“It can indeed,” said Miss Burke. “What a change in my life! I feel the world is full of hope.”
“Then did you accept Rosebery solely from base motives, dear?”
“Well, I could feel he was his father’s son. I even fancied a likeness between them. When I saw him simply as himself, my motives were base. And I suppose they still are. But it is better to have them here. It will mean freedom.”
“No, it will not, dear. That is not all that has to go without saying.”
“Oh, I don’t mind working in this house. I shall have essential freedom. That need not mean I am not occupied.”
“Nothing essential has its real meaning. So all is clear between us. That is one of the lowest of human speeches.”
“Will you write my letter for me? I have not had enough education.”
“You mean you have the ability and nothing meaner. I think I have it all. Yes, I will write the letter for you, and Rosebery will see what he has lost.”
“And you will write for youself in the same way?” said Hester.
“No, I shall write in a different way. We do not do things in the same way for ourselves and for other people. I shall try not to realise how I write. It might hardly do for the last vestige of my romance.”
“I think both the men will look forward again.”
“And both look back,” said Miss Burke. “They did not cease from doing so. It was the main thing in Mr. Rosebery’s life.”
“Did you call him ‘Mr. Rosebery’?” said Hester.
“Yes, I could not say the simple name.”
“Then of course you cannot marry him,” said Emma.
“He called me ‘Miss Burke’. He said the name had its own sound for him.”
“Take care, dear. You are going to refuse him, and for reasons that are not his fault.”
“What reasons will you give?” said Hester.
“The true ones will be best,” said Miss Burke. “Then the matter will be at an end. That I accepted him to have a provision, and now have one from someone else. I could even say it was Miss Greatheart.”
“He will think I am bribing you,” said Emma. “But it is what he was doing himself. How it will enhance your value to us both!”
“You can refuse Julius on palpable grounds,” said Hester.
“No, I cannot appear to be the slave of convention. He might alter his opinion of me. I think I must just say that I have not enough to give.”
“Well, I suppose that is true. So I hope he will not think I have influenced you.”
“He knows you are not on his side. You did not disguise it.”
“But I mean behind his back. When I was trying to put things in their true light, I did it to his face.”
“Well, he may remember that,” said Emma.
“Will Mr. Hume want Miss Wolsey to go back to him as his housekeeper?” said Miss Burke.
“I expect so,” said Hester, idly. “But I shall not go.”
“I feel guilty about Mr. Rosebery. I am afraid to think of him.”
“Yes, he does make one feel like that. He has a sort of pathos. I remember I felt it myself.”
“You mean when he proposed to you?”
“Yes,” said Hester, just throwing up her brows.
“But it did not prevent you from refusing him?”
“Well!” said Hester, lifting her shoulders. “Now I will leave you to write your letters, and go and make my peace with Plautus.”
Miss Burke looked at Emma as the door closed.
“I don’t know what to think about Miss Wolsey,” she said.
“You must think everything, dear. I see it cannot be helped. And I will think the one thing, that she has known the depths, and that I have seen her knowing them. It is a good thing experience is ennobling. I believe she is becoming a little ennobled.”
“I think she ought to be grateful to you.”
“And we dislike people when we owe them gratitude. Just as we do when we owe them anything else. It does seem they might just say nothing about it. So that is what I will do.”
“I do not dislike people when I am grateful to them. I am grateful to you now.”
“It is too much, dear. And when I forgot you would outlive me!”
“But I don’t think we owe so much to the men we are rejecting. What they offered was easy to give.”
“Then of course we must reject them. I will write your letter at once. I do feel so equal to it. See how my pen is travelling across the paper; that is the right thing to happen, I know; and it only has to travel a little further. Now you can copy the letter in your own hand.”
“And I suppose the pen must begin to travel again.”
“I am not sure that it ought. This is something no person of quality would find easy. And my pen is travelling over the paper; I do not seem able to prevent it. I am actually writing the awkward words; I think it is best for them to have the awkwardness; it will not seem that I am trying to make an impression; and that is the impression I want to make. I will not read it over, in case it is not what I think. And re-reading a letter is painstaking and unworthy of me.”
“Shall I take the letters to the post?” said Hester, coming in with Plautus in her arms. “It is better to let them know at once. Then the episode can sink into the past.”
“The postman can take them in the morning,” said Miss Burke.
“No, let Hester take them. We don’t want them lingering about in the present, and preventing it from being an episode. I am sure it is salutary for us to feel it is that.”
Hester took the letters in a hand she disengaged from Plautus, and went out, using them to caress him, and Emma looked after her.
“It is a pity we cannot judge by the surface, when it is so often arranged for us to judge by it.”
Hester returned and sat down by the fire.
“So the old times are to come again. Indeed we might say they have come. I daresay a single life is best.”
“Do you?” said Emma. “Wouldn’t it have been found out, if it was?”
“You say you like living for yourself.”
“Yes, but it would be very bad to think it was best.”
“I shall always be glad I have known the Humes.”
“I shall not. I would rather not have known them. I did not think of a household’s being like that. I was brought up in a household myself, and now I don’t know what to think about it. No one told me anything; but then no one told these children anything either; I mean until to-day.”
“Are you ready for dinner?” said Miss Burke. “It is nearly done.”
“To think that the times of our hearing that homely word might have been numbered!”
“And the times of my saying it,” said Miss Burke.
“And now we feel it will all go on for ever,” said Hester.
“I do not,” said Emma. “I feel it will only go on until I die. I resent the people who will survive me. That may be why I did not let myself realise about Miss Burke.”
“You should remember that you lived before they did, and that they might envy that.”
“They might and they ought, but they do not. They envy nothing. That is their real offence. Suppose we envied nothing about them! Or suppose they believed it!”
Plautus came up to Emma and made her a characteristic gift.
“Now that is your fault, Hester. He has got into the way of giving things to me. You will have to show yourself ready to accept again.”
“Ah, but, Plautus, you will not be a human being.”
“What are you saying, Hester? Has your experience of the world altered you like that?”
“Well, I cannot feel I am the same.”
“But you should not wreak the difference on a helpless, dumb creature.”
“Oh, Plautus, what does she call you?”
“I thought that would bring you to your senses. I began to feel we had a stranger in our midst.”
“He wants the door opened for him,” said Miss Burke.