Few men knew better that when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling, they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to doubt, and this, when all the time he knew.
Through endless labyrinths of delusion these two unhappy creatures might be traced, were it profitable. Down what a vale of little intricate follies should we be going, lighted by one ghastly conclusion! At times, struggling from the midst of her sophisms, Cornelia prayed her lover would claim her openly, and so nerve her to a pitch of energy that would clinch the ruinous debate. Forgetting that she was an 'ideal'—the accredited mistress of pure wisdom and of the power of deciding rightly—she prayed to be dealt with as a thoughtless person, and one of the herd of women. She felt that Sir Purcell threw too much on her. He expected her to go calmly to her father, and to Sir Twickenham, and tell them individually that her heart was engaged; then with a stately figure to turn, quit the house, and lay her hand in his. He made no allowance for the weakness of her sex, for the difficulties surrounding her, for the consideration due to Sir Twickenham's pride, and to her father's ill-health. She half-protested to herself that he expected from her the mechanical correctness of a machine, and overlooked the fact that she was human. It was a grave comment on her ambition to be an 'ideal.'
So let us leave them, till we come upon the ashy fruit of which this blooming sentimentalism is the seed.
It was past midnight when Mrs. Chump rushed to Arabella's room, and her knock was heard vociferous at the door. The ladies, who were at work upon diaries and letters, allowed her to thump and wonder whether she had come to the wrong door, for a certain period; after which, Arabella placidly unbolted her chamber, and Adela presented herself in the passage to know the meaning of the noise.
"Oh! ye poor darlin's, I've heard ut all, I have."
This commencement took the colour from their cheeks. Arabella invited her inside, and sent Adela for Cornelia.
"Oh, and ye poor deers!" cried Mrs. Chump to Arabella, who remarked: "Pray wait till my sisters come;" causing the woman to stare and observe: "If ye're not as cold as the bottom of a pot that naver felt fire." She repeated this to Cornelia and Adela as an accusation, and then burst on "My heart's just breakin' for ye, and ye shall naver want bread, eh! and roast beef, and my last bottle of Port ye'll share, though ye've no ideea what a lot o' thoughts o' poor Chump's under that cork, and it'll be a waste on you. Oh! and that monster of a Mr. Paricles that's got ye in his power and's goin' to be the rroon of ye—shame to 'm! Your father's told me; and, oh! my darlin' garls, don't think ut my fault. For, Pole—Pole—"
Mrs. Chump was choked by her grief. The ladies, unbending to some curiosity, eliminated from her gasps and sobs that Mr. Pole had, in the solitude of his library below, accused her of causing the defection of Mr. Pericles, and traced his possible ruin to it, confessing, that in the way of business, he was at Mr. Pericles' mercy.
"And in such a passion with me!" Mrs. Chump wrung her hands. "What could I do to Mr. Paricles? He isn't one o' the men that I can kiss; and Pole shouldn't wish me. And Pole settin' down his rroon to me! What'll I do? My dears! I do feel for ye, for I feel I'd feel myself such a beast, without money, d'ye see? It's the most horrible thing in the world. It's like no candle in the darrk. And I, ye know, I know I'd naver forgive annybody that took my money; and what'll Pole think of me? For oh! ye may call riches temptation, but poverty's punishment; and I heard a young curate say that from the pulpit, and he was lean enough to know, poor fella!"
Both Cornelia and Arabella breathed more freely when they had heard Mrs. Chump's tale to an end. They knew perfectly well that she was blameless for the defection of Mr. Pericles, and understood from her exclamatory narrative that their father had reason to feel some grave alarm at the Greek's absence from their house, and had possibly reasons of his own for accusing Mrs. Chump, as he had done. The ladies administered consolation to her, telling her that for their part they would never blame her; even consenting to be kissed by her, hugged by her, playfully patted, complimented, and again wept over. They little knew what a fervour of secret devotion they created in Mrs. Chump's bosom by this astounding magnanimity displayed to her, who laboured under the charge of being the source of their ruin; nor could they guess that the little hypocrisy they were practising would lead to any singular and pregnant resolution in the mind of the woman, fraught with explosion to their house, and that quick movement which they awaited.
Mrs. Chump, during the patient strain of a tender hug of Arabella, had mutely resolved in a great heat of gratitude that she would go to Mr. Pericles, and, since he was necessary to the well-being of Brookfield, bring him back, if she had to bring him back in her arms.
[Georgiana Ford to Wilfrid:]
"I have omitted replying to your first letter, not because of the nature of its contents: nor do I write now in answer to your second because of the permission you give me to lay it before my brother. I cannot think that concealment is good, save for very base persons; and since you take the initiative in writing very openly, I will do so likewise.
"It is true that Emilia is with me. Her voice is lost, and she has fallen as low in spirit as one can fall and still give us hope of her recovery. But that hope I have, and I am confident that you will not destroy it. In the summer she goes with us to Italy. We have consulted one doctor, who did not prescribe medicine for her. In the morning she reads with my brother. She seems to forget whatever she reads: the occupation is everything necessary just now. Our sharp Monmouth air provokes her to walk briskly when she is out, and the exercise has once or twice given colour to her cheeks. Yesterday being a day of clear frost, we drove to a point from which we could mount the Buckstone, and here, my brother says, the view appeared to give her something of her lost animation. It was a look that I had never seen, and it soon went: but in the evening she asked me whether I prayed before sleeping, and when she retired to her bedroom, I remained there with her for a time.
"You will pardon me for refusing to let her know that you have written to your relative in the Austrian service to obtain a commission for you. But, on the other hand, I have thought it right to tell her incidentally that you will be married in the Summer of this year. I can only say that she listened quite calmly.
"I beg that you will not blame yourself so vehemently. By what you do, her friends may learn to know that you regret the strange effect produced by certain careless words, or conduct: but I cannot find that self-accusation is ever good at all. In answer to your question, I may add that she has repeated nothing of what she said when we were together in Devon.
"Our chief desire (for, as we love her, we may be directed by our instinct), in the attempt to restore her, is to make her understand that she is anything but worthless. She has recently followed my brother's lead, and spoken of herself, but with a touch of scorn. This morning, while the clear frosty sky continues, we were to have started for an old castle lying toward Wales; and I think the idea of a castle must have struck her imagination, and forced some internal contrast on her mind. I am repeating my brother's suggestion—she seemed more than usually impressed with an idea that she was of no value to anybody. She asked why she should go anywhere, and dropped into a chair, begging to be allowed to stay in a darkened room. My brother has some strange intuition of her state of mind. She has lost any power she may have had of grasping abstract ideas. In what I conceived to be play, he told her that many would buy her even now. She appeared to be speculating on this, and then wished to know how much those persons would consider her to be worth, and who they were. Nor did it raise a smile on her face to hear my brother mention Jews, and name an absolute sum of money; but, on the contrary, after evidently thinking over it, she rose up, and said that she was ready to go. I write fully to you, telling you these things, that you may see she is at any rate eager not to despair, and is learning, much as a child might learn it, that it need not be.
"Believe me, that I will in every way help to dispossess your mind of the remorse now weighing upon you, as far as it shall be within my power to do so.
"Mr. Runningbrook has been invited by my brother to come and be her companion. They have a strong affection for one another. He is a true poet, full of reverence for a true woman."
[Wilfrid to Georgiana Ford:]
"I cannot thank you enough. When I think of her I am unmanned; and if I let my thoughts fall back upon myself, I am such as you saw me that night in Devon—helpless, and no very presentable figure. But you do not picture her to me. I cannot imagine whether her face has changed; and, pardon me, were I writing to you alone, I could have faith that the delicate insight and angelic nature of a woman would not condemn my desire to realize before my eyes the state she has fallen to. I see her now under a black shroud. Have her features changed? I cannot remember one—only at an interval her eyes. Does she look into the faces of people as she used? Or does she stare carelessly away? Softly between the eyes, is what I meant. I mean—but my reason for this particularity is very simple. I would state it to you, and to no other. I cannot have peace till she is restored; and my prayer is, that I may not haunt her to defeat your labour. Does her face appear to show that I am quite absent from her thoughts? Oh! you will understand me. You have seen me stand and betray no suffering when a shot at my forehead would have been mercy. To you I will dare to open my heart. I wish to be certain that I have not injured her—that is all. Perhaps I am more guilty than you think: more even than I can call to mind. If I may fudge by the punishment, my guilt is immeasurable. Tell me—if you will but tell me that the sacrifice of my life to her will restore her, it is hers. Write, and say this, and I will come: Do not delay or spare me. Her dumb voice is like a ghost in my ears. It cries to me that I have killed it. Be actuated by no charitable considerations in refraining to write. Could a miniature of her be sent? You will think the request strange; but I want to be sure she is not haggard—not the hospital face I fancy now, which accuses me of murder. Does she preserve the glorious freshness she used to wear? She had a look—or did you see her before the change? I only want to know that she is well."
[Tracy Runningbrook to Wilfrid:]
"You had my promise that I would write and give your conscience a nightcap. I have a splendid one for you. Put it on without any hesitation. I find her quite comfortable. Powys reads Italian with her in the morning. His sister (who might be a woman if she liked, but has an insane preference for celestial neutrality) does the moral inculcation. The effect is comical. I should like you to see Cold Steel leading Tame Fire about, and imagining the taming to be her work! You deserve well of your generation. You just did enough to set this darling girl alight. Knights and squires numberless will thank you. The idea of your reproaching yourself is monstrous. Why, there's no one thanks you more than she does. You stole her voice, which some may think a pity, but I don't, seeing that I would rather have her in a salon than before the footlights. Imagine my glory in her!—she has become half cat! She moves softly, as if she loved everything she touched; making you throb to feel the little ball of her foot. Her eyes look steadily, like green jewels before the veil of an Egyptian temple. Positively, her eyes have grown green—or greenish! They were darkish hazel formerly, and talked more of milkmaids and chattering pastorals than a discerning master would have wished. Take credit for the change; and at least I don't blame you for the tender hollows under the eyes, sloping outward, just hinted… Love's mark on her, so that men's hearts may faint to know that love is known to her, and burn to read her history. When she is about to speak, the upper lids droop a very little; or else the under lids quiver upward—I know not which. Take further credit for her manner. She has now a manner of her own. Some of her naturalness has gone, but she has skipped clean over the 'young lady' stage; from raw girl she has really got as much of the great manner as a woman can have who is not an ostensibly retired dowager, or a matron on a pedestal shuffling the naked virtues and the decorous vices together. She looks at you with an immense, marvellous gravity, before she replies to you—enveloping you in a velvet light. This, is fact, not fine stuff, my dear fellow. The light of her eyes does absolutely cling about you. Adieu! You are a great master, and know exactly when to make your bow and retire. A little more, and you would have spoilt her. Now she is perfect."
[Wilfrid to Tracy Runningbrook:]
"I have just come across a review of your last book, and send it, thinking you may wish to see it. I have put a query to one of the passages, which I think misquoted: and there will be no necessity to call your attention to the critic's English. You can afford to laugh at it, but I confess it puts your friends in a rage. Here are a set of fellows who arm themselves with whips and stand in the public thoroughfare to make any man of real genius run the gauntlet down their ranks till he comes out flayed at the other extremity! What constitutes their right to be there?—By the way, I met Sir Purcell Barrett (the fellow who was at Hillford), and he would like to write an article on you that should act as a sort of rejoinder. You won't mind, of course—it's bread to him, poor devil! I doubt whether I shall see you when you comeback, so write a jolly lot of letters. Colonel Pierson, of the Austrian army, my uncle (did you meet him at Brookfield?), advises me to sell out immediately. He is getting me an Imperial commission—cavalry. I shall give up the English service. And if they want my medal, they can have it, and I'll begin again. I'm sick of everything except a cigar and a good volume of poems. Here's to light one, and now for the other!
"'Large eyes lit up by some imperial sin,'" etc.(Ten lines from Tracy's book are here copied neatly.)
[Tracy Runningbrook to Wilfrid:]
"Why the deuce do you write me such infernal trash about the opinions of a villanous dog who can't even en a decent sentence? I've been damning you for a white-livered Austrian up and down the house. Let the fellow bark till he froths at the mouth, and scatters the virus of the beast among his filthy friends. I am mad-dog proof. The lines you quote were written in an awful hurry, coming up in the train from Richford one morning. You have hit upon my worst with commendable sagacity. If it will put money in Barren's pocket, let him write. I should prefer to have nothing said. The chances are all in favour of his writing like a fool. If you're going to be an Austrian, we may have a chance of shooting one another some day, so here's my hand before you go and sell your soul; and anything I can do in the meantime—command me."
[Georgiana Ford to Wilfrid:]
"I do not dare to charge you with a breach of your pledged word. Let me tell you simply that Emilia has become aware of your project to enter the Austrian service, and it has had the effect on her which I foresaw. She could bear to hear of your marriage, but this is too much for her, and it breaks my heart to see her. It is too cruel. She does not betray any emotion, but I can see that every principle she had gained is gone, and that her bosom holds the shadows of a real despair. I foresaw it, and sought to guard her against it. That you, whom she had once called (to me) her lover, should enlist himself as an enemy, of her country!—it comes to her as a fact striking her brain dumb while she questions it, and the poor body has nothing to do but to ache. Surely you could have no object in doing this? I will not suspect it. Mr. Runningbrook is acquainted with your plans, I believe; but he has no remembrance of having mentioned this one to Emilia. He distinctly assures me that he has not done so, and I trust him to speak truth. How can it have happened? But here is the evil done. I see no remedy. I am not skilled in sketching the portraits you desire of her, and yet, if you have ever wished her to know this miserable thing, it would be as well that you should see the different face that has come among us within twenty hours."
[Wilfrid to Georgiana Ford:]
"I will confine my reply to a simple denial of having caused this fatal intelligence to reach her ears; for the truth of which, I pledge my honour as a gentleman. A second's thought would have told me—indeed I at once acquiesced in your view—that she should not know it. How it has happened it is vain to attempt to guess. Can you suppose that I desired her to hate me? Yet this is what the knowledge of the step I am taking will make her do! If I could see—if I might see her for five minutes, I should be able to explain everything, and, I sincerely think (painful as it would be to me), give her something like peace. It is too late even to wish to justify myself; but her I can persuade that she—Do you not see that her mind is still unconvinced of my—I will call it baseness! Is this the self-accusing you despise? A little of it must be heard. If I may see her I will not fail to make her understand my position. She shall see that it is I who am worthless—not she! You know the circumstances under which I last beheld her—when I saw pang upon pang smiting her breast from my silence! But now I may speak. Do not be prepossessed against my proposal! It shall be only for five minutes—no more. Not that it is my desire to come. In truth, it could not be. I have felt that I alone can cure her—I who did the harm. Mark me: she will fret secretly—, but dear and kindest lady, do not smile too critically at the tone I adopt. I cannot tell how I am writing or what saying. Believe me that I am deeply and constantly sensible of your generosity. In case you hesitate, I beg you to consult Mr. Powys."
[Georgiana Ford to Wilfrid:]
"I had no occasion to consult my brother to be certain that an interview between yourself and Emilia should not take place. There can be no object, even if the five minutes of the meeting gave her happiness, why the wound of the long parting should be again opened. She is wretched enough now, though her tenderness for us conceals it as far as possible. When some heavenly light shall have penetrated her, she will have a chance of peace. The evil is not of a nature to be driven out by your hands. If you are not going into the Austrian service, she shall know as much immediately. Otherwise, be as dead to her as you may, and your noblest feelings cannot be shown under any form but that."
[Wilfrid to Tracy Runningbrook:]
"Some fellows whom I know want you to write a prologue to a play they are going to get up. It's about Shakespeare—at least, the proceeds go to something of that sort. Do, like a good fellow, toss us off twenty lines. Why don't you write? By the way, I hope there's no truth in a report that has somehow reached me, that they have the news down in Monmouth of my deserting to the black-yellow squadrons? Of course, such a thing as that should have been kept from them. I hear, too, that your—I suppose I must call her now your—pupil is falling into bad health. Think me as cold and 'British' as you like; but the thought of this does really affect me painfully. Upon my honour, it does! 'And now he yawns!' you're saying. You're wrong. We Army men feel just as you poets do, and for a longer time, I think, though perhaps not so acutely. I send you the 'Venus' cameo which you admired. Pray accept it from an old friend. I mayn't see you again."
[Tracy Runningbrook to Wilfrid:] (enclosing lines)
"Here they are. It will require a man who knows something about metre to speak them. Had Shakespeare's grandmother three Christian names? and did she anticipate feminine posterity in her rank of life by saying habitually, 'Drat it?' There is as yet no Society to pursue this investigation, but it should be started. Enormous thanks for the Venus. I wore it this morning at breakfast. Just as we were rising, I leaned forward to her, and she jumped up with her eyes under my chin. 'Isn't she a beauty?' I said. 'It was his,' she answered, changing eyes of eagle for eyes of dove, and then put out the lights. I had half a mind to offer it, on the spot. May I? That is to say, if the impulse seizes me I take nobody's advice, and fair Venus certainly is not under my chin at this moment. As to ill health, great mother Nature has given a house of iron to this soul of fire. The windows may blaze, or the windows may be extinguished, but the house stands firm. When you are lightning or earthquake, you may have something to reproach yourself for; as it is, be under no alarm. Do not put words in my mouth that I have not uttered. 'And now he yawns,' is what I shall say of you only when I am sure you have just heard a good thing. You really are the best fellow of your set that I have come across, and the only one pretending to brains. Your modesty in estimating your value as a leader of Pandours will be pleasing to them who like that modesty. Good-bye. This little Emilia is a marvel of flying moods. Yesterday she went about as if she said, 'I've promised Apollo not to speak till to-morrow.' To-day, she's in a feverish gabble—or began the day with a burst of it; and now she's soft and sensible. If you fancy a girl at her age being able to see, that it's a woman's duty to herself and the world to be artistic—to perfect the thing of beauty she is meant to be by nature!—and, seeing, too, that Love is an instrument like any other thing, and that we must play on it with considerate gentleness, and that tearing at it or dashing it to earth, making it howl and quiver, is madness, and not love!—I assure you she begins to see it! She does see it. She is going to wear a wreath of black briony (preserved and set by Miss Ford, a person cunning in these matters). She's going to the ball at Penarvon Castle, and will look—supply your favourite slang word. A little more experience, and she will have malice. She wants nothing but that to make her consummate. Malice is the barb of beauty. She's just at present a trifle blunt. She will knock over, but not transfix. I am anxious to watch the effect she produces at Penarvon. Poor little woman! I paid a compliment to her eyes. 'I've got nothing else,' said she. Dine as well as you can while you are in England. German cookery is an education for the sentiment of hogs. The play of sour and sweet, and crowning of the whole with fat, shows a people determined to go down in civilization, and try the business backwards. Adieu, curst Croat! On the Wallachian border mayst thou gather philosophy from meditation."
Dexterously as Wilfrid has turned Tracy to his uses by means of the foregoing correspondence, in doing so he had exposed himself to the retributive poison administered by that cunning youth. And now the Hippogriff seized him, and mounted with him into mid-air; not as when the idle boy Ganymede was caught up to act as cup-bearer in celestial Courts, but to plunge about on yielding vapours, with nothing near him save the voice of his desire.
The Philosopher here peremptorily demands the pulpit. We are subject, he says, to fantastic moods, and shall dry ready-minted phrases picture them forth? As, for example, can the words 'delirium,' or 'frenzy,' convey an image of Wilfrid's state, when his heart began to covet Emilia again, and his sentiment not only interposed no obstacle, but trumpeted her charms and fawned for her, and he thought her lost, remembered that she had been his own, and was ready to do any madness to obtain her? 'Madness' is the word that hits the mark, but it does not fully embrace the meaning. To be in this state, says the Philosopher, is to be 'On The Hippogriff;' and to this, as he explains, the persons who travel to Love by the road of sentiment will come, if they have any stuff in them, and if the one who kindles them is mighty. He distinguishes being on the Hippogriff from being possessed by passion. Passion, he says, is noble strength on fire, and points to Emilia as a representation of passion. She asks for what she thinks she may have; she claims what she imagines to be her own. She has no shame, and thus, believing in, she never violates, nature, and offends no law, wild as she may seem. Passion does not turn on her and rend her when it is thwarted. She was never carried out of the limit of her own intelligent force, seeing that it directed her always, with the simple mandate to seek that which belonged to her. She was perfectly sane, and constantly just to herself, until the failure of her voice, telling her that she was a beggar in the world, came as a second blow, and partly scared her reason. Constantly just to herself, mind! This is the quality of true passion. Those who make a noise, and are not thus distinguishable, are on Hippogriff.
—By which it is clear to me that my fantastic Philosopher means to indicate the lover mounted in this wise, as a creature bestriding an extraneous power. "The sentimentalist," he says, "goes on accumulating images and hiving sensations, till such time as (if the stuff be in him) they assume a form of vitality, and hurry him headlong. This is not passion, though it amazes men, and does the madder thing."
In fine, it is Hippogriff. And right loath am I to continue my partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and is, as a necessary consequence, blind to the fact that the public detest him. I mean, this garrulous, super-subtle, so-called Philosopher, who first set me upon the building of 'The Three Volumes,' it is true, but whose stipulation that he should occupy so large a portion of them has made them rock top-heavy, to the forfeit of their stability. He maintains that a story should not always flow, or, at least, not to a given measure. When we are knapsack on back, he says, we come to eminences where a survey of our journey past and in advance is desireable, as is a distinct pause in any business, here and there. He points proudly to the fact that our people in this comedy move themselves,—are moved from their own impulsion,—and that no arbitrary hand has posted them to bring about any event and heap the catastrophe. In vain I tell him that he is meantime making tatters of the puppets' golden robe illusion: that he is sucking the blood of their warm humanity out of them. He promises that when Emilia is in Italy he will retire altogether; for there is a field of action, of battles and conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights for plain issues, and he can but sum results. Let us, he entreats, be true to time and place. In our fat England, the gardener Time is playing all sorts of delicate freaks in the lines and traceries of the flower of life, and shall we not note them? If we are to understand our species, and mark the progress of civilization at all, we must. Thus the Philosopher. Our partner is our master, and I submit, hopefully looking for release with my Emilia, in the day when Italy reddens the sky with the banners of a land revived.
I hear Wilfrid singing out that he is aloft, burning to rush ahead, while his beast capers in one spot, abominably ludicrous. This trick of Hippogriff is peculiar, viz., that when he loses all faith in himself, he sinks—in other words, goes to excesses of absurd humility to regain it. Passion has likewise its panting intervals, but does nothing so preposterous. The wreath of black briony, spoken of by Tracy as the crown of Emilia's forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in Wilfrid's fancy. It worked a Satanic distraction in him. The girl sat before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves shining deadly—radiant above—young Hecate! The next instant he was bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry sensations at her present happiness).
Why had she not made allowance for his miserable situation that night in Devon? Why did she not comprehend his difficulties in relation to his father's affairs? Why did she not know that he could not fail to love her for ever?
Interrogations such as these were so many switches of the whip in the flanks of Hippogriff.
Another peculiarity of the animal gifted with wings is, that around the height he soars to he can see no barriers nor any of the fences raised by men. And here again he differs from Passion, which may tug against common sense but is never, in a great nature, divorced from it: In air on Hippogriff, desires wax boundless, obstacles are hidden. It seemed nothing to Wilfrid (after several tremendous descents of humility) that he should hurry for Monmouth away, to gaze on Emilia under her fair, infernal, bewitching wreath; nothing that he should put an arm round her; nothing that he should forthwith carry her off, though he died for it. Forming no design beyond that of setting his eyes on her, he turned the head of Hippogriff due Westward.
Penarvon castle lay over the borders of Monmouthshire. Thither, on a night of frosty moonlight, troops of carriages were hurrying with the usual freightage for a country ball:—the squire who will not make himself happy by seeing that his duty to the softer side of his family must be performed during the comfortable hours when bachelors snooze in arm-chairs, and his nobler dame who, not caring for Port or tobacco, cheerfully accepts the order of things as bequeathed to her: the everlastingly half-satisfied young man, who looks forward to the hour when his cigar-light will shine; and the damsel thrice demure as a cover for her eagerness. Within a certain distance of one of the carriages, a man rode on horseback. The court of the castle was reached, and he turned aside, lingering to see whether he could get a view of the lighted steps. To effect his object, he dismounted and led his horse through the gates, turning from gravel to sward, to keep in the dusk. A very agile middle-aged gentleman was the first to appear under the portico-lamps, and he gave his hand to a girl of fifteen, and then to a most portly lady in a scarlet mantle. The carriage-door slammed and drove off, while a groan issued from the silent spectator. "Good heavens! have I followed these horrible people for five-and-twenty miles!" Carriage after carriage rattled up to the steps, was disburdened of still more 'horrible people' to him, and went the way of the others. "I shan't see her, after all," he cried hoarsely, and mounting, said to the beast that bore him, "Now go sharp."
Whether you recognize the rider of Hippogriff or not, this is he; and the poor livery-stable screw stretched madly till wind failed, when he was allowed to choose his pace. Wilfrid had come from London to have sight of Emilia in the black-briony wreath: to see her, himself unseen, and go. But he had not seen her; so he had the full excuse to continue the adventure. He rode into a Welsh town, and engaged a fresh horse for the night.
"She won't sing, at all events," thought Wilfrid, to comfort himself, before the memory that she could not, in any case, touched springs of weakness and pitying tenderness. From an eminence to which he walked outside the town, Penarvon was plainly visible with all its lighted windows.
"But I will pluck her from you!" he muttered, in a spasm of jealousy; the image of himself as an outcast against the world that held her, striking him with great force at that moment.
"I must give up the Austrian commission, if she takes me."
And be what? For he had sold out of the English service, and was to receive the money in a couple of days. How long would the money support him? It would not pay half his debts! What, then, did this pursuit of Emilia mean? To blink this question, he had to give the spur to Hippogriff. It meant (upon Hippogriff at a brisk gallop), that he intended to live for her, die for her, if need be, and carve out of the world all that she would require. Everything appears possible, on Hippogriff, when he is going; but it is a bad business to put the spur on so willing a beast. When he does not go of his own will;—when he sees that there are obstructions, it is best to jump off his back. And we should abandon him then, save that having once tasted what he can do for us, we become enamoured of the habit of going keenly, and defying obstacles. Thus do we begin to corrupt the uses of the gallant beast (for he is a gallant beast, though not of the first order); we spoil his instincts and train him to hurry us to perdition.
"If my sisters could see me now!" thought Wilfrid, half-smitten with a distant notion of a singularity in his position there, the mark for a frosty breeze, while his eyes kept undeviating watch over Penarvon.
After a time he went back to the inn, and got among coachmen and footmen, all battling lustily against the frost with weapons scientifically selected at the bar. They thronged the passages, and lunged hearty punches at one another, drank and talked, and only noticed that a gentleman was in their midst when he moved to get a light. One complained that he had to drive into Monmouth that night, by a road that sent him five miles out of his way, owing to a block—a great stone that had fallen from the hill. "You can't ask 'em to get out and walk ten steps," he said; "or there! I'd lead the horses and just tip up the off wheels, and round the place in a twinkle, pop 'm in again, and nobody hurt; but you can't ask ladies to risk catchin' colds for the sake of the poor horses."
Several coachmen spoke upon this, and the shame and marvel it was that the stone had not been moved; and between them the name of Mr. Powys was mentioned, with the remark that he would spare his beasts if he could.
"What's that block you're speaking of, just out of Monmouth?" enquired Wilfrid; and it being described to him, together with the exact bearings of the road and situation of the mass of stone, he at once repeated a part of what he had heard in the form of the emphatic interrogation, "What! there?" and flatly told the coachman that the stone had been moved.
"It wasn't moved this morning, then, sir," said the latter.
"No; but a great deal can be done in a couple of hours," said Wilfrid.
"Did you see 'em at work, sir?"
"No; but I came that way, and the road was clear."
"The deuce it was!" ejaculated the coachman, willingly convinced.
"And that's the way I shall return," added Wilfrid.
He tossed some money on the bar to aid in warming the assemblage, and received numerous salutes as he passed out. His heart was beating fast. "I shall see her, in the teeth of my curst luck," he thought, picturing to himself the blessed spot where the mass of stone would lie; and to that point he galloped, concentrating all the light in his mind on this maddest of chances, till it looked sound, and finally certain.
"It's certain, if that's not a hired coachman," he calculated. "If he is, he won't risk his fee. If he isn't, he'll feel on the safe side anyhow. At any rate, it's my only chance." And away he flew between glimmering slopes of frost to where a white curtain of mist hung across the wooded hills of the Wye.
Emilia was in skilful hands, and against anything less powerful than a lover mounted upon Hippogriff, might have been shielded. What is poison to most girls, Merthyr prescribed for her as medicine. He nourished her fainting spirit upon vanity. In silent astonishment Georgiana heard him address speeches to her such as dowagers who have seen their day can alone of womankind complacently swallow. He encouraged Tracy Runningbrook to praise the face of which she had hitherto thought shyly. Jewels were placed at her disposal, and dresses laid out cunningly suited to her complexion. She had a maid to wait on her, who gabbled at the momentous hours of robing and unrobing: "Oh, miss! of all the dark young ladies I ever see!"—Emilia was the most bewitching. By-and-by, Emilia was led to think of herself; but with a struggle and under protest. How could it be possible that she was so very nice to the eye, and Wilfrid had abandoned her? The healthy spin of young new blood turned the wheels of her brain, and then she thought: "Perhaps I am really growing handsome?" The maid said artfully of her hair: "If gentlemen could only see it down, miss! It's the longest, and thickest, and blackest, I ever touched!" And so saying, slid her fingers softly through it after the comb, and thrilled the owner of that hair till soft thoughts made her bosom heave, and then self-love began to be sensibly awakened, followed by self-pity, and some further form of what we understand as consciousness. If partially a degradation of her nature, this saved her mind from true despair when it began to stir after the vital shock that had brought her to earth. "To what purpose should I be fair?" was a question that did not yet come to her; but it was sweet to see Merthyr's eyes gather pleasure from the light of her own. Sweet, though nothing more than coldly sweet. She compared herself to her father's old broken violin, that might be mended to please the sight; but would never give the tones again. Sometimes, if hope tormented her, she would strangle it by trying her voice: and such a little piece of self-inflicted anguish speedily undid all Merthyr's work. He was patient as one who tends a flower in the Spring. Georgiana marvelled that the most sensitive and proud of men should be striving to uproot an image from the heart of a simple girl, that he might place his own there. His methods almost led her to think that his estimate of human nature was falling low. Nevertheless, she was constrained to admit that there was no diminution of his love for her, and it chastened her to think so. "Would it be the same with me, if I—?" she half framed the sentence, blushing remorsefully while she denied that anything could change her great love for her brother. She had caught a glimpse of Wilfrid's suppleness and selfishness. Contrasting him with Merthyr, she was singularly smitten with shame, she knew not why.
The anticipation of the ball at Penarvon Castle had kindled very little curiosity in Emilia's bosom. She seemed to herself a machine; "one of the rest;" and looked more to see that she was still coveted by Merthyr's eyes than at the glitter of the humming saloons. A touch of her old gladness made her smile when Captain Gambier unexpectedly appeared and walked across the dancers to sit beside her. She asked him why he had come from London: to which he replied, with a most expressive gaze under her eyelids, that he had come for one object. "To see me?" thought Emilia, wondering, and reddening as she ceased to wonder. She had thought as a child, and the neat instant felt as a woman. He finished Merthyr's work for him. Emilia now thought: "Then I must be worth something." And with "I am," she ended her meditation, glowing. He might have said that she had all beauty ever showered upon woman: she would have been led to believe him at that moment of her revival.
Now, Lady Charlotte had written to Georgiana, telling her that Captain Gambier was soon to be expected in her neighbourhood, and adding that it would be as well if she looked closely after her charge. When Georgiana saw him go over to Emilia she did not remember this warning: but when she perceived the sudden brilliancy and softness in Emilia's face after the first words had fallen on her ears, she grew alarmed, knowing his reputation, and executed some diversions, which separated them. The captain made no effort to perplex her tactics, merely saying that he should call in a day or two. Merthyr took to himself all the credit of the visible bloom that had come upon Emilia, and pacing with her between the dances, said: "Now you will come to Italy, I think."
She paused before answering, "Now?" and feverishly continued: "Yes; at once. I will go. I have almost felt my voice again to-night."
"That's well. I shall write to Marini to-morrow. You will soon find your voice if you will not fret for it. Touch Italy!"
"Yes; but you must be near me," said Emilia.
Georgiana heard this, and could not conceive other than that Emilia was growing to be one of those cormorant creatures who feed alike on the homage of noble and ignoble. She was critical, too, of that very assured pose of Emilia's head and firm planting of her feet as the girl paraded the room after the dances in which she could not join. Previous to this evening, Georgiana had seen nothing of the sort in her; but, on the contrary, a doubtful droop of the shoulders and an unwilling gaze, as of a soul submerged in internal hesitations. "I earnestly trust that this is a romantic folly of Merthyr's, and no more," thought Georgiana, who would have had that view concerning his love for Italy likewise, if recollection of her own share of adventure there had not softly interposed.
Tracy, Georgiana, Merthyr, and Emilia were in the carriage, well muffled up, with one window open to the white mist. Emilia was eager to thank her friend, if only for the physical relief from weariness and sluggishness which she was experiencing. She knew certainly that the dim light of a recovering confidence in herself was owing, all, to him, and burned to thank him. Once on the way their hands touched, and he felt a shy pressure from her fingers as they parted. Presently the carriage stopped abruptly, and listening they heard the coachman indulge his companion outside with the remark that they were a couple of fools, and were now regularly 'dished.'
"I don't see why that observation can't go on wheels," said Tracy.
Merthyr put out his head, and saw the obstruction of the mass of stone across the road. He alighted, and together with the footman, examined the place to see what the chance was of their getting the carriage past. After a space of waiting, Georgiana clutched the wraps about her throat and head, and impetuously followed her brother, as her habit had always been. Emilia sat upright, saying, "I must go too." Tracy moaned a petition to her to rest and be comfortable while the Gods were propitious. He checked her with his arm, and tried to pacify her by giving a description of the scene. The coachman remained on his seat. Merthyr, Georgiana, and the footman were on the other side of the rock, measuring the place to see whether, by a partial ascent of the sloping rubble down which it had bowled, the carriage might be got along.
"Go; they have gone round; see whether we can give any help," said Emilia to Tracy, who cried: "My goodness! what help can we give? This is an express situation where the Fates always appear in person and move us on. We're sure to be moved, if we show proper faith in them. This is my attitude of invocation." He curled his legs up on the seat, resting his head on an arm; but seeing Emilia preparing for a jump he started up, and immediately preceded her. Emilia looked out after him. She perceived a figure coming stealthily from the bank. It stopped, and again advanced, and now ran swiftly down. She drew back her head as it approached the open door of the carriage; but the next moment trembled forward, and was caught with a cat-like clutch upon Wilfrid's breast.
"Emilia! my own for ever! I swore to die this night it I did not see you!"
"You love me, Wilfrid? love me?"
"Come with me now!"
"Now?"
"Away! with me! your lover!"
"Then you love me!
"I love you! Come!"
"Now? I cannot move."
"I am out in the night without you."
"Oh, my lover! Oh, Wilfrid!"
"Come to me!"
"My feet are dead!"
"It's too late!"
A sturdy hulloa! sounding from the coachman made Merthyr's ears alive. When he returned he found Emilia huddled up on the seat, alone, her face in her hands, and the touch of her hands like fire. He had to entreat her to descend, and in helping her to alight bore her whole weight, and supported her in a sad wonder, while the horses were led across the rubble, and the carriage was with difficulty, and some confusions, guided to clear its wheels of the obstructing mass. Emilia persisted in saying that nothing ailed her; and to the coachman, who could have told him something, and was willing to have done so (notwithstanding a gold fee for silence that stuck in his palm), Merthyr put no question.
As they were taking their seats in the carriage again, Georgiana said,"Where is your wreath, Sandra?"
The black-briony wreath was no longer on her head.
"Then, it wasn't a dream!" gasped Emilia, feeling at her temples.
Georgiana at once fell into a scrutinizing coldness, and when Merthyr, who fancied the wreath might have fallen as he was lifting Emilia from the carriage, proposed to go and search the place for it, his sister laid her fingers on his arm, remarking, "You will not find it, dear;" and Emilia cried "Oh! no, no! it is not there;" and, with her hands pressed hard against her bosom, sat fixed and silent.
Out of this mood she issued with looks of such tenderness that one who watched her, speculating on her character as Merthyr did, could see that in some mysterious way she had been, during the few minutes that separated them, illumined upon the matter nearest her heart. Was it her own strength, inspired by some sublime force, that had sprung up suddenly to eject a worthless love? So he hoped in despite of whispering reason, till Georgiana spoke to him.
When the force of Wilfrid's embrace had died out from her body, Emilia conceived wilfully that she had seen an apparition, so strange, sudden, and wild had been his coming and going: but her whole body was a song to her. "He is not false: he is true." So dimly, however, was the 'he' now fashioned in her brain, and so like a thing of the air had he descended on her, that she almost conceived the abstract idea, 'Love is true,' and possibly, though her senses did not touch on it to shape it, she had the reflection in her: "After all, power is mine to bring him to my side." Almost it seemed to her that she had brought him from the grave. She sat hugging herself in the carriage, hating to hear words, and seeing a ball of fire away in the white mist. Georgiana looked at her no more; and when Tracy remarked that he had fancied having seen a fellow running up the bank, she said quietly, "Did you?"
"Robert must have seen him, too," added Merthyr, and so the interloper was dismissed.
On reaching home, no sooner were they in the hall than Emilia called for her bedroom candle in a thin, querulous voice that made Tracy shout with laughter and love of her quaintness.
Emilia gave him her hand, and held up her mouth to kiss Georgiana, but no cheek was bent forward for the salute. The girl passed from among them, and then Merthyr said to his sister: "What is the matter?"
"Surely, Merthyr, you should not be at a loss," she answered, in a somewhat unusual tone, that was half irony.
Merthyr studied her face. Alone with her, he said: "I could almost suppose that she has seen this man."
Georgiana smiled sadly. "I have not seen him, dear; and she has not told me so."
"You think it was so?"
"I can imagine it just possible."
"What! while we were out and had left her! He must be mad!"
"Not necessarily mad, unless to be without principle is to be mad."
"Mad, or graduating for a Spanish comedie d'intrigue," said Merthyr. "What on earth can he mean by it? If he must see her, let him come here. But to dog a carriage at midnight, and to prefer to act startling surprises!—one can't help thinking that he delights in being a stage-hero."
Georgiana's: "If he looks on her as a stage-heroine?" was unheeded, and he pursued: "She must leave England at once," and stated certain arrangements that were immediately to be made.
"You will not give up this task you have imposed on yourself?" she said.
"To do what?"
She could have answered: "To make this unsatisfactory creature love you;" but her words were, "To civilize this little savage."
Merthyr was bright in a moment: "I don't give up till I see failure."
"Is it not possible, dear, to be dangerously blind?" urged Georgiana.
"Keep to the particular case," he returned; "and don't tempt me into your woman's snare of a generalization. It's possible, of course, to be one-ideaed and obstinate. But I have not yet seen your savage guilty of a deceit. Her heart has been stirred, and her heart, as you may judge, has force enough to be constant, though none can deny that it has been roughly proved."
"For which you like her better?" said Georgiana, herself brightening.
"For which I like her better," he replied, and smiled, perfectly armed.
"Oh! is it because I am a woman that I do not understand this sort of friendship?" cried Georgiana. "And from you, Merthyr, to a girl such as she is! Me she satisfies less and less. You speak of force of heart, as if it were manifested in an abandonment of personal will."
"No, my darling, but in the strong conception of a passion."
"Yes; if she had discriminated, and fixed upon a worthy object!"
"That," rejoined Merthyr, "is akin to the doctrine of justification by success."
"You seek to foil me with sophisms," said Georgiana, warming. "A woman—even a girl—should remember what is due to herself. You are attracted by a passionate nature—I mean, men are."
"The general instance," assented Merthyr.
"Then, do you never reflect," pursued Georgiana, "on the composition and the elements of that sort of nature? I have tried to think the best of it. It seems to me still no, not contemptible at all—but selfishness is the groundwork of it; a brilliant selfishness, I admit. I see that it shows its best feature, but is it the nobler for that? I think, and I must think, that excellence is a point to be reached only by unselfishness, and that usefulness is the test of excellence."
"Before there has been any trial of her?" asked Merthyr. "Have you not been a little too eager to put the test to her?"
Georgiana reluctantly consented to have her argument attached to a single person. "She is not a child, Merthyr."
"Ay; but she should bethought one."
"I confess I am utterly at sea," Georgiana sighed. "Will you at least allow that sordid selfishness does less mischief than this 'passion' you admire so much?"
"I will allow that she may do herself more mischief than if she had the opposite vice of avarice—anything you will, of that complexion."
"And why should she be regarded as a child?" asked Georgiana piteously.
"Because, if she has outnumbered the years of a child, she is no further advanced than a child, owing to what she has to get rid of. She is overburdened with sensations that set her head on fire. Her solid, firm, and gentle heart keeps her balanced, so long as there is no one playing on it. That a fool should be doing so, is scarcely her fault."
Georgiana murmured to herself, "He is not a fool." She said, "I do see a certain truth in what you say, dear Merthyr. But I have been disappointed in her. I have taken her among my poor. She listens to their tales, without sympathy. I took her into a sick-room. She stood by a dying bed like a statue. Her remark when we came into the air was, 'Death seems easy, if it were not so stifling!' Herself always! herself the centre of what she sees and feels! And again, she has no active desire to do good to any mortal thing. A passive wish that everybody should be happy, I know she has. Few have not. She would give money if she had it. But this is among the mysteries of Providence to me, that one no indifferent to others should be gifted with so inexplicable a power of attraction."
Merthyr put this case to her: "Suppose you saw any of the poor souls you wait on lying sick with fever, would it be just to describe the character of one so situated as fretful, ungrateful, of rambling tongue, poor in health, and generally of loose condition of mind?"
"There, again, is that foreign doctrine which exults in the meanest triumphs by getting the thesis granted that we are animal—only animals!" Georgiana burst out. You argue that at this season and at that season she is helpless. If she is a human creature, must she not have a mind to cover those conditions?"
"And a mind," Merthyr took her up, "specially experienced, armed, and alert to be a safeguard to her at the most critical period of her life! Oh, yes! Whether she 'must' have it is one thing; but no one can content the value of such a jewel to any young person."
Georgiana stood silenced; and knew later that she had been silenced by a fallacy. For, is youth the most critical period of life? Neither brother nor sister, however, were talking absolutely for the argument. Beneath this dialogue, the current in her mind pressed to elicit some avowal of his personal feeling for the girl, toward whom Georgiana's disposition was kindlier than her words might lead one to think. He, on the other hand, talked with the distinct object of disguising his feelings under a tone of moderate friendship for Emilia, that was capable of excusing her. A sensitive man of thirty odd years does not loudly proclaim his appreciation of a girl under twenty: moreover, Merthyr wished to spare his sister.
He thought of questioning Robert, the coachman, whether anyone had visited the carriage during his five minutes' absence from it: but Merthyr's peculiar Welsh delicacy kept him from doing that, hard as it was to remain in doubt and endure the little poisoned shafts of a suspicion.
In the morning there was a letter from Marini on the breakfast-table. Merthyr glanced down the contents. His countenance flashed with a marvellous light. "Where is she?" he said, looking keenly for Emilia.
Emilia came in from the garden.
"Now, my Sandra!" cried Merthyr, waving the letter to her; "can you pack up, to start in an hour? There's work coming on for us, and I shall be a boy again, and not the drumstick I am in this country. I have a letter from Marini. All Lombardy is prepared to rise, and this time the business will be done. Marini is off for Genoa. Under the orange-trees, my Sandra! and looking on the bay, singing of Italy free!"
Emilia fell back a step, eyeing him with a grave expression of wonder, as if she beheld another being from the one she had hitherto known. The calm Englishman had given place to a volcanic spirit.
"Isn't that the sketch we made?" he resumed. "The plot's perfect. I detest conspiracies, but we must use what weapons we can, and be Old Mole, if they trample us in the earth. Once up, we have Turin to back us. This I know. We shall have nothing but the Tedeschi to manage: and if they beat us in cavalry, it's certain that they can't rely on their light horse. The Magyars would break in a charge. We know that they will. As for the rest:—
'Soldati settentrionali,Come sarebbe Boemi a Croati,'
we are a match for them! Artillery we shall get. The Piedmontese are mad for the signal. Come; sit and eat. The air seems dead down in this quiet country; we're out of the stream. I must rush up to London to breathe and then we won't lose a moment. We shall be in Italy in four days. Four days, my Sandra! And Italy going to be free; Georgey, I'm fasting. And you will see all your old friends. All? Good God! No!—not all! Their blood shall nerve us. The Austrian thinks he wastes us by slaughter. With every dead man he doubles the life of the living! Am I talking like a foreigner, Sandra mia? My child, you don't eat! And I, who dreamed last night that I looked out over Novara from the height of the Col di Colma, and saw the plain under a red shadow from a huge eagle!"
Merthyr laughed, swinging round his arm. Emilia continued staring at him as at a man transformed, while Georgiana asked: "May Marini's letter be seen?" Her visage had become firm and set in proportion as her brother's excitement increased.
"Eat, my Sandra! eat!" called Merthyr, who was himself eating with a campaigning appetite.
Georgiana laid down the letter folded under Merthyr's fingers, keeping her hand on it till he grew alive to her meaning, that it should be put away.
"Marini is vague about artillery," she murmured.
"Vague!" echoed Merthyr. "Say prudent. If he said we could lay hands on fifty pieces, then distrust him!"
"God grant that this be not another pit for further fruitless bloodshed!" was the interjection standing in Georgiana's eyes, and then she dropped them pensively, while Merthyr recounted the patient schemes that had led to this hour, the unuttered anxieties and the bursting hopes.
Still Emilia kept her distressfully unenthusiastic looks turned from one to the other, though her Italy was the theme. She did not eat, but had dropped one hand flat on her plate, looking almost idiotic. She heard of Italy as of a distant place, known to her in ancient years. Merthyr's transformation, too, helped some form of illusion in her brain that she was cut off from any kindred feeling with other people.
As soon as he had finished, Merthyr jumped up; and coming round to Emilia, touched her shoulder affectionately, saying: "Now! There won't be much packing to do. We shall be in London to-night in time for your mother to pass the evening with you."
Emilia rose straightway, and her eyes fell vacantly on Georgiana for help, as far as they could express anything.
Georgiana gave no response, save a look well nigh as vacant in the interchange.
"But you haven't eaten at all!" said Merthyr.
Emilia shook her head. "No."
"Eat, my Sandra! to please me! You will need all your strength if you would be a match for Georgey anywhere where there's action."
"Yes!" Emilia traversed his words with a sudden outcry. "Yes, I will go to London. I am ready to go to London now."
It was clear that a new light had fallen on her intelligence.
Merthyr was satisfied to see her sit down to the table, and he at once went out to issue directions for the first step in the new and momentous expedition.
Emilia put the bread to her mouth, and crumbled it on a dry lip: but it was evident to Georgiana, hostile witness as she was, that Emilia's mind was gradually warming to what Merthyr had said, and that a picture was passing before the girl. She perceived also a thing that no misery of her own had yet drawn from Emilia. It was a tear that fell heavily on the back of her hand. Soon the tears came in quick succession, while the girl tried to eat, and bit at salted morsels. It was a strange sight for Georgiana, this statuesque weeping, that got human bit by bit, till the bosom heaved long sobs: and yet no turn of the head for sympathy; nothing but passionless shedding of big tear-drops!
She went to the girl, and put her hand upon her; kissed her, and then said: "We have no time to lose. My brother never delays when he has come to a resolve."
Emilia tried to articulate: "I am ready."
"But you have not eaten!"
Emilia made a mechanical effort to eat.
"Remember," said Georgiana, "we have a long distance to go. You will want your strength. You would not be a burden to him? Eat, while I get your things ready." And Georgiana left her, secretly elated to feel that in this expedition it was she, and she alone, who was Merthyr's mate. What storm it was, and what conflict, agitated the girl and stupefied her, she cared not to guess, now that she had the suitable designation, 'savage,' confirmed in all her acts, to apply to her.
When Tracy Runningbrook came down at his ordinary hour of noon to breakfast, he found a twisted note from Georgiana, telling him that important matters had summoned Merthyr to London, and that they were all to be seen at Lady Gosstre's town-house.
"I believe, by Jove! Powys manoeuvres to get her away from me," he shouted, and sat down to his breakfast and his book with a comforted mind. It was not Georgiana to whom he alluded; but the appearance of Captain Gambier, and the pronounced discomposure visible in the handsome face of the captain on his hearing of the departure, led Tracy to think that Georgiana's was properly deplored by another, though that other was said to be engaged. 'On revient toujours,' he hummed.
Three days passed as a running dream to Emilia. During that period she might have been hurried off to Italy without uttering a remonstrance. Merthyr's spirited talk of the country she called her own; of its heroic youth banded to rise, and sworn to liberate it or die; of good historic names borne by men, his comrades, in old campaigning adventures; and stories and incidents of those past days—all given with his changed face, and changed ringing voice, almost moved her to plunge forgetfully into this new tumultuous stream while the picture of the beloved land, lying shrouded beneath the perilous star it was about to follow grew in her mind.
"Shall I go with the Army?" she asked Georgiana.
"No, my child; you will simply go to school," was the cold reply.
"To school!" Emilia throbbed, "while they are fighting!"
"To the Academy. My brother's first thought is to further your progress in Art. When your artistic education is complete, you will choose your own course."
"He knows, he knows that I have no voice!" Emilia struck her lap with twisted fingers. "My voice is thick in my throat. If I am not to march with him, I can't go; I will not go. I want to see the fight. You have. Why should I keep away? Could I run up notes, even if I had any voice, while he is in the cannon-smoke?"
"While he is in the cannon-smoke!" Georgiana revolved the line thoughtfully. "You are aware that my brother looks forward to the recovery of your voice," she said.
"My voice is like a dead serpent in my throat," rejoined Emilia. "My voice! I have forgotten music. I lived for that, once; now I live for nothing, only to take my chance everywhere with my friend. I want to smell powder. My father says it is like salt, the taste of blood, and is like wine when you smell it. I have heard him shout for it. I will go to Italy, if I may go where my friend Merthyr goes; but nothing can keep me shut up now. My head's a wilderness when I'm in houses. I can scarcely bear to hear this London noise, without going out and walking till I drop."
Coming to a knot in her meditation, Georgiana concluded that Emilia's heart was warming to Merthyr. She was speedily doubtful again.
These two delicate Welsh natures, as exacting as they were delicate, were little pleased with Emilia's silence concerning her intercourse with Wilfrid. Merthyr, who had expressed in her defence what could be said for her, was unwittingly cherishing what could be thought in her disfavour. Neither of them hit on the true cause, which lay in Georgiana's coldness to her. One little pressure of her hand, carelessly given, made Merthyr better aware of the nature he was dealing with. He was telling her that a further delay might keep them in London for a week; and that he had sent for her mother to come to her.
"I must see my mother," she had said, excitedly. The extension of the period named for quitting England made it more imminent m her imagination than when it was a matter of hours. "I must see her."
"I have sent for her," said Merthyr, and then pressed Emilia's hand. But she who, without having brooded on complaints of its absence, thirsted for demonstrative kindness, clung to the hand, drawing it, doubled, against her chin.
"That is not the reason," she said, raising her full eyes up at him over the unrelinquished hand. "I love the poor Madre; let her come; but I have no heart for her just now. I have seen Wilfrid."
She took a tighter hold of his fingers, as fearing he might shrink from her. Merthyr hated mysteries, so he said, "I supposed it must have been so—that night of our return from Penarvon?"
"Yes," she murmured, while she read his face for a shadow of a repulsion; "and, my friend, I cannot go to Italy now!"
Merthyr immediately drew a seat beside her. He perceived that there would be no access to her reason, even as he was on the point of addressing it.
"Then all my care and trouble are to be thrown away?" he said, taking the short road to her feelings.
She put the hand that was disengaged softly on his shoulder. "No; not thrown away. Let me be what Merthyr wishes me to be! That is my chief prayer."
"Why, then, will you not do what Merthyr wishes you to do?"
Emilia's eyelids shut, while her face still fronted him.
"Oh! I will speak all out to you," she cried. "Merthyr, my friend, he came to kiss me once, before I have only just understood it! He is going to Austria. He came to touch me for the last time before his hand is red with my blood. Stop him from going! I am ready to follow you:—I can hear of his marrying that woman:—Oh! I cannot live and think of him in that Austrian white coat. Poor thing!—my dear! my dear!" And she turned away her head.
It is not unnatural that Merthyr hearing these soft epithets, should disbelieve in the implied self-conquest of her preceding words. He had no clue to make him guess that these were simply old exclamations of hers brought to her lips by the sorrowful contrast in her mind.
"It will be better that you should see him," he said, with less of his natural sincerity; so soon are we corrupted by any suspicion that our egoism prompts.
"Here?" And she hung close to him, open-lipped, open-eyed, open-eared, as if (Georgiana would think it, thought Merthyr) her savage senses had laid the trap for this proposal, and now sprung up keen for their prey. "Here, Merthyr? Yes! let me see him. You will! Let me see him, for he cannot resist me. He tries. He thinks he does: but he cannot. I can stretch out my finger—I can put it on the day when, if he has galloped one way he will gallop another. Let him come."
She held up both her hands in petition, half dropping her eyelids, with a shadowy beauty.
In Merthyr's present view, the idea of Wilfrid being in ranks opposed to him was so little provocative of intense dissatisfaction, that it was out of his power to believe that Emilia craved to see him simply to dissuade the man from the obnoxious step. "Ah, well! See him; see him, if you must," he said. "Arrange it with my sister."
He quitted the room, shrinking from the sound of her thanks, and still more from the consciousness of his torment.
The business that detained him was to get money for Marini. Georgiana placed her fortune at his disposal a second time. There was his own, which he deemed it no excess of chivalry to fling into the gulf. The two sat together, arranging what property should be sold, and how they would share the sacrifice in common. Georgiana pressed him to dispose of a little estate belonging to her, that money might immediately be raised. They talked as they sat over the fire toward the dusk of the winter evening.
"You would not have refused me once, Merthyr!"
"When you were a child, and I hardly better than a boy. Now it's different. Let mine go first, Georgey. You may have a husband, who will not look on these things as we do."
"How can I love a husband!" was all she said; and Merthyr took her in his arms. His gaiety had gone.
"We can't go dancing into a pit of this sort," he sighed, partly to baffle the scrutiny he apprehended in her silence. "The garrison at Milan is doubled, and I hear they are marching troops through Tyrol. Some alerte has been given, and probably some traitors exist. One wouldn't like to be shot like a dog! You haven't forgotten poor Tarani? I heard yesterday of the girl who calls herself his widow."
"They were betrothed, and she is!" exclaimed Georgiana.
"Well, there's a case of a man who had two loves—a woman and his country; and both true to him!"
"And is he so singular, Merthyr?"
"No, my best! my sweetest! my heart's rest! no!"
They exchanged tender smiles.
"Tarani's bride—beloved! you can listen to such matters—she has undertaken her task. Who imposed it? I confess I faint at the thought of things so sad and shameful. But I dare not sit in judgement on a people suffering as they are. Outrage upon outrage they have endured, and that deadens—or rather makes their heroism unscrupulous. Tarani's bride is one of the few fair girls of Italy. We have a lock of her hair. She shore it close the morning her lover was shot, and wore the thin white skull-cap you remember, until it was whispered to her that her beauty must serve."
"I have the lock now in my desk," said Georgiana, beginning to tremble."Do you wish to look at it?"