CHAPTER XLVIII

Three days passed 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 cherishing 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 petition, 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 shore

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.

"Oh! can it be permitted? Oh! can we not save her? Oh, poor soul! my

sister! Is she blind to her lover in heaven?"

Georgiana's face was dyed with shame.

"We must put these things by," said Merthyr. "Go to Emilia presently, and

tell her--settle with her as you think fitting, how she shall see this

Wilfrid Pole. I have promised her she shall have her wish."

Coloured by the emotion she was burning from, these words smote Georgiana

with a mournful compassion for Merthyr.

He had risen, and by that she knew that nothing could be said to alter

his will.

A sentimental pair likewise, if you please; but these were

sentimentalists who served an active deity; and not that arbitrary

protection of a subtle selfishness which rules the fairer portion of our

fat England.