CHAPTER IV

On rising from tea, there was again a scramble for the pleasure of being first out of the room, which happened to be increased by one or two of the card-parties having just broken up and the players being disposed to move exactly the different way. Among these was Mr Howard, his sister leaning on his arm; and no sooner were they within reach of Emma, than Mrs Blake, calling her notice by a friendly touch, said, “Your goodness to Charles, my dear Miss Watson, brings all his family upon you. Give me leave to introduce my brother, Mr Howard.” Emma curtsied, the gentleman bowed, made a hasty request for the honour of her hand in the two next dances, to which as hasty an affirmative was given, and they were immediately impelled in opposite directions. Emma was very well pleased with the circumstance; there was a quietly cheerful, gentlemanlike air in Mr Howard which suited her; and in a few minutes afterwards the value of her engagement increased, when, as she was sitting in the card-room, somewhat screened by a door, she heard Lord Osborne, who was lounging on a vacant table near her, call Tom Musgrave towards him and say, “Why do not you dance with that beautiful Emma Watson? I want you to dance with her, and I will come and stand by you.”

“I was determined on it this very moment, my lord; I’ll be introduced and dance with her directly.”

“Aye, do; and if you find she does not want much talking to, you may introduce me by and by.”

“Very well, my lord. If she is like her sisters, she will only want to be listened to. I will go this moment. I shall find her in the tea-room. That stiff old Mrs Edwards has never done tea.”

Away he went, Lord Osborne after him; and Emma lost no time in hurrying from her corner, exactly the other way, forgetting in her haste that she left Mrs Edwards behind.

“We had quite lost you,” said Mrs Edwards, who followed her with Mary, in less than five minutes. “If you prefer this room to the other there is no reason why you should not be here, but we had better all be together.”

Emma was saved the trouble of apologising, by their being joined at the moment by Tom Musgrave, who requesting Mrs Edwards aloud to do him the honour of presenting him to Miss Emma Watson, left that good lady without any choice in the business, but that of testifying by the coldness of her manner that she did it unwillingly. The honour of dancing with her was solicited without loss of time, and Emma, however she might like to be thought a beautiful girl by lord or commoner, was so little disposed to favour Tom Musgrave himself that she had considerable satisfaction in avowing her previous engagement. He was evidently surprised and discomposed. The style of her last partner had probably led him to believe her not overpowered with applications.

“My little friend, Charles Blake,” he cried, “must not expect to engross you the whole evening. We can never suffer this. It is against the rules of the assembly, and I am sure it will never be patronised by our good friend here, Mrs Edwards; she is by much too nice a judge of decorum to give her licence to such a dangerous particularity.”

“I am not going to dance with Master Blake, sir.”

The gentleman, a little disconcerted, could only hope he might be more fortunate another time, and seeming unwilling to leave her, though his friend Lord Osborne was waiting in the doorway for the result, as Emma with some amusement perceived, he began to make civil enquiries after her family.

“How comes it that we have not the pleasure of seeing your sisters here this evening? Our assemblies have been used to be so well treated by them that we do not know how to take this neglect.”

“My eldest sister is the only one at home, and she could not leave my father.”

“Miss Watson the only one at home! You astonish me! It seems but the day before yesterday that I saw them all three in this town. But I am afraid I have been a very sad neighbour of late. I hear dreadful complaints of my negligence wherever I go, and I confess it is a shameful length of time since I was at Stanton. But I shall _now_ endeavour to make myself amends for the past.”

Emma’s calm curtsy in reply must have struck him as very unlike the encouraging warmth he had been used to receive from her sisters, and gave him probably the novel sensation of doubting his own influence, and of wishing for more attention than she bestowed. The dancing now recommenced; Miss Carr being impatient to _call_, everybody was required to stand up; and Tom Musgrave’s curiosity was appeased on seeing Mr Howard come forward and claim Emma’s hand.

“That will do as well for me,” was Lord Osborne’s remark, when his friend carried him the news, and he was continually at Howard’s elbow during the two dances.

The frequency of his appearance there was the only unpleasant part of the engagement, the only objection she could make to Mr Howard. In himself, she thought him as agreeable as he looked; though chatting on the commonest topics, he had a sensible, unaffected way of expressing himself, which made them all worth hearing, and she only regretted that he had not been able to make his pupil’s manners as unexceptionable as his own. The two dances seemed very short, and she had her partner’s authority for considering them so. At their conclusion, the Osbornes and their train were all on the move.

“We are off at last,” said his lordship to Tom; “how much longer do you stay in this heavenly place?--till sunrise?”

“No, faith! my lord, I have had quite enough of it. I assure you I shall not show myself here again when I have had the honour of attending Lady Osborne to her carriage. I shall retreat in as much secrecy as possible to the most remote corner of the house, where I shall order a barrel of oysters, and be famously snug.”

“Let me see you soon at the castle; and bring me word how she looks by daylight.”

Emma and Mrs Blake parted as old acquaintance, and Charles shook her by the hand and wished her good-bye at least a dozen times. From Miss Osborne and Miss Carr she received something like a jerking curtsy as they passed her; even Lady Osborne gave her a look of complacency, and his lordship actually came back after the others were out of the room, to “beg her pardon,” and look in the window-seat behind her for the gloves which were visibly compressed in his hand. As Tom Musgrave was seen no more, we may suppose his plan to have succeeded, and imagine him mortifying with his barrel of oysters in dreary solitude, or gladly assisting the landlady in her bar to make fresh negus for the happy dancers above. Emma could not help missing the party by whom she had been, though in some respects unpleasantly, distinguished, and the two dances which followed and concluded the ball were rather flat in comparison with the others. Mr Edwards having played with good luck, they were some of the last in the room.

“Here we are back again, I declare,” said Emma sorrowfully, as she walked into the dining-room, where the table was prepared, and the neat upper maid was lighting the candles.

“My dear Miss Edwards, how soon it is at an end! I wish it could all come over again.”

A great deal of kind pleasure was expressed in her having enjoyed the evening so much; and Mr Edwards was as warm as herself in the praise of the fullness, brilliancy, and spirit of the meeting, though as he had been fixed the whole time at the same table in the same room, with only one change of chairs, it might have seemed a matter scarcely perceived. But he had won four rubbers out of five, and everything went well. His daughter felt the advantage of this gratified state of mind, in the course of the remarks and retrospections which now ensued over the welcome soup.

“How came you not to dance with either of the Mr Tomlinsons, Mary?” said her mother.

“I was always engaged when they asked me.”

“I thought you were to have stood up with Mr James the last two dances; Mrs Tomlinson told me he was gone to ask you, and I heard you say two minutes before that you were _not_ engaged.”

“Yes, but there was a mistake; I had misunderstood; I did not know I was engaged. I thought it had been for the two dances after, if we stayed so long; but Captain Hunter assured me it was for those very two.”

“So you ended with Captain Hunter, Mary, did you?” said her father. “And whom did you begin with?”

“Captain Hunter,” was repeated, in a very humble tone.

“Hum! That is being constant, however. But who else did you dance with?”

“Mr Norton and Mr Styles.”

“And who are they?”

“Mr Norton is a cousin of Captain Hunter’s.”

“And who is Mr Styles?”

“One of his particular friends.”

“All in the same regiment,” added Mrs Edwards. “Mary was surrounded by red-coats all the evening. I should have been better pleased to see her dancing with some of our old neighbours, I confess.”

“Yes, yes; we must not neglect our old neighbours. But if these soldiers are quicker than other people in a ball-room, what are young ladies to do?”

“I think there is no occasion for their engaging themselves so many dances beforehand, Mr Edwards.”

“No, perhaps not; but I remember, my dear, when you and I did the same.”

Mrs Edwards said no more, and Mary breathed again. A good deal of good-humoured pleasantry followed, and Emma went to bed in charming spirits, her head full of Osbornes, Blakes, and Howards.