Sandra Belloni Part 66

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 rea.s.sured. 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce, 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.

CHAPTER XLII

Up the centre aisle of Hillford Church, the Tinleys (late as usual) were seen trooping for morning service in midwinter. There was a man in the rear known to be a man by the sound of his boots and measure of his stride, for the ladies of Brookfield, having rejected the absurd pretensions of Albert Tinley, could not permit curiosity to encounter the risk of meeting his gaze by turning their heads. So, with charitable condescension they returned the slight church nod of prim Miss Tinley pa.s.sing, of the detestable Laura Tinley, of affected Rose Tinley (whose complexion was that of a dust-bin), and of Madeline Tinley (too young for a character beyond what the name bestowed), and then they arranged their prayer-books, and apparently speculated as to the possible text that morning to be given forth from the pulpit. But it seemed to them all that an exceedingly bulky object had pa.s.sed as guardian of the light-footed damsels preceding him. Though none of the ladies had looked up as he pa.s.sed, they were conscious of a stature and a circ.u.mference which they had deemed to be entirely beyond the reach of the Tinleys, and a scornful notion of the Tinleys having hired a guardsman, made Arabella smile at the stretch of her contempt, that could help her to conceive the ironic possibility. Relieved on the suspicion that Albert was in attendance of his sisters, they let their eyes fall calmly on the Tinley pew. Could two men upon this earthly sphere possess such a bearskin? There towered the shoulders of Mr. Pericles; his head looking diminished by the hugeous collar. Arabella felt a seizure of her hand from Adela's side. She placed her book open before her, and stared at the pulpit. From neither of the three of Brookfield could Laura's observation extract a sign of the utter astonishment she knew they must be experiencing; and had it not been for the ingenuous broad whisper of Mrs. Chump, which sounded toward the verge even of her conception of possibilities, the Tinleys would not have been gratified by the first public display of the prize they had wrested from the Poles.

"Mr. Paricles--oh!" went Mrs. Chump, and a great many pews were set in commotion.

Forthwith she bent over Cornelia's lap, and Cornelia, surveying her placidly, had to murmur, "By-and-by; by-and-by."

"But, did ye see 'm, my dear? and a forr'ner in a Protestant Church! And such a forr'ner as he is, to be sure! And, ye know, ye said he'd naver come with you, and it's them creatures ye don't like. Corrnelia!"

"The service commences," remarked that lady, standing up.

Many eyes were on Mr. Pericles, who occasionally inspected the cornices and corbels and stained gla.s.s to right and left, or detected a young lady staring at him, or antic.i.p.ated her going to stare, and put her to confusion by a sharp turn of his head, and then a sniff and smoothing down of his moustache. But he did not once look at the Brookfield pew.

By hazard his eye ranged over it, and after the first performance of this trick he would have found the ladies a match for him, even if he had sought to challenge their eyes. They were constrained to admit that Laura Tinley managed him cleverly. She made him hold a book and appear respectably devout. She got him down in good time when seats were taken, and up again, without much transparent persuasion. The first notes of the organ were seen to agitate the bearskin. Laura had difficulty to induce the man to rise for the hymn, and when he had listened to the intoning of a verse, Mr. Pericles suddenly bent, as if he had snapped in two: nor could Laura persuade him to rejoin the present posture of the congregation. Then only did Laura, to cover her failure, turn the subdued light of a merry smile upon the Brookfield pew.

The smile was noticed by Apprehension sitting in the corner of one eye, and it was likewise known that Laura's chagrin at finding that she was not being watched affected her visibly. At the termination of the sermon, the ladies bowed their heads a short s.p.a.ce, and placing Mrs.

Chump in front drove her out, so that her exclamations of wonderment, and affectedly ostentatious gaspings of sympathy for Brookfield, were heard by few. On they hurried, straight and fast to Brookfield. Mr. Pole was talking to Tracy Runningbrook at the gate. The ladies cut short his needless apology to the young man for not being found in church that day, by asking questions of Tracy. The first related to their brother's whereabouts; the second to Emilia's condition. Tracy had no time to reply. Mrs. Chump had identified herself with Brookfield so warmly that the defection of Mr. Pericles was a fine legitimate excitement to her.

"I hate 'm!" she cried. "I pos'tively hate the man! And he to go to church! A pretty figure for an angel--he, now! But, my dears, we cann't let annybody else have 'm. Shorrt of his bein' drowned or killed, we must intrigue to keep the wretch to ourselves."

"Oh, dear!" said Adela impatiently.

"Well, and I didn't say to myself, ye little jealous thing!" retorted Mrs. Chump.

"Indeed, ma'am, you are welcome to him."

"And indeed, miss, I don't want 'm. And, perhaps, ye were flirtin' all the fun out of him on board the yacht, and got tired of 'm; and that's why."

Adela said: "Thank you," with exasperating sedateness, which provoked an intemperate outburst from Mrs. Chump. "Sunday! Sunday!" cried Mr. Pole.

"Ain't I the first to remember ut, Pole? And didn't I get up airly so as to go to church and have my conscience qui't, and 'stead of that I come out full of evil pa.s.sions, all for the sake o' these ungrateful garls that's always where ye cann't find 'em. Why, if they was to be married at the altar, they'd stare and be 'ffendud if ye asked them if they was thinking of their husbands, they would! 'Oh, dear, no! and ye're mistaken, and we're thinkin' o' the coal-scuttle in the back parlour,'--or somethin' about souls, if not coals. There's their answer.

What did ye do with Mr. Paricles on board the yacht? Aha!"

"What's this about Pericles?" said Mr. Pole.

"Oh, nothing, Papa," returned Adela.

"Nothing, do ye call ut!" said Mrs. Chump. "And, mayhap, good cause too.

Didn't ye tease 'm, now, on board the yacht? Now, did he go on board the yacht at all?"

"I should think you ought to know that as well as Adela," said Mr. Pole.

Adela interposed, hurriedly: "All this, my dear Papa, is because Mr. Pericles has thought proper to visit the Tinleys' pew. Who would complain how or where he does it, so long as the duty is fulfilled?"

Mr. Pole stared, muttering: "The Tinleys!"