Sandra Belloni by George Meredith, v7

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Emilia threw up both hands to her eyes: but Wilfrid, all on fire with a
word, made one of her hands his own, repeating eagerly: "Once? once?"

"Once?" she echoed him.

"'Once my love?'" said he. "Not now?--does it mean, 'not now?' My
darling!--pardon me, I must say it. My beloved! you said: 'He who was
once my lover:'--you said that. What does it mean? Not that--not--?
does it mean, all's over? Why did you bring me here? You know I must
love you forever. Speak! 'Once?'"

"'Once?'" Emilia was breathing quick, but her voice was well contained:
"Yes, I said 'once.' You were then."

"Till that night in Devon?

"Let it be."

"But you love me still?"

"We won't speak of it."

"I see! You cannot forgive. Good heavens! I think I remember your
saying so once--Once! Yes, then: you said it then, during our 'Once;'
when I little thought you would be merciless to me--who loved you from
the first! the very first! I love you now! I wake up in the night,
thinking I hear your voice. You haunt me. Cruel! cold!--who guards you
and watches over you but the man you now hate? You sit there as if you
could make yourself stone when you pleased. Did I not chastise that man
Pericles publicly because he spoke a single lie of you? And by that act
I have made an enemy to our house who may crush us in ruin. Do I regret
it? No. I would do any madness, waste all my blood for you, die for
you!"

Emilia's fingers received a final twist, and were dropped loose. She let
them hang, looking sadly downward. Melancholy is the most irritating
reply to passion, and Wilfrid's heart waged fierce at the sight of her,
grown beautiful!--grown elegant!--and to reject him! When, after a
silence which his pride would not suffer him to break, she spoke to ask
what Mr. Pericles had said of her, he was enraged, forgot himself, and
answered: "Something disgraceful."

Deep colour came on Emilia. "You struck him, Wilfrid?"

"It was a small punishment for his infamous lie, and, whatever might be
the consequences, I would do it again."

"Wilfrid, I have heard what he has said. Madame Marini has told me. I
wish you had not struck him. I cannot think of him apart from the days
when I had my voice. I cannot bear to think of your having hurt him. He
was not to blame. That is, he did not say: it was not untrue."

She took a breath to make this last statement, and continued with the
same peculiar implicity of distinctness, which a terrific thunder of
"What?" from Wilfrid did not overbear: "I was quite mad that day I went
to him. I think, in my despair I spoke things that may have led him to
fancy the truth of what he has said. On my honour, I do not know. And I
cannot remember what happened after for the week I wandered alone about
London. Mr. Powys found me on a wharf by the river at night."

A groan burst from Wilfrid. Emilia's instinct had divined the antidote
that this would be to the poison of revived love in him, and she felt
secure, though he had again taken her hand; but it was she who nursed a
mere sentiment now, while passion sprang in him, and she was not prepared
for the delirium with which he enveloped her. She listened to his raving
senselessly, beginning to think herself lost. Her tortured hands were
kissed; her eyes gazed into. He interpreted her stupefaction as
contrition, her silence as delicacy, her changeing of colour as flying
hues of shame: the partial coldness at their meeting he attributed to the
burden on her mind, and muttering in a magnanimous sublimity that he
forgave her, he claimed her mouth with force.

"Don't touch me!" cried Emilia, showing terror.

"Are you not mine?"

"You must not kiss me."

Wilfrid loosened her waist, and became in a minute outwardly most cool
and courteous.

"My successor may object. I am bound to consider him. Pardon me.
Once!--"

The wretched insult and silly emphasis passed harmlessly from her: but a
word had led her thoughts to Merthyr's face, and what is meant by the
phrase 'keeping oneself pure,' stood clearly in Emilia's mind. She had
not winced; and therefore Wilfrid judged that his shot had missed because
there was no mark. With his eye upon her sideways, showing its circle
wide as a parrot's, he asked her one of those questions that lovers
sometimes permit between themselves. "Has another--?" It is here as it
was uttered. Eye-speech finished the sentence.

Rapidly a train of thought was started in Emilia, and she came to this
conclusion, aloud: "Then I love nobody!" For the had never kissed
Merthyr, or wished for his kiss.

"You do not?" said Wilfrid, after a silence. "You are generous in being
candid."

A pressure of intensest sorrow bowed his head. The real feeling in him
stole to Emilia like a subtle flame.

"Oh! what can I do for you?" she cried.

"Nothing, if you do not love me," he was replying mournfully, when, "Yes!
yes!" rushed to his lips; "marry me: marry me to-morrow. You have loved
me. 'I am never to leave you!' Can you forget the night when you said
it? Emilia! Marry me and you will love me again. You must. This man,
whoever he is--Ah! why am I such a brute! Come! be mine! Let me call
you my own darling! Emilia!--or say quietly 'you have nothing to hope
for:' I shall not reproach you, believe me."

He looked resigned. The abrupt transition had drawn her eyes to his.
She faltered: "I cannot be married." And then: "How could I guess that
you felt in this way?"

"Who told me that I should?" said he. "Your words have come true. You
predicted that I should fly from 'that woman,' as you called her, and
come to you. See! here it is exactly as you willed it. You--you are
changed. You throw your magic on me, and then you are satisfied, and
turn elsewhere."

Emilia's conscience smote her with a verification of this charge, and she
trembled, half-intoxicated for the moment, by the aspect of her power.
This filled her likewise with a dangerous pity for its victim; and now,
putting out both hands to him, her chin and shoulders raised
entreatingly, she begged the victim to spare her any word of marriage.

"But you go, you run away from me--I don't know where you are or what you
are doing," said Wilfrid. "And you leave me to that woman. She loves
the Austrians, as you know. There! I will ask nothing--only this: I
will promise, if I quit the Queen's service for good, not to wear the
white uniform--"

"Oh!" Emilia breathed inward deeply, scarce noticing the 'if' that
followed; nodding quick assent to the stipulation before she heard the
nature of it. It was, that she should continue in England.

"Your word," said Wilfrid; and she pledged it, and did not think she was
granting much in the prospect of what she gained.

"You will, then?" said he.

"Yes, I will."

"On your honour?"

These reiterated questions were simply pretexts for steps nearer to the
answering lips.

"And I may see you?" he went on.

"Yes."

"Wherever you are staying? And sometimes alone? Alone!--"

"Not if you do not know that I am to be respected," said Emilia, huddled
in the passionate fold of his arms. He released her instantly, and was
departing, wounded; but his heart counselled wiser proceedings.

"To know that you are in England, breathing the same air with me, near
me! is enough. Since we are to meet on those terms, let it be so. Let
me only see you till some lucky shot puts me out of your way."

This 'some lucky shot,' which is commonly pointed at themselves by the
sentimental lovers, with the object of hitting the very centre of the
hearts of obdurate damsels, glanced off Emilia's, which was beginning to
throb with a comprehension of all that was involved in the word she had
given.

"I have your promise?" he repeated: and she bent her head.

"Not," he resumed, taking jealousy to counsel, now that he had advanced a
step: "Not that I would detain you against your will! I can't expect to
make such a figure at the end of the piece as your Count Branciani--who,
by the way, served his friends oddly, however well he may have served his
country."

"His friends?" She frowned.

"Did he not betray the conspirators? He handed in names, now and then."

"Oh!" she cried, "you understand us no better than an Austrian. He
handed in names--yes he was obliged to lull suspicion. Two or three of
the least implicated volunteered to be betrayed by him; they went and
confessed, and put the Government on a wrong track. Count Branciani made
a dish of traitors--not true men--to satisfy the Austrian ogre. No one
knew the head of the plot till that
night of the spy. Do you not see?--he weeded the conspiracy!"

"Poor fellow!" Wilfrid answered, with a contracted mouth: "I pity him
for being cut off from his handsome wife."

"I pity her for having to live," said Emilia.

And so their duett dropped to a finish. He liked her phrase better than
his own, and being denied any privileges, and feeling stupefied by a
position which both enticed and stung him, he remarked that he presumed
he must not detain her any longer; whereupon she gave him her hand. He
clutched the ready hand reproachfully.

"Good-bye," said she.

"You are the first to say it," he complained.

"Will you write to that Austrian colonel, your cousin, to say "Never!
never!" to-morrow, Wilfrid?"

"While you are in England, I shall stay, be sure of that."

She bade him give her love to all Brookfield.

"Once you had none to give but what I let you take back for the purpose!"
he said. "Farewell! I shall see the harp to-night. It stands in the
old place. I will not have it moved or touched till you--"

"Ah! how kind you were, Wilfrid!"

"And how lovely you are!"

There was no struggle to preserve the backs of her fingers from his lips,
and, as this time his phrase was not palpably obscured by the one it
countered, artistic sentiment permitted him to go.

CHAPTER LIII

A minute after his parting with Emilia, Wilfrid swung round in the street
and walked back at great strides. "What a fool I was not to see that she
was acting indifference!" he cried. "Let me have two seconds with her!"
But how that was to be contrived his diplomatic brain refused to say.
"And what a stiff, formal fellow I was all the time!" He considered that
he had not uttered a sentence in any way pointed to touch her heart.
"She must think I am still determined to marry that woman."

Wilfrid had taken his stand on the opposite side of the street, and
beheld a male figure in the dusk, that went up to the house and then
stood back scanning the windows. Wounded by his audacious irreverence
toward the walls behind which his beloved was sheltered, Wilfrid crossed
and stared at the intruder. It proved to be Braintop.

"How do you do, sir!--no! that can't be the house," stammered Braintop,
with a very earnest scrutiny.

"What house? what do you want?" enquired Wilfrid.

"Jenkinson," was the name that won the honour of rescuing Braintop from
this dilemma.

"No; it is Lady Gosstre's house: Miss Belloni is living there; and stop:
you know her. Just wait, and take in two or three words from me, and
notice particularly how she is looking, and the dress she wears. You can
say--say that Mrs. Chump sent you to enquire after Miss Belloni's
health."

Wilfrid tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and wrote:

"I can be free to-morrow. One word! I shall expect it, with your name
in full."

But even in the red heat of passion his born diplomacy withheld his own
signature. It was not difficult to override Braintop's scruples about
presenting himself, and Wilfrid paced a sentinel measure awaiting the
reply. "Free to-morrow," he repeated, with a glance at his watch under a
lamp: and thus he soliloquized: "What a time that fellow is! Yes, I can
be free to-morrow if I will. I wonder what the deuce Gambier had to do
in Monmouthshire. If he has been playing with my sister's reputation, he
shall have short shrift. That fellow Braintop sees her now--my little
Emilia! my bird! She won't have changed her dress till she has dined.
If she changes it before she goes out--by Jove, if she wears it to-night
before all those people, that'll mean 'Good-bye' to me: 'Addio, caro,' as
those olive women say, with their damned cold languor, when they have
given you up. She's not one of them! Good God! she came into the room
looking like a little Empress. I'll swear her hand trembled when I went,
though! My sisters shall see her in that dress. She must have a clever
lady's maid to have done that knot to her back hair. She's getting as
full of art as any of them--Oh! lovely little darling! And when she
smiles and holds out her hand! What is it--what is it about her? Her
upper lip isn't perfectly cut, there's some fault with her nose, but I
never saw such a mouth, or such a face. "Free to-morrow?" Good God!
she'll think I mean I'm free to take a walk!"

At this view of the ghastly shortcoming of his letter as regards
distinctness, and the prosaic misinterpretation it was open to, Wilfrid
called his inventive wits to aid, and ran swiftly to the end of the
street. He had become--as like unto a lunatic as resemblance can
approach identity. Commanding the length of the pavement for an instant,
to be sure that no Braintop was in sight, he ran down a lateral street,
but the stationer's shop he was in search of beamed nowhere visible for
him, and he returned at the same pace to experience despair at the
thought that he might have missed Braintop issuing forth, for whom he
scoured the immediate neighbourhood, and overhauled not a few quiet
gentlemen of all ages. "An envelope!" That was the object of his
desire, and for that he wooed a damsel passing jauntily with a jug in her
hand, first telling her that he knew her name was Mary, at which singular
piece of divination she betrayed much natural astonishment. But a fine
round silver coin and an urgent request for an envelope, told her as
plainly as a blank confession that this was a lover. She informed him
that she lived three streets off, where there were shops. "Well, then,"
said Wilfrid, "bring me the envelope here, and you'll have another
opportunity of looking down the area."

"Think of yourself," replied she, saucily; but proved a diligent
messenger. Then Wilfrid wrote on a fresh slip:

"When I said "Free," I meant free in heart and without a single chain to
keep me from you. From any moment that you please, I am free. This is
written in the dark."

He closed the envelope, and wrote Emilia's name and the address as black
as his pencil could achieve it, and with a smart double-knock he
deposited the missive in the box. From his station opposite he guessed
the instant when it was taken out, and from that judged when she would be
reading it. Or perhaps she would not read it till she was alone? "That
must be her bedroom," he said, looking for a light in one of the upper
windows; but the voice of a fellow who went by with: "I should keep that
to myself, if I was you," warned him to be more discreet.

"Well, here I am. I can't leave the street," quoth Wilfrid, to the stock
of philosophy at his disposal. He burned with rage to think of how he
might be exhibiting himself before Powys and his sister.

It was half-past nine when a carriage drove up to the door. Into this
Mr. Powys presently handed Georgiana and Emilia. Braintop followed the
ladies, and then the coachman received his instructions and drove away.
Forthwith Wilfrid started in pursuit. He calculated that if his wind
held till he could jump into a light cab, his legitimate prey Braintop
might be caught. For, "they can't be taking him to any party with them!"
he chose to think, and it was a fair calculation that they were simply
conducting Braintop part of his way home. The run was pretty swift.
Wilfrid's blood was fired by the pace, until, forgetting the traitor
Braintop, up rose Truth from the bottom of the well in him, and he felt
that his sole desire was to see Emilia once more--but once! that night.
Running hard, in the midst of obstacles, and with eye and mind fined on
one object, disasters befell him. He knocked apples off a stall, and
heard vehement hallooing behind: he came into collision with a gentleman
of middle age courting digestion as he walked from his trusty dinner at
home to his rubber at the Club: finally he rushed full tilt against a
pot-boy who was bringing all his pots broadside to the flow of the
street. "By Jove! is this what they drink?" he gasped, and dabbed with
his handkerchief at the beer-splashes, breathlessly hailing the looked-
for cab, and, with hot brow and straightened-out forefinger, telling the
driver to keep that carriage in sight. The pot-boy had to be satisfied
on his master's account, and then on his own, and away shot Wilfrid, wet
with beer from throat to knee--to his chief protesting sense, nothing but
an exhalation of beer! "Is this what they drink?" he groaned, thinking
lamentably of the tastes of the populace. All idea of going near Emilia
was now abandoned. An outward application of beer quenched his frenzy.
She seemed as an unattainable star seen from the depths of foul pits.
"Stop!" he cried from the window.

"Here we are, sir," said the cabman.

The carriage had drawn up, and a footman's alarum awakened one of the
houses. The wretched cabman had likewise drawn up right under the
windows of the carriage. Wilfrid could have pulled the trigger of a
pistol at his forehead that moment. He saw that Miss Ford had recognized
him, and he at once bowed elegantly. She dropped the window, and said,
"You are in evening dress, I think; we will take you in with us."

Wilfrid hoped eagerly he might be allowed to hand them to the door, and
made three skips across the mire. Emilia had her hands gathered away
from the chances of seizure. In wild rage he began protesting that he
could not possibly enter, when Georgiana said, "I wish to speak to you,"
and put feminine pressure upon him. He was almost on the verge of the
word "beer," by way of despairing explanation, when the door closed
behind him.

"Permit me to say a word to your recent companion. He is my father's
clerk. I had to see him on urgent business; that is why I took this
liberty," he said, and retreated.

Braintop was still there, quietly posted, performing upon his head with a
pocket hair-brush.

Wilfrid put Braintop's back to the light, and said, "Is my shirt soiled?"

After a short inspection, Braintop pronounced that it was, "just a
little."

"Do you smell anything?" said Wilfrid, and hung with frightful suspense
on the verdict. "A fellow upset beer on me."

"It is beer!" sniffed Braintop.

"What on earth shall I do?" was the rejoinder; and Wilfrid tried to
remember whether he had felt any sacred joy in touching Emilia's dress as
they went up the steps to the door.

Braintop fumbled in the breast-pocket of his coat. "I happen to have,"
he said, rather shamefacedly.

"What is it?"

"Mrs. Chump gave it to me to-day. She always makes me accept something:
I can't refuse. It's this:--the remains of some scent she insisted on my
taking, in a bottle."

Wilfrid plucked at the stopper with a reckless desperation, saturated his
handkerchief, and worked at his breast as if he were driving a lusty
dagger into it.

"What scent is it?" he asked hurriedly.

"Alderman's Bouquet, sir."

"Of all the detestable!---" Wilfrid had no time for more, owing to fresh
arrivals. He hastened in, with his smiling, wary face, half trusting
that there might after all be purification in Alderman's Bouquet, and
promising heaven due gratitude if Emilia's senses discerned not the curse
on him. In the hall a gust from the great opening contention between
Alderman's Bouquet and bad beer, stifled his sickly hope. Frantic, but
under perfect self-command outwardly, he glanced to right and left, for
the suggestion of a means of escape. They were seven steps up the stairs
before his wits prompted him to say to Georgiana, "I have just heard very
serious news from home. I fear--"

"What?--or, pardon me: does it call you away?" she asked, and Emilia gave
him a steady look.

"I fear I cannot remain here. Will you excuse me?"

His face spoke plainly now of mental torture repressed. Georgiana put
her hand out in full sympathy, and Emilia said, in her deep whisper, "Let
me hear to-morrow." Then they bowed. Wilfrid was in the street again.

"Thank God, I've seen her!" was his first thought, overhearing "What did
she think of me?" as he sighed with relief at his escape. For, lo! the
Branciani dress was not on her shoulders, and therefore he might imagine
what he pleased:--that she had arrayed herself so during the day to
delight his eyes; or that, he having seen her in it, she had determined
none others should. Though feeling utterly humiliated, he was yet happy.
Driving to the station, he perceived starlight overhead, and blessed it;
while his hand waved busily to conduct a current of fresh, oblivious air
to his nostrils. The quiet heavens seemed all crowding to look down on
the quiet circle of the firs, where Emilia's harp had first been heard by
him, and they took her music, charming his blood with imagined harmonies,
as he looked up to them. Thus all the way to Brookfield his fancy
soared, plucked at from below by Alderman's Bouquet.

The Philosopher, up to this point rigidly excluded, rushes forward to the
footlights to explain in a note, that Wilfrid, thus setting a perfume to
contend with a stench, instead of wasting for time, change of raiment,
and the broad lusty airs of heaven to blow him fresh again, symbolizes
the vice of Sentimentalism, and what it is always doing. Enough!

CHAPTER LIV

"Let me hear to-morrow." Wilfrid repeated Emilia's petition in the tone
she had used, and sent a delight through his veins even with that clumsy
effort of imitation. He walked from the railway to Brookfield through
the circle of firs, thinking of some serious tale of home to invent for
her ears to-morrow. Whatever it was, he was able to conclude it--"But
all's right now." He noticed that the dwarf pine, under whose spreading
head his darling sat when he saw her first, had been cut down. Its
absence gave him an ominous chill.

The first sight that saluted him as the door opened, was a pile of Mrs.
Chump's boxes: he listened, and her voice resounded from the library.
Gainsford's eye expressed a discretion significant that there had been an
explosion in the house.

"I sha'nt have to invent much," said Wilfrid to himself, bitterly.

There was a momentary appearance of Adela at the library-door; and over
her shoulder came an outcry from Mrs. Chump. Arabella then spoke: Mr.
Pole and Cornelia following with a word, to which Mrs. Chump responded
shrilly: "Ye shan't talk to 'm, none of ye, till I've had the bloom of
his ear, now!" A confused hubbub of English and Irish ensued. The
ladies drew their brother into the library.

Doubtless you have seen a favourite sketch of the imaginative youthful
artist, who delights to portray scenes on a raft amid the tossing waters,
where sweet and satiny ladies, in a pardonable abandonment to the
exigencies of the occasion, are exhibiting the full energy and activity
of creatures that existed before sentiment was born. The ladies of
Brookfield had almost as utterly cast off their garb of lofty reserve and
inscrutable superiority. They were begging Mrs. Chump to be, for pity's
sake, silent. They were arguing with the woman. They were
remonstrating--to such an extent as this, in reply to an infamous
outburst: "No, no: indeed, Mrs. Chump, indeed!" They rose, as she rose,
and stood about her, motioning a beseeching emphasis with their hands.
Not visible for one second was the intense indignation at their fate
which Wilfrid, spying keenly into them, perceived. This taught him that
the occasion was as grave as could be. In spite of the oily words his
father threw from time to time abruptly on the tumult, he guessed what
had happened.

Briefly, Mrs. Chump, aided by Braintop, her squire, had at last hunted
Mr. Pericles down, and the wrathful Greek had called her a beggar. With
devilish malice he had reproached her for speculating in such and such
Bonds, and sending ventures to this and that hemisphere, laughing
infernally as he watched her growing amazement. "Ye're jokin', Mr.
Paricles," she tried to say and think; but the very naming of poverty had
given her shivers. She told him how she had come to him because of Mr.
Pole's reproach, which accused her of causing the rupture. Mr. Pericles
twisted the waxy points of his moustache. "I shall advise you, go home,"
he said; "go to a lawyer: say, 'I will see my affairs, how zey stand.'
Ze man will find Pole is ruined. It may be--I do not know--Pole has left
a little of your money; yes, ma'am, it may be."

The end of the interview saw Mrs. Chump flying past Mr. Pericles to where
Braintop stood awaiting her with a meditative speculation on that
official promotion which in his attention to the lady he anticipated. It
need scarcely be remarked that he was astonished to receive a scent-
bottle on the spot, as the only reward his meritorious service was
probably destined ever to meet with. Breathless in her panic, Mrs. Chump
assured him she was a howling beggar, and the smell of a scent was like a
crool blow to her;" above all, the smell of Alderman's Bouquet, which
Chump--"tell'n a lie, ye know, Mr. Braintop, said was after him. And I,
smell'n at 't over 'n Ireland--a raw garl I was--I just thought 'm a
prince, the little sly fella! And oh! I'm a beggar, I am!" With which,
she shouted in the street, and put Braintop to such confusion that he
hailed a cab recklessly, declaring to her she had no time to lose, if she
wished to catch the train. Mrs. Chump requested the cabman that as a man
possessed of a feeling heart for the interests of a helpless woman, he
would drive fast; and, at the station, disputed his charge on the ground
of the knowledge already imparted to him of her precarious financial
state. In this frame of mind she fell upon Brookfield, and there was
clamour in the house. Wilfrid arrived two hours after Mrs. Chump. For
that space the ladies had been saying over and over again empty words to
pacify her. The task now devolved on their brother. Mr. Pole, though he
had betrayed nothing under the excitement of the sudden shock, had lost
the proper control of his mask. Wilfrid commenced by fixedly listening
to Mrs. Chump until for the third time her breath had gone. Then, taking
on a smile, he said: "Perhaps you are aware that Mr. Pericles has a
particular reason for animosity tome. We've disagreed together, that's
all. I suppose it's the habit of those fellows to attack a whole family
where one member of it offends them." As soon as the meaning of this was
made clear to Mrs. Chump, she caught it to her bosom for comfort; and
finding it gave less than at the moment she required, she flung it away
altogether; and then moaned, a suppliant, for it once more. "The only
thing, if you are in a state of alarm about my father's affairs, is for
him to show you by his books that his house is firm," said Wilfrid, now
that he had so far helped to eject suspicion from her mind.

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