Sandra Belloni Part 49

"Oh, Lord, Pole, if ye're going to talk of beggary!" Mrs. Chump threw up her hands. "My lady, I naver could abide the name of 't. I'm a kind heart, ye know, but I can't bear a ragged friend. I hate 'm! He seems to give me a pinch."

Having uttered this, it struck her that it was of a kind to convulse Mrs. Lupin, for whose seizures she could never accurately account; and looking round, she perceived, sure enough, that little forlorn body agitated, with a handkerchief to her mouth.

"As to Besworth," Mr. Pole had continued, "I might buy twenty Besworths.

If--if the cut shows the right card. If--" Sweat started on his forehead, and he lifted his eyebrows, blinking. "But none!" (he smote the table) "none can say I haven't been a good father! I've educated my girls to marry the best the land can show. I bought a house to marry them out of; it was their own idea." He caught Arabella's eyes. "I thought so, at all events; for why should I have paid the money if I hadn't thought so? when then--yes, that sum..." (was he choking!) "saved me!--saved me!"

A piteous desperate outburst marked the last words, that seemed to struggle from a tightened cord.

"Not that there's anything the matter," he resumed, with a very brisk wink. "I'm quite sound: heart's sound, lungs sound, stomach regular. I can see, and smell, and hear. Sense of touch is rather lumpy at times, I know; but the doctor says it's nothing--nothing at all; and I should be all right, if I didn't feel that I was always wearing a great leaden hat."

"My gracious, Pole, if ye're not talkin' pos'tuv nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Chump.

"Well, my dear Martha" (Mr. Pole turned to her argumentatively), "how do you account for my legs? I feel it at top. I declare I've felt the edge of the brim half a yard out. Now, my lady, a man in that state--sound and strong as the youngest--but I mean a vexed man--worried man bothered man, he doesn't want a woman to look after him;--I mean, he does--he does! And why won't young girls--oh! they might, they might--see that?

And when she's no extra expense, but brings him--helps him to face--and no one has said the world's a jolly world so often as I have. It's jolly!" He groaned.

Lady Charlotte saw Wilfrid gazing at one spot on the table without a change of countenance. She murmured to him, "What hits you hits me."

Mr. Pole had recommenced, on the evident instigation of Laura Tinley, though Lady Gosstre and Freshfield Sumner had both sought to check the current. In Chump's lifetime, it appeared, he (Mr. Pole) had thought of Mrs. Chump with a respectful ardour; and albeit she was no longer what she was when Chump brought her over, a blooming Irish girl--"her hair exactly as now, the black curl half over the cheek, and a bright laugh, and a white neck, fat round arms, and--"

A shout of "Oh, Pole! ye seem to be undressin' of me before them all,"

diverted the neighbours of the Beauty.

"Who would not like such praise?" Laura Tinley, to keep alive the subject, laid herself open to Freshfield by a remark.

"At the same personal peril?" he inquired smoothly.

Mr. Pericles stood up, crying "Enfin!" as the doors were flung open, and a great Signora of operatic fame entered the hall, supported on one side by a charming gentleman (a tenore), who shared her fame and more with her. In the rear were two working baritones; and behind them, outside, Italian heads might be discerned.

The names of the Queen of Song and Prince of Singers flew round the room; and Laura uttered words of real grat.i.tude, for the delightful surprise, to Arabella, as the latter turned from her welcome of them.

"She is exactly like Emilia--young," was uttered. The thought went with a pang through Wilfrid's breast. When the Signora was asked if she would sup or take champagne, and she replied that she would sup by-and-by, and drink porter now, the likeness to Emilia was established among the Poles.

Meantime the unhappy Braintop received an indication that he must depart. As he left the hall he brushed past the chief-clerk of his office, who soon appeared bowing and elbowing among the guests. "What a subst.i.tute for me!" thought Braintop bitterly; and in the belief that this old clerk would certainly go back that night, and might undertake his commission, he lingered near the band on the verge of the lawn. A touch at his elbow startled him. In the half-light he discerned Emilia.

"Don't say you have seen me," were her first words. But when he gave her the letter, she drew him aside, and read it by the aid of lighted matches held in Braintop's hat drawing in her fervent breath to a "Yes! yes!" at the close, while she pressed the letter to her throat.

Presently the singing began in an upper room, that had shortly before flashed with sudden light. Braintop entreated Emilia to go in, and then rejoiced that she had refused. They stood in a clear night-air, under a yellowing crescent, listening to the voice of an imperial woman.

Impressed as he was, Braintop had, nevertheless, leisure to look out of his vinous mist and notice, with some misgiving, a parading light at a certain distance--apparently the light of cigarettes being freshly kindled. He was too much elated to feel alarm: but "If her father were to catch me again," he thought. And with Emilia on his arm!

Mr. Pole's chief-clerk had brought discomposing news. He was received by an outburst of "No business, Payne; I won't have business!"

Turning to Mr. Pericles, the old clerk said: "I came rather for you, sir, not expecting to find Mr. Pole." He was told by Mr. Pericles to speak what he had to say: and then the guests, who had fallen slightly back, heard a cavernous murmur; and some, whose eyes where on Mr. Pole, observed a sharp conflict of white and red in his face.

"There, there, there, there!" went Mr. Pole. "'Hem, Pericles!" His handkerchief was drawn out; and he became engaged, as it were, in wiping a moisture from the palm of his hand. "Pericles, have you got pluck now?

Eh?"

Mr. Pericles had leaned down his ear for the whole of the news.

"Ten sossand," he said, smoothing his waistbands, and then inserting his thumbs into the pits of his waistcoat. "Also a chance of forty. Let us not lose time for ze music."

He walked away.

"I don't believe in that d---d coolness, ma'am," said Mr. Pole, wheeling round on Freshfield Sumner. "It's put on. That wears a mask; he's one of those confounded humbugs who wear a mask. Ten-forty! and all for a shrug; it's not human. I tell you, he does that just out of a sort of jealousy to rival me as an Englishman. Because I'm cool, he must be. Do you think a mother doesn't feel the loss of her children?"

"I fear that I must grow petticoats before I can answer purely feminine questions," said Freshfield.

"Of course--of course," a.s.sented Mr. Pole; "and a man feels like a mother to his money. For the moment, he does--for the moment. What are those fellows--Spartans--women who cut off their b.r.e.a.s.t.s--?"

Freshfield suggested, "Amazons."

"No; they were women," Mr. Pole corrected him; "and if anything hurt them, they never cried out. That's what--ha!--our friend Pericles is trying at. He's a fool. He won't sleep to-night. He'll lie till he gets cold in the feet, and then tuck them up like a Dutch doll, and perspire cold till his heart gives a bound, and he'll jump up and think his last hour's come. Wind on the stomach, do ye call it? I say it's wearing a mask!"

The bird's-eye of the little merchant shot decisive meaning.

Two young ladies had run from his neighbourhood, making as if to lift hands to ears. The sight of them brought Mrs. Chump to his side. "Pole!

Pole!" she said, "is there annything wrong?"

"Wrong, Martha?" He bent to her, attempting Irish--"Arrah, now! and mustn't all be right if you're here?"

She smote his cheek fondly. "Ye're not a bit of an Irish-man, ye deer little fella."

"Come along and dance," cried he imperiously.

"A pretty spectacle--two fandangoes, when there's singing, ye silly!"

Mrs. Chump led him upstairs, chafing one of his hands, and remarking loudly on the wonder it was to see his knees constantly 'give' as he walked.

On the dark lawn, pressing Wilfrid's written words for fiery nourishment to her heart, Emilia listened to the singing.

"Why do people make a noise, and not be satisfied to feel?" she said angrily to Braintop, as a great clapping of hands followed a divine aria. Her ideas on this point would have been different in the room.

By degrees a tender delirium took hold of her sense; and then a subtle emotion--which was partly prompted by dim rivalry with the voice that seemed to be speaking so richly to the man she loved--set her bosom rising and falling. She translated it to herself thus: "What a joy it will be to him to hear me now!" And in a pause she sang clear out--

"Prima d'Italia amica;"

and hung on the last note, to be sure that she would be heard by him.

Braintop saw the cigarette dash into sparks on the gra.s.s. At the same moment a snarl of critical vituperation told Emilia that she had offended taste and her father. He shouted her name, and, striding up to her, stumbled over Braintop, whom he caught with one hand, while the other fell firmly on Emilia.

"'Amica--amica-a-a,'" he burlesqued her stress of the luckless note--lowing it at her, and telling her in triumphant Italian that she was found at last. Braintop, after a short struggle, and an effort at speech, which was loosely shaken in his mouth, heard that he stood a prisoner. "Eh! you have not lost your cheeks," insulted his better acquaintance with English slang.

Alternately in this queer tongue and in Italian the pair of victims were addressed.

Emilia knew her father's temper. He had a habit of dallying with an evil pa.s.sion till it boiled over and possessed him. Believing Braintop to be in danger of harm, she beckoned to some of the faces crowding the windows; but the movement was not seen, as none of the circ.u.mstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. "Now to recommence," he said; "and we shall not notice a jackdaw again." His eye went sideways watchfully at Wilfrid. "You like zat piece of opera?"

"Immensely," said Wilfrid, half bowing to the Signora--to whom, as to Majesty, Mr. Pericles introduced him, and fixed him.

"Now! To seats!"

Mr. Pericles' mandates was being obeyed, when a cry of "Wilfrid!" from Emilia below, raised a flutter.

Mr. Pole had been dozing in his chair. He rose at the cry, looking hard, with a mechanical jerk of the neck, at two or three successive faces, and calling, "Somebody--somebody" to take his outstretched hand trembling in a paroxysm of nervous terror.