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Emile Zola - "Contes a Ninon"

Richard Harding Davis - "Gallegher and Other Stories"

Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint - "The Blind Spot"

Unknown - "The Bible, King James version, Book 30: Amos"

Sandra Belloni, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Sandra Belloni, Complete




"Toast till the day of my death--tell your mistress that!" he replied;
and partly from shame at his unaccountable vehemence, he paused in his
sponging, meditated, and chilled. An association of toast with spectral
things grew in his mind, when presently the girl's voice was heard:
"Please, sir, did say you'd have toast, or not, this morning?" It cost
him an effort to answer simply, "Yes."

That she should continue, "Not sir?" appeared like perversity. "No aig?"
was maddening.

"Well, no; never mind it this morning," said he.

"Not this morning," she repeated.

"Then it will not be till the day of your death, as you said," she is
thinking that, was the idea running in his brain, and he was half ready
to cry out "Stop," and renew his order for toast, that he might seem
consecutive. The childishness of the wish made him ask himself what it
mattered. "I said 'Not till the day;' so, none to-day would mean that I
have reached the day." Shivering with the wet on his pallid skin, he
thought this over.

His landlady had used her discretion, and there was toast on the table. A
beam of Spring's morning sunlight illuminated the toast-rack. He sat, and
ate, and munched the doubt whether "not till" included the final day, or
stopped short of it. By this the state of his brain may be conceived. A
longing for beauty, and a dark sense of an incapacity to thoroughly enjoy
it, tormented him. He sent for his landlady's canary, and the ready
shrill song of the bird persuaded him that much of the charm of music is
wilfully swelled by ourselves, and can be by ourselves withdrawn: that is
to say, the great chasm and spell of sweet sounds is assisted by the
force of our imaginations. What is that force?--the heat and torrent of
the blood. When that exists no more--to one without hope, for
instance--what is music or beauty? Intrinsically, they are next to
nothing. He argued it out so, and convinced himself of his own delusions,
till his hand, being in the sunlight, gave him a pleasant warmth. "That's
something we all love," he said, glancing at the blue sky above the
roofs. "But there's little enough of it in this climate," he thought,
with an eye upon the darker corners of his room. When he had eaten, he
sent word to his landlady to make up his week's bill. The week was not at
an end, and that good woman appeased before him, astonished, saying: "To
be sure, your habits is regular, but there's little items one I'll guess
at, and how make out a bill, Sir Purcy, and no items?"

He nodded his head.

"The country again?" she asked smilingly.

"I am going down there," he said.

"And beautiful at this time of the year, it is! though, for market
gardening, London beats any country I ever knew; and if you like creature
comforts, I always say, stop in London! And then the policemen! who
really are the greatest comfort of all to us poor women, and seem sent
from above especially to protect our weakness. I do assure you, Sir
Purcy, I feel it, and never knew a right-minded woman that did not. And
how on earth our grandmothers contrived to get about without them! But
there! people who lived before us do seem like the most uncomfortable!
When--my goodness! we come to think there was some lived before tea! Why,
as I say over almost every cup I drink, it ain't to be realized. It seems
almost wicked to say it, Sir Purcy; but it's my opinion there ain't a
Christian woman who's not made more of a Christian through her tea. And a
man who beats his wife my first question is, 'Do he take his tea
regular?' For, depend upon it, that man is not a tea-drinker at all."

He let her talk away, feeling oddly pleased by this mundane chatter, as
was she to pour forth her inmost sentiments to a baronet.

When she said: "Your fire shall be lighted to-night to welcome you," the
man looked up, and was going to request that the trouble might be spared,
but he nodded. His ghost saw the burning fire awaiting him. Or how if it
sparkled merrily, and he beheld it with his human eyes that night? His
beloved would then have touched him with her hand--yea, brought the dead
to life! He jumped to his feet, and dismissed the worthy dame. On both
sides of him, 'Yes,' and 'No,' seemed pressing like two hostile powers
that battled for his body. They shrieked in his ears, plucked at his
fingers. He heard them hushing deeply as he went to his pistol-case, and
drew forth one--he knew not which.




CHAPTER LVI

On a wild April morning, Emilia rose from her bed and called to mind a
day of the last year's Spring when she had watched the cloud streaming
up, and felt that it was the curtain of an unknown glory. But now it wore
the aspect of her life itself, with nothing hidden behind those stormy
folds, save peace. South-westward she gazed, eyeing eagerly the struggle
of twisting vapour; long flying edges of silver went by, and mounds of
faint crimson, and here and there a closing space of blue, swift as a
thought of home to a soldier in action. The heavens were like a
battle-field. Emilia shut her lips hard, to check an impulse of prayer
for Merthyr fighting in Italy: for he was in Italy, and she once more
among the Monmouth hills: he was in Italy fighting, and she chained here
to her miserable promise! Three days after she had given the promise to
Wilfrid, Merthyr left, shaking her hand like any common friend. Georgiana
remained, by his desire, to protect her. Emilia had written to Wilfrid
for release, but being no apt letter-writer, and hating the task, she was
soon involved by him in a complication of bewildering sentiments, some of
which she supposed she was bound to feel, while perhaps one or two she
did feel, at the summons. The effect was that she lost the true wording
of her blunt petition for release: she could no longer put it bluntly.
But her heart revolted the more, and gave her sharp eyes to see into his
selfishness. The purgatory of her days with Georgiana, when the latter
was kept back from her brother in his peril, spurred Emilia to renew her
appeal; but she found that all she said drew her into unexpected traps
and pitfalls. There was only one thing she could say plainly: "I want to
go." If she repeated this, Wilfrid was ready with citations from her
letters, wherein she had said 'this,' and 'that,' and many other phrases.
His epistolary power and skill in arguing his own case were creditable to
him. Affected as Emilia was by other sensations, she could not combat the
idea strenuously suggested by him, that he had reason to complain of her
behaviour. He admitted his special faults, but, by distinctly tracing
them to their origin, he complacently hinted the excuse for them.
Moreover, and with artistic ability, he painted such a sentimental halo
round the 'sacredness of her pledged word,' that Emilia could not resist
a superstitious notion about it, and about what the breaking of it would
imply. Georgiana had removed her down to Monmouth to be out of his way. A
constant flight of letters pursued them both, for Wilfrid was far too
clever to allow letters in his hand-writing to come for one alone of two
women shut up in a country-house together. He saw how the letterless one
would sit speculating shrewdly and spitefully; so he was careful to amuse
his mystified Dragon, while he drew nearer and nearer to his gold apple.
Another object was, that by getting Georgiana to consent to become in
part his confidante, he made it almost a point of honour for her to be
secret with Lady Charlotte.

At last a morning came with no Brookfield letter for either of them. The
letters stopped from that time. It was almost as if a great buzzing had
ceased in Emilia's ears, and she now heard her own sensations clearly. To
Georgiana's surprise, she manifested no apprehension or regret. "Or
else," the lady thought, "she wears a mask to me;" and certainly it was a
pale face that Emilia was beginning to wear. At last came April and its
wild morning. No little female hypocrisies passed between them when they
met; they shook hands at arm's length by the breakfast-table. Then Emilia
said: "I am ready to go to Italy: I will go at once."

Georgiana looked straight at her, thinking: "This is a fit of indignation
with Wilfrid." She answered: "Italy! I fancied you had forgotten there
was such a country."

"I don't forget my country and my friends," said Emilia,

"At least, I must ask the ground of so unexpected a resolution," was
rejoined.

"Do you remember what Merthyr wrote in his letter from Arona? How long it
takes to understand the meaning of some, words! He says that I should not
follow an impulse that is not the impulse of all my nature--myself
altogether. Yes! I know what that means now. And he tells me that my life
is worth more than to be bound to the pledge of a silly moment. It is!
He, Georgey, unkind that you are!--he does not distrust me; but always
advises and helps me: Merthyr waits for me. I cannot be instantly ready
for every meaning in the world. What I want to do, is to see Wilfrid: if
not, I will write to him. I will tell him that I intend to break my
promise."

A light of unaffected pride shone from the girl's face, as she threw down
this gauntlet to sentimentalism.

"And if he objects?" said Georgiana.

"If he objects, what can happen? If he objects by letter, I am gone. I
shall not write for permission. I shall write what my will is. If I see
him, and he objects, I can look into his eyes and say what I think right.
Why, I have lived like a frozen thing ever since I gave him my word. I
have felt at times like a snake hissing at my folly. I think I have felt
something like men when they swear."

Georgiana's features expressed a slight but perceptible disgust. Emilia
continued humbly: "Forgive me. I wish you to know how I hate the word I
gave that separates me from Merthyr in my Italy, and makes you dislike
your poor Emilia. You do. I have pardoned it, though it was twenty stabs
a day."

"But, why, if this promise was so hateful to you, did you not break it
before?" asked Georgiana.

"I had not the courage," Emilia stooped her head to confess; "and
besides," she added, curiously half-closing her eyelids, as one does to
look on a minute object, "I could not see through it before."

"If," suggested Georgiana, "you break your word, you release him from
his."

"No! if he cannot see the difference," cried Emilia, wildly, "then let
him keep away from me for ever, and he shall not have the name of friend!
Is there no difference--I wish you would let me cry out as they do in
Shakespeare, Georgey!" Emilia laughed to cover her vehemence. "I want
something more than our way of talking, to witness that there is such a
difference between us. Am I to live here till all my feelings are burnt
out, and my very soul is only a spark in a log of old wood? and to keep
him from murdering my countrymen, or flogging the women of Italy! God
knows what those Austrians would make him do. He changes. He would easily
become an Austrian. I have heard him once or twice, and if I had shut my
eyes, I might have declared an Austrian spoke. I wanted to keep him here,
but it is not right that I--I should be caged till I scarcely feel my
finger-ends, or know that I breathe sensibly as you and others do. I am
with Merthyr. That is what I intend to tell him."

She smiled softly up to Georgiana's cold eyes, to get a look of
forgiveness for her fiery speaking.

"So, then, you love my brother?" said Georgiana.

Emilia could have retorted, "Cruel that you are!" The pain of having an
unripe feeling plucked at without warning, was bitter; but she repressed
any exclamation, in her desire to maintain simple and unsensational
relations always with those surrounding her.

"He is my friend," she said. "I think of something better than that other
word. Oh, that I were a man, to call him my brother-in-arms! What's a
girl's love in return for his giving his money, his heart, and offering
his life every day for Italy?"

As soon as Georgiana could put faith in her intention to depart, she gave
her a friendly hand and embrace.

Two days later they were at Richford, with Lady Gosstre. The journals
were full of the Italian uprising. There had been a collision between the
Imperial and patriotic forces, near Brescia, from which the former had
retired in some confusion. Great things were expected of Piedmont, though
many, who had reason to know him, distrusted her king. All Lombardy
awaited the signal from Piedmont. Meanwhile blood was flowing.

In the excitement of her sudden rush from dead monotony to active life,
Emilia let some time pass before she wrote to Wilfrid. Her letter was in
her hand, when one was brought in to her from him. It ran thus:--

"I have just returned home, and what is this I hear? Are you utterly
faithless? Can I not rely on you to keep the word you have solemnly
pledged! Meet me at once. Name a place. I am surrounded by misery and
distraction. I will tell you all when we meet. I have trusted that you
were firm. Write instantly. I cannot ask you to come here. The house is
broken up. There is no putting to paper what has happened. My father lies
helpless. Everything rests on me. I thought that I could rely on you."

Emilia tore up her first letter, and replied:--

"Come here at once. Or, if you would wish to meet me elsewhere, it shall
be where you please: but immediately. If you have heard that I am going
to Italy, it is true. I break my promise. I shall hope to have your
forgiveness. My heart bleeds for my dear Cornelia, and I am eager to see
my sisters, and embrace them, and share their sorrow. If I must not come,
tell them I kiss them. Adieu!"

Wilfrid replied:--

"I will be by Richford Park gates to-morrow at a quarter to nine. You
speak of your heart. I suppose it is a habit. Be careful to put on a
cloak or thick shawl; we have touches of frost. If I cannot amuse you,
perhaps the nightingales will. Do you remember those of last year? I
wonder whether we shall hear the same?--we shall never hear the same."

This iteration, whether cunningly devised or not, had a charm for
Emilia's ear. She thought: "I had forgotten all about them." When she was
in her bedroom at night, she threw up her window. April was leaning close
upon May, and she had not to wait long before a dusky flutter of low
notes, appearing to issue from the great rhododendron bank across the
lawn, surprised her. She listened, and another little beginning was
heard, timorous, shy, and full of mystery for her. The moon hung over
branches, some that showed young buds, some still bare. Presently the
long, rich, single notes cut the air, and melted to their glad delicious
chuckle. The singer was answered from a farther bough, and again from
one. It grew to be a circle of melody round Emilia at the open window.
Was it the same as last year's? The last year's lay in her memory faint
and well-nigh unawakened. There was likewise a momentary sense of
unreality in this still piping peacefulness, while Merthyr stood in a
bloody-streaked field, fronting death. And yet the song was sweet. Emilia
clasped her arms, shut her eyes, and drank it in. Not to think at all, or
even to brood on her sensations, but to rest half animate and let those
divine sounds find a way through her blood, was medicine to her.

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?"