“Sei buon' Italiana?”
Across what chasm did the words come to her?
It seemed but a minutes and again many hours back, that she had asked
that question of a little fellow, who, if he had looked up and nodded
would have given her great joy, but who kept his face dark from her
and with a sullen “Si” extinguished her last feeling of a desire for
companionship with life.
“Si,” she replied, quite as sullenly, and without looking up.
But when her hand was taken and other words were uttered, she that had
crouched there so long between death and life immovable, loving
neither, rose possessed of a passion for the darkness and the void, and
struggling bitterly with the detaining hand, crying for instant death.
No strength was in her to support the fury.
“Merthyr Powys is with you,” said her friend, “and will never leave
you.”
“Will never take me up there?” Emilia pointed to the noisy level above
them.
“Listen, and I will tell you how I have found you,” replied Merthyr.
“Don't force me to go up.”
She spoke from the end of her breath. Merthyr feared that it was more
than misery, even madness, afflicting her. He sat on the wharf-bench
silent till she was reassured. But at his first words, the eager
question came: “You will not force me to go up there?”
“No; we can stay and talk here,” said Merthyr. “And this is how I have
found you. Do you suppose you have been hidden from us all this time?
Perhaps you fancy you do not belong to your friends? Well, I spoke to
all of your 'children,' as you used to call them. Do you remember? The
day before yesterday two had seen you. You said to one, 'From Savoy or
Piedmont?' He said, 'From Savoy;' and you shook your head: 'Not looking
on Italy!' you said. This night I roused one of them, and he stretched
his finger down the steps, saying that you had gone down there. 'Sei
buon' Italiano?” you said. “And that is how I have found you. Sei buon'
Italiana?”
Emilia let her hand rest in Merthyr's, wondering to think that there
should be no absolute darkness for a creature to escape into while
living. A trembling came on her. “Let me look over at the water,” she
said; and Merthyr, who trusted her even in that extremity, allowed her
to lean forward, and felt her grasp grow moist in his, till she turned
back with shudders, giving him both her hands. “A drowned woman looks so
dreadful!” Her speech was faint as she begged to be taken away from that
place. Merthyr put his hand to her arm-pit, sustaining her steps. As
they neared the level where men were, she looked behind her and realized
the black terrors she had just been blindly handling. Fright sped her
limbs for a second or two, and then her whole weight hung upon Merthyr.
He held her in both arms, thinking that she had swooned, but she
murmured: “Have you heard that my voice has gone?”
“If you have suffered, I do not wonder,” he said.
“I am useless. My voice is dead.”
“Useless to your friends? Tush, my little Emilia! Sandra mia! Don't you
know that while you love your friends that's all they want of you?”
“Oh!” she moaned; “the gas-lamp hurts me. What a noise there is!”
“We shall soon get away from the noise.”
“No; I like it; but not the light. Oh, my feet!--why are you walking
still? What friends?”
“For instance, myself.”
“You knew of my wandering about London! It makes me believe in heaven. I
can't bear to think of being unseen.”
“This morning,” said Merthyr, “I saw the policeman in whose house you
have been staying.”
Emilia bowed her head to the mystery by which this friend was endowed
to be cognizant of her actions. “I feel that I have not seen the streets
for years. If it were not for you I should fall down.--Oh! do you
understand that my voice has quite gone?”
Merthyr perceived her anxiety to be that she might not betaken on
doubtful terms. “Your hand hasn't,” he said, pressing it, and so
gratified her with a concrete image of something that she could still
bestow upon a friend. To this she clung while the noisy wheels bore her
through London, till her weak body failed to keep courage in her breast,
and she wept and came closer to Merthyr. He who supposed that her recent
despair and present tears were for the loss of her lover, gave happily
more comfort than he took. “When old gentlemen choose to interest
themselves about very young ladies,” he called upon his humorous
philosophy to observe internally, as men do to forestall the possible
cynic external;--and the rest of the sentence was acted under his eyes
by the figures of three persons. But, there she was, lying within his
arm, rescued, the creature whom he had found filling his heart, when
lost, and whom he thought one of the most hopeful of the women of earth!
He thanked God for bare facts. She lay against him with her eyelids
softly joined, and as he felt the breathing of her body, he marvelled to
think how matter-of-fact they had both been on the brink of a tragedy,
and how naturally she had, as it were, argued herself up to the gates of
death. For want of what? “My sister may supply it,” thought Merthyr.
“Oh! that river is like a great black snake with a sick eye, and will
come round me!” said Emilia, talking as from sleep; then started, with
fright in her face: “Oh! my hunger again!”
“Hunger!” said he, horrified.
“It comes worse than ever,” she moaned. “I was half dead just now, and
didn't feel it. There's--there's no pain in death. But this--it's like
fire and frost! I feel being eaten up. Give me something.”
Merthyr set his teeth and enveloped her in a tight hug that relieved her
from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his
shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get
food for her. She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through
the window of the cab. Bit by bit he handed her the morsels. It was
impossible to procure broth. When they drove on, she did not complain of
suffering, but her chest rose and fell many times heavily. She threw him
out in the reading of her character, after a space, by excusing herself
for having eaten with such eagerness; and it was long before he learnt
what Wilfrid's tyrannous sentiment had done to this simple nature.
He understood better the fear she expressed of meeting Georgiana.
Nevertheless, she exhibited none on entering the house, and returned
Georgiana's embrace with what strength was left to her.