Part 65 (2/2)
The rage in Emilia was blind at first, but it rose like a hawk, and singled its enemy. She fixed her mind to conceive the foolishness of putting out a face that her rival might envy, and of destroying anything that had value. The flattery of beauty came on her like a warm garment.
When she opened her eyes, seeing what she was and where, she almost smiled at the silly picture that had given her comfort. Those men had looked on her admiringly, it was true, but would Wilfrid have ceased to love her if she had been beautiful? An extraordinary intuition of Wilfrid's sentiment tormented her now. She saw herself in the light that he would have seen her by, till she stood with the sensations of an exposed criminal in the dark length of the street, and hurried down it, back, as well as she could find her way, to the friendly policeman.
Her question on reaching him, ”Are you married?” was prodigiously astonis.h.i.+ng, and he administered the rebuff of an affirmative with severity. ”Then,” said Emilia, ”when you go home, let me go with you to your wife. Perhaps she will consent to take care of me for this night.”
The policeman coughed mildly and replied, ”It's plain you know nothing of women--begging your pardon, miss,--for I can see you're a lady.”
Emilia repeated her pet.i.tion, and the policeman explained the nature of women. Not to be baffled, Emilia said, ”I think your wife must be a good woman.” Hereat the policeman laughed, arming ”that the best of them knew what bad suspicions was.” Ultimately, he consented to take her to his wife, when he was relieved, after the term of so many minutes. Emilia stood at a distance, speculating on the possible choice he would make of a tune to accompany his monotonous walk to and fro, and on the certainty of his wearing any tune to nothing.
She was in a bed, sleeping heavily, a little before dawn.
The day that followed was her day of misery. The blow that had stunned her had become as a loud intrusive pulse in her head. By this new daylight she fathomed the depth, and reckoned the value, of her loss.
And her senses had no pleasure in the light, though there was suns.h.i.+ne.
The woman who was her hostess was kind, but full of her first surprise at the strange visit, and too openly ready for any information the young lady might be willing to give with regard to her condition, prospects, and wishes. Emilia gave none. She took the woman's hand, asking permission to remain under her protection. The woman by-and-by named a sum of money as a sum for weekly payment, and Emilia transferred all to her that she had. The policeman and his wife thought her, though reasonable, a trifle insane. She sat at a window for hours watching a 'last man' of the fly species walking up and plunging down a pane of gla.s.s. On this transparent solitary field for the most objectless enterprise ever undertaken, he buzzed angrily at times, as if he had another meaning in him, which was being wilfully misinterpreted. Then he mounted again at his leisure, to pitch backward as before. Emilia found herself thinking with great seriousness that it was not wonderful for boys to be always teasing and killing flies, whose thin necks and bobbing heads themselves suggested the idea of decapitation. She said to her hostess: ”I don't like flies. They seem never to sing but when they are bothered.” The woman replied: ”Ah, indeed?” very smoothly, and thought: ”If you was to bust out now, which of us two would be strongest?” Emilia grew distantly aware that the policeman and his wife talked of her and watched her with combined observation.
When it was night she went to keep her appointment. The girl was there, but the boy came late. He said he had earned only a few pence that day, and would be beaten. He spoke in a whimpering tone which caused the girl to desire a translation of his words. Emilia told her how things were with him, and the girl expressed a wish that she had an organ, as in that case she would be sure to earn more than sixpence a day; such being the amount that procured her nightly a comfortable reception in the arms of her parents. ”Do you like music?” said Emilia. The girl replied that she liked organs; but, as if to avoid committing an injustice, cited parrots as foremost in her affections. Holding them both to her breast, Emilia thought that she would rescue them from this beating by giving them the money they had to offer for kindness: but the restlessness of the children suddenly made her a third party to the thought of cakes. She had no money. Her heart bled for the poor little hungry, apprehensive creatures. For a moment she half fancied she had her voice, and looked up at the windows of the pitiless houses with a bold look; but there was a speedy mockery of her thought ”You shall listen: you shall open!” She coughed hoa.r.s.ely, and then fell into fits of crying.
Her friend the policeman came by and took her arm with a force that he meant to be persuasive; so lifting her and handing her some steps beyond the limit of his beat, with stern directions for her to proceed home immediately. She obeyed. Next day she asked her hostess to lend her half-a-crown. The woman snapped shortly in answer: ”No; the less you have the better.” Emilia was obliged to abandon her little people.
She was to this extent the creature of mania: that she could not conceive of a way being open by which she might return to her father and mother, or any of her friends. It was to her not a matter for her will to decide upon, but simply a black door shut that nothing could displace. When the week, for which term of shelter she had paid, was ended, her hostess spoke upon this point, saying, more to convince Emilia of the necessity for seeking her friends than from any unkindness: ”Me and my husband can't go on keepin' you, you know, my dear, however well's our meaning.” Emilia drew the woman toward her with both her lands, softly shaking her head. She left the house about noon.
It was now her belief that she had probably no more than another day to live, for she was dest.i.tute of money. The thought relieved her from that dreadful fear of the street, and she walked at her own pace, even after dark. The rumble and the rattle of wheels; the cries and grinding noises; the hum of motion and talk; all under the lingering smoky red of a London Winter sunset, were not discord to her animated blood. Her unhunted spirit made a music of them. It was not like the music of other days, nor was the exultation it created at all like happiness: but she at least forgot herself. Voices came in her ear, and hung unheard until long after the speaker had pa.s.sed. Hunger did not a.s.sail her. She was not beset by an animal weakness; and having in her mind no image of death, and with her ties to life cut away;--thus devoid of apprehension or regret, she was what her quick blood made her, for the time. She recognized that, for one near extinction, it was useless to love or to hate: so Wilfrid and Lady Charlotte were spared. Emilia thought of them both with a sort of equanimity; not that any clear thought filled her brain through that delirious night. The intoxicating music raged there at one level depression, never rising any scale, never undulating ever so little, scarcely changing its barbarous monotony of notes. She had no power over it. Her critical judgement would at another moment have shrieked at it. She was moved by it as by a mechanical force.
The South-west wind blew, and the hours of the night were not evil to outcasts. Emilia saw many lying about, getting rest where they might.
She hurried her eye pityingly over little children, but the devil that had seized her sprang contempt for the others--older beggars, who appeared to succ.u.mb to their fate when they should have lifted their heads up bravely. On she pa.s.sed from square to market, market to park; and presently her mind shot an arrow of desire for morning, which was nothing less than hunger beginning to stir. ”When will the shops open?”
She tried to cheat herself by replying that she did not care when, but pangs of torment became too rapid for the counterfeit. Her imagination raised the roof from those great rich houses, and laid bare a brilliancy of dish-covers; and if any sharp gust of air touched the nerve in her nostril, it seemed instantaneously charged with the smell of old dinners. ”No,” cried Emilia, ”I dislike anything but plain food.” She quickly gave way, and admitted a craving for dainty morsels. ”One lump of sugar!” she subsequently sighed. But neither sugar nor meat approached her.
Her seat was under trees, between a man and a woman who slanted from her with hidden chins. The chilly dry leaves began to waken, and the sky showed its grey. Hunger had become as a leaden ball in Emilia's chest.
She could have eaten eagerly still, but she had no ravenous images of food. Nevertheless, she determined to beg for bread at a baker's shop.
Coming into the empty streets again, the dread of exposing her solitary wretchedness and the stains of night upon her, kept her back. When she did venture near the baker's shop, her sensation of weariness, want of was.h.i.+ng, and general misery, made her feel a contrast to all other women she saw, that robbed her of the necessary effrontery. She preferred to hide her head.
The morning hours went in this conflict. She was between-whiles hungry and desperate, or stricken with shame. Fatigue, bringing the imperious necessity for rest, intervened as a relief. Emilia moaned at the weary length of the light, but when dusk fell and she beheld flame in the lamps, it seemed to be too sudden and she was alarmed. Pa.s.sive despair had set in. She felt sick, though not weak, and the thought of asking help had gone.
A street urchin, of the true London species, in whom excess of woollen comforter made up for any marked scantiness in the rest of his attire, came trotting the pavement, pouring one of the favourite tunes of his native metropolis through the tube of a penny-whistle, from which it did not issue so disguised but that attentive ears might p.r.o.nounce it the royal march of the Cannibal Islands. A placarded post beside a lamp met this musician's eye; and, still piping, he bent his knees and read the notification. Emilia thought of the Hillford and Ipley clubmen, the big drum, the speeches, the cheers, and all the wild strength that lay in her that happy morning. She watched the boy piping as if he were reading from a score, and her sense of humour was touched. ”You foolish boy!”
she said to herself softly. But when, having evidently come to the last printed line, the boy rose and pocketed his penny-whistle, Emilia was nearly laughing. ”That's because he cannot turn over the leaf,” she said, and stood by the post till long after the boy had disappeared.
The slight emotion of fun had restored to her some of her lost human sensations, and she looked about for a place where to indulge them undisturbed. One of the bridges was in sight She yearned for the solitude of the wharf beside it, and hurried to the steps. To descend she had to pa.s.s a street-organ and a small figure bent over it. ”Sei buon' Italiano?” she said. The answer was a surly ”Si.” Emilia cried convulsively ”Addio!” Her brain had become on a sudden vacant of a thought, and all she knew was that she descended.
CHAPTER XLI
”Sei buon' Italiana?”
Across what chasm did the words come to her?
It seemed but a minutes and again many hours back, that she had asked that question of a little fellow, who, if he had looked up and nodded would have given her great joy, but who kept his face dark from her and with a sullen ”Si” extinguished her last feeling of a desire for companions.h.i.+p with life.
”Si,” she replied, quite as sullenly, and without looking up.
But when her hand was taken and other words were uttered, she that had crouched there so long between death and life immovable, loving neither, rose possessed of a pa.s.sion for the darkness and the void, and struggling bitterly with the detaining hand, crying for instant death.
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