Chapter Text
When George received a letter all the way from England, postmarked to a week after the supposed wedding, but with a return address of E. Woodhouse, he did not immediately read it.
Perhaps Emma was being coy. She always had some silly game to amuse herself- the result, no doubt, of being relatively alone on an aging estate with no mental stimulation of any kind, save what she invented. But there was always the chance that she merely meant to grab his attention. Something was very possibly wrong, and George didn’t have time to devote his whole attention to Emma until after his February deadline.
When he did get around to reading the letter, he deeply regretted that decision.
‘Dear Mr. Knightly,
I received your telegram this week, and I was sad to hear that you would not have been able to attend the wedding.’
Aha, George thought. This will be the part when Emma announces that the whole February business is just some ridiculous scheme. He read on.
‘However, despite your generous notes on myself as your first knew me (though curiously lacking in any reference to our current degree of correspondence) the wedding has been cancelled. I am sorry to say that Frank’s aunt passed just before Christmas and upon such an event, he decided to reevaluate his life and it’s trajectory. Thus, he and I were unable to go on with the marriage.
I hope you will not spend an ounce of anxiety on me because of these events. I was determined to be a married woman, but I can confess to you - and only to you - that I was not motivated by a strong desire to be Frank’s wife. My successor will be much happier in her position.
George, in truth, I believe I have narrowly avoided a terrible fate. You have told me all my life that I deceive myself as often as I do others, and here I think I nearly paid the price for my wit. I never saw Frank’s true character because I was blinded by my own fantasy. I would have married a man I did not love. Worse, not only did he not love me, but harbored affection for another. I dread to think what my life would have become.
I know there is much cause for chastisement in this correspondence, but please, have mercy on me. I know all I have done wrong, now that I no longer blind myself. Reading your telegram, I am struck by nothing so much as how silly and irritating I was when we first met. You have always seen the real good in me, though you rarely tell me, but it is clear to me that I have not grown up from that child I was that day. Not in the ways that matter.
Faithfully, reflectively, mournfully yours,
Emma Woodhouse
“Oh, Emma,” he sighed as he approached the end of the correspondence.
As always, she was a unique mix of ridiculous notions and remarkable good sense. Her own self-chastisement was so reflective and thoughtful that he couldn’t have said it better. She had a perfect understanding of her own folly, a quality that set her apart among millions of men and women. And yet, somehow she’d found herself just as vulnerable to her own vices as if she was completely ignorant of them. It was George’s opinion that her intelligence came from inborn talent, a natural sense of inquisition, and a certain pride in her understanding of all things around her. Her folly, he liked to believe, was the result of always living among those stupider and more gullible than her, and an unwillingness to venture out into the wider world for fear of losing some modicum of comfort or status.
Who could Emma have been, if she’d been properly challenged all her life? He thought back to a rather fantastic argument they’d had about a year ago on the notion of her going to Oxford in pursuit of some higher education and true academic engagement. She had played the whole matter off so dismissively that it made him want to scream, and then to fly to England and talk some sense into her.
She was such a good, pure person when her meddlesome and vain natures were tempered. She still could be. She was young, after all. Unspoiled by haunting memories, unhaunted by lost comrades. She was the shining future of England that so many had fought for, and there she was, throwing it away because university was not the fashionable thing for a lady in her position. Or, perhaps, because the only duty she truly never shirked was the oversight of the young master Henry Woodhouse.
University had been one thing, but unwanted marriage? Her successor? What sort of character did this Frank Churchill have, anyway? George had a very clear idea of why a young man might become engaged to a woman with no intent of marriage, and it set something burning within him.
“If he was anything but a respectful gentleman…” he muttered to himself as he went about his business the next day, distracted by very dark thoughts indeed.
He found himself halfway through writing young Henry a letter when he realized it would do no good. As Emma’s only male relative, he should have been protecting her, but George wasn’t certain the boy even knew the ways Frank Churchill might have disrespected his sister. Emma would certainly never speak a word of any ill behavior.
He considered changing tactics. Perhaps he could warn the boy to watch out for more fortune hunters or trophy seekers. Emma wasn’t likely to be pulled into the same scheme twice, but then again, she was prone to deceiving herself more thoroughly than anyone else ever could. There was no help in doing that, either. If Emma were to make another choice, what power would young Henry have to oppose her? He didn’t even have an older relative to call upon.
These thoughts twisted in the back of his mind for some time over the next few weeks, not quite consciously. It was not the kind of situation he was involved in, really, and aside from writing Emma back, there was nothing he could do but worry. Between moving his mother into the new apartment, keeping up his weekly column, and training the newest journalist, he didn’t have much energy to spare on young ladies in England. Still, sometimes he caught himself thinking the whole thing over, again.
Just when George might have properly banished the thought, he received another letter from Highbury, though this one was from someone he’d only corresponded with maybe once in his life.
Sergeant Knightly,
I know you wrote Emma last month about the wedding. I don’t know if you heard, but her fiancé is a scoundrel. I have vowed to kill him if he ever sets foot on our property again, and I smashed the violin he gave me last Christmas and I told the police captain I don’t want to see him near her again. She told me she was fine (some rot about how relieved she is!) but I also caught her crying alone in her bedroom. Or, well, I heard her.
Everyone in town is talking about it, and Timothy Fairfax has been spreading terrible rumors, so the school people know too. People are saying that Emma is Frank’s mistress. I heard from a chum that he comes by the house regularly. Emma won’t agree to go move in with Isabella (our married sister). She lives in a much more rural county. Please urge her to go. Perhaps invite her to Chicago. It’s nice there in the winters, right? Just as long as she’s back by Easter break.
Henry Woodhouse
And that was it, really. Henry didn’t have the wits of his sister (he had snorted at the comment about Chicago’s winters, which would make a Londoner count their blessings), but even he could see what was happening. No one would be watching over his sister carefully. She was a single, wealthy young woman who lived alone and had seen very little of the world. She was finally old enough for someone to saunter in and try to declare her their personal property, and someone aught to be there to make sure that man had honorable intentions (and hopefully a good brain).
Frank Churchill would need to be told off, rumors to be dissipated, and perhaps he could even convince her to make something of her life beyond all this marriage business.
It wasn’t that George didn’t know how it looked, exactly. Was he not a man wandering in, trying to direct a somewhat vulnerable young woman? But, well, he couldn’t help but feel that Emma needed a friend whose advice she couldn’t argue out of. Someone with time to spare, but enough disinterest to not be obtrusive. He could be an older brother figure, watchful and protective the way she was as a sister to Henry. He could finally pay her back for that time after the war, when he’d been twenty himself and Hartfield had been his quiet refuge.
There was only the paper to be told, and a ticket to be bought, really. They would never give him the time off. After all, he’d just gotten back from vacation. It was all the better that way, though. He had been holding off spending a recent inheritance, anyway, in case he decided to take a sabbatical and finally write that novel. Living with Emma, he imagined he could make that small sum go very far indeed.