Part 84 (1/2)
”Well, little one!” she addressed Emilia; ”I am glad you have recovered your voice. You play the game of t.i.t-for-tat remarkably well. We will now sheath our battledores. There is my hand.”
The unconquerable aplomb in Lady Charlotte, which Wilfrid always artistically admired, and which always mastered him; the sight of her pale face and courageous eyes; and her choice of the moment to come forward and declare her presence;--all fell upon the furnace of Wilfrid's heart like a quenching flood. In a stupefaction, he confessed to himself that he could say actually nothing. He could hardly look up.
Emilia turned her eyes from the outstretched hand, to the lady's face.
”What will it mean?” she said.
”That we are quits, I presume; and that we bear no malice. At any rate, that I relinquish the field. I like a hand that can deal a good stroke.
I conceived you to be a mere little romantic person, and correct my mistake. You win the prize, you see.”
”You would have made him an Austrian, and he is now safe from that. I win nothing more,” said Emilia.
When Tracy and Emilia stood alone, he cried out in a rapture of praise, ”Now I know what a power you have. You may bid me live or die.”
The recent scene concerned chiefly the actors who had moved onward: it had touched Emilia but lightly, and him not at all. But, while he magnified the glory of her singing, the imperishable note she had sounded this night, and the power and the triumph that would be hers, Emilia's bosom began to heave, and she checked him with a storm of tears. ”Triumph! yes! what is this I have done? Oh, Merthyr, my true hero! He praises me and knows nothing of how false I have been to you.
I am a slave! I have sold myself--sold myself!” She dropped her face in her hands, broken with grief. ”He fights,” she pursued; ”he fights for my country. I feel his blood--it seems to run from my body as it runs from his. Not if he is dying--I dare not go to him if he is dying! I am in chains. I have sworn it for money. See what a different man Merthyr is from any on earth! Would he shoot himself for a woman? Would he grow meaner the more he loved her? My hero! my hero! and Tracy, my friend!
what is my grief now? Merthyr is my hero, but I hear him--I hear him speaking it into my ears with his own lips, that I do not love him. And it is true. I never should have sold myself for three weary years away from him, if I had loved him. I know it now it is done. I thought more of my poor friends and Wilfrid, than of Merthyr, who bleeds for my country! And he will not spurn me when we meet. Yes, if he lives, he will come to me gentle as a ghost that has seen G.o.d!”
She abandoned herself to weeping. Tracy, in a tender reverence for one who could speak such solemn matter spontaneously, supported her, and felt her tears as a rain of flame on his heart.
The nightingales were mute. Not a sound was heard from bough or brake.
CHAPTER LIX
A wreck from the last Lombard revolt landed upon our sh.o.r.es in June. His right arm was in a sling, and his Italian servant following him, kept close by his side, with a ready hand, as if fearing that at any moment the wounded gentleman's steps might fail. There was no public war going on just then: for which reason he was eyed suspiciously by the rest of the pa.s.sengers making their way up the beach; who seemed to entertain an impression that he had no business at such a moment to be crippled, and might be put down as one of those foreign fools who stand out for a trifle as targets to fools a little luckier than themselves. Here, within our salt girdle, flourishes common sense. We cherish life; we abhor bloodshed; we have no sympathy with your juvenile points of honour: we are, in short, a civilized people; and seeing that Success has made us what we are, we advise other nations to succeed, or be quiet. Of all of which the gravely-smiling gentleman appeared well aware; for, with an eye that courted none, and a perfectly calm face, he pa.s.sed through the crowd, only once availing himself of his brown-faced Beppo's spontaneously depressed shoulder when a twinge of pain shooting from his torn foot took his strength away. While he remained in sight, some speculation as to his nationality continued: he had been heard to speak nothing but Italian, and yet the flower of English cultivation was signally manifest in his style and bearing. The purchase of that day's journal, giving information that the Lombard revolt was fully, it was thought finally, crushed out, and the insurgents scattered, hanged, or shot, suggested to a young lady in a group melancholy with luggage, that the wounded gentleman was one who had escaped from the Austrians.
”Only, he is English.”
”If he is, he deserves what he's got.”
A stout Briton delivered this sentence, and gave in addition a sermon on meddling, short, emphatic, and not uncheerful apparently, if estimated by the hearty laugh that closed it; though a lady remarked, ”Oh, dear me! You are very sweeping.”
”By George! ma'am,” cried the Briton, holding out his newspaper, ”here's a leader on the identical subject, with all my views in it! Yes! those Italians are absurd: they never were a people: never agreed. Egad! the only place they're fit for is the stage. Art! if you like. They know all about colouring canvas, and sculpturing. I don't deny 'em their merits, and I don't mind listening to their squalling, now and then: though, I'll tell you what: have you ever noticed the calves of those singers?--I mean, the men. Perhaps not--for they' ve got none. They're sticks, not legs. Who can think much of fellows with such legs? Now, the next time you go to the Italian Opera, notice 'em. Ha! ha!--well, that would sound queer, told at secondhand; but, just look at their legs, ma'am, and ask yourself whether there's much chance for a country that stands on legs like those! Let them paint, and carve blocks, and sing.
They're not fit for much else, as far as I can see.”
Thus, in the pride of his manliness, the male Briton. A shrill cry drew the attention of this group once more to the person who had just kindly furnished a topic. He had been met on his way by a lady unmistakeably foreign in her appearance. ”Marini!” was the word of the cry; and the lady stood with her head bent and her hands stiffened rigidly.
”Lost her husband, I dare say!” the Briton murmured. ”Perhaps he's one of the 'hanged, or shot,' in the list here Hanged! shot! Ask those Austrians to be merciful, and that's their reply. Why, good G.o.d! it's like the grunt of a savage beast! Hanged! shot!--count how many for one day's work! Ten at Verona; fifteen at Mantua; five--there, stop! If we enter into another alliance with those infernal ruffians!--if they're not branded in the face of Europe as inhuman butchers! if I--by George!
if I were an Italian I'd handle a musket myself, and think great guns the finest music going. Mind, if there's a subscription for the widows of these poor fellows, I put down my name; so shall my wife, so shall my daughters, so we will all, down to the baby!”
Merthyr's name was shouted first on his return to England by Mrs. Chump.
He was waiting on the platform of the London station for the train to take him to Richford, when, ”Oh! Mr. Pow's, Mr. Pow's!” resounded, and Mrs. Chump fluttered before him. She was on her way to Brookfield, she said; and it was, she added, her firm belief that heaven had sent him to her sad, not deeming ”that poor creature, Mr. Braintop, there, sufficient for the purpose. For what I've got to go through, among them at Brookfield, Mr. Pow's, it's perf'ctly awful. Mr. Braintop,”
she turned to the youth, ”you may go now. And don't go takin' s.h.i.+p and sailin' for Italy after the little Belloni, for ye haven't a chance--poor fella! though he combs 's hair so careful, Mr. Pow's, and ye might almost laugh and cry together to see how humble he is, and audacious too--all in a lump. For, when little Belloni was in the s.h.i.+p, ye know, and she thinkin', 'not one of my friends near to wave a handkerchief!' behold, there's that boy Braintop just as by maguc, and he wavin' his best, which is a cambric, and a present from myself, and precious wet that night, ye might swear; for the quiet lovers, Mr.
Pow's, they cry, they do, buckutsful!”
”And is Miss Belloni gone?” said Merthyr, looking steadily for answer.
”To be sure, sir, she has; but have ye got a squeak of pain? Oh, dear!