CHAPTER VI
“Now, my dear Emma,” said Miss Watson, as soon as they were alone, “you must talk to me all the rest of the day without stopping, or I shall not be satisfied. But first of all Nanny shall bring in the dinner. Poor thing! You will not dine as you did yesterday, for we have nothing but some fried beef. How nice Mary Edwards looks in her new pelisse! And now tell me how you like them all, and what I am to say to Sam. I have begun my letter; Jack Stokes is to call for it to-morrow, for his uncle is going within a mile of Guildford next day.”
Nanny brought in the dinner.
“We will wait upon ourselves,” continued Elizabeth, “and then we shall lose no time. And so you would not come home with Tom Musgrave?”
“No. You had said so much against him that I could not wish either for the obligation or the intimacy which the use of his carriage must have created. I should not even have liked the appearance of it.”
“You did very right; though I wonder at your forbearance, and I do not think I could have done it myself. He seemed so eager to fetch you that I could not say no, though it rather went against me to be throwing you together, so well as I knew his tricks; but I did long to see you, and it was a clever way of getting you home. Besides, it won’t do to be too nice. Nobody could have thought of the Edwards letting you have their coach, after the horses being out so late. But what am I to say to Sam?”
“If you are guided by me, you will not encourage him to think of Miss Edwards. The father is decidedly against him, the mother shows him no favour, and I doubt his having any interest with Mary. She danced twice with Captain Hunter, and I think shows him in general as much encouragement as is consistent with her disposition and the circumstances she is placed in. She once mentioned Sam, and certainly with a little confusion--but that was perhaps merely owing to the consciousness of his liking her, which may very probably have come to her knowledge.”
“Oh! dear, yes--she has heard enough of _that_ from us all. Poor Sam! He is out of luck as well as other people. For the life of me, Emma, I cannot help feeling for those that are crossed in love. Well, now begin, and give me an account of everything as it happened.”
Emma obeyed her, and Elizabeth listened with very little interruption till she heard of Mr Howard as a partner.
“Dance with Mr Howard. Good heavens! You don’t say so! Why, he is quite one of the great and grand ones. Did you not find him very high?”
“His manners are of a kind to give _me_ much more ease and confidence than Tom Musgrave’s.”
“Well, go on. I should have been frightened out of my wits to have had anything to do with the Osbornes’ set.”
Emma concluded her narration.
“And so you really did not dance with Tom Musgrave at all? but you must have liked him--you must have been struck with him altogether.”
“I do _not_ like him, Elizabeth. I allow his person and air to be good; and that his manner to a certain point--his address rather--is pleasing. But I see nothing else to admire in him. On the contrary, he seems very vain, very conceited, absurdly anxious for distinction, and absolutely contemptible in some of the measures he takes for being so. There is a ridiculousness about him that entertains me; but his company gives me no other agreeable emotion.”
“My dearest Emma! You are like nobody else in the world. It is well Margaret is not by. You do not offend _me_, though I hardly know how to believe you; but Margaret would never forgive such words.”
“I wish Margaret could have heard him profess his ignorance of her being out of the country; he declared it seemed only two days since he had seen her.”
“Aye, that is just like him; and yet this is the man she _will_ fancy so desperately in love with her. He is no favourite of mine, as you well know, Emma, but you must think him agreeable. Can you lay your hand on your heart, and say you do not?”
“Indeed I can, both hands; and spread to their widest extent.”
“I should like to know the man you _do_ think agreeable!”
“His name is Howard.”
“Howard! Dear me; I cannot think of him but as playing cards with Lady Osborne, and looking proud. I must own, however, that it _is_ a relief to me to find you can speak as you do of Tom Musgrave; my heart did misgive me that you would like him too well. You talked so stoutly beforehand, that I was sadly afraid your brag would be punished. I only hope it will last, and that he will not come on to pay you much attention; it is a hard thing for a woman to stand against the flattering ways of a man when he is bent upon pleasing her.”
As their quietly sociable little meal concluded, Miss Watson could not help observing how comfortably it had passed.
“It is so delightful to me,” said she, “to have things going on in peace and good-humour. Nobody can tell how much I hate quarrelling. Now, though we have had nothing but fried beef, how good it has all seemed. I wish everybody were as easily satisfied as you; but poor Margaret is very snappish, and Penelope owns she would rather have quarrelling going on than nothing at all.”
Mr Watson returned in the evening not the worse for the exertion of the day, and consequently pleased with what he had done, and glad to talk of it over his own fireside. Emma had not foreseen any interest to herself in the occurrences of a visitation; but when she heard Mr Howard spoken of as the preacher, and as having given them an excellent sermon, she could not help listening with a quicker ear.
“I do not know when I have heard a discourse more to my mind,” continued Mr Watson, “or one better delivered. He reads extremely well, with great propriety, and in a very impressive manner, and at the same time without any theatrical grimace or violence. I own I do not like much action in the pulpit; I do not like the studied air and artificial inflexions of voice which your very popular and most admired preachers generally have. A simple delivery is much better calculated to inspire devotion, and shows a much better taste. Mr Howard read like a scholar and a gentleman.”
“And what had you for dinner, sir?” said his eldest daughter.
He related the dishes, and told what he had ate himself.
“Upon the whole,” he added, “I have had a very comfortable day. My old friends were quite surprised to see me amongst them, and I must say that everybody paid me great attention, and seemed to feel for me as an invalid. They would make me sit near the fire; and as the partridges were pretty high, Dr Richards would have them sent away to the other end of the table, ‘that they might not offend Mr Watson,’ which I thought very kind of him. But what pleased me as much as anything was Mr Howard’s attention. There is a pretty steep flight of steps up to the room we dine in, which do not quite agree with my gouty foot, and Mr Howard walked by me from the bottom to the top, and would make me take his arm. It struck me as very becoming in so young a man, but I am sure I had no claim to expect it; for I never saw him before in my life. By the by, he enquired after one of my daughters, but I do not know which. I suppose you know among yourselves.”