Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie,was yet very glad to be called from it,by the now encouraging manner of such a judge,and such a friend as Miss Woodhouse,and only wanted invitation,to give the history of her hopes with great,though trembling delight.—Emma’s tremblings as she asked,and as she listened,were better concealed than Harriet’s,but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady;but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self,such a burst of threatening evil,such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions,must create.—She listened with much inward suffering,but with great outward patience,to Harriet’s detail.—Methodical, or well arranged,or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be;but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit—especially with the corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of Mr. Knightley’s most improved opinion of Harriet.
Harriet had been conscious of a difference in his behaviour ever since those two decisive dances.—Emma knew that he had, on that occasion, found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at least from the time of Miss Woodhouse’s encouraging her to think of him, Harriet had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he had been used to do, and of his having indeed quite a different manner towards her; a manner of kindness and sweetness!—Latterly she had been more and more aware of it.When they had been all walking together,he had so often come and walked by her,and talked so very delightfully!—He seemed to want to be acquainted with her.Emma knew it to have been very much the case.She had often observed the change,to almost the same extent.—Harriet repeated expressions of approbation and praise from him—and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for being without art or affectation, for having simple, honest, generous, feelings.—She knew that he saw such recommendations in Harriet; he had dwelt on them to her more than once.—Much that lived in Harriet’s memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another, a compliment implied, a preference inferred, had been unnoticed, because unsuspected, by Emma. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour’s relation, and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed undiscerned by her who now heard them; but the two latest occurrences to be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Harriet, were not without some degree of witness from Emma herself.—The first, was his walking with her apart from the others, in the lime-walk at Donwell, where they had been walking some time before Emma came, and he had taken pains (as she was convinced) to draw her from the rest to himself—and at first, he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done before, in a very particular way indeed!—(Harriet could not recall it without a blush.) He seemed to be almost asking her, whether her affections were engaged.—But as soon as she (Miss Woodhouse) appeared likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about farming:—The second, was his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour before Emma came back from her visit, the very last morning of his being at Hartfield—though, when he first came in, he had said that he could not stay five minutes—and his having told her, during their conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more (as Emma felt) than he had acknowledged to _her_. The superior degree of confidence towards Harriet, which this one article marked, gave her severe pain.
On the subject of the first of the two circumstances,she did, after a little reflection,venture the following question. “Might he not?—Is not it possible, that when enquiring,as you thought, into the state of your affections,he might be alluding to Mr. Martin—he might have Mr.Martin’s interest in view?But Harriet rejected the suspicion with spirit.
“Mr. Martin!No indeed!—There was not a hint of Mr. Martin.I hope I know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin,or to be suspected of it.”
When Harriet had closed her evidence,she appealed to her dear Miss Woodhouse,to say whether she had not good ground for hope.
“I never should have presumed to think of it at first,” said she, “but for you.You told me to observe him carefully,and let his behaviour be the rule of mine—and so I have.But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him;and that if he does chuse me,it will not be any thing so very wonderful.”
The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech,the many bitter feelings,made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma’s side,to enable her to say on reply,
“Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr.Knightley is the last man in the world,who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he really does.”
Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory;and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness,which at that moment would have been dreadful penance,by the sound of her father’s footsteps.He was coming through the hall.Harriet was too much agitated to encounter him.“She could not compose herself— Mr.Woodhouse would be alarmed—she had better go;”—with most ready encouragement from her friend,therefore, she passed off through another door—and the moment she was gone,this was the spontaneous burst of Emma’s feelings: “Oh God!that I had never seen her!”
The rest of the day, the following night,were hardly enough for her thoughts.—She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to her.—How to understand it all!How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practising on herself, and living under!—The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!—she sat still, she walked about,she tried her own room,she tried the shrubbery—in every place, every posture,she perceived that she had acted most weakly;that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree;that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying;that she was wretched,and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness.
To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart,was the first endeavour.To that point went every leisure moment which her father’s claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind.
How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her,as every feeling declared him now to be?When had his influence, such influence begun?—When had he succeeded to that place in her affection,which Frank Churchill had once, for a short period, occupied?—She looked back; she compared the two—compared them,as they had always stood in her estimation,from the time of the latter’s becoming known to her—and as they must at any time have been compared by her, had it—oh!had it, by any blessed felicity, occurred to her,to institute the comparison.—She saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr. Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart—and, in short, that she had never really cared for Frank Churchill at all!