Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England). Complete

“I am here, sir,” said his clerk, who had been holding deferential watch at a few steps from the table.

“What do you do here then, sir, all this time?”

“I waited, sir, because—”

“You waste and dawdle away twenty or thirty minutes, when you ought to be doing your work. What do you mean?” Mr. Pole stood up and took an angry stride.

The young man could scarcely believe his master was not stooping to jest with him. He said: “For that matter, sir, it can’t be a minute that I have been wasting.”

“I called you in half an hour ago,” returned Mr. Pole, fumbling at his watch-fob.

“It must have been somebody else, sir.”

“Did you bring in this directory? Look at it! This?”

“This is the book that I brought in, sir.”

“How long since?”

“I think, not a minute and a half, sir.”

Mr. Pole gazed at him, and coughed slowly. “I could have sworn…” he murmured, and commenced blinking.

“I suppose I must be a little queer,” he pursued; and instantly his right hand struck out, quivering. The young clerk grasped it, and drew him to a chair.

“Tush,” said his master, working his feverish fingers across his forehead. “Want of food. I don’t eat like you young fellows. Fetch me a glass of wine and a biscuit. Good wine, mind. Port. Or, no; you can’t trust tavern Port:—brandy. Get it yourself, don’t rely on the porter. And bring it yourself, you understand the importance? What is your name?”

“Braintop,” replied the youth, with the modesty of one whose name has been too frequently subjected to puns.

“I think I never heard so singular a name in my life,” Mr. Pole ejaculated seriously. “Braintop! It’ll always make me think of brandy. What are you waiting for now?”

“I took the liberty of waiting before, to say that a lady wished to see you, sir.”

Mr. Pole started from his chair. “A foreign lady?”

“She may be foreign. She speaks English, sir, and her name, I think, was foreign. I’ve forgotten it, I fear.”

“It’s the wife of that fellow from Riga!” cried the merchant. “Show her in. Show her in, immediately. I suspected this. She’s in London, I know. I’m equal to her: show her in. When you fetch the Braintop and biscuit, call me to the door. You understand.”

The youth affected meekly to enjoy this fiery significance given to his name, and said that he understood, without any doubt. He retired, and in a few moments ushered in Emilia Belloni.

Mr. Pole was in the middle of the room, wearing a countenance of marked severity, and watchful to maintain it in his opening bow; but when he perceived his little Brookfield guest standing timidly in the doorway, his eyebrows lifted, and his hands spread out; and “Well, to be sure!” he cried; while Emilia hurried up to him. She had to assure him that everything was right at home, and was next called upon to state what had brought her to town; but his continued exclamation of “Bless my soul!” reprieved her reply, and she sat in a chair panting quickly.

Mr. Pole spoke tenderly of refreshments; wine and cake, or biscuits.

“I cannot eat or drink,” said Emilia.

“Why, what’s come to you, my dear?” returned Mr. Pole in unaffected wonder.

“I am not hungry.”

“You generally are, at home, about this time—eh?”

Emilia sighed, and feigned the sad note to be a breath of fatigue.

“Well, and why are you here, my dear?” Mr. Pole was beginning to step to the right and the left of her uneasily.

“I have come—” she paused, with a curious quick speculating look between her eyes; “I have come to see you.”

“See me, my dear? You saw me this morning.”

“Yes; I wanted to see you alone.”

Emilia was having the first conflict with her simplicity; out of which it was not to issue clear, as in the foregone days. She was thinking of the character of the man she spoke to, studying him, that she might win him to succour the object she had in view. It was a quality going, and a quality coming; nor will we, if you please, lament a law of growth.

“Why, you can see me alone, any day, my dear,” said Mr. Pole; “for many a day, I hope.”

“You are more alone to me here. I cannot speak at Brookfield. Oh!”—and Emilia had to still her heart’s throbbing—“you do not want me to go to Italy, do you?”

“Want you to go? Not a bit. There is some talk of it, isn’t there? I don’t want you to go. Don’t you want to go.”

“No! no!” said Emilia, with decisive fervour.

“Don’t want to go?”

“No: to stay! I want to stay!”

“Eh? to stay?”

“To stay with you! Never to leave England, at least! I want to give up all that I may stay.”

“All?” repeated Mr. Pole, evidently marvelling as to what that sounding box might contain; and still more, perplexed to hear Emilia’s vehement—“Yes! all!” as if there were that in the mighty abnegation to make a reasonable listener doubtful.

“No. I really don’t want you to go,” he said. “In fact,” and the merchant’s hospitable nature was at war with something in his mind, “I like you, my dear; I like to have you about me. You’re cheerful; you’re agreeable; I like your smile; your voice, too. You’re a very pleasant companion. Only, you know, we may break up our house. If the girls get married, I must live somewhere in lodgings, and I couldn’t very well ask you to cook for me.”

“I can cook a little,” Emilia smiled. “I went into the kitchen, till Adela objected.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t do, you know,” pursued Mr. Pole, with the seriousness of a man thrown out of his line of argument. “You can cook, eh? Got an idea of it? I always said you were a useful little woman. Do have a biscuit and some wine:—No? well, where was I?—That confounded boy. Brainty-top, top! that’s it Braintop. Was I talking of him, my dear? Oh no! about your getting married. For if you can cook, why not? Get a husband and then you won’t got to Italy. You ought to get one. Some young fellows don’t look for money.”

“I shall make money come, in time,” said Emilia; in the leaping ardour of whose eyes might be seen that what she had journeyed to speak was hot within her. “I know I shall be worth having. I shall win a name, I think—I do hope it!”

“Well, so Pericles says. He’s got a great notion of you. Perhaps he means it himself. He’s rich. Rash, I admit. But, as the chances go, he’s tremendously rich. He may mean it.”

“What?” asked Emilia.

“Marry you, you know.”

“Ah, what a torture!”

In that heat of her feelings she realized the horror of the words to her, with an intensity that made them seem to quiver like an arrow in her breast.

“You don’t like him?” said Mr. Pole.

“Not love him! not love him!”

“Yes, yes, but that comes after marriage. Often the case. Look here: don’t you go against your interests. You mustn’t be flighty. If Pericles speaks to you, have him. Clap your hands. Dozens of girls would, that I know.”

“But, oh!” interposed Emilia; “if he married me he would kiss me!”

Mr. Pole coughed and blinked. “Well!” he remarked, as one gravely cogitating; and with the native delicacy of a Briton turned it off in a playful, “So shall I now,” adding, “though I ain’t your husband.”

He stooped his head. Emilia put her hands on his shoulders, and submitted her face to him.

“There!” went Mr. Pole: “‘pon my honour, it does me good:—better than medicine! But you mustn’t give that dose to everybody, my dear. You don’t, of course. All right, all right—I’m quite satisfied. I was only thinking of you going to Italy, among those foreign rascals, who’ve no more respect for a girl than they have for a monkey—their brother. A set of swindlers! I took you for the wife of one when you came in, at first. And now, business is business. Let’s get it over. What have you come about? Glad to see you—understand that.”

Emilia lifted her eyes to his.

“You know I love you, sir.”

“I’m sure you’re a grateful little woman.”

She rose: “Oh! how can I speak it!”

An idea that his daughters had possibly sent her to herald one of the renowned physicians of London, concerning whom he was perpetually being plagued by them, or to lead him to one, flashed through Mr. Pole. He was not in a state to weigh the absolute value of such a suspicion, but it seemed probable; it explained an extraordinary proceeding; and, having conceived, his wrath took it up as a fact, and fought with it.

“Stop! If that’s what you’ve come for, we’ll bring matters to a crisis. You fancy me ill, don’t you, my dear?”

“You do not look well, sir.”

Emilia’s unhesitating reply confirmed his suspicion.

“I am well. I am, I say! And now, understand that, if that’s your business, I won’t go to the fellow, and I won’t see him here. They’ll make me out mad, next. He shall never have a guinea from me while I live. No, nor when I die. Not a farthing! Sit down, my dear, and wait for the biscuits. I wish to heaven they’d come. There’s brandy coming, too. Where’s Braintop?”

He took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead, and jerked it like a bell-rope.

Emilia, in a singular bewilderment, sat eyeing a beam of sombre city sunlight on the dusty carpet. She could only suppose that the offending “he” was Wilfrid; but, why he should be so, she could not guess: and how to plead for him, divided her mind.

“Don’t blame him; be angry with me, if you are angry,” she began softly. “I know he thinks of you anxiously. I know he would do nothing to hurt you. No one is so kind as he is. Would you deprive him of money, because he offends you?”

“Deprive him of money,” repeated Mr. Pole, with ungrudging accentuation. “Well, I’ve heard about women, but I never knew one so anxious for a doctor to get his fee as you are.”

Emilia wonderingly fixed her sight on him an instant, and, quite unillumined, resumed: “Blame me, sir. But, I know you will be too kind. Oh! I love him. So, I must love you, and I would not give you pain. It is true he loves me. You will not see him, because he loves me?”

“The doctor?” muttered Mr. Pole. “The doctor?” he almost bellowed; and got sharp up from his chair, and looked at himself in the glass, blinking rapidly; and then turned to inspect Emilia.

Emilia drew him to her side again.

“Go on,” he said; and there became visible in his face a frightful effort to comprehend her, and get to the sense of her words.

And why it was so frightful as to be tragic, you will know presently.

He thought of the arrival of Braintop, freighted with brandy, as the only light in the mist, and breathing heavily from his nose, almost snorting the air he took in from a widened mouth, he sat and tried to listen to her words as well as for Braintop’s feet.

Emilia was growing too conscious of her halting eloquence, as the imminence of her happiness or misery hung balancing in doubtful scales before her.

“Oh! he loves me, and I love him,” she gasped, and wondered why words should be failing her. “See us together, sir, and hear us. We will make you well.”

The exclamation “Good Lord!” groaned out in a tone as from the lower pits of despair, cut her short.

Tearfully she murmured: “You will not see us, sir?”

“Together?” bawled the merchant.

“Yes, I mean together.”

“If you’re not mad, I am.” And he jumped on his legs and walked to the farther corner of the room. “Which of us is it?” His features twitched in horribly comic fashion. “What do you mean? I can’t understand a word. My brain must have gone;” throwing his hand over his forehead. “I’ve feared so for the last four months. Good God! a lunatic asylum! and the business torn like a piece of old rag! I know that fellow at Riga’s dancing like a cannibal, and there—there ‘ll be articles in the papers.—Here, girl! come up to the light. Come here, I say.”

Emilia walked up to him.

“You don’t look mad. I dare say everybody else understands you. Do they?”

The sad-flushed pallor of his face provoked Emilia to say: “You ought to have the doctor here immediately. Let me bring him, sir.”

A gleam as of a lantern through his oppressive mental fog calmed the awful irritability of his nerves somewhat.

“You’ve got him outside?”

“No, sir.”

The merchant’s eagerness faded out. He put his hand to her shoulder, and went along to a chair, sinking into it, and closing his eyelids. So they remained, Emilia at his right hand. She watched him breathing with a weak open mouth, and thought more of the doctor now than of Wilfrid.

CHAPTER XXV

Braintop’s knock at the door had been unheeded for some minutes. At last Emilia let him in. The brandy and biscuits were placed on a table, and Emilia resumed her watch by Mr. Pole. She saw that his lips moved, after a space, and putting her ear down, understood that he desired not to see any one who might come for an interview with him: nor were the clerks to be admitted. The latter direction was given in precise terms. Emilia repeated the orders outside. On her return, the merchant’s eyes were open.

“My forehead feels damp,” he said; “and I’m not hot at all. Just take hold of my hands. They’re like wet crumpets. I wonder what makes me so stiff. A man mustn’t sit at business too long at a time. Sure to make people think he’s ill. What was that about a doctor? I seem to remember. I won’t see one.”

Emilia had filled a glass with brandy. She brought it nearer to his hand, while he was speaking. At the touch of the glass, his fingers went round it slowly, and he raised it to his mouth. The liquor revived him. He breathed “ah!” several times, and grimaced, blinking, as if seeking to arouse a proper brightness in his eyes. Then, he held out his empty glass to her, and she filled it, and he sipped deliberately, saying: “I’m warm inside. I keep on perspiring so cold. Can’t make it out. Look at my finger-ends, my dear. They’re whitish, aren’t they?”

Emilia took the hand he presented, and chafed it, and put it against her bosom, half under one arm. The action appeared to give some warmth to his heart, for he petted her, in return.

A third time he held out the glass, and remarked that this stuff was better than medicine.

“You women!” he sneered, as at a reminiscence of their faith in drugs.

“My legs are weak, though!” He had risen and tested the fact. “Very shaky. I wonder what makes ‘em—I don’t take much exercise.” Pondering on this problem, he pursued: “It’s the stomach. I’m as empty as an egg-shell. Odd, I’ve got no appetite. But, my spirits are up. I begin to feel myself again. I’ll eat by-and-by, my dear. And, I say; I’ll tell you what:—I’ll take you to the theatre to-night. I want to laugh. A man’s all right when he’s laughing. I wish it was Christmas. Don’t you like to see the old pantaloon tumbled over, my boy?—my girl, I mean. I did, when I was a boy. My father took me. I went in the pit. I can smell oranges, when I think of it. I remember, we supped on German sausage; or ham—one or the other. Those were happy old days!”

He shook his head at them across the misty gulf.

“Perhaps there’s a good farce going on now. If so, we’ll go. Girls ought to learn to laugh as well as boys. I’ll ring for Braintop.”

He rang the bell, and bade Emilia be careful to remind him that he wanted Braintop’s address; for Braintop was useful.

It appeared that there were farces at several of the theatres. Braintop rattled them out, their plot and fun and the merits of the actors, with delightful volubility, as one whose happy subject had been finally discovered. He was forthwith commissioned to start immediately and take a stage-box at one of the places of entertainment, where two great rivals of the Doctor genus promised to laugh dull care out of the spirit of man triumphantly, and at the description of whose drolleries any one with faith might be half cured. The youth gave his address on paper to Emilia.

“Make haste, sir,” said Mr. Pole. “And, stop. You shall go, yourself; go to the pit, and have a supper, and I’ll pay for it. When you’ve ordered the box—do you know the Bedford Hotel? Go there, and see Mrs. Chickley, and tell her I am coming to dine and sleep, and shall bring one of my daughters. Dinner, sittingroom, and two bed-rooms, mind. And tell Mrs. Chickley we’ve got no carpet-bag, and must come upon her wardrobe. All clear to you? Dinner at half-past five going to theatre.”

Braintop bowed comprehendingly.

“Now, that fellow goes off chirping,” said Mr. Pole to Emilia. “It’s just the thing I used to wish to happen to me, when I was his age—my master to call me in and say ‘There! go and be jolly.’ I dare say the rascal’ll order a champagne supper. Poor young chap! let his heart be merry. Ha! ha! heigho!—Too much business is bad for man and boy. I feel better already, if it weren’t for my legs. My feet are so cold. Don’t you think I’m pretty talkative, my dear?”

“I am glad to hear you talk,” said Emilia, striving to look less perplexed than she felt.

He asked her slyly why she had come to London; and she begged that she might speak of it by-and-by; whereat Mr. Pole declared that he intended to laugh them all out of that nonsense. “And what did you say about being in love with him? A doctor in good practice—but you needn’t commence by killing me if you do go and marry the fellow. Eh? what is it?”

Emilia was too much entangled herself to attempt to extricate him; and apparently his wish to be enlightened passed away, for he was the next instant searching among his papers for the letter from Riga. Not finding it, he put on his hat.

“Must give up business to-day. Can’t do business with a petticoat in the room. I wish the Lord Mayor’d stop them all at Temple Bar. Now we’ll go out, and I’ll show you a bit of the City.”

He offered her his arm, and she noticed that in walking through the office, he was erect, and the few words he spoke were delivered in the peremptory elastic tone of a vigorous man.

“My girls,” he said to her in an undertone, “never come here. Well! we don’t expect ladies, you know. Different spheres in this world. They mean to be tip-top in society; and quite right too. My dear, I think we’ll ride. Do you mind being seen in a cab?”

He asked her hesitatingly: and when Emilia said, “Oh, no! let us ride,” he seemed relieved. “I can’t see the harm in a cab. Different tastes, in this world. My girls—but, thank the Lord! they’ve got carriages.”

For an hour the merchant and Emilia drove about the City. He showed her all the great buildings, and dilated on the fabulous piles of wealth they represented, taking evident pleasure in her exclamations of astonishment.

“Yes, yes; they may despise us City fellows. I say, ‘Come and see,’ that’s all! Now, look up that court. Do you see three dusty windows on the second floor? That man there could buy up any ten princes in Europe—excepting one or two Austrians or Russians. He wears a coat just like mine.”

“Does he?” said Emilia, involuntarily examining the one by her side.

“We don’t show our gold-linings, in the City, my dear.”

“But, you are rich, too.”

“Oh! I—as far as that goes. Don’t talk about me. I’m—I’m still cold in the feet. Now, look at that corner house. Three months ago that man was one of our most respected City merchants. Now he’s a bankrupt, and can’t show his head. It was all rotten. A medlar! He tampered with documents; betrayed trusts. What do you think of him?”

“What was it he did?” asked Emilia.

Mr. Pole explained, and excused him; then he explained, and abused him.

“He hadn’t a family, my dear. Where did the money go? He’s called a rascal now, poor devil! Business brings awful temptations. You think, this’ll save me! You catch hold of it and it snaps. That’ll save me; but you’re too heavy, and the roots give way, and down you go lower and lower. Lower and lower! The gates of hell must be very low down if one of our bankrupts don’t reach ‘em.” He spoke this in a deep underbreath. “Let’s get out of the City. There’s no air. Look at that cloud. It’s about over Brookfield, I should say.”

“Dear Brookfield!” echoed Emilia, feeling her heart fly forth to sing like a skylark under the cloud.

“And they’re not satisfied with it,” murmured Mr. Pole, with a voice of unwonted bitterness.

At the hotel, he was received very cordially by Mrs. Chickley, and Simon, the old waiter.

“You look as young as ever, ma’am,” Mr. Pole complimented her cheerfully, while he stamped his feet on the floor, and put forward Emilia as one of his girls; but immediately took the landlady aside, to tell her that she was “merely a charge—a ward—something of that sort;” admitting, gladly enough, that she was a very nice young lady. “She’s a genius, ma’am, in music:—going to do wonders. She’s not one of them.” And Mr. Pole informed Mrs. Chickley that when they came to town, they usually slept in one or other of the great squares. He, for his part, preferred old quarters: comfort versus grandeur.

Simon had soon dressed the dinner-table. By the time dinner was ready, Mr. Pole had sunk into such a condition of drowsiness, that it was hard to make him see why he should be aroused, and when he sat down, fronting Emilia, his eyes were glazed, and he complained that she was scarcely visible.

“Some of your old yellow seal, Simon. That’s what I want. I haven’t got better at home.”

The contents of this old yellow seal formed the chief part of the merchant’s meal. Emilia was induced to drink two full glasses.

“Doesn’t that make your feet warm, my dear?” said Mr. Pole.

“It makes me want to talk,” Emilia confessed.

“Ah! we shall have some fun to-night. ‘To-the-rutte-ta-to!’ If you could only sing, ‘Begone dull care!’ I like glees: good, honest, English, manly singing for me! Nothing like glees and madrigals, to my mind. With chops and baked potatoes, and a glass of good stout, they beat all other music.”

Emilia sang softly to him.

When she had finished, Mr. Pole applauded her mildly.

“Your music, my dear?”

“My music: Mr. Runningbrook’s words. But only look. He will not change a word, and some of the words are so curious, they make me lift my chin and pout. It’s all in my throat. I feel as if I had to do it on tiptoe. Mr. Runningbrook wrote the song in ten minutes.”

“He can afford to—comes of a family,” said Mr. Pole, and struck up a bit of “Celia’s Arbour,” which wandered into “The Soldier Tired,” as he came bendingly, both sets of fingers filliping, toward Emilia, with one of those ancient glee—suspensions, “Taia—haia—haia—haia,” etc., which were meant for jolly fellows who could bear anything.

“Eh?” went Mr. Pole, to elicit approbation in return.

Emilia smoothed the wrinkles of her face, and smiled.

“There’s nothing like Port,” said Mr. Pole. “Get little Runningbrook to write a song: ‘There’s nothing like Port.’ You put the music. I’ll sing it.”

“You will,” cried Emilia.

“Yes, upon my honour! now my feet are warmer, I by Jingo! what’s that?” and again he wore that strange calculating look, as if he were being internally sounded, and guessed at his probable depth. “What a twitch! Something wrong with my stomach. But a fellow must be all right when his spirits are up. We’ll be off as quick as we can. Taia—haihaia—hum. If the farce is bad, it’s my last night of theatre-going.”

The delight at being in a theatre kept Emilia dumb when she gazed on the glittering lights. After an inspection of the house, Mr. Pole kindly remarked: “You must marry and get out of this. This’d never do. All very well in the boxes: but on the stage—oh, no! I shouldn’t like you to be there. If my girls don’t approve of the doctor, they shall look out somebody for you. I shouldn’t like you to be painted, and rigged out; and have to squall in this sort of place. Stage won’t do for you. No, no!”

Emilia replied that she had given up the stage; and looked mournfully at the drop-scene, as at a lost kingdom, scarcely repressing her tears.

The orchestra tuned and played a light overture. She followed up the windings of the drop-scene valley, meeting her lover somewhere beneath the castle-ruin, where the river narrowed and the trees intertwined. On from dream to dream the music carried her, and dull fell the first words of the farce. Mr. Pole said, “Now, then!” and began to chuckle. As the farce proceeded, he grew more serious, repeating to Emilia, quite anxiously: “I wonder whether that boy Braintop’s enjoying it.” Emilia glanced among the sea of heads, and finally eliminated the head of Braintop, who was respectfully devoting his gaze to the box she occupied. When Mr. Pole had been assisted to discover him likewise, his attention alternated between Braintop and the stage, and he expressed annoyance from time to time at the extreme composure of Braintop’s countenance. “Why don’t the fellow laugh? Does he think he’s listening to a sermon?” Poor Braintop, on his part, sat in mortal fear lest his admiration of Emilia was perceived. Divided? between this alarming suspicion, and a doubt that the hair on his forehead was not properly regulated, he became uneasy and fitful in his deportment. His imagination plagued him with a sense of guilt, which his master’s watchfulness of him increased. He took an opportunity to furtively to eye himself in a pocket-mirror, and was subsequently haunted by an additional dread that Emilia might have discovered the instrument; and set him down as a vain foolish dog. When he saw her laugh he was sure of it. Instead of responding to Mr. Pole’s encouragement, he assumed a taciturn aspect worthy of a youthful anchorite, and continued to be the spectator of a scene to which his soul was dead.