Robert Rodi's Blog, page 2

Edgar and Emma, chapter 10

Emma, dismayed that she had not been able to catch Edgar's attention before leaving the churchyard—and even more distraught that the impediment to doing so was his apparent fascination with Alice Nesmith—again took to her room, with the stated intention of remaining there the rest of her days. This time, however, her family were less solicitous of her; no doubt they expected her to relent at any time, as she had done before. And she could not quite resent them for it, because she fully expected it herself.Self-incarceration had not suited her; she had grown bored with herself, and weary of her grief, and maintained her isolation only out of dread of the embarrassment she should face if she ended it so soon. But when Tom’s letter had arrived, alerting her of Edgar’s imminent arrival, she joyed at her deliverance; for the reason for her seclusion no longer applied.But there was little chance of that now. After she had wept out the initial ravages of her disappointment, she lay on her pillow and rationally examined the possibility of another face-saving miracle. It was slight. She could scarcely expect providence to come to her aid a second time; and even if she could, what might that aid consist of? A letter advising her that Alice Nesmith had been struck by lightning? She could not in good conscience wish for it, little as she cared for Alice—and the two had never been on good terms; not since they were very young, when, having grown tired and irritable over a game they had been playing for far too long, they had fallen out over the rules. Each one invented a regulation that favored her over her competitor; each then accused the other, and neither admitted the deceit; with the result that Alice had pulled Emma’s hair, and Emma had pushed Alice into a cow-pat. They had been forced by their fathers to make it up; but each was strong-willed, and nurtured a secret strain of rebellion in her breast, that kept them at arm’s length from that day to this. They might be coerced into civility, but they would never again choose to be friends. It sometimes seemed absurd that the effects of a petty childhood falling-out should yet be felt in full adulthood; but Emma could think of no possible amendment of it now. Except, in her less guarded moments…Alice Nesmith being struck by lightning.But until this eventuality, Emma found herself self-exiled to her room…again.
In the end, her salvation came in the form of Mrs. Curtis, who came to Graftings one morning to beg her company on a series of errands which it would be excessively tedious to have to attend to on her own. Emma put up a show of resistance, but allowed herself to be persuaded to end her tragic confinement; and thus when at last she came downstairs, she sacrificed no dignity, for she was doing her aunt a favor.Still, she scolded herself for having got herself into the same predicament twice, and vowed to better suppress her more operatic impulses, that she should not do so a third time. Since the first two had been prompted by extremes of grief having to do with Edgar Willmot, she felt it might be best to avoid him entirely; for should she happen again to espy him doting on Alice, she could not depend on her reason.Alas, she might conceivably evade him in the flesh; but the idea of Edgar was not so easily skirted. She learned as much within her first five minutes out-of-doors. She had known, of course, that the reason Mrs. Curtis sought her company was that she wished to talk—there being no circumstance in all of Creation in which Mrs. Curtis did not wish to talk—but she had not suspected that today, what she wished principally to talk of was the male Willmots.“You turned the heads of both brothers on Sunday,” she said, as they headed into the village, arm in arm. “Mr. Curtis and I could not but notice it. That is to say, I noticed it and I pointed it out to him, and he did not contradict me. But I think I can guess which of the two pleased you better.”“I hope you will not make the attempt,” said Emma, with no small dread.“In fairness, I do think their finer qualities are evenly distributed; do not you? Edgar is very much the responsible one; his is the cooler head, his the sounder judgment. He possesses a very comforting gravity, and an endearing trustworthiness.” Mrs. Curtis recited all this as if describing a very well-made suit of clothes which she never wished to wear.“Whereas Ralph,” she continued, “is the more suave, the more charming, the more conversationally adept. He is also more certain to be delightful company, and to notice everything, and to frame it in such a way as to make one laugh. Do you not agree?”“I cannot disagree,” said Emma reluctantly.“But while their characters are thus balanced, I think there is, alas, less equivalence in their aspects. Edgar is very self-contained and very graceful; but he has not the same advantage of countenance as does Ralph. Surely you will agree with me. Ralph is by any measure the handsomest of the brothers.”Again, Emma could not argue the point; but she would not give her aunt the satisfaction of saying so. Mrs. Curtis placed far more importance on physical appearance than she did; and Emma would not encourage her by confirming a judgment based on such superficial terms…though she knew her aunt would press the matter. If only something would occur to divert her attention.And at that moment, such a thing did occur; but not in a manner which Emma would have wished. For at the juncture where the high street met the road to the parsonage, they were intercepted by Alice Nesmith.Mrs. Curtis was delighted. “Come and join us, dear Alice!” she exclaimed. “We are headed for the shops, as I deduce, by the basket on your arm, you are as well.”Alice looked for a moment like she might turn and flee; but then she steeled herself, came forth, and fell into step with them.“Good day to you, Miss Nesmith,” said Emma.“And to you, Miss Emma Marlow,” said Alice crisply. “I congratulate you on your return to Marlhurst.”“Oh, have you not renewed your acquaintance until just now?” Mrs. Curtis asked. “What luck to have run into you then, Alice; for we are just now having a very illuminating tête-a-tête. What do you think Emma has just been telling me of?”“I am sorry to confess,” replied Alice with perhaps too much satisfaction, “that I have not heard Miss Emma Marlow speak sufficiently often to guess at what she might say.”“Why, she has only been saying which of the Willmot brothers she finds the most handsome. I think you may surmise which she chose.”“I beg your pardon, Aunt,” said Emma, feeling color come to her face. “I have said not one word on the subject. The discourse has been entirely your own.”“But there are so many Willmots,” said Alice, ignoring Emma’s protest; “I don’t like to venture a guess as to which one you mean.” But her eyes—which she now turned on Emma—betrayed that she had indeed ventured a guess.“Difficult creature,” said Mrs. Curtis, and she playfully tweaked Alice’s arm—a familiarity that made Emma feel quite faint. “Why will you never guess when I ask it of you?”“I am sorry, but I am very stupid at it.”“I will have to tell you, then,” said the older woman, and she drew Alice closer that she might lower her voice. “It is of course Ralph whom Emma favors.”“Aunt,” Emma cried, “forgive me, but I never said such a thing! It was yourself who named him.”By this time they had reached the shops, and joined with other villagers who were out with their baskets, running their errands in the relative cool of morning, before the inevitable heat of midday.“Ralph is very fair,” said Alice with a nod of approval. “Though I confess I prefer a darker complexion. No doubt Miss Emma Marlow and I have not the same taste in men.”Emma, who did not like to consider that she and Alice Nesmith might have the same taste in anything, stilled the protest that was poised to leap from her tongue; in which interval her aunt renewed her discourse on the male Willmots.“That is the benefit, you see,” she said, taking Alice in one arm and Emma in the other and leading them up the high street, “of having so very many brothers in a single family. There is certain to be one to fit every fancy. Think of it, girls: Ralph is light, Edgar is dark; Richard is slender, David is burly; and Peter—well, Peter is too young yet to say what he will be. I suppose we must be content to wait.”“I think he will be tall,” said Alice. “He is very high already, for just twelve years.”“Then the Willmots must be persuaded to have another son,” quipped Mrs. Curtis, “that there may also be one who is short.”“But what if he should instead be round? Then the Willmots must have two more sons: one who is short, and another who is gaunt.”“Mrs. Willmot will not thank you for that, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis, and the two laughed very wildly. Emma, whose elbow was securely interlocked with that of her aunt, could think of no greater mortification than to be seen with them behaving thusly, and indeed several heads turned in response to the noise they were making. But alas, she was to learn that greater mortification always awaits those helpless to defend against it.“Why, bless me,” cried Aunt Curtis, “are those not two of the gentlemen we have only just named?”Emma looked up, and to her horror saw that indeed Edgar and Ralph Willmot were a short distance ahead, very near to the milliner’s shop.“Emma, my dear,” said Mrs. Curtis with telling deliberation, “was not our principle destination this morning the milliner’s?”“No, indeed, Aunt,” said Emma, pretending not to take her meaning, “we have no business to transact there.”Mrs. Curtis gave her arm a little shake. “Silly creature! You understand me, I am sure. I mean to say, what a chance this is to speak extemporaneously to your lover, Mr. Ralph Willmot!”Emma felt her face burn again. “I have no such lover,” she insisted.“Ah, but here is an opportunity to make it so!”“The mere fact that an opportunity presents itself,” Emma said desperately, “does not signify that it is advisable to take it.”Mrs. Curtis cawed out a laugh. “How clever you are! Ever ready with a turn of phrase. I suppose you think that gentlemen find cleverness an attractive quality in a lady. They do not. You may trust me on this, my dear; I know it for a certainty.”“I am sure no one knows it better,” snapped Emma; and as soon as she had said it, she regretted that provocation had rendered her pert.Fortunately her aunt was oblivious to her meaning, and merrily pulled her in the direction of the milliner’s shop.“I declare,” said Mrs. Curtis when they came within hailing distance of the brothers, “here are friends of ours! Look, girls; it is the Misters Willmot.”The brothers, who had been conferring together, raised their heads at this, and a momentary look passed between Emma and Edgar—a look of such candid, unaffected interest that each was embarrassed by it, certain that it was misconstrued—after which they turned their glances quickly away, and did not risk allowing their eyes to meet a second time.“How do you do, ladies,” Ralph said as he and Edgar tipped their hats.“Very well, thank you,” said Mrs. Curtis. “We are just come to visit the milliner’s. And what,” she added with unconcealed glee, “do you think we have all been talking about?”Emma, whose skin was so recently reddened by shame, now felt it go pale with anxiety. “Aunt, no,” she whispered.“You must not ask us to guess,” said Ralph. “For we might scandalize you by deducing quite wrongly.”“Then I will have to tell you,” said Mrs. Curtis, and as Emma felt herself begin to sink into the ground, she declared: “We have been singing the praises of this lovely springtime weather.”“Indeed it is very clement,” murmured Edgar, whose gaze remained downcast, as though in search of coins from Roman Britain that might be easily unearthed by the toe of his shoe.“Such a wonderful moistness in the air,” said Mrs. Curtis with a quick glance at Emma; and the spark in her eye revealed how much she enjoyed causing her niece trepidation, then relieving it at the last possible moment. “So beneficial for the skin. Does not Emma’s visage have a particular glow this morning, Mr. Willmot?”“Indeed it does,” said Ralph, at whom she had quite pointedly directed the question; for Edgar seemed to drift ever further to the outskirts of the group. “And yet she looks no less fine than Miss Nesmith—or I daresay yourself, ma’am.”Mrs. Curtis laughed wildly again. “You must not say such things, Mr. Willmot! I am an old married lady.”He flashed her a dazzling grin. “Then this moist air is more efficacious than any I have yet known; for you look no less a maiden than your two companions.”Again she shrieked with laughter; up and down the street heads turned in curiosity at such stridency, and Emma longed to be gone. But she knew she was fixed in place for the time being. It was unlike her aunt to hurry away from a place where compliments were aplenty.“To be sure,” Mrs. Curtis said, “there is but a difference of seven years between my niece and myself. My brother Marlow is fully a dozen years my senior, you know; so that I was but a child myself when Emma was born.”“That explains it,” said Ralph with another bow. “I congratulate your husband, ma’am, on his good fortune in winning so young and comely a bride.”“As well you might,” she said with a little smirk of pride. “For Mr. Curtis was nearly forty when I married him and might have done much worse, as I often tell him. But I daresay I have made him happy. He will not say so; but as he has not got rid of me in all these years, I must conclude he is not unsatisfied.”“He is the happiest of men, I am certain,” said Ralph.She crowed again. “Oh! if Mr. Curtis is the happiest of men, then what dour creatures all the rest of you must be!” She turned again to Emma. “I shall wish better for my niece, sir; that I shall. For her, I shall wish a husband who is always gallant, always gay, always ready with a compliment.” She took another quick look at Ralph, as if requiring further inspiration, then added, “A well-looking fellow, who is always considerate and obliging. That is my ideal. That is what I wish for Emma.”“Such a paragon of positivity!” said Ralph, shaking his head and feigning a dubious look. “I wonder whether he exists in the world.”“I am certain he does, and in quantity. In fact, you may be sure there is one to be found wherever you go.” She gave him a very sly look, as if daring him to take her meaning.“Aunt,” Emma whispered frantically; “you grow too bold.”“And Miss Nesmith,” Ralph said, nodding his head at Alice; “is she not included in your marital good wishes?”“Oh, I shouldn’t like a cheerful husband,” protested Alice. “I should be much more contented with a sober-minded man—a scholarly man of great, mindful silences.” She did not look at Edgar as she said this; but Emma saw Edgar color and turn further away, as though he felt Alice’s eyes on him all the same.“Then at least,” said Ralph, “you ladies will never be rivals for the same suitor. I congratulate you on the safety of your friendship.” He turned his head, as if to say something to Edgar, then appeared momentarily confounded at finding him so far off. “It appears my brother is impatient to depart,” he said, “and indeed we have lingered here longer than we had ought. But with such company as this, none would dare to blame us.”“Such gallant words have bought you your release,” said Mrs. Curtis, waving him away. “Go, then; we will detain you no longer.”As soon as the brothers were beyond the range of hearing, she turned to Emma and squeezed her forearm. “Did that not go well? How attentive he was! How rhapsodic in praise of your fine skin!”“I believe,” said Emma, “he meant to praise each of our complexions in equal measure.”“Oh, foolish girl; that was but a blind! He included Alice and me, the better to mask his compliment to you.”Emma looked at her with incredulity. Was it possible Mrs. Curtis really believed what she had said? When Emma had last known her, she had admired her aunt very much, and thought her the pinnacle of all womanly achievement: a beautiful young wife with a fine house, and a liberal husband who allowed her to do what she pleased. Now that Emma had reached womanhood herself, Mrs. Curtis appeared very different to her; she seemed to be rather the younger of the two, as if her early marriage had frozen her in a perpetual state of juvenile giddiness. Were her aunt now to pick up her skirts and turn a somersault in the high street, Emma would be embarrassed, but not surprised.“I must bid you good morning as well,” said Alice. “I begin my rounds just ahead, at the tobacconist’s shop, as my father has once again let his pouch go empty.”Emma was surprised to her a daughter speak so sardonically of a parent; she kept her counsel, but the incident did nothing to inspire her to think better of her childhood friend.Thus Alice left them, buffeted by Mrs. Curtis’s regretful effusions; after which aunt and niece went on alone. Emma had to endure another four minutes’ dissection of their encounter with Ralph, until by chance they passed the draper’s shop, and Mrs. Curtis must abandon all talk of the Willmots and tell Emma the shocking history of Madame Claude. Emma, grateful to be quit of the earlier subject, listened to the narrative with great equanimity, though she had already heard it twice before.
Thus at the end of the morning, each of its principal participants returned home secure in an entirely erroneous conviction.Ralph was certain, by the way Mrs. Curtis had spoken, and by the way Emma had blushed at it, that his way to the latter’s heart was clear.Edgar was equally certain of his brother’s success with Emma; and was additionally persuaded, having now seen both girls together, that Alice suited him much the worse of the two—but that she was, all the same, the best for which he could hope.Emma was surer than ever that she could not be in the presence of Edgar and Alice without suffering great unhappiness. Never mind that he behaved diffidently towards Alice; it was clear Alice had not minded—which, to Emma, meant that she had accustomed herself to such behavior from him, and had not found it an impediment to love.Mrs. Curtis was confident that she would soon triumph on two separate fronts. Her campaign to match Emma with Ralph Willmot gave every indication of success; and by the way Alice spoke of preferring “a scholarly man of great, mindful silences,” it was clear she was indeed an ideal match for Tom Peake, did she but know it—and Mrs. Curtis would see that she did know it.As for Alice herself…she was the least deluded of those here enumerated. For she was certain that Emma was less immediate a danger to her than she had feared, and that she had somehow gained an advantage with Edgar—an advantage she meant to press.And let the consequences be what they may.

Edgar and Emma, chapter 9

“Today I speak to you of selflessness. Of all the virtues impressed on us by our Creator, none is so great as Christian charity. The early practitioners of our faith were not renowned for their forbearance, or for their chastity, or for their rectitude, although these were essential to them; no, what set them apart was their duty to others. The first Christians distinguished themselves by their attentions to those in want; even they who were in want themselves, put aside their own needs and sought instead to comfort and serve the sick and indigent among their communities and countrymen.”Mr. Nesmith paused; he would not have called it a theatrical moment—indeed he would have been shocked to hear it called such—but this was its effect. He looked down from his lectern at his visibly awed congregation, and continued: “But we latter-day unworthies, in our pomp and finery, congratulate ourselves on our righteousness based solely on the achievement of every seventh day coming to fill these pews, and tamping down for a single hour the rampant greed and self-interest that drive us like mustangs the remainder of the week. We feast at the poison trough of gossip; we prey on the weaknesses of others the way vultures feast on carrion; we gorge ourselves on sweetmeats while others starve, and slake our thirsts with wine and spirits that dull our moral senses and unleash our basest demons. We cloy ourselves with ourselves, sicken our souls with our animal cravings, debase our flesh by giving free rein to our appetites, and in all ways reduce ourselves to cringing, cackling avatars of darkness. We serve no one—ourselves least of all—none but he for whom the fall of human honor is the tireless labor of many millennia. Even now he laughs at our self-delusions and hypocrisies, as we mire ourselves ever deeper in the black tar-pit of sin.”He lowered his head for a moment; then looked up and continued. “As a final note, let us welcome back to our flock Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow, and their many fine children. May they prosper among us, and add to our share of blessings. Now rise, and lift your voices in Hymn number two-hundred-and-forty, ‘O perfect love, all human thought transcending’.”
The Willmots, by reason of their being the most ancient family in the neighborhood, were the first to exit the church, and to pay their compliments to Mr. Nesmith. Ralph in particular shook his hand and said, “What a stirring sermon! One finds one cannot wait to curtail one’s gorging and slaking.”Mr. Nesmith—perhaps alone of all who lived—was not beguiled by Ralph’s impudent charm. “Enjoy your levity while you may, sir,” he said. “Rakehells never profit.”“Do you not think so?” said Ralph before moving on. “You have been speaking to the wrong rakehells.”The Marlows, because of their exalted rank, next emerged, and Lady Marlow especially commended the parson on his oration. “I am glad to see you have not lost your fervor.”“Nor never shall,” he reassured her.Mrs. Curtis skirted behind Lady Marlow during this exchange, averting her eyes from Mr. Nesmith, and once outside, summoned her husband to follow her to their chaise—a summons he was only to pleased to answer, as he had no use for the social talk on the churchyard green that followed every service. On an average Sunday his wife would have been in the thick of it; but today she was strangely uneasy, and felt it imperative that she avoid the parson’s notice. Were she a woman capable of even the simplest feat of reflection, she might have determined that this was because she feared his censure of those who fed at the “poison trough of gossip” had been aimed squarely at her. As it was, the vague inkling of having somehow put a foot wrong was enough to pull her from company; though she was not so chastened as to drive away entirely, and instead sat with her husband inside the chaise, observing through its window what transpired on the lawn, for later analysis.Had she but known it, she was safe from Mr. Nesmith’s scrutiny. Indeed she might have come right up under his chin and stood on his shoes, and still not managed to engage his attention. For he was preoccupied with watching, from the corner of his eye, the progress of Ralph Willmot. He could still not rest easy that his daughter’s dalliance with that young rascal had indeed concluded; for the term of their flirtation had forced father and daughter into their most steadfast opposition yet. He had insisted that she give him up; she had outright refused, and threatened elopement if he pressed his paternal authority. So fierce was she in her defense of their attachment, that he could not but be mystified by how easily she then set Ralph Willmot aside, mere weeks later. He had never dared to question her about it, lest he provoke her into renewing the connection; but he watched her—he watched them both—for any signs that such a thing might be in the works.Yet today Ralph did no more than bow to Alice, before moving on to speak with the Lynches, who stood some distance from her. Even more gratifyingly, Mr. Nesmith espied another young man approach and engage Alice in conversation—that being his verger, Mr. Redmond; a humble young man, but of excellent character and a cheerful disposition. He could not fathom what Redmond saw in his restless, unpredictable daughter, but whatever it was, he meant to promote it in any way he could.As it happened, he was not the only one who at that moment regarded Alice and Mr. Redmond; for Edgar, too, caught sight of the couple just as they struck up their conversation. They seemed very friendly, which came as a surprise, because until very recently Alice had been rather obvious about her interest in Edgar himself. But then, she had also once been equally forthright in her attentions to Ralph. Edgar found her agreeable enough, but suspected she did not quite know who—or what—she wanted, and was loath to become enmeshed in her experiments to find out.Alice had been rather cooler toward Edgar just before he departed for Oxford; could it be that her father’s verger had by then engaged her interest? He dared to hope so; for he could not in good conscience give her any encouragement on his own behalf.She must have sensed his eyes on her, because she turned and met them with her own; and by the smile that lit her face, Edgar knew at once that she had not replaced him with the verger—or with anyone else. He was still the principal focus of her attraction. In fact she now dismissed the verger so curtly, leaving him almost in mid-sentence to come and speak to Edgar instead, that the poor young man was visibly startled; his jaw hung so low and so long on his chest, a bird might have built a nest in his mouth.Edgar cursed himself for his stupidity in spying on Alice, for now he had drawn her to him, and she was very much not the young lady to whom he wished at this moment to speak. But he could not turn and flee her, as she had done to the verger; his own manners were too correct for such discourtesy, and so he held his ground.But before Alice could reach him, he felt a presence at his side, and turned——and there she was: the very person in all the world he most wished for.“I beg your pardon,” Emma said with pleasing demureness, “but I wonder if you remember me, Mr. Willmot.”“Indeed I do,” he said. “And I hope you have had the good sense, these past several years, to steer clear of vipers.”She laughed, very prettily. “Oh! it was not a viper; you said so yourself. Only a grass snake. I think you must mean to aggrandize your heroism, Mr. Willmot, by putting me in greater danger than I actually was.”He feigned an expression of great pain. “I am found out!” he exclaimed. But then he smiled and added, “I see that you have grown in wit, as you have in beauty.”She blushed. “You are too kind, sir.”“Not at all. I saw you within, you know; and had you not been seated with your mother and father, it would have taken me more than a moment to place you. The five years since last we met have done you many kindnesses.”She laughed again. “Was I as much to be pitied as that?”“Not at all; you were quite bonny. Yet…a bud, as opposed to a blossom.”Her face flushed anew; and he could sense that, behind him, Alice had halted in her progress toward him, no doubt having seen him otherwise engaged. He felt free to suggest a stroll about the churchyard, and Emma, to his delight, agreed to the scheme.“My father’s ward, Tom Peake, writes to me that you are newly returned from Oxford,” she said as they ambled away from the others.He raised an eyebrow. “I was not aware that I was of such interest to him.”She colored again; Edgar enjoyed the sight. He wondered how often he might induce her to do so.“You are no longer enrolled there, I think?” she asked.He shook his head; and—as the morning was proving rather warm for a walk—they stopped as if by mutual consent beneath a willow tree, to rest for a moment in its deep pool of shade.“I am not,” he confirmed. “But there is a lecturer there—Professor Bridge—who has become a mentor to me, and who is guiding me through a literary project I have undertaken.”“Indeed?” she said, and she looked at him with what seemed unfeigned interest. “What is the nature of this project?”“I’m afraid you would find it very dull,” he said—remembering the glaze that had come over Alice’s eyes when he expounded upon it to her.“You think me a silly creature, then? Lacking in understanding?” There was an accusatory note in her voice that made him suddenly wary.“Not at all,” he said, gently taking her elbow and leading her back out onto the green. “Merely that it is a ponderous subject for so light a morning.” She seemed to be considering this, and so to distract her he said, “Your sister looks uncommonly fine as well; for that was her, I believe, in your family's pew.” She nodded, and he asked, “Does she still have her dogs?”“Oh, Frances will never abandon her spaniels.” She gave him a hopeful look. “And what of your own loyal friend? How fares my second rescuer, Baron?”Edgar softened his features so as not to appear too harsh. “He lived to a venerable old age and died in his sleep. I would wish no better for any of us.”Despite his efforts, Emma seemed distressed by the news. “Oh, but I remember him being so full of life, leaping in the air! Surely five years are insufficient to see such a vital creature into his dotage.”“Their lives are set to a different tempo than ours.”This seemed to sadden her; perhaps she was thinking of her sister’s dogs, and what just a few more years might bring. But then she surprised him by rounding on him and saying, “You have yet to answer my question.”He was quite confounded. “What question was that?”“The nature of your literary project.”There was something about her manner…she was a delicate, slender thing, but there was iron in her; it showed in her carriage. She would not back down. He surprised himself by finding this enchanting; and so, he relented.“I have undertaken a new translation of Plutarch’s Lives,” he explained. “You are perhaps familiar with the work?”She shook her head in the negative, but did not seem abashed.“It is a series of parallel biographies, written in Greek, by the ancient historian Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus—or Plutarch, as he is known to us.” He appraised her look for any sign of regret that she had introduced the subject; but her eyes were bright and avid. “Each set of biographies pairs a noble Greek hero or statesman with a Roman who is his rough equivalent.”“Ah,” she said, but with no languor in her tone; indeed, she seemed to be urging him to go on. Which he took haste to do, as they had now made the circuit of the churchyard, and were again approaching the other congregants—or rather, those who had not yet dispersed.“For example,” he said, “Plutarch, pairs his biography of Alexander with that of Julius Caesar; and by this means, he allows the similarities and differences between them to illuminate their characters in a way treating them singly would not.”“How very clever,” she said; and though he listened for mockery in the words, he found none.Thus emboldened, he felt sufficient courage to confess to her something he thus far had not told anyone else—except of course Professor Bridge. “The reason I have chosen to make an English translation of my own,” he said breathlessly, “is that I have a plan to enlarge the work; and that is by—”He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of his mother. Given her girth, Mrs. Willmot not known for sprinting across churchyard lawns, so her sudden arrival by his side rather startled him; indeed, he lost his hat.As he stooped to pick it up again, his mother said, “My dear Miss Emma, I am so glad to see you have reacquainted yourself with my Edgar. Did he know you, I wonder? I would not be surprised if at first he did not know you. But I have another son just returned, as well; and I think you must not play favorites. That would never do. You will of course remember Ralph?…He is just there, under the window of the nave, speaking to Mr. Grayson. Will you just do me the courtesy of saying hello to him? I will be happy to lead the way.”Emma could not but agree; and as she turned to go she gave Edgar a guileless smile that almost made up for her being taken from him.Except that, while Emma went on ahead, Mrs. Willmot hung briefly back, and said, “I am sorry to be so brusque, Edgar; but you will forgive me when you understand me better. It seems that Miss Emma Marlow is very taken with our Ralph, and being a young lady of excellent breeding, is too shy to approach him. So as his mother I take it upon myself to bring the two lovers together. There! now I hope I am forgiven.” She happily turned away from him and made after Emma, who had paused to look back, in apparent curiosity at her delay.Edgar watched his mother lead Emma to where Ralph—now alerted to their coming—had stepped away from Mr. Grayson; and watched as Ralph bowed to Emma, and even kissed her hand, as was his wont, while Mrs. Willmot gabbled happily on.It was only a few moments before Edgar became aware that he now stood in no less stupefied a state than the verger had, when abandoned by Alice. He shook his head, and with a great summoning of self-command, pulled himself back to order.And yet he was still astounded. Emma Marlow…in love with Ralph?But then, why not? All the world was in love with Ralph. Edgar himself adored him, for all his faults. Ralph had the means to make it so; he boasted good looks, and courtliness, and an uncanny charisma that could draw the birds down from the trees. In love with Ralph?…When the alternative was dour, scholarly Edgar, and his tiresome Greeks and Romans, who would be otherwise?As if in answer to his question, Alice drew up beside him. Had she been following him at a distance, while he and Emma walked the entire churchyard ’round? Perhaps so; and while five minutes before, the idea would have alarmed him, now he found a measure of solace in it. Alice, at least—who knew Ralph as well as anybody—seemed to prefer Edgar’s company.Alice, and Alice alone.Well, then, he ought not to punish her for such partiality. He offered her a smile, and said, “I have just been speaking to Miss Emma Marlow.”“I have seen as much,” she said; and if there was a serrated edge of jealousy to her words, what of it? In his present state, Edgar could not but see it as a tribute.“She is much changed,” he said. “You are of an age, I think.”“We are neither of us yet nineteen,” she said, as if affirming that Emma had not that advantage over her, and daring him to try another.He was happy at this evidence that she cared enough to campaign for him. He extended his elbow. “You must not stand beneath the cruel sun,” he said. “I would not have you wilt; I would have you flourish.”She beamed at him, and took his arm, and he led her beneath the roof of the porch, where they stood and talked until Mrs. Willmot called him to come to the carriage. When he looked up, he saw that all the other families had since gone, and he had not been aware of it.He had not even noticed Emma Marlow depart.

Emma and Edgar, chapter 8

As soon as Mr. Willmot was back at the lodge, he wrote to his eldest son and bade him return without delay. Then he went to make peace with his wife, of whom he could once again think kindly, now that he had satisfied himself through exertion of his paternal authority.As it happened, Ralph Willmot had by this same time grown bored with London—his “errand” there having consisted of no more than a chain of louche amusements, of which had was now feeling more than surfeited—and had written to Edgar as well, to propose himself in Oxford. He surmised that the soothing torpidity of an academic environment might help him recuperate from the effects of his many indulgences; but alas, Edgar wrote back to say that he had been summoned home.Ralph was disappointed; he had intended to delay his own return to Willmot Lodge by visiting his brother. But since it was not to be, he thought they might as well make the last leg of the journey together. They arranged to meet at The Copper Fox, an inn in Surrey much frequented by travelers from Marlhurst and its environs, there to eat and drink together before continuing. Ralph was the first to arrive, riding up in the pummeling heat of early afternoon. Once inside the cool, low-ceilinged common room, he took the opportunity to order a tankard of ale to quench his thirst. Indeed he might have time for another, before Edgar turned up; which thought so pleased him that he wished his brother in no hurry. For despite the vast differences in their characters, the two young men were close, and each had an improving effect on the other: Ralph was not quite so comfortable debauching himself with Edgar’s eye upon him, and Edgar was actually known to laugh in Ralph’s company—there were eyewitnesses to the phenomenon, who had reputably reported it.After he had quaffed his first few mouthfuls, Ralph felt sufficiently recovered from the oppressive warmth to survey the other patrons in the room. He fully expected to discover a face familiar to him—but was surprised by the one which finally answered this expectation.“Peake!” he exclaimed, after departing his own table and coming to where his old friend sat. “What a welcome thing, to find you here. You won’t mind my joining you?”Tom, who had been very happily passing the time with a book, none the less closed it and smiled agreeably. “Not at all. Hello, Willmot.”“So it’s true,” said Ralph, after sitting down and stealing another swallow of ale. “If you’re here at The Copper Fox, you must be headed north from Sussex; which can only mean the Marlows are again installed at Graftings.”“I left them this morning,” Tom said. “You knew, then, of our coming?”“The excellent Mrs. Curtis told me of it, before I departed for town—from whence I now return.”“Ah, yes. She is not one to keep such a thing secret.”“A secret of any kind would kill her,” Ralph agreed; “it would be a stone in her breast.”Tom smiled; but he would not laugh at his aunt. It would be ungenerous.Ralph, however, was not troubled by such scruples. “She is like my mother,” he continued, leaning back in his chair and seeming very happy to have an audience. “They are both of them so very voluble. My brother and I have an ongoing game, whenever those two ladies get together in one room: we observe to see which one dominates the conversation. The result is always the same: whichever manages to speak the first syllable. Because the other will have lost her chance, and there will never be sufficient pause thereafter for her to leap in and claim the field.”Tom arched one eyebrow. “I can believe that is a game of yours; I am less persuaded that it is also your brother’s.”“Oh, Edgar is more satirical than anybody knows. It just requires bringing out in him.”Tom nodded, while thinking, “What he means is, it just requires a bad influence.”“Perhaps I can demonstrate,” Ralph continued. “He is to meet me here forthwith. He comes down from Oxford, where he is engaged in some tiresome project involving Latin texts. He has described it to me, but I never listen on principle.”“I will be sorry to miss him,” Tom said, while producing a few coins from his vest pocket and setting them on the table, “but alas, I must once again brave the heat of the day.”“You are headed to London?”“Yes; but only to pass through it.” He gave forth with another wry grin. “My destination is Cambridge. I am a university man myself these days, and Michaelmas term begins shortly.”Ralph blanched. “I am sorry; I hope you will not mind my have spoken slightingly of academia.”“Not at all. The scholar’s lot is not for every man.”“Are you reading Classics, like Edgar?”“No; Law, at Jesus College. I am in my second year.” He smiled more widely. “It seems Mrs. Curtis did not tell you that.”“Indeed she did not. Damn the woman.”At this unexpected irreverence, Tom himself laughed, as much from shock as from diversion; and suddenly he understood how Ralph’s roguish charm might indeed crack his brother’s virtuous veneer.He recovered in an instant, and got to his feet. “I am glad we met, Willmot; I will not be back at Graftings for some months, and would have regretted missing you.”“But you won’t regret missing Edgar?” Ralph asked, with a mocking glint in his eye. “Never mind, you cannot fool me: I know it is because you are a Cambridge man, and he an Oxfordian. You are rivals, and must soon come to blows.”Tom laughed again. “I shouldn’t think either your brother or I had much to fear from any blows such meek souls as we might land on one another.”Ralph walked him to the door. “There is something else Mrs. Curtis didn’t tell me,” he said, “and that is how the Misses Marlow do. I have not seen them since they were the merest girls. They are well?”“Both very well indeed.”“And…well-looking?” He gave Tom so pointed a look that Tom astonished himself by laughing a third time.“My dear Willmot,” he said, “they are as sisters to me.”“Very comely sisters, I expect.”“Since you ask, I believe they are generally considered quite handsome.”Ralph grinned in satisfaction, then clapped him on the back. “Safe travels to you, my friend. Be most attentive to your studies; graduate with honors, and take your place at the forefront of your profession. I do not wish this purely in a spirit of altruism, but from knowing that someday, I am very likely to require a good lawyer.”
As Tom rode north, he repented of the haste with which he had left Ralph’s company. It wasn’t due to Ralph’s infamous conversation that he had fled; he was long accustomed to that—and to the way Ralph’s charisma overrode any objection.No, it had been because he really hadn’t wished to meet Edgar. Ralph had been more intuitive than he knew: indeed, Tom had no compelling desire to sit and compare notes with an Oxford alumnus.Now, back under the punishing sun, his principles wilted in the unseasonable September calidity, and he felt increasingly silly that he had chose not to meet a friend of many years over so slight a thing as a school rivalry.He felt particularly ashamed when he recalled Emma’s fondness for Edgar, which had been the cause of so much recent misery to her. Tom might have waited to meet him, if only to advise him to treat kindly with her. That this had not even occurred to him, he now viewed with great shame.He resolved to redeem himself by stopping in town long enough to post a short letter to Emma, advising her that Edgar Willmot was in fact on his way back to Marlhurst.
Edgar reached The Copper Fox some twenty minutes later, and after embracing his brother sat down with him and feasted on cold meats with bread and butter. While they ate, Edgar explained the reason for his summons home: “Father wishes to groom me to take over for him when he is dead. I would that I were not the eldest son, because I have no feeling for such things; I am a scholar, not a farmer nor a manager.”“Well, don’t attempt to shift the burden of responsibility onto me,” Ralph said (he had by this time finished his second tankard of ale). “You may be ill-suited to the role of country squire, but I think I must be its very antithesis.”Edgar smiled. “I had considered proposing such a thing, but abandoned it, for the very reason you cite. David, however, seems to possess the kind of character that would exult in overseeing of our estates.”“David is not yet sixteen. You perhaps read too much into his avidity for nature.” He pronounced the word “nature” as though it burned his tongue to say it.“No, I have watched him; he has a feeling for the animals, and the soil. It brings something out in him. He seems…in accord with it all.” He sighed. “I very nearly envy him that. It is a kind of gift.”“Well, then. Are you going to nominate him to Father?”“Not yet. As you say, he is very young. Let him see what other roads he might travel, and if he still finds as much felicity in land management as he does now, he and I will conspire to make it so. And then I will be free to pursue my own ambitions.”“About which I pray you will not discourse at present,” Ralph said heavily. “I am already rather tired.”
As they rode south, Edgar said, “You ought to give your own future more deliberation, brother. As the second son, you have the luxury of choice; I cannot adequately convey to you how fortunate you are in that.”Ralph rolled his eyes. “You speak as if my choices were legion; in reality, there is the church, there is the law, and there is government. Nothing else is entirely respectable for a gentleman. Alas, I find all three tiresome in the extreme. No, the thing for me is to wed some young lady sufficiently high in the social order to excuse her husband from any obligation of employment whatever.” He grinned. “That said, what an excellent time for the Marlow girls to re-enter our lives!”Edgar shot him a startled glance. “The Marlows? In what sense do you mean ‘re-enter’?”“They have moved back to Graftings. Hadn’t you heard? No, I suppose you wouldn't have; you must pluck your nose out of your books from time to time, brother, and listen to the word on the wind.”“The entire family, you say? Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow, and both daughters?” He had tried not to expose himself, but the way he pitched that word “both” would have revealed him to anyone more mindful than his self-regarding brother.“The lot of them,” said Ralph. “And Tom Peake as well; though he’s now off to Cambridge. He was at the inn just before you. Did I not mention it?”“Indeed you did not.”They reached an expanse of road that was shaded by poplar trees, and slowed their mounts so that they might longer enjoy the comparative coolness.“The Misses Marlow were pretty young girls, as you may recall,” Ralph continued. “Peake assures me that their charms have only increased.”“Tom Peake said that?” “Well…I asked, and he didn’t deny it.” He looked contemplative. “I suppose either one of them would do, for my purposes, each being the daughter of a baronet. Though I seem to recall the elder sister running wild with something resembling a small wolf pack.”“I should’ve thought a thing like that would appeal to you,” quipped Edgar.Ralph gave his brother an astonished look. “Was that a satirical remark? Was it? Did Mr. Edgar Willmot, Oxford scholar and latter-day Cato, just utter a word in jest?”Edgar laughed; but his brother’s affectionate mockery was not the chief cause of his merriment. That, rather, was the certain knowledge that he would soon meet again a young girl who had frolicked at the periphery of his vision for years before he finally noticed her; a lovely, sylvan sprite whom he had once memorably—indeed unforgettably—carried in his arms.

Edgar and Emma, chapter 7

“Well, there’s a good thing,” said Mrs. Willmot as the family rode home. “All of them looking so well, and such hospitality! No one more welcoming than the Marlows; have I not always said so, Mr. Wilmott? You’d never know five years had gone by. Except, of course, the girls so grown up.”“And Tom,” said Patience. “Tom, too; very much grown up.”“Yes, my pet; but we saw him not a year ago, so we knew that already, didn’t we?” Mrs. Willmot shifted her weight to make herself more comfortable; she had Peter on her lap, the better to accommodate all seven of them in the carriage; but Peter was no longer of a size to fit any lap anywhere—a fact both he and he mother were loath to admit, though she less so every time the carriage trundled awkwardly over a rise or gully, and his sharp hip bones bit into her midsection. “Though I must say,” she continued, once she had readjusted herself into an easier pose, “that was an extraordinary outburst by Miss Emma Marlow, near the end. I don’t mind saying, I felt myself quite challenged, indeed I did.”“Headstrong girl,” said her husband with a harrumph. “I remember her well enough. That sister, too. Never forget the time they accosted me on the high street and all but extorted sixpence from me to buy sweets. Brazen, is what I call them.” Too late, he remembered what had enabled the extortion in question—Frances and Emma having caught him sharing a furtive kiss with a shop girl behind the stationer’s—but fortunately his wife was congenitally incurious, and did not interrogate him on the subject.“I don’t think Emma meant any discourtesy,” said Patience. “It’s just that she wanted news of Edgar, and hadn’t had any; she had been patient, but wasn’t willing to let you depart without any word of him.”“I daresay you’re right, my dear,” said Mrs. Willmot, as she again rearranged herself beneath Peter’s weight. “Except that is it Ralph, not Edgar, of whom she craved news.”Patience shook her head. “No; I am certain it is Edgar. She has quite doted on him ever since he rescued her from that viper.”“It was a mere grass snake, not a viper,” said her mother; “he told me so himself. And yes, she was grateful to him, I recall it now. But I have it on the very best authority that Miss Emma Marlow pines only for our Ralph. Not,” she added, with a smile of maternal pride, “that she would be the first.”Patience looked perplexed. “Are you certain? I suppose I may be misremembering. But I could have sworn her heart belonged only to Edgar.”“Never mind, my dear. A young girl’s fancy is a fickle thing; it alters with the wind…unless the gentleman in question chooses to fix it in place.” She gave her husband a meaningful glance. “And that is our Ralph’s specialty.”“A bit too much so, from all I hear,” grumbled Mr. Willmot. “What the devil is the matter with this road? I don’t recall it ever being quite so bad as this. Did we just run over a body?”“You were very attentive to young Tom,” said Mrs. Willmot, turning back to her eldest daughter. “That was very kind. He must want kindness, poor orphan, having lost his first family, and now divided from his second by university.”“I expect he will return for Christmas,” said Patience with a hitch of desperation in her voice.“No doubt, my pet; but remember, the Marlows always pass the Yuletide in Wiltshire. So we shan’t benefit from his rejoining them.”Patience looked suddenly stricken, and turned her face to the window.“Damnable thing, a university education,” said Mr. Willmot. “Glad I never had one. Gives a young man all sorts of airs and fancies…Say, what was that about Edgar being at Oxford? Didn’t you say he’d gone to Boars Hill, to see Amy and your sister Clayton?”“Yes, my love,” said Mrs. Willmot. “But that was just a stop on his way; his principal object was his old college, and his former mentor, Professor Bridge.”“But the boy’s been graduated two years now! Why on earth would he want to run back to see any of those old black crows?”“He’s explained it often enough,” said Mrs. Willmot, an edge of crossness creasing her voice. “Why do you never listen, husband? Edgar has it in mind to be a scholar, and his old professor is helping him to do it.”Mr. Willmot looked as though someone had struck him in the face with a day-old trout. “A ‘scholar,’ you say?…And what exactly would that entail?”“Why, he’s only told us a dozen times,” said Mrs. Willmot with a great show of indignation, to cover the fact that she couldn’t quite remember herself.“I’m sure I’d have heard him, if ever he’d said something so damnably foolish,” Mr. Willmot insisted, and his wife covered Peter’s ears against any further strong language. “The idea! Edgar is my eldest son, my heir. His place is at Willmot Lodge, learning to be a country squire, so that he may run our estates and manage our properties as I have done, and my father before me, and my father’s father, and all the fathers before that, back six hundred years to when my ancestor Sir Kennard Willmot was granted title to our lands from King John.” “That’s as may be,” said Mrs. Willmot, cautiously unstopping Peter’s ears (to the boy’s immense relief). “But Edgar has a quickness of mind greater than any our family has yet produced, and we owe it to him to allow it free rein. There is no telling how he may distinguish himself—and us.”“There is no telling,” said Mr. Willmot sharply, “who will administer our affairs after I am gone, if he is off somewhere lying on a couch in a dressing gown, writing poetry in Greek.”Mrs. Willmot felt her face burn. “There is always Ralph. Ralph wants an occupation; you have said so yourself.”He waved his hand in dismissal. “Ralph could not administer a pot to boil.”Mrs. Willmot briefly reddened, for Ralph was her favourite, and she disliked any word said against him. “How would you know it, Mr. Willmot, as you have not tried him?”“I know it,” replied her husband, “as he has tried me.”And so the argument gained in amplitude and acrimony; and Patience, who under ordinary circumstances would by now have interposed some calming word to assuage her parents’ tempers and lead them gently back to accord, did no such thing, because she was consumed by her own private grief, and insensible to anyone else’s. Not her mother’s; not her father’s……and not Peter’s, even when the boy muttered audibly, during one of the frostier intervals of silence that punctuated his parents’ quarrel, “We really might have gone to see the kennel. It wasn’t so very far from the house as all that.”

Emma and Edgar, chapter 6

On the morning of the day set aside for callers, Emma found herself in a state of nervous expectation. She took great care with her dress, so that she might be seen to best advantage when the visitors arrived; but had then the difficult task of maintaining that appearance of freshness as the hours wore on. This was not made easier by Frances, who, in high excitement at the prospect seeing so many old friends (especially Mr. Denham, who had promised to bring his Labrador retriever, Magnate), ran about the house in an attempt to groom the spaniels, who very much did not wish to be groomed. At one point Cannon, the male of the pair, tore past Emma with such brusqueness that Emma spun for a moment like a top, and was in peril of falling over; and though she steadied herself at the last, her hair had come out of curl, which called for immediate repair. This required the services of her lady’s maid, Jenny, who had just sat down to her own, long-deferred breakfast, and was loath to leave it; so that both mistress and maid were in sullen spirits as they gathered before the vanity mirror to re-set the drooping locks.Emma’s next gauntlet was lunch, which was a humble enough affair—a brace of pheasants, a tierce of hares, poached oysters, plovers’ eggs in aspic, white soup, gooseberry cheese, tomato soufflé, cherry-water ice, and a nougat almond cake—but Sir Godfrey, perhaps from a heightened sense of occasion, proposed a glass of wine instead of the usual ale. The introduction of this novelty nearly proved disastrous, for while relating an anecdote from the previous day, Tom gestured with his arm in such a manner as to topple Emma’s wineglass. She was able to twist out of the way of the spill, though it was some minutes before she was certain none of the droplets had marred her dress (an investigation that again required the summoning of Jenny, who was now persuaded she was being tormented on purpose). Yet afterward, when she resumed her seat—or rather, when she took her place in the new, dry chair that was brought for her—she was sufficiently vexed to lose the governance of her tongue. “I am perfectly willing to go out and hurl myself into the trough,” she told her family, “if that is what will satisfy you to leave me in peace.” She had no sooner made this offer than her father told her to mind her temper.Her anxiety turned into open agony once the calls commenced, for at any moment she expected the Willmots to be introduced, and to see he whom she had so long yearned to meet again. He would walk through the door, taller, no doubt, and even more regal in bearing, but with perhaps—was it so very much to wish for?—a momentary softening of his look when his eyes first settled on her. Or instead of a softening, a slight perplexity, only resolved when Lady Marlow said, “And of course you recall my youngest daughter, Emma,” at which his eyes would widen in astonishment, and he would say, “Emma! but I would not have known you. How very altered you are; you left us a girl, and you return to us a woman.”Well…perhaps that was a bit much to wish for.Every time the door to the parlor opened, her heart leapt in her breast; but when the footman entered and announced someone else entirely, she sank again into despondency. How those first few hours tried her—sitting quietly through the visits of the Heaths (he had grown fatter; she leaner), the Barrets (who had done the opposite), and Mrs. Buckley (who had acquired a new husband and become Mrs. Lynch). Mr. Denham followed; and on his entry Emma took refuge behind the furniture, to be out of the way for Magnate’s introduction to Dash and Cannon. Alas, for all his size, the Labrador was affrighted by the yapping spaniels, and dove for safety behind the very divan Emma had chosen; upon which the two spaniels leapt to confront him from the other side, so that Emma found herself pinned between the awful, snarling beasts. Were that not amply exasperating in itself, she had also to contend with the laughter of all the others at her predicament.“They have attempted the ruin of my hair,” she thought defiantly; “then my gown; and now my life and limb. But I will prevail; I must prevail…for him.”
By the time Mrs. Grayson departed—after having related a seemingly interminable story about how the glover’s shop on the high street had closed its doors, and why the bulk of Marlhurst society chose not to patronize the draper who had opened in its place—Emma felt herself in need of a moment’s quiet in which to collect herself. She begged her leave and stole upstairs to her dressing room, where her first thought was to gauge the toll the afternoon had taken on her appearance. She was amazed to find herself yet looking rather well. She felt as though she had been dragged five miles behind a galloping stallion; but there was no sign of weariness or abuse in her aspect. Even so, she did not know how much longer she could stave off the disfiguring effects of eroding hope.She sat in the window seat overlooking the drive; and though she knew that no carriage would appear so long as she kept vigil—“A watched pot never boils,” she had often heard Hicks say—she could not seem to look away. It was unthinkable that the Willmots should not come today. They were particular friends of the Marlows—Mr. Willmot and Sir Godfrey had even been known to enjoy a day’s shooting—and despite living outside Marlhurst proper, they were indispensable to the village’s society. Where were they? Where was he?She would have liked a confidant at this moment, to whom she might unburden her heart. But she had none. Frances was in many ways a dear sister to her—she had happy memories of their frolics and games when they were children, and even now they shared moments of merry fellowship—but Frances was entirely too self-contained to be in sympathy with another human being. Emma could not quite regard this as a defect; it was simply Frances. Impossible to imagine her any other way.Her Aunt Curtis might have served; she was certainly sympathetic—indeed, earnestly sympathetic; she solicited confidences the way a beggar solicits coin—but she tended to talk as much as she listened. And also—there was no use attempting to deny it—her understanding was not quite all it should be. Emma could not be certain that she would sufficiently grasp the fullness of the regard in which she held Edgar.But this was all beside the point, because Aunt Curtis was not at hand. She was to come later in the afternoon, and stay for dinner—by which time Emma would no longer require her compassion, because she would have seen Edgar. Would she not? She must. It defied all reason that the Willmots should stay away the entire day.Her doleful thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. She said, “Come in,” and was surprised to see Tom enter.“I did not like the way you fled us just now,” he said. “You seemed in distress. Is all not well?”And she found herself, to her surprise, confessing all to him. She had so persuaded herself of the need of a confidant, that his mere appearance at this moment had elected him.“So you see,” she said at the end of her oration, “what wretchedness it is to wait for him to arrive. All my hopes for the future are dependent on his coming today. I am suspended in agony until he does.”She now looked up at Tom, ready for what advice he offered her; but in an instant she saw that she must be disappointed. He appeared utterly confounded; and really, she might have known it. He was like a brother to her; they had grown up together; and she had never known him to be easy with the vagaries of human feeling. He preferred the clearly defined precepts of the law. Were there a statute maintaining that the Willmots must come today or be fined for dereliction of duty, he would be able to reassure her; but as their arrival was a matter of simple caprice, he could not.But then his face brightened, and she could not understand why; until she saw that he looked not at her, but past her—over her shoulder and out the window. And when she turned to see what had delighted him so, she espied—could it be?—a carriage in the drive, with the Willmot’s own driver (whose long, fishlike face she recognized at once) at the reins.Oh, untrammeled happiness! She and Tom gathered at the casement to watch as the carriage disgorged its occupants.First came Mr. Willmot, who after stepping out turned and extended his hand to his wife—who certainly required his aid, as she was so large that her balance on the step was not a thing anyone could depend on. After she had been brought safely to ground, the eldest Willmot daughter, Patience, emerged; she looked much as she did when Emma had last seen her. Then came the two junior girls—the twins; very greatly changed indeed, but they had been the merest children when Emma had known them. Likewise Peter, the youngest Willmot, who now leapt out, bypassing the step altogether; he had gained a full six inches in the time the Marlows had been away. After which David issued forth, more handsome and broad-shouldered than Emma remembered him.And then…no one.Emma had been slowly apprehending, with each new Willmot who materialized, that the coach was not large enough to accommodate all of their number; for they were, she recalled, some dozen or so in total. But it had not yet occurred to her that Edgar would be among those not accounted for.“Why does he not come out?” Emma said, concerned that he had perhaps suffered an injury that limited his ability to move without assistance.It was not until the driver shut the door, hopped back into his seat, and with a flick of the reins drove the carriage out of sight, that she realized the full horror of the situation.“He…he is not with them,” she muttered, feeling as though the floor might give way beneath her feet. “They have come…but they have come without him.” She looked up at Tom. “What…what shall I do?”He appeared less uncertain than he had before. “You will do what custom dictates,” he said—but not unkindly. “You will do what you must.” And with a smile, he gave her his arm. He seemed to understand—as Emma was beginning to—that one could stave off private dismay by observing the mandates of public duty. Her heart was crushed, her future barren; but she owed it to her father and mother to behave otherwise. She must represent them and do them credit.She took Tom’s arm, and let him lead her back downstairs.
“Ah! Here is Miss Emma Marlow at last,” cried Mrs. Willmot when Emma and Tom reentered the parlour. “I would know her anywhere. My dear, you have quite blossomed; like something from a painting. Is she not like something from a painting, Mr. Willmot?”“I beg your pardon, my dear,” said her husband, who had been in private conference with Sir Godfrey near to the fire.“I said, is not Miss Emma Marlow like something from a painting?”Mr. Willmot gave Emma a cursory glance, then said, “Very like.” And with that he turned back to Sir Godfrey and continued speaking in a low voice.“And Mister Tom!” cried Mrs. Willmot. “Look, children,” she said, turning to her brood, who sat ranged around her, “here is Miss Emma Marlow, whom many of you may be too young to remember; and with her is Mr. Tom, whom we had the pleasure of seeing just last summer.”The children dutifully conveyed their how-d’you-do’s, and Mrs. Willmot smiled brightly at Tom. “I know you are soon to return to Cambridge. How long are we to have you to ourselves?”“Not long, I’m afraid,” he said. “Three days hence I depart to resume my studies.”“Ah! Well, then, we must make the most of what time we have. Sit, sit. I was just telling Lady Marlow the shocking history of our glover, Mr. Leonard. You will never guess—he inherited a fortune!”As Emma took a place on the sofa, Lady Marlow gave her a very pointed look, which she understood to mean that she should not undermine Mrs. Willmot’s evident pleasure in relating this story, by revealing that they had just heard it from Mrs. Grayson.“Thirty thousand pounds,” Mrs. Willmot continued, “from an elderly cousin he’d never even met. I fear it quite went to his head. He decided that he was now above remaining in trade, so he closed his shop. Mr. Harris, the clothier on Drake Street, made him an offer for it, but he wouldn’t be bothered to consider it. He just shut his doors—left his inventory and fixtures and all, exactly as they were! And what do you think he did then, but take a house in town, and try to wriggle his way into London society! I declare I do not know who he had advising him; but whoever it was, he did him no service. “You can perhaps guess the result. His wife, overawed by her change in fortune and silly by nature, was induced to run away with the son of an earl. Which I daresay is not the way Mr. Leonard had hoped for his family to integrate itself into the aristocracy. But I should not speak of such things in front of the children. Peter, girls—stop your ears.”“Can we go and see the dogs?” pleaded Peter, who had much rather visit the spaniels (which Frances had removed to the kennel) than be privy to any tiresome grown-up scandal.“We shan’t be here long enough to make it worth your while. Just sit still and mind your manners. And you, dear Tom—do sit down! There is more yet to tell.”Tom had been performing a rather delicate maneuver—feigning interest in Mrs. Willmot’s narration while inching away from the group of women and children, and closer to Mr. Willmot and Sir Godfrey, whose conversation he must naturally prefer. But now Mrs. Willmot had fixed him in place—he could not without discourtesy refuse her—so with only the slightest sigh of defeat, he lowered himself onto the settee next to Patience, who appeared only too happy to share it with him.“After his disgrace,” Mrs. Willmot continued in a lower voice, as though to prevent the children from hearing—though they could not possibly have done otherwise than hear every word—“Mr. Leonard wrote to Mr. Harris again, offering him the shop for the same terms originally proposed; but by that time Mr. Harris had made an alternate arrangement, and so declined it. In the end Mr. Leonard sold out to a draper, a Frenchwoman named Mrs. Claude, except she insists that everyone call her Madame Claude, which is very difficult for English tongues you know.” It was certainly difficult for her English tongue, as each time she pronounced it, her jaw widened like that of an adder preparing to swallow an egg. “All was well for a time, until the day last Christmas when Madame Claude sold Mrs. Heath a bolt of muslin for two pounds-fourpence, but when the bill came it was for guineas, not pounds. Mrs. Heath brought the bill back to the shop and pointed out the discrepancy, but Madame Claude refused to admit any error, and said it was the price agreed. Now it is not a large difference, but Mrs. Heath resented that she should be ill-used for even a few shillings, and refused to pay more than the original price Madame Claude had quoted, but the obstinate woman would take nothing but the amount she had billed. And it was too late for Mrs. Heath to return the fabric, for she had already had it made into a very smart evening dress, plus a cravat for her husband got up from the leftovers. So it was quite a stalemate, and remains so to this day. But I daresay Madame Claude regrets her meanness over those two shillings, because we who are friends of Mrs. Heath—and who have never known her to tell an untruth in forty years—have refused to patronize her since. And let me tell you what is most interesting in all this …”Emma, whose attention had been waning, now stopped listening entirely. She had only managed to pay heed up to now in the vain hope that somewhere, in some aside or digression, Mrs. Willmot might make mention of her eldest son; but it was clear that she was no more to be diverted from her chronicle than a bloodhound from a scent. Emma cast her gaze from one Willmot child to the next, in the hope of seeing some reflection of Edgar in their faces; but she found very little. Possibly David resembled him most, because at fifteen he was on the cusp of manhood. But in truth—how dispirited she was to realize it!—she had half-forgotten what Edgar looked like. The broad strokes of his features were still bright her memory; but the nuances—the curve of his nose, the precise set of his brow—eluded her.She sat in glum silence, pondering this betrayal of her own recall, until at length she heard Mrs. Willmot say, “We have taken enough of your time, Lady Marlow; I daresay other friends will soon come to call, and they don’t need to find us here as well. Lucy-Ann, ring the bell to fetch the carriage, there’s a good girl.”Again on impulse, Emma leapt to her feet and took a position before the string, effectively blocking it from anyone’s reach. Lucy-Ann stood before her, perplexed; everyone else stared at her as well.“Mrs. Willmot,” she said—again marveling at the sound of her own voice, so free was she of any power over it—“you do not stir from this house till you let me know how all the rest of your family do.”Mrs. Willmot and Mr. Willmot shared a meaningful glance; Lady Marlow and Sir Godfrey did likewise; even Tom’s and Patience’s eyes met in mutual inquiry. But this was all in the space of a heartbeat; then Mrs. Willmot, in apparent good humor, undertook to answer her.“Our children are all extremely well, my dear; but at present many of them are from home. Amy is with my sister Clayton; Richard is at Eton; Edgar at Oxford; and Ralph on an errand in town. I am very sensible to the honor you do me in asking after them. I hope to reacquaint you with them—or at least one of them—very soon.”She had such a twinkling in her eye when she said this, that Emma must blush—had her secret been guessed? Was she found out?Yet none of that truly mattered…Edgar was at Oxford. She had feared him married, but it was almost as bad; he was become an academic. She ought to have known, by the scholarly turn of his mind, that he would tend that way. He was perhaps by now a fellow, or even a don, with lodgings on campus from which he would never again stir to return to humble Marlhurst.After the Willmots departed, Sir Godfrey sought out his errant daughter to rebuke her for her rudeness to Mrs. Willmot; but Emma had already fled, in tears, back up to her room, with the intention—blurted to Tom, whom she passed on her way to the stairs—of remaining there the rest of her life.

Emma and Edgar, chapter 5

“The Marlows are in residence at Graftings,” said Mrs. Willmot. “We will call on them tomorrow afternoon, to congratulate them on their return.”“I can ride over in the morning,” her husband volunteered, “and ascertain from Sir Godfrey whether that would be welcome.”“You are very kind, Mr. Willmot, but such exertion is unnecessary. Mrs. Curtis informs me that the family will be at home, Lady Marlow has sent a card confirming it, and Mrs. Grayson has already announced her plan to call at three o’clock; so I thought we might time our own arrival for half-past the hour.”“I can see,” said Mr. Willmot, “that the ladies of Marlhurst are, as usual, several paces ahead of the men. Very well. I am at your service, my dear. Command me or no, as you will.”“I will command you now, since you are so agreeable. I am uncertain as to how many of the children ought to accompany us. I pray you will advise me.”Mr. Willmot sat back in his chair, and gave his wife a very satisfactory show of considering the matter with due gravity. It was ten o’clock, an hour at which the younger members of the household had gone to bed, leaving their elders free to take a glass of sherry or port wine, and enjoy, if fleetingly, the absence of riot and tumult. Mr. Willmot had already downed one glass of port, which had rendered him introspective; his second might render him inert. So he had better answer his wife now; and after a moment’s further thought he peered over his spectacles at her, and said, “Why may not they all come with us?”“Graftings is a small house,” said Mrs. Willmot, “and the Marlows have but two daughters and a ward. I do not like to overwhelm them.”“Surely we are not so many as to inconvenience a baronet and his lady.”“They are not so grand as you remember; and you, sir, are accustomed to our company, and forget the sensational effect we can have on those whom we descend upon unawares.”“But the Marlows will not be unawares; nor are they unfamiliar with the bounty of our progeny.”“That is certainly true; but time may have blunted their memory of exactly how many they are. Mrs. Curtis, who is Sir Godfrey’s own sister, and an acquaintance I have often welcomed to this very house, often confuses the number. I have known her to say as little as eight and as many as thirteen.”“Mrs. Curtis is not so fortunate as to have a child of her own,” observed Mr. Willmot, who did not greatly care for that lady, “or she would not have wished you so many as that.” In truth, although he loved his children, the idea of four more of them made him go rather pale.“It must also be said,” his wife continued, “that when last we saw the Marlows, many of our offspring were very young. Now five years have passed, and they have grown large and strapping, with great, booming voices.”Mr. Willmot did not like this characterization of his darlings. “Perhaps Graftings has sufficient hitching posts to which we can tether them,” he said sharply. “And for refreshment, we may pitch some hay their way.”Mrs. Willmot frowned at him. “Come now; there is no need to be satirical. I only mean that our children fill much more of a room today, than they did when last the Marlows knew them.”“You are too nice on the Marlows’ behalf, I think. Do I not recall that their eldest daughter is a famous lover of dogs? She kept two in the house with her, I believe. Great, rambunctious beasts. Now that she is older, I suspect she has graduated to a full…what is the word, for a multiplicity of canines? Horde? Pride? Crush? Cabal?”“The term is ‘pack,’ ” came a voice from across the room. In her quiet corner, where she sat nursing her thimbleful of madeira, Patience—the sole adult child at home tonight, and thus permitted to share in the evening’s refreshment—now chose to interject herself into the discussion, before her father and mother could fall into contentiousness. She had served this function many times before, and knew how to head off incipient disputation.“If I may remind you, Mama, Papa,” she continued, “Amy is with Aunt Clayton, and three of the boys are away as well. So we are at present five, not nine; a number much less to be feared.”“By heaven, you’re right,” said her father. “Why is it, Mrs. Willmot, that neither you nor I happened to consider that?”“We are not so clever as our children,” said his wife. “At least, I’m sure I am not. You, sir, I suspect are distracted by thoughts of industry and the affairs of the realm.”“Indeed so,” he said; though in fact, before his wife had interrupted him with her proposition to call on the Marlows, his principal thought had been of when he might next slip away to visit an obliging young seamstress who lived with her mother on the village outskirts. Mr. Willmot had gone from taking pride in his wife’s extraordinary fecundity, when first they were wed, to now, many years later, living in abject fear of it; so that as a precaution, he enjoyed himself as much as prudence allowed, outside the dangerous terrain of her fertile embrace.With the matter thus settled, each member of the trio fell into private thoughts. Indeed Mr. Willmot fell into private slumber, as he was wont to do, and his wife and daughter would risk no further conversation, lest it wake him. When they had finished their own dainty servings, they went upstairs, leaving Mr. Willmot to the care of his valet, Hastings, who never failed, by some means Mrs. Willmot never cared to inquire into, and her husband even less so, to arrange it so that when Mr. Willmot awoke the next morning, he would be in his nightshirt and cap, in his own bed, in his own room. Alone in her bedchamber, Patience sat before her mirror and brushed out her hair before retiring for the night. She had very long hair, black and silken, and was immoderately proud of it—perhaps it was the only immoderate thing about her. Again, as every night, she lamented that no one would ever see her hair in its unpinned splendour, and admire it as much as she did herself; not even her sister Amy, who had shared this room before their Aunt Clayton—who had fixed on Amy as her favorite—persuaded the Willmots to allow her to take her on as a companion. With so many children already bulging at the rafters, the Willmots did not require too strenuous an argument before they submitted. And for a time, Patience was very glad to have a room to herself—a very wonderful luxury, for a girl her age, in her situation.But it had seemed less wonderful once she had accepted that her situation would never alter. Then the luxury of having a room all her own, became instead the curse of that being all she would ever call her own. Yet she had not acted precipitously in making it so; for she had twice been disappointed in love, allowing herself to feel earnest affection for men who did not choose to return the favor, and she meant never again to risk such injury to her heart. Thus, pitying her mother (who felt the loss of Amy much more keenly than she had imagined she would), it had seemed right for Patience to close the door on all hope of matrimony, put on her cap, and take her place at her mother’s side, as her confidant and comfort.But she had done this at six-and-twenty; at which point, her memory of Tom Peake had been of a boy of fifteen. An intelligent, somewhat grave boy of fifteen, to be sure; but a boy of fifteen all the same. When she next saw him—just the previous summer—the change in him was astonishing. He rode into Marlhurst one morning, bearing a communication from Sir Godfrey to his groundskeeper at Graftings, and stayed long enough to pay his respects to all the Marlows’ principal connections in the village.This quite naturally brought him to Willmot Lodge—accompanied by his Aunt Curtis, who was effusive in her praise of him—and he was reintroduced to the family, who scarcely recognized him. He had grown the taller by several inches, and his jaw had attractively squared; his voice had deepened and his manner softened. He behaved with the utmost courtesy, though without much warmth; there was very much a sense of him withholding his private self from display. And in truth Patience, though impressed by the improvement in him, did not feel much drawn to him; she found him much too distant.But then something happened that galvanized her in quite a different way. Mrs. Willmot said something mildly stupid, and Mrs. Curtis replied in such a way as to compound the original stupidity many times over; and Tom Peake turned to Patience, and gave her such a look—a look of utter sympathy and understanding; a look that said, “We must not laugh,” while acknowledging that there was something they both wished very much to laugh at—that had Patience not been seated, she might have been knocked back on her heels. It was the most intimate moment she had ever shared with a man, the only time one of that sex had looked at her, and her alone, and established—however briefly—a small space which they alone inhabited, in perfect concord.She had not seen him since, but she had thought of him often; and the prospect of meeting him the very next day was tremendously exciting to her.It was all foolishness, of course; she was a woman of twenty-eight, who had removed herself from the marriage market. He was a young man of twenty, the ward of a baronet, with a future ahead of him that comprised many dances, many dalliances, many courtships and kisses, before he settled on a wife. There was no reason that he should look at her; none at all.And yet…she very much hoped he should look, all the same.

Edgar and Emma, chapter 4

Sir Godfrey’s confidence that any of his houses was ready to receive him, turned out to be misplaced; for when the family arrived at Graftings they found much in want. The garden and parkland were in excellent state, due to the ministrations of their excellent groundskeeper, Carr; but the house itself was in some disarray. Three rooms were still beneath cloth, including the breakfast room, which was very inconvenient, and those that had been made ready were not scrupulously clean. Emma noted with dismay that her mother’s traveling coat, which was very long, left a visible trail on the dusty floor of one of the upstairs rooms.The housekeeper, Mrs. Hicks, followed Lady Marlow on her inspection, but with what Emma thought was inadequate humility for the magnitude of her failings. Indeed, Hicks seemed instead to expect to draw Lady Marlow into sympathy with her, for the many frustrations and indignities she had suffered on the family’s behalf.“It is the fault of young people today, my lady,” she said. “They none of them have the discipline, nor indeed the desire, to work. I have been through four laundry maids in total since last you resided here, which you will note is almost one for every year. And heaven knows I have lost count of the hall boys. One of them did not wait for the dignity of being dismissed, but departed of his own volition, and I am still not certain he did not take something with him to make the adventure worth his while, though I have been over the silver and plate several times since and can find nothing lacking. And I beg you will not ask me to begin to list the defects of the housemaid, but to note that she has got herself into a rather…unfortunate circumstance”—here she shot a quick glance at Emma and Frances, as if to gauge whether they took her meaning, which Emma certainly did—“and is unable to work to her fullest capacity…not that her fullest capacity is much to speak of. Perhaps I ought to have discharged her for it, but she is very popular in the village—I daresay too much so, given the evidence—and it would reflect badly on the family were we to cut loose a young girl in such obvious distress, and leave her with no other means of support.”“Has she no parents?” asked Lady Marlow, leading the way into the adjoining sewing room.“There is a mother. Such as she is,” said Hicks, following with brisk steps, and coming up behind Lady Marlow in time to see her run her gloved hand along the upper edge of a moulding. The result was not felicitous. Lady Marlow frowned, and Hicks hastened to continue her reply. “She has a reputation for light fingers; indeed Mr. Nichols the fruit seller will not allow her within six yards of his shop, and has been known to chase her from his premises while hurling overripe quinces.”Lady Marlow sighed, and turned back to the doorway. “I think this maid had better remain below stairs. It won’t do for my daughters to be exposed to a girl in her condition.”“My very thought, my lady,” said Hicks eagerly. “Indeed I was on the very point of suggesting exactly that.”Lady Marlow cut short her inspection of the house and returned to the drawing room to report to her husband; who immediately set his valet, Samson, the task of aiding Mrs. Hicks in putting the house to order. Samson returned later, just as the family had gathered for tea, to assure them that all was well in hand, and to offer his private opinion that, “Had Mrs. Hicks devoted half the energy to her duties that she has committed to composing her defense of having failed in them, the latter endeavor would not have been necessary.”This was not the homecoming they had anticipated; but despite their exalted rank, Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow were very even-tempered people (how else had they managed to live in close lodgings in Chipping Norton?) and were soon quite at their ease. Indeed Sir Godfrey felt sufficiently pleased with his return to order the bells rung, and to distribute ninepence among the ringers.After tea had concluded, Frances could be contained no longer, and tore from the house with Dash and Cannon loping after her, to assess the repair of the long-neglected kennels. Sir Godfrey retired to his library, there to reacquaint himself with his collection and pass an hour or two in quiet study. Lady Marlow went up to her room, claiming that the journey had tired her.Tom had not yet arrived; there had been no room for him in the carriage, so it was decided he would follow on horseback, which allowed him to delay his own departure until it best suited him. He was not expected until dinner.This left Emma on her own, with nothing very much to do. Her room was still being unpacked, so she could not retire to it; nor could she occupy herself with a book, for hers were in her trunks, and her father, when in his library, was to be disturbed for nothing less pressing than a French invasion—and not even that, depending on whether it were cavalry or only infantry.It was by now a few hours since they had arrived at the house, so that Emma had recovered from the exhaustion of the journey, and could not only face the outdoors again, but found herself eager to do so. She settled on taking a walk. The exercise would clear her head of the dullness that had been lodged there by the endless jostling of the road, and the endless jangling of Hicks’s self-exoneration. It was growing rather late in the day, but she needn’t wander too far afield; perhaps she’d only go as far as the kennels, to see how Frances fared. She left the room to fetch her shawl from the closet, and was surprised to find herself not alone in the corridor. A girl stood at the end of it, silhouetted against the window; and even in profile it was clear that she was crying.“I beg your pardon,” Emma said. “Are you all right?”The girl started, and stepped away from the window; and Emma could now see that she was very young—as young as herself—and that the front of her skirt protruded due to a visible swelling underneath.“The delinquent housemaid,” Emma told herself.“Thank you, miss,” the girl said; “I am very well, miss; my apologies, miss.”But it was plainly evident that she was not very well at all. In point of fact, her agitation quite shocked Emma, who was jarred into an unpleasant realization of just how sheltered her own life had been. She had come to think herself rather worldly, for all the varieties of human behavior she had witnessed on the streets of Chipping Norton; but she had never in her life encountered anything like this private anguish, which was pitched to so high a degree, and was so nakedly unabashed. Emma could not begin to imagine the degradation necessary to reduce someone to such utter unselfconsciousness.She thought to offer a consoling world, but before she could compose one, Hicks appeared from around the corner, her face a paper-white mask of fury.“Violet!” she exclaimed. “Was it not three-quarter-hour’s past that I bade you no more venture upstairs?”“But I have not cleared the tea service,” the girl said, her voice unsteady and very pitiful to hear.“I have come myself for that purpose,” said Hicks. “Now, off with you! Back downstairs where you belong!”Violet scuttled past Emma, whimpering as she went; and when she was out of sight, the housekeeper smiled grimly at Emma.“My apologies, miss,” she said. “You should not have had to suffer that; it was your mother’s sole admonition to me. I hope you will not think it necessary to tell her of it.”Emma ignored this plea for secrecy. “She seems very much discomposed,” she said, looking in the direction the girl had just gone.“As well she might, in her difficulty,” said Hicks indignantly. “I’m sure she ought to have considered the consequences before she gave herself over to folly.”“Her name is Violet, you say?” asked Emma.“Yes—but there is no need for you to learn it, miss. She will trouble you no further. I daresay she will henceforth be invisible to you. You need never know she is beneath the same roof.”Emma did not find this as comforting as Hicks seemed to think she should.“Is there anything else, miss?” the housekeeper asked, as though it had been Emma who had summoned her, and not she who had interposed herself. “No, thank you, Hicks,” she said. But when she turned to go, Emma said, “Wait—yes. I wonder—if you have a moment—whether you might satisfy my curiosity on a small matter.”Hicks turned back, and looked at her with wary interest. “Curiosity, miss?”“Yes.” It had occurred to her, during the long carriage ride, when she had been so interminably trapped with her own thoughts, that at twenty-five Edgar Willmot might well have married. She was determined to have it not be so, but could not shake a sense of dread all the same. “I wonder whether there have been many marriages made, in the time we have been gone,” she asked.“Oh, bless me, yes, quite some number,” said Hicks, and she proceeded not only to cite them, but to provide the prevailing opinion of each match, as to whether he was worthy of her or vice-versa, or who had married solely for fortune, and who had taken to drink in regret, and so on—an oration that lasted until Frances came barging back in, her shoes caked in mud and her dogs no less so, flushed in the face and yet happy, and declaring that there was not so much rot as she feared, and that a carpenter would need no more than a few days to bring it all to order.Mere moments later Tom arrived, and entered the house beaming quiet good cheer. Sir Godfrey, hearing him, came out to greet him; and with a sigh Emma gave up her project of a walk, re-hung her shawl, and rejoined her family.But she was not dispirited. Because in the litany of names the housekeeper had related in her long marital chronicle, Edgar Willmot’s had not been mentioned.

Edgar and Emma: chapter 4

Sir Godfrey’s confidence that any of his houses was ready to receive him, turned out to be misplaced; for when the family arrived at Graftings they found much in want. The garden and parkland were in excellent state, due to the ministrations of their excellent groundskeeper, Carr; but the house itself was in some disarray. Three rooms were still beneath cloth, including the breakfast room, which was very inconvenient, and those that had been made ready were not scrupulously clean. Emma noted with dismay that her mother’s traveling coat, which was very long, left a visible trail on the dusty floor of one of the upstairs rooms.The housekeeper, Mrs. Hicks, followed Lady Marlow on her inspection, but with what Emma thought was inadequate humility for the magnitude of her failings. Indeed, Hicks seemed instead to expect to draw Lady Marlow into sympathy with her, for the many frustrations and indignities she had suffered on the family’s behalf.“It is the fault of young people today, my lady,” she said. “They none of them have the discipline, nor indeed the desire, to work. I have been through four laundry maids in total since last you resided here, which you will note is almost one for every year. And heaven knows I have lost count of the hall boys. One of them did not wait for the dignity of being dismissed, but departed of his own volition, and I am still not certain he did not take something with him to make the adventure worth his while, though I have been over the silver and plate several times since and can find nothing lacking. And I beg you will not ask me to begin to list the defects of the housemaid, but to note that she has got herself into a rather…unfortunate circumstance”—here she shot a quick glance at Emma and Frances, as if to gauge whether they took her meaning, which Emma certainly did—“and is unable to work to her fullest capacity…not that her fullest capacity is much to speak of. Perhaps I ought to have discharged her for it, but she is very popular in the village—I daresay too much so, given the evidence—and it would reflect badly on the family were we to cut loose a young girl in such obvious distress, and leave her with no other means of support.”“Has she no parents?” asked Lady Marlow, leading the way into the adjoining sewing room.“There is a mother. Such as she is,” said Hicks, following with brisk steps, and coming up behind Lady Marlow in time to see her run her gloved hand along the upper edge of a moulding. The result was not felicitous. Lady Marlow frowned, and Hicks hastened to continue her reply. “She has a reputation for light fingers; indeed Mr. Nichols the fruit seller will not allow her within six yards of his shop, and has been known to chase her from his premises while hurling overripe quinces.”Lady Marlow sighed, and turned back to the doorway. “I think this maid had better remain below stairs. It won’t do for my daughters to be exposed to a girl in her condition.”“My very thought, my lady,” said Hicks eagerly. “Indeed I was on the very point of suggesting exactly that.”Lady Marlow cut short her inspection of the house and returned to the drawing room to report to her husband; who immediately set his valet, Samson, the task of aiding Mrs. Hicks in putting the house to order. Samson returned later, just as the family had gathered for tea, to assure them that all was well in hand, and to offer his private opinion that, “Had Mrs. Hicks devoted half the energy to her duties that she has committed to composing her defense of having failed in them, the latter endeavor would not have been necessary.”This was not the homecoming they had anticipated; but despite their exalted rank, Sir Godfrey and Lady Marlow were very even-tempered people (how else had they managed to live in close lodgings in Chipping Norton?) and were soon quite at their ease. Indeed Sir Godfrey felt sufficiently pleased with his return to order the bells rung, and to distribute ninepence among the ringers.After tea had concluded, Frances could be contained no longer, and tore from the house with Dash and Cannon loping after her, to assess the repair of the long-neglected kennels. Sir Godfrey retired to his library, there to reacquaint himself with his collection and pass an hour or two in quiet study. Lady Marlow went up to her room, claiming that the journey had tired her.Tom had not yet arrived; there had been no room for him in the carriage, so it was decided he would follow on horseback, which allowed him to delay his own departure until it best suited him. He was not expected until dinner.This left Emma on her own, with nothing very much to do. Her room was still being unpacked, so she could not retire to it; nor could she occupy herself with a book, for hers were in her trunks, and her father, when in his library, was to be disturbed for nothing less pressing than a French invasion—and not even that, depending on whether it were cavalry or only infantry.It was by now a few hours since they had arrived at the house, so that Emma had recovered from the exhaustion of the journey, and could not only face the outdoors again, but found herself eager to do so. She settled on taking a walk. The exercise would clear her head of the dullness that had been lodged there by the endless jostling of the road, and the endless jangling of Hicks’s self-exoneration. It was growing rather late in the day, but she needn’t wander too far afield; perhaps she’d only go as far as the kennels, to see how Frances fared. She left the room to fetch her shawl from the closet, and was surprised to find herself not alone in the corridor. A girl stood at the end of it, silhouetted against the window; and even in profile it was clear that she was crying.“I beg your pardon,” Emma said. “Are you all right?”The girl started, and stepped away from the window; and Emma could now see that she was very young—as young as herself—and that the front of her skirt protruded due to a visible swelling underneath.“The delinquent housemaid,” Emma told herself.“Thank you, miss,” the girl said; “I am very well, miss; my apologies, miss.”But it was plainly evident that she was not very well at all. In point of fact, her agitation quite shocked Emma, who was jarred into an unpleasant realization of just how sheltered her own life had been. She had come to think herself rather worldly, for all the varieties of human behavior she had witnessed on the streets of Chipping Norton; but she had never in her life encountered anything like this private anguish, which was pitched to so high a degree, and was so nakedly unabashed. Emma could not begin to imagine the degradation necessary to reduce someone to such utter unselfconsciousness.She thought to offer a consoling world, but before she could compose one, Hicks appeared from around the corner, her face a paper-white mask of fury.“Violet!” she exclaimed. “Was it not three-quarter-hour’s past that I bade you no more venture upstairs?”“But I have not cleared the tea service,” the girl said, her voice unsteady and very pitiful to hear.“I have come myself for that purpose,” said Hicks. “Now, off with you! Back downstairs where you belong!”Violet scuttled past Emma, whimpering as she went; and when she was out of sight, the housekeeper smiled grimly at Emma.“My apologies, miss,” she said. “You should not have had to suffer that; it was your mother’s sole admonition to me. I hope you will not think it necessary to tell her of it.”Emma ignored this plea for secrecy. “She seems very much discomposed,” she said, looking in the direction the girl had just gone.“As well she might, in her difficulty,” said Hicks indignantly. “I’m sure she ought to have considered the consequences before she gave herself over to folly.”“Her name is Violet, you say?” asked Emma.“Yes—but there is no need for you to learn it, miss. She will trouble you no further. I daresay she will henceforth be invisible to you. You need never know she is beneath the same roof.”Emma did not find this as comforting as Hicks seemed to think she should.“Is there anything else, miss?” the housekeeper asked, as though it had been Emma who had summoned her, and not she who had interposed herself. “No, thank you, Hicks,” she said. But when she turned to go, Emma said, “Wait—yes. I wonder—if you have a moment—whether you might satisfy my curiosity on a small matter.”Hicks turned back, and looked at her with wary interest. “Curiosity, miss?”“Yes.” It had occurred to her, during the long carriage ride, when she had been so interminably trapped with her own thoughts, that at twenty-five Edgar Willmot might well have married. She was determined to have it not be so, but could not shake a sense of dread all the same. “I wonder whether there have been many marriages made, in the time we have been gone,” she asked.“Oh, bless me, yes, quite some number,” said Hicks, and she proceeded not only to cite them, but to provide the prevailing opinion of each match, as to whether he was worthy of her or vice-versa, or who had married solely for fortune, and who had taken to drink in regret, and so on—an oration that lasted until Frances came barging back in, her shoes caked in mud and her dogs no less so, flushed in the face and yet happy, and declaring that there was not so much rot as she feared, and that a carpenter would need no more than a few days to bring it all to order.Mere moments later Tom arrived, and entered the house beaming quiet good cheer. Sir Godfrey, hearing him, came out to greet him; and with a sigh Emma gave up her project of a walk, re-hung her shawl, and rejoined her family.
But she was not dispirited. Because in the litany of names the housekeeper had related in her long marital chronicle, Edgar Willmot’s had not been mentioned.

Edgar and Emma, chapter 3

It was one of the features of the time, that everyone professed to be shocked by but which everyone accepted none the less, that the position of clergyman had been so thoroughly degraded that it had become a profession instead of a calling. In practice it was little more than a repository for second or third sons of the gentry, or for those gentlemen whose ambitions did not aspire to government or the law, but who required an occupation all the same. Everyone knew, or knew of, an ostensible man of the cloth who was transparently a man of the world, and many poor souls in parishes across the realm went from cradle to grave with the benefit of no divine guidance but that obtained from a minister whose spirituality was as easily put on, and taken off again, as his cassock. The Rev. Mr. Nesmith, who held the Marlhurst living, was not one such. He abided by the principles set down by the Church, and was resolute in his insistence that all who formed his congregation do likewise. He exhibited, however, little of the joy one might expect to find in a man who kept faith with the Gospels, and in fact seemed often quite openly vexed; and it was believed that the failings of his flock, rather than moving him to pity, prompted him to wroth. He was unwavering in his religious convictions, but lacked the corresponding sympathy for imperfect, imprecise, impenetrable human nature that might have made him of genuine service to his parishioners.Despite this, they were proud of their firebrand of a parson, and admired the sternness of his aspect and swiftness of his judgment; but they could not help, at those moments when his fury blazed a little too uncomfortably near, and singed their self-regard, wishing instead for a bland, fat curate who would solemnize their weddings and baptize their babies, and spend the rest of his time in his garden, doting on his hollyhocks. For there was never a moment in which Mr. Nesmith appeared to ease his rectitude, or defer the pursuit of his duties to accommodate the pleasures of company. (It was this which made him so valued a dinner partner to Mr. Curtis: the parson showed up, spoke little, ate briskly, and then departed—for Mr. Curtis, a model guest in every respect.) If asked—and no one had dared—he would have replied that there was a war between good and evil that had been raging for two thousand years, in which they all served as foot soldiers, and thus must ever be vigilant against the next iniquitous sally. The romance of this vision could be stirring, but the reality of living with it day to day tended to wear.There was but one person in all his flock on whom his energy and bombast fell utterly flat, and that was his daughter. He had been lucky in his wife—the late Mrs. Nesmith had been a meek, compliant soul, who took direction from him in all things, and submitted to his will with never a word of protest or reproach—but unlucky in his child, because Alice took entirely after him, and not at all after her mother. The girl was proud, willful, fearless, and persistent. This would not have been a problem were she not unlike him in one troubling respect: she was worldly. Or rather she aspired to worldliness; for she had seen little enough of the world yet to manage it. From her earliest days she was the despair of her father, with her attraction to all that was bright, and glittering, and gay. She begrudged every day she was forced to spend in the country, in the household of a dour, sober man, toiling like a dray horse on his behalf, while her beauty and charm were at their zenith.But she was clever, and had devised a plan of escape. The Willmots were the richest of the families accessible to her, and they had a plenitude of sons; she intended to wed one of them. At first she had singled out Ralph, as he was the nearest to her in temperament. Her initial attentions to him were amply recompensed, and after a few weeks there was a general expectation of an attachment between them. But as their acquaintance deepened, she became increasingly aware of a streak of wildness in him. He was prodigal and profligate, burning through money as though it were tinder, and allowing his eye to rove wherever it would. Alice was canny enough to understand that if she could not control him now, when youth and novelty were to her advantage, she would be much less likely to do so after they had been married a span of years. Disaster lay at the end of their road together. Accordingly she behaved more coolly towards him. Without her encouragement, their flirtation ran its natural course, and so skillfully had she orchestrated it that they remained the best of friends. She then turned her mind to Edgar. He was neither so handsome nor so dashing as Ralph, but he was the heir to the Willmot fortune; and given his natural humility, she was certain she could exercise sufficient authority over him. Let him but show the slightest inclination, and before he knew it, she would have him draping her in jewels, housing her on a fashionable street in town, and traveling to and fro in their very own barouche. But alas, Edgar did not show the slightest inclination. Try as she might to dazzle him with her bountiful charms, he remained remote, indeed nearly oblivious. It was some time before she perceived that the means to fix his attention, were not the same as had fixed his brother’s; an entirely new strategy was called for. 
She subsequently learned, through interrogation of his sisters (expertly disguised as idle chatter), that Edgar’s passion was for history, and specifically the Classical period. And so she feigned a shared enthusiasm, as a result of which she had had to endure a number of very long evenings, cornered by him at some gathering or other, listening to him rhapsodize Pericles the Great or Scipio Africanus, when she would rather have engaged herself in livelier pursuits like gossiping, or dancing, or playing spillikins. Indeed, she would rather have sat quietly and done nothing at all. The boredom of her own blank thoughts was preferable to the clanging dullness of the Seven Against Thebes.So very tiresome did she find these occasions, and so slowly did Edgar respond to them (his manner towards her had but warmed by the barest perceptible degree) that she had begun to consider abandoning him for the next Willmot brother down—Richard; but he was away at Eton—or the one after that—David; but he was not yet sixteen.But now Mrs. Curtis had come and delivered the news that caused her to take up the reins she had dropped, and once more commit herself to the conquest of Edgar Willmot’s heart. The return of the Marlows to Graftings was not an event to be regarded blithely, because there were two daughters to that house, both unmarried, and of an age with herself. Even more alarmingly, during the entirety of their acquaintance, Alice had known Edgar to speak the name of only one other young lady in her presence—and that was Miss Emma Marlow.Alice was a keen observer of her fellow man, and she had a long memory besides. She well recalled an event from five years prior, when this very Miss Emma Marlow, having injured herself on a walk far from home, had been carried back to Graftings by Edgar himself, who had heard her heard her cry out and gone to rescue her. The story had been briefly sensational in Marlhurst, and for almost a fortnight had been told and re-told at many gatherings, with many inevitable embellishments. (In the original accounting, the girl had been affrighted by a small snake; by the time the story reached its pinnacle, the offending creature had swelled into a ravenous wolf, which Edgar had warded off with a flaming fagot.) There was little doubt in Alice’s mind that Edgar had enjoyed his fleeting reputation as a romantic hero. He would never say so; but as the older, less dashing, more solemn brother of Ralph Willmot, he can only have relished having the sunny light of approbation cast on him for a change, in place of the usual glazed gaze of disregard. In his mind, Miss Emma Marlow must forever be associated with this phenomenon; and his pleasure in its memory would only be augmented by her presence—especially if she had grown up pretty. Which seemed likely; Alice remembered her as having been quite fetching at thirteen.Her scheme for Edgar was not yet in certain peril; for while Mrs. Curtis had not mentioned a husband for either Marlow girl—and as their aunt, she would have been sure to know of any—it remained possible that Miss Emma Marlow had acquired a suitor sometime during her absence, and perhaps even come to an understanding with him. It was unlike Mrs. Curtis to neglect to mention such a thing, but it was not an impossibility. Alice must hope soon to learn of an attachment between Miss Emma Marlow and Mr. Somebody-or-other; the disappointment of which might make Edgar Willmot more amenable to her pity, and her comfort. Time alone would tell. In the interim, she must gird her loins and prepare to do battle. But even more pressingly, she must see to her father’s dinner. Both the cook and the housekeeper at the parsonage were very old, and neither sufficiently respected her authority. Perhaps her youth was to blame—although there were mistresses of greater households who were younger than she. More likely it was that both servants could see that Alice’s interest in the house was chiefly as a place to flee, and scaled down their industriousness accordingly. Why strive to excel in one’s duties, for a mistress whose eyes were always turned longingly out the window?And yet if her father were unhappy with his dinner, it was Alice who would suffer a rebuke, not the staff. So she made certain that all was in order, and was rewarded, in mid-meal, with his thanks…though in truth the meal was no more than a cold consommé, French bread and cheese, and a joint of beef. The Reverend Mr. Nesmith embraced plain eating, declaring it consonant with his office. His one indulgence was a glass of dry sack before the meal—which, as it softened his mood as well as stimulated his appetite, Alice wholly approved.Their mealtime conversations were never very scintillating; in fact Mr. Nesmith would sometimes carry a book to the table so that he might continue his researches uninterrupted. When he did not, he might catechize Alice on her own studies, in which she was invariably delinquent; but she had learned over the years how to frame a non-answer that appeased him. It took no special cleverness on her part, for he was usually willing to be deceived, it being the far better choice, than cornering her into confessing a half-truth, and thus prompting her into open rebellion.Tonight, however, he felt more talkative than usual. “I believe you have had some company today, my dear,” he said as he carved himself a slice of beef. “I heard quite a chorus of voices from my study.”“I am sorry if we disturbed you, Father,” she said.“I was not in the least disturbed. Such was the steadiness of the din that after a quarter-hour I ceased to hear it at all. But your visitors were certainly a garrulous lot.”“In point of fact, Father, I had but one caller today; Mrs. Curtis.”He put down his knife and fork in amazement. “Indeed? But I distinctly heard competing voices. What a prodigious talker that women is; she can even overlap herself. Yet it was kind of her to call on you. Did she come for any special purpose?”“She brought news, Father. It seems the Marlows are soon to return to Graftings.”He nodded in approval as he chewed; and when he had swallowed, said, “I will welcome them. For a baronet, Sir Godfrey displays a very commendable humility. He will be an example for the strutting young men hereabouts. Does his family accompany him?”“Yes, sir; that is, his wife and two daughters. I believe his ward will be here but briefly; he then returns to Cambridge.”Mr. Nesmith looked contemplative. “Neither girl is married, then?”“No, sir. Though Mrs. Curtis gives me to understand that both are out.”This pointed reference was rather provocative of Alice, for she longed to be out herself; but in the absence of her mother, this would require a female relative coming to stay, to perform the necessary chaperoning. Mr. Nesmith, alas, was unlikely ever to assent to this, for he thought the practice of introducing young women to society—often making an elaborate business of formally presenting them to persons whom they had known their whole lives—a very silly one. Father and daughter had contended over the matter many times; but of late Alice had largely given it up. Because even were her father to consent to it, her only female relative was her mother’s sister, Mrs. Scope—a woman whose religious fervor burned even more fiercely than her brother-in-law’s. Indeed she made him seem by comparison a debauched idolator. Mr. Nesmith, who disapproved of excess in all things, including fidelity to heaven, had once or twice, when his guard was down, dropped a shocking hint that he suspected Mrs. Scope of having gone over to Methodism.On this occasion, Alice’s confrontational remark on the matter sailed as cleanly over her father’s head as if she had pitched her words at the rafters, not at him. Something else had occurred to him that consumed his thoughts.“Graftings,” he said. “I believe that is where the disgraced housemaid is employed.”“Violet Cutler?” Alice said.He frowned. “Is it necessary to clarify, my dear? Will you now tell me that our little village is host to more than one?”“No indeed,” she said, and felt her face go red. “I’m sorry, Father.”“I prefer that her name remain unspoken at my dinner table. That is all.”She sensed an opportunity to vex him by pointing out an inconstancy in his manner. “But have you not said, Father, that as a daughter of Christ she is to be forgiven her transgression, and not ejected from the community?”But he was not to be goaded. “Indeed I have, child; for what is Christ’s dictate to us, but that we forgive others as we ourselves would be forgiven?” He beamed condescension at her. “Yet for her part, the girl must show gratitude for her forgiveness, by forever going about with her head lowered in shame, and speaking only when spoken to, and even then never presuming to meet the eyes of those whom she addresses. It is simply a matter of showing contrition, and of not offending those who have managed, in the face of manifold temptations, to conduct themselves with greater propriety.”“Of course, Father,” said Alice. But could not remember such stipulations being set forth in the Gospels, and she had been made to read them many times through. It was very like her father, that he should endorse Violet Cutler’s absolution while concurrently seeing to it that she never forgot the crime of which she had been absolved. Alice sometimes wondered whether her father privately thought that Christ had been entirely too whimsical in his pronouncements, and would have liked the opportunity to amend one, or two, or all of them.“And that is very much to my point,” he said now. “Such a person may not be the most suitable housemaid in an establishment boasting two maiden daughters. It lacks decorum.” He took up another mouthful of beef, and when he had consumed it he added, “I don’t like to presume to lecture a baronet on private matters. Doubtless he and his lady will settle the matter simply enough between them, when it is brought to their attention. If not so, I’ll very gently have a word.”And with that, Mr. Nesmith felt that he had exposed his innocent young daughter to quite enough deliberation on so sordid a subject. The fate of Violet Cutler was a valuable object lesson for all the town’s young ladies, but there was a point beyond which consideration of it tended to prurience. Accordingly he changed the subject to an epidemic of loose bowels currently afflicting the parsonage sheep, which kept father and daughter pleasantly occupied until the end of the meal, when each retired to solitary pursuits.

Edgar and Emma: Chapter 3

It was one of the features of the time, that everyone professed to be shocked by but which everyone accepted none the less, that the position of clergyman had been so thoroughly degraded that it had become a profession instead of a calling. In practice it was little more than a repository for second or third sons of the gentry, or for those gentlemen whose ambitions did not aspire to government or the law, but who required an occupation all the same. Everyone knew, or knew of, an ostensible man of the cloth who was transparently a man of the world, and many poor souls in parishes across the realm went from cradle to grave with the benefit of no divine guidance but that obtained from a minister whose spirituality was as easily put on, and taken off again, as his cassock. The Rev. Mr. Nesmith, who held the Marlhurst living, was not one such. He abided by the principles set down by the Church, and was resolute in his insistence that all who formed his congregation do likewise. He exhibited, however, little of the joy one might expect to find in a man who kept faith with the Gospels, and in fact seemed often quite openly vexed; and it was believed that the failings of his flock, rather than moving him to pity, prompted him to wroth. He was unwavering in his religious convictions, but lacked the corresponding sympathy for imperfect, imprecise, impenetrable human nature that might have made him of genuine service to his parishioners.Despite this, they were proud of their firebrand of a parson, and admired the sternness of his aspect and swiftness of his judgment; but they could not help, at those moments when his fury blazed a little too uncomfortably near, and signed their self-regard, wishing instead for a bland, fat curate who would solemnize their weddings and baptize their babies, and spend the rest of his time in his garden, doting on his hollyhocks. For there was never a moment in which Mr. Nesmith appeared to ease his rectitude, or defer the pursuit of his duties to accommodate the pleasures of company. (It was this which made him so valued a dinner partner to Mr. Curtis: the parson showed up, spoke little, ate briskly, and then departed—for Mr. Curtis, a model guest in every respect.) If asked—and no one had dared—he would have replied that there was a war between good and evil that had been raging for two thousand years, in which they all served as foot soldiers, and thus must ever be vigilant against the next iniquitous sally. The romance of this vision could be stirring, but the reality of living with it day to day tended to wear.There was but one person in all his flock on whom his energy and bombast fell utterly flat, and that was his daughter. He had been lucky in his wife—the late Mrs. Nesmith had been a meek, compliant soul, who took direction from him in all things, and submitted to his will with never a word of protest or reproach—but unlucky in his child, because Alice took entirely after him, and not at all after her mother. The girl was proud, willful, fearless, and persistent. This would not have been a problem were she not unlike him in one troubling respect: she was worldly. Or rather she aspired to worldliness; for she had seen little enough of the world yet to manage it. From her earliest days she was the despair of her father, with her attraction to all that was bright, and glittering, and gay. She begrudged every day she was forced to spend in the country, in the household of a dour, sober man, toiling like a dray horse on his behalf, while her beauty and charm were at their zenith.But she was clever, and had devised a plan of escape. The Willmots were the richest of the families accessible to her, and they had a plenitude of sons; she intended to wed one of them. At first she had singled out Ralph, as he was the nearest to her in temperament. Her initial attentions to him were amply recompensed, and after a few weeks there was a general expectation of an attachment between them. But as their acquaintance deepened, she became increasingly aware of a streak of wildness in him. He was prodigal and profligate, burning trough money as though it were tinder, and allowing his eye to rove wherever it would. Alice was canny enough to understand that if she could not control him now, when youth and novelty were to her advantage, she would be much less likely to do so after they had been married a span of years. Disaster lay at the end of their road together. Accordingly she behaved more coolly towards him. Without her encouragement, their flirtation ran its natural course, and so skillfully had she orchestrated it that they remained the best of friends. She then turned her mind to Edgar. He was neither so handsome nor so dashing as Ralph, but he was the heir to the Willmot fortune; and given his natural humility, she was certain she could exercise sufficient authority over him. Let him but show the slightest inclination, and before he knew it, she would have him draping her in jewels, housing her on a fashionable street in town, and traveling to and fro in their very own barouche. But alas, Edgar did not show the slightest inclination. Try as she might to dazzle him with her bountiful charms, he remained remote, indeed nearly oblivious. It was some time before she perceived that the means to fix his attention, were not the same as had fixed his brother’s; an entirely new strategy was called for. 
She subsequently learned, through interrogation of his sisters (expertly disguised as idle chatter), that Edgar’s passion was for history, and specifically the Classical period. And so she feigned a shared enthusiasm, as a result of which she had had to endure a number of very long evenings, cornered by him at some gathering or other, listening to him rhapsodize Pericles the Great or Scipio Africanus, when she would rather have engaged herself in livelier pursuits like gossiping, or dancing, or playing spillikins. Indeed, she would rather have sat quietly and done nothing at all. The boredom of her own blank thoughts was preferable to the clanging dullness of the Seven Against Thebes.So very tiresome did she find these occasions, and so slowly did Edgar respond to them (his manner towards her had but warmed by the barest perceptible degree) that she had begun to consider abandoning him for the next Willmot brother down—Richard; but he was away at Eton—or the one after that—David; but he was not yet sixteen.But now Mrs. Curtis had come and delivered the news that caused her to take up the reins she had dropped, and once more commit herself to the conquest of Edgar Willmot’s heart. The return of the Marlows to Graftings was not an event to be regarded blithely, because there were two daughters to that house, both unmarried, and of an age with herself. Even more alarmingly, during the entirety of their acquaintance, Alice had known Edgar to speak the name of only one other young lady in her presence—and that was Miss Emma Marlow.Alice was a keen observer of her fellow man, and she had a long memory besides. She well recalled an event from five years prior, when this very Miss Emma Marlow, having injured herself on a walk far from home, had been carried back to Graftings by Edgar himself, who had heard her heard her cry out and gone to rescue her. The story had been briefly sensational in Marlhurst, and for almost a fortnight had been told and re-told at many gatherings, with many inevitable embellishments. (In the original accounting, the girl had been affrighted by a small snake; by the time the story reached its pinnacle, the offending creature had swelled into a ravenous wolf, which Edgar had warded off with a flaming fagot.) There was little doubt in Alice’s mind that Edgar had enjoyed his fleeting reputation as a romantic hero. He would never say so; but as the older, less dashing, more solemn brother of Ralph Willmot, he can only have relished having the sunny light of approbation cast on him for a change, in place of the usual glazed gaze of disregard. In his mind, Miss Emma Marlow must forever be associated with this phenomenon; and his pleasure in its memory would only be augmented by her presence—especially if she had grown up pretty. Which seemed likely; Alice remembered her as having been quite fetching at thirteen.Her scheme for Edgar was not yet in certain peril; for while Mrs. Curtis had not mentioned a husband for either Marlow girl—and as their aunt, she would have been sure to know of any—it remained possible that Miss Emma Marlow had acquired a suitor sometime during her absence, and perhaps even come to an understanding with him. It was unlike Mrs. Curtis to neglect to mention such a thing, but it was not an impossibility. Alice must hope soon to learn of an attachment between Miss Emma Marlow and Mr. Somebody-or-other; the disappointment of which might make Edgar Willmot more amenable to her pity, and her comfort. Time alone would tell. In the interim, she must gird her loins and prepare to do battle. But even more pressingly, she must see to her father’s dinner. Both the cook and the housekeeper at the parsonage were very old, and neither sufficiently respected her authority. Perhaps her youth was to blame—although there were mistresses of greater households who were younger than she. More likely it was that both servants could see that Alice’s interest in the house was chiefly as a place to flee, and scaled down their industriousness accordingly. Why strive to excel in one’s duties, for a mistress whose eyes were always turned longingly out the window?And yet if her father were unhappy with his dinner, it was Alice who would suffer a rebuke, not the staff. So she made certain that all was in order, and was rewarded, in mid-meal, with his thanks…though in truth the meal was no more than a cold consommé, French bread and cheese, and a joint of beef. The Reverend Mr. Nesmith embraced plain eating, declaring it consonant with his office. His one indulgence was a glass of dry sack before the meal—which, as it softened his mood as well as stimulated his appetite, Alice wholly approved.Their mealtime conversations were never very scintillating; in fact Mr. Nesmith would sometimes carry a book to the table so that he might continue his researches uninterrupted. When he did not, he might catechize Alice on her own studies, in which she was invariably delinquent; but she had learned over the years how to frame a non-answer that appeased him. It took no special cleverness on her part, for he was usually willing to be deceived, it being the far better choice, than cornering her into confessing a half-truth, and thus prompting her into open rebellion.Tonight, however, he felt more talkative than usual. “I believe you have had some company today, my dear,” he said as he carved himself a slice of beef. “I heard quite a chorus of voices from my study.”“I am sorry if we disturbed you, Father,” she said.“I was not in the least disturbed. Such was the steadiness of the din that after a quarter-hour I ceased to hear it at all. But your visitors were certainly a garrulous lot.”“In point of fact, Father, I had but one caller today; Mrs. Curtis.”He put down his knife and fork in amazement. “Indeed? But I distinctly heard competing voices. What a prodigious talker that women is; she can even overlap herself. Yet it was kind of her to call on you. Did she come for any special purpose?”“She brought news, Father. It seems the Marlows are soon to return to Graftings.”He nodded in approval as he chewed; and when he had swallowed, said, “I will welcome them. For a baronet, Sir Godfrey displays a very commendable humility. He will be an example for the strutting young men hereabouts. Does his family accompany him?”“Yes, sir; that is, his wife and two daughters. I believe his ward will be here but briefly; he then returns to Cambridge.”Mr. Nesmith looked contemplative. “Neither girl is married, then?”“No, sir. Though Mrs. Curtis gives me to understand that both are out.”This pointed reference was rather provocative of Alice, for she longed to be out herself; but in the absence of her mother, this would require a female relative coming to stay, to perform the necessary chaperoning. Mr. Nesmith, alas, was unlikely ever to assent to this, for he thought the practice of introducing young women to society—often making an elaborate business of formally presenting them to persons whom they had known their whole lives—a very silly one. Father and daughter had contended over the matter many times; but of late Alice had largely given it up. Because even were her father to consent to it, her only female relative was her mother’s sister, Mrs. Scope—a woman whose religious fervor burned even more fiercely than her brother-in-law’s. Indeed she made him seem by comparison a debauched idolator. Mr. Nesmith, who disapproved of excess in all things, including fidelity to heaven, had once or twice, when his guard was down, dropped a shocking hint that he suspected Mrs. Scope of having gone over to Methodism.On this occasion, Alice’s confrontational remark on the matter sailed as cleanly over her father’s head as if she had pitched her words at the rafters, not at him. Something else had occurred to him that consumed his thoughts.“Graftings,” he said. “I believe that is where the disgraced housemaid is employed.”“Violet Cutler?” Alice said.He frowned. “Is it necessary to clarify, my dear? Will you now tell me that our little village is host to more than one?”“No indeed,” she said, and felt her face go red. “I’m sorry, Father.”“I prefer that her name remain unspoken at my dinner table. That is all.”She sensed an opportunity to vex him by pointing out an inconstancy in his manner. “But have you not said, Father, that as a daughter of Christ she is to be forgiven her transgression, and not ejected from the community?”But he was not to be goaded. “Indeed I have, child; for what is Christ’s dictate to us, but that we forgive others as we ourselves would be forgiven?” He beamed condescension at her. “Yet for her part, the girl must show gratitude for her forgiveness, by forever going about with her head lowered in shame, and speaking only when spoken to, and even then never presuming to meet the eyes of those whom she addresses. It is simply a matter of showing contrition, and of not offending those who have managed, in the face of manifold temptations, to conduct themselves with greater propriety.”“Of course, Father,” said Alice. But could not remember such stipulations being set forth in the Gospels, and she had been made to read them many times through. It was very like her father, that he should endorse Violet Cutler’s absolution while concurrently seeing to it that she never forgot the crime of which she had been absolved. Alice sometimes wondered whether her father privately thought that Christ had been entirely too whimsical in his pronouncements, and would have liked the opportunity to amend one, or two, or all of them.“And that is very much to my point,” he said now. “Such a person may not be the most suitable housemaid in an establishment boasting two maiden daughters. It lacks decorum.” He took up another mouthful of beef, and when he had consumed it he added, “I don’t like to presume to lecture a baronet on private matters. Doubtless he and his lady will settle the matter simply enough between them, when it is brought to their attention. If not so, I’ll very gently have a word.”And with that, Mr. Nesmith felt that he had exposed his innocent young daughter to quite enough deliberation on so sordid a subject. The fate of Violet Cutler was a valuable object lesson for all the town’s young ladies, but there was a point beyond which consideration of it tended to prurience. Accordingly he changed the subject to an epidemic of loose bowels currently afflicting the parsonage sheep, which kept father and daughter pleasantly occupied until the end of the meal, when each retired to solitary pursuits.