Sandra Belloni Part 72

CHAPTER XLVIII

Three days pa.s.sed as a running dream to Emilia. During that period she might have been hurried off to Italy without uttering a remonstrance.

Merthyr's spirited talk of the country she called her own; of its heroic youth banded to rise, and sworn to liberate it or die; of good historic names borne by men, his comrades, in old campaigning adventures; and stories and incidents of those past days--all given with his changed face, and changed ringing voice, almost moved her to plunge forgetfully into this new tumultuous stream while the picture of the beloved land, lying shrouded beneath the perilous star it was about to follow grew in her mind.

"Shall I go with the Army?" she asked Georgiana.

"No, my child; you will simply go to school," was the cold reply.

"To school!" Emilia throbbed, "while they are fighting!"

"To the Academy. My brother's first thought is to further your progress in Art. When your artistic education is complete, you will choose your own course."

"He knows, he knows that I have no voice!" Emilia struck her lap with twisted fingers. "My voice is thick in my throat. If I am not to march with him, I can't go; I will not go. I want to see the fight. You have.

Why should I keep away? Could I run up notes, even if I had any voice, while he is in the cannon-smoke?"

"While he is in the cannon-smoke!" Georgiana revolved the line thoughtfully. "You are aware that my brother looks forward to the recovery of your voice," she said.

"My voice is like a dead serpent in my throat," rejoined Emilia. "My voice! I have forgotten music. I lived for that, once; now I live for nothing, only to take my chance everywhere with my friend. I want to smell powder. My father says it is like salt, the taste of blood, and is like wine when you smell it. I have heard him shout for it. I will go to Italy, if I may go where my friend Merthyr goes; but nothing can keep me shut up now. My head's a wilderness when I'm in houses. I can scarcely bear to hear this London noise, without going out and walking till I drop."

Coming to a knot in her meditation, Georgiana concluded that Emilia's heart was warming to Merthyr. She was speedily doubtful again.

These two delicate Welsh natures, as exacting as they were delicate, were little pleased with Emilia's silence concerning her intercourse with Wilfrid. Merthyr, who had expressed in her defence what could be said for her, was unwittingly cheris.h.i.+ng what could be thought in her disfavour. Neither of them hit on the true cause, which lay in Georgiana's coldness to her. One little pressure of her hand, carelessly given, made Merthyr better aware of the nature he was dealing with. He was telling her that a further delay might keep them in London for a week; and that he had sent for her mother to come to her.

"I must see my mother," she had said, excitedly. The extension of the period named for quitting England made it more imminent m her imagination than when it was a matter of hours. "I must see her."

"I have sent for her," said Merthyr, and then pressed Emilia's hand. But she who, without having brooded on complaints of its absence, thirsted for demonstrative kindness, clung to the hand, drawing it, doubled, against her chin.

"That is not the reason," she said, raising her full eyes up at him over the unrelinquished hand. "I love the poor Madre; let her come; but I have no heart for her just now. I have seen Wilfrid."

She took a tighter hold of his fingers, as fearing he might shrink from her. Merthyr hated mysteries, so he said, "I supposed it must have been so--that night of our return from Penarvon?"

"Yes," she murmured, while she read his face for a shadow of a repulsion; "and, my friend, I cannot go to Italy now!"

Merthyr immediately drew a seat beside her. He perceived that there would be no access to her reason, even as he was on the point of addressing it.

"Then all my care and trouble are to be thrown away?" he said, taking the short road to her feelings.

She put the hand that was disengaged softly on his shoulder. "No; not thrown away. Let me be what Merthyr wishes me to be! That is my chief prayer."

"Why, then, will you not do what Merthyr wishes you to do?"

Emilia's eyelids shut, while her face still fronted him.

"Oh! I will speak all out to you," she cried. "Merthyr, my friend, he came to kiss me once, before I have only just understood it! He is going to Austria. He came to touch me for the last time before his hand is red with my blood. Stop him from going! I am ready to follow you:--I can hear of his marrying that woman:--Oh! I cannot live and think of him in that Austrian white coat. Poor thing!--my dear! my dear!" And she turned away her head.

It is not unnatural that Merthyr hearing these soft epithets, should disbelieve in the implied self-conquest of her preceding words. He had no clue to make him guess that these were simply old exclamations of hers brought to her lips by the sorrowful contrast in her mind.

"It will be better that you should see him," he said, with less of his natural sincerity; so soon are we corrupted by any suspicion that our egoism prompts.

"Here?" And she hung close to him, open-lipped, open-eyed, open-eared, as if (Georgiana would think it, thought Merthyr) her savage senses had laid the trap for this proposal, and now sprung up keen for their prey.

"Here, Merthyr? Yes! let me see him. You will! Let me see him, for he cannot resist me. He tries. He thinks he does: but he cannot. I can stretch out my finger--I can put it on the day when, if he has galloped one way he will gallop another. Let him come."

She held up both her hands in pet.i.tion, half dropping her eyelids, with a shadowy beauty.

In Merthyr's present view, the idea of Wilfrid being in ranks opposed to him was so little provocative of intense dissatisfaction, that it was out of his power to believe that Emilia craved to see him simply to dissuade the man from the obnoxious step. "Ah, well! See him; see him, if you must," he said. "Arrange it with my sister."

He quitted the room, shrinking from the sound of her thanks, and still more from the consciousness of his torment.

The business that detained him was to get money for Marini. Georgiana placed her fortune at his disposal a second time. There was his own, which he deemed it no excess of chivalry to fling into the gulf. The two sat together, arranging what property should be sold, and how they would share the sacrifice in common. Georgiana pressed him to dispose of a little estate belonging to her, that money might immediately be raised.

They talked as they sat over the fire toward the dusk of the winter evening.

"You would not have refused me once, Merthyr!"

"When you were a child, and I hardly better than a boy. Now it's different. Let mine go first, Georgey. You may have a husband, who will not look on these things as we do."

"How can I love a husband!" was all she said; and Merthyr took her in his arms. His gaiety had gone.

"We can't go dancing into a pit of this sort," he sighed, partly to baffle the scrutiny he apprehended in her silence. "The garrison at Milan is doubled, and I hear they are marching troops through Tyrol.

Some alerte has been given, and probably some traitors exist. One wouldn't like to be shot like a dog! You haven't forgotten poor Tarani?

I heard yesterday of the girl who calls herself his widow."

"They were betrothed, and she is!" exclaimed Georgiana.

"Well, there's a case of a man who had two loves--a woman and his country; and both true to him!"

"And is he so singular, Merthyr?"

"No, my best! my sweetest! my heart's rest! no!"

They exchanged tender smiles.

"Tarani's bride--beloved! you can listen to such matters--she has undertaken her task. Who imposed it? I confess I faint at the thought of things so sad and shameful. But I dare not sit in judgement on a people suffering as they are. Outrage upon outrage they have endured, and that deadens--or rather makes their heroism unscrupulous. Tarani's bride is one of the few fair girls of Italy. We have a lock of her hair. She sh.o.r.e it close the morning her lover was shot, and wore the thin white skull-cap you remember, until it was whispered to her that her beauty must serve."

"I have the lock now in my desk," said Georgiana, beginning to tremble.

"Do you wish to look at it?"

"Yes; fetch it, my darling."

He sat eyeing the firelight till she returned, and then taking the long golden lock in his handy he squeezed it, full of bitter memories and sorrowfulness.

"Giulietta?" breathed his sister.

"I would put my life on the truth of that woman's love. Well!"

"Yes?"

"She abandons herself to the commandant of the citadel."

A low outcry burst from Georgiana. She fell at Merthyr's knees sobbing violently. He let her sob. In the end she struggled to speak.