Sandra Belloni by George Meredith, v7
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George Meredith >> Sandra Belloni by George Meredith, v7
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Next day there were numerous visits to the house. Emilia was reserved,
and might have been thought sad, but she welcomed Tracy Runningbrook
gladly, with "Oh! my old friend!" and a tender squeeze of his hand.
"True, if you like; hot, if you like; but I old?" cried Tracy.
"Yes, because I seem to have got to the other side of you; I mean, I know
you, and am always sure of you," said Emilia. "You don't care for music;
I don't care for poetry, but we're friends, and I am quite certain of
you, and think you 'old friend' always."
"And I," said Tracy, better up to the mark by this time, "I think of you,
you dear little woman, that I ought to be grateful to you, for, by
heaven! you give me, every time I see you, the greatest temptation to be
a fool and let me prove that I'm not. Altro! altro!"
"A fool!" said Emilia caressingly; showing that his smart insinuation had
slipped by her.
The tale of Brookfield was told over again by Tracy, and Emilia
shuddered, though Merthyr and her country held her heart and imagination
active and in suspense, from moment to moment. It helped mainly to
discolour the young world to her eyes. She was under the spell of an
excitement too keen and quick to be subdued, by the sombre terrors of a
tragedy enacted in a house that she had known. Brookfield was in the
talk of all who came to Richford. Emilia got the vision of the wretched
family seated in the library as usual, when upon midnight they were about
to part, and a knock came at the outer door, and two men entered the
hall, bearing a lifeless body with a red spot above the heart. She saw
Cornelia fall to it. She saw the pale-faced family that had given her
shelter, and moaned for lack of a way of helping them and comforting
them. She reproached herself for feeling her own full physical life so
warmly, while others whom she had loved were weeping. It was useless to
resist the tide of fresh vitality in her veins, and when her thoughts
turned to their main attraction, she was rejoicing at the great strength
she felt coming to her gradually. Her face was smooth and impassive:
this new joy of strength came on her like the flowing of a sea to a,
land-locked water. "Poor souls!" she sighed for her friends, while
irrepressible exultation filled her spirit.
That afternoon, in the midst of packing and preparations for the journey,
at all of which Lady Gosstre smiled with a complacent bewilderment, a
card, bearing the name of Miss Laura Tinley, was sent up to Emilia. She
had forgotten this person, and asked Lady Gosstre who it was. Arabella's
rival presented herself most winningly. For some time, Emilia listened
to her, with wonder that a tongue should be so glib on matters of no
earthly interest. At last, Laura said in an undertone: "I am the bearer
of a message from Mr. Pericles; do you walk at all in the garden?"
Emilia read her look, and rose. Her thoughts struck back on the creature
that she was when she had last seen Mr. Pericles, and again, by contrast,
on what she was now. Eager to hear of him, or rather to divine the
mystery in her bosom aroused by the unexpected mention of his name, she
was soon alone with Laura in the garden.
"Oh, those poor Poles!" Laura began.
"You were going to say something of Mr. Pericles," said Emilia.
"Yes, indeed, my dear; but, of course, you have heard all the details of
that dreadful night? It cannot be called a comfort to us that it enables
my brother Albert to come forward in the most disinterested--I might
venture to say, generous--manner, and prove the chivalry of his soul;
still, as things are, we are glad, after such misunderstandings, to prove
to that sorely-tried family who are their friends. I--you would little
think so from their treatment of me--I was at school with them. I knew
them before they became unintelligible, though they always had a turn for
it. To dress well, to be refined, to marry well--I understand all that
perfectly; but who could understand them? Not they themselves, I am
certain! And now penniless! and not only that, but lawyers! You know
that Mrs. Chump has commenced an action?--no? Oh, yes! but I shall have
to tell you the whole story."
"What is it?--they want money?" said Emilia.
"I will tell you. Our poor gentlemanly organist, whom you knew, was
really a baronet's son, and inherited the title."
Emilia interrupted her: "Oh, do let me hear about them!"
"Well, my dear, this unfortunate--I may call him 'lover,' for if a man
does not stamp the truth of his affection with a pistol, what other means
has he? And just a word as to romance. I have been sighing for it--no
one would think so--all my life. And who would have thought that these
poor Poles should have lived to convince me of the folly! Oh, delicious
humdrum!--there is nothing like it. But you are anxious, naturally.
Poor Sir Purcell Barren--he may or may not have been mad, but when he was
brought to the house at Brookfield--quite by chance--I mean, his body--
two labouring men found him by a tree--I don't know whether you
remembered a pollard-willow that stood all white and rotten by the water
in the fir-wood:--well, as I said, mad or not, no sooner did poor
Cornelia see him than she shrieked that she was the cause of his death.
He was laid in the hall--which I have so often trod! and there Cornelia
sat by his poor dead body, and accused Wilfrid and her father of every
unkindness. They say that the scene was terrible. Wilfrid--but I need
not tell you his character. He flutters from flower to flower, but he
has feeling Now comes the worst of all--in one sense; that is, looking on
it as people of the world; and being in the world, we must take a worldly
view occasionally. Mr. Pole--you remember how he behaved once at
Besworth: or, no; you were not there, but he used your name. His mania
was, as everybody could see, to marry his children grandly. I don't
blame him in any way. Still, he was not justified in living beyond his
means to that end, speculating rashly, and concealing his actual
circumstances. Well, Mr. Pericles and he were involved together; that
is, Mr. Pericles--"
"Is Mr. Pericles near us now?" said Emilia quickly.
"We will come to him," Laura resumed, with the complacency of one who saw
a goodly portion of the festival she was enjoying still before her. "I
was going to say, Mr. Pericles had poor Mr. Pole in his power; has him,
would be the correcter tense. And Wilfrid, as you may have heard, had
really grossly insulted him, even to the extent of maltreating him--a
poor foreigner--rich foreigner, if you like! but not capable of standing
against a strong young man in wrath. However, now there can be little
doubt that Wilfrid repents. He had been trying ever since to see Mr.
Pericles; and the very morning of that day, I believe, he saw him and
humbled himself to make an apology. This had put Mr. Pole in good
spirits, and in the evening--he and Mrs. Chump were very fond of their
wine after dinner--he was heard that very evening to name a day for his
union with her; for that had been quite understood, and he had asked his
daughters and got their consent. The sight of Sir Purcell's corpse, and
the cries of Cornelia, must have turned him childish. I cannot conceive
a situation so harrowing as that of those poor children hearing their
father declare himself an impostor! a beggar! a peculator! He cried,
poor unhappy man, real tears! The truth was that his nerves suddenly
gave way. For, just before--only just before, he was smiling and talking
largely. He wished to go on his knees to every one of them, and kept
telling them of his love--the servants all awake and listening! and more
gossiping servants than the Poles always, by the most extraordinary
inadvertence, managed to get, you never heard of! Nothing would stop him
from humiliating himself! No one paid any attention to Mrs. Chump until
she started from her chair. They say that some of the servants who were
crying outside, positively were compelled to laugh when they heard her
first outbursts. And poor Mr. Pole confessed that he had touched her
money. He could not tell her how much. Fancy such a scene, with a dead
man in the house! Imagination almost refuses to conjure it up! Not to
dwell on it too long--for, I have never endured such a shock as it has
given me--Mrs. Chump left the house, and the next thing received from her
was a lawyer's letter. Business men say she is not to blame: women may
cherish their own opinion. But, oh, Miss Belloni! is it not terrible?
You are pale."
Emilia behind what she felt for her friends, had a dim comprehension of
the meaning of their old disgust at Laura, during this narration. But,
hearing the word of pity, she did not stop to be critical. "Can you do
nothing for them?" she said abruptly.
The thought in Laura's shocked grey eyes was, "They have done little
enough for you," i.e., toward making you a lady. "Oh!" she cried; "I can
you teach me what to do? I must be extremely delicate, and calculate
upon what they would accept from me. For--so I hear--they used to--and
may still--nourish a--what I called--silly--though not in unkindness--
hostility to our family--me. And perhaps now natural delicacy may render
it difficult for them to..."
In short, to accept an alms from Laura Tinley; so said her pleading look
for an interpretation.
"You know Mr. Pericles," said Emilia, "he can do the mischief--can he
not? Stop him."
Laura laughed. "One might almost say that you do not know him, Miss
Belloni. What is my influence? I have neither a voice, nor can I play
on any instrument. I would--indeed I will--do my best my utmost; only,
how even to introduce the subject to him? Are not you the person? He
speaks of you constantly. He has consulted doctors with regard to your
voice, and the only excuse, dear Miss Belloni, for my visit to you to-
day, is my desire that any misunderstanding between you may be cleared.
Because, I have just heard--Miss Belloni will forgive me!--the origin of
it; and tidings coming that you were in the neighbourhood, I thought--
hoped that I might be the means of re-uniting two evidently destined to
be of essential service to one another. And really, life means that,
does it not?"
Emilia was becoming more critical of this tone the more she listened.
She declared, her immediate willingness to meet Mr. Pericles. With
which, and Emilia's assurance that she would write, and herself make the
appointment, Laura retired, in high glee at the prospect of winning the
gratitude of the inscrutable millionaire. It was true that the absence
of any rivalry for the possession of the man took much of his sweetness
from him. She seemed to be plucking him from the hands of the dead, and
half recognized that victory over uncontesting rivals claps the laurel-
wreath rather rudely upon our heads.
Emilia lost no time in running straight to Georgiana, who was busy at her
writing-desk. She related what she had just heard, ending breathlessly:
"Georgey! my dear! will you help them?"
"In what possible way can I do so?" said Georgiana. To-morrow night we
shall have left England."
"But to-day we are here." Emilia pressed a hand to her bosom: "my heart
feels hollow, and my friends cry out in it. I cannot let him suffer."
She looked into Georgiana's eyes. "Will you not help them?--they want
money."
The lady reddened. "Is it not preposterous to suppose that I can offer
them assistance of such a kind?"
"Not you," returned Emilia, sighing; and in an under-breath, "me--will
you lend it to me? Merthyr would. I shall repay it. I cannot tell what
fills me with this delight, but I know I am able to repay any sum. Two
thousand pounds would help them. I think--I think my voice has come
back."
"Have you tried it?" said Georgiana, to produce a diversion from the
other topic.
"No; but believe me when I tell you, it must be. I scarcely feel the
floor; no misery touches me. I am only sorry for my friends, not down on
the ground with them. Believe me! And I have been studying all this
while. I have not lost an hour. I would accept a part, and step on the
boards within a week, and be certain to succeed. I am just as willing to
go to the Conservatorio and submit to discipline. Only, dear friend,
believe me, that I ask for money now, because I am sure I can repay it.
I want to send it immediately, and then, good-bye to England."
Georgiana closed her desk. She had been suspicious at first of another
sentiment in the background, but was now quite convinced of the
simplicity of Emilia's design. She said: "I will tell you exactly how I
am placed. I do not know, that under any circumstances, I could have
given into your hands so large a sum as this that you ask for. My
brother has a fortune; and I have also a little property. When I say my
brother has a fortune, he has the remains of one. All that has gone has
been devoted to relieve your countrymen, and further the interests he has
nearest at heart. What is left to him, I believe, he has now thrown into
the gulf. You have heard Lady Charlotte call him a fanatic."
Emilia's lip quivered.
"You must not blame her for that," Georgiana continued. "Lady Gosstre
thinks much the same. The world thinks with them. I love him, and prove
my love by trusting him, and wish to prove my love by aiding him, and
being always at hand to succour, as I should be now, but that I obeyed
his dearest wish in resting here to watch over you. I am his other self.
I have taught him to feel that; so that in his devotion to this cause he
may follow every impulse he has, and still there is his sister to fall
back on. My child! see what I have been doing. I have been calculating
here." Georgiana took a scroll from her desk, and laid it under Emilia's
eyes. "I have reckoned our expenses as far as Turin, and have only
consented to take Lady Gosstre's valet for courier, just to please her.
I know that he will make the cost double, and I feel like a miser about
money. If Merthyr is ruined, he will require every farthing that I have
for our common subsistence. Now do you understand? I can hardly put the
case more plainly. It is out of my power to do what you ask me to do."
Emilia sighed lightly, and seemed not much cast down by the refusal. She
perceived that it was necessarily positive, and like all minds framed to
resolve to action, there was an instantaneous change of the current of
her thoughts in another direction.
"Then, my darling, my one prayer!" she said. "Postpone our going for a
week. I will try to get help for them elsewhere."
Georgiana was pleased by Emilia's manner of taking the rebuff; but it
required an altercation before she consented to this postponement; she
nodded her head finally in anger.
CHAPTER LVII
By the park-gates that evening, Wilfrid received a letter from the hands
of Tracy Runningbrook. It said: "I am not able to see you now. When I
tell you that I will see you before I leave England, I insist upon your
believing me. I have no head for seeing anybody now. Emilia"--was the
simple signature, perused over and over again by this maddened lover,
under the flitting gate-lamp, after Tracy had left him. The coldness of
Emilia's name so briefly given, concentrated every fire in his heart.
What was it but miserable cowardice, he thought, that prevented him from
getting the peace poor Barrett had found? Intolerable anguish weakened
his limbs. He flung himself on a wayside bank, grovelling, to rise again
calm and quite ready for society, upon the proper application of the
clothes-brush. Indeed; he patted his shoulder and elbow to remove the
soil of his short contact with earth, and tried a cigar: but the first
taste of the smoke sickened his lips. Then he stood for a moment as a
man in a new world. This strange sensation of disgust with familiar
comforting habits, fixed him in perplexity, till a rushing of wild
thoughts and hopes from brain to heart, heart to brain, gave him insight,
and he perceived his state, and that for all he held to in our life he
was dependent upon another; which is virtually the curse of love.
"And he passed along the road," adds the Philosopher, "a weaker man, a
stronger lover. Not that love should diminish manliness or gains by so
doing; but travelling to love by the ways of Sentiment, attaining to the
passion bit by bit, does full surely take from us the strength of our
nature, as if (which is probable) at every step we paid fee to move
forward. Wilfrid had just enough of the coin to pay his footing. He was
verily fining himself down. You are tempted to ask what the value of him
will be by the time that he turns out pure metal? I reply, something
considerable, if by great sacrifice he gets to truth--gets to that
oneness of feeling which is the truthful impulse. At last, he will stand
high above them that have not suffered. The rejection of his cigar."
This wages too absurd. At the risk of breaking our partnership for ever,
I intervene. My Philosopher's meaning is plain, and, as usual, good; but
not even I, who have less reason to laugh at him than anybody, can
gravely accept the juxtaposition of suffering and cigars. And, moreover,
there is a little piece of action in store.
Wilfrid had walked half way to Brookfield, when the longing to look upon
the Richford chamber-windows stirred so hotly within him that he returned
to the gates. He saw Captain Gambier issuing on horseback from under the
lamp. The captain remarked that it was a fine night, and prepared to
ride off, but Wilfrid requested him to dismount, and his voice had the
unmistakeable ring in it by which a man knows that there must be no
trifling. The captain leaned forward to look at him before he obeyed the
summons, All self-control had abandoned Wilfrid in the rage he felt at
Gambier's having seen Emilia, and the jealous suspicion that she had
failed to keep her appointment for the like reason.
"Why do you come here?" he said, hoarsely.
"By Jove! that's an odd question," said the captain, at once taking his
ground.
"Am I to understand that you've been playing with my sister, as you do
with every other woman?"
Captain Gambier murmured quietly, "Every other woman?" and smoothed his
horse's neck. "They're not so easily played with, my dear fellow. You
speak like a youngster."
"I am the only protector of my sister's reputation," said Wilfrid, "and,
by heaven! if you have cast her over to be the common talk, you shall
meet me."
The captain turned to his horse, saying, "Oh! Well!" Being mounted, he
observed: "My dear Pole, you might have sung out all you had to say. Go
to your sister, and if she complains of my behaviour, I'll meet you. Oh,
yes! I'll meet you; I have no objection to excitement. You're in the
hands of an infernally clever woman, who does me the honour to wish to
see my blood on the carpet, I believe; but if this is her scheme, it's
not worthy of her ability. She began pretty well. She arranged the
preliminaries capitally. Why, look here," he relinquished his ordinary
drawl; "I'll tell you something, which you may put down in my favour or
not--just as you like. That woman did her best to compromise your sister
with me on board the yacht. I can't tell you how, and won't. Of course,
I wouldn't if I could; but I have sense enough to admire a very charming
person, and I did the only honourable thing in my power. It's your
sister, my good fellow, who gave me my dismissal. We had a little common
sense conversation--in which she shines. I envy the man that marries
her, but she denies me such luck. There! if you want to shoot me for my
share in that transaction, I'll give you your chance: and if you do, my
dear Pole, either you must be a tremendous fool, or that woman's ten
times cleverer than I thought. You know where to find me. Good night."
The captain gave heel to his horse, hearing no more.
Adela confirmed to Wilfrid what Gambier had spoken; and that it was she
who had given him his dismissal. She called him by his name, "Augustus,"
in a kindly tone, remarking, that Lady Charlotte had persecuted him
dreadfully. "Poor Augustus! his entire reputation for evil is owing to
her black paint-brush. There is no man so easily 'hooked,' as Mrs.
Bayruffle would say, as he, though he has but eight hundred a year:
barely enough to live on. It would have been cruel of me to keep him,
for if he is in love, it's with Emilia."
Wilfrid here took upon himself to reproach her for a certain negligence
of worldly interests. She laughed and blushed with humorous
satisfaction; and, on second thoughts, he changed his opinion, telling
her that he wished he could win his freedom as she had done.
"Wilfrid," she said suddenly, "will you persuade Cornelia not to wear
black?"
"Yes, if you wish it," he replied.
"You will, positively? Then listen, dear. I don't like the prospect of
your alliance with Lady Charlotte."
Wilfrid could not repress a despondent shrug.
"But you can get released," she cried; and ultimately counselled him:
"Mention the name of Lord Eltham before her once, when you are alone.
Watch the result. Only, don't be clumsy. But I need not tell you that."
For hours he cudgelled his brains to know why she desired Cornelia not to
wear black, and when the light broke in on him he laughed like a jolly
youth for an instant. The reason why was in a web so complicated, that,
to have divined what hung on Cornelia's wearing of black, showed a rare
sagacity and perception of character on the little lady's part. As
thus:--Sir Twickenham Pryme is the most sensitive of men to ridicule and
vulgar tattle: he has continued to visit the house, learning by degrees
to prefer me, but still too chivalrous to withdraw his claim to Cornelia,
notwithstanding that he has seen indications of her not too absolute
devotion towards him:--I have let him become aware that I have broken
with Captain Gambier (whose income is eight hundred a year merely), for
the sake of a higher attachment: now, since the catastrophe, he can with
ease make it appear to the world that I was his choice from the first,
seeing that Cornelia will assuredly make no manner of objection:--but, if
she, with foolish sentimental persistence, assumes the garb of sorrow,
then Sir Twickenham's ears will tingle; he will retire altogether; he
will not dare to place himself in a position which will lend a colour to
the gossip, that jilted by one sister, he flew for consolation to the
other; jilted, too, for the mere memory of a dead man! an additional
insult!
Exquisite intricacy! Wilfrid worked through all the intervolutions, and
nearly forgot his wretchedness in admiration of his sister's mental
endowments. He was the more willing to magnify them, inasmuch as he
thereby strengthened his hope that liberty would follow the speaking of
the talismanic name of Eltham to Lady Charlotte, alone. He had come to
look upon her as the real barrier between himself and Emilia.
"I think we have brains," he said softly, on his pillow, upon a review of
the beggared aspect of his family; and he went to sleep with a smile on
his face.
CHAPTER LVIII
A sharp breath of air had passed along the dews, and all the young green
of the fresh season shone in white jewels. The sky, set with very dim
distant stars, was in grey light round a small brilliant moon. Every
space of earth lifted clear to her; the woodland listened; and in the
bright silence the nightingales sang loud.
Emilia and Tracy Runningbrook were threading their way toward a lane over
which great oak branches intervolved; thence under larches all with
glittering sleeves, and among spiky brambles, with the purple leaf and
the crimson frosted. The frost on the edges of the brown-leaved bracken
gave a faint colour. Here and there, intense silver dazzled their eyes.
As they advanced amid the icy hush, so hard and instant was the ring of
the earth under them, their steps sounded as if expected.
"This night seems made for me!" said Emilia.
Tracy had no knowledge of the object of the expedition. He was her
squire simply; had pitched on a sudden into an enamoured condition, and
walked beside her, caring little whither he was led, so that she left him
not.
They came upon a clearing in the wood where a tournament of knights might
have been held. Ranged on two sides were rows of larches, and forward,
fit to plume a dais, a clump of tall firs stood with a flowing silver fir
to right and left, and the white stems of the birch-tree shining from
among them. This fair woodland court had three broad oaks, as for
gateways; and the moon was above it. Moss and the frosted brown fern
were its flooring.
Emilia said eagerly, "This way," and ran under one of the oaks. She
turned to Tracy following: "There is no doubt of it." Her hand was lying
softly on her throat.
"Your voice?" Tracy divined her.
She nodded, but frowned lovingly at the shout he raised, and he
understood that there was haply some plot to be worked out. The open
space was quite luminous in the middle of those three deep walls of
shadow. Emilia enjoined him to rest where he was, and wait for her on
that spot like a faithful sentinel, whatsoever ensued. Coaxing his
promise, she entered the square of white light alone. Presently she
stood upon a low mound, so that her whole figure was distinct, while the
moon made her features visible.
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