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Sam Vaknin - "The Belgian Curtain"

Pencho Slaveykov - "Epical Songs"

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Sandra Belloni, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Sandra Belloni, Complete




At this point Wilfrid roused up. "You met him the next day near the same
place?" he remarked.

She turned to him with astonishment on her features. "How did you know
that? How could you know?"

"Sort of thing that generally happens," said Wilfrid.

"Yes; he was there," Emilia slowly pursued, controlling her inclination
to question further. "He had forgotten about the handkerchief, for when I
saw him, I fancied he might have found the owner. We talked together. He
told me he was in the Army, and I spoke of my father's playing and my
singing. He was so fond of music that I promised him he should hear us
both. He used to examine my hand, and said they were sensitive fingers
for playing. I knew that. He had great hopes of me. He said he would give
me a box at the Opera, now and then. I was mad with joy; and so delighted
to have made a friend. I had never before made a rich friend. I sang to
him in the park. His eyes looked beautiful with pleasure. I know I
enchanted him."

"How old were you then?" inquired Wilfrid.

"Sixteen. I can sing better now, I know; but I had voice then, and he
felt that I had. I forgot where we were, till people stood round us, and
he hurried me away from them, and said I must sing to him in some quiet
place. I promised to, and he promised he would have dinner for me at
Richmond Hill, in the country, and he would bring friends to hear me."

"Go on," said Wilfrid, rather sharply.

She sighed. "I only saw him once after that. It was such a miserable day!
It rained. It was Saturday. I did not expect to find him in the rain; but
there he stood, exactly where he had given me the handkerchief. He smiled
kindly, as I came up. I dislike gloomy people! His face was always fresh
and nice. His moustache reminded me of Italy. I used to think of him
under a great warm sky, with olives and vine-trees and mulberries like my
father used to speak of. I could have flung my arms about his neck."

"Did you?" The cornet gave a strangled note.

"Oh, no!" said Emilia seriously. "But I told him how happy the thought of
going into the country made me, and that it was almost like going to
Italy. He told me he would take me to Italy, if I liked. I could have
knelt at his feet. Unfortunately his friends could not come. Still, I was
to go, and dine, and float on the water, plucking flowers. I determined
to fancy myself in Venice, which is the place my husband must take me to,
when I am married to him. I will give him my whole body and soul for his
love, when I am there!"

Here the cornet was capable of articulate music for a moment, but it
resolved itself into: "Well, well! Yes, go on!"

"I took his arm this time. It gave me my first timid feeling that I
remember, and he laughed at me, and drove it quite away, telling me his
name: Augustus Frederick what was it? Augustus Frederick--it began with G
something. O me! have I really forgotten? Christian names are always
easier to remember. A captain he was--a riding one; just like you. I
think you are all kind!"

"Extremely," muttered the ironical cornet. "A.F.G.;--those are the
initials on the handkerchief!"

"They are!" cried Emilia. "It must have been his own handkerchief!"

"You have achieved the discovery," quoth Wilfrid. "He dropped it there
overnight, and found it just as you were passing in the morning."

"That must be impossible," said Emilia, and dismissed the subject
forthwith, in a feminine power of resolve to be blind to it.

"I am afraid," she took up her narrative, "my father is sometimes really
almost mad. He does such things! I had walked under this gentleman's
umbrella to the bridge between the park and the gardens with the sheep,
and beautiful flowers in beds. In an instant my father came up right in
our faces. He caught hold of my left hand. I thought he wanted to shake
it, for he imitates English ways at times, even with us at home, and
shakes our hands when he comes in. But he swung me round. He stood
looking angrily at this gentleman, and cried 'Yes! yes!' to every word he
spoke. The gentleman bowed to me, and asked me to take his umbrella; but
I was afraid to; and my father came to me,--oh, Madonna, think of what he
did! I saw that his pockets were very big. He snatched out potatoes, and
began throwing them as hard as he could throw them at the gentleman, and
struck him with some of them. He threw nine large potatoes! I begged him
to think of our dinner; but he cried 'Yes! it is our dinner we give to
your head, vagabond!' in his English. I could not help running up to the
gentleman to beg for his pardon. He told me not to cry, and put some
potatoes he had been picking up all into my hand. They were muddy, but he
wiped them first; and he said it was not the first time he had stood
fire, and then said good-bye; and I slipped the potatoes into my pocket
immediately, thankful that they were not wasted. My father pulled me away
roughly from the laughing and staring people on the bridge. But I knew
the potatoes were only bruised. Even three potatoes will prevent you from
starving. They were very fine ones, for I always took care to buy them
good. When I reached home--"

Wilfrid had risen, and was yawning with a desperate grimace. He bade her
continue, and pitched back heavily into his seat.

"When I reached home and could be alone with my mother, she told me my
father had been out watching me the day before, and that he had filled
his pockets that morning. She thought he was going to walk out in the
country and get people on the road to cook them for him. That is what he
has done when he was miserable,--to make himself quite miserable, I
think, for he loves streets best. Guess my surprise! My mother was making
my head ache with her complaints, when, as I drew out the potatoes to
show her we had some food, there was a purse at the bottom of my
pocket,--a beautiful green purse! O that kind gentleman! He must have put
it in my hand with the potatoes that my father flung at him! How I have
cried to think that I may never sing to him my best to please him! My
mother and I opened the purse eagerly. It had ten pounds in paper money,
and five sovereigns, and silver,--I think four shillings. We determined
to keep it a secret; and then we thought of the best way of spending it,
and decided not to spend it all, but to keep some for when we wanted it
dreadfully, and for a lesson or two for me now and then, and a
music-score, and perhaps a good violin for my father, and new strings for
him and me, and meat dinners now and then, and perhaps a day in the
country: for that was always one of my dreams as I watched the clouds
flying over London. They seemed to be always coming from happy places and
going to happy places, never stopping where I was! I cannot be sorrowful
long. You know that song of mine that you like so much--my own composing?
It was a song about that kind gentleman. I got words to suit it as well
as I could, from a penny paper, but they don't mean anything that I mean,
and they are only words."

She did not appear to hear the gallant cornet's denial that he cared
particularly for that song.

"What I meant was,--that gentleman speaks--I have fought for Italy; I am
an English hero and have fought for Italy, because of an Italian child;
but now I am wounded and a prisoner. When you shoot me, cruel Austrians,
I shall hear her voice and think of nothing else, so you cannot hurt me."

Emilia turned spitefully on herself at this close. "How I spoil it! My
words are always stupid, when I feel.--Well, now my mother and I were
quite peaceful, and my father was better fed. One night he brought home a
Jew gentleman, beautifully dressed, with diamonds all over him. He
sparkled like the Christmas cakes in pastry-cooks" windows. I sang to
him, and he made quite a noise about me. But the man made me so
uncomfortable, touching my shoulders, and I could not bear his hands,
even when he was praising me. I sang to him till the landlady made me
leave off, because of the other lodgers who wanted to sleep. He came
every evening; and then said I should sing at a concert. It turned out to
be a public-house, and my father would not let me go; but I was sorry;
for in public the man could not touch me as he did. It damped the voice!"

"I should like to know where that fellow lives," cried the cornet.

"I don't know, I'm sure," she said. "He lends money. Do you want any? I
heard your sisters say something, one day. You can always have all that I
have, you know."

A quick spirit of pity and honest kindness went through Wilfrid's veins
and threatened to play the woman with his eyes, for a moment. He took her
hand and pressed it. She put her lips to his fingers.

"Once," she continued, "when the Jew gentleman had left, I spoke to my
father of his way with me, and then my father took me on his knee, and
the things he told me of what that man felt for me made my mother come
and tear me away to bed. I was obliged to submit to the Jew gentleman
patting and touching me always. He used to crush my dreams afterwards! I
know my voice was going. My father was so eager for me to please him, I
did my best; but I felt dull, and used to sit and shake my head at my
harp, crying; or else I felt like an angry animal, and could have torn
the strings.

"Think how astonished I was when my mother came to me to say my father
had money in his pockets!--one pound, seventeen shillings, she counted:
and he had not been playing! Then he brought home a new violin, and he
said to me, 'I shall go; I shall play; I am Orphee, and dinners shall
rise!' I was glad, and kissed him; and he said, 'This is Sandra's gift to
me,' showing the violin. I only knew what that meant two days afterwards.
Is a girl not seventeen fit to be married?"

With this abrupt and singular question she had taken an indignant figure,
and her eyes were fiery: so that Wilfrid thought her much fitter than a
minute before.

"Married!" she exclaimed. "My mother told me about that. You do not
belong to yourself: you are tied down. You are a slave, a drudge; mustn't
dream, mustn't think! I hate it. By-and-by, I suppose it will happen. Not
yet! And yet that man offered to take me to Italy. It was the Jew
gentleman. He said I should make money, if he took me, and grow as rich
as princesses. He brought a friend to hear me, another Jew gentleman; and
he was delighted, and he met me near our door the very next morning, and
offered me a ring with blue stones, and he proposed to marry me also, and
take me to Italy, if I would give up his friend and choose him instead.
This man did not touch me, and, do you know, for some time I really
thought I almost, very nearly, might,--if it had not been for his face!
It was impossible to go to Italy--yes, to go to heaven! through that face
of his! That face of his was just like the pictures of dancing men with
animals' hairy legs and hoofs in an old thick poetry book belonging to my
mother. Just fancy a nose that seemed to be pecking at great fat red
lips! He met me and pressed me to go continually, till all of a sudden up
came the first Jew gentleman, and he cried out quite loud in the street
that he was being robbed by the other; and they stood and made a noise in
the street, and I ran away. But then I heard that my father had borrowed
money from the one who came first, and that his violin came from that
man; and my father told me the violin would be taken from him, and he
would have to go to prison, if I did not marry that man. I went and cried
in my mother's arms. I shall never forget her kindness; for though she
could never see anybody crying without crying herself, she did not, and
was quiet as a mouse, because she knew how her voice hurt me. There's a
large print-shop in one of the great streets of London, with coloured
views of Italy. I used to go there once, and stand there for I don't know
how long, looking at them, and trying to get those Jew gentlemen--"

"Call them Jews--they're not gentlemen," interposed Wilfrid.

"Jews," she obeyed the dictate, "out of my mind. When I saw the views of
Italy they danced and grinned up and down the pictures. Oh, horrible!
There was no singing for me then. My music died. At last that oldish lady
gave up her lessons, and said to me, 'You little rogue! you will do what
I do, some day;' for she was going to be married to that young man who
thought her voice so much improved; and she paid me three pounds, and
gave me one pound more, and some ribbons and gloves. I went at once to my
mother, and made her give me five pounds out of the gentleman's purse. I
took my harp and music-scores. I did not know where I was going, but only
that I could not stop. My mother cried: but she helped to pack my things.
If she disobeys me I act my father, and tower over her, and frown, and
make her mild. She was such a poor good slave to me that day! but I
trusted her no farther than the door. There I kissed her, full of love,
and reached the railway. They asked me where I was going, and named
places to me: I did not know one. I shut my eyes, and prayed to be
directed, and chose Hillford. In the train I was full of music in a
moment. There I met farmer Wilson, of the farm near us--where your
sisters found me; and he was kind, and asked me about myself; and I
mentioned lodgings, and that I longed for woods and meadows. Just as we
were getting out of the train, he said I was to come with him; and I did,
very gladly. Then I met you; and I am here. All because I prayed to be
directed--I do think that!"

Emilia clasped her hands, and looked pensively at the horizon sky, with a
face of calm gratefulness.

The cornet was on his legs. "So!" he said. "And you never saw anything
more of that fellow you kissed in the park?"

"Kissed?--that gentleman?" returned Emilia. "I have not kissed him. He
did not want it. Men kiss us when we are happy, and we kiss them when
they are unhappy."

Wilfrid was perhaps incompetent to test the truth of this profound
aphoristic remark, delivered with the simplicity of natural conviction.
The narrative had, to his thinking, quite released from him his temporary
subjection to this little lady's sway. All that he felt for her
personally now was pity. It speaks something for the strength of the
sentiment with which he had first conceived her, that it was not pelted
to death, and turned to infinite disgust, by her potatoes. For sentiment
is a dainty, delicate thing, incapable of bearing much: revengeful, too,
when it is outraged. Bruised and disfigured, it stood up still, and
fought against them. They were very fine ones, as Emilia said, and they
hit him hard. However, he pitied her, and that protected him like a
shield. He told his sisters a tale of his own concerning the strange
damsel, humorously enough to make them see that he enjoyed her presence
as that of no common oddity.




CHAPTER VII

While Emilia was giving Wilfrid her history in the garden, the ladies of
Brookfield were holding consultation over a matter which was well
calculated to perplex and irritate them excessively. Mr. Pole had
received a curious short epistle from Mrs. Chump, informing him of the
atrocious treatment she had met with at the hands of his daughter; and
instead of reviewing the orthography, incoherence, and deliberate
vulgarity of the said piece of writing with the contempt it deserved, he
had taken the unwonted course of telling Arabella that she had done a
thing she must necessarily repent of, or in any case make apology for. An
Eastern Queen, thus addressed by her Minister of the treasury, could not
have felt greater indignation. Arabella had never seen her father show
such perturbation of mind. He spoke violently and imperiously. The
apology was ordered to be despatched by that night's post, after having
been submitted to his inspection. Mr. Pole had uttered mysterious
phrases: "You don't know what you've been doing:--You think the ship'll
go on sailing without wind: You'll drive the horse till he drops," and
such like; together with mutterings. The words were of no import
whatsoever to the ladies. They were writings on the wall;
untranslateable. But, as when the earth quakes our noble edifices totter,
their Palace of the Fine Shades and the Nice Feelings groaned and
creaked, and for a moment they thought: "Where are we?" Very soon they
concluded, that the speech Arabella had heard was due to their darling
papa's defective education.

In the Council of Three, with reference to the letter of apology to Mrs.
Chump, Adela proposed, if it pleased Arabella, to fight the battle of the
Republic. She was young, and wished both to fight and to lead, as
Arabella knew. She was checked. "It must be left to me," said Arabella.

"Of course you resist, dear?" Cornelia carelessly questioned.

"Assuredly I do."

"Better humiliation! better anything! better marriage! than to submit in
such a case," cried Adela.

For, so united were the ladies of Brookfield, and so bent on their grand
hazy object, that they looked upon married life unfavourably: and they
had besides an idea that Wedlock, until 'late in life' (the age of
thirty, say), was the burial alive of woman intellectual.

Toward midday the ladies put on their garden hats and went into the
grounds together, for no particular purpose. Near the West copse they
beheld Mr. Pole with Wilfrid and Emilia talking to a strange gentleman.
Assuming a proper dignity, they advanced, when, to their horror, Emilia
ran up to them crying: "This is Mr. Purcell Barrett, the gentleman who
plays the organ at church. I met him in the woods before I knew you. I
played for him the other Sunday, and I want you to know him."

She had hold of Arabella's hand and was drawing her on. There was no
opportunity for retreat. Wilfrid looked as if he had already swallowed
the dose. Almost precipitated into the arms of the ladies, Mr. Barrett
bowed. He was a tolerably youthful man, as decently attired as old black
cloth could help him to be. A sharp inspection satisfied the ladies that
his hat and boots were inoffensive: whereupon they gave him the three
shades of distance, tempered so as not to wound his susceptible poverty.

The superlative Polar degree appeared to invigorate Mr. Barrett. He
devoted his remarks mainly to Cornelia, and cheerfully received her
frozen monosyllables in exchange. The ladies talked of Organs and Art,
Emilia and Opera. He knew this and that great organ, and all the operas;
but he amazed the ladies by talking as if he knew great people likewise.
This brought out Mr. Pole, who, since he had purchased Brookfield, had
been extinguished by them and had not once thoroughly enjoyed his money's
worth. A courtly poor man was a real pleasure to him.

Giving a semicircular sweep of his arm: "Here you see my little estate,
sir," he said. "You've seen plenty bigger in Germany, and England too. We
can't get more than this handful in our tight little island. Unless born
to it, of course. Well! we must be grateful that all our nobility don't
go to the dogs. We must preserve our great names. I speak against my own
interest."

He lifted Adela's chin on his forefinger. She kept her eyes demurely
downward, and then gazed at her sisters with gravity. These ladies took a
view of Mr. Barrett. His features wore an admirable expression of simple
interest. "Well, sir; suppose you dine with us to-day?" Mr. Pole bounced
out. "Neighbours should be neighbourly."

This abrupt invitation was decorously accepted.

"Plain dinner, you know. Nothing like what you get at the tables of those
Erzhogs, as you call 'em, over in Germany. Simple fare; sound wine! At
all events, it won't hurt you. You'll come?"

Mr. Barrett bowed, murmuring thanks. This was the very man Mr. Pole
wanted to have at his board occasionally: one who had known great people,
and would be thankful for a dinner. He could depreciate himself as a mere
wealthy British merchant imposingly before such a man. His daughters had
completely cut him off from his cronies; and the sense of restriction,
and compression, and that his own house was fast becoming alien territory
to him, made him pounce upon the gentlemanly organist. His daughters
wondered why he should, in the presence of this stranger, exaggerate his
peculiar style of speech. But the worthy merchant's consciousness of his
identity was vanishing under the iron social rule of the ladies. His
perishing individuality prompted the inexplicable invitation, and the
form of it.

After Mr. Barrett had departed, the ladies ventured to remonstrate with
their papa. He at once replied by asking whether the letter to Mrs. Chump
had been written; and hearing that it had not, he desired that Arabella
should go into the house and compose it straightway. The ladies coloured.
To Adela's astonishment, she found that Arabella had turned. Joining her,
she said, "Dearest, what a moment you have lost! We could have stood
firm, continually changing the theme from Chump to Barrett, Barrett to
Chump, till papa's head would have twirled. He would have begun to think
Mr. Barrett the Irish widow, and Mrs. Chump the organist."

Arabella rejoined: "Your wit misleads you, darling. I know what I am
about. I decline a wordy contest. To approach to a quarrel, or, say
dispute, with one's parent apropos of such a person, is something worse
than evil policy, don't you think?"

So strongly did the sisters admire this delicate way of masking a piece
of rank cowardice, that they forgave her. The craven feeling was common
to them all, which made it still more difficult to forgive her.

"Of course, we resist?" said Cornelia.

"Undoubtedly."

"We retire and retire," Adela remarked. "We waste the royal forces. But,
dear me, that makes us insurgents!"

She laughed, being slightly frivolous. Her elders had the proper
sentimental worship of youth and its supposed quality of innocence, and
caressed her.

At the ringing of the second dinner-bell, Mr. Pole ran to the foot of the
stairs and shouted for Arabella, who returned no answer, and was late in
her appearance at table. Grace concluded, Mr. Pole said, "Letter gone? I
wanted to see it, you know."

"It was as well not, papa," Arabella replied.

Mr. Pole shook his head seriously. The ladies were thankful for the
presence of Mr. Barrett. And lo! this man was in perfect evening uniform.
He looked as gentlemanly a visitor as one might wish to see. There was no
trace of the poor organist. Poverty seemed rather a gold-edge to his
tail-coat than a rebuke to it; just as, contrariwise, great wealth is, to
the imagination, really set off by a careless costume. One need not
explain how the mind acts in such cases: the fact, as I have put it, is
indisputable. And let the young men of our generation mark the present
chapter, that they may know the virtue residing in a tail-coat, and cling
to it, whether buffeted by the waves, or burnt out by the fire, of evil
angry fortune. His tail-coat safe, the youthful Briton is always ready
for any change in the mind of the moody Goddess. And it is an almost
certain thing that, presuming her to have a damsel of condition in view
for him as a compensation for the slaps he has received, he must lose
her, he cannot enter a mutual path with her, if he shall have failed to
retain this article of a black tail, his social passport. I mean of
course that he retain respect for the article in question. Respect for it
firmly seated in his mind, the tail may be said to be always handy. It is
fortune's uniform in Britain: the candlestick, if I may dare to say so,
to the candle; nor need any young islander despair of getting to himself
her best gifts, while he has her uniform at command, as glossy as may be.

The ladies of Brookfield were really stormed by Mr. Barrett's elegant
tail. When, the first glass of wine nodded over, Mr. Pole continued the
discourse of the morning, with allusions to French cooks, and his cook,
their sympathies were taken captive by Mr. Barrett's tact: the door to
their sympathies having been opened to him as it were by his attire. They
could not guess what necessity urged Mr. Pole to assert his locked-up
self so vehemently; but it certainly made the stranger shine with a
beautiful mild lustre. Their spirits partly succumbed to him by a process
too lengthened to explain here. Indeed, I dare do no more than hint at
these mysteries of feminine emotion. I beg you to believe that when we
are dealing with that wonder, the human heart female, the part played by
a tail-coat and a composed demeanour is not insignificant. No doubt the
ladies of Brookfield would have rebutted the idea of a tail-coat
influencing them in any way as monstrous. But why was it, when Mr. Pole
again harped on his cook, in almost similar words, that they were drawn
to meet the eyes of the stranger, on whom they printed one of the most
fabulously faint fleeting looks imaginable, with a proportionately big
meaning for him that might read it? It must have been that this uniform
of a tail had laid a basis of equality for the hour, otherwise they never
would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed the chance of showing them
that he could respond to the remotest mystic indications, with a muffled
adroitness equal to their own, and so encouraged them to commence a
language leading to intimacy with a rapidity that may well appear magical
to the uninitiated. In short, the man really had the language of the very
elect of polite society. If you are not versed in this alphabet of mute
intelligence, you are in the ranks with waiters and linen-drapers, and
are, as far as ladies are concerned, tail-coated to no purpose.