Part 44 (1/2)
”You excuse him for writing to me in that style?”
”Yes; he may write to any woman like that.”
”He has lat.i.tude! You really fancy that's the sort of letter a friend would write?”
”That is how Mr. Powys would write to me,” said Emilia. Lady Charlotte laughed. ”My unhappy Merthyr!”
”Only if I could be a great deal older,” Emilia hastened to add; and Lady Charlotte slightly frowned, but rubbed it out with a smile.
Rising, the lady said: ”I have spoken to you upon equal terms; and remember, very few women would have done what I have done. You are cared for by Merthyr Powys, and that's enough. It would do you no harm to fix your eyes upon him. You won't get him; but it would do you no harm. He has a heart, as they call it; whatever it is, it's as strong as a cable.
He is a knight of the antique. He is specially guarded, however. Well, he insists that you are his friend; so you are mine, and that is why I have come to you and spoken to you. You will be silent about it, I need not say. No one but yourself is aware that Lieutenant Pole does me the honour to liken me to the good old gentleman who accompanied Telemachus in his voyages, and chooses me from among the handmaidens of earth. On this head you will promise to be silent.”
Lady Charlotte held forth her hand. Emilia would not take it before she had replied, ”I knew this before you came,” and then she pressed the extended fingers.
Lady Charlotte drew her close. ”Has Wilfrid taken you into his confidence so far?”
Emilia explained that she had heard it from his father.
The lady's face lit up as from a sting of anger. ”Very well--very well,”
she said; and, presently, ”You are right when you speak of the power of lying in men. Observe--Wilfrid told me that not one living creature knew there was question of an engagement between us. What would you do in my case?”
Emilia replied, ”Forgive him; and I should think no more of it.”
”Yes. It would be right; and, presuming him to have the vice, I could be of immense service to him, if at least he does not lie habitually. But this is a description of treachery, you know.”
”Oh!” cried Emilia, ”what kind of treachery is that, if he only will keep his heart open for me to give all mine to it!”
She stood clutching her hands in the half-sobbing ecstasy which signalises a spiritual exaltation built on disquiet. She had shown small emotion hitherto. The sight of it was like the sight of a mighty hostile power to Lady Charlotte--a power that moved her--that challenged, and irritated, and subdued her. For she saw there something that she had not; and being of a nature leaning to great-mindedness, though not of the first rank, she could not meanly mask her own deficiency by despising it. To do this is the secret evil by which souls of men and women stop their growth.
Lady Charlotte decided now to say good-bye. Her parting was friendly--the form of it consisting of a nod, an extension of the hand, and a kind word or two.
When alone, Emilia wondered why she kept taking long breaths, and tried to correct herself: but the heart laboured. Yet she seemed to have no thought in her mind; she had no active sensation of pity or startled self-love. She went to smooth Mr. Pole's pillow, as to a place of forgetfulness. The querulous tyrannies of the invalid relieved her; but the heavy lifting of her chest returned the moment she was alone. She mentioned it to the doctor, who prescribed for liver, informing her that the said organ conducted one of the most important functions of her bodily system.
Emilia listened to the lecturer, and promised to take his medicine, trusting to be perfectly quieted by the nauseous draught; but when Mr.
Powys came, she rushed up to him, and fell with a cry upon his breast, murmuring broken words that Georgiana might fairly interpret as her suspicions directed. Nor had she ever seen Merthyr look as he did when their eyes next met.
CHAPTER XXIX
The card of Mr. Powys found Arabella alone in the house. Mrs. Lupin was among village school-children; Mrs. Chump had gone to London to see whether anything was known of Mr. Pole at his office, where she fell upon the youth Braintop, and made him her own for the day. Adela was out in the woods, contemplating nature; and Cornelia was supposed to be walking whither her stately fancy drew her.
”Will you take long solitary walks unprotected?” she was asked.
”I have a parasol,” she replied; and could hear, miles distant, the domestic comments being made on her innocence; and the story it would be--”She thinks of no possible danger but from the sun.”
A little forcing of her innocence now was necessary as an opiate for her conscience. She was doing what her conscience could only pardon on the plea of her extreme innocence. The sisters, and the fas.h.i.+on at Brookfield, permitted the a.s.sumption, and exaggerated it willingly. It chanced, however, that Adela had reason to feel discontented. It was a breach of implied contract, she thought, that Cornelia should, as she did only yesterday, tell her that she had seen Edward Buxley in the woods, and that she was of opinion that the air of the woods was bad for her. Not to see would have been the sisterly obligation, in Adela's idea--especially when seeing embraced things that no loving sister should believe.
Bear in mind that we are sentimentalists. The eye is our servant, not our master; and--so are the senses generally. We are not bound to accept more than we choose from them. Thus we obtain delicacy; and thus, as you will perceive, our civilization, by the aid of the sentimentalists, has achieved an effective varnish. There, certainly, to the vulgar, mind a tail is visible. The outrageous philosopher declares vehemently that no beast of the field or the forest would own such a tail. (His meaning is, that he discerns the sign of the animal slinking under the garb of the stately polished creature. I have all the difficulty in the world to keep him back and let me pursue my course.) These philosophers are a bad-mannered body. Either in opposition, or in the support of them, I maintain simply that the blinking sentimentalist helps to make civilization what it is, and civilization has a great deal of merit.
”Did you not leave your parasol behind you at Ipley?” said Adela, as she met Cornelia in the afternoon.