“Gone! Shut me out! Shut me out, they did! Who decided? Who decided he should go?” He fairly impaled Emma with an angry glare. “You!”
Emma had witnessed the effects of too much wine before, but never to such a degree. She was too stunned to respond, and was grateful that her husband had also stayed behind to help manage Mr. Churchill.
Mr. Knightley interposed himself between Emma and their agitated guest. “Mr. Churchill, perhaps you had better—”
Mr. Churchill ignored Mr. Knightley altogether, seeming to look right through him as he continued to address Emma. “Always directing everybody around you. Manipulating us all. How could you live with yourself?” He laughed hysterically. “Apparently, you could not.”
“Mr. Churchill!” Guest or no, Mr. Knightley had done with politeness. “If you cannot act with civility, I shall be forced to have a servant conduct you back to Randalls. Perhaps a proper night’s rest will enable you to regain command of yourself.”
Edgar Churchill at last raised his gaze to Mr. Knightley’s stern countenance. “You do not know what it is to mourn.” He looked then at Emma. “And neither do you, Agnes.”
Oh, dear. Edgar Churchill was farther gone than she had realized. His pupils were wide, his face all confusion.
“I am not Mrs. Churchill,” Emma said gently.
“Are you not?” He looked about the room. “Where is she? Where did she go?” His voice cracked. “She was just here…”
He was still discomposed, but no longer belligerent. Emma pitied him. Mr. Knightley’s glower softened.
“Mr. Churchill, if you are feeling indisposed, allow me to call for your carriage.”
His unfocused gaze continued to sweep the room. “Where is Frank? Where is my son? I want my son.”
Emma and Mr. Knightley exchanged glances. “It would be cruel to send him back to an unfamiliar house alone,” she said. “And even if we did, I think he needs to eat something before he leaves.”
“Do you believe him collected enough to join the other guests?”
“He is placed near Frank Churchill at the dining table. That should comfort him.”
It was settled. Mr. Knightley took Mr. Churchill’s wineglass from him and set it on a nearby table, then he and Emma escorted Frank’s uncle to the dining room. He moved slowly, his fit of temper apparently having depleted his energy. The continual thrumming of his left hand, however, bespoke a spirit not yet at ease.
When they entered the dining room, the rest of the party was — mercifully — so immersed in conversation that their entrance was scarcely noticed. Frank, however, had been watching the door. He observed his uncle’s demeanor and immediately came to them. “Are you well, sir?”
Mr. Churchill attempted to speak, but his voice broke. He tried to force out words but hoarseness had overtaken him. Perhaps it was just as well — he could not cause a further scene.
“Come.” Frank led him to his chair. “We have been missing you.”
Emma was glad that Mr. Perry happened to be placed across the table from Edgar Churchill. The apothecary was used to dealing with people in all manner of conditions and temperaments, and himself possessed a soothing demeanor. His conversation would help further steady the senior Mr. Churchill.
When all were seated, Emma’s gaze took in the whole assembly. The guests of honor, Frank and Jane Churchill, exhibited the proper degree of newlywed felicity. Their friends shared their joy; their families — particularly Miss Bates — fairly radiated it. Miss Bates, in fact, seated (by no accident) between Mr. Nodd and Mr. Wynnken, and across from Major Barnes-Lincoln, wore a look of such happiness that in the candlelight she looked almost pretty, and Emma harbored hopes that the demands of chewing and swallowing would by necessity check the flow of her conversation enough to allow the gentlemen around her to participate in it.
Mrs. Knightley met her husband’s gaze and smiled. Their first dinner party, in both its official and tacit objectives, looked to be a success after all.
That was the last peaceful moment of the night.
Though Edgar Churchill had the courtesy to tolerate the soup course, somewhere between the fish and the pheasant the company nearly bore witness to a return of his bisque.
The heaving gentleman was hastily removed from the dining room to an empty bedchamber, where Mr. Perry attended him. Frank rose to accompany them, but upon being assured of Mr. Perry’s having the situation well in hand, was persuaded to remain in the dining room with all of the people assembled there for his benefit. Emma and Mr. Knightley, their sense of obligation equally divided between their duty to one ill guest and responsibility to dozens of others, settled it between them that Mr. Knightley, more familiar with the Donwell household, would accompany the apothecary and his patient to oversee any provisions required to make Mr. Churchill more comfortable.
To Emma, meanwhile, fell the unenviable task of presiding over a dining table whose atmosphere had altered considerably. The unseemly intoxication of the groom’s uncle, a gentleman of Edgar Churchill’s stature, was a subject on everyone’s minds but no one’s tongues as they awkwardly tried to converse about any other subject in the world. Miss Bates had no trouble filling the uncomfortable silence, and Emma for once was grateful for her steady, cheerful chatter. The more she spoke, however, the more pained Mr. Wynnken appeared, and the major looked as if he very much wished that she, too, would retire from the room pleading indisposition. Mr. Nodd seemed in danger of nodding off altogether. Emma’s matchmaking plans were unraveling before her eyes.
Mr. Woodhouse blamed the bisque. Rich food, he had long maintained, was never good for anybody’s digestion, but especially for an elderly gentleman such as Edgar Churchill. (At nine-and-fifty, Mr. Woodhouse was yet on the light side of sixty, the year which, in his mind, marked the threshold of old age. In temperament and habits, however, Mr. Woodhouse had been old at thirty.) He passionately attempted to dissuade everyone near him from so much as tasting the syllabub. Only Mrs. Elton complied — not out of doubts regarding the dessert’s richness, but out of conviction of its inferiority to the syllabub served at Maple Grove.
When Mr. Knightley returned and reported that Mr. Churchill had fallen into slumber, a sense of ease rippled through the assembly. Edgar Churchill would sleep off his overindulgence. For the present, both he and his embarrassing behavior could be quite guiltlessly forgotten.
Mr. Knightley, who, for some reason best known to himself, had certainly taken an early dislike to Frank Churchill, was only growing to dislike him more.
It was most inconsiderate of Edgar Churchill to die during his nephew’s marriage celebration.
The women had returned to the drawing room, leaving the men to their port and tobacco, when a footman entered and discreetly informed Emma that she was wanted posthaste by Mr. Perry. She reached Edgar’s chamber to discover her husband and Frank Churchill also about to enter.
“Has Mr. Churchill’s condition declined?” she asked.
“We were not told.” Mr. Knightley opened the door.
Edgar Churchill lay prostrate beneath a sheet. Mr. Perry, his round face and keen eyes bearing an unusually grave expression, stood over him. The apothecary had removed his own coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, which he now restored to their proper position at his wrists. Two maids gathered soiled linen; despite the chill, a window had been opened.
“My uncle is worse?” Frank asked.
“I am terribly sorry, Mr. Churchill. Your uncle is dead.”
Emma gasped.
“How can that be?” Frank exclaimed. “You assured me earlier that he would be fine — that you would see to his care. Mr. Knightley informed us all that he was sleeping.”
“He was — so deeply that he did not waken, even when he evacuated his stomach. After the servants tidied him up and put him into a nightshirt, he continued to sleep soundly, though his pulse was quite rapid and his
