‘Well – as you wish. Or rather, as they wish. Now I must leave you – I am supposed to be supervising the furnishing of Dr Harding’s study. Penelope wishes you to take charge of the kitchen. Go down there as soon as you can – it is in chaos. Oh!’ For a moment, Elizabeth put her hands over her face, exclaimed, ‘It is all so wretched!’ and hurried from the room.
Emma knew that she, too, should be bustling about, in a show of grateful repayment for the hospitality of a sister whom she could not like or admire; but instead she crossed to the window and knelt down by the sill, which was raised only a foot or so from the floor. How very quiet it was in this room! The stream’s murmur was audible, that was all. It is even quieter than Stanton, she thought. There, you could hear the cows on the farm, roosters, and the quack of ducks. Here, nothing at all. Not a single echo comes up from all that commotion going on at the front.
Poor Elizabeth, thought Emma. She feels I have robbed her of her home and her happiness. And I suppose that is true. But it would all soon have come to an end in any case. Papa could not have lasted many more months. Sam said so. And here, living with Penelope, who knows? Elizabeth’s life may take some new course, at present undreamed-of. So long as she does not allow herself to be turned into a mere drudge. I have never been in so quiet a house! I am sure that it will not suit Penelope. Why, of all the places in the world, did they decide to settle here?
***
Emma, without any trouble, found her way down the back stair again and to the kitchen regions, from where, as she approached them, a considerable clatter and gabble of voices proceeded. Here three different sets of persons were attempting to pursue their conflicting ends: builders’ men were installing shelves and pipes, carters’ men were fetching in tables, cupboards, and crates of pots and crockery; bewildered servants, most of them newly hired, were attempting to sort these articles, set them in order, and prepare a meal. Old Nanny, from the parsonage, theoretically in charge of all these proceedings, could do nothing but shake her head helplessly.
‘If ever I saw such a discombobulation in all my days! But, to be sure, it’s just like Miss Penny – she always was a helter-skelter child, wanting all finished as soon as the first idea came into her head; lord save us, though, the new master must be as rich as Crusoe, when you consider all the money that’s gone into this kitchen alone: just look at that brand-new Rumford stove, Miss Emma, and that great steamer, and the fine porcelain sink and that warming cupboard – and the pastry-room – and those shelves in the pantry, solid slate, beautiful they are. ’Tis plain money’s no object.’
Emma looked, and was likewise impressed. And she could see, too, the imprint of a practical mind. Dr Harding might look elderly, vague, and bewildered, but his appearance must bely him; the shrewd intelligence that had planned this kitchen and its appurtenances certainly did not belong to Penelope, who was perfectly capable of sewing a sleeve upside down into a bodice. Dr Harding might, in family disputes, retreat to a corner, but he was no dotard. Unless, of course, Mr Thickstaffe had planned the kitchen?
While engaged in these thoughts, Emma had begun organizing the servants, who were only too glad to find themselves under one firm authority; and soon, with the help of old Nanny, order and calm began to prevail; articles were not picked up and put down twenty times by as many people, but were assigned to their correct place, or stored in temporary harbours of safety. Fortunately there seemed an abundance of these. Emma, snatching moments to explore, discovered a maze of unused ancient offices, dairies, still-rooms, game-larders, sculleries, cellars, and other dark dank little rooms whose function remained unknown, unguessable. They seemed so old that she could easily imagine Saxon warriors ensconced in them, with shields and swords and flagons of mead. This notion brought a sudden warm recollection of Captain Fremantle discoursing with ingenuous enthusiasm on Saxon kings, and Emma smiled involuntarily at the thought.
She slipped out of doors, momentarily, and found a brick-paved yard to the side of the house, with a central well, and stables, coach-houses, and tack-rooms; also a series of walled gardens, all in a state of shocking neglect; this shortcoming was now being remedied at breakneck speed by a troop of gardeners digging, scything down brambles, chopping dead branches, and laying turf. Emma was a little sorry to see the wilderness so speedily put straight, and hoped their activities would not be too extensive.
Papa would have enjoyed this place, she thought, peering into an ancient rose-garden where the spreading, straggly boughs interlaced like cobwebs. I am sorry he did not have an opportunity to come here. But perhaps he may have, years ago, when Sir Meldred was still alive.
Conscience-stricken, she hurried back indoors, summoned by cries of ‘Miss Emma! Miss Emma!’ and gave orders as to the disposition of china, silver, milk-pans, and laundry baskets.
By working without cease during the next five or six hours, a state of rational tidiness was finally achieved; Emma, during that period of time, had not set foot in the rest of the house, but was interested to observe, when she did emerge from the kitchen region, that the areas which had been under the governance of Mr Thickstaffe were now equally orderly; Dr Harding, with the aid of Elizabeth, had arranged for himself a calm sanctuary of study and library; but the saloons, boudoirs, parlours and ballroom, under the ordinance of Penelope, still remained in a state of very considerable confusion. Penelope, it seemed, had not the imaginative eye, she could not conceive how an object would look in a particular spot unless it were actually in position there, and articles of furniture were continually being dragged hither and thither according to her cry: ‘Try it the other way again! No, put it back, but turn it around. No, that will not do either!’
At last Dr Harding, assuming a hitherto unsuspected authority, said, ‘My dear, I think we have all had enough. Should we not dine? Here is Bertrand, to say that dinner has been ready this last half-hour.’
Bertrand, to the amazement and suspicion of Nanny, was a genuine French chef, and the meal he had produced in such adverse surroundings was a surprisingly excellent one.
‘I had no idea that Dr Harding was quite so well-to-do,’ Emma murmured to Elizabeth after the meal when they were making up beds and hanging curtains in their own room (‘For it is little use expecting servants to penetrate up so high as this on the first day,’ Elizabeth had remarked with her usual common sense.)
Now she said simply, ‘Penelope tells me that Mr Thickstaffe has long advised him – advised him about his investments. Advised him how to accumulate a nest-egg.’
‘To some purpose, it would seem! But I still consider Thickstaffe an odious creature.’
At the dinner table Mr Thickstaffe, who comported himself in all ways as a member of the family, had cried out: ‘Here’s a toast to little Miss Emma, who has a head on her shoulders worthy of Boney himself! And here’s to our industrious Miss Elizabeth, who has achieved ten times as much as any other person here, and will not even let me fill her glass with wine, though I have invited her three times!’
He bowed and raised his glass, and Dr Harding remarked, ‘Indeed I think myself fortunate to have acquired two such notable sisters,’ while Penelope pressed her lips together, looked at her plate, and remained silent.
Very soon after the meal Emma, who felt really exhausted, retired to bed. She had been too fatigued and harassed, all day, to think much of her sorrows, but now they came swooping back: her father, Mrs Blake, and Aunt Maria; oppressed and low-spirited she knelt huddling by the window and stared out. At this time of a winter evening the scene outside was almost pitch black; she could see only the reflection of her own candle on the pane; but, as she looked, that reflection was joined by another point of light, the light of a lantern, carried by somebody climbing the hill outside; and shortly afterwards a second tiny spark approached. They twinkled together, on the dark hillside; two people, apparently, standing, talking by the little cascade.
Who could it be? Who would t
ake the trouble to go out for a private conference in the wintry cold and dark?
Emma felt a little ashamed of even appearing to overlook their meeting; she moved away from the window and began on her toilet. When she returned to the window later, the lights were gone.
Elizabeth had long since retired, and her slow regular breathing showed her to be in deep sleep. Emma’s last thought before she, too, slept, was: who, what company can Penelope hope to entertain in this house, with all those plate-racks and warming-cupboards?
Chapter 8
Emma spent five very active days at Clissocks, arranging, rearranging, stowing, sorting, making lists, and listening to the arguments of Elizabeth and Penelope as to the disposition of the furniture.
‘Why in the world do you trouble to argue with Penelope?’ Emma ventured to ask one day when she and Elizabeth were alone in the still-room, making an inventory of its contents. ‘She only asks advice in order to repudiate it and put forward some superior plan of her own. She does not deserve the effort of rational opposition.’
A pause ensued. At first Emma thought her sister did not intend to answer. But at last she replied briefly, ‘Penelope loves to argue. And if I engage her, it somewhat lessens the risk of her disputing with Dr Harding. I have noticed that such contentious discussions fatigue him greatly . . . These tools should certainly not be in here. Jem?’ She put her head out of the door and called, ‘Jem, take all these things to the garden-room.’
Emma looked after her sister with surprised respect. Penelope’s curt impatience with Dr Harding had already struck her as unexpected and improper in such a new-married wife; that Elizabeth had not only observed it, but taken her own measures to alleviate the friction, impressed her greatly. Elizabeth has far too low an opinion of herself, thought Emma. Mrs Blake often said so. She rates both her looks and her intelligence far too humbly; that is partly because Penelope, who is younger, has always asserted herself and put down her elder sister; it is a shocking pity; Elizabeth has by far the better nature, her looks are superior, if only she would take pains, and she is quite as shrewd as Penelope. How I wonder what Elizabeth and Tom Musgrave said to each other during those four dances! I shall never dare to ask. Poor Tom. How can he ever lift up his head again, after causing the death of Mrs Blake and little Charles. He will be obliged to leave this neighbourhood and move away.
Mr Thickstaffe also kept an observant and watchful eye, Emma noticed, on the relations between Dr Harding and his bride. Sometimes he would jokingly intervene, or would seize the first opportunity to carry the conversation away into some more innocuous area. While Emma respected him more for this, she did not like him any better – indeed, after five days, her antipathy had grown to a point where she found it a penance even to be in the same room with him, and strenuously avoided being alone in his company.
She wondered if he had noticed this. He was certainly no fool, despite his unpolished and often offensive manners. He could and quite often did converse intelligently on a variety of topics of public interest; he knew a great deal about money, since he had for some time followed the profession of a bill-broker, as had his father before him; he had been born and brought up in rooms above the family office in Lombard Street.
Emma wondered why he had left this lucrative profession. Perhaps there had been some untoward occurrence? Akin to that at Osborne Park? Whatever the reason, at some point he had become Dr Harding’s adviser, and it was through his offices, apparently, that the doctor had gained the opportunity of turning a modest competence, amassed by industrious years of medical practice, into a handsome fortune.
‘I’d say it was a lucky stroke for your family, Miss Emma, that brought me into Dr Harding’s path and him into that of your sister,’ Mr Thickstaffe told Emma while they were making a catalogue, she with great reluctance, of some silver and plate which the doctor had bought at an auction.
‘No doubt,’ she responded coldly, writing down 6 Queen Anne teaspoons, much tarnished.
‘And I am hoping to put your brother Mr Sam in the way of doing as well for himself as the doctor; Mr Sam Watson is a clever man and a good surgeon and it would be a great pity if his lack of advancement were to be caused simply by straitened means.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Emma reluctantly.
Thickstaffe ignored her chilly tone. He chuckled.
‘Poor young fellow! He still dangles after Miss Mary Edwards. But he has no hope of her, no hope whatsoever, since she came into that fortune. I have it on firm authority—’ (Mr Thickstaffe, it seemed, had many relations in the countryside) – ‘that Lord Osborne is to make her an offer any day. Why, Nanny, what is it? Why do you seek me here in the butler’s pantry?’
Old Nanny, who had been hovering in the doorway, regarded Mr Thickstaffe with a gimlet eye. She had decided from the start that he was no gentry, but a jumped-up chaw-bacon; and as such she treated him. He was well aware of this and bore her no ill-will; her usage seemed to amuse him.
‘It’s not you I want, Mr Thickstaffe, but Miss Emma; here’s your brother, miss, Master Sam, come a-calling, and who do you suppose he has with him but Lord Osborne? Seems they met a-riding along the river road.’
‘Well, well, well!’ chuckled Thickstaffe. ‘Romeo, and what’s the other young feller-me-lad’s name, Count Paris, both come a-calling at the same time? Now I wonder what brings them hither? Can they know something that we do not know? It falls out handily, for I, too, wished to see Mr Sam Watson.’
Emma walked into the morning-room, which, by one means or another, had been made tolerably fit for the reception of callers. Here she found her sister Elizabeth, somewhat ill-at-ease in the company of Sam and Lord Osborne, who seemed awkward in the company of each other. It was plain immediately to Emma that Elizabeth, though always happy to see Sam, had left some task unfinished which was preoccupying her mind; and that she wished Lord Osborne at the bottom of the sea.
‘Dr Harding will be here soon,’ she explained rather distractedly. ‘I have sent to fetch him – he and Penelope – Mrs Harding – went out with Heythrop to inspect the new approach road they are digging.’
To Emma’s annoyance, Mr Thickstaffe had followed her into the morning-room and now saluted the two young men.
‘Mr Sam Watson! And Lord Osborne! Pray convey my best respects to Lady Osborne, when you see her, and to Miss Harriet. How are those new birch plantations doing, sir? Were they badly affected by the cold winter last year? And the new cut and fish hatcheries, did they prosper?’
Emma was indignant that Mr Thickstaffe assumed so much the air of the householder himself; what right had he to do so? And Lord Osborne, she observed, received his greetings with a degree of confusion and with very little pleasure. It was true that Lord Osborne never, at any time, seemed particularly confident or easy in company; he was pale, as usual, mumbled something in which the words ‘happy’ and ‘obliged’ could be heard, looked at his feet, and presently was heard to explain stammeringly that Lady Osborne had gone to London for a few days on business related to the new incumbent at Stanton. She had been accompanied by Mr Howard. Lord Osborne evinced very little enthusiasm at this disclosure, but that might be just his natural manner.
Emma had hardly thought that her spirits could be reduced any lower, but these tidings caused her heart, inexplicably, to sink. They will come back from London engaged to be married, she thought sorrowfully. He will find it easier to make the offer in London. That is certain to happen.
Now Penelope appeared, all smiles.
‘Lord Osborne! How truly delightful! My husband will be here directly, he is just changing his footwear! The mud! I had forgotten how much mud there is in the country. But how is your lady mother? Is she well?’
Lord Osborne lamely repeated his information regarding Lady Osborne’s visit to town; as he did so Penelope darted lightning glances at her sisters: why was I not called sooner? they demanded, why have no refreshmen
ts been offered, where is Fielding with the sherry?
‘And so your dear mother is enjoying the delights of town; but when she returns, and when we are more settled in, I do hope and trust that we shall see her here. We should value her opinion of what has been achieved so far.’
Lord Osborne muttered something that might, or might not, be accepted as a declaration of his mother’s intentions in that respect.
‘She is – that is she has – or, at least I believe so . . .’
‘Delightful to have town within such easy reach from here!’ exulted Penelope. ‘We plan many, many excursions to the metropolis – do we not, my love?’
For at this moment Dr Harding made his appearance, in clean boots, looking moithered, and as if he wished himself elsewhere. However, his face lit up at sight of Sam.
‘Of course, from Chichester, a visit to London was quite out of the question – but now – quite another matter – and, also, when the builders have at last left us in peace, we shall hope to see a great deal of our neighbours – nothing too formal, you know, at first, but to have some young people gathered in for games of lottery tickets and a little dancing – that is the kind of entertainment that Dr Harding so much enjoys – and a little hot supper you know – then, by and bye, closer to Easter, when our good Bertrand has made plenty of white soup, perhaps a ball . . .’
Sam had been talking earnestly to Thickstaffe, but the word ball caught his ear.
‘A ball?’ he said with brotherly bluntness. ‘Good heavens, Penelope! Flying rather high, ain’t you? Have you a sufficiently large room for such a purpose? Or indeed a large enough acquaintance?’
Penelope gave him a quelling look, but Emma thought she caught a brief flash of what looked like relief and partisanship in the eye of Dr Harding.
‘Certainly there is room. The two saloons at the side have been thrown into one, and it would be the most shocking waste not to make use—’