Sandra Belloni by George Meredith, v1

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This etext was produced by Pat Castevans
and David Widger

SANDRA BELLONI

By George Meredith

CONTENTS

BOOK 1
I. THE POLES PRELUDE
II. THE EXPEDITION BY MOONLIGHT
III. WILFRID'S DIPLOMACY
IV. EMILIA'S FIRST TRIAL IN PUBLIC
V. EMILIA PLAYS ON THE CORNET
VI. EMILIA SUPPLIES THE KEY TO HERSELF AND CONTINUES HER
PERFORMANCE ON THE CORNET
VII. THREATS OF A CRISIS IN THE GOVERNMENT OF BROOKFIELD:
AND OF THE VIRTUE RESIDENT IN A TAIL-COAT
VIII. IN WHICH A BIG DRUM SPEEDS THE MARCH OF
EMILIA'S HISTORY
IX. THE RIVAL CLUBS
X. THE LADIES OF BROOKFIELD AT SCHOOL

BOOK 2
XI. IN WHICH WE SEE THE MAGNANIMITY THAT IS IN BEER.
XII. SHOWING HOW SENTIMENT AND PASSION TAKE
THE DISEASE OF LOVE
XIII. CONTAINS A SHORT DISCOURSE ON PUPPETS
XIV. THE BESWORTH QUESTION
XV. WILFRID'S EXHIBITION OF TREACHERY
XVI. HOW THE LADIES OF BROOKFIELD CAME TO THEIR RESOLVE
XVII. IN THE WOODS

BOOK 3
XVIII. RETURN OF THE SENTIMENTALIST INTO BONDAGE
XIX. LIFE AT BROOKFIELD.
XX. BY WILMING WEIR
XXI. RETURN OF MR. PERICLES
XXII. THE PITFALL OF SENTIMENT
XXIII. WILFRID DIPLOMATIZES
XXIV. EMILIA MAKES A MOVE
XXV. A FARCE WITHIN A FARCE

BOOK 4
XXVI. SUGGESTS THAT THE COMIC MASK HAS SOME KINSHIP WITH A SKULL
XXVII. SMALL LIFE AT BROOKFIELD
XXVIII. GEORGIANA FORD
XXIX. FIRST SCOURGING OF THE FINE SHADES
XXX. OF THE DOUBLE-MAN IN US, AND THE GREAT FIGHT
WHEN THESE ARE FULL-GROWN
XXXI. BESWORTH LAWN
XXXII. THE SUPPER
XXXIII. DEFEAT AND FLIGHT OF MRS. CHUMP

BOOK 5
XXXIV. INDICATES THE DEGRADATION OF BROOKFIELD, TOGETHER
WITH CERTAIN PROCEEDINGS OF THE YACHT
XXXV. MRS. CHUMP'S EPISTLE
XXXVI. ANOTHER PITFALL OF SENTIMENT
XXXVII. EMILIA'S FLIGHT.
XXXVIII. SHE CLINGS TO HER VOICE
XXXIX. HER VOICE FAILS

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

BOOK 7
L. EMILIA BEGINS TO FEEL MERTHYR'S POWER
LI. A CHAPTER INTERRUPTED BY THE PHILOSOPHER
LII. A FRESH DUETT BETWEEN WILFRID AND EMILIA
LIII. ALDERMAN'S BOUQUET
LIIV. THE EXPLOSION AT BROOKFIELD
LV. THE TRAGEDY OF SENTIMENT
LVI. AN ADVANCE AND A CHECK.
LVII. CONTAINS A FURTHER ANATOMY OF WILFRID
LVIII. FROST ON THE MAY NIGHT.
LVIX. EMILIA'S GOOD-BYE

SANDRA BELLONI

ORIGINALLY EMILIA IN ENGLAND

BOOK 1

I. THE POLES PRELUDE
II. THE EXPEDITION BY MOONLIGHT
III. WILFRID'S DIPLOMACY
IV. EMILIA'S FIRST TRIAL IN PUBLIC
V. EMILIA PLAYS ON THE CORNET
VI. EMILIA SUPPLIES THE KEY TO HERSELF AND CONTINUES HER
PERFORMANCE ON THE CORNET
VII. THREATS OF A CRISIS IN THE GOVERNMENT OF BROOKFIELD:
AND OF THE VIRTUE RESIDENT IN A TAIL-COAT
VIII. IN WHICH A BIG DRUM SPEEDS THE MARCH OF
EMILIA'S HISTORY
IX. THE RIVAL CLUBS
X. THE LADIES OF BROOKFIELD AT SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

We are to make acquaintance with some serious damsels, as this English
generation knows them, and at a season verging upon May. The ladies of
Brookfield, Arabella, Cornelia, and Adela Pole, daughters of a
flourishing City-of-London merchant, had been told of a singular thing:
that in the neighbouring fir-wood a voice was to be heard by night, so
wonderfully sweet and richly toned, that it required their strong sense
to correct strange imaginings concerning it. Adela was herself the chief
witness to its unearthly sweetness, and her testimony was confirmed by
Edward Buxley, whose ear had likewise taken in the notes, though not on
the same night, as the pair publicly proved by dates. Both declared that
the voice belonged to an opera-singer or a spirit. The ladies of
Brookfield, declining the alternative, perceived that this was a surprise
furnished for their amusement by the latest celebrity of their circle,
Mr. Pericles, their father's business ally and fellow-speculator; Mr.
Pericles, the Greek, the man who held millions of money as dust compared
to a human voice. Fortified by this exquisite supposition, their strong
sense at once dismissed with scorn the idea of anything unearthly,
however divine, being heard at night, in the nineteenth century, within
sixteen miles of London City. They agreed that Mr. Pericles had hired
some charming cantatrice to draw them into the woods and delightfully
bewilder them. It was to be expected of his princely nature, they said.
The Tinleys, of Bloxholme, worshipped him for his wealth; the ladies of
Brookfield assured their friends that the fact of his being a money-maker
was redeemed in their sight by his devotion to music. Music was now the
Art in the ascendant at Brookfield. The ladies (for it is as well to
know at once that they were not of that poor order of women who yield
their admiration to a thing for its abstract virtue only)--the ladies
were scaling society by the help of the Arts. To this laudable end
sacrifices were now made to Euterpe to assist them. As mere daughters of
a merchant, they were compelled to make their house not simply
attractive, but enticing; and, seeing that they liked music, it seemed a
very agreeable device. The Tinleys of Bloxholme still kept to dancing,
and had effectually driven away Mr. Pericles from their gatherings. For
Mr. Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He
presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second.
The Tinleys did not go `so' at all, and consequently they lost the
satirical man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny
scoff her sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more.
The Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this
kind obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream
whereof was their prime nourishment.

That the Tinleys really were their match, they acknowledged, upon the
admission of the despicable nature of the game. The Tinleys had winged a
dreadful shaft at them; not in itself to be dreaded, but that it struck a
weak point; it was a common shot that exploded a magazine; and for a time
it quite upset their social policy, causing them to act like simple young
ladies who feel things and resent them. The ladies of Brookfield had let
it be known that, in their privacy together, they were Pole, Polar, and
North Pole. Pole, Polar, and North Pole were designations of the three
shades of distance which they could convey in a bow: a form of salute
they cherished as peculiarly their own; being a method they had invented
to rebuke the intrusiveness of the outer world, and hold away all
strangers until approved worthy. Even friends had occasionally to submit
to it in a softened form. Arabella, the eldest, and Adela, the youngest,
alternated Pole and Polar; but North Pole was shared by Cornelia with
none. She was the fairest of the three; a nobly-built person; her eyes
not vacant of tenderness when she put off her armour. In her war-panoply
before unhappy strangers, she was a Britomart. They bowed to an iceberg,
which replied to them with the freezing indifference of the floating
colossus, when the Winter sun despatches a feeble greeting messenger-beam
from his miserable Arctic wallet. The simile must be accepted in its
might, for no lesser one will express the scornfulness toward men
displayed by this strikingly well-favoured, formal lady, whose heart of
hearts demanded for her as spouse, a lord, a philosopher, and a
Christian, in one: and he must be a member of Parliament. Hence her
isolated air.

Now, when the ladies of Brookfield heard that their Pole, Polar, and
North Pole, the splendid image of themselves, had been transformed by the
Tinleys, and defiled by them to Pole, Polony, and Maypole, they should
have laughed contemptuously; but the terrible nerve of ridicule quivered
in witness against them, and was not to be stilled. They could not
understand why so coarse a thing should affect them. It stuck in their
flesh. It gave them the idea that they saw their features hideous, but
real, in a magnifying mirror.

There was therefore a feud between the Tinleys and the Poles; and when
Mr. Pericles entirely gave up the former, the latter rewarded him by
spreading abroad every possible kind interpretation of his atrocious bad
manners. He was a Greek, of Parisian gilding, whose Parisian hat flew
off at a moment's notice, and whose savage snarl was heard at the
slightest vexation. His talk of renowned prime-donne by their Christian
names, and the way that he would catalogue emperors, statesmen, and
noblemen known to him, with familiar indifference, as things below the
musical Art, gave a distinguishing tone to Brookfield, from which his
French accentuation of our tongue did not detract.

Mr. Pericles grimaced bitterly at any claim to excellence being set up
for the mysterious voice in the woods. Tapping one forefinger on the
uplifted point of the other, he observed that to sing abroad in the night
air of an English Spring month was conclusive of imbecility; and that no
imbecile sang at all. Because, to sing, involved the highest
accomplishment of which the human spirit could boast. Did the ladies
see? he asked. They thought they saw that he carried on a deception
admirably. In return, they inquired whether he would come with them and
hunt the voice, saying that they would catch it for him. "I shall catch
a cold for myself," said Mr. Pericles, from the elevation of a shrug,
feeling that he was doomed to go forth. He acted reluctance so well that
the ladies affected a pretty imperiousness; and when at last he consented
to join the party, they thanked him with a nicely simulated warmth,
believing that they had pleased him thoroughly.

Their brother Wilfrid was at Brookfield. Six months earlier he had
returned from India, an invalided cornet of light cavalry, with a
reputation for military dash and the prospect of a medal. Then he was
their heroic brother he was now their guard. They love him tenderly, and
admired him when it was necessary; but they had exhausted their own
sensations concerning his deeds of arms, and fancied that he had served
their purpose. And besides, valour is not an intellectual quality, they
said. They were ladies so aspiring, these daughters of the merchant
Samuel Bolton Pole, that, if Napoleon had been their brother, their
imaginations would have overtopped him after his six months' inaction in
the Tuileries. They would by that time have made a stepping-stone of the
emperor. 'Mounting' was the title given to this proceeding. They went
on perpetually mounting. It is still a good way from the head of the
tallest of men to the stars; so they had their work before them; but, as
they observed, they were young. To be brief, they were very ambitious
damsels, aiming at they knew not exactly what, save that it was something
so wide that it had not a name, and so high in the air that no one could
see it. They knew assuredly that their circle did not please them. So,
therefore, they were constantly extending and refining it: extending it
perhaps for the purpose of refining it. Their susceptibilities demanded
that they should escape from a city circle. Having no mother, they ruled
their father's house and him, and were at least commanders of whatsoever
forces they could summon for the task.

It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say, they
supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice Feelings, and
exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades. Whereof more will be said; but
in the meantime it will explain their propensity to mount; it will
account for their irritation at the material obstructions surrounding
them; and possibly the philosopher will now have his eye on the source of
that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which was the crown of
their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross
appreciation of the world by other people, who excel in this and that
accomplishment, persons that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with
the Fine Shades carry their own test of intrinsic value.

Nor let the philosopher venture hastily to despise them as pipers to
dilettante life. Such persons come to us in the order of civilization.
In their way they help to civilize us. Sentimentalists are a perfectly
natural growth of a fat soil. Wealthy communities must engender them.
If with attentive minds we mark the origin of classes, we shall discern
that the Nice Feelings and the Fine Shades play a principal part in our
human development and social history. I dare not say that civilized man
is to be studied with the eye of a naturalist; but my vulgar meaning
might almost be twisted to convey: that our sentimentalists are a variety
owing their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding.
The pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this training. He
does. But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of high German
romances. Here is so notable a difference, that he cannot possibly be
said to be of the family. And I maintain it against him, who have
nevertheless listened attentively to the eulogies pronounced by the
vendors of prize bacon.

After thus stating to you the vast pretensions of the ladies of
Brookfield, it would be unfair to sketch their portraits. Nothing but
comedy bordering on burlesque could issue from the contrast, though they
graced a drawing-room or a pew, and had properly elegant habits and taste
in dress, and were all fair to the sight. Moreover, Adela had not long
quitted school. Outwardly they were not unlike other young ladies with
wits alert. They were at the commencement of their labours on this night
of the expedition when they were fated to meet something greatly
confusing them.

CHAPTER II

Half of a rosy mounting full moon was on the verge of the East as the
ladies, with attendant cavaliers, passed, humming softly, through the
garden-gates. Arabella had, by right of birth, made claim to Mr.
Pericles: not without an unwontedly fretful remonstrance from Cornelia,
who said, "My dear, you must allow that I have some talent for drawing
men out."

And Arabella replied: "Certainly, dear, you have; and I think I have some
too."

The gentle altercation lasted half-an-hour, but they got no farther than
this. Mr. Pericles was either hopeless of protecting himself from such
shrewd assailants, or indifferent to their attacks, for all his defensive
measures were against the cold. He was muffled in a superbly mounted
bearskin, which came up so closely about his ears that Arabella had to
repeat to him all her questions, and as it were force a way for her voice
through the hide. This was provoking, since it not only stemmed the
natural flow of conversation, but prevented her imagination from
decorating the reminiscence of it subsequently (which was her profound
secret pleasure), besides letting in the outer world upon her. Take it
as an axiom, when you utter a sentimentalism, that more than one pair of
ears makes a cynical critic. A sentimentalism requires secresy. I can
enjoy it, and shall treat it respectfully if you will confide it to me
alone; but I and my friends must laugh at it outright.

"Does there not seem a soul in the moonlight?" for instance. Arabella,
after a rapturous glance at the rosy orb, put it to Mr. Pericles, in
subdued impressive tones. She had to repeat her phrase; Mr. Pericles
then echoing, with provoking monotony of tone, "Sol?"--whereupon "Soul!"
was reiterated, somewhat sharply: and Mr. Pericles, peering over the
collar of the bear, with half an eye, continued the sentence, in the
manner of one sent thereby farther from its meaning: "Ze moonlight?"
Despairing and exasperated, Arabella commenced afresh: "I said, there
seems a soul in it"; and Mr. Pericles assented bluntly: "In ze light!"--
which sounded so little satisfactory that Arabella explained, "I mean the
aspect;" and having said three times distinctly what she meant, in answer
to a terrific glare from the unsubmerged whites of the eyes of Mr.
Pericles, this was his comment, almost roared forth:

"Sol! you say so-whole--in ze moonlight--Luna? Hein? Ze aspect is of
Sol!--Yez."

And Mr. Pericles sank into his bear again, while Wilfrid Pole, who was
swinging his long cavalry legs to rearward, shouted; and Mr. Sumner, a
rising young barrister, walking beside Cornelia, smiled a smile of
extreme rigidity. Arabella was punished for claiming rights of birth.
She heard the murmuring course of the dialogue between Cornelia and Mr.
Sumner, sufficiently clear to tell her it was not fictitious and was well
sustained, while her heart was kept thirsting for the key to it. In
advance were Adela and Edward Buxley, who was only a rich alderman's only
son, but had the virtue of an extraordinary power of drawing caricatures,
and was therefore useful in exaggerating the features of disagreeable
people, and showing how odious they were: besides endearing pleasant ones
exhibiting how comic they could be. Gossips averred that before Mr. Pole
had been worried by his daughters into giving that mighty sum for
Brookfield, Arabella had accepted Edward as her suitor; but for some
reason or other he had apparently fallen from his high estate. To tell
the truth, Arabella conceived that he had simply obeyed her wishes, while
he knew he was naughtily following his own; and Adela, without
introspection at all, was making her virgin effort at the caricaturing of
our sex in his person: an art for which she promised well.

Out of the long black shadows of the solitary trees of the park, and
through low yellow moonlight, they passed suddenly into the muffed ways
of the wood. Mr. Pericles was ineffably provoking. He had come for
gallantry's sake, and was not to be rallied, and would echo every
question in a roar, and there was no drawing of the man out at all. He
knocked against branches, and tripped over stumps, and ejaculated with
energy; but though he gave no heed or help to his fair associate, she
thought not the worse of him, so heroic can women be toward any creature
that will permit himself to be clothed by a mystery. At times the party
hung still, fancying the voice aloft, and then, after listening to the
unrelieved stillness, they laughed, and trod the stiff dry ferns and soft
mosses once more. At last they came to a decided halt, when the
proposition to return caused Adela to come up to Mr. Pericles and say to
him, "Now, you must confess! You have prohibited her from singing to-
night so that we may continue to be mystified. I call this quite
shameful of you!"

And even as Mr. Pericles was protesting that he was the most mystified of
the company, his neck lengthened, and his head went round, and his ear
was turned to the sky, while he breathed an elaborate "Ah!" And sure
enough that was the voice of the woods, cleaving the night air, not
distant. A sleepy fire of early moonlight hung through the dusky fir-
branches. The voice had the woods to itself, and seemed to fill them and
soar over them, it was so full and rich, so light and sweet. And now, to
add to the marvel, they heard a harp accompaniment, the strings being
faintly touched, but with firm fingers. A woman's voice: on that could
be no dispute. Tell me, what opens heaven more flamingly to heart and
mind, than the voice of a woman, pouring clear accordant notes to the
blue night sky, that grows light blue to the moon? There was no flourish
in her singing. All the notes were firm, and rounded, and sovereignly
distinct. She seemed to have caught the ear of Night, and sang confident
of her charm. It was a grand old Italian air, requiring severity of tone
and power. Now into great mournful hollows the voice sank steadfastly.
One soft sweep of the strings succeeded a deep final note, and the
hearers breathed freely.

"Stradella!" said the Greek, folding his arms.

The ladies were too deeply impressed to pursue their play with him. Real
emotions at once set aside the semi-credence they had given to their own
suggestions.

"Hush! she will sing again," whispered Adela. "It is the most delicious
contralto." Murmurs of objection to the voice being characterized at all
by any technical word, or even for a human quality, were heard.

"Let me find zis woman!" cried the prose enthusiast Mr. Pericles,
imperiously, with his bearskin thrown back on his shoulders, and forth
they stepped, following him.

In the middle of the wood there was a sandy mound, rising half the height
of the lesser firs, bounded by a green-grown vallum, where once an old
woman, hopelessly a witch, had squatted, and defied the authorities to
make her budge: nor could they accomplish the task before her witch-soul
had taken wing in the form of a black night-bird, often to be heard
jarring above the spot. Lank dry weeds and nettles, and great lumps of
green and gray moss, now stood on the poor old creature's place of
habitation, and the moon, slanting through the fir-clumps, was scattered
on the blossoms of twisted orchard-trees, gone wild again. Amid this
desolation, a dwarfed pine, whose roots were partially bared as they
grasped the broken bank that was its perch, threw far out a cedar-like
hand. In the shadow of it sat the fair singer. A musing touch of her
harp-strings drew the intruders to the charmed circle, though they could
discern nothing save the glimmer of the instrument and one set of fingers
caressing it. How she viewed their rather impertinent advance toward
her, till they had ranged in a half-circle nearer and nearer, could not
be guessed. She did not seem abashed in any way, for, having preluded,
she threw herself into another song.

The charm was now more human, though scarcely less powerful. This was a
different song from the last: it was not the sculptured music of the old
school, but had the richness and fulness of passionate blood that marks
the modern Italian, where there is much dallying with beauty in the thick
of sweet anguish. Here, at a certain passage of the song, she gathered
herself up and pitched a nervous note, so shrewdly triumphing, that, as
her voice sank to rest, her hearers could not restrain a deep murmur of
admiration.

Then came an awkward moment. The ladies did not wish to go, and they
were not justified in stopping. They were anxious to speak, and they
could not choose the word to utter. Mr. Pericles relieved them by moving
forward and doffing his hat, at the same time begging excuse for the
rudeness they were guilty of.

The fair singer answered, with the quickness that showed a girl: "Oh,
stay; do stay, if I please you!" A singular form of speech, it was
thought by the ladies.

She added: "I feel that I sing better when I have people to listen to
me."

"You find it more sympathetic, do you not?" remarked Cornelia.

"I don't know," responded the unknown, with a very honest smile. "I like
it."

She was evidently uneducated. "A professional?" whispered Adela to
Arabella. She wanted little invitation to exhibit her skill, at all
events, for, at a word, the clear, bold, but finely nervous voice, was
pealing to a brisker measure, that would have been joyous but for one
fall it had, coming unexpectedly, without harshness, and winding up the
song in a ringing melancholy.

After a few bars had been sung, Mr. Pericles was seen tapping his
forehead perplexedly. The moment it ended, he cried out, in a tone of
vexed apology for strange ignorance: "But I know not it? It is Italian--
yes, I swear it is Italian! But--who then? It is superbe! But I know
not it!"

"It is mine," said the young person.

"Your music, miss?"

"I mean, I composed it."

"Permit me to say, Brava!"

The ladies instantly petitioned to have it sung to them again; and
whether or not they thought more of it, or less, now that the authorship
was known to them, they were louder in their applause, which seemed to
make the little person very happy.

"You are sure it pleases you?" she exclaimed.

They were very sure it pleased them. Somehow the ladies were growing
gracious toward her, from having previously felt too humble, it may be.
She was girlish in her manner, and not imposing in her figure. She would
be a sweet mystery to talk about, they thought: but she had ceased to be
quite the same mystery to them.

"I would go on singing to you," she said; "I could sing all night long:
but my people at the farm will not keep supper for me, when it's late,
and I shall have to go hungry to bed, if I wait."

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