George Meredith
Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England). Complete
The delight at being in a theatre kept Emilia dumb when she gazed on the glittering lights. After an inspection of the house, Mr. Pole kindly remarked: “You must marry and get out of this. This’d never do. All very well in the boxes: but on the stage—oh, no! I shouldn’t like you to be there. If my girls don’t approve of the doctor, they shall look out somebody for you. I shouldn’t like you to be painted, and rigged out; and have to squall in this sort of place. Stage won’t do for you. No, no!”
Emilia replied that she had given up the stage; and looked mournfully at the drop-scene, as at a lost kingdom, scarcely repressing her tears.
The orchestra tuned and played a light overture. She followed up the windings of the drop-scene valley, meeting her lover somewhere beneath the castle-ruin, where the river narrowed and the trees intertwined. On from dream to dream the music carried her, and dull fell the first words of the farce. Mr. Pole said, “Now, then!” and began to chuckle. As the farce proceeded, he grew more serious, repeating to Emilia, quite anxiously: “I wonder whether that boy Braintop’s enjoying it.” Emilia glanced among the sea of heads, and finally eliminated the head of Braintop, who was respectfully devoting his gaze to the box she occupied. When Mr. Pole had been assisted to discover him likewise, his attention alternated between Braintop and the stage, and he expressed annoyance from time to time at the extreme composure of Braintop’s countenance. “Why don’t the fellow laugh? Does he think he’s listening to a sermon?” Poor Braintop, on his part, sat in mortal fear lest his admiration of Emilia was perceived. Divided? between this alarming suspicion, and a doubt that the hair on his forehead was not properly regulated, he became uneasy and fitful in his deportment. His imagination plagued him with a sense of guilt, which his master’s watchfulness of him increased. He took an opportunity to furtively to eye himself in a pocket-mirror, and was subsequently haunted by an additional dread that Emilia might have discovered the instrument; and set him down as a vain foolish dog. When he saw her laugh he was sure of it. Instead of responding to Mr. Pole’s encouragement, he assumed a taciturn aspect worthy of a youthful anchorite, and continued to be the spectator of a scene to which his soul was dead.
“I believe that fellow’s thinking of nothing but his supper,” said Mr. Pole.
“I dare say he dined early in the day,” returned Emilia, remembering how hungry she used to be in the evenings of the potatoe-days.
“Yes, but he might laugh, all the same.” And Mr. Pole gave Emilia the sound advice: “Mind you never marry a fellow who can’t laugh.”
Braintop saw Emilia smile. Then, in an instant, her face changed its expression to one of wonder and alarm, and her hands clasped together tightly. What on earth was the matter with her? His agitated fancy, centred in himself, now decided that some manifestation of most shocking absurdity had settled on his forehead, or his hair, for he was certain of his neck-tie. Braintop had recourse to his pocket-mirror once more. It afforded him a rapid interchange of glances with a face which he at all events could distinguish from the mass, though we need not.
The youth was in the act of conveying the instrument to its retreat, when conscience sent his eyes toward Emilia, who, to his horror, beckoned to him, and touched Mr. Pole, entreating him to do the same. Mr. Pole gesticulated imperiously, whereat Braintop rose, and requested his neighbour to keep his seat for ten minutes, as he was going into that particular box; and “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, I shall stop there,” said Braintop, a little grandly, through the confusion of his ideas, as he guessed at the possible reasons for the summons.
Emilia had seen her father in the orchestra. There he sat, under the leader, sullenly fiddling the prelude to the second play, like a man ashamed, and one of the beaten in this world. Flight had been her first thought. She had cause to dread him. The more she lived and the dawning knowledge of what it is to be a woman in the world grew with her, the more she shrank from his guidance, and from reliance on him. Not that she conceived him designedly base; but he outraged her now conscious delicacy, and what she had to endure as a girl seemed unbearable to her now. Besides, she felt a secret shuddering at nameless things, which made her sick of the thought of returning to him and his Jew friends. But, alas! he looked so miserable—a child of harmony among the sons of discord! He kept his head down, fiddling like a machine. The old potatoe-days became pathetically edged with dead light to Emilia. She could not be cruel. “When I am safe,” she laid stress on the word in her mind, to awaken blessed images, “I will see him often, and make him happy; but I will let him know that all is well with me now, and that I love him always.”
So she said to Mr. Pole, “I know one of those in the orchestra. May I write a word to him on a piece of paper before we go? I wish to.”
Mr. Pole reflected, and seeing her earnest in her desire to do this, replied: “Well, yes; if you must—the girls are not here.”
Emilia borrowed his pencil-case, and wrote:—
“Sandra is well, and always loves her caro papa, and is improving, and will see him soon. Her heart is full of love for him and for her mama; and if they leave their lodgings they are to leave word where they go. Sandra never forgets Italy, and reads the papers. She has a copy of the score of an unknown opera by our Andronizetti, and studies it, and anatomy, English, French, and pure Italian, and can ride a horse. She has made rich friends, who love her. It will not be long, and you will see her.”
The hasty scrawl concluded with numerous little caressing exclamations in Italian diminutives. This done, Emilia thought: “But he will look up and see me!” She resolved not to send it till they were about to quit the theatre. Consequently, Braintop, on his arrival, was told to sit down. “You don’t look cheerful in the pit,” said Mr. Pole. “You’re above it?—eh? You’re all alike in that. None of you do what your dads did. Up-up-up? You may get too high, eh?—Gallery?” and Mr. Pole winked knowingly and laughed.
Braintop, thus elevated, tried his best to talk to Emilia, who sat half fascinated with the fear of seeing her father lift his eyes and recognize her suddenly. She sat boldly in the front, as before; not being a young woman to hide her head where there was danger, and having perhaps a certain amount of the fatalism which is often youth’s philosophy in the affairs of life. “If this is to be, can I avert it?”
Mr. Pole began to nod at the actors, heavily. He said to Emilia, “If there is any fun going on, give me a nudge.” Emilia kept her eyes on her father in the orchestra, full of pity for his deplorable wig, in which she read his later domestic history, and sad tales of the family dinners.
“Do you see one of those”—she pointed him out to Braintop; “he is next to the leader, with his back to us. Are you sure? I want you to give him this note before he goes; when we go. Will you do it? I shall always be thankful to you.”
Considering what Braintop was ready to do that he might be remembered for a day and no more, the request was so very moderate as to be painful to him.
“You will leave him when you have given it into his hand. You are not to answer any questions,” said Emilia.
With a reassuring glance at the musician’s wig, Braintop bent his head.
“Do see,” she pursued, “how differently he bows from the other men, though it is only dance music. Oh, how his ears are torn by that violoncello! He wants to shriek:—he bears it!”
She threw a piteous glance across the agitated instruments, and Braintop was led to inquire: “Is he anything particular?”
“He can bring out notes that are more like honey—if you can fancy a thread of honey drawn through your heart as if it would never end! He is Italian.”
Braintop modestly surveyed her hair and brows and cheeks, and taking the print of her eyes on his brain to dream over, smelt at a relationship with the wry black wig, which cast a halo about it.
The musicians laid down their instruments, and trooped out, one by one. Emilia perceived a man brush against her father’s elbow. Her father flicked at his offended elbow with the opposite hand, and sat crumpled up till all had passed him: then went out alone. That little action of disgust showed her that he had not lost spirit, albeit condemned to serve amongst an inferior race, promoters of discord.
Just as the third play was opening, some commotion was seen in the pit, rising from near Braintop’s vacated seat; and presently a thing that shone flashing to the lights, came on from hand to hand, each hand signalling subsequently toward Mr. Pole’s box. It approached. Braintop’s eyes were in waiting on Emilia, who looked sadly at the empty orchestra. A gentleman in the stalls, a head beneath her, bowed, and holding up a singular article, gravely said that he had been requested to pass it. She touched Mr. Pole’s shoulder. “Eh? anything funny?” said he, and glanced around. He was in time to see Braintop lean hurriedly over the box, and snatch his pocket-mirror from the gentleman’s hand. “Ha! ha!” he laughed, as if a comic gleam had illumined him. A portion of the pit and stalls laughed too. Emilia smiled merrily. “What was it?” said she; and perceiving many faces beneath her red among handkerchiefs, she was eager to see the thing that the unhappy Braintop had speedily secreted.
“Come, sir, let’s see it!” quoth Mr. Pole, itching for a fresh laugh; and in spite of Braintop’s protest, and in defiance of his burning blush, he compelled the wretched youth to draw it forth, and be manifestly convicted of vanity.
A shout of laughter burst from Mr. Pole. “No wonder these young sparks cut us all out. Lord, what cunning dogs they are! They ain’t satisfied with seeing themselves in their boots, but they—ha! ha! By George! We’ve got the best fun in our box. I say, Braintop! you ought to have two, my boy. Then you’d see how you looked behind. Ha-ha-hah! Never enjoyed an evening so much in my life! A looking-glass for their pockets! ha! ha!—hooh!”
Luckily the farce demanded laughter, or those parts of the pit which had not known Braintop would have been indignant. Mr. Pole became more and more possessed by the fun, as the contrast of Braintop’s abject humiliation with this glaring testimony to his conceit tickled him. He laughed till he complained of hunger. Emilia, though she thought it natural that Braintop should carry a pocket-mirror if he pleased, laughed from sympathy; until Braintop, reduced to the verge of forbearance, stood up and remarked that, to perform the mission entrusted to him, he must depart immediately. Mr. Pole was loth to let him go, but finally commending him to a good supper, he sighed, and declared himself a new man.
“Oh! what a jolly laugh! The very thing I wanted! It’s worth hundreds to me. I was queer before: no doubt about that!”
Again the ebbing convulsion of laughter seized him. “I feel as clear as day,” he said; and immediately asked Emilia whether she thought he would have strength to get down to the cab. She took his hand, trying to assist him from the seat. He rose, and staggered an instant. “A sort of reddish cloud,” he murmured, feeling over his forehead. “Ha! I know what it is. I want a chop. A chop and a song. But, I couldn’t take you, and I like you by me. Good little woman!” He patted Emilia’s shoulder, preparatory to leaning on it with considerable weight, and so descended to the cab, chuckling ever and anon at the reminiscence of Braintop.
There was a disturbance in the street. A man with a foreign accent was shouting by the door of a neighbouring public-house, that he would not yield his hold of the collar of a struggling gentleman, till the villain had surrendered his child, whom he scandalously concealed from her parents. A scuffle ensued, and the foreign voice was heard again:
“Wat! wat you have de shame, you have de pluck, ah! to tell me you know not where she is, and you bring me a letter? Ho!—you have de cheeks to tell me!”
This highly effective pluralizing of their peculiar slang, brought a roar of applause from the crowd of Britons.
“Only a street row,” said Mr. Pole, to calm Emilia.
“Will he be hurt?” she cried.
“I see a couple of policemen handy,” said Mr. Pole, and Emilia cowered down and clung to his hand as they drove from the place.
CHAPTER XXVI
It was midnight. Mr. Pole had appeased his imagination with a chop, and was trying to revive the memory of his old after-theatre night carouses by listening to a song which Emilia sang to him, while he sipped at a smoking mixture, and beat time on the table, rejoiced that he was warm from head to foot at last.
“That’s a pretty song, my dear,” he said. “A very pretty song. It does for an old fellow; and so did my supper: light and wholesome. I’m an old fellow; I ought to know I’ve got a grown-up son and grown-up daughters. I shall be a grandpa, soon, I dare say. It’s not the thing for me to go about hearing glees. I had an idea of it. I’m better here. All I want is to see my children happy, married and settled, and comfortable!”
Emilia stole up to him, and dropped on one knee: “You love them?”
“I do. I love my girls and my boy. And my brandy-and-water, do you mean to say, you rogue?”
“And me?” Emilia looked up at him beseechingly.
“Yes, and you. I do. I haven’t known you long, my dear, but I shall be glad to do what I can for you. You shall make my house your home as long as you live; and if I say, make haste and get married, it’s only just this: girls ought to marry young, and not be in an uncertain position.”
“Am I worth having?”
“To be sure you are! I should think so. You haven’t got a penny; but, then, you’re not for spending one. And”—Mr. Pole nodded to right and left like a man who silenced a host of invisible logicians, urging this and that—“you’re a pleasant companion, thrifty, pretty, musical: by Jingo! what more do they want? They’ll have their song and chop at home.”
“Yes; but suppose it depends upon their fathers?”
“Well, if their fathers will be fools, my dear, I can’t help ‘em. We needn’t take ‘em in a lump: how about the doctor? I’ll see him to-morrow morning, and hear what he has to say. Shall I?”
Mr. Pole winked shrewdly.
“You will not make my heart break?” Emilia’s voice sounded one low chord as she neared the thing she had to say.
“Bless her soul!” the old merchant patted her; “I’m not the sort of man for that.”
“Nor his?”
“His?” Mr. Pole’s nerves became uneasy in a minute, at the scent of a mystification. He dashed his handkerchief over his forehead, repeating: “His? Break a man’s heart! I? What’s the meaning of that? For God’s sake, don’t bother me!”
Emilia was still kneeling before him, eyeing him with a shadowed steadfast air.
“I say his, because his heart is in mine. He has any pain that hurts me.”
“He may be tremendously in love,” observed Mr. Pole; “but he seems a deuced soft sort of a doctor! What’s his name?”
“I love Wilfrid.”
The merchant appeared to be giving ear to her, long after the words had been uttered, while there was silence in the room.
“Wilfrid? my son?” he cried with a start.
“He is my lover.”
“Damned rascal!” Mr. Pole jumped from his chair. “Going and playing with an unprotected girl. I can pardon a young man’s folly, but this is infamous. My dear child,” he turned to Emilia, “if you’ve got any notion about my son Wilfrid, you must root it up as quick as you can. If he’s been behaving like a villain, leave him to me. I detest, I hate, I loathe, I would kick, a young man who deceives a girl. Even if he’s my son!—more’s the reason!”
Mr. Pole was walking up and down the room, fuming as he spoke. Emilia tried to hold his hand, as he was passing, but he said: “There, my child! I’m very sorry for you, and I’m damned angry with him. Let me go.”
“Can you, can you be angry with him for loving me?”
“Deceiving you,” returned Mr. Pole; “that’s what it is. And I tell you, I’d rather fifty times the fellow had deceived me. Anything rather than that he should take advantage of a girl.”
“Wilfrid loves me and would die for me,” said Emilia.
“Now, let me tell you the fact,” Mr. Pole came to a halt, fronting her. “My son Wilfrid Pole may be in love, as he says, here and there, but he is engaged to be married to a lady of title. I have his word—his oath. He got near a thousand pounds out of my pocket the other day on that understanding. I don’t speak about the money, but—now—it’s a lump—others would have made a nice row about it—but is he a liar? Is he a seducing, idling, vagabond dog? Is he a contemptible scoundrel?”
“He is my lover,” said Emilia.
She stood without changing a feature; as in a darkness, holding to the one thing she was sure of. Then, with a sudden track of light in her brain: “I know the mistake,” she said. “Pardon him. He feared to offend you, because you are his father, and he thought I might not quite please you. For, he loves me. He has loved me from the first moment he saw me. He cannot be engaged to another. I could bring him from any woman’s side. I have only to say to myself—he must come to me. For he loves me! It is not a thing to doubt.”
Mr. Pole turned and recommenced his pacing with hasty steps. All the indications of a nervous tempest were on him. Interjecting half-formed phrases, and now and then staring at Emilia, as at an incomprehensible object, he worked at his hair till it lent him the look of one in horror at an apparition.
“The fellow’s going to marry Lady Charlotte Chillingworth, I tell you. He has asked my permission. The infernal scamp! he knew it pleased me. He bled me of a thousand pounds only the other day. I tell you, he’s going to marry Lady Charlotte Chillingworth.”
Emilia received this statement with a most perplexing smile. She shook her head. “He cannot.”
“Cannot? I say he shall, and must, and in a couple of months, too!”
The gravely sceptical smile on Emilia’s face changed to a blank pallor.
“Then, you make him, sir—you?”
“He’ll be a beggar, if he don’t.”
“You will keep him without money?”
Mr. Pole felt that he gazed on strange deeps in that girl’s face. Her voice had the wire-like hum of a rising wind. There was no menace in her eyes: the lashes of them drooped almost tenderly, and the lips were but softly closed. The heaving of the bosom, though weighty, was regular: the hands hung straight down, and were open. She looked harmless; but his physical apprehensiveness was sharpened by his nervous condition, and he read power in her: the capacity to concentrate all animal and mental vigour into one feeling—this being the power of the soul.
So she stood, breathing quietly, steadily eyeing him.
“No, no;” went on Mr. Pole. “Come, come. We’ll sit down, and see, and talk—see what can be done. You know I always meant kindly by you.”
“Oh, yes!” Emilia musically murmured, and it cost her nothing to smile again.
“Now, tell me how this began.” Mr. Pole settled himself comfortably to listen, all irritation having apparently left him, under the influence of the dominant nature. “You need not be ashamed to talk it over to me.”
“I am not ashamed,” Emilia led off, and told her tale simply, with here and there one of her peculiar illustrations. She had not thought of love till it came to life suddenly, she said; and then all the world looked different. The relation of Wilfrid’s bravery in fighting for her, varied for a single instant the low monotony of her voice. At the close of the confession, Mr. Pole wore an aspect of distress. This creature’s utter unlikeness to the girls he was accustomed to, corroborated his personal view of the case, that Wilfrid certainly could not have been serious, and that she was deluded. But he pitied her, for he had sufficient imagination to prevent him from despising what he did not altogether comprehend. So, to fortify the damsel, he gave her a lecture: first, on young men—their selfish inconsiderateness, their weakness, the wanton lives they led, their trick of lying for any sugar-plum, and how they laughed at their dupes. Secondly, as to the conduct consequently to be prescribed to girls, who were weaker, frailer, by disposition more confiding, and who must believe nothing but what they heard their elders say.
Emilia gave patient heed to the lecture.
“But I am safe,” she remarked, when he had finished; “for my lover is not as those young men are.”
To speak at all, and arrange his ideas, was a vexation to the poor merchant. He was here like an irritable traveller, who knocks at a gate, which makes as if it opens, without letting him in. Emilia’s naive confidence he read as stupidity. It brought on a fresh access of the nervous fever lurking in him, and he cried, jumping from his seat: “Well, you can’t have him, and there’s an end. You must give up—confound! why! do you expect to have everything you want at starting? There, my child—but, upon my honour! a man loses his temper at having to talk for an hour or so, and no result. You must go to bed; and—do you say your prayers? Well! that’s one way of getting out of it—pray that you may forget all about what’s not good for you. Why, you’re almost like a young man, when you set your mind on a thing. Bad! won’t do! Say your prayers regularly. And, please, pour me out a mouthful of brandy. My hand trembles—I don’t know what’s the matter with it;—just like those rushes on the Thames I used to see when out fishing. No wind, and yet there they shake away. I wish it was daylight on the old river now! It’s night, and no mistake. I feel as if I had a fellow twirling a stick over my head. The rascal’s been at it for the last month. There, stop where you are, my dear. Don’t begin to dance!”
He pressed at his misty eyes, half under the impression that she was taking a succession of dazzling leaps in air. Terror of an impending blow, which he associated with Emilia’s voice, made him entreat her to be silent. After a space, he breathed a long breath of relief, saying: “No, no; you’re firm enough on your feet. I don’t think I ever saw you dance. My girls have given it up. What led me to think…but, let’s to bed, and say our prayers. I want a kiss.”
Emilia kissed him on the forehead. The symptoms of illness were strange to her, and passed unheeded. She was too full of her own burning passion to take evidence from her sight. The sun of her world was threatened with extinction. She felt herself already a wanderer in a land of tombs, where none could say whether morning had come or gone. Intensely she looked her misery in the face; and it was as a voice that said, “No sun: never sun any more,” to her. But a blue-hued moon slipped from among the clouds, and hung in the black outstretched fingers of the tree of darkness, fronting troubled waters. “This is thy light for ever! thou shalt live in thy dream.” So, as in a prison-house, did her soul now recall the blissful hours by Wilming Weir. She sickened but an instant. The blood in her veins was too strong a tide for her to crouch in that imagined corpse-like universe which alternates with an irradiated Eden in the brain of the passionate young.
“Why should I lose him!” The dry sob choked her.
She struggled with the emotion in her throat, and Mr. Pole, who had previously dreaded supplication and appeals for pity, caressed her. Instantly the flood poured out.
“You are not cruel. I knew it. I should have died, if you had come between us. Oh, Wilfrid’s father, I love you!—I have never had a very angry word on my mouth. Think! think! if you had made me curse you. For, I could! You would have stopped my life, and Wilfrid’s. What would our last thoughts have been? We could not have forgiven you. Take up dead birds killed by frost. You cry: Cruel winter! murdering cold! But I knew better. You are Wilfrid’s father, whom I can kneel to. My lover’s father! my own father! my friend next to heaven! Oh! bless my love, for him. You have only to know what my love for him is! The thought of losing him goes like perishing cold through my bones;—my heart jerks, as if it had to pull up my body from the grave every time it beats....”
“God in heaven!” cried the horrified merchant, on whose susceptible nerves these images wrought with such a force that he absolutely had dread of her. He gasped, and felt at his heart, and then at his pulse; rubbed the moisture from his forehead, and throwing a fixedly wild look on her eyes, he jumped up and left her kneeling.
His caress had implied mercy to Emilia: for she could not reconcile it with the rejection of the petition of her soul. She was now a little bewildered to see him trotting the room, frowning and blinking, and feeling at one wrist, at momentary pauses, all his words being: “Let’s be quiet. Let’s be good. Let’s go to bed, and say our prayers;” mingled with short ejaculations.
“I may say,” she intercepted him, “I may tell my dear lover that you bless us both, and that we are to live. Oh, speak! sir! let me hear you!”
“Let’s go to bed,” iterated Mr. Pole. “Come, candles! do light them. In God’s name! light candles. And let’s be off and say our prayers.”
“You consent, sir?”
“What’s that your heart does?” Mr. Pole stopped to enquire; adding: “There, don’t tell me. You’ve played the devil with mine. Who’d ever have made me believe that I should feel more at ease running up and down the room, than seated in my arm-chair! Among the wonders of the world, that!”
Emilia put up her lips to kiss him, as he passed her. There was something deliciously soothing and haven-like to him in the aspect of her calmness.
“Now, you’ll be a good girl,” said he, when he had taken her salute.
“And you,” she rejoined, “will be happier!”
His voice dropped. “If you go on like this, you’ve done for me!”
But she could make no guess at any tragic meaning in his words. “My father—let me call you so!”
“Will you see that you can’t have him?” he stamped the syllables into her ears: and, with a notion of there being a foreign element about her, repeated:—“No!—not have him!—not yours!—somebody else’s!”
This was clear enough.
“Only you can separate us,” said Emilia, with a brow levelled intently.
“Well, and I—” Mr. Pole was pursuing in the gusty energy of his previous explanation. His eyes met Emilia’s, gravely widening. “I—I’m very sorry,” he broke down: “upon my soul, I am!”
The old man went to the mantel-piece and leaned his elbow before the glass.
Emilia’s bosom began to rise again.
She was startled to hear him laugh. A slight melancholy little burst; and then a louder one, followed by a full-toned laughter that fell short and showed the heart was not in it.
“That boy Braintop! What fun it was!” he said, looking all the while into the glass. “Why can’t we live in peace, and without bother! Is your candle alight, my dear?”
Emilia now thought that he was practising evasion.
“I will light it,” she said.
Mr. Pole gave a wearied sigh. His head being still turned to the glass, he listened with a shrouded face for her movements: saying, “Good night; good night; I’ll light my own. There’s a dear!”
A shouting was in his ears, which seemed to syllable distinctly: “If she goes at once, I’m safe.”
The sight of pain at all was intolerable to him; but he had a prophetic physical warning now that to witness pain inflicted by himself would be more than he could endure.
Emilia breathed a low, “Good night.”
“Good night, my love—all right to-morrow!” he replied briskly; and remorse touching his kind heart as the music of her ‘good night’ penetrated to it by thrilling avenues, he added injudiciously: “Don’t fret. We’ll see what we can do. Soon make matters comfortable.”
“I love you, and I know you will not stab me,” she answered.
“No; certainly not,” said Mr. Pole, still keeping his back to her.
Struck with a sudden anticipating fear of having to go through this scene on the morrow, he continued: “No misunderstands, mind! Wilfrid’s done with.”
There was a silence. He trusted she might be gone. Turning round, he faced her; the light of the candle throwing her pale visage into ghostly relief.
“Where is sleep for you if you part us?”
Mr. Pole flung up his arms. “I insist upon your going to bed. Why shouldn’t I sleep? Child’s folly!”
Though he spoke so, his brain was in strings to his timorous ticking nerves; and he thought that it would be well to propitiate her and get her to utter some words that would not haunt his pillow.
“My dear girl! it’s not my doing. I like you. I wish you well and happy. Very fond of you;—blame circumstances, not me.” Then he murmured: “Are black spots on the eyelids a bad sign? I see big flakes of soot falling in a dark room.”
Emilia’s mated look fleeted. “You come between us, sir, because I have no money?”
“I tell you it’s the boy’s only chance to make his hit now.” Mr. Pole stamped his foot angrily.
“And you make my Cornelia marry, though she loves another, as Wilfrid loves me, and if they do not obey you they are to be beggars! Is it you who can pray? Can you ever have good dreams? I saved my father from the sin, by leaving him. He wished to sell me. But my poor father had no money at all, and I can pardon him. Money was a bright thing to him: like other things to us. Mr. Pole! What will any one say for you!”
The unhappy merchant had made vehement efforts to perplex his hearing, that her words might be empty and not future dragons round his couch. He was looking forward to a night of sleep as a cure for the evil sensations besetting him—his only chance. The chance was going; and with the knowledge that it was unjustly torn from him—this one gleam of clear reason in his brain undimmed by the irritable storm which plucked him down—he cried out, to clear himself:—
“They are beggars, both, and all, if they don’t marry before two months are out. I’m a beggar then. I’m ruined. I shan’t have a penny. I’m in a workhouse. They are in good homes. They are safe, and thank their old father. Now, then; now. Shall I sleep?”
