Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England). Complete

“Forgive me,” she said; “I have been disturbed about you.”

Perceiving that it would be well to save her from any spiritual twists and turns that she might reach what she desired to know, he spoke out fully: “I have not written to you about Miss Belloni lately. I think it must be seven or eight days since I had a letter from her—you shall see it—looking as if it had been written in the dark. She gave the address of a London hotel. I went to her, and her story was that she had come to town to get Mr. Pole’s consent to her marriage with his son; and that when she succeeded in making herself understood by him, the old man fell, smitten with paralysis, crying out that he was ruined, and his children beggars.”

“Ah!” said Georgiana; “then this son is engaged to her?”

“She calls him her lover.”

“Openly?”

“Have I not told you? ‘naked and unashamed.’”

“Of course that has attracted my Merthyr!” Georgians drew to him tenderly, breathing as one who has a burden off her heart.

“But why did she write to you?” the question started up.

For this reason: it appears that Mr. Pole showed such nervous irritation at the idea of his family knowing the state he was in, that the doctor attending him exacted a promise from her not to communicate with one of them. She was alone, in great perplexity, and did what I had requested her to do. She did me the honour to apply to me for any help it was in my power to give.

Georgiana stood eyeing the ground sideways. “What is she like?”

“You shall see to-morrow, if you will come with me.”

“Dark, or fair?”

Merthyr turned her face to the light, laughing softly. Georgiana coloured, with dropped eyelids.

She raised her eyes under their load of shame. “I will come gladly,” she said.

“Early to-morrow, then,” rejoined Merthyr.

On the morrow, as they were driving to the hotel, Georgians wanted to know whether he called ‘this Miss Belloni’ by her Christian name—a question so needless that her over-conscious heart drummed with gratitude when she saw that he purposely spared her from one meaning look. In this mutual knowledge, mutual help, in minute as in great things, as well as in the recognition of a common nobility of mind, the love of the two was fortified.

Emilia had not been left by Mr. Powys without the protection of a woman’s society in her singular position. Lady Charlotte’s natural prompt kindness required no spur from her friend that she should go and brace up the spirits of a little woman, whom she pitied doubly for loving a man who was deceiving her, and not loving one who was good for her. She went frequently to Emilia, and sat with her in the sombre hotel drawing-room. Still, frank as she was and blunt as she affected to be, she could not bring her tongue to speak of Wilfrid. If she had fancied any sensitive shuddering from the name and the subject to exist, she would have struck boldly, being capable of cruelty and, where she was permitted to see a weakness, rather fond of striking deep. A belief in the existence of Emilia’s courage touched her to compassion. One day, however, she said, “What is it you take to in Merthyr Powys?” and this brought on plain speaking.

Emilia could give no reason; and it is a peculiarity of people who ask such questions that they think a want of directness in the answer suspicious.

Lady Charlotte said gravely, “Come, come!”

“What do you mean?” asked Emilia. “I like so many things in him.”

“You don’t like one thing chiefly?”

“I like—what do I like?—his kindness.”

“His kindness!” This was the sort of reply to make the lady implacable. She seldom read others shrewdly, and could not know, that near her, Emilia thought of Wilfrid in a way that made the vault of her brain seem to echo with jarred chords. “His kindness! What a picture is the ‘grateful girl!’ I have seen rows of white-capped charity children giving a bob and a sniffle as the parson went down the ranks promising buns. Well! his kindness! You are right in appreciating as much as you can see. I’ll tell you why I like him;—because he is a gentleman. And you haven’t got an idea how rare that animal is. Dear me! Should I be plainer to you if I called him a Christian gentleman? It’s the cant of a detestable school, my child. It means just this—but why should I disturb your future faith in it? The professors mainly profess to be ‘a comfort to young women,’ and I suppose you will meet your comfort, and worship them with the ‘growing mind;’ and I must confess that they bait it rather cunningly; nothing else would bite. They catch almost all the raw boys who have anything in them. But for me, Merthyr himself would have been caught long ago. There’s no absolute harm in them, only that they’re a sentimental compromise. I deny their honesty; and if it’s flatly proved, I deny their intelligence. Well! this you can’t understand.”

“I have not understood you at all,” said Emilia.

“No? It’s the tongue that’s the natural traitor to a woman, and takes longer runs with every added year. I suppose you know that Mr. Powys wishes to send you to Italy?”

“I do,” said Emilia.

“When are you going?”

“I am not going?”

“Why?”

Emilia’s bosom rose. She cried “Dear lady!” on the fall of it, and was scarce audible—adding, “Do you love Wilfrid?”

“Well, you have brought me to the point quickly,” Lady Charlotte remarked. “I don’t commonly beat the bush long myself. Love him! You might as well ask me my age. The indiscretion would be equal, and the result the same. Love! I have a proper fear of the word. When two play at love they spoil the game. It’s enough that he says he loves me.”

Emilia looked relieved. “Poor lady!” she sighed.

“Poor!” Lady Charlotte echoed, with curious eyes fixed on the puzzle beside her.

“Tell me you will not believe him,” Emilia continued. “He is mine; I shall never give him up. It is useless for you or any one else to love him. I know what love is now. Stop while you can. I can be sorry for you, but I will not let him go from me. He is my lover.”

Emilia closed her lips abruptly. She produced more effect than was visible. Lady Charlotte drew out a letter, saying, “Perhaps this will satisfy you.”

“Nothing!” cried Emilia, jumping to her feet.

“Read it—read it; and, for heaven’s sake, ma fille sauvage, don’t think I’m here to fight for the man! He is not Orpheus; and our modern education teaches us that it’s we who are to be run after. Will you read it?”

“No.”

“Will you read it to please me?”

Emilia changed from a look of quiet opposition to gentleness of feature. “Why will it please you if I read that he has flattered you? I never lie about what I feel; I think men do.” Her voice sank.

“You won’t allow yourself to imagine, then, that he has spoken false to you?”

“Tell me,” retorted Emilia, “are you sure in your heart—as sure as it beats each time—that he loves you? You are not.”

“It seems that we are dignifying my gentleman remarkably,” said Lady Charlotte. “When two women fight for a man, that is almost a meal for his vanity. Now, listen. I am not, as they phrase it, in love. I am an experienced person—what is called a woman of the world. I should not make a marriage unless I had come to the conclusion that I could help my husband, or he me. Do me the favour to read this letter.”

Emilia took it and opened it slowly. It was a letter in the tone of the gallant paying homage with some fervour. Emilia searched every sentence for the one word. That being absent, she handed back the letter, her eyes lingering on the signature.

“Do you see what he says?” asked Lady Charlotte; “that I can be a right hand to him, as I believe I can.”

“He writes like a friend.” Emilia uttered this as when we have a contrast in the mind.

“You excuse him for writing to me in that style?”

“Yes; he may write to any woman like that.”

“He has latitude! You really fancy that’s the sort of letter a friend would write?”

“That is how Mr. Powys would write to me,” said Emilia. Lady Charlotte laughed. “My unhappy Merthyr!”

“Only if I could be a great deal older,” Emilia hastened to add; and Lady Charlotte slightly frowned, but rubbed it out with a smile.

Rising, the lady said: “I have spoken to you upon equal terms; and remember, very few women would have done what I have done. You are cared for by Merthyr Powys, and that’s enough. It would do you no harm to fix your eyes upon him. You won’t get him; but it would do you no harm. He has a heart, as they call it; whatever it is, it’s as strong as a cable. He is a knight of the antique. He is specially guarded, however. Well, he insists that you are his friend; so you are mine, and that is why I have come to you and spoken to you. You will be silent about it, I need not say. No one but yourself is aware that Lieutenant Pole does me the honour to liken me to the good old gentleman who accompanied Telemachus in his voyages, and chooses me from among the handmaidens of earth. On this head you will promise to be silent.”

Lady Charlotte held forth her hand. Emilia would not take it before she had replied, “I knew this before you came,” and then she pressed the extended fingers.

Lady Charlotte drew her close. “Has Wilfrid taken you into his confidence so far?”

Emilia explained that she had heard it from his father.

The lady’s face lit up as from a sting of anger. “Very well—very well,” she said; and, presently, “You are right when you speak of the power of lying in men. Observe—Wilfrid told me that not one living creature knew there was question of an engagement between us. What would you do in my case?”

Emilia replied, “Forgive him; and I should think no more of it.”

“Yes. It would be right; and, presuming him to have the vice, I could be of immense service to him, if at least he does not lie habitually. But this is a description of treachery, you know.”

“Oh!” cried Emilia, “what kind of treachery is that, if he only will keep his heart open for me to give all mine to it!”

She stood clutching her hands in the half-sobbing ecstasy which signalises a spiritual exaltation built on disquiet. She had shown small emotion hitherto. The sight of it was like the sight of a mighty hostile power to Lady Charlotte—a power that moved her—that challenged, and irritated, and subdued her. For she saw there something that she had not; and being of a nature leaning to great-mindedness, though not of the first rank, she could not meanly mask her own deficiency by despising it. To do this is the secret evil by which souls of men and women stop their growth.

Lady Charlotte decided now to say good-bye. Her parting was friendly—the form of it consisting of a nod, an extension of the hand, and a kind word or two.

When alone, Emilia wondered why she kept taking long breaths, and tried to correct herself: but the heart laboured. Yet she seemed to have no thought in her mind; she had no active sensation of pity or startled self-love. She went to smooth Mr. Pole’s pillow, as to a place of forgetfulness. The querulous tyrannies of the invalid relieved her; but the heavy lifting of her chest returned the moment she was alone. She mentioned it to the doctor, who prescribed for liver, informing her that the said organ conducted one of the most important functions of her bodily system.

Emilia listened to the lecturer, and promised to take his medicine, trusting to be perfectly quieted by the nauseous draught; but when Mr. Powys came, she rushed up to him, and fell with a cry upon his breast, murmuring broken words that Georgiana might fairly interpret as her suspicions directed. Nor had she ever seen Merthyr look as he did when their eyes next met.

CHAPTER XXIX

The card of Mr. Powys found Arabella alone in the house. Mrs. Lupin was among village school-children; Mrs. Chump had gone to London to see whether anything was known of Mr. Pole at his office, where she fell upon the youth Braintop, and made him her own for the day. Adela was out in the woods, contemplating nature; and Cornelia was supposed to be walking whither her stately fancy drew her.

“Will you take long solitary walks unprotected?” she was asked.

“I have a parasol,” she replied; and could hear, miles distant, the domestic comments being made on her innocence; and the story it would be—“She thinks of no possible danger but from the sun.”

A little forcing of her innocence now was necessary as an opiate for her conscience. She was doing what her conscience could only pardon on the plea of her extreme innocence. The sisters, and the fashion at Brookfield, permitted the assumption, and exaggerated it willingly. It chanced, however, that Adela had reason to feel discontented. It was a breach of implied contract, she thought, that Cornelia should, as she did only yesterday, tell her that she had seen Edward Buxley in the woods, and that she was of opinion that the air of the woods was bad for her. Not to see would have been the sisterly obligation, in Adela’s idea—especially when seeing embraced things that no loving sister should believe.

Bear in mind that we are sentimentalists. The eye is our servant, not our master; and—so are the senses generally. We are not bound to accept more than we choose from them. Thus we obtain delicacy; and thus, as you will perceive, our civilization, by the aid of the sentimentalists, has achieved an effective varnish. There, certainly, to the vulgar, mind a tail is visible. The outrageous philosopher declares vehemently that no beast of the field or the forest would own such a tail. (His meaning is, that he discerns the sign of the animal slinking under the garb of the stately polished creature. I have all the difficulty in the world to keep him back and let me pursue my course.) These philosophers are a bad-mannered body. Either in opposition, or in the support of them, I maintain simply that the blinking sentimentalist helps to make civilization what it is, and civilization has a great deal of merit.

“Did you not leave your parasol behind you at Ipley?” said Adela, as she met Cornelia in the afternoon.

Cornelia coloured. Her pride supported her, and she violated fine shades painfully in her response: “Mr. Barrett left me there. Is that your meaning?”

Adela was too much shocked to note the courageousness of the reply. “Well! if all we do is to come into broad daylight!” was her horrified mental ejaculation.

The veil of life was about to be lifted for these ladies. They found Arabella in her room, crying like an unchastened school-girl; and their first idea was one of intense condemnation—fresh offences on the part of Mrs. Chump being conjectured. Little by little Arabella sobbed out what she had heard that day from Mr. Powys.

After the first stupor Adela proposed to go to her father instantly, and then suggested that they should all go. She continued talking in random suggestions, and with singular heat, as if she conceived that the sensibility of her sisters required to be aroused. By moving and acting, it seemed to her that the prospect of a vast misery might be expunged, and that she might escape from showing any likeness to Arabella’s shamefully-discoloured face. It was impossible for her to realize grief in her own bosom. She walked the room in a nervous tremour, shedding a note of sympathy to one sister and to the other. At last Arabella got fuller command of her voice. When she had related that her father’s positive wish, furthered by the doctor’s special injunction to obey it scrupulously, was that they were not to go to him in London, and not to breathe a word of his illness, but to remain at Brookfield entertaining friends, Adela stamped her foot, saying that it was more than human nature could bear.

“If we go,” said Arabella, “the London doctor assured Mr. Powys that he would not answer for papa’s life.”

“But, good heavens! are we papa’s enemies? And why may Mr. Powys see him if we, his daughters, cannot? Tell me how Mr. Powys met him and knew of it! Tell me—I am bewildered. I feel that we are cheated in some way. Oh! tell me something clear.”

Arabella said calmingly: “Emilia is with papa. She wrote to Mr. Powys. Whether she did rightly or not we have not now to inquire. I believe that she thought it right.”

“Entertain friends!” interjected Adela. “But papa cannot possibly mean that we are to go through—to—the fete on Besworth Lawn, Bella! It’s in two days from this dreadful day.”

“Papa has mentioned it to Mr. Powys; he desires us not to postpone it. We…” Arabella’s voice broke piteously.

“Oh! but this is torture!” cried Adela, with a deplorable vision of the looking-glass rising before her, as she felt the tears sting her eyelids. “This cannot be! No father would…not loving us as dear papa does! To be quiet! to sit and be gay! to flaunt at a fete! Oh, mercy! mercy! Tell me—he left us quite well—no one could have guessed. I remember he looked at me from the carriage window. Tell me—it must be some moral shock—what do you attribute it to? Wilfrid cannot be the guilty one. We have been only too compliant to papa’s wishes about that woman. Tell me what you think it can be!”

A voice said, “Money!”

Which of the sisters had spoken Adela did not know. It was bitter enough that one could be brought to utter the thing, even if her ideas were so base as to suspect it. The tears now came dancing over her under-lids like triumphing imps. “Money!” echoed through her again and again. Curiously, too, she had no occasion to ask how it was that money might be supposed to have operated on her father’s health. Unable to realize to herself the image of her father lying ill and suffering, but just sufficiently touched by what she could conceive of his situation, the bare whisper of money came like a foul insult to overwhelm her in floods of liquid self-love. She wept with that last anguish of a woman who is compelled to weep, but is incapable of finding any enjoyment in her tears. Cornelia and Arabella caught her hands; she was the youngest, and had been their pet. It gratified them that Adela should show a deep and keen feeling. Adela did not check herself from a demonstration that enabled her to look broadly, as it were, on her own tenderness of heart. Following many outbursts, she asked, “And the illness—what is it? not its cause—itself!”

A voice said, “Paralysis!”

Adela’s tears stopped. She gazed on both faces, trying with open mouth to form the word.

CHAPTER XXX

Flying from port to port to effect an exchange of stewards (the endless occupation of a yacht proprietor), Wilfrid had no tidings from Brookfield. The night before the gathering on Besworth Lawn he went to London and dined at his Club—a place where youths may drink largely of the milk of this world’s wisdom. Wilfrid’s romantic sentiment was always corrected by an hour at his Club. After dinner he strolled to a not perfectly regulated theatre, in company with a brother officer; and when they had done duty before the scenes for a space of time, they lounged behind to disenchant themselves, in obedience to that precocious cynicism which is the young man’s extra-Luxury. The first figure that caught Wilfrid’s attention there was Mr. Pericles, in a white overcoat, stretched along a sofa—his eyelids being down, though his eyes were evidently vigilant beneath. A titter of ladies present told of some recent interesting commotion.

“Only a row between that rich Greek fellow who gave the supper, and Marion,” a vivacious dame explained to Wilfrid. “She’s in one of her jealous fits; she’d be jealous if her poodle-dog went on its hind-legs to anybody else.”

“Poodle, by Jove!” said Wilfrid. “Pericles himself looks like an elongated poodle shaved up to his moustache. Look at him. And he plays the tyrant, does he?”

“Oh! she stands that. Some of those absurd women like it, I think. She’s fussing about another girl.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“What man’s worth it?”

“But, would you?”

“It depends upon the ‘him,’ monsieur.

“Depends upon his being very handsome!”

“And good.”

“And rich?”

“No!” the lady fired up. “There you don’t know us.”

The colloquy became almost tender, until she said, “Isn’t this gassy, and stifling? I confess I do like a carriage, and Richmond on a Sunday. And then, with two daughters, you know! But what I complain of is her folly in being in love, or something like it, with a rich fellow.”

“Love the poor devil—manage the rich, you mean.”

“Yes, of course; that makes them both happy.”

“It’s a method of being charitable to two.”

A rather fleshy fairy now entered, and walked straight up to the looking-glass to examine her paint—pronouncedly turning her back to the sofa, where Mr. Pericles still lay at provoking full length. Her panting was ominous of a further explosion.

“Innocent child!” in the mockery of a foreign accent, commenced it; while Wilfrid thought how unjustly and coldly critically he had accused his little Emilia of vulgarity, now that he had this feminine display of it swarming about him.

“Innocent child, indeed! Be as deaf as you like, you shall hear. And sofas are not made for men’s dirty boots, in this country. I believe they’re all pigs abroad—the men; and the women—cats! Oh! don’t open your eyes—don’t speak, pray. You’re certain I must go when the bell rings. You’re waiting for that, you unmanly dog!”

“A pig,” Mr. Pericles here ventured to remind her, murmuring as one in a dream.

“A peeg!” she retorted mildly, somewhat mollified by her apparent success. But Mr. Pericles had relapsed into his exasperating composure. The breath of a deliberate and undeserved peacefulness continued to be drawn in by his nostrils.

At the accustomed warning there was an ostentatious rustle of retiring dresses; whereat Mr. Pericles chose to proclaim himself awake. The astute fairy-fury immediately stepped before him.

“Now you can’t go on pretending sleep. You shall hear, and everybody shall hear. You know you’re a villain! You’re a wolf seeking…”

Mr. Pericles waved his hand, and she was caught by the wrist and told that the scene awaited her.

“Let them wait!” she shouted, and, sharpening her cry as she was dragged off, “Dare to take that girl to Italy! I know what that means, with you. An Englishman might mean right—but you! You think you’ve been dealing with a fool! Why, I can stop this in a minute, and I will. It’s you’re the fool! Why, I know her father: he plays in the orchestra. I know her name—Belloni!”

Up sprang the Greek like a galvanized corpse; while two violent jerks from the man hauling her out rattled the laugh of triumph which burst from her. At the same time Wilfrid strove forward, with the frown of one still bent listening, and he and Pericles were face to face. The eyebrows of the latter shot up in a lively arch. He made a motion toward the ceremony of ‘shake-hands;’ but, perceiving no correspondent overture, grinned, “It is warm—ha?”

“You feel the heat? Step outside a minute,” said Wilfrid.

“Oh, no!” Mr. Pericles looked pleasantly sagacious. “Ze draught—a cold.”

“Will you come?” pursued Wilfrid.

“Many sanks!”

Wilfrid’s hand was rising. At this juncture his brother officer slipped out some languid words in his ear, indicative of his astonishment that he should be championing a termagant, and horror at the idea of such a thing being publicly imagined, tamed Wilfrid quickly. He recovered himself with his usual cleverness. Seeing the signs of hostility vanish, Mr. Pericles said, “You are on a search for your father? You have found him? Hom! I should say a maladie of nerfs will come to him. A pin fall—he start! A storm at night—he is out dancing among his ships of venture! Not a bid of corage!—which is bad. If you shall find Mr. Pole for to-morrow on ze lawn, vary glad.”

With a smile compounded of sniffing dog and Parisian obsequiousness, Mr. Pericles passed, thinking “He has not got her:” for such was his deduction if he saw that a man could flush for a woman’s name.

Wilfrid stood like a machine with a thousand wheels in revolt. Sensations pricked at ideas, and immediately left them to account for their existence as they best could. The ideas committed suicide without a second’s consideration. He felt the great gurgling sea in which they were drowned heave and throb. Then came a fresh set, that poised better on the slack-rope of his understanding. By degrees, a buried dread in his brain threw off its shroud. The thought that there was something wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia—not was coming, but had come. Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all. That night he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and protect her. There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and did he belong to himself? What bound him to Lady Charlotte? She was not lovely or loving. He had not even kissed her hand; yet she held him in a chain.