Sandra Belloni by George Meredith, v7

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"Will Pole do ut?" ejaculated Mrs. Chump, half off her seat.

"Of course I will--of course! of course. Haven't I told you so?" said
Mr. Pole, blinking mightily from his armchair over the fire. "Sit down,
Martha."

"Oh! but how'll I understand ye, Pole?" she cried.

"I'll do my best to assist in explaining," Wilfrid condescended to say.

The ladies were touched when Mrs. Chump replied, with something of a
curtsey, "I'll thank ye vary much, sir." She added immediately, "Mr.
Wilfrud," as if correcting the 'sir,' for sounding cold.

It was so trustful and simple, that it threw alight on the woman under
which they had not yet beheld her. Compassion began to stir in their
bosoms, and with it an inexplicable sense of shame, which soon threw any
power of compassion into the background. They dared not ask themselves
whether it was true that their father had risked the poor thing's money
in some desperate stake. What hopeful force was left to them they
devoted to her property, and Adela determined to pray that night for its
safe preservation. The secret feeling in the hearts of the ladies was,
that in putting them on their trial with poverty, Celestial Powers would
never at the same time think it necessary to add disgrace. Consequently,
and as a defence against the darker dread, they now, for the first time,
fully believed that monetary ruin had befallen their father. They were
civil to Mrs. Chump, and forgiving toward her brogue, and her naked
outcries of complaint and suddenly--suggested panic; but their pity, save
when some odd turn in her conduct moved them, was reserved dutifully for
their father. His wretched sensations at the pouring of a storm of tears
from the exhausted creature, caused Arabella to rise and say to Mrs.
Chump kindly, "Now let me take you to bed."

But such a novel mark of tender civility caused the woman to exclaim:
"Oh, dear! if ye don't sound like wheedlin' to keep me blind."

Even this was borne with. "Come; it will do you good to rest," said
Arabella.

"And how'll I sleep?"

"By shutting my eye--peeps,"--as I used to tell my old nurse," said
Adela; and Mrs. Chump, accustomed to an occasional (though not public)
bit of wheedling from her, was partially reassured.

"I'll sit with you till you do sleep," said Arabella.

"Suppose," Mrs. Chump moaned, "suppose I'm too poor aver to repay ye? If
I'm a bankrup'?--oh!"

Arabella smiled. "Whatever I may do is certainly not done for a
remuneration, and such a service as this, at least, you need not speak
of."

Mrs. Chump's evident surprise, and doubt of the honesty of the change in
her manner, caused Arabella very acutely to feel its dishonesty. She
looked at Cornelia with envy. The latter lady was leaning meditatively,
her arm on a side of her chair, like a pensive queen, with a ready, mild,
embracing look for the company. 'Posture' seemed always to triumph over
action.

Before quitting the room, Mrs. Chump asked Mr. Pole whether he would be
up early the next morning.

"Very early,--you beat me, if you can," said he, aware that the question
was put as a test to his sincerity.

"Oh, dear! Suppose it's onnly a false alarrm of the 'bomunable Mr.
Paricles--which annybody'd have listened to--ye know that!" said Mrs.
Chump, going forth.

She stopped in the doorway, and turned her head round, sniffing, in a
very pronounced way. "Oh, it's you," she flashed on Wilfrid; "it's you,
my dear, that smell so like poor Chump. Oh! if we're not rooned, won't
we dine together! Just give me a kiss, please. The smell of ye's
comfortin'."

Wilfrid bent his cheek forward, affecting to laugh, though the subject
was tragic to him.

"Oh! perhaps I'll sleep, and not look in the mornin' like that beastly
tallow, Mr. Paricles says I spent such a lot of money on, speculator--
whew, I hate ut!--and hemp too! Me!--Martha Chump! Do I want to hang
myself, and burn forty thousand pounds worth o' candles round my corpse
danglin' there? Now, there, now! Is that sense? And what'd Pole want
to buy me all that grease for? And where'd I keep ut, I'll ask ye? And
sure they wouldn't make me a bankrup' on such a pretence as that. For,
where's the Judge that's got the heart?"

Having apparently satisfied her reason with these interrogations, Mrs.
Chump departed, shaking her head at Wilfrid: "Ye smile so nice, ye do!"
by the way. Cornelia and Adela then rose, and Wilfrid was left alone
with his father.

It was natural that he should expect the moment for entire confidence
between them to have come. He crossed his legs, leaning over the
fireplace, and waited. The old man perceived him, and made certain
humming sounds, as of preparation. Wilfrid was half tempted to think he
wanted assistance, and signified attention; upon which Mr. Pole became
immediately absorbed in profound thought.

"Singular it is, you know," he said at last, with a candid air, "people
who know nothing about business have the oddest ideas--no common sense in
'em!"

After that he fell dead silent.

Wilfrid knew that it would be hard for him to speak. To encourage him,
he said: "You mean Mrs. Chump, sir?"

"Oh! silly woman--absurd! No, I mean all of you; every man Jack, as
Martha'd say. You seem to think--but, well! there! let's go to bed."

"To bed?" cried Wilfrid, frowning.

"Why, when it's two or three o'clock in the morning, what's an old fellow
to do? My feet are cold, and I'm queer in the back--can't talk! Light
my candle, young gentleman--my candle there, don't you see it? And you
look none of the freshest. A nap on your pillow'll do you no harm."

"I wanted to talk to you a little, sir," said Wilfrid, about as much
perplexed as he was irritated.

"Now, no talk of bankers' books to-night!" rejoined his father. "I can't
and won't. No cheques written 'tween night and morning. That's
positive. There! there's two fingers. Shall have three to-morrow
morning--a pen in 'em, perhaps."

With which wretched pleasantry the little merchant nodded to his son, and
snatching up his candle, trotted to the door.

"By the way, give a look round my room upstairs, to see all right when
you're going to turn in yourself," he said, before disappearing.

The two fingers given him by his father to shake at parting, had told
Wilfrid more than the words. And yet how small were these troubles
around him compared with what he himself was suffering! He looked
forward to the bittersweet hour verging upon dawn, when he should be
writing to Emilia things to melt the vilest obduracy. The excitement
which had greeted him on his arrival at Brookfield was to be thanked for
its having made him partially forget his humiliation. He had, of course,
sufficient rational feeling to be chagrined by calamity, but his dominant
passion sucked sustaining juices from every passing event.

In obedience to his father's request, Wilfrid went presently into the old
man's bedroom, to see that all was right. The curtains of the bed were
drawn close, and the fire in the grate burnt steadily. Calm sleep seemed
to fill the chamber. Wilfrid was retiring, with a revived anger at his
father's want of natural confidence in him, or cowardly secresy. His
name was called, and he stopped short.

"Yes, sir?" he said.

"Door's shut?"

"Shut fast."

The voice, buried in curtains, came after a struggle.

"You've done this, Wilfrid. Now, don't answer:--I can't stand talk. And
you must undo it. Pericles can if he likes. That's enough for you to
know. He can. He won't see me. You know why. If he breaks with me--
it's a common case in any business--I'm... we're involved together."
Then followed a deep sigh. The usual crisp brisk way of his speaking was
resumed in hollow tones: "You must stop it. Now, don't answer. Go to
Pericles to-morrow. You must. Nothing wrong, if you go at once."

"But, Sir! Good heaven!" interposed Wilfrid, horrified by the thought of
the penance here indicated.

The bed shook violently.

"If not," was uttered with a sort of muted vehemence, "there's another
thing you can do. Go to the undertaker's, and order coffins for us all.
There--good night!"

The bed shook again. Wilfrid stood eyeing the mysterious hangings, as if
some dark oracle had spoken from behind them. In fear of irritating the
old man, and almost as much in fear of bringing on himself a revelation
of the frightful crisis that could only be averted by his apologizing
personally to the man he had struck, Wilfrid stole from the room.

CHAPTER LV

There is a man among our actors here who may not be known to you. It had
become the habit of Sir Purcell Barren's mind to behold himself as under
a peculiarly malign shadow. Very young men do the same, if they are much
afflicted: but this is because they are still boys enough to have the
natural sense to be ashamed of ill-luck, even when they lack courage to
struggle against it. The reproaching of Providence by a man of full
growth, comes to some extent from his meanness, and chiefly from his
pride. He remembers that the old Gods selected great heroes whom to
persecute, and it is his compensation for material losses to conceive
himself a distinguished mark for the Powers of air. One who wraps
himself in this delusion may have great qualities; he cannot be of a very
contemptible nature; and in this place we will discriminate more closely
than to call him fool. Had Sir Purcell sunk or bent under the thong that
pursued him, he might, after a little healthy moaning, have gone along as
others do. Who knows?--though a much persecuted man, he might have
become so degraded as to have looked forward with cheerfulness to his
daily dinner; still despising, if he pleased, the soul that would invent
a sauce. I mean to say, he would, like the larger body of our
sentimentalists, have acquiesced in our simple humanity, but without
sacrificing a scruple to its grossness, or going arm-in-arm with it by
any means. Sir Purcell, however, never sank, and never bent. He was
invariably erect before men, and he did not console himself with a murmur
in secret. He had lived much alone; eating alone; thinking alone. To
complain of a father is, to a delicate mind, a delicate matter, and Sir
Purcell was a gentleman to all about him. His chief affliction in his
youth, therefore, kept him dumb. A gentleman to all about him, he
unhappily forgot what was due to his own nature. Must we not speak under
pressure of a grief? Little people should know that they must: but then
the primary task is to teach them that they are little people. For, if
they repress the outcry of a constant irritation, and the complaint
against injustice, they lock up a feeding devil in their hearts, and they
must have vast strength to crush him there. Strength they must have to
kill him, and freshness of spirit to live without him, after he has once
entertained them with his most comforting discourses. Have you listened
to him, ever? He does this:--he plays to you your music (it is he who
first teaches thousands that they have any music at all, so guess what a
dear devil he is!); and when he has played this ravishing melody, he
falls to upon a burlesque contrast of hurdy-gurdy and bag-pipe squeal and
bellow and drone, which is meant for the music of the world. How far
sweeter was yours! This charming devil Sir Purcell had nursed from
childhood.

As a child, between a flighty mother and a father verging to insanity
from caprice, he had grown up with ideas of filial duty perplexed, and
with a fitful love for either, that was not attachment: a baffled natural
love, that in teaching us to brood on the hardness of our lot, lays the
foundation for a perniciously mystical self-love. He had waged
precociously philosophic, when still a junior. His father had kept him
by his side, giving him no profession beyond that of the obedient
expectant son and heir. His first allusion to the youth's dependency had
provoked their first breach, which had been widened by many an
ostentatious forgiveness on the one hand, and a dumbly-protesting
submission on the other. His mother died away from her husband's roof.
The old man then sought to obliterate her utterly. She left her boy a
little money, and the injunction of his father was, that he was never to
touch it. He inherited his taste for music from her, and his father
vowed, that if ever he laid hand upon a musical instrument again, he
would be disinherited. All these signs of a vehement spiteful antagonism
to reason, the young man might have treated more as his father's
misfortune than his own, if he could only have brought himself to
acknowledge that such a thing as madness stigmatized his family. But the
sentimental mind conceived it as 'monstrous impiety' to bring this
accusation against a parent who did not break windows, or grin to
deformity. He behaved toward him as to a reasonable person, and felt the
rebellious rancour instead of the pity. Thus sentiment came in the way
of pity. By degrees, Sir Purcell transferred all his father's madness to
the Fates by whom he was persecuted. There was evidently madness
somewhere, as his shuddering human nature told him. It did not offend
his sentiment to charge this upon the order of the universe.

Against such a wild-hitting madness, or concentrated ire of the superior
Powers, Sir Purcell stood up, taking blow upon blow. As organist of
Hillford Church, he brushed his garments, and put a polish on his
apparel, with an energetic humility that looked like unconquerable
patience; as though he had said: "While life is left in me, I will be
seen for what I am." We will vary it--"For what I think myself." In
reality, he fought no battle. He had been dead-beaten from his boyhood.
Like the old Spanish Governor, the walls of whose fortress had been
thrown down by an earthquake, and who painted streets to deceive the
enemy, he was rendered safe enough by his astuteness, except against a
traitor from within.

One who goes on doggedly enduring, doggedly doing his best, must subsist
on comfort of a kind that is likely to be black comfort. The mere piping
of the musical devil shall not suffice. In Sir Purcell's case, it had
long seemed a magnanimity to him that he should hold to a life so
vindictively scourged, and his comfort was that he had it at his own
disposal. To know so much, to suffer, and still to refrain, flattered
his pride. "The term of my misery is in my hand," he said, softened by
the reflection. It is our lowest philosophy.

But, when the heart of a man so fashioned is stirred to love a woman, it
has a new vital force, new health, and cannot play these solemn pranks.
The flesh, and all its fatality, claims him. When Sir Purcell became
acquainted with Cornelia, he found the very woman his heart desired, or
certainly a most admirable picture of her. It was, perhaps, still more
to the lady's credit, if she was only striving to be what he was learning
to worship. The beneficial change wrought in him, made him enamoured of
healthy thinking and doing. Had this, as a result of sharp mental
overhauling, sprung from himself, there would have been hope for him.
Unhappily, it was dependent on her who inspired it. He resolved that
life should be put on a fresh trial in her person; and expecting that
naturally to fail, of which he had always entertained a base conception,
he was perforce brought to endow her with unexampled virtues, in order to
keep any degree of confidence tolerably steadfast in his mind. The lady
accepted the decorations thus bestowed on her, with much grace and
willingness. She consented, little aware of her heroism, to shine forth
as an 'ideal;' and to this he wantonly pinned his faith. Alas! in our
world, where all things must move, it becomes, by-and-by, manifest that
an 'ideal,' or idol, which you will, has not been gifted with two legs.
What is, then, the duty of the worshipper? To make, as I should say,
some compromise between his superstitious reverence and his recognition
of facts. Cornelia, on her pedestal, could not prefer such a request
plainly; but it would have afforded her exceeding gratification, if the
man who adored her had quietly taken her up and fixed her in a fresh
post, of his own choosing entirely, in the new circles of changeing
events. Far from doing that, he appeared to be unaware that they went,
with the varying days, through circles, forming and reforming. He walked
rather as a man down a lengthened corridor, whose light to which he turns
is in one favourite corner, visible till he reaches the end. What
Cornelia was, in the first flaming of his imagination around her, she was
always, unaffected by circumstance, to remain. It was very hard. The
'ideal' did feel the want--if not of legs--of a certain tolerant
allowance for human laws on the part of her worshipper; but he was
remorselessly reverential, both by instinct and of necessity. Women are
never quite so mad in sentimentalism as men.

We have now looked into the hazy interior of their systems--our last
halt, I believe, and last examination of machinery, before Emilia quits
England.

About the time of the pairing of the birds, and subsequent to the
Brookfield explosion, Cornelia received a letter from her lover, bearing
the tone of a summons. She was to meet him by the decayed sallow--the
'fruitless tree,' as he termed it. Startled by this abruptness, her
difficulties made her take counsel of her dignity. "He knows that these
clandestine meetings degrade me. He is wanting in faith, to require
constant assurances. He will not understand my position!" She
remembered the day at Besworth, of which Adela (somewhat needlessly,
perhaps) had told her; that it had revealed two of the family, in
situations censurable before a gossiping world, however intrinsically
blameless. That day had been to the ladies a lesson of deference to
opinion. It was true that Cornelia had met her lover since, but she was
then unembarrassed. She had now to share in the duties of the household-
-duties abnormal, hideous, incredible. Her incomprehensible father was
absent in town. Daily Wilfrid conducted Adela thither on mysterious
business, and then Mrs. Chump was left to Arabella and herself in the
lonely house. Numberless things had to be said for the quieting of this
creature, who every morning came downstairs with the exclamation that she
could no longer endure her state of uncertainty, and was "off to a
lawyer." It was useless to attempt the posture of a reply. Words, and
energetic words, the woman demanded, not expostulations--petitions that
she would be respectful to the house before the household. Yes,
occasionally (so gross was she!) she had to be fed with lies. Arabella
and Cornelia heard one another mouthing these dreadful things, with a
wretched feeling of contemptuous compassion. The trial was renewed
daily, and it was a task, almost a physical task, to hold the woman back
from London, till the hour of lunch came. If they kept her away from her
bonnet till then they were safe.

At this meal they had to drink champagne with her. Diplomatic Wilfrid
had issued the order, with the object, first, of dazzling her vision; and
secondly, to set the wheels of her brain in swift motion. The effect was
marvellous; and, had it not been for her determination never to drink
alone, the miserable ladies might have applauded it. Adela, on the rare
days when she was fortunate enough to reach Brookfield in time for
dinner, was surprised to hear her sisters exclaim, "Oh, the hatefulness
of that champagne!" She enjoyed it extremely. She, poor thing, had
again to go through a round of cabs and confectioners' shops in London.
"If they had said, 'Oh, the hatefulness of those buns and cold
chickens!'" she thought to herself. Not objecting to champagne at lunch
with any particular vehemence, she was the less unwilling to tell her
sisters what she had to do for Wilfrid daily.

"Three times a week I go to see Emilia at Lady Gosstre's town-house. Mr.
Powys has gone to Italy, and Miss Ford remains, looking, if I can read
her, such a temper. On the other days I am taken by Wilfrid to the
arcades, or we hire a brougham to drive round the park,--for nothing but
the chance of seeing that girl an instant. Don't tell me it's to meet
Lady Charlotte! That lovely and obliging person it is certainly not my
duty to undeceive. She's now at Stornley, and speaks of our affairs to
everybody, I dare say. Twice a week Wilfrid--oh! quite casually! --calls
on Miss Ford, and is gratified, I suppose; for this is the picture:--
There sits Emilia, one finger in her cheek, and the thumb under her chin,
and she keeps looking down so. Opposite is Miss Ford, doing some work--
making lint for patriots, probably. Then Wilfrid, addressing
commonplaces to her; and then Emilia's father--a personage, I assure you!
up against the window, with a violin. I feel a bitter edge on my teeth
still! What do you think he does to please his daughter for one while
hour! He draws his fingers--does nothing else; she won't let him; she
won't hear a tune-up the strings in the most horrible caterwaul, up and
down. It is really like a thousand lunatics questioning and answering,
and is enough to make you mad; but there that girl sits, listening.
Exactly in this attitude--so. She scarcely ever looks up. My brother
talks, and occasionally steals a glance that way. We passed one whole
hour as I have described. In the middle of it, I happened to look at
Wilfrid's face, while the violin was wailing down. I fancied I heard the
despair of one of those huge masks in a pantomime. I was almost choked."

When Adela had related thus much, she had to prevent downright revolt,
and spoil her own game, by stating that Wilfrid did not leave the house
for his special pleasure, and a word, as to the efforts he was making to
see Mr. Pericles, convinced the ladies that his situation was as pitiable
as their own.

Cornelia refused to obey her lover's mandate, and wrote briefly. She
would not condescend to allude to the unutterable wretchedness afflicting
her, but spoke of her duty to her father being foremost in her prayers
for strength. Sir Purcell interpreted this as indicating the beginning
of their alienation. He chided her gravely in an otherwise pleasant
letter. She was wrong to base her whole reply upon the little sentence
of reproach, but self-justification was necessary to her spirit. Indeed,
an involuntary comparison of her two suitors was forced on her, and, dry
as was Sir Twickenham's mind, she could not but acknowledge that he had
behaved with an extraordinary courtesy, amounting to chivalry, in his
suit. On two occasions he had declined to let her be pressed to decide.
He came to the house, and went, like an ordinary visitor. She was
indebted to him for that splendid luxury of indecision, which so few of
the maids of earth enjoy for a lengthened term. The rude shakings given
her by Sir Purcell, at a time when she needed all her power of dreaming,
to support the horror of accumulated facts, was almost resented. "He as
much as says he doubts me, when this is what I endure!" she cried to
herself, as Mrs. Chump ordered her champagne-glass to be filled, with
"Now, Cornelia, my dear; if it's bad luck we're in for, there's nothin'
cheats ut like champagne," and she had to put the (to her) nauseous
bubbles to her lips. Sir Purcell had not been told of her tribulations,
and he had not expressed any doubt of her truth; but sentimentalists can
read one another with peculiar accuracy through their bewitching gauzes.
She read his unwritten doubt, and therefore expected her unwritten misery
to be read.

So it is when you play at Life! When you will not go straight, you get
into this twisting maze. Now he wrote coldly, and she had to repress a
feeling of resentment at that also. She ascribed the changes of his tone
fundamentally to want of faith in her, and absolutely, during the
struggle she underwent, she by this means somehow strengthened her idea
of her own faithfulness. She would have phrased her projected line of
conduct thus: "I owe every appearance of assent to my poor father's
scheme, that will spare his health. I owe him everything, save the
positive sacrifice of my hand." In fact, she meant to do her duty to her
father up to the last moment, and then, on the extreme verge, to remember
her duty to her lover. But she could not write it down, and tell her
lover as much. She knew instinctively that, facing the eyes, it would
not look well. Perhaps, at another season, she would have acted and
thought with less folly; but the dull pain of her great uncertainty, and
the little stinging whips daily applied to her, exaggerated her tendency
to self-deception. "Who has ever had to bear so much?--what slave?" she
would exclaim, as a refuge from the edge of his veiled irony. For a
slave has, if not selection of what he will eat and drink, the option of
rejecting what is distasteful. Cornelia had not. She had to act a part
every day with Mrs. Chump, while all those she loved, and respected, and
clung to, were in the same conspiracy. The consolation of hating, or of
despising, her tormentress was denied. The thought that the poor
helpless creature had been possibly ruined by them, chastened Cornelia's
reflections mightily, and taught her to walk very humbly through the
duties of the day. Her powers of endurance were stretched to their
utmost. A sublime affliction would, as she felt bitterly, have enlarged
her soul. This sordid misery narrowed it. Why did not her lover, if his
love was passionate, himself cut the knot claim her, and put her to a
quick decision? She conceived that were he to bring on a supreme crisis,
her heart would declare itself. But he appeared to be wanting in that
form of courage. Does it become a beggar to act such valiant parts?
perhaps he was even then replying from his stuffy lodgings.

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