Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England). Complete

“Oh! he loves me, and I love him,” she gasped, and wondered why words should be failing her. “See us together, sir, and hear us. We will make you well.”

The exclamation “Good Lord!” groaned out in a tone as from the lower pits of despair, cut her short.

Tearfully she murmured: “You will not see us, sir?”

“Together?” bawled the merchant.

“Yes, I mean together.”

“If you’re not mad, I am.” And he jumped on his legs and walked to the farther corner of the room. “Which of us is it?” His features twitched in horribly comic fashion. “What do you mean? I can’t understand a word. My brain must have gone;” throwing his hand over his forehead. “I’ve feared so for the last four months. Good God! a lunatic asylum! and the business torn like a piece of old rag! I know that fellow at Riga’s dancing like a cannibal, and there—there ‘ll be articles in the papers.—Here, girl! come up to the light. Come here, I say.”

Emilia walked up to him.

“You don’t look mad. I dare say everybody else understands you. Do they?”

The sad-flushed pallor of his face provoked Emilia to say: “You ought to have the doctor here immediately. Let me bring him, sir.”

A gleam as of a lantern through his oppressive mental fog calmed the awful irritability of his nerves somewhat.

“You’ve got him outside?”

“No, sir.”

The merchant’s eagerness faded out. He put his hand to her shoulder, and went along to a chair, sinking into it, and closing his eyelids. So they remained, Emilia at his right hand. She watched him breathing with a weak open mouth, and thought more of the doctor now than of Wilfrid.

CHAPTER XXV

Braintop’s knock at the door had been unheeded for some minutes. At last Emilia let him in. The brandy and biscuits were placed on a table, and Emilia resumed her watch by Mr. Pole. She saw that his lips moved, after a space, and putting her ear down, understood that he desired not to see any one who might come for an interview with him: nor were the clerks to be admitted. The latter direction was given in precise terms. Emilia repeated the orders outside. On her return, the merchant’s eyes were open.

“My forehead feels damp,” he said; “and I’m not hot at all. Just take hold of my hands. They’re like wet crumpets. I wonder what makes me so stiff. A man mustn’t sit at business too long at a time. Sure to make people think he’s ill. What was that about a doctor? I seem to remember. I won’t see one.”

Emilia had filled a glass with brandy. She brought it nearer to his hand, while he was speaking. At the touch of the glass, his fingers went round it slowly, and he raised it to his mouth. The liquor revived him. He breathed “ah!” several times, and grimaced, blinking, as if seeking to arouse a proper brightness in his eyes. Then, he held out his empty glass to her, and she filled it, and he sipped deliberately, saying: “I’m warm inside. I keep on perspiring so cold. Can’t make it out. Look at my finger-ends, my dear. They’re whitish, aren’t they?”

Emilia took the hand he presented, and chafed it, and put it against her bosom, half under one arm. The action appeared to give some warmth to his heart, for he petted her, in return.

A third time he held out the glass, and remarked that this stuff was better than medicine.

“You women!” he sneered, as at a reminiscence of their faith in drugs.

“My legs are weak, though!” He had risen and tested the fact. “Very shaky. I wonder what makes ‘em—I don’t take much exercise.” Pondering on this problem, he pursued: “It’s the stomach. I’m as empty as an egg-shell. Odd, I’ve got no appetite. But, my spirits are up. I begin to feel myself again. I’ll eat by-and-by, my dear. And, I say; I’ll tell you what:—I’ll take you to the theatre to-night. I want to laugh. A man’s all right when he’s laughing. I wish it was Christmas. Don’t you like to see the old pantaloon tumbled over, my boy?—my girl, I mean. I did, when I was a boy. My father took me. I went in the pit. I can smell oranges, when I think of it. I remember, we supped on German sausage; or ham—one or the other. Those were happy old days!”

He shook his head at them across the misty gulf.

“Perhaps there’s a good farce going on now. If so, we’ll go. Girls ought to learn to laugh as well as boys. I’ll ring for Braintop.”

He rang the bell, and bade Emilia be careful to remind him that he wanted Braintop’s address; for Braintop was useful.

It appeared that there were farces at several of the theatres. Braintop rattled them out, their plot and fun and the merits of the actors, with delightful volubility, as one whose happy subject had been finally discovered. He was forthwith commissioned to start immediately and take a stage-box at one of the places of entertainment, where two great rivals of the Doctor genus promised to laugh dull care out of the spirit of man triumphantly, and at the description of whose drolleries any one with faith might be half cured. The youth gave his address on paper to Emilia.

“Make haste, sir,” said Mr. Pole. “And, stop. You shall go, yourself; go to the pit, and have a supper, and I’ll pay for it. When you’ve ordered the box—do you know the Bedford Hotel? Go there, and see Mrs. Chickley, and tell her I am coming to dine and sleep, and shall bring one of my daughters. Dinner, sittingroom, and two bed-rooms, mind. And tell Mrs. Chickley we’ve got no carpet-bag, and must come upon her wardrobe. All clear to you? Dinner at half-past five going to theatre.”

Braintop bowed comprehendingly.

“Now, that fellow goes off chirping,” said Mr. Pole to Emilia. “It’s just the thing I used to wish to happen to me, when I was his age—my master to call me in and say ‘There! go and be jolly.’ I dare say the rascal’ll order a champagne supper. Poor young chap! let his heart be merry. Ha! ha! heigho!—Too much business is bad for man and boy. I feel better already, if it weren’t for my legs. My feet are so cold. Don’t you think I’m pretty talkative, my dear?”

“I am glad to hear you talk,” said Emilia, striving to look less perplexed than she felt.

He asked her slyly why she had come to London; and she begged that she might speak of it by-and-by; whereat Mr. Pole declared that he intended to laugh them all out of that nonsense. “And what did you say about being in love with him? A doctor in good practice—but you needn’t commence by killing me if you do go and marry the fellow. Eh? what is it?”

Emilia was too much entangled herself to attempt to extricate him; and apparently his wish to be enlightened passed away, for he was the next instant searching among his papers for the letter from Riga. Not finding it, he put on his hat.

“Must give up business to-day. Can’t do business with a petticoat in the room. I wish the Lord Mayor’d stop them all at Temple Bar. Now we’ll go out, and I’ll show you a bit of the City.”

He offered her his arm, and she noticed that in walking through the office, he was erect, and the few words he spoke were delivered in the peremptory elastic tone of a vigorous man.

“My girls,” he said to her in an undertone, “never come here. Well! we don’t expect ladies, you know. Different spheres in this world. They mean to be tip-top in society; and quite right too. My dear, I think we’ll ride. Do you mind being seen in a cab?”

He asked her hesitatingly: and when Emilia said, “Oh, no! let us ride,” he seemed relieved. “I can’t see the harm in a cab. Different tastes, in this world. My girls—but, thank the Lord! they’ve got carriages.”

For an hour the merchant and Emilia drove about the City. He showed her all the great buildings, and dilated on the fabulous piles of wealth they represented, taking evident pleasure in her exclamations of astonishment.

“Yes, yes; they may despise us City fellows. I say, ‘Come and see,’ that’s all! Now, look up that court. Do you see three dusty windows on the second floor? That man there could buy up any ten princes in Europe—excepting one or two Austrians or Russians. He wears a coat just like mine.”

“Does he?” said Emilia, involuntarily examining the one by her side.

“We don’t show our gold-linings, in the City, my dear.”

“But, you are rich, too.”

“Oh! I—as far as that goes. Don’t talk about me. I’m—I’m still cold in the feet. Now, look at that corner house. Three months ago that man was one of our most respected City merchants. Now he’s a bankrupt, and can’t show his head. It was all rotten. A medlar! He tampered with documents; betrayed trusts. What do you think of him?”

“What was it he did?” asked Emilia.

Mr. Pole explained, and excused him; then he explained, and abused him.

“He hadn’t a family, my dear. Where did the money go? He’s called a rascal now, poor devil! Business brings awful temptations. You think, this’ll save me! You catch hold of it and it snaps. That’ll save me; but you’re too heavy, and the roots give way, and down you go lower and lower. Lower and lower! The gates of hell must be very low down if one of our bankrupts don’t reach ‘em.” He spoke this in a deep underbreath. “Let’s get out of the City. There’s no air. Look at that cloud. It’s about over Brookfield, I should say.”

“Dear Brookfield!” echoed Emilia, feeling her heart fly forth to sing like a skylark under the cloud.

“And they’re not satisfied with it,” murmured Mr. Pole, with a voice of unwonted bitterness.

At the hotel, he was received very cordially by Mrs. Chickley, and Simon, the old waiter.

“You look as young as ever, ma’am,” Mr. Pole complimented her cheerfully, while he stamped his feet on the floor, and put forward Emilia as one of his girls; but immediately took the landlady aside, to tell her that she was “merely a charge—a ward—something of that sort;” admitting, gladly enough, that she was a very nice young lady. “She’s a genius, ma’am, in music:—going to do wonders. She’s not one of them.” And Mr. Pole informed Mrs. Chickley that when they came to town, they usually slept in one or other of the great squares. He, for his part, preferred old quarters: comfort versus grandeur.

Simon had soon dressed the dinner-table. By the time dinner was ready, Mr. Pole had sunk into such a condition of drowsiness, that it was hard to make him see why he should be aroused, and when he sat down, fronting Emilia, his eyes were glazed, and he complained that she was scarcely visible.

“Some of your old yellow seal, Simon. That’s what I want. I haven’t got better at home.”