On a wild April morning, Emilia rose from her bed and called to mind a
day of the last year's Spring when she had watched the cloud streaming
up, and felt that it was the curtain of an unknown glory. But now it
wore the aspect of her life itself, with nothing hidden behind those
stormy folds, save peace. South-westward she gazed, eyeing eagerly the
struggle of twisting vapour; long flying edges of silver went by, and
mounds of faint crimson, and here and there a closing space of blue,
swift as a thought of home to a soldier in action. The heavens were like
a battle-field. Emilia shut her lips hard, to check an impulse of prayer
for Merthyr fighting in Italy: for he was in Italy, and she once more
among the Monmouth hills: he was in Italy fighting, and she chained here
to her miserable promise! Three days after she had given the promise
to Wilfrid, Merthyr left, shaking her hand like any common friend.
Georgiana remained, by his desire, to protect her. Emilia had written
to Wilfrid for release, but being no apt letter-writer, and hating the
task, she was soon involved by him in a complication of bewildering
sentiments, some of which she supposed she was bound to feel, while
perhaps one or two she did feel, at the summons. The effect was that she
lost the true wording of her blunt petition for release: she could no
longer put it bluntly. But her heart revolted the more, and gave her
sharp eyes to see into his selfishness. The purgatory of her days with
Georgiana, when the latter was kept back from her brother in his peril,
spurred Emilia to renew her appeal; but she found that all she said drew
her into unexpected traps and pitfalls. There was only one thing she
could say plainly: “I want to go.” If she repeated this, Wilfrid was
ready with citations from her letters, wherein she had said 'this,'
and 'that,' and many other phrases. His epistolary power and skill in
arguing his own case were creditable to him. Affected as Emilia was by
other sensations, she could not combat the idea strenuously suggested
by him, that he had reason to complain of her behaviour. He admitted
his special faults, but, by distinctly tracing them to their origin,
he complacently hinted the excuse for them. Moreover, and with artistic
ability, he painted such a sentimental halo round the 'sacredness of her
pledged word,' that Emilia could not resist a superstitious notion about
it, and about what the breaking of it would imply. Georgiana had removed
her down to Monmouth to be out of his way. A constant flight of letters
pursued them both, for Wilfrid was far too clever to allow letters
in his hand-writing to come for one alone of two women shut up in
a country-house together. He saw how the letterless one would sit
speculating shrewdly and spitefully; so he was careful to amuse his
mystified Dragon, while he drew nearer and nearer to his gold apple.
Another object was, that by getting Georgiana to consent to become in
part his confidante, he made it almost a point of honour for her to be
secret with Lady Charlotte.
At last a morning came with no Brookfield letter for either of them. The
letters stopped from that time. It was almost as if a great buzzing had
ceased in Emilia's ears, and she now heard her own sensations clearly.
To Georgiana's surprise, she manifested no apprehension or regret. “Or
else,” the lady thought, “she wears a mask to me;” and certainly it was
a pale face that Emilia was beginning to wear. At last came April and
its wild morning. No little female hypocrisies passed between them when
they met; they shook hands at arm's length by the breakfast-table. Then
Emilia said: “I am ready to go to Italy: I will go at once.”
Georgiana looked straight at her, thinking: “This is a fit of
indignation with Wilfrid.” She answered: “Italy! I fancied you had
forgotten there was such a country.”
“I don't forget my country and my friends,” said Emilia.
“At least, I must ask the ground of so unexpected a resolution,” was
rejoined.
“Do you remember what Merthyr wrote in his letter from Arona? How long
it takes to understand the meaning of some, words! He says that I should
not follow an impulse that is not the impulse of all my nature--myself
altogether. Yes! I know what that means now. And he tells me that my
life is worth more than to be bound to the pledge of a silly moment.
It is! He, Georgey, unkind that you are!--he does not distrust me; but
always advises and helps me: Merthyr waits for me. I cannot be instantly
ready for every meaning in the world. What I want to do, is to see
Wilfrid: if not, I will write to him. I will tell him that I intend to
break my promise.”
A light of unaffected pride shone from the girl's face, as she threw
down this gauntlet to sentimentalism.
“And if he objects?” said Georgiana.
“If he objects, what can happen? If he objects by letter, I am gone. I
shall not write for permission. I shall write what my will is. If I
see him, and he objects, I can look into his eyes and say what I think
right. Why, I have lived like a frozen thing ever since I gave him my
word. I have felt at times like a snake hissing at my folly. I think I
have felt something like men when they swear.”
Georgiana's features expressed a slight but perceptible disgust. Emilia
continued humbly: “Forgive me. I wish you to know how I hate the word I
gave that separates me from Merthyr in my Italy, and makes you dislike
your poor Emilia. You do. I have pardoned it, though it was twenty stabs
a day.”
“But, why, if this promise was so hateful to you, did you not break it
before?” asked Georgiana.
“I had not the courage,” Emilia stooped her head to confess; “and
besides,” she added, curiously half-closing her eyelids, as one does to
look on a minute object, “I could not see through it before.”
“If,” suggested Georgiana, “you break your word, you release him from
his.”
“No! if he cannot see the difference,” cried Emilia, wildly, “then
let him keep away from me for ever, and he shall not have the name of
friend! Is there no difference--I wish you would let me cry out as they
do in Shakespeare, Georgey!” Emilia laughed to cover her vehemence. “I
want something more than our way of talking, to witness that there is
such a difference between us. Am I to live here till all my feelings are
burnt out, and my very soul is only a spark in a log of old wood? and to
keep him from murdering my countrymen, or flogging the women of Italy!
God knows what those Austrians would make him do. He changes. He would
easily become an Austrian. I have heard him once or twice, and if I had
shut my eyes, I might have declared an Austrian spoke. I wanted to keep
him here, but it is not right that I--I should be caged till I scarcely
feel my finger-ends, or know that I breathe sensibly as you and others
do. I am with Merthyr. That is what I intend to tell him.”
She smiled softly up to Georgiana's cold eyes, to get a look of
forgiveness for her fiery speaking.
“So, then, you love my brother?” said Georgiana.
Emilia could have retorted, “Cruel that you are!” The pain of having an
unripe feeling plucked at without warning, was bitter; but she repressed
any exclamation, in her desire to maintain simple and unsensational
relations always with those surrounding her.
“He is my friend,” she said. “I think of something better than that
other word. Oh, that I were a man, to call him my brother-in-arms!
What's a girl's love in return for his giving his money, his heart, and
offering his life every day for Italy?”
As soon as Georgiana could put faith in her intention to depart, she
gave her a friendly hand and embrace.
Two days later they were at Richford, with Lady Gosstre. The journals
were full of the Italian uprising. There had been a collision between
the Imperial and patriotic forces, near Brescia, from which the former
had retired in some confusion. Great things were expected of Piedmont,
though many, who had reason to know him, distrusted her king. All
Lombardy awaited the signal from Piedmont. Meanwhile blood was flowing.
In the excitement of her sudden rush from dead monotony to active life,
Emilia let some time pass before she wrote to Wilfrid. Her letter was in
her hand, when one was brought in to her from him. It ran thus:--
“I have just returned home, and what is this I hear? Are you utterly
faithless? Can I not rely on you to keep the word you have solemnly
pledged! Meet me at once. Name a place. I am surrounded by misery and
distraction. I will tell you all when we meet. I have trusted that you
were firm. Write instantly. I cannot ask you to come here. The house
is broken up. There is no putting to paper what has happened. My father
lies helpless. Everything rests on me. I thought that I could rely on
you.”
Emilia tore up her first letter, and replied:--
“Come here at once. Or, if you would wish to meet me elsewhere, it shall
be where you please: but immediately. If you have heard that I am going
to Italy, it is true. I break my promise. I shall hope to have your
forgiveness. My heart bleeds for my dear Cornelia, and I am eager to
see my sisters, and embrace them, and share their sorrow. If I must not
come, tell them I kiss them. Adieu!”
Wilfrid replied:--
“I will be by Richford Park gates to-morrow at a quarter to nine. You
speak of your heart. I suppose it is a habit. Be careful to put on a
cloak or thick shawl; we have touches of frost. If I cannot amuse you,
perhaps the nightingales will. Do you remember those of last year? I
wonder whether we shall hear the same?--we shall never hear the same.”
This iteration, whether cunningly devised or not, had a charm for
Emilia's ear. She thought: “I had forgotten all about them.” When she
was in her bedroom at night, she threw up her window. April was leaning
close upon May, and she had not to wait long before a dusky flutter of
low notes, appearing to issue from the great rhododendron bank across
the lawn, surprised her. She listened, and another little beginning was
heard, timorous, shy, and full of mystery for her. The moon hung over
branches, some that showed young buds, some still bare. Presently the
long, rich, single notes cut the air, and melted to their glad delicious
chuckle. The singer was answered from a farther bough, and again from
one. It grew to be a circle of melody round Emilia at the open window.
Was it the same as last year's? The last year's lay in her memory
faint and well-nigh unawakened. There was likewise a momentary sense of
unreality in this still piping peacefulness, while Merthyr stood in
a bloody-streaked field, fronting death. And yet the song was sweet.
Emilia clasped her arms, shut her eyes, and drank it in. Not to think
at all, or even to brood on her sensations, but to rest half animate and
let those divine sounds find a way through her blood, was medicine to
her.
Next day there were numerous visits to the house. Emilia was reserved,
and might have been thought sad, but she welcomed Tracy Runningbrook
gladly, with “Oh! my old friend!” and a tender squeeze of his hand.
“True, if you like; hot, if you like; but I old?” cried Tracy.
“Yes, because I seem to have got to the other side of you; I mean, I
know you, and am always sure of you,” said Emilia. “You don't care
for music; I don't care for poetry, but we're friends, and I am quite
certain of you, and think you 'old friend' always.”
“And I,” said Tracy, better up to the mark by this time, “I think of
you, you dear little woman, that I ought to be grateful to you, for, by
heaven! you give me, every time I see you, the greatest temptation to be
a fool and let me prove that I'm not. Altro! altro!”
“A fool!” said Emilia caressingly; showing that his smart insinuation
had slipped by her.
The tale of Brookfield was told over again by Tracy, and Emilia
shuddered, though Merthyr and her country held her heart and imagination
active and in suspense, from moment to moment. It helped mainly to
discolour the young world to her eyes. She was under the spell of an
excitement too keen and quick to be subdued, by the sombre terrors of
a tragedy enacted in a house that she had known. Brookfield was in the
talk of all who came to Richford. Emilia got the vision of the wretched
family seated in the library as usual, when upon midnight they were
about to part, and a knock came at the outer door, and two men entered
the hall, bearing a lifeless body with a red spot above the heart. She
saw Cornelia fall to it. She saw the pale-faced family that had given
her shelter, and moaned for lack of a way of helping them and comforting
them. She reproached herself for feeling her own full physical life so
warmly, while others whom she had loved were weeping. It was useless to
resist the tide of fresh vitality in her veins, and when her thoughts
turned to their main attraction, she was rejoicing at the great strength
she felt coming to her gradually. Her face was smooth and impassive:
this new joy of strength came on her like the flowing of a sea to a
land-locked water. “Poor souls!” she sighed for her friends, while
irrepressible exultation filled her spirit.
That afternoon, in the midst of packing and preparations for the
journey, at all of which Lady Gosstre smiled with a complacent
bewilderment, a card, bearing the name of Miss Laura Tinley, was sent up
to Emilia. She had forgotten this person, and asked Lady Gosstre who it
was. Arabella's rival presented herself most winningly. For some time,
Emilia listened to her, with wonder that a tongue should be so glib on
matters of no earthly interest. At last, Laura said in an undertone: “I
am the bearer of a message from Mr. Pericles; do you walk at all in the
garden?”
Emilia read her look, and rose. Her thoughts struck back on the
creature that she was when she had last seen Mr. Pericles, and again, by
contrast, on what she was now. Eager to hear of him, or rather to divine
the mystery in her bosom aroused by the unexpected mention of his name,
she was soon alone with Laura in the garden.
“Oh, those poor Poles!” Laura began.
“You were going to say something of Mr. Pericles,” said Emilia.
“Yes, indeed, my dear; but, of course, you have heard all the details of
that dreadful night? It cannot be called a comfort to us that it enables
my brother Albert to come forward in the most disinterested--I might
venture to say, generous--manner, and prove the chivalry of his soul;
still, as things are, we are glad, after such misunderstandings, to
prove to that sorely-tried family who are their friends. I--you would
little think so from their treatment of me--I was at school with them.
I knew them before they became unintelligible, though they always had a
turn for it. To dress well, to be refined, to marry well--I understand
all that perfectly; but who could understand them? Not they themselves,
I am certain! And now penniless! and not only that, but lawyers! You
know that Mrs. Chump has commenced an action?--no? Oh, yes! but I shall
have to tell you the whole story.”
“What is it?--they want money?” said Emilia.
“I will tell you. Our poor gentlemanly organist, whom you knew, was
really a baronet's son, and inherited the title.”
Emilia interrupted her: “Oh, do let me hear about them!”
“Well, my dear, this unfortunate--I may call him 'lover,' for if a man
does not stamp the truth of his affection with a pistol, what other
means has he? And just a word as to romance. I have been sighing for
it--no one would think so--all my life. And who would have thought that
these poor Poles should have lived to convince me of the folly! Oh,
delicious humdrum!--there is nothing like it. But you are anxious,
naturally. Poor Sir Purcell Barren--he may or may not have been mad, but
when he was brought to the house at Brookfield--quite by chance--I mean,
his body--two labouring men found him by a tree--I don't know whether
you remembered a pollard-willow that stood all white and rotten by the
water in the fir-wood:--well, as I said, mad or not, no sooner did poor
Cornelia see him than she shrieked that she was the cause of his death.
He was laid in the hall--which I have so often trod! and there Cornelia
sat by his poor dead body, and accused Wilfrid and her father of every
unkindness. They say that the scene was terrible. Wilfrid--but I need
not tell you his character. He flutters from flower to flower, but he
has feeling Now comes the worst of all--in one sense; that is, looking
on it as people of the world; and being in the world, we must take a
worldly view occasionally. Mr. Pole--you remember how he behaved once at
Besworth: or, no; you were not there, but he used your name. His mania
was, as everybody could see, to marry his children grandly. I don't
blame him in any way. Still, he was not justified in living beyond
his means to that end, speculating rashly, and concealing his actual
circumstances. Well, Mr. Pericles and he were involved together; that
is, Mr. Pericles--”
“Is Mr. Pericles near us now?” said Emilia quickly.
“We will come to him,” Laura resumed, with the complacency of one who
saw a goodly portion of the festival she was enjoying still before her.
“I was going to say, Mr. Pericles had poor Mr. Pole in his power; has
him, would be the correcter tense. And Wilfrid, as you may have heard,
had really grossly insulted him, even to the extent of maltreating
him--a poor foreigner--rich foreigner, if you like! but not capable of
standing against a strong young man in wrath. However, now there can be
little doubt that Wilfrid repents. He had been trying ever since to see
Mr. Pericles; and the very morning of that day, I believe, he saw him
and humbled himself to make an apology. This had put Mr. Pole in good
spirits, and in the evening--he and Mrs. Chump were very fond of their
wine after dinner--he was heard that very evening to name a day for his
union with her; for that had been quite understood, and he had asked his
daughters and got their consent. The sight of Sir Purcell's corpse, and
the cries of Cornelia, must have turned him childish. I cannot conceive
a situation so harrowing as that of those poor children hearing their
father declare himself an impostor! a beggar! a peculator! He cried,
poor unhappy man, real tears! The truth was that his nerves suddenly
gave way. For, just before--only just before, he was smiling and talking
largely. He wished to go on his knees to every one of them, and kept
telling them of his love--the servants all awake and listening! and
more gossiping servants than the Poles always, by the most extraordinary
inadvertence, managed to get, you never heard of! Nothing would stop him
from humiliating himself! No one paid any attention to Mrs. Chump until
she started from her chair. They say that some of the servants who were
crying outside, positively were compelled to laugh when they heard her
first outbursts. And poor Mr. Pole confessed that he had touched her
money. He could not tell her how much. Fancy such a scene, with a dead
man in the house! Imagination almost refuses to conjure it up! Not to
dwell on it too long--for, I have never endured such a shock as it has
given me--Mrs. Chump left the house, and the next thing received from
her was a lawyer's letter. Business men say she is not to blame:
women may cherish their own opinion. But, oh, Miss Belloni! is it not
terrible? You are pale.”
Emilia behind what she felt for her friends, had a dim comprehension of
the meaning of their old disgust at Laura, during this narration. But,
hearing the word of pity, she did not stop to be critical. “Can you do
nothing for them?” she said abruptly.
The thought in Laura's shocked grey eyes was, “They have done little
enough for you,” i.e., toward making you a lady. “Oh!” she cried; “I
can you teach me what to do? I must be extremely delicate, and calculate
upon what they would accept from me. For--so I hear--they used
to--and may still--nourish a--what I called--silly--though not in
unkindness--hostility to our family--me. And perhaps now natural
delicacy may render it difficult for them to...”
In short, to accept an alms from Laura Tinley; so said her pleading look
for an interpretation.
“You know Mr. Pericles,” said Emilia, “he can do the mischief--can he
not? Stop him.”
Laura laughed. “One might almost say that you do not know him, Miss
Belloni. What is my influence? I have neither a voice, nor can I play on
any instrument. I would--indeed I will--do my best my utmost; only, how
even to introduce the subject to him? Are not you the person? He speaks
of you constantly. He has consulted doctors with regard to your voice,
and the only excuse, dear Miss Belloni, for my visit to you to-day, is
my desire that any misunderstanding between you may be cleared. Because,
I have just heard--Miss Belloni will forgive me!--the origin of it; and
tidings coming that you were in the neighbourhood, I thought--hoped
that I might be the means of re-uniting two evidently destined to be of
essential service to one another. And really, life means that, does it
not?”
Emilia was becoming more critical of this tone the more she listened.
She declared, her immediate willingness to meet Mr. Pericles. With
which, and Emilia's assurance that she would write, and herself make the
appointment, Laura retired, in high glee at the prospect of winning the
gratitude of the inscrutable millionaire. It was true that the absence
of any rivalry for the possession of the man took much of his sweetness
from him. She seemed to be plucking him from the hands of the dead,
and half recognized that victory over uncontesting rivals claps the
laurel-wreath rather rudely upon our heads.
Emilia lost no time in running straight to Georgiana, who was busy
at her writing-desk. She related what she had just heard, ending
breathlessly: “Georgey! my dear! will you help them?”
“In what possible way can I do so?” said Georgiana. “To-morrow night we
shall have left England.”
“But to-day we are here.” Emilia pressed a hand to her bosom: “my heart
feels hollow, and my friends cry out in it. I cannot let him suffer.”
She looked into Georgiana's eyes. “Will you not help them?--they want
money.”
The lady reddened. “Is it not preposterous to suppose that I can offer
them assistance of such a kind?”
“Not you,” returned Emilia, sighing; and in an under-breath, “me--will
you lend it to me? Merthyr would. I shall repay it. I cannot tell what
fills me with this delight, but I know I am able to repay any sum. Two
thousand pounds would help them. I think--I think my voice has come
back.”
“Have you tried it?” said Georgiana, to produce a diversion from the
other topic.
“No; but believe me when I tell you, it must be. I scarcely feel the
floor; no misery touches me. I am only sorry for my friends, not down
on the ground with them. Believe me! And I have been studying all this
while. I have not lost an hour. I would accept a part, and step on the
boards within a week, and be certain to succeed. I am just as willing
to go to the Conservatorio and submit to discipline. Only, dear friend,
believe me, that I ask for money now, because I am sure I can repay it.
I want to send it immediately, and then, good-bye to England.”
Georgiana closed her desk. She had been suspicious at first of another
sentiment in the background, but was now quite convinced of the
simplicity of Emilia's design. She said: “I will tell you exactly how
I am placed. I do not know, that under any circumstances, I could
have given into your hands so large a sum as this that you ask for. My
brother has a fortune; and I have also a little property. When I say my
brother has a fortune, he has the remains of one. All that has gone has
been devoted to relieve your countrymen, and further the interests he
has nearest at heart. What is left to him, I believe, he has now thrown
into the gulf. You have heard Lady Charlotte call him a fanatic.”
Emilia's lip quivered.
“You must not blame her for that,” Georgiana continued. “Lady Gosstre
thinks much the same. The world thinks with them. I love him, and prove
my love by trusting him, and wish to prove my love by aiding him, and
being always at hand to succour, as I should be now, but that I obeyed
his dearest wish in resting here to watch over you. I am his other self.
I have taught him to feel that; so that in his devotion to this cause he
may follow every impulse he has, and still there is his sister to fall
back on. My child! see what I have been doing. I have been calculating
here.” Georgiana took a scroll from her desk, and laid it under Emilia's
eyes. “I have reckoned our expenses as far as Turin, and have only
consented to take Lady Gosstre's valet for courier, just to please her.
I know that he will make the cost double, and I feel like a miser about
money. If Merthyr is ruined, he will require every farthing that I have
for our common subsistence. Now do you understand? I can hardly put the
case more plainly. It is out of my power to do what you ask me to do.”
Emilia sighed lightly, and seemed not much cast down by the refusal. She
perceived that it was necessarily positive, and like all minds framed to
resolve to action, there was an instantaneous change of the current of
her thoughts in another direction.
“Then, my darling, my one prayer!” she said. “Postpone our going for a
week. I will try to get help for them elsewhere.”
Georgiana was pleased by Emilia's manner of taking the rebuff; but it
required an altercation before she consented to this postponement; she
nodded her head finally in anger.