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Oscar D. Skelton - "The Canadian Dominion, a Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor"

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Sandra Belloni, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Sandra Belloni, Complete




"She shall come back as soon as she has a collar," growled Mr. Pericles,
meaning captivity.

"If she'd only come back with her own maiden name," interjected Mrs.
Chump, "I'll give her a character; but, upon my hon'r--d'ye think ut
possible, now...?"

Arabella talked over her, and rescued her father's name.

The noisy sympathy and wild speculations of the Tinleys and Copleys had
to be endured. On the whole, the feeling toward Emilia was kind, and the
hope that she would come to no harm was fervently expressed by all the
ladies; frequently enough, also, to show the opinion that it might easily
happen. On such points Mrs. Chump never failed to bring the conversation
to a block. Supported as they were by Captain Gambier, Edward Buxley,
Freshfield Sumner, and more than once by Sir Twickenham (whom Freshfield,
launching angry shafts, now called the semi-betrothed, the statistical
cripple, and other strong things that show a developing genius for
street-cries and hustings--epithets in every member of the lists of the
great Rejected, or of the jilted who can affect to be philosophical),
notwithstanding these aids, the ladies of Brookfield were crushed by Mrs.
Chump. Her main offence was, that she revived for them so much of
themselves that they had buried. "Oh! the unutterably sordid City life!"
It hung about her like a smell of London smoke. As a mere animal, they
passed her by, and had almost come to a state of mind to pass her off. It
was the phantom, or rather the embodiment of their First Circle, that
they hated in the woman. She took heroes from the journals read by
servant-maids; she thought highly of the Court of Aldermen; she went on
public knees to the aristocracy; she was proud, in fact, of all City
appetites. What, though none saw the peculiar sting? They felt it; and
one virtue in possessing an 'ideal' is that, lodging in you as it does,
it insists upon the interior being furnished by your personal
satisfaction, and not by the blindness or stupidity of the outer world.
Thus, in one direction, an ideal precludes humbug. The ladies might
desire to cloak facts, but they had no pleasure in deception. They had
the feminine power of extinguishing things disagreeable, so long as
nature or the fates did them no violence. When these forces sent an
emissary to confound them, as was clearly the case with Mrs. Chump, they
fought. The dreadful creature insisted upon shows of maudlin affection
that could not be accorded to her, so that she existed in a condition of
preternatural sensitiveness. Among ladies pretending to dignity of life,
the horror of acrid complaints alternating with public offers of love
from a gross woman, may be pictured in the mind's eye. The absence of Mr.
Pole and Wilfrid, which caused Mrs. Chump to chafe at the restraint
imposed by the presence of males to whom she might not speak endearingly,
and deprived the ladies of proper counsel, and what good may be at times
in masculine authority, led to one fierce battle, wherein the great shot
was fired on both sides. Mrs. Chump was requested to leave the house: she
declined. Interrogated as to whether she remained as an enemy, knowing
herself to be so looked upon, she said that she remained to save them
from the dangers they invited. Those dangers she named, observing that
Mrs. Lupin, their aunt, might know them, but was as liable to be sent to
sleep by a fellow with a bag of jokes as a watchdog to be quieted by a
bone. The allusion here was to Mrs. Lupin's painful, partially
inexcusable, incurable sense of humour, especially when a gleam of it led
to the prohibited passages of life. The poor lady was afflicted so keenly
that, in instances where one of her sex and position in the social scale
is bound to perish rather than let even the shadow of a laugh appear, or
any sign of fleshly perception or sympathy peep out, she was seen to be
mutely, shockingly, penitentially convulsed: a degrading sight. And
albeit repeatedly remonstrated with, she, upon such occasions, invariably
turned imploring glances--a sort of frowning entreaty--to the ladies, or
to any of her sex present. "Did you not see that? Oh! can you resist it?"
she seemed to gasp, as she made those fruitless efforts to drag them to
her conscious level. "Sink thou, if thou wilt," was the phrase indicated
to her. She had once thought her propensity innocent enough, and
enjoyable. Her nieces had almost cured her, by sitting on her, until Mrs.
Chump came to make her worst than ever. It is to be feared that Mrs.
Chump was beginning to abuse her power over the little colourless lady.
We cannot, when we find ourselves possessed of the gift of sending a
creature into convulsions, avoid exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the
victims of the modern feminine 'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman;
devout and charitable, as her nieces admitted; but radically--what? They
did not like to think, or to say, what;--repugnant, seemed to be the
word. A woman who consented to perceive the double-meaning, who
acknowledged its suggestions of a violation of decency laughable, and who
could not restrain laughter, was, in their judgement, righteously a
victim. After signal efforts to lift her up, the verdict was that their
Aunt Lupin did no credit to her sex. If we conceive a timorous little
body of finely-strung nerves, inclined to be gay, and shrewdly
apprehensive, but depending for her opinion of herself upon those about
her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin's life was one of sorrow and scourges
in the atmosphere of the 'ideal.' Never did nun of the cloister fight
such a fight with the flesh, as this poor little woman, that she might
not give offence to the Tribunal of the Nice Feelings which leads us to
ask, "Is sentimentalism in our modern days taking the place of
monasticism to mortify our poor humanity?" The sufferings of the Three of
Brookfield under Mrs. Chump was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin's. The good
little woman's soul withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces
helped her daily. Laughter, far from expanding her heart and invigorating
her frame, was a thing that she felt herself to be nourishing as a
traitor in her bosom: and the worst was, that it came upon her like a
reckless intoxication at times, possessing her as a devil might; and
justifying itself, too, and daring to say, "Am I not Nature?" Mrs. Lupin
shrank from the remembrance of those moments.

In another age, the scenes between Mrs. Lupin and Mrs. Chump, greatly
significant for humanity as they are, will be given without offence on
one side or martyrdom on the other. At present, and before our
sentimentalists are a concrete, it would be profitless rashness to depict
them. When the great shots were fired off (Mrs. Chump being requested to
depart, and refusing) Mrs. Lupin fluttered between the belligerents,
doing her best to be a medium for the restoration of peace. In repeating
Mrs. Chump's remarks, which were rendered purposely strong with Irish
spice by that woman, she choked; and when she conveyed to Mrs. Chump the
counter-remarks of the ladies, she provoked utterances that almost killed
her. A sadder life is not to be imagined. The perpetual irritation of a
desire to indulge in her mortal weakness, and listening to the sleepless
conscience that kept watch over it; her certainty that it would be better
for her to laugh right out, and yet her incapacity to contest the justice
of her nieces' rebuke; her struggle to resist Mrs. Chump, which ended in
a sensation of secret shameful liking for her--all these warring
influences within were seen in her behaviour.

"I have always said," observed Cornelia, "that she labours under a
disease." What is more, she had always told Mrs. Lupin as much, and her
sisters had echoed her. Three to one in such a case is a severe trial to
the reason of solitary one. And Mrs. Lupin's case was peculiar, inasmuch
as the more she yielded to Chump-temptation and eased her heart of its
load of laughter, the more her heart cried out against her and subscribed
to the scorn of her nieces. Mrs. Chump acted a demon's part; she thirsted
for Mrs. Lupin that she might worry her. Hitherto she had not known that
anything peculiar lodged in her tongue, and with no other person did she
think of using it to produce a desired effect; but now the scenes in
Brookfield became hideous to the ladies, and not wanting in their trials
to the facial muscles of the gentlemen. A significant sign of what the
ladies were enduring was, that they ceased to speak of it in their
consultations. It is a blank period in the career of young creatures when
a fretting wretchedness forces them out of their dreams to action; and it
is then that they will do things that, seen from the outside (i.e. in the
conduct of others), they would hold to be monstrous, all but impossible.
Or how could Cornelia persuade herself, as she certainly persuaded Sir
Twickenham and the world about her, that she had a contemplative pleasure
in his society? Arabella drew nearer to Edward Buxley, whom she had not
treated well, and who, as she might have guessed, had turned his thoughts
toward Adela; though clearly without encouragement. Adela indeed said
openly to her sisters, with a Gallic ejaculation, "Edward follows me, do
you know; and he has adopted a sort of Sicilian-vespers look whenever he
meets me with Captain Gambier. I could forgive him if he would draw out a
dagger and be quite theatrical; but, behold, we meet, and my bourgeois
grunts and stammers, and seems to beg us to believe that he means nothing
whatever by his behaviour. Can you convey to his City-intelligence that
he is just a trifle ill-bred?"

Now, Arabella had always seen Edward as a thing that was her own, which
accounts for the treatment to which, he had been subjected. A quick spur
of jealousy--a new sensation--was the origin of her leaning toward
Edward; and the plea of saving Adela from annoyance excused and covered
it. He, for his part, scarcely concealed his irritation, until a little
scented twisted note was put in his hand, which said, "You are as anxious
as I can be about our sweet lost Emilia! We believe ourselves to be on
her traces." This gave him wonderful comfort. It put Adela in a beautiful
fresh light as a devoted benefactress and delicious intriguante. He threw
off some of his most telling caricatures at this period. Adela had
divined that Captain Gambier suspected his cousin Merthyr Powys of
abstracting Emilia, that he might shield her from Mr. Pericles. The
Captain confessed it, calmly blushing, and that he was in communication
with Miss Georgiana Ford, Mr. Powys's half-sister; about whom Adela was
curious, until the Captain ejaculated, "A saint!"--whereat she was
satisfied, knowing by instinct that the preference is for sinners. Their
meetings usually referred to Emilia; and it was astonishing how willingly
the Captain would talk of her. Adela repeated to herself, "This is our
mask," and thus she made it the Captain's; for it must be said that the
conquering Captain had never felt so full of pity to any girl or woman to
whom he fancied he had done damage, as to Emilia. He enjoyed a most
thorough belief that she was growing up to perplex him with her love, and
he had not consequently attempted to precipitate the measure; but her
flight had prematurely perplexed him. In grave debate with the ends of
his moustache for a term, he concluded by accusing Merthyr Powys; and
with a little feeling of spite not unknown to masculine dignity, he wrote
to Merthyr's half-sister--"merely to inquire, being aware that whatever
he does you have been consulted on, and the friends of this Miss Belloni
are distressed by her absence."

The ladies of Brookfield were accustomed to their father's occasional
unpremeditated absences, and neither of them had felt an apprehension
which she could not dismiss, until one morning Mr. Powys sent up his card
to Arabella, requesting permission to speak with her alone.




CHAPTER XXVIII

Georgiana Ford would have had little claim among the fair saints to be
accepted by them as one of their order. Her reputation for coldness was
derived from the fact of her having stood a siege from Captain Gambier.
But she loved a creature of earth too well to put up a hand for saintly
honours. The passion of her life centred in devotion to her half-brother.
Those who had studied her said, perhaps with a touch of malignity, that
her religious instinct had its source in a desire to gain some place of
intercession for him. Merthyr had leaned upon it too often to doubt the
strength of it, whatever its purity might be. She, when barely more than
a child (a girl of sixteen), had followed him over the then luckless
Italian fields--sacrificing as much for a cause that she held to be
trivial, as he in the ardour of his half-fanatical worship. Her theory
was: "These Italians are in bondage, and since heaven permits it, there
has been guilt. By endurance they are strengthened, by suffering
chastened; so let them endure and suffer." She would cleave to this view
with many variations of pity. Merthyr's experience was tolerant to the
weaker vessel's young delight in power, which makes her sometimes, though
sweet and merciful by nature, enunciate Hebraic severities oracularly. He
smiled, and was never weary of pointing out practical refutations.
Whereat she said, "Will a thousand instances change the principle?" When
the brain, and especially the fine brain of a woman, first begins to act
for itself, the work is of heavy labour; she finds herself plunging
abroad on infinite seas, and runs speedily into the anchorage of dogmas,
obfuscatory saws, and what she calls principles. Here she is safe; but if
her thinking was not originally the mere action of lively blood upon that
battery of intelligence, she will by-and-by reflect that it is not well
for a live thing to be tied to a dead, and that long clinging to safety
confesses too much. Merthyr waited for Georgians patiently. On all other
points they were heart-in-heart. It was her pride to say that she loved
him with no sense of jealousy, and prayed that he might find a woman, in
plain words, worthy of him. This woman had not been found; she confessed
that she had never seen her.

Georgians received Captain Gambier's communication in Monmouth. Merthyr
had now and then written of a Miss Belloni; but he had seemed to refer to
a sort of child, and Georgians had looked on her as another Italian
pensioner. She was decisive. The moment she awoke to feel herself
brooding over the thought of this girl, she started to join Merthyr.
Solitude is pasturage for a suspicion. On her way she grew persuaded that
her object was bad, and stopped; until the thought came, 'If he is in a
dilemma, who shall help him save his sister?' And, with spiritually
streaming eyes at a vision of companionship broken (but whether by his
taking another adviser, or by Miss Belloni, she did not ask), Georgiana
continued her journey.

At the door of Lady Gosstre's town-house she hesitated, and said in her
mind, "What am I doing? and what earthliness has come into my love for
him?"

Or, turning to the cry, "Will he want me?" stung herself. Conscious that
there was some poison in her love, but clinging to it not less, she
entered the house, and was soon in Merthyr's arms.

"Why have you come up?" he asked.

"Were you thinking of coming to me quickly?" she murmured in reply.

He did not say yes, but that he had business in London. Nor did he say
what.

Georgiana let him go.

"How miserable is such a weakness! Is this my love?" she thought again.

Then she went to her bedroom, and knelt, and prayed her Saviour's pardon
for loving a human thing too well. But, if the rays of her mind were
dimmed, her heart beat too forcibly for this complacent self-deceit. "No;
not too well! I cannot love him too well. I am selfish. When I say that,
it is myself I am loving. To love him thrice as dearly as I do would
bring me nearer to God. Love I mean, not idolatry--another form of
selfishness."

She prayed to be guided out of the path of snares.

"CAN YOU PRAY? CAN YOU PUT AWAY ALL PROPS OF SELF? THIS IS TRUE
WORSHIP, UNTO WHATSOEVER POWER YOU KNEEL."

This passage out of a favourite book of sentences had virtue to help her
now in putting away the 'props of self.' It helped her for the time. She
could not foresee the contest that was commencing for her.

"LOVE THAT SHRIEKS AT A MORTAL WOUND, AND BLEEDS HUMANLY, WHAT IS HE
BUT A PAGAN GOD, WITH THE PASSIONS OF A PAGAN GOD?"

"Yes," thought Georgiana, meditating, "as different from the Christian
love as a brute from a man!"

She felt that the revolution of the idea of love in her mind (all that
consoled her) was becoming a temptation. Quick in her impulses, she
dismissed it. "I am like a girl!" she said scornfully. "Like a woman"
would not have flattered her. Like what did she strive to be? The picture
of another self was before her--a creature calmly strong, unruffled, and
a refuge to her beloved. It was a steady light through every wind that
blew, save when the heart narrowed; and then it waxed feeble, and the
life in her was hungry for she knew not what.

Georgiana's struggle was to make her great passion eat up all the others.
Sure of the intensity and thoroughness of her love for Merthyr, she would
forecast for herself tasks in his service impossible save to one
sensually dead and therefore spiritually sexless. "My love is pure," she
would say; as if that were the talisman which rendered it superhuman. She
was under the delusion that lovers' love was a reprehensible egoism. Her
heart had never had place for it; and thus her nature was unconsummated,
and the torment of a haunting insufficiency accompanied her sweetest
hours, ready to mislead her in all but very clearest actions.

She saw, or she divined, much of this struggle; but the vision of it was
fitful, not consecutive. It frightened and harassed without illuminating
her. Now, upon Merthyr's return, she was moved by it just enough to take
his hand and say:--

"We are the same?"

"What can change us?" he replied.

"Or who?" and as she smiled up to him, she was ashamed of her smile.

"Yes, who!" he interjected, by this time quite enlightened. All subtle
feelings are discerned by Welsh eyes when untroubled by any mental
agitation. Brother and sister were Welsh, and I may observe that there is
human nature and Welsh nature.

"Forgive me," she said; "I have been disturbed about you."

Perceiving that it would be well to save her from any spiritual twists
and turns that she might reach what she desired to know, he spoke out
fully: "I have not written to you about Miss Belloni lately. I think it
must be seven or eight days since I had a letter from her--you shall see
it--looking as if it had been written in the dark. She gave the address
of a London hotel. I went to her, and her story was that she had come to
town to get Mr. Pole's consent to her marriage with his son; and that
when she succeeded in making herself understood by him, the old man fell,
smitten with paralysis, crying out that he was ruined, and his children
beggars."

"Ah!" said Georgiana; "then this son is engaged to her?"

"She calls him her lover."

"Openly?"

"Have I not told you? 'naked and unashamed.'"

"Of course that has attracted my Merthyr!" Georgians drew to him
tenderly, breathing as one who has a burden off her heart.

"But why did she write to you?" the question started up.

For this reason: it appears that Mr. Pole showed such nervous irritation
at the idea of his family knowing the state he was in, that the doctor
attending him exacted a promise from her not to communicate with one of
them. She was alone, in great perplexity, and did what I had requested
her to do. She did me the honour to apply to me for any help it was in my
power to give.

Georgiana stood eyeing the ground sideways. "What is she like?"

"You shall see to-morrow, if you will come with me."

"Dark, or fair?"

Merthyr turned her face to the light, laughing softly. Georgiana
coloured, with dropped eyelids.

She raised her eyes under their load of shame. "I will come gladly," she
said.

"Early to-morrow, then," rejoined Merthyr.

On the morrow, as they were driving to the hotel, Georgians wanted to
know whether he called 'this Miss Belloni' by her Christian name--a
question so needless that her over-conscious heart drummed with gratitude
when she saw that he purposely spared her from one meaning look. In this
mutual knowledge, mutual help, in minute as in great things, as well as
in the recognition of a common nobility of mind, the love of the two was
fortified.

Emilia had not been left by Mr. Powys without the protection of a woman's
society in her singular position. Lady Charlotte's natural prompt
kindness required no spur from her friend that she should go and brace up
the spirits of a little woman, whom she pitied doubly for loving a man
who was deceiving her, and not loving one who was good for her. She went
frequently to Emilia, and sat with her in the sombre hotel drawing-room.
Still, frank as she was and blunt as she affected to be, she could not
bring her tongue to speak of Wilfrid. If she had fancied any sensitive
shuddering from the name and the subject to exist, she would have struck
boldly, being capable of cruelty and, where she was permitted to see a
weakness, rather fond of striking deep. A belief in the existence of
Emilia's courage touched her to compassion. One day, however, she said,
"What is it you take to in Merthyr Powys?" and this brought on plain
speaking.

Emilia could give no reason; and it is a peculiarity of people who ask
such questions that they think a want of directness in the answer
suspicious.

Lady Charlotte said gravely, "Come, come!"

"What do you mean?" asked Emilia. "I like so many things in him."

"You don't like one thing chiefly?"

"I like--what do I like?--his kindness."

"His kindness!" This was the sort of reply to make the lady implacable.
She seldom read others shrewdly, and could not know, that near her,
Emilia thought of Wilfrid in a way that made the vault of her brain seem
to echo with jarred chords. "His kindness! What a picture is the
'grateful girl!' I have seen rows of white-capped charity children giving
a bob and a sniffle as the parson went down the ranks promising buns.
Well! his kindness! You are right in appreciating as much as you can see.
I'll tell you why I like him;--because he is a gentleman. And you haven't
got an idea how rare that animal is. Dear me! Should I be plainer to you
if I called him a Christian gentleman? It's the cant of a detestable
school, my child. It means just this--but why should I disturb your
future faith in it? The professors mainly profess to be 'a comfort to
young women,' and I suppose you will meet your comfort, and worship them
with the 'growing mind;' and I must confess that they bait it rather
cunningly; nothing else would bite. They catch almost all the raw boys
who have anything in them. But for me, Merthyr himself would have been
caught long ago. There's no absolute harm in them, only that they're a
sentimental compromise. I deny their honesty; and if it's flatly proved,
I deny their intelligence. Well! this you can't understand."

"I have not understood you at all," said Emilia.

"No? It's the tongue that's the natural traitor to a woman, and takes
longer runs with every added year. I suppose you know that Mr. Powys
wishes to send you to Italy?"

"I do," said Emilia.

"When are you going?"

"I am not going?"

"Why?"

Emilia's bosom rose. She cried "Dear lady!" on the fall of it, and was
scarce audible--adding, "Do you love Wilfrid?"

"Well, you have brought me to the point quickly," Lady Charlotte
remarked. "I don't commonly beat the bush long myself. Love him! You
might as well ask me my age. The indiscretion would be equal, and the
result the same. Love! I have a proper fear of the word. When two play at
love they spoil the game. It's enough that he says he loves me."

Emilia looked relieved. "Poor lady!" she sighed.

"Poor!" Lady Charlotte echoed, with curious eyes fixed on the puzzle
beside her.

"Tell me you will not believe him," Emilia continued. "He is mine; I
shall never give him up. It is useless for you or any one else to love
him. I know what love is now. Stop while you can. I can be sorry for you,
but I will not let him go from me. He is my lover."

Emilia closed her lips abruptly. She produced more effect than was
visible. Lady Charlotte drew out a letter, saying, "Perhaps this will
satisfy you."

"Nothing!" cried Emilia, jumping to her feet.

"Read it--read it; and, for heaven's sake, ma fille sauvage, don't think
I'm here to fight for the man! He is not Orpheus; and our modern
education teaches us that it's we who are to be run after. Will you read
it?"

"No."

"Will you read it to please me?"

Emilia changed from a look of quiet opposition to gentleness of feature.
"Why will it please you if I read that he has flattered you? I never lie
about what I feel; I think men do." Her voice sank.