CHAPTER L

Emilia remained locked up with her mother all that evening. The good

little shrill woman, tender-eyed and slatternly, had to help try on

dresses, and run about for pins, and express her critical taste in

undertones, believing all the while that her daughter had given up music

to go mad with vanity. The reflection struck her, notwithstanding, that

it was a wiser thing for one of her sex to make friends among rich people

than to marry a foreign husband.

The girl looked a brilliant woman in a superb Venetian dress of purple

velvet, which she called 'the Branciani dress,' and once attired in it,

and the rich purges and swelling creases over the shoulders puffed out to

her satisfaction, and the run of yellow braid about it properly inspected

and flattened, she would not return to her more homely wear, though very

soon her mother began to whimper and say that she had lost her so long,

and now that she had found her it hardly seemed the same child. Emilia

would listen to no entreaties to put away her sumptuous robe. She

silenced her mother with a stamp of her foot, and then sighed: "Ah! Why

do I always feel such a tyrant with you?" kissing her.

"This dress," she said, and held up her mother's chin fondlingly between

her two hands, "this dress was designed by my friend Merthyr--that is,

Mr. Powys--from what he remembered of a dress worn by Countess Branciani,

of Venice. He had it made to give to me. It came from Paris. Countess

Branciani was one of his dearest friends. I feel that I am twice as much

his friend with this on me. Mother, it seems like a deep blush all over

me. I feel as if I looked out of a rose."

She spread her hands to express the flower magnified.

"Oh! what silly talk," said her mother: "it does turn your head, this

dress does!"

"I wish it would give me my voice, mother. My father has no hope. I wish

he would send me news to make me happy about him; or come and run his

finger up the strings for hours, as he used to. I have fancied I heard

him at times, and I had a longing to follow the notes, and felt sure of

my semi-tones. He won't see me! Mother! he would think something of me if

he saw me now!"

Her mother's lamentations reached that vocal pitch at last which Emilia

could not endure, and the little lady was despatched to her home under

charge of a servant.

Emilia feasted on the looking-glass when alone. Had Merthyr, in restoring

her to health, given her an overdose of the poison?

"Countess Branciani made the Austrian Governor her slave," she uttered,

planting one foot upon a stool to lend herself height. "He told her who

were suspected, and who would be imprisoned, and gave her all the State

secrets. Beauty can do more than music. I wonder whether Merthyr loved

her? He loves me!"

Emilia was smitten with a fear that he would speak of it when she next

saw him. "Oh! I hope he will be just the same as he has been," she

sighed; and with much melancholy shook her head at her fair reflection,

and began to undress. It had not struck her with surprise that two men

should be loving her, until, standing away from the purple folds, she

seemed to grow smaller and smaller, as a fire-log robbed of its flame,

and felt insufficient and weak. This was a new sensation. She depended no

more on her own vital sincerity. It was in her nature, doubtless, to

crave constantly for approval, but in the service of personal beauty

instead of divine Art, she found herself utterly unwound without it:

victim of a sense of most uncomfortable hollowness. She was glad to

extinguish the candle and be covered up dark in the circle of her warmth.

Then her young blood sang to her again.

An hour before breakfast every morning she read with Merthyr. Now, this

morning how was she to appear to him? There would be no reading, of

course. How could he think of teaching one to whom he trembled. Emilia

trusted that she might see no change in him, and, above all, that he

would not speak of his love for her. Nevertheless, she put on her robe of

conquest, having first rejected with distaste a plainer garb. She went

down the stairs slowly. Merthyr was in the library awaiting her. "You are

late," he said, eyeing the dress as a thing apart from her, and remarking

that it was hardly suited for morning wear. "Yellow, if you must have a

strong colour, and you wouldn't exhibit the schwartz-gelb of the Tedeschi

willingly. But now!"

This was the signal for the reading to commence.

"Wilfrid would not have been so cold to me," thought Emilia, turning the

leaves of Ariosto as a book of ashes. Not a word of love appeared to be

in his mind. This she did not regret; but she thirsted for the assuring

look. His eyes were quietly friendly. So friendly was he, that he blamed

her for inattention, and took her once to task about a melodious accent

in which she vulgarized the vowels. All the flattery of the Branciani

dress could not keep Emilia from her feeling of smallness. Was it

possible that he loved her? She watched him as eagerly as her shyness

would permit. Any shadow of a change was spied for. Getting no softness

from him, or superadded kindness, no shadow of a change in that

direction, she stumbled in her reading purposely, to draw down rebuke;

her construing was villanously bad. He told her so, and she replied: "I

don't like poetry." But seeing him exchange Ariosto for Roman History,

she murmured, "I like Dante." Merthyr plunged her remorselessly into the

second Punic war.

But there was worse to follow. She was informed that after breakfast she

would be called upon to repeat the principal facts she had been reading

of. Emilia groaned audibly.

"Take the book," said Merthyr.

"It's so heavy," she complained.

"Heavy?"

"I mean, to carry about."

"If you want to 'carry it about,' the boy shall follow you with it."

She understood that she was being laughed at. Languor, coupled with the

consciousness of ridicule, overwhelmed her.

"I feel I can't learn," she said.

"Feel, that you must," was replied to her.

"No; don't take any more trouble with me!"

"Yes; I expect you to distinguish Scipio from Cicero, and not make the

mistake of the other evening, when you were talking to Mrs. Cameron."

Emilia left him, abashed, to dread shrewdly their meeting within five

minutes at the breakfast-table; to dread eating under his eyes, with

doubts of the character of her acts generally. She was, indeed, his

humble scholar, though she seemed so full of weariness and revolt. He,

however, when alone, looked fixedly at the door through which she had

passed, and said, "She loves that man still. Similar ages, similar

tastes, I suppose! She is dressed to be ready for him. She can't learn:

she can do nothing. My work mayn't be lost, but it's lost for me."

Merthyr did not know that Georgiana had betrayed him, but in no case

would he have given Emilia the signs she expected: in the first place,

because he had self-command; and, secondly, because of those years he

counted in advance of her. So she had the full mystery of his loving her

to think over, without a spot of the weakness to fasten on.

Georgiana's first sight of Emilia in her Branciani dress shut her heart

against the girl with iron clasps. She took occasion to remark, "We need

not expect visitors so very early;" but the offender was impervious.

Breakfast finished, the reading with Merthyr recommenced, when Emilia,

having got over her surprise at the sameness of things this day,

acquitted herself better, and even declaimed the verses musically. Seeing

him look pleased, she spoke them out sonorously. Merthyr applauded. Upon

which Emilia said, with odd abruptness and solemnity, "Will he come

to-day?" It was beyond Merthyr's power of self-control to consent to be

taken into a consultation on this matter, and he attempted to put it

aside. "He may or he may not--probably to-morrow."

"No; to-day, in the afternoon," said Emilia, "be near me."

"I have engagements."

"Some word, say, that will seem to be you with me."

"Some flattery, or you won't remember it."

"Yes, I like flattery."

"Well, you look like Countess Branciani when, after thinking her husband

the basest of men, she discovered him to be the noblest."

Emilia blushed. "That's not easily forgotten! But she must have looked

braver, bolder, not so under a burden as I feel."

"The comparison was meant to suit the moment of your reciting."

"Yes," said Emilia, half-mournfully, "then 'myself' doesn't sit on my

shoulders: I don't even care what I am."

"That is what Art does for you."

"Only by fits and starts now. Once I never thought of myself."

There was a knock at the street-door, and she changed countenance.

Presently there came a gentle tap at their own door.

"It is that woman," said Emilia.

"I fancy it must be Lady Charlotte. You will not see her?"

Merthyr was anticipating a negative, but Emilia said, "Let her come in."

She gave her hand to the lady, and was the less concerned of the two.

Lady Charlotte turned away from her briskly.

"Georgey didn't say anything of you in her letter, Merthyr; I am going up

to her, but I wished to satisfy myself that you were in town, first:--to

save half-a-minute, you see I anticipate the philosophic manly sneer. Is

it really true that you are going to mix yourself up in this mad Italian

business again? Now that you're a man, my dear Merthyr, it seems almost

inexcuseable--for a sensible Englishman!"

Lady Charlotte laughed, giving him her hand at the same time.

"Don't you know I swore an oath?" Merthyr caught up her tone.

"Yes, but you never succeed. I complain that you never succeed. Of what

use on earth are all your efforts if you never succeed?"

Emilia's voice burst out:--

"'Piacemi almen che i miei sospir sien quali

Spera 'l Tevero e 'l Arno,

E 'l Po,--'"

Merthyr continued the ode, acting a similar fervour:--

"'Ben provvide Natura al nostro stato

Quando dell' Alpi schermo

Pose fra noi e la tedesca rabbis."

"We are merely bondsmen to the re-establishment of the provisions of

nature."

"And we know we shall succeed!" said Emilia, permitting her antagonism to

pass forth in irritable emphasis.

Lady Charlotte quickly left them, to run up to Georgiana. She was not

long in the house. Emilia hung near Merthyr all day, and she was near him

when the knock was heard which she could suppose to be Wilfrid's, as it

proved. Wilfrid was ushered in to Georgiana. Delicacy had prevented

Merthyr from taking special notice to Emilia of Lady Charlotte's visit,

and he treated Wilfrid's similarly, saying, "Georgey will send down

word."

"Only, don't leave me till she does," Emilia rejoined.

Her agitation laid her open to be misinterpreted. It was increased when

she saw him take a book and sit in the armchair between two lighted

candles, calmly careless of her. She did not actually define to herself

that he should feel jealously, but his indifference was one extreme which

provoked her instinct to imagine a necessity for the other. Word came

from Georgiana, and Emilia moved to the door. "Remember, we dine

half-an-hour earlier to-day, on account of the Cameron party," was all

that he uttered. Emilia made an effort to go. She felt herself as a ship

sailing into perilous waters, without compass. Why did he not speak

tenderly? Before Georgiana had revealed his love for her, she had been

strong to see Wilfrid. Now, the idea smote her softened heart that

Wilfrid's passion might engulf her if she had no word of sustainment from

Merthyr. She turned and flung herself at his feet, murmuring, "Say

something to me." Merthyr divined this emotion to be a sort of foresight

of remorse on her part: he clasped the interwoven fingers of her hands,

letting his eyes dwell upon hers. The marvel of their not wavering or

softening meaningly kept her speechless. She rose with a strength not her

own: not comforted, and no longer speculating. It was as if she had been

eyeing a golden door shut fast, that might some day open, but was in

itself precious to behold. She arose with deep humbleness, which awakened

new ideas of the nature of worth in her bosom. She felt herself so low

before this man who would not be played upon as an obsequious

instrument--who would not leap into ardour for her beauty! Before that

man upstairs how would she feel? The question did not come to her. She

entered the room where he was, without a blush. Her step was firm, and

her face expressed a quiet gladness. Georgiana stayed through the first

commonplaces: then they were alone.