But Emilia’s worst crime before the arraigning lady was that Wilfrid had cast her off. Female justice, therefore, said: “You must be unworthy of my brother;” and female delicacy thought: “You have been soiled by a previous history.” She had pitied Wilfrid: now she held him partially blameless: and while love was throbbing in many pulses all round her. The man she had seen besieged by passionate love, touched her cold imagination with a hue of fire, as Winter dawn lies on a frosty field. She almost conceived what this other, not sisterly, love might be; though not as its victim, by any means. She became, as she had never before been, spiritually tormented and restless. The thought framed itself that Charlotte and Wilfrid were not, by any law of selection, to match. What mattered it? Simply that it in some way seemed to increase the merits of one of the two. The task, moreover, of avoiding to tease her brother was made easier to her by flying to this new refuge of mysterious reflection. At times she poured back the whole flood of her heart upon Merthyr, and then in alarm at the host of little passions that grew cravingly alive in her, she turned her thoughts to Wilfrid again; and so, till they turned wittingly to him. That this host of little passions will invariably surround a false great one, she learnt by degrees, by having to quell them and rise out of them. She knew that now she occasionally forced her passion for Merthyr; but what nothing could teach her was, that she did so to eject another’s image. On the contrary, her confession would have been: “Voluntarily I dwell upon that other, that my love for Merthyr may avoid excess.” To such a state of clearness much self-questioning brought her: but her blood was as yet unwarmed; and that is a condition fostering self-deception as much as when it rages.
Madame Marini wrote to ask whether Emilia might receive the visits of a Sir Purcell Barrett, whom they had met, and whom Emilia called her friend; adding: “The other gentleman has called at our old lodgings three times. The last time our landlady says, he wept. Is it an Englishman, really?”
Merthyr laughed at this, remarking: “Charlotte is not so vigilant, after all.”
“He wept.” Georgiana thought and remembered the cold self-command that his face had shown when Emilia claimed him, and his sole reply was, “I am engaged to this lady,” designating Lady Charlotte. Now, too, some of Emilia’s phrases took life in her memory. She studied them, thinking over them, as if a voice of nature had spoken. Less and less it seemed to her that a woman need feel shame to utter them. She interpreted this as her growth of charity for a girl so violently stricken with love. “In such a case, the more she says the more is she to be excused; for nothing but a frenzy of passion could move her to speak so,” thought Georgiana. Accepting the words, and sanctioning the passion, the person of him who had inspired it stood magnified in its light. She believed that if he had played with the girl, he repented, and the idea of a man shedding tears burnt to her heart.
Merthyr and Georgiana remained in Devonshire till a letter from Madame Marini one morning told them that Emilia had disappeared.
“You delayed too long to go to her, Merthyr,” said his sister, astonishing him. “I understand why; but you may trust to time and scorn chance too much. Let us go now and find her, if it is not too late.”
Marini met them at the station in London, and they heard that Wilfrid had discovered Marini’s new abode, and had called there that morning. “I had my eye on him. It was not a piece of love-play,” said Marini: “and today she should have seen my Chief, which would have cured her of sis pestilence of a love, to give her sublime thoughts. Do you love her, Miss Ford? Aha! it will be Christian names in Italy again.”
“I like her very much,” said Georgiana; “but I confess it mystifies me to see you all so excited about her. It must be some attraction possessed by her–what, I cannot say. I like her, certainly.”
“Figlia mia! she is an element–she is fire!” said Marini. “My sought, when our Mertyr brought her, was, it is Italy he sees in her face–her voice–name–anysing! And a day passed, and I could not lose her for my own sake, and felt a somesing, too! She is half man.”
“A singular reason for an attraction.” Georgiana smiled.
“She is not,” Marini put out his fingers like claws to explain, while his eyelashes met over his eyes–“she is not what man has made of your sex; and she is brave of heart.”
“Can you possibly tell what such a child can be?” questioned Georgiana, almost irritably.
Marini did not reply to her.
“A face to find a home in!–eh, Mertyr?”
“Let’s discover where that face has found a home,” said Merthyr. “She is a very plain and unpretending person, if people will not insist upon her being more. This morbid admiration of heroines puts a trifle too much weight upon their shoulders, does it not?”
Georgiana knew that to call Emilia ‘child’ was to wound the most sensitive nerve in Merthyr’s system, if he loved her, and she had determined to try harshly whether he did. Nevertheless, though the expression succeeded, and was designedly cruel, she could not forgive the insincerity of his last speech; craving in truth for confidence as her smallest claim on him now. So, at all the consultations, she acquiesced in any scheme that was proposed; the advertizings and the use of detectives; the communication with Emilia’s mother and father; and the callings at suburban concert-rooms. Sir Purcell Barrett frequently called to assist in the discovery. At first he led them to suspect Mr. Pericles; but a trusty Italian playing spy upon that gentleman soon cleared him, and they were more in the dark than ever. It was only when at last Georgiana heard Merthyr, the picture of polished self-possession, giving way to a burst of disappointment in the room before them all: “Are we sure that she lives?” he cried:–then Georgiana, looking at the firelight over her joined fingers, said:–
“But, have you forgotten the serviceable brigade you have in your organ- boys, Marini? If Emilia sees one, be sure she will speak to him.”
“Have I not said she is a General?” Marini pointed at Georgiana with a gleam of his dark eyes, and Merthyr squeezed his sister’s hand, thanking her; by which he gave her one whole night of remorse, because she had not spoken earlier.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
“My voice! I have my voice!”
Emilia had cried it out to herself almost aloud, on the journey from Devon to London. The landscape slipping under her eyes, with flashing grey pools and light silver freshets, little glades, little copses, farms, and meadows rounding away to spires of village churches under blue hills, would not let her sink, heavy as was the spirit within her, and dead to everything as she desired to be. Here, a great strange old oak spread out its arms and seemed to hold the hurrying train a minute. When gone by, Emilia thought of it as a friend, and that there, there, was the shelter and thick darkness she had hoped she might be flying to. Or the reach of a stream was seen, and in the middle of it one fair group of clouds, showing distance beyond distance in colour. Emilia shut her sight, and tried painfully to believe that there were no distances for her. This was an easy task when the train stopped. It was surprising to her then why the people moved. The whistle of the engine and rush of the scenery set her imagination anew upon the horror of being motionless.
“My voice! I have my voice!” The exclamation recurred at intervals, as a quick fear, that bubbled up from blind sensation, of her being utterly abandoned, and a stray thing carrying no light, startled her. Darkness she still had her desire for; but not to be dark in the darkness. She looked back on the recent night as a lake of fire, through which she had plunged; and of all the faculties about her, memory had suffered most, so that it could recall no images of what had happened, but lay against its black corner a shuddering bundle of nerves. The varying fields and woods and waters offering themselves to her in the swiftness, were as wine dashed to her lips, which could not be dead to it. The wish to be of some worth began a painful quickening movement. At first she could have sobbed with the keen anguish that instantaneously beset her. For–“If I am of worth, who looks on me?” was her outcry, and the darkness she had previously coveted fell with the strength of a mace on her forehead; but the creature’s heart struggled further, and by-and-by in despite of her the pulses sprang a clear outlook on hope. It struck through her like the first throb of a sword-cut. She tried to blind herself to it; the face of hope was hateful.
This conflict of the baffled spirit of youth with its forceful flood of being continued until it seemed that Emilia was lifted through the fiery circles into daylight; her last cry being as her first: “I have my voice!”
Of that which her voice was to achieve for her she never thought. She had no thought of value, but only an eagerness to feel herself possessor of something. Wilfrid had appeared to her to have taken all from her, until the recollection of her voice made her breathe suddenly quick and deep, as one recovering the taste of life.
Despair, I have said before, is a wilful business, common to corrupt blood, and to weak woeful minds: native to the sentimentalist of the better order. The only touch of it that came to Emilia was when she attempted to penetrate to Wilfrid’s reason for calling her down to Devon that he might renounce and abandon her. She wanted a reason to make him in harmony with his acts, and she could get none. This made the world look black to her. But, “I have my voice!” she said, exhausted by the passion of the night, tearless, and only sensible to pain when the keen swift wind, and the flying squares of field and meadow prompted her nature mysteriously to press for healthy action.
A man opposite to her ventured a remark: “We’re going at a pretty good pace now, miss.”
She turned her eyes to him, and the sense of speed was reduced in her at once, she could not comprehend how. Remembering presently that she had not answered him, she said: “It is because you are going home, perhaps, that you think it fast.”
“No, miss,” he replied, “I’m going to market. They can’t put on steam too stiff for me when I’m bound on business.”
Emilia found it impossible to fathom the sensations of the man, and their common desire for speed bewildered her more. She was relieved when the train was lightened of him. Soon the skirts of red vapour were visible, and when the guard took poor Braintop’s return-ticket from her petulant hand, all of the journey that she bore in mind was the sight of a butcher-boy in blue, with a red cap, mounted on a white horse, who rode gallantly along a broad highroad, and for whom she had struck out some tune to suit the measure of his gallop.
She accepted her capture by the Marinis more calmly than Merthyr had been led to suppose. The butcher-boy’s gallop kept her senses in motion for many hours, and that reckless equestrian embodied the idea of the vivifying pace from which she had dropped. He went slower and slower. By degrees the tune grew dull, and jarred; and then Emilia looked out on the cold grey skies of our autumn, the rain and the fogs, and roaring London filled her ears. So had ended a dream, she thought. She would stand at the window listening to street-organs, whose hideous discord and clippings and drawls did not madden her, and whose suggestion of a lovely tune rolled out no golden land to her. That treasure of her voice, to which no one in the house made allusion, became indeed a buried treasure.
In the South-western suburb where the Marinis lived, plots of foliage were to be seen, and there were lanes not so black but that they showed the hues of the season. These led to the parks and to noble gardens. Emilia daily went out to keep the dying colours of the year in view, and walked to get among the trees, where, with Madame attendant on her, she sat counting the leaves as each one curved, and slid, and spun to earth, or on a gust of air hosts went aloft; but it always ended in their coming down; Emilia verified that fact repeatedly. However high they flew, the ground awaited them. Madame entertained her with talk of Italy, and Tuscan wine, and Lombard bread, and Turin chocolate. Marini never alluded to his sufferings for the loss of these cruelly interdicted dainties, never! But Madame knew how his exile affected him. And in England the sums one paid for everything! “One fancies one pays for breath,” said Madame, shivering.
One day the ex-organist of Hillford Church passed before them. Emilia let him go. The day following he passed again, but turned at the end of the alley and simulated astonishment at the appearance of Emilia, as he neared her. They shook hands and talked, while Madame zealously eyed any chance person promenading the neighbourhood. She wrote for instructions concerning this gentleman calling himself Sir Purcell Barrett, and receiving them, she permitted Emilia to invite him to their house. “He is an Englishman under a rope, ready for heaven,” Madame described him to her husband, who, though more at heart with Englishmen, could not but admit that this one wore a look that appeared as a prognostication of sadness.
Sir Purcell informed Emilia of his accession to title; and in reply to her “Are you not glad?” smiled and said that a mockery could scarcely make him glad; indicating nevertheless how feeble the note of poverty was in his grand scale of sorrow. He came to the house and met them in the gardens frequently. With some perversity he would analyze to herself Emilia’s spirit of hope, partly perhaps for the sake of probing to what sort of thing it might be in its nature and defences; and, as against an accomplished disputant she made but a poor battle, he injured what was precious to her without himself gaining any good whatever.
“Why, what do you look forward to?” she said wondering, at the end of one of their arguments, as he courteously termed this play of logical foils with a baby.
“Death,” answered the grave gentleman, striding on.
Emilia pitied him, thinking: “I might feel as he does, if I had not my voice.” Seeing that calamity very remote, she added: “I should!”
She knew of his position toward Cornelia: that is, she knew as much as he did: for the want of a woman’s heart over which to simmer his troubles was urgent within him and Emilia’s, though it lacked experience, was a woman’s regarding love. And moreover, she did not weep, but practically suggested his favourable chances, which it was a sad satisfaction to him to prove baseless, and to knock utterly over. The grief in which the soul of a human creature is persistently seeking (since it cannot be thrown off) to clothe itself comfortably, finds in tears an irritating expression of sympathy. Hints of a brighter future are its nourishment. Such embryos are not tenacious of existence, and when destroyed they are succulent food for a space to the moody grief I am describing.
The melancholy gentleman did Emilia this good, that, never appearing to imagine others to know misery save himself, he gave her full occupation apart from the workings of her own mind. As to her case, he might have offered the excuse that she really had nothing of the aspect of a lovesick young lady, and was not a bit sea-green to view, or lamentable in tone. He was sufficiently humane to have felt for anyone suffering, and the proof of it is, that the only creature he saw under such an influence he pitied so deplorably, as to make melancholy a habit with him. He fretted her because he would do nothing, and this spectacle of a lover beloved, but consenting to be mystified, consentingly paralyzed:– of a lover beloved!–
“Does she love you?” said Emilia, beseechingly.
“If the truth is in her, she does,” he returned.
“She has told you she loves you?–that she loves no one else?”
“Of this I am certain.”
“Then, why are you downcast? my goodness! I would take her by the hand ‘Woman; do you know yourself? you belong to me!’–I would say that; and never let go her hand. That would decide everything. She must come to you then, or you know what it is that means to separate you. My goodness! I see it so plain!”
But he declined to look thus low, and stood pitifully smiling:–This spectacle, together with some subtle spur from the talk of love, roused Emilia from her lethargy. The warmth of a new desire struck around her heart. The old belief in her power over Wilfrid joined to a distinct admission that she had for the moment lost him; and she said, “Yes; now, as I am now, he can abandon me:” but how if he should see her and hear her in that hushed hour when she was to stand as a star before men? Emilia flushed and trembled. She lived vividly though her far-projected sensations, until truly pity for Wilfrid was active in her bosom, she feeling how he would yearn for her. The vengeance seemed to her so keen that pity could not fail to come. Thus, to her contemplation, their positions became reversed: it was Wilfrid now who stood in the darkness, unselected. Her fiery fancy, unchained from the despotic heart, illumined her under the golden future.
“Come to us this evening, I will sing to you,” she said, and the ‘Englishman under a rope’ bowed assentingly.
“Sad songs, if you like,” she added.
“I have always thought sadness more musical than mirth,” said he. “Surely there is more grace in sadness!”
Poetry, sculpture, and songs, and all the Arts, were brought forward in mournful array to demonstrate the truth of his theory.
When Emilia understood him, she cited dogs and cats, and birds, and all things of nature that rejoiced and revelled, in support of the opposite view.
“Nay, if animals are to be your illustration!” he protested. He had been perhaps half under the delusion that he spoke with Cornelia, and with a sense of infinite misery, he compressed the apt distinction that he had in his mind; which was to show where humanity and simple nature drew a line, and wherein humanity claimed the loftier seat.
“But such talk must be uttered to a soul,” he phrased internally, and Emilia was denied what belonged to Cornelia.
Hitherto Emilia had refused to sing, and Madame Marini, faithful to her instructions, had never allowed her to be pressed to sing. Emilia would brood over notes, thinking: “I can take that; and that; and dwell on such and such a note for any length of time;” but she would not call up her voice; she would not look at her treasure. It seemed more to her, untouched; and went on doubling its worth, until doubtless her idea of capacity greatly relieved her of the burden on her breast, and the reflection that she held a charm for all, and held it from all, flattered one who had been cruelly robbed.
On their way homeward, among the chrysanthemums in the long garden-walk, they met Tracy Runningbrook, between whose shouts of delight and Emilia’s reserve there was so marked a contrast that one would have deemed Tracy an offender in her sight. She had said to him entreatingly, “Do not come,” when he volunteered to call on the Marinis in the evening; and she got away from him as quickly as she could, promising to be pleased if he called the day following. Tracy flew leaping to one of the great houses where he was tame cat. When Sir Purcell as they passed on spoke a contemptuous word of his soft habits and idleness, Emilia said: “He is one of my true friends.”
“And why is he interdicted the visit this evening?”
“Because,” she answered, and grew pale, “he–he does not care for music. I wish I had not met him.”
She recollected how Tracy’s flaming head had sprung up before her–he who had always prophesied that she would be famous for arts unknown to her, and not for song just when she was having a vision of triumph and caressing the idea of her imprisoned voice bursting its captivity, and soaring into its old heavens.
“He does not care for music!” interjected Sir Purcell, with something like a frown. “I have nothing in common with him. But that I might have known. I can have nothing in common with a man who is not to be impressed by music.”
“I love him quite as well,” said Emilia. “He is a quick friend. I am always certain of him.”
“And I imagine also that you are quits with your quick friend,” added Sir Purcell. “You do not care for verse, or he for voices!”
“Poetry?” said Emilia; “no, not much. It seems like talking on tiptoe; like animals in cages, always going to one end and back again….”
“And making the same noise when they get at the end–like the bears!” Sir Purcell slightly laughed. “You don’t approve of the rhymes?”
“Yes, I like the rhymes; but when you use words–I mean, if you are in earnest–how can you count and have stops, and–no, I do not care anything for poetry.”
Sir Purcell’s opinion of Emilia, though he liked her, was, that if a genius, she was an incomplete one; and his positive judgement (which I set down in phrase that would have startled him) ranked both her and Tracy as a pair of partial humbugs, entertaining enough. They were both too real for him.
Haply at that moment the girl was intensely susceptible, for she chilled by his side; and when he left her she begged Madame to walk fast. “I wonder whether I have a cold!” she said.
Madame explained all the signs of it with tragic minuteness, deciding that Emilia was free at present, and by miracle, from this English scourge; but Emilia kept her hands at her mouth. Over the hornbeam hedge of the lane that ran through the market-gardens, she could see a murky sunset spreading its deep-coloured lines, that seemed to her really like a great sorrowing over earth. It had never seemed so till now; and, entering the house, the roar of vehicles in a neighbouring road sounded like something implacable in the order of things among us, and clung about her ears pitilessly. Running upstairs, she tried a scale of notes that broke on a cough. “Did I cough purposely?” she asked herself; but she had not the courage to try the notes again. While dressing she hummed a passage, and sought stealthily to pass the barrier of her own watchfulness by dwelling on a deep note, from which she was to rise bursting with full bravura energy, and so forth on a tide of song. But her breath failed. She stared into the glass and forced the note. A panic caught at her heart when she heard the sound that issued. “Am I ill? I must be hungry!” she exclaimed. “It is a cough! But I don’t cough! What is the matter with me?”
Under these auspices she forced her voice again, and subsequently loosened her dress, complaining of the dressmaker’s affection for tightness. “Now,” she said, having fallen upon an attempt at simple “do, re, me, fa,” and laughed at herself. Was it the laugh, that stopping her at “si,” made that “si” so husky, asthmatic, like the wheezing of a crooked old witch? “I am unlucky, to-night,” said Emilia. Or, rather, so said her surface-self. The submerged self–self in the depths–rarely speaks to the occasions, but lies under calamity quietly apprehending all; willing that the talker overhead should deceive others, and herself likewise, if possible. Emilia found her hands acting daintily and critically in the attirement of her person; and then surprised herself murmuring: “I forgot that Tracy won’t be here to-night.” By which she betrayed that she had divined those arts she was to shine in, according to Tracy; and betrayed that she had a terrible fear of a loss of all else. It pained her now that Tracy should not be coming. “Can I send for him?” she thought, as she looked winningly into the glass, trying to feel what sort of a feeling it was to be in love with a face like that one fronting her, so familiar in its aspects, so strange when scrutinized studiously! She drew a chair, and laying her elbow on the toilet-table, gazed hard, until the thought: “What face did Wilfrid see last?” (meaning, “when he saw me last”) drove her away.
Not only did she know herself now a face of many faces; but the life within her likewise as a soul of many souls. The one Emilia, so unquestioning, so sure, lay dead; and a dozen new spirits, with but a dim likeness to her, were fighting for possession of her frame, now occupying it alone, now in couples; and each casting grim reflections on the other. Which is only a way of telling you that the great result of mortal suffering–consciousness–had fully set in; to ripen; perhaps to debase; at any rate, to prove her.
To be of worth was still her fixed idea–all that was clear in the thickening mist. “I cannot be ugly,” she said, and reproved herself for simulating a childish tone. “Why do I talk in that way? I know I am not ugly. But if a fire scorched my face? There is nothing that seems safe!” The love of friends was suggested to her as something to rely on; and the loving them. “But if I have nothing to give!” said Emilia, and opened both her empty hands. She had diverted her mind from the pressure upon it, by this colloquy with a looking-glass, and gave herself a great rapture by running up notes to this theme:–
“No, no, no, no, no!–nothing! nothing!”
Clear, full, sonant notes; the notes of her true voice. She did not attempt them a second time; nor, when Sir Purcell requested her to sing in the course of the evening, did she comply. “The Signora thinks I have a cold,” she said. Madame Marini protested that she hoped not, she even thought not, though none could avoid it at this season in this climate, and she turned to Sir Purcell to petition for any receipts he might have in his possession, specifics for warding off the frightful affliction of households in England.
“I have now twenty,” said Madame, and throwing up her eyes; “I have tried all! oh! so many lozenge!”
Marini and Emilia laughed. While Sir Purcell was maintaining the fact of his total ignorance of the subject against Madame’s incredulity, Emilia left the room. When she came back Madame was pressing her visitor to be explicit with regard to a certain process of cure conducted by an application of cold water. The Neapolitan gave several shudders as she marked him attentively. “Water cold!” she murmured with the deepest pathos, and dropped her face in her hands with narrowed shoulders. Emilia held a letter over to Sir Purcell. He took it, first assuring himself that Marini was in complicity with them. To Marini Emilia addressed a Momus forefinger, and Marini shrugged, smiling. “Water cold!” ejaculated Madame, showing her countenance again. “In winter! Luigi, they are mad!” Marini poked the fire briskly, for his sensations entirely sided with his wife.
The letter Sir Purcell held contained these words:
“Be kind, and meet me to-morrow at ten in the morning, at that place where you first saw me sitting. I want you to take me to one who will help me. I cannot lose time any more. I must work. I have been dead for I cannot say how long. I know you will come.
“I am, for ever,
“Your thankful friend,
“Emilia.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
The pride of punctuality brought Sir Purcell to that appointed seat in the gardens about a minute in advance of Emilia. She came hurrying up to him with three fingers over her lips. The morning was cold; frost edged the flat brown chestnut and beech leaves lying about on rimy grass; so at first he made no remark on her evident unwillingness to open her mouth, but a feverish look of her eyes touched him with some kindly alarm for her.
“You should not have come out, if you think you are in any danger,” he said.
“Not if we walk fast,” she replied, in a visibly-controlled excitement. “It will be over in an hour. This way.”
She led the marvelling gentleman toward the row, and across it under the big black elms, begging him to walk faster. To accommodate her, he suggested, that if they had any distance to go, they might ride, and after a short calculating hesitation, she consented, letting him know that she would tell him on what expedition she was bound whilst they were riding. The accompaniment of the wheels, however, necessitated a higher pitch of her voice, which apparently caused her to suffer from a contraction of the throat, for she remained silent, with a discouraged aspect, her full brown eyes showing as in a sombre meditation beneath the thick brows. The direction had been given to the City. On they went with the torrent, and were presently engulfed in fog. The roar grew muffled, phantoms poured along the pavement, yellow beamless lights were in the shop-windows, all the vehicles went at a slow march.
“It looks as if Business were attending its own obsequies,” said Sir Purcell, whose spirits were enlivened by an atmosphere that confirmed his impression of things.
Emilia cried twice: “Oh! what cruel weather!” Her eyelids blinked, either with anger or in misery.
They were set down a little beyond the Bank, and when they turned from the cabman, Sir Purcell was warm in his offer of his arm to her, for he had seen her wistfully touching what money she had in her pocket, and approved her natural good breeding in allowing it to pass unmentioned.
“Now,” he said, “I must know what you want to do.”
“A quiet place! there is no quiet place in this City,” said Emilia fretfully.
A gentleman passing took off his hat, saying, with City politeness, “Pardon me: you are close to a quiet place. Through that door, and the hall, you will find a garden, where you will hear London as if it sounded fifty miles off.”
He bowed and retired, and the two (Emilia thankful, Sir Purcell tending to anger), following his indication, soon found themselves in a most perfect retreat, the solitude of which they had the misfortune, however, of destroying for another, and a scared, couple.
Here Emilia said: “I have determined to go to Italy at once. Mr. Pericles has offered to pay for me. It’s my father’s wish. And–and I cannot wait and feel like a beggar. I must go. I shall always love England–don’t fear that!”
Sir Purcell smiled at the simplicity of her pleading look.
“Now, I want to know where to find Mr. Pericles,” she pursued. “And if you will come to him with me! He is sure to be very angry–I thought you might protect me from that. But when he hears that I am really going at last–at once!–he can laugh sometimes! you will see him rub his hands.”
“I must enquire where his chambers are to be found,” said Sir Purcell.
“Oh! anybody in the City must know him, because he is so rich.” Emilia coughed. “This fog kills me. Pray make haste. Dear friend, I trouble you very much, but I want to get away from this. I can hardly breathe. I shall have no heart for my task, if I don’t see him soon.”
“Wait for me, then,” said Sir Purcell; “you cannot wait in a better place. And I must entreat you to be careful.” He half alluded to the adjustment of her shawl, and to anything else, as far as she might choose to apprehend him. Her dexterity in tossing him the letter, unseen by Madame Marini, might have frightened him and given him a dread, that albeit woman, there was germ of wickedness in her.
This pained him acutely, for he never forgot that she had been the means of his introduction to Cornelia, from whom he could not wholly dissociate her: and the idea that any prospective shred of impurity hung about one who had even looked on his beloved, was utter anguish to the keen sentimentalist. “Be very careful,” he would have repeated, but that he had a warning sense of the ludicrous, and Emilia’s large eyes when they fixed calmly on a face were not of a flighty east She stood, too, with the “dignity of sadness,” as he was pleased to phrase it.
“She must be safe here,” he said to himself. And yet, upon reflection, he decided not to leave her, peremptorily informing her to that effect. Emilia took his arm, and as they were passing through the hall of entrance they met the same gentleman who had directed them to the spot of quiet. Both she and Sir Purcell heard him say to a companion: “There she is.” A deep glow covered Emilia’s face. “Do they know you?” asked Sir Purcell. “No,” she said: and then he turned, but the couple had gone on.
“That deserves chastisement,” he muttered. Briefly telling her to wait, he pursued them. Emilia was standing in the gateway, not at all comprehending why she was alone. “Sandra Belloni!” struck her ear. Looking forward she perceived a hand and a head gesticulating from a cab- window. She sprang out into the street, and instantly the hand clenched and the head glared savagely. It was Mr. Pericles himself, in travelling costume.
“I am your fool?” he began, overbearing Emilia’s most irritating “How are you?” and “Are you quite well?
“I am your fool? hein? You send me to Paris! to Geneve! I go over Lago Maggiore, and aha! it is your joke, meess! I juste return. Oh capital! At Milano I wait–I enquire–till a letter from old Belloni, and I learn I am your fool–of you all! Jomp in.”
“A gentleman is coming,” said Emilia, by no means intimidated, though the forehead of Mr. Pericles looked portentous. “He was bringing me to you.”
“Zen, jomp in!” cried Mr. Pericles.
Here Sir Purcell came up.
Emilia said softly: “Mr. Pericles.”
There was the form of a bow of moderate recognition between them, but other hats were off to Emilia. The two gentlemen who had offended Sir Purcell had insisted, on learning the nature of their offence, that they had a right to present their regrets to the lady in person, and beg an excuse from her lips. Sir Purcell stood white with a futile effort at self-control, as one of them, preluding “Pardon me,” said: “I had the misfortune to remark to my friend, as I passed you, ‘There she is.’ May I, indeed, ask your pardon? My friend is an artist. I met him after I had first seen you. He, at least, does not think foolish my recommendation to him that he should look on you at all hazards. Let me petition you to overlook the impertinence.”
“I think, gentlemen, you have now made the most of the advantage my folly, in supposing you would regret or apologize fittingly for an impropriety, has given you,” interposed Sir Purcell.
His new and superior tone (for he had previously lost his temper and spoken with a silly vehemence) caused them to hesitate. One begged the word of pardon from Emilia to cover his retreat. She gave it with an air of thorough-bred repose, saying, “I willingly pardon you,” and looking at them no more, whereupon they vanished. Ten minutes later, Emilia and Sir Purcell were in the chambers of Mr. Pericles.
The Greek had done nothing but grin obnoxiously to every word spoken on the way, drawing his hand down across his jaw, to efface the hard pale wrinkles, and eyeing Emilia’s cavalier with his shrewdest suspicious look.
“You will excuse,”–he pointed to the confusion of the room they were in, and the heap of unopened letters,–“I am from ze Continent; I do not expect ze pleasure. A seat?”
Mr. Pericles handed chairs to his visitors.
“It is a climate, is it not,” he resumed.
Emilia said a word, and he snapped at her, immediately adding, “Hein? Ah! so!” with a charming urbanity.
“How lucky that we should meet you,” exclaimed Emilia. “We were just coming to you–to find out, I mean, where you were, and call on you.”
“Ough! do not tell me lies,” said Mr. Pericles, clasping the hollow of his cheeks between thumb and forefinger.
“Allow me to assure you that what Miss Belloni has said is perfectly correct,” Sir Purcell remarked.
Mr. Pericles gave a short bow. “It is ze same; I am much obliged.”
“And you have just come from Italy?” said Emilia.
“Where you did me ze favour to send me, it is true. Sanks!”
“Oh, what a difference between Italy and this!” Emilia turned her face to the mottled yellow windows.
“Many sanks,” repeated Mr. Pericles, after which the three continued silent for a time.
At last Emilia said, bluntly, “I have come to ask you to take me to Italy.”
Mr. Pericles made no sign, but Sir Purcell leaned forward to her with a gaze of astonishment, almost of horror.
“Will you take me?” persisted Emilia.
Still the sullen Greek refused either to look at her or to answer.
“Because I am ready to go,” she went on. “I want to go at once; to-day, if you like. I am getting too old to waste an hour.”
Mr. Pericles uncrossed his legs, ejaculating, “What a fog! Ah!” and that was all. He rose, and went to a cupboard.
Sir Purcell murmured hurriedly in Emilia’s ear, “Have you considered what you’ve been saying?”
“Yes, yes. It is only a journey,” Emilia replied, in a like tone.
“A journey!”
“My father wishes it.”
“Your mother?”
“Hush! I intend to make him take the Madre with me.”
She designated Mr. Pericles, who had poured into a small liqueur glass some green Chartreuse, smelling strong of pines. His visitors declined to eject the London fog by this aid of the mountain monks, and Mr. Pericles warmed himself alone.
“You are wiz old Belloni,” he called out.
“I am not staying with my father,” said Emilia.
“Where?” Mr. Pericles shed a baleful glance on Sir Purcell.
“I am staying with Signor Marini.”
“Servente!” Mr. Pericles ducked his head quite low, while his hand swept the floor with an imaginary cap. Malice had lighted up his features, and finding, after the first burst of sarcasm, that it was vain to indulge it toward an absent person, he altered his style. “Look,” he cried to Emilia, “it is Marini stops you and old Belloni–a conspirator, aha! Is it for an artist to conspire, and be carbonaro, and kiss books, and, mon Dieu! bon! it is Marini plays me zis trick. I mark him. I mark him, I say! He is paid by young Pole. I hold zat family in my hand, I say! So I go to be met by you, and on I go to Italy. I get a letter at Milano,– “Marini stop me at Dover,” signed “Giuseppe Belloni.” Ze letter have been spied into by ze Austrians. I am watched–I am dogged–I am imprisoned–I am examined. ‘You know zis Giuseppe Belloni? ‘Meine Herrn! he was to come. I leave word at Paris for him, at Geneve, at Stresa, to bring his daughter to ze Conservatoire, for which I pay. She has a voice–or she had.'”
“Has!” exclaimed Emilia.
“Had!” Mr. Pericles repeated.
“She has!”
“Zen sing!” with which thunder of command, Mr. Pericles gave up his vindictive narration of the points of his injuries sustained, and, pitching into a chair, pressed his fingers to his temples, frowning attention. His eyes were on the floor. Presently he glanced up, and saw Emilia’s chest rising quickly. No voice issued.
“It is to commence,” cried Mr. Pericles. “Hein! now sing.”
Emilia laid her hand under her throat. “Not now! Oh, not now! When you have told me what those Austrians did to you. I want to hear; I am very anxious to hear. And what they said of my father. How could he have come to Milan without a passport? He had only a passport to Paris.”
“And at Paris I leave instructions for ze procuration of a passport over Lombardy. Am I not Antonio Pericles Agriolopoulos? Sing, I say!”
“Ah, but what voices you must have heard in Italy,” said Emilia softly. “I am afraid to sing after them. Si: I dare not.”
She panted, little in keeping with the cajolery of her tones, but she had got Mr. Pericles upon a theme serious to his mind.
“Not a voice! not one!” he cried, stamping his foot. “All is French. I go twice wizin six monz, and if I go to a goose-yard I hear better. Oh, yes! it is tune–“ta-ta-ta–ti-ti-ti–to!” and of ze heart–where is zat? Mon Dieu! I despair. I see music go dead. Let me hear you, Sandra.”
His enthusiasm had always affected Emilia, and painfully since her love had given her a consciousness of infidelity to her Art, but now the pathetic appeal to her took away her strength, and tears rose in her eyes at the thought of his faith in her. His repetition of her name–the ‘Sandra’ being uttered with unwonted softness–plunged her into a fit of weeping.
“Ah!” Mr. Pericles shouted. “See what she has come to!” and he walked two or three paces off to turn upon her spitefully. “she will be vapeurs, nerfs, I know not! when it wants a physique of a saint! Sandra Belloni,” he added, gravely, “lift up ze head! Sing, ‘Sempre al tuo santo nome.'”
Emilia checked her tears. His hand being raised to beat time, she could not withstand the signal. “Sempre;”–there came two struggling notes, to which another clung, shuddering like two creatures on the deeps.
She stopped; herself oddly calling out “Stop.”
“Stop who, donc?” Mr. Pericles postured an indignant interrogation.
“I mean, I must stop,” Emilia faltered. “It’s the fog. I cannot sing in this fog. It chokes me.”
Apparently Mr. Pericles was about to say something frightfully savage, which was restrained by the presence of Sir Purcell. He went to the door in answer to a knock, while Emilia drew breath as calmly as she might; her head moving a little backward with her breathing, in a sad mechanical way painful to witness. Sir Purcell stretched his hand out to her, but she did not take it. She was listening to voices at the door. Was it really Mr. Pole who was there? Quite unaware of the effect the sight of her would produce on him, Emilia rose and walked to the doorway. She heard Mr. Pole abusing Mr. Pericles half banteringly for his absence while business was urgent, saying that they must lay their heads together and consult, otherwise–a significant indication appeared to close the sentence.
“But if you’ve just come off your journey, and have got a lady in there, we must postpone, I suppose. Say, this afternoon. I’ll keep up to the mark, if nothing happens….”
Emilia pushed the door from the hand of Mr. Pericles, and was advancing toward the old man on the landing; but no sooner did the latter verify to his startled understanding that he had seen her, than with an exclamation of “All right! good-bye!” he began a rapid descent, of the stairs. A distance below, he bade Mr. Pericles take care of her, and as an excuse for his abrupt retreat, the word “busy” sounded up.
“Does my face frighten him?” Emilia thought. It made her look on herself with a foreign eye. This is a dreadful but instructive piece of contemplation; acting as if the rich warm blood of self should have ceased to hug about us, and we stand forth to be dissected unresistingly. All Emilia’s vital strength now seemed to vanish. At the renewal of Mr. Pericles’ peremptory mandate for her to sing, she could neither appeal to him, nor resist; but, raising her chest, she made her best effort, and then covered her face. This was done less for concealment of her shame- stricken features than to avoid sight of the stupefaction imprinted upon Mr. Pericles.
“Again, zat A flat!” he called sternly.
She tried it.
“Again!”
Again she did her utmost to accomplish the task. If you have seen a girl in a fit of sobs elevate her head, with hard-shut eyelids, while her nostrils convulsively take in a long breath, as if for speech, but it is expended in one quick vacant sigh, you know how Emilia looked. And it requires a humane nature to pardon such an aspect in a person from whom we have expected triumphing glances and strong thrilling tones.
“What is zis?” Mr. Pericles came nearer to her.
He would listen to no charges against the atmosphere. Commanding her to give one simple run of notes, a contralto octave, he stood over her with keenly watchful eyes. Sir Purcell bade him observe her distress.
“I am much obliged,” Mr. Pericles bowed. “she is ruined. I have suspected. Ha! But I ask for a note! One!”
This imperious signal drew her to another attempt. The deplorable sound that came sent Emilia sinking down with a groan.
“Basta, basta! So, it is zis tale,” said Mr. Pericles, after an observation of her huddled shape. “Did I not say–”
His voice was so menacingly loud and harsh that Sir Purcell remarked: “This is not the time to repeat it–pardon me–whatever you said.”
“Ze fool–she play ze fool! Sir, I forget ze Christian–ah! Purcell!–I say she play ze fool, and look at her! Why is it she comes to me now? A dozen times I warn her. To Italy! to Italy! all is ready: you will have a place at ze Conservatorio. No: she refuse. I say ‘Go, and you are a queen. You are a Prima at twenty, and Europe is beneas you.’ No: she refuse, and she is ruined. ‘What,’ I say, ‘what zat dam silly smile mean?’ Oh, no! I am not lazy!’ ‘But you area fool!’ ‘Oh, no!’ ‘And what are you, zen? And what shall you do?’ Nussing! nussing! nussing! And, dam! zere is an end.”
Emilia had caught blindly at Sir Purcell’s hand, by which she raised herself, and then uncovering her face, looked furtively at the malign furnace-white face of Mr. Pericles.
“It cannot have gone,”–she spoke, as if mentally balancing the possibility.
“It has gone, I say; and you know why, Mademoiselle ze Fool!” Mr. Pericles retorted.
“No, no; it can’t be gone. Gone? voices never go!”
The reiteration of the “You know why,” from Mr. Pericles, and all the wretchedness of loss it suggested, robbed her of the little spark of nervous fire by which she felt half-reviving in courage and confidence.
“Let me try once more,” she appealed to him, in a frenzy.
Mr. Pericles, though fully believing in his heart that it might only be a temporary deprivation of voice, affected to scout the notion of another trial, but finally extended his forefinger: “Well, now; start! ‘Sempre al tuo Santo!’ Commence: Sem–” and Mr. Pericles hummed the opening bar, not as an unhopeful man would do. The next moment he was laughing horribly. Emilia, to make sure of the thing she dreaded, forced the note, and would not be denied. What voice there was in her came to the summons. It issued, if I may so express it, ragged, as if it had torn through a briar-hedge: then there was a whimper of tones, and the effect was like the lamentation of a hardly-used urchin, lacking a certain music that there is in his undoubted heartfelt earnestness. No single note poised firmly for the instant, but swayed, trembling on its neighbour to right and to left when pressed for articulate sound, it went into a ghastly whisper. The laughter of Mr. Pericles was pleasing discord in comparison.
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
Am I ill? I must be hungry!
Depreciating it after the fashion of chartered hypocrites. Fine Shades were still too dominant at Brookfield He thinks that the country must be saved by its women as well I know that your father has been hearing tales told of me My voice! I have my voice! Emilia had cried it out to herself She had great awe of the word ‘business’
SANDRA BELLONI
By GEORGE MEREDITH
BOOK 6
XL. SHE TASTES DESPAIR
XLI. SHE IS FOUND
XLII. DEFECTION OF MR. PERICLES FROM THE BROOKFIELD CIRCLE XLIII. IN WHICH WE SEE WILFRID KINDLING XLIV. ON THE HIPPOGRIFF IN AIR: IN WHICH THE PHILOSOPHER HAS A SHORT SPELL.
XLV. ON THE HIPPOGRIFF ON EARTH.
XLVI. RAPE OF THE BLACK-BRIONY WREATH XLVII. THE CALL TO ACTION
XLVIII. CONTAINS A FURTHER VIEW OF SENTIMENT XLIX. BETWEEN EMILIA AND GEORGIANA
CHAPTER XL
Emilia stretched out her hand and said, “Good-bye.” Seeing that the hardened girl, with her dead eyelids, did not appear to feel herself at his mercy, and also that Sir Purcell’s forehead looked threatening, Mr. Pericles stopped his sardonic noise. He went straight to the door, which he opened with alacrity, and mimicking very wretchedly her words of adieu, stood prepared to bow her out. She astonished him by passing without another word. Before he could point a phrase bitter enough for expression, Sir Purcell had likewise passed, and in going had given him a quietly admonishing look.
“Zose Poles are beggars!” Mr. Pericles roared after them over the stairs, and slammed his door for emphasis. Almost immediately there was a knock at it. Mr. Pericles stood bent and cat-like as Sir Purcell reappeared. The latter, avoiding all preliminaries, demanded of the Greek that he should promise not to use the names of his friends publicly in such a manner again.
“I require a promise for the future. An apology will be needless from you.”
“I shall not give it,” said Mr. Pericles, with a sharp lift of his upper lip.
“But you will give me the promise I have returned for.”
In answer Mr. Pericles announced that he had spoken what was simply true: that the prosperity of the Poles was fictitious: that he, or any unfavourable chance, could ruin them: and that their friends might do better to protect their interests than by menacing one who had them in his power.
Sir Purcell merely reiterated his demand for the promise, which was ultimately snarled to him; whereupon he retired, joy on his features. For, Cornelia poor, she might be claimed by him fearlessly: that is to say, without the fear of people whispering that the penniless baronet had sued for gold, and without the fear of her father rejecting his suit. At least he might, with this knowledge that he had gained, appoint to meet her now! All the morning Sir Purcell had been combative, owing to that subordinate or secondary post he occupied in a situation of some excitement;–which combativeness is one method whereby men thus placed, imagining that they are acting devotedly for their friends, contrive still to assert themselves. He descended to the foot of the stairs, where he had told Emilia to wait for him, full of kind feelings and ready cheerful counsels; as thus: “Nothing that we possess belongs to us;–All will come round rightly in the end; Be patient, look about for amusement, and improve your mind.” And more of this copper coinage of wisdom in the way of proverbs. But Emilia was nowhere visible to receive the administration of comfort. Outside the house the fog appeared to have swallowed her. With some chagrin on her behalf (partly a sense of duty unfulfilled) Sir Purcell made his way to the residence of the Marinis, to report of her there, if she should not have arrived. The punishment he inflicted on himself in keeping his hand an hour from that letter to be written to Cornelia, was almost pleasing; and he was rewarded by it, for the projected sentences grew mellow and rich, condensed and throbbed eloquently. What wonder, that with such a mental occupation, he should pass Emilia and not notice her? She let him go.
But when he was out of sight, all seemed gone. The dismally-lighted city wore a look of Judgement terrible to see. Her brain was slave to her senses: she fancied she had dropped into an underground kingdom, among a mysterious people. The anguish through which action had just hurried her, now fell with a conscious weight upon her heart. She stood a moment, seeing her desolation stretch outwardly into endless labyrinths; and then it narrowed and took hold of her as a force within: changing thus, almost with each breathing of her body.
The fog had thickened. Up and down the groping city went muffled men, few women. Emilia looked for one of her sex who might have a tender face. Desire to be kissed and loved by a creature strange to her, and to lay her head upon a woman’s bosom, moved her to gaze around with a longing once or twice; but no eyes met hers, and the fancy recurred vividly that she was not in the world she had known. Otherwise, what had robbed her of her voice? She played with her fancy for comfort, long after any real vitality in it had oozed out. Her having strength to play at fancies showed that a spark of hope was alive. In truth, firm of flesh as she was, to believe that all worth had departed from her was impossible, and when she reposed simply on her sensations, very little trouble beset her: only when she looked abroad did the aspect of numerous indifferent faces, and the harsh flowing of the world its own way, tell her she had lost her power. Could it be lost? The prospect of her desolation grew so wide to her that she shut her eyes, abandoning herself to feeling; and this by degrees moved her to turn back and throw herself at the feet of Mr. Pericles. For, if he said, “Wait, my child, and all will come round well,” she was prepared blindly to think so. The projection of the words in her mind made her ready to weep: but as she neared the house of his office the wish to hear him speak that, became passionate; she counted all that depended on it, and discovered the size of the fabric she had built on so thin a plank. After a while, her steps were mechanically swift. Before she reached the chambers of Mr. Pericles she had walked, she knew not why, once round the little quiet enclosed city-garden, and a cold memory of those men who had looked at her face gave her some wonder, to be quickly kindled into fuller comprehension.
Beholding Emilia once more, Mr. Pericles enjoyed a revival of his taste for vengeance; but, unhappily for her, he found it languid, and when he had rubbed his hands, stared, and by sundry sharp utterances brought her to his feet, his satisfaction was less poignant than he had expected. As a consequence, instead of speaking outrageously, according to his habit, in wrath, he was now frigidly considerate, informing Emilia that it would be good for her if she were dead, seeing that she was of no use whatever; but, as she was alive, she had better go to her father and mother, and learn knitting, or some such industrial employment. “Unless zat man for whom you play fool!–” Mr. Pericles shrugged the rest of his meaning.
“But my voice may not be gone,” urged Emilia. “I may sing to you to- morrow–this evening. It must be the fog. Why do you think it lost? It can’t be–”
“Cracked!” cried Mr. Pericles.
“It is not! No; do not think it. I may stay here. Don’t tell me to go yet. The streets make me wish to die. And I feel I may, perhaps, sing presently. Wait. Will you wait?”
A hideous imitation of her lamentable tones burst from Mr. Pericles. “Cracked!” he cried again.
Emilia lifted her eyes, and looked at him steadily. She saw the idea grow in the eyes fronting her that she had a pleasant face, and she at once staked this little bit of newly-conceived worth on an immediate chance. Remember; that she was as near despair as a creature constituted so healthily could go. Speaking no longer in a girlish style, but with the grave pleading manner of a woman, she begged Mr. Pericles to take her to Italy, and have faith in the recovery of her voice. He, however, far from being softened, as he grew aware of her sweetness of feature, waxed violent and insulting.
“Take me,” she said. “My voice will reward you. I feel that you can cure it.”
“For zat man! to go to him again!” Mr. Pericles sneered.
“I never shall do that.” There sprang a glitter as of steel in Emilia’s eyes. “I will make myself yours for life, if you like. Take my hand, and let me swear. I do not break my word. I will swear, that if I recover my voice to become what you expected,–I will marry you whenever you ask me, and then–”
More she was saying, but Mr. Pericles, sputtering a laugh of “Sanks!” presented a postured supplication for silence.
“I am not a man who marries.”
He plainly stated the relations that the woman whom he had distinguished by the honours of selection must hold toward him.
Emilia’s cheeks did not redden; but, without any notion of shame at the words she listened to, she felt herself falling lower and lower the more her spirit clung to Mr. Pericles: yet he alone was her visible personification of hope, and she could not turn from him. If he cast her off, it seemed to her that her voice was condemned. She stood there still, and the cold-eyed Greek formed his opinion.
He was evidently undecided as regards his own course of proceeding, for his chin was pressed by thumb and forefinger hard into his throat, while his eyebrows were wrinkled up to their highest elevation. From this attitude, expressive of the accurate balancing of the claims of an internal debate, he emerged into the posture of a cock crowing, and Emilia heard again his bitter mimicry of her miserable broken tones, followed by Ha! dam! Basta! basta!”
“Sit here,” cried Mr. Pericles. He had thrown himself into a chair, and pointed to his knee.
Emilia remained where she was standing.
He caught at her hand, but she plucked that from him. Mr. Pericles rose, sounding a cynical “Hein!”
“Don’t touch me,” said Emilia.
Nothing exasperates certain natures so much as the effort of the visibly weak to intimidate them.
“I shall not touch you?” Mr. Pericles sneered. “Zen, why are you here?”
“I came to my friend,” was Emilia’s reply.
“Your friend! He is not ze friend of a couac-couac. Once, if you please: but now” (Mr. Pericles shrugged), “now you are like ze rest of women. You are game. Come to me.”
He caught once more at her hand, which she lifted; then at her elbow.
“Will you touch me when I tell you not to?”
There was the soft line of an involuntary frown over her white face, and as he held her arm from the doubled elbow, with her clenched hand aloft, she appeared ready to strike a tragic blow.
Anger and every other sentiment vanished from Mr. Pericles in the rapturous contemplation of her admirable artistic pose.
“Mon Dieu! and wiz a voice!” he exclaimed, dashing his fist in a delirium of forgetfulness against the one plastered lock of hair on his shining head. “Little fool! little dam fool!–zat might have been”–(Mr. Pericles figured in air with his fingers to signify the exaltation she was to have attained)–“Mon Dieu! and look at you! Did I not warn you? non a vero? Did I not say ‘Ruin, ruin, if you go so? For a man!–a voice! You will not come to me? Zen, hear! you shall go to old Belloni. I do not want you, my pretty dear. Woman is a trouble, a drug. You shall go to old Belloni; and, crack! if ze voice will come back to a whip,–bravo, old Belloni!”
Mr. Pericles turned to reach down his hat from a peg. At the same instant Emilia quitted the room.
Dusk was deepening the yellow atmosphere, and the crowd was now steadily flowing in one direction. The bereaved creature went with the stream, glad to be surrounded and unseen, till it struck her, at last, that she was moving homeward. She stopped with a pang of grief, turned, and met all those people to whom the fireside was a beacon. For some time she bore against the pressure, but her loneliness overwhelmed her. None seemed to go her way. For a refuge, she turned into one of the city side streets, where she was quite alone. Unhappily, the street was of no length, and she soon came to the end of it. There was the choice of retracing her steps, or entering a strange street; and while she hesitated a troop of sheep went by, that made a piteous noise. She followed them, thinking curiously of the something broken that appeared to be in their throats. By-and-by, the thought flashed in her that they were going to be slaughtered. She held her step, looking at them, but without any tender movement of the heart. They came to a butcher’s yard, and went in.
When she had passed along a certain distance, a shiver seized her, and her instinct pushed her toward the lighted shops, where there were pictures. In one she saw the portrait of that Queen of Song whom she had heard at Besworth. Two young men, glancing as they walked by arm in arm, pronounced the name of the great enchantress, and hummed one of her triumphant airs. The features expressed health, humour, power, every fine animal faculty. Genius was on the forehead and the plastic mouth; the forehead being well projected, fair, and very shapely, showing clear balance, as well as capacity to grasp flame, and fling it. The line reaching to a dimple from the upper lip was saved from scornfulness by the lovely gleam, half-challenging, half-consoling, regal, roguish–what you would–that sat between her dark eyelashes, like white sunlight on the fringed smooth roll of water by a weir. Such a dimple, and such a gleam of eyes, would have been keys to the face of a weakling, and it was the more fascinating from the disregard of any minor charm notable upon this grand visage, which could not suffer a betrayal. You saw, and there was no effort to conceal, that the spirit animating it was intensely human; but it was human of the highest chords of humanity, indifferent to finesse and despising subtleties; gifted to speak, to inspire, and to command all great emotions. In fact, it was the masque of a dramatic artist in repose. Tempered by beauty, the robust frame showed that she possessed a royal nature, and could, as a foremost qualification for Art, feel harmoniously. She might have many of the littlenesses of which women are accused; for Art she promised unspotted excellence; and, adorable as she was by attraction of her sex, she was artist over all.
Emilia found herself on one of the bridges, thinking of this aspect. Beneath her was the stealing river, with its red intervals, and the fog had got a wider circle. She could not disengage that face from her mind. It seemed to say to her, boldly, “I live because success is mine;” and to hint, as with a paler voice, “Death the fruit of failure.” Could she, Emilia, ever be looked on again by her friends? The dread of it gave her shudders. Then, death was certainly easy! But death took no form in her imagination, as it does to one seeking it. She desired to forget and to hide her intolerable losses; to have the impostor she felt herself to be buried. As she walked along she held out her hands, murmuring, “Helpless! useless!” It came upon her as a surprise that one like herself should be allowed to live. “I don’t want to,” she said; and the neat moment, “I wonder what a drowned woman is like?” She hurried back to the streets and the shops. The shops failed now to give her distraction, for a stiff and dripping image floated across all the windows, and she was glad to see the shutters being closed; though, when the streets were dark, some friendliness seemed to have gone. When the streets were quits dark, save for the row of lamps, she walked fast, fearing she knew not what.
A little Italian boy sat doubled over his organ on a doorstep, while a yet smaller girl at his elbow plied him with questions in English. Emilia stopped before them, and the girl complained to her that the perverse little foreigner would not answer. Two or three words in his native tongue soon brought his face to view. Emilia sat down between them, and listened to the prattle of two languages. The girl said that she never had supper, which was also the case with the boy; so Emilia felt for her purse, and sent the girl with sixpence in search of a shop that sold cafes. The girl came back with her apron full. As they were all about to eat, a policeman commanded them to quit the spot, informing them that he knew both them and their dodges. Emilia stood up, and was taking her little people away, when the policeman, having suddenly changed his accurate opinion of her, said, “You’re giving ’em some supper, miss? Oh, they must sit down to their suppers, you know!” and walked away, not to be a witness of this infraction of the law. So, they sat down and ate, and the boy and girl tried to say intelligible things to one another, and laughed. Emilia could not help joining in their laughter. The girl was very anxious to know whether the boy was ever beaten, and hearing that he was, she appeared better satisfied, remarking that she was also, but curious still as to the different forms of chastisement they received. This being partially explained, she wished to know whether he would be beaten that night, Emilia interpreting. A grin, and a rapid whistle and ‘cluck,’ significant of the application of whips, told the state of his expectations; at which the girl clapped her hands, adding, lamentably, “So shall I, ’cause I am always.” Emilia gathered them under each shoulder, when, to her delight and half perplexity, they closed their eyes, leaning against her.
The policeman passed, and for an hour endured this spectacle. At last he felt compelled to explain to Emilia what were the sentiments of gentlefolks with regard to their doorsteps, apart from the law of the matter. He put it to her human nature whether she would like her doorsteps to be blocked, so that no one could enter, and anyone emerging stood a chance of being precipitated, nose foremost, upon the pavement. Then, again, as gentle-folks had good experience of, the young ones in London were twice as cunning as the old. Emilia pleaded for her sleeping pair, that they might not be disturbed. Her voice gave the keeper of the peace notions of her being one of the eccentric young ladies who are occasionally ‘missing,’ and have advertizing friends. He uttered a stern ahem! preliminary to assent; but the noise wakened the children, who stared, and readily obeyed his gesture, which said, “Be off!” while his words were those of remonstrance. Emilia accompanied them a little way. Both promised eagerly that they would be at the same place the night following and departed–the boy with laughing nods and waving of hands, which the girl imitated. Emilia’s feeling of security went with them. She at once feigned a destination in the distance, and set forward to reach it, but the continued exposure of this delusion made it difficult to renew. She fell to counting the hours that were to elapse before she would meet those children, saying to herself, that whatever she did she must keep her engagement to be at the appointed steps. This restriction set her darkly fancying that she wished for her end.
Remembering those men who had looked at her admiringly, “Am I worth looking at?” she said; and it gave her some pleasure to think that she had it still in her power to destroy a thing of value. She was savagely ashamed of going to death empty-handed. By-and-by, great fatigue stiffened her limbs, and she sat down from pure want of rest. The luxury of rest and soothing languor kept hard thoughts away. She felt as if floating, for a space. The fear of the streets left her. But when necessity for rest had gone, she clung to the luxury still, and sitting bent forward, with her hands about her knees, she began to brood over tumbled images of a wrong done to her. She had two distinct visions of herself, constantly alternating and acting like the temptation of two devils. One represented her despicable in feature, and bade her die; the other showed a fair face, feeling which to be her own, Emilia had fits of intolerable rage. This vision prevailed; and this wicked side of her humanity saved her. Active despair is a passion that must be superseded by a passion. Passive despair comes later; it has nothing to do with mental action, and is mainly a corruption or degradation of our blood. The rage in Emilia was blind at first, but it rose like a hawk, and singled its enemy. She fixed her mind to conceive the foolishness of putting out a face that her rival might envy, and of destroying anything that had value. The flattery of beauty came on her like a warm garment. When she opened her eyes, seeing what she was and where, she almost smiled at the silly picture that had given her comfort. Those men had looked on her admiringly, it was true, but would Wilfrid have ceased to love her if she had been beautiful? An extraordinary intuition of Wilfrid’s sentiment tormented her now. She saw herself in the light that he would have seen her by, till she stood with the sensations of an exposed criminal in the dark length of the street, and hurried down it, back, as well as she could find her way, to the friendly policeman.
Her question on reaching him, “Are you married?” was prodigiously astonishing, and he administered the rebuff of an affirmative with severity. “Then,” said Emilia, “when you go home, let me go with you to your wife. Perhaps she will consent to take care of me for this night.” The policeman coughed mildly and replied, “It’s plain you know nothing of women–begging your pardon, miss,–for I can see you’re a lady.” Emilia repeated her petition, and the policeman explained the nature of women. Not to be baffled, Emilia said, “I think your wife must be a good woman.” Hereat the policeman laughed, arming “that the best of them knew what bad suspicions was.” Ultimately, he consented to take her to his wife, when he was relieved, after the term of so many minutes. Emilia stood at a distance, speculating on the possible choice he would make of a tune to accompany his monotonous walk to and fro, and on the certainty of his wearing any tune to nothing.
She was in a bed, sleeping heavily, a little before dawn.
The day that followed was her day of misery. The blow that had stunned her had become as a loud intrusive pulse in her head. By this new daylight she fathomed the depth, and reckoned the value, of her loss. And her senses had no pleasure in the light, though there was sunshine. The woman who was her hostess was kind, but full of her first surprise at the strange visit, and too openly ready for any information the young lady might be willing to give with regard to her condition, prospects, and wishes. Emilia gave none. She took the woman’s hand, asking permission to remain under her protection. The woman by-and-by named a sum of money as a sum for weekly payment, and Emilia transferred all to her that she had. The policeman and his wife thought her, though reasonable, a trifle insane. She sat at a window for hours watching a ‘last man’ of the fly species walking up and plunging down a pane of glass. On this transparent solitary field for the most objectless enterprise ever undertaken, he buzzed angrily at times, as if he had another meaning in him, which was being wilfully misinterpreted. Then he mounted again at his leisure, to pitch backward as before. Emilia found herself thinking with great seriousness that it was not wonderful for boys to be always teasing and killing flies, whose thin necks and bobbing heads themselves suggested the idea of decapitation. She said to her hostess: “I don’t like flies. They seem never to sing but when they are bothered.” The woman replied: “Ah, indeed?” very smoothly, and thought: “If you was to bust out now, which of us two would be strongest?” Emilia grew distantly aware that the policeman and his wife talked of her and watched her with combined observation.
When it was night she went to keep her appointment. The girl was there, but the boy came late. He said he had earned only a few pence that day, and would be beaten. He spoke in a whimpering tone which caused the girl to desire a translation of his words. Emilia told her how things were with him, and the girl expressed a wish that she had an organ, as in that case she would be sure to earn more than sixpence a day; such being the amount that procured her nightly a comfortable reception in the arms of her parents. “Do you like music?” said Emilia. The girl replied that she liked organs; but, as if to avoid committing an injustice, cited parrots as foremost in her affections. Holding them both to her breast, Emilia thought that she would rescue them from this beating by giving them the money they had to offer for kindness: but the restlessness of the children suddenly made her a third party to the thought of cakes. She had no money. Her heart bled for the poor little hungry, apprehensive creatures. For a moment she half fancied she had her voice, and looked up at the windows of the pitiless houses with a bold look; but there was a speedy mockery of her thought “You shall listen: you shall open!” She coughed hoarsely, and then fell into fits of crying. Her friend the policeman came by and took her arm with a force that he meant to be persuasive; so lifting her and handing her some steps beyond the limit of his beat, with stern directions for her to proceed home immediately. She obeyed. Next day she asked her hostess to lend her half-a-crown. The woman snapped shortly in answer: “No; the less you have the better.” Emilia was obliged to abandon her little people.
She was to this extent the creature of mania: that she could not conceive of a way being open by which she might return to her father and mother, or any of her friends. It was to her not a matter for her will to decide upon, but simply a black door shut that nothing could displace. When the week, for which term of shelter she had paid, was ended, her hostess spoke upon this point, saying, more to convince Emilia of the necessity for seeking her friends than from any unkindness: “Me and my husband can’t go on keepin’ you, you know, my dear, however well’s our meaning.” Emilia drew the woman toward her with both her lands, softly shaking her head. She left the house about noon.
It was now her belief that she had probably no more than another day to live, for she was destitute of money. The thought relieved her from that dreadful fear of the street, and she walked at her own pace, even after dark. The rumble and the rattle of wheels; the cries and grinding noises; the hum of motion and talk; all under the lingering smoky red of a London Winter sunset, were not discord to her animated blood. Her unhunted spirit made a music of them. It was not like the music of other days, nor was the exultation it created at all like happiness: but she at least forgot herself. Voices came in her ear, and hung unheard until long after the speaker had passed. Hunger did not assail her. She was not beset by an animal weakness; and having in her mind no image of death, and with her ties to life cut away;–thus devoid of apprehension or regret, she was what her quick blood made her, for the time. She recognized that, for one near extinction, it was useless to love or to hate: so Wilfrid and Lady Charlotte were spared. Emilia thought of them both with a sort of equanimity; not that any clear thought filled her brain through that delirious night. The intoxicating music raged there at one level depression, never rising any scale, never undulating ever so little, scarcely changing its barbarous monotony of notes. She had no power over it. Her critical judgement would at another moment have shrieked at it. She was moved by it as by a mechanical force.
The South-west wind blew, and the hours of the night were not evil to outcasts. Emilia saw many lying about, getting rest where they might. She hurried her eye pityingly over little children, but the devil that had seized her sprang contempt for the others–older beggars, who appeared to succumb to their fate when they should have lifted their heads up bravely. On she passed from square to market, market to park; and presently her mind shot an arrow of desire for morning, which was nothing less than hunger beginning to stir. “When will the shops open?” She tried to cheat herself by replying that she did not care when, but pangs of torment became too rapid for the counterfeit. Her imagination raised the roof from those great rich houses, and laid bare a brilliancy of dish-covers; and if any sharp gust of air touched the nerve in her nostril, it seemed instantaneously charged with the smell of old dinners. “No,” cried Emilia, “I dislike anything but plain food.” She quickly gave way, and admitted a craving for dainty morsels. “One lump of sugar!” she subsequently sighed. But neither sugar nor meat approached her.
Her seat was under trees, between a man and a woman who slanted from her with hidden chins. The chilly dry leaves began to waken, and the sky showed its grey. Hunger had become as a leaden ball in Emilia’s chest. She could have eaten eagerly still, but she had no ravenous images of food. Nevertheless, she determined to beg for bread at a baker’s shop. Coming into the empty streets again, the dread of exposing her solitary wretchedness and the stains of night upon her, kept her back. When she did venture near the baker’s shop, her sensation of weariness, want of washing, and general misery, made her feel a contrast to all other women she saw, that robbed her of the necessary effrontery. She preferred to hide her head.
The morning hours went in this conflict. She was between-whiles hungry and desperate, or stricken with shame. Fatigue, bringing the imperious necessity for rest, intervened as a relief. Emilia moaned at the weary length of the light, but when dusk fell and she beheld flame in the lamps, it seemed to be too sudden and she was alarmed. Passive despair had set in. She felt sick, though not weak, and the thought of asking help had gone.
A street urchin, of the true London species, in whom excess of woollen comforter made up for any marked scantiness in the rest of his attire, came trotting the pavement, pouring one of the favourite tunes of his native metropolis through the tube of a penny-whistle, from which it did not issue so disguised but that attentive ears might pronounce it the royal march of the Cannibal Islands. A placarded post beside a lamp met this musician’s eye; and, still piping, he bent his knees and read the notification. Emilia thought of the Hillford and Ipley clubmen, the big drum, the speeches, the cheers, and all the wild strength that lay in her that happy morning. She watched the boy piping as if he were reading from a score, and her sense of humour was touched. “You foolish boy!” she said to herself softly. But when, having evidently come to the last printed line, the boy rose and pocketed his penny-whistle, Emilia was nearly laughing. “That’s because he cannot turn over the leaf,” she said, and stood by the post till long after the boy had disappeared. The slight emotion of fun had restored to her some of her lost human sensations, and she looked about for a place where to indulge them undisturbed. One of the bridges was in sight She yearned for the solitude of the wharf beside it, and hurried to the steps. To descend she had to pass a street-organ and a small figure bent over it. “Sei buon’ Italiano?” she said. The answer was a surly “Si.” Emilia cried convulsively “Addio!” Her brain had become on a sudden vacant of a thought, and all she knew was that she descended.
CHAPTER XLI
“Sei buon’ Italiana?”
Across what chasm did the words come to her?
It seemed but a minutes and again many hours back, that she had asked that question of a little fellow, who, if he had looked up and nodded would have given her great joy, but who kept his face dark from her and with a sullen “Si” extinguished her last feeling of a desire for companionship with life.
“Si,” she replied, quite as sullenly, and without looking up.
But when her hand was taken and other words were uttered, she that had crouched there so long between death and life immovable, loving neither, rose possessed of a passion for the darkness and the void, and struggling bitterly with the detaining hand, crying for instant death. No strength was in her to support the fury.
“Merthyr Powys is with you,” said her friend, “and will never leave you.”
“Will never take me up there?” Emilia pointed to the noisy level above them.
“Listen, and I will tell you how I have found you,” replied Merthyr.
“Don’t force me to go up.”
She spoke from the end of her breath. Merthyr feared that it was more than misery, even madness, afflicting her. He sat on the wharf-bench silent till she was reassured. But at his first words, the eager question came: “You will not force me to go up there?”
“No; we can stay and talk here,” said Merthyr. “And this is how I have found you. Do you suppose you have been hidden from us all this time? Perhaps you fancy you do not belong to your friends? Well, I spoke to all of your ‘children,’ as you used to call them. Do you remember? The day before yesterday two had seen you. You said to one, ‘From Savoy or Piedmont?’ He said, ‘From Savoy;’ and you shook your head: ‘Not looking on Italy!’ you said. This night I roused one of them, and he stretched his finger down the steps, saying that you had gone down there. ‘Sei buon’ Italiano?” you said. “And that is how I have found you. Sei buon’ Italiana?”
Emilia let her hand rest in Merthyr’s, wondering to think that there should be no absolute darkness for a creature to escape into while living. A trembling came on her. “Let me look over at the water,” she said; and Merthyr, who trusted her even in that extremity, allowed her to lean forward, and felt her grasp grow moist in his, till she turned back with shudders, giving him both her hands. “A drowned woman looks so dreadful!” Her speech was faint as she begged to be taken away from that place. Merthyr put his hand to her arm-pit, sustaining her steps. As they neared the level where men were, she looked behind her and realized the black terrors she had just been blindly handling. Fright sped her limbs for a second or two, and then her whole weight hung upon Merthyr. He held her in both arms, thinking that she had swooned, but she murmured: “Have you heard that my voice has gone?”
“If you have suffered, I do not wonder,” he said.
“I am useless. My voice is dead.”
“Useless to your friends? Tush, my little Emilia! Sandra mia! Don’t you know that while you love your friends that’s all they want of you?”
“Oh!” she moaned; “the gas-lamp hurts me. What a noise there is!”
“We shall soon get away from the noise.”
“No; I like it; but not the light. Oh, my feet!–why are you walking still? What friends?”
“For instance, myself.”
“You knew of my wandering about London! It makes me believe in heaven. I can’t bear to think of being unseen.”
“This morning,” said Merthyr, “I saw the policeman in whose house you have been staying.”
Emilia bowed her head to the mystery by which this friend was endowed to be cognizant of her actions. “I feel that I have not seen the streets for years. If it were not for you I should fall down.–Oh! do you understand that my voice has quite gone?”
Merthyr perceived her anxiety to be that she might not betaken on doubtful terms. “Your hand hasn’t,” he said, pressing it, and so gratified her with a concrete image of something that she could still bestow upon a friend. To this she clung while the noisy wheels bore her through London, till her weak body failed to keep courage in her breast, and she wept and came closer to Merthyr. He who supposed that her recent despair and present tears were for the loss of her lover, gave happily more comfort than he took. “When old gentlemen choose to interest themselves about very young ladies,” he called upon his humorous philosophy to observe internally, as men do to forestall the possible cynic external;–and the rest of the sentence was acted under his eyes by the figures of three persons. But, there she was, lying within his arm, rescued, the creature whom he had found filling his heart, when lost, and whom he thought one of the most hopeful of the women of earth! He thanked God for bare facts. She lay against him with her eyelids softly joined, and as he felt the breathing of her body, he marvelled to think how matter-of-fact they had both been on the brink of a tragedy, and how naturally she had, as it were, argued herself up to the gates of death. For want of what? “My sister may supply it,” thought Merthyr.
“Oh! that river is like a great black snake with a sick eye, and will come round me!” said Emilia, talking as from sleep; then started, with fright in her face: “Oh! my hunger again!”
“Hunger!” said he, horrified.
“It comes worse than ever,” she moaned. “I was half dead just now, and didn’t feel it. There’s–there’s no pain in death. But this–it’s like fire and frost! I feel being eaten up. Give me something.”
Merthyr set his teeth and enveloped her in a tight hug that relieved her from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get food for her. She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through the window of the cab. Bit by bit he handed her the morsels. It was impossible to procure broth. When they drove on, she did not complain of suffering, but her chest rose and fell many times heavily. She threw him out in the reading of her character, after a space, by excusing herself for having eaten with such eagerness; and it was long before he learnt what Wilfrid’s tyrannous sentiment had done to this simple nature. He understood better the fear she expressed of meeting Georgiana. Nevertheless, she exhibited none on entering the house, and returned Georgiana’s embrace with what strength was left to her.
CHAPTER XLII
Up the centre aisle of Hillford Church, the Tinleys (late as usual) were seen trooping for morning service in midwinter. There was a man in the rear known to be a man by the sound of his boots and measure of his stride, for the ladies of Brookfield, having rejected the absurd pretensions of Albert Tinley, could not permit curiosity to encounter the risk of meeting his gaze by turning their heads. So, with charitable condescension they returned the slight church nod of prim Miss Tinley passing, of the detestable Laura Tinley, of affected Rose Tinley (whose complexion was that of a dust-bin), and of Madeline Tinley (too young for a character beyond what the name bestowed), and then they arranged their prayer-books, and apparently speculated as to the possible text that morning to be given forth from the pulpit. But it seemed to them all that an exceedingly bulky object had passed as guardian of the light- footed damsels preceding him. Though none of the ladies had looked up as he passed, they were conscious of a stature and a circumference which they had deemed to be entirely beyond the reach of the Tinleys, and a scornful notion of the Tinleys having hired a guardsman, made Arabella smile at the stretch of her contempt, that could help her to conceive the ironic possibility. Relieved on the suspicion that Albert was in attendance of his sisters, they let their eyes fall calmly on the Tinley pew. Could two men upon this earthly sphere possess such a bearskin? There towered the shoulders of Mr. Pericles; his head looking diminished by the hugeous collar. Arabella felt a seizure of her hand from Adela’s side. She placed her book open before her, and stared at the pulpit. From neither of the three of Brookfield could Laura’s observation extract a sign of the utter astonishment she knew they must be experiencing; and had it not been for the ingenuous broad whisper of Mrs. Chump, which sounded toward the verge even of her conception of possibilities, the Tinleys would not have been gratified by the first public display of the prize they had wrested from the Poles.
“Mr. Paricles–oh!” went Mrs. Chump, and a great many pews were set in commotion.
Forthwith she bent over Cornelia’s lap, and Cornelia, surveying her placidly, had to murmur, “By-and-by; by-and-by.”
“But, did ye see ‘m, my dear? and a forr’ner in a Protestant Church! And such a forr’ner as he is, to be sure! And, ye know, ye said he’d naver come with you, and it’s them creatures ye don’t like. Corrnelia!”
“The service commences,” remarked that lady, standing up.
Many eyes were on Mr. Pericles, who occasionally inspected the cornices and corbels and stained glass to right and left, or detected a young lady staring at him, or anticipated her going to stare, and put her to confusion by a sharp turn of his head, and then a sniff and smoothing down of his moustache. But he did not once look at the Brookfield pew. By hazard his eye ranged over it, and after the first performance of this trick he would have found the ladies a match for him, even if he had sought to challenge their eyes. They were constrained to admit that Laura Tinley managed him cleverly. She made him hold a book and appear respectably devout. She got him down in good time when seats were taken, and up again, without much transparent persuasion. The first notes of the organ were seen to agitate the bearskin. Laura had difficulty to induce the man to rise for the hymn, and when he had listened to the intoning of a verse, Mr. Pericles suddenly bent, as if he had snapped in two: nor could Laura persuade him to rejoin the present posture of the congregation. Then only did Laura, to cover her failure, turn the subdued light of a merry smile upon the Brookfield pew.
The smile was noticed by Apprehension sitting in the corner of one eye, and it was likewise known that Laura’s chagrin at finding that she was not being watched affected her visibly. At the termination of the sermon, the ladies bowed their heads a short space, and placing Mrs. Chump in front drove her out, so that her exclamations of wonderment, and affectedly ostentatious gaspings of sympathy for Brookfield, were heard by few. On they hurried, straight and fast to Brookfield. Mr. Pole was talking to Tracy Runningbrook at the gate. The ladies cut short his needless apology to the young man for not being found in church that day, by asking questions of Tracy. The first related to their brother’s whereabouts; the second to Emilia’s condition. Tracy had no time to reply. Mrs. Chump had identified herself with Brookfield so warmly that the defection of Mr. Pericles was a fine legitimate excitement to her. “I hate ‘m!” she cried. “I pos’tively hate the man! And he to go to church! A pretty figure for an angel–he, now! But, my dears, we cann’t let annybody else have ‘m. Shorrt of his bein’ drowned or killed, we must intrigue to keep the wretch to ourselves.”
“Oh, dear!” said Adela impatiently.
“Well, and I didn’t say to myself, ye little jealous thing!” retorted Mrs. Chump.
“Indeed, ma’am, you are welcome to him.”
“And indeed, miss, I don’t want ‘m. And, perhaps, ye were flirtin’ all the fun out of him on board the yacht, and got tired of ‘m; and that’s why.”
Adela said: “Thank you,” with exasperating sedateness, which provoked an intemperate outburst from Mrs. Chump. “Sunday! Sunday!” cried Mr. Pole.
“Ain’t I the first to remember ut, Pole? And didn’t I get up airly so as to go to church and have my conscience qui’t, and ‘stead of that I come out full of evil passions, all for the sake o’ these ungrateful garls that’s always where ye cann’t find ’em. Why, if they was to be married at the altar, they’d stare and be ‘ffendud if ye asked them if they was thinking of their husbands, they would! ‘Oh, dear, no! and ye’re mistaken, and we’re thinkin’ o’ the coal-scuttle in the back parlour,’– or somethin’ about souls, if not coals. There’s their answer. What did ye do with Mr. Paricles on board the yacht? Aha!”
“What’s this about Pericles?” said Mr. Pole.
“Oh, nothing, Papa,” returned Adela.
“Nothing, do ye call ut!” said Mrs. Chump. “And, mayhap, good cause too. Didn’t ye tease ‘m, now, on board the yacht? Now, did he go on board the yacht at all?”
“I should think you ought to know that as well as Adela,” said Mr. Pole.
Adela interposed, hurriedly: “All this, my dear Papa, is because Mr. Pericles has thought proper to visit the Tinleys’ pew. Who would complain how or where he does it, so long as the duty is fulfilled?”
Mr. Pole stared, muttering: “The Tinleys!”
“She’s botherin’ of ye, Pole, the puss!” said Mrs. Chump, certain that she had hit a weak point in that mention of the yacht. “Ask her what sorrt of behaviour–”
“And he didn’t speak to any of you?” said Mr. Pole.
“No, Papa.”
“He looked the other way?”
“He did us that honour.”
“Ask her, Pole, how she behaved to ‘m on board the yacht,” cried Mrs. Chump. “Oh! there was flirtin’, fiirtin’! And go and see what the noble poet says of tying up in sacks and plumpin’ of poor bodies of women into forty fathoms by them Turks and Greeks, all because of jeal’sy. So, they make a woman in earnest there, the wretches, ’cause she cann’t have onny of her jokes. Didn’t ye tease Mr. Paricles on board the yacht, Ad’la? Now, was he there?”
“Martha! you’re a fool!” said Mr. Pole, looking the victim of one of his fits of agitation. “Who knows whether he was there better than you? You’ll be forgetting soon that we’ve ever dined together. I hate to see a woman so absurd! There–never mind! Go in: take off bonnet something –anything! only I can’t bear folly! Eh, Mr. Runningbrook?”
“‘Deed, Pole, and ye’re mad.” Mrs. Chump crossed her hands to reply with full repose. “I’d like to know how I’m to know what I never said.”
The scene was growing critical. Adela consulted the eyes of her sisters, which plainly said that this was her peculiar scrape. Adela ended it by going up to Mrs. Chump, taking her by the shoulders, and putting a kiss upon her forehead. “Now you will see better,” she said. “Don’t you know Mr. Pericles was not with us? As surely as he was with the Tinleys this morning!”
“And a nice morning it is!” ejaculated Mr. Pole, trotting off hurriedly.
“Does Pole think–” Mrs. Chump murmured, with reference to her voyaging on the yacht. The kiss had bewildered her sequent sensations.
“He does think, and will think, and must think,” Adela prattled some persuasive infantine nonsense: her soul all the while in revolt against her sisters, who left her the work to do, and took the position of spectators and critics, condemning an effort they had not courage to attempt.
“By the way, I have to congratulate a friend of mine,” said Tracy, selecting Adela for an ironical bow.
“Then it is Captain Gambier,” cried Mrs. Chump, as if a whole revelation had burst on her. Adela blushed. “Oh! and what was that I heard?” continued the aggravating woman.
Adela flashed her eyes round on her sisters. Even then they left her without aid, their feeling being that she had debased the house by her familiarity with this woman before Tracy.
“Stay! didn’t ye both–” Mrs. Chump was saying.
“Yes?”–Adela passed by her–“only in your ears alone, you know! “At which hint Mrs. Chump gleefully turned and followed her. A rumour was prevalent of some misadventure to Adela and the captain on board the yacht. Arabella saw her depart, thinking, “How singular is her propensity to imitate me!” for the affirmative uttered in the tone of interrogation was quite Arabella’s own; as also occasionally the negative,–the negative, however, suiting the musical indifference of the sound, and its implied calm breast.
“As for Pericles,” said Tracy, “you need not wonder that the fellow prays in other pews than yours. By heaven! he may pray and pray: I’d send him to Hades with an epigram in his heart!”
From Tracy the ladies learnt that Wilfrid had inflicted public chastisement upon Mr. Pericles for saying a false thing of Emilia. He danced the prettiest pas seal that was ever footed by debutant on the hot iron plates of Purgatory. They dared not ask what it was that Mr. Pericles had said, but Tracy was so vehement on the subject of his having met his deserts, that they partly guessed it to bear some relation to their sex’s defencelessness, and they approved their brother’s work.
Sir Twickenham and Captain Gambier dined at Brookfield that day. However astonishing it might be to one who knew his character and triumphs, the captain was a butterfly netted, and was on the highroad to an exhibition of himself pinned, with his wings outspread. During the service of the table Tracy relieved Adela from Mrs. Chump’s inadvertencies and little bits of feminine malice, but he could not help the captain, who blundered like a schoolboy in her rough hands. It was noted that Sir Twickenham reserved the tolerating smile he once had for her. Mr. Pole’s nervous fretfulness had increased. He complained in occasional underbreaths, correcting himself immediately with a “No, no!” and blinking briskly.
But after dinner came the time when the painfullest scene was daily enacted. Mrs. Chump drank Port freely. To drink it fondly, it was necessary that she should have another rosy wineglass to nod to, and Mr. Pole, whose taste for wine had been weakened, took this post as his duty. The watchful, pinched features of the poor pale little man bloomed unnaturally, and his unintelligible eyes sparkled as he emptied his glass. His daughters knew that he drank, not for his pleasure, but for their benefit; that he might sustain Martha Chump in the delusion that he was a fitting bridegroom, and with her money save them from ruin. Each evening, with remorse that blotted all perception of the tragic comicality of the show, they saw him, in his false strength and his anxiety concerning his pulse’s play, act this part. The recurring words, “Now, Martha, here’s the Port,” sent a cold wave through their blood. They knew what the doctor remarked on the effect of that Port. “Ill!” Mrs. Chump would cry, when she saw him wink after sipping; “you, Pole! what do they say of ye, ye deer!” and she returned the wink, the ladies looking on. Not to drink a proper quantum of Port, when Port was on the table, was, in Mrs. Chump’s eyes, mean for a man. Even Chump, she would say, was master of his bottle, and thought nothing of it. “Who does?” cried her present suitor, and the Port ebbed, and his cheeks grew crimson.
This frightful rivalry with the ghost of Alderman Chump continued night after night. The rapturous Martha was incapable of observing that if she drank with a ghost in memory, in reality she drank with nothing better than an animated puppet. The nights ended with Mr. Pole either sleeping in his arm-chair (upon which occasions one daughter watched him and told dreadful tales of his waking), or staggering to bed, debating on the stairs between tea and brandy, complaining of a loss of sensation at his knee-cap, or elbow, or else rubbing his head and laughing hysterically. His bride was not at such moments observant. No wonder Wilfrid kept out of the way, if he had not better occupation elsewhere. The ladies, in their utter anguish, after inveighing against the baneful Port, had begged their father to delay no more to marry the woman. “Why?” said Mr. Pole, sharply; “what do you want me to marry her for?” They were obliged to keep up the delusion, and said, “Because she seems suited to you as a companion.” That satisfied him. “Oh! we won’t be in a hurry,” he said, and named a day within a month; and not liking their unready faces, laughed, and dismissed the idea aloud, as if he had not earnestly been entertaining it.
The ladies of Brookfield held no more their happy, energetic midnight consultations. They had begun to crave for sleep and a snatch of forgetfulness, the scourge being daily on their flesh: and they had now no plans to discuss; they had no distant horizon of low vague lights that used ever to be beyond their morrow. They kissed at the bedroom door of one, and separated. Silence was their only protection to the Nice Feelings, now that Fine Shades had become impossible. Adela had almost made herself distinct from her sisters since the yachting expedition. She had grown severely careful of the keys of her writing-desk, and would sometimes slip the bolt of her bedroom door, and answer “Eh?” dubiously in tone, when her sisters had knocked twice, and had said “Open” once. The house of Brookfield showed those divisional rents which an admonitory quaking of the earth will create. Neither sister was satisfied with the other. Cornelia’s treatment of Sir Twickenham was almost openly condemned, but at the same time it seemed to Arabella that the baronet was receiving more than the necessary amount of consolation from the bride of Captain Gambier, and that yacht habits and moralities had been recently imported to Brookfield. Adela, for her part, looked sadly on Arabella, and longed to tell her, as she told Cornelia, that if she continued to play Freshfield Sumner purposely against Edward Buxley, she might lose both. Cornelia quietly measured accusations and judged impartially; her mind being too full to bring any personal observations to bear. She said, perhaps, less than she would have said, had she not known that hourly her own Nice Feelings had to put up a petition for Fine Shades: had she not known, indeed, that her conduct would soon demand from her sisters an absolutely merciful interpretation. For she was now simply attracting Sir Twickenham to Brookfield as a necessary medicine to her Papa. Since Mrs. Chump’s return, however, Mr. Pole had spoken cheerfully of himself, and, by innuendo emphasized, had imparted that his mercantile prospects were brighter. In fact, Cornelia half thought that he must have been pretending bankruptcy to gain his end in getting the consent of his daughters to receive the woman. She, and Adela likewise, began to suspect that the parental transparency was a little mysterious, and that there is, after all, more than we see in something that we see through. They were now in danger of supposing that because the old man had possibly deceived them to some extent, he had deceived them altogether. But was not the after-dinner scene too horribly true? Were not his hands moist and cold while the forehead was crimson? And could a human creature feel at his own pulse, and look into vacancy with that intense apprehensive look, and be but an actor? They could not think so. But his conditions being dependent upon them, the ladies felt in their hearts a spring of absolute rebellion when the call for fresh sacrifices came. Though they did not grasp the image, they had a feeling that he was nourished bit by bit by everything they held dear; and though they loved him, and were generous, they had begun to ask, “What next?”
The ladies were at a dead-lock, and that the heart is the father of our histories, I am led to think when I look abroad on families stagnant because of so weak a motion of the heart. There are those who have none at all; the mass of us are moved from the propulsion of the toes of the Fates. But the ladies of Brookfield had hearts lively enough to get them into scrapes. The getting out of them, or getting on at all, was left to Providence. They were at a dead-lock, for Arabella, flattered as she was by Freshfield Sumner’s wooing, could not openly throw Edward over, whom indeed she thought that she liked the better of the two, though his letters had not so wide an intellectual range. Her father was irritably anxious that she should close with Edward. Adela could not move: at least, not openly. Cornelia might have taken an initiative; but tenderness for her father’s health had hitherto restrained her, and she temporized with Sir Twickenham on the noblest of principles. She was, by the devotion of her conduct, enabled to excuse herself so far that she could even fish up an excuse in the shape of the effort she had made to find him entertaining: as if the said effort should really be re-payment enough to him for his assiduous and most futile suit. One deep grief sat on Cornelia’s mind. She had heard from Lady Gosstre that there was something like madness in the Barrett family. She had consented to meet Sir Purcell clandestinely (after debate on his claim to such a sacrifice on her part), and if, on those occasions, her lover’s tone was raised, it gave her a tremour. And he had of late appeared to lose his noble calm; he had spoken (it might almost be interpreted) as if he doubted her. Once, when she had mentioned her care for her father, he had cried out upon the name of father with violence, looking unlike himself.
His condemnation of the world, too, was not so Christian as it had been; it betrayed what the vulgar would call spite, and was not all compassed in his peculiar smooth shrug–expressive of a sort of border-land between contempt and charity: which had made him wear in her sight all the superiority which the former implies, with a considerable share of the benign complacency of the latter. This had gone. He had been sarcastic even to her; saying once, and harshly: “Have you a will?” Personally she liked the poor organist better than the poor baronet, though he had less merit. It was unpleasant in her present mood to be told “that we have come into this life to fashion for ourselves souls;” and that “whosoever cannot decide is a soulless wretch fit but to pass into vapour.” He appeared to have ceased to make his generous allowances for difficult situations. A senseless notion struck Cornelia, that with the baronetcy he had perhaps inherited some of the madness of his father.
The two were in a dramatic tangle of the Nice Feelings worth a glance as we pass on. She wished to say to him, “You are unjust to my perplexities;” and he to her, “You fail in your dilemma through cowardice.” Instead of uttering which, they chid themselves severally for entertaining such coarse ideas of their idol. Doubtless they were silent from consideration for one another: but I must add, out of extreme tenderness for themselves likewise. There are people who can keep the facts that front them absent from their contemplation by not framing them in speech; and much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself. “My duty to my father,” being cited by Cornelia, Sir Purcell had to contend with it.
“True love excludes no natural duty,” she said.
And he: “Love discerns unerringly what is and what is not duty.”
“In the case of a father, can there be any doubt?” she asked, the answer shining in her confident aspect.
“There are many things that fathers may demand of us!” he interjected bitterly.
She had a fatal glimpse here of the false light in which his resentment coloured the relations between fathers and children; and, deeming him incapable of conducting this argument, she felt quite safe in her opposition, up to a point where feeling stopped her.
“Devotedness to a father I must conceive to be a child’s first duty,” she said.
Sir Purcell nodded: “Yes; a child’s!”
“Does not history give the higher praise to children who sacrifice themselves for their parents?” asked Cornelia.
And he replied: “So, you seek to be fortified in such matters by history!”
Courteous sneers silenced her. Feeling told her she was in the wrong; but the beauty of her sentiment was not to be contested, and therefore she thought that she might distrust feeling: and she went against it somewhat; at first very tentatively, for it caused pain. She marked a line where the light of duty should not encroach on the light of our human desires. “But love for a parent is not merely duty,” thought Cornelia. “It is also love;–and is it not the least selfish love?”
Step by step Sir Purcell watched the clouding of her mind with false conceits, and knew it to be owing to the heart’s want of vigour. Again