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George Barr McCutcheon - "Castle Craneycrow"

Georg Ebers - "The Nuts"

William J. Locke - "The Fortunate Youth"

George Meredith - "The Tragic Comedians, Complete"

Sandra Belloni, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Sandra Belloni, Complete




Emilia gazed at no one now. She rose, without a word or an apology,
keeping her eyes down.

"Fiasco!" cruelly cried Mr. Pericles.

That was better to her than the silly kindness of the people who deemed
it well to encourage her with applause. Emilia could not bear the
clapping of hands, and fled.




CHAPTER V

The night was warm under a slowly-floating moon. Full of compassion for
the poor girl, who had moved him if she had failed in winning the
assembly, Wilfrid stepped into the garden, where he expected to find her,
and to be the first to pet and console her. Threading the scented shrubs,
he came upon a turn in one of the alleys, from which point he had a view
of her figure, as she stood near a Portugal laurel on the lawn. Mr.
Pericles was by her side. Wilfrid's intention was to join them. A loud
sob from Emilia checked his foot.

"You are cruel," he heard her say.

"If it is good, I tell it you; if it is bad; abominable, I tell it you,
juste ze same," responded Mr. Pericles.

"The others did not think it very bad."

"Ah! bah!" Mr. Pericles cut her short.

Had they been talking of matters secret and too sweet, Wilfrid would have
retired, like a man of honour. As it was, he continued to listen. The
tears of his poor little friend, moreover, seemed to hold him there in
the hope that he might afford some help.

"Yes; I do not care for the others," she resumed. "You praised me the
night I first saw you."

"It is perhaps zat you can sing to z' moon," returned Mr. Pericles. "But,
what! a singer, she must sing in a house. To-night it is warm, to-morrow
it is cold. If you sing through a cold, what noise do we hear? It is a
nose, not a voice. It is a trompet."

Emilia, with a whimpering firmness, replied: "You said I am lazy. I am
not."

"Not lazy," Mr. Pericles assented.

"Do I care for praise from people who do not understand music? It is not
true. I only like to please them."

"Be a street-organ," Mr. Pericles retorted.

"I must like to see them pleased when I sing," said Emilia desperately.

"And you like ze clap of ze hands. Yez. It is quite natural. Yess. You
are a good child, it is clear. But, look. You are a voice uncultivated,
sauvage. You go wrong: I hear you: and dese claps of zese noodels send
you into squeaks and shrills, and false! false away you go. It is a
gallop ze wrong way."

Here Mr. Pericles attempted the most horrible reproduction of Emilia's
failure. She cried out as if she had been bitten.

"What am I to do?" she asked sadly.

"Not now," Mr. Pericles answered. "You live in London?--at where?"

"Must I tell you?"

"Certainly, you must tell me."

"But, I am not going there; I mean, not yet."

"You are going to sing to z' moon through z' nose. Yez. For how long?"

"These ladies have asked me to stay with them. They make me so happy.
When I leave them--then!"

Emilia sighed.

"And zen?" quoth Mr. Pericles.

"Then, while my money lasts, I shall stay in the country."

"How much money?"

"How much money have I?" Emilia frankly and accurately summed up the
condition of her treasury. "Four pounds and nineteen shillings."

"Hom! it is spent, and you go to your father again?"

"Yes."

"To ze old Belloni?"

"My father."

"No!" cried Mr. Pericles, upon Emilia's melancholy utterance. He bent to
her ear and rapidly spoke, in an undertone, what seemed to be a vivid
sketch of a new course of fortune for her. Emilia gave one joyful outcry;
and now Wilfrid retreated, questioning within himself whether he should
have remained so long. But, as he argued, if he was convinced that the
rascally Greek fellow meant mischief to her, was he not bound to employ
every stratagem to be her safeguard? The influence of Mr. Pericles
already exercised over her was immense and mysterious. Within ten minutes
she was singing triumphantly indoors. Wilfrid could hear that her voice
was firm and assured. She was singing the song of the woods. He found to
his surprise that his heart dropped under some burden, as if he had no
longer force to sustain it.

By-and-by some of the members of the company issued forth. Carriages were
heard on the gravel, and young men in couples, preparing to light the
ensign of happy release from the ladies (or of indemnification for their
absence, if you please), strolled about the grounds.

"Did you see that little passage between Laura Tinley and Bella Pole?"
said one, and forthwith mimicked them: "Laura commencing:-'We must have
her over to us.' 'I fear we have pre-engaged her.'--'Oh, but you, dear,
will do us the favour to come, too?' 'I fear, dear, our immediate
engagements will preclude the possibility.'--'Surely, dear Miss Pole, we
may hope that you have not abandoned us?'--'That, my dear Miss Tinley, is
out of the question.'--'May we not name a day?'--'If it depends upon us,
frankly, we cannot bid you do so.'"

The other joined him in laughter, adding: "'Frankly' 's capital! What
absurd creatures women are! How the deuce did you manage to remember it
all?"

"My sister was at my elbow. She repeated it, word for word."

"Pon my honour, women are wonderful creatures!"

The two young men continued their remarks, with a sense of perfect
consistency.

Lady Gosstre, as she was being conducted to her carriage, had pronounced
aloud that Emilia was decidedly worth hearing.

"She's better worth knowing," said Tracy Runningbrook. "I see you are all
bent on spoiling her. If you were to sit and talk with her, you would
perceive that she's meant for more than to make a machine of her throat.
What a throat it is! She has the most comical notion of things. I fancy
I'm looking at the budding of my own brain. She's a born artist, but I'm
afraid everybody's conspiring to ruin her."

"Surely," said Adela, "we shall not do that, if we encourage her in her
Art."

"He means another kind of art," said Lady Gosstre. "The term 'artist,'
applied to our sex, signifies 'Frenchwoman' with him. He does not allow
us to be anything but women. As artists then we are largely privileged, I
assure you."

"Are we placed under a professor to learn the art?" Adela inquired,
pleased with the subject under such high patronage.

"Each new experience is your accomplished professor," said Tracy. "One
I'll call Cleopatra a professor: she's but an illustrious example."

"Imp! you are corrupt." With which my lady tapped farewell on his
shoulder. Leaning from the carriage window, she said: "I suppose I shall
see you at Richford? Merthyr Powys is coming this week. And that reminds
me: he would be the man to appreciate your 'born artist.' Bring her to
me. We will have a dinner. I will despatch a formal invitation to-morrow.
The season's bad out of town for getting decent people to meet you. I
will do my best."

She bowed to Adela and Tracy. Mr. Pole, who had hovered around the
unfamiliar dialogue to attend the great lady to the door, here came in
for a recognition, and bowed obsequiously to the back of the carriage.

Arabella did not tell her sisters what weapons she had employed to effect
the rout of Mrs. Chump. She gravely remarked that the woman had consented
to go, and her sisters thanked her. They were mystified by Laura's
non-recognition of Emilia, and only suspected Wilfrid so faintly that
they were able to think they did not suspect him at all. On the whole,
the evening had been a success. It justified the ladies in repeating a
well-known Brookfield phrase: "We may be wrong in many things, but never
in our judgement of the merits of any given person." In the case of Tracy
Runningbrook, they had furnished a signal instance of their discernment.
Him they had met at the house of a friend of the Tinleys (a Colonel's
wife distantly connected with great houses). The Tinleys laughed at his
flaming head and him, but the ladies of Brookfield had ears and eyes for
a certain tone and style about him, before they learnt that he was of the
blood of dukes, and would be a famous poet. When this was mentioned,
after his departure, they had made him theirs, and the Tinleys had no
chance. Through Tracy, they achieved their introduction to Lady Gosstre.
And now they were to dine with her. They did not say that this was
through Emilia. In fact, they felt a little that they had this evening
been a sort of background to their prodigy: which was not in the design.
Having observed, "She sang deliciously," they dismissed her, and referred
to dresses, gaucheries of members of the company, pretensions here and
there, Lady Gosstre's walk, the way to shuffle men and women, how to
start themes for them to converse upon, and so forth. Not Juno and her
Court surveying our mortal requirements in divine independence of
fatigue, could have been more considerate for the shortcomings of
humanity. And while they were legislating this and that for others, they
still accepted hints for their own improvement, as those who have
Perfection in view may do. Lady Gosstre's carriage of her shoulders, and
general manner, were admitted to be worthy of study. "And did you notice
when Laura Tinley interrupted her conversation with Tracy Runningbrook,
how quietly she replied to the fact and nothing else, so that Laura had
not another word?"--"And did you observe her deference to papa, as
host?"--"And did you not see, on more than one occasion, with what
consummate ease she would turn a current of dialogue when it had gone far
enough?" They had all noticed, seen, and observed. They agreed that there
was a quality beyond art, beyond genius, beyond any special cleverness;
and that was, the great social quality of taking, as by nature, without
assumption, a queenly position in a circle, and making harmony of all the
instruments to be found in it. High praise of Lady Gosstre ensued. The
ladies of Brookfield allowed themselves to bow to her with the greater
humility, owing to the secret sense they nursed of overtopping her still
in that ineffable Something which they alone possessed: a casket little
people will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time to open for them, if
they would continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to contain.
Finally, these energetic young ladies said their prayers by the morning
twitter of the birds, and went to their beds, less from a desire for rest
than because custom demanded it.

Three days later Emilia was a resident in the house, receiving lessons in
demeanour from Cornelia, and in horsemanship from Wilfrid. She expressed
no gratitude for kindnesses or wonder at the change in her fortune, save
that pleasure sat like an inextinguishable light on her face. A splendid
new harp arrived one day, ticketed, "For Miss Emilia Belloni."

"He does not know I have a second Christian name," was her first remark,
after an examination of the instrument.

"'He?'" quoth Adela. "May it not have been a lady's gift?"

Emilia clearly thought not.

"And to whom do you ascribe it?"

"Who sent it to me? Mr. Pericles, of course."

She touched the strings immediately, and sighed.

"Are you discontented with the tone, child?" asked Adela.

"No. I--I'll guess what it cost!"

Surely the ladies had reason to think her commonplace!

She explained herself better to Wilfrid, when he returned to Brookfield
after a short absence. Showing the harp, "See what Mr. Pericles thinks me
worth!" she said.

"Not more than that?" was his gallant rejoinder. "Does it suit you?"

"Yes; in every way."

This was all she said about it.

In the morning after breakfast, she sat at harp or piano, and then ran
out to gather wild flowers and learn the names of trees and birds. On
almost all occasions Wilfrid was her companion. He laughed at the little
sisterly revelations the ladies confided concerning her too heartily for
them to have any fear that she was other than a toy to him. Few women are
aware with how much ease sentimental men can laugh outwardly at what is
internal torment. They had apprised him of their wish to know what her
origin was, and of her peculiar reserve on that topic: whereat he assured
them that she would have no secrets from him. His conduct of affairs was
so open that none could have supposed the gallant cornet entangled in a
maze of sentiment. For, veritably, this girl was the last sort of girl to
please his fancy; and he saw not a little of fair ladies: by virtue of
his heroic antecedents, he was himself well seen of them. The gallant
cornet adored delicacy and a gilded refinement. The female flower could
not be too exquisitely cultivated to satisfy him. And here he was,
running after a little unformed girl, who had no care to conceal the fact
that she was an animal, nor any notion of the necessity for doing so! He
had good reason to laugh when his sisters talked of her. It was not a
pleasant note which came from the gallant cornet then. But, in the
meadows, or kindly conducting Emilia's horse, he yielded pretty music.
Emilia wore Arabella's riding-habit, Adela's hat, and Cornelia's gloves.
Politic as the ladies of Brookfield were, they were full of natural
kindness; and Wilfrid, albeit a diplomatist, was not yet mature enough to
control and guide a very sentimental heart. There was an element of dim
imagination in all the family: and it was this that consciously elevated
them over the world in prospect, and made them unconsciously subject to
what I must call the spell of the poetic power.

Wilfrid in his soul wished that Emilia should date from the day she had
entered Brookfield. But at times it seemed to him that a knowledge of her
antecedents might relieve him from his ridiculous perplexity of feeling.
Besides though her voice struck emotion, she herself was
unimpressionable. "Cold by nature," he said; looking at the unkindled
fire. She shook hands like a boy. If her fingers were touched and
retained, they continued to be fingers for as long as you pleased.
Murmurs and whispers passed by her like the breeze. She appeared also to
have no enthusiasm for her Art, so that not even there could Wilfrid find
common ground. Italy, however, he discovered to be the subject that made
her light up. Of Italy he would speak frequently, and with much simulated
fervour.

"Mr. Pericles is going to take me there," said Emilia. "He told me to
keep it secret. I have no secrets from my friends. I am to learn in the
academy at Milan."

"Would you not rather let me take you?"

"Not quite." She shook her head. "No; because you do not understand music
as he does. And are you as rich? I cost a great deal of money even for
eating alone. But you will be glad when you hear me when I come back. Do
you hear that nightingale? It must be a nightingale."

She listened. "What things he makes us feel!"

Bending her head, she walked on silently. Wilfrid, he knew not why, had
got a sudden hunger for all the days of her life. He caught her hand and,
drawing her to a garden seat, said: "Come; now tell me all about yourself
before I knew you. Do you mind?"

"I'll tell you anything you want to hear," said Emilia.

He enjoined her to begin from the beginning.

"Everything about myself?" she asked.

"Everything. I have your permission to smoke?"

Emilia smiled. "I wish I had some Italian cigars to give you. My father
sometimes has plenty given to him."

Wilfrid did not contemplate his havannah with less favour.

"Now," said Emilia, taking a last sniff of the flowers before
surrendering her nostril to the invading smoke. She looked at the scene
fronting her under a blue sky with slow flocks of clouds: "How I like
this!" she exclaimed. "I almost forget that I long for Italy, here."

Beyond a plot of flowers, a gold-green meadow dipped to a ridge of gorse
bordered by dark firs and the tips of greenest larches.




CHAPTER VI

"My father is one of the most wonderful men in the whole world!"

Wilfrid lifted an eyelid.

"He is one of the first-violins at the Italian Opera!"

The gallant cornet's critical appreciation of this impressive
announcement was expressed in a spiral ebullition of smoke from his
mouth.

"He is such a proud man! And I don't wonder at that: he has reason to be
proud."

Again Wilfrid lifted an eyelid, and there is no knowing but that ideas of
a connection with foreign Counts, Cardinals, and Princes passed hopefully
through him.

"Would you believe that he is really the own nephew of Andronizetti!"

"Deuce he is!" said Wilfrid, in a mist. "Which one?"

"The composer!"

Wilfrid emitted more smoke.

"Who composed--how I love him!--that lovely 'la, la, la, la,' and the
'te-de, ta-da, te-dio,' that pleases you, out of 'Il Maladetto.' And I am
descended from him! Let me hope I shall not be unworthy of him. You will
never tell it till people think as much of me, or nearly. My father says
I shall never be so great, because I am half English. It's not my fault.
My mother was English. But I feel that I am much more Italian than
English. How I long for Italy--like a thing underground! My father did
something against the Austrians, when he was a young man. Would not I
have done it? I am sure I would--I don't know what. Whenever I think of
Italy, night or day, pant-pant goes my heart. The name of Italy is my
nightingale: I feel that somebody lives that I love, and is ill-treated
shamefully, crying out to me for help. My father had to run away to save
his life. He was fifteen days lying in the rice-fields to escape from the
soldiers--which makes me hate a white coat. There was my father; and at
night he used to steal out to one of the villages, where was a good, true
woman--so they are, most, in Italy! She gave him food; maize-bread and
wine, sometimes meat; sometimes a bottle of good wine. When my father
thinks of it he cries, if there is gin smelling near him. At last my
father had to stop there day and night. Then that good woman's daughter
came to him to keep him from starving; she risked being stripped naked
and beaten with rods, to keep my father from starving. When my father
speaks of Sandra now, it makes my mother--she does not like it. I am
named after her: Emilia Alessandra Belloni. 'Sandra' is short for it. She
did not know why I was christened that, and will never call me anything
but Emilia, though my father says Sandra, always. My father never speaks
of that dear Sandra herself, except when he is tipsy. Once I used to wish
him to be tipsy; for then I used to sit at my piano while he talked, and
I made all his words go into music. One night I did it so well, my father
jumped right up from his chair, shouting 'Italia!' and he caught his wig
off his head, and threw it into the fire, and rushed out into the street
quite bald, and people thought him mad.

"It was the beginning of all our misfortunes! My father was taken and
locked up in a place as a tipsy man. That he has never forgiven the
English for! It has made me and my mother miserable ever since. My mother
is sure it is all since that night. Do you know, I remember, though I was
so young, that I felt the music--oh! like a devil in my bosom? Perhaps it
was, and it passed out of me into him. Do you think it was?"

Wilfrid answered: "Well, no! I shouldn't think you had anything to do
with the devil." Indeed, he was beginning to think her one of the
smallest of frocked female essences.

"I lost my piano through it," she went on. "I could not practise. I was
the most miserable creature in all the world till I fell in love with my
harp. My father would not play to get money. He sat in his chair, and
only spoke to ask about meal-time, and we had no money for food, except
by selling everything we had. Then my piano went. So then I said to my
mother, I will advertize to give lessons, as other people do, and make
money for us all, myself. So we paid money for a brass-plate, and our
landlady's kind son put it up on the door for nothing, and we waited for
pupils to come. I used to pray to the Virgin that she would blessedly
send me pupils, for my poor mother's complaints were so shrill and out of
tune it's impossible to tell you what I suffered. But by-and-by my father
saw the brass-plate. He fell into one of his dreadful passions. We had to
buy him another wig. His passions were so expensive: my mother used to
say, 'There goes our poor dinner out of the window!' But, well! he went
to get employment now. He can, always, when he pleases; for such a touch
on the violin as my father has, you never heard. You feel yourself from
top to toe, when my father plays. I feel as if I breathed music like air.
One day came news from Italy, all in the newspaper, of my father's
friends and old companions shot and murdered by the Austrians. He read it
in the evening, after we had a quiet day. I thought he did not mind it
much, for he read it out to us quite quietly; and then he made me sit on
his knee and read it out. I cried with rage, and he called to me,
'Sandra! Peace!' and began walking up and down the room, while my mother
got the bread and cheese and spread it on the table, for we were
beginning to be richer. I saw my father take out his violin. He put it on
the cloth and looked at it. Then he took it up, and laid his chin on it
like a man full of love, and drew the bow across just once. He whirled
away the bow, and knocked down our candle, and in the darkness I heard
something snap and break with a hollow sound. When I could see, he had
broken it, the neck from the body--the dear old violin! I could cry
still. I--I was too late to save it. I saw it broken, and the empty
belly, and the loose strings! It was murdering a spirit--that was! My
father sat in a corner one whole week, moping like such an old man! I was
nearly dead with my mother's voice. By-and-by we were all silent, for
there was nothing to eat. So I said to my mother, 'I will earn money.' My
mother cried. I proposed to take a lodging for myself, all by myself; go
there in the morning and return at night, and give lessons, and get money
for them. My landlady's good son gave me the brass-plate again. Emilia
Alessandra Belloni! I was glad to see my name. I got two pupils very
quickly one, an old lady, and one, a young one. The old lady--I mean, she
was not grey--wanted a gentleman to marry her, and the landlady told
me--I mean my pupil--it makes me laugh--asked him what he thought of her
voice: for I had been singing. I earned a great deal of money: two pounds
ten shillings a week. I could afford to pay for lessons myself, I
thought. What an expense! I had to pay ten shillings for one lesson! Some
have to pay twenty; but I would pay it to learn from the best
masters;--and I had to make my father and mother live on potatoes, and
myself too, of course. If you buy potatoes carefully, they are extremely
cheap things to live upon, and make you forget your hunger more than
anything else.

"I suppose," added Emilia, "you have never lived upon potatoes entirely?
Oh, no!"

Wilfrid gave a quiet negative.

"But I was pining to learn, and was obliged to keep them low. I could
pitch any notes, and I was clear but I was always ornamenting, and what I
want is to be an accurate singer. My music-master was a German--not an
Austrian--oh, no!--I'm sure he was not. At least, I don't think so, for I
liked him. He was harsh with me, but sometimes he did stretch his fingers
on my head, and turn it round, and say words that I pretended not to
think of, though they sent me home burning. I began to compose, and this
gentleman tore up the whole sheet in a rage, when I showed it him; but he
gave me a dinner, and left off charging me ten shillings--only seven, and
then five--and he gave me more time than he gave others. He also did
something which I don't know yet whether I can thank him for. He made me
know the music of the great German. I used to listen: I could not believe
such music could come from a German. He followed me about, telling me I
was his slave. For some time I could not sleep. I laughed at myself for
composing. He was not an Austrian: but when he was alive he lived in
Vienna, the capital of Austria. He ate Austrian bread, and why God gave
him such a soul of music I never can think!--Well, by-and-by my father
wanted to know what I did in the day, and why they never had anything but
potatoes for dinner. My mother came to me, and I told her to say, I took
walks. My father said I was an idle girl, and like my mother--who was a
slave to work. People are often unjust! So my father said he would watch
me. I had to cross the park to give a lesson to a lady who had a husband,
and she wanted to sing to him to keep him at home in the evening. I used
to pray he might not have much ear for music. One day a gentleman came
behind me in the park. He showed me a handkerchief, and asked me if it
was mine. I felt for my own and found it in my pocket. He was certain I
had dropped it. He looked in the corners for the name, I told him my
name--Emilia Alessandra Belloni. He found A.F.G. there. It was a
beautiful cambric handkerchief, white and smooth. I told him it must be a
gentleman's, as it was so large; but he said he had picked it up close by
me, and he could not take it, and I must; and I was obliged to keep it,
though I would much rather not. Near the end of the park he left me."