She had moved back, showing a harder figure, or the "I love you, love you!" would have sounded with force. It came, though not so vehemently as might have been, to the appeal of a soft fixed look.
"Yes, I love you, Charlotte; you know that I do."
"You love me?"
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I love you! Dead, inanimate Charlotte, I love you!"
She threw out her hand as one would throw a bone to a dog.
"My living, breathing, n.o.ble Charlotte," he cried, a little bewitched, "I love you with all my heart!"
It surprised him that her features should be gradually expressing less delight.
"With all your heart?"
"Could I give you a part?"
"It is done, sometimes," she said, mock-sadly. Then, in her original voice: "Good. I never credited that story of you and the girl Emilia. I suppose what people say is a lie?"
Her eyes, in perfect accordance with the tone she had adopted, set a quiet watch on him.
"Who says it?" he thundered, just as she antic.i.p.ated.
"It"s not true?"
"Not true!--how can it be true?"
"You never loved Emilia Belloni?--don"t love her now?--do not love her now? If you have ever said that you love Emilia Belloni, recant, and you are forgiven; and then go, for I think I hear Georgiana below. Quick!
I am not acting. It"s earnest. The word, if you please, as you are a gentleman. Tell me, because I have heard tales. I have been perplexed about you. I am sure you"re a manly fellow, who would never have played tricks with a girl you were bound to protect; but you might have--pardon the slang--spooned,--who knows? You might have been in love with her downright. No harm, even if a trifle foolish; but in the present case, set my mind at rest. Quick! There are both my hands. Take them, press them, and speak."
The two hands were taken, but his voice was not so much at command. No image of Emilia rose in his mind to reproach him with the casting over of his heart"s dear mistress, but a blind struggle went on. It seemed that he could do what he dared not utter. The folly of lips more loyal than the spirit touched his lively perception; and as the hot inward struggle, masked behind his softly-playing eyes, had reduced his personal consciousness so that if he spoke from his feeling there was a chance of his figuring feebly, he put on his ever-ready other self:--
"Categorically I reply: Have I loved Miss Emilia Belloni?--No. Do I?--No. Do I love Charlotte Chillingworth?--Yes, ten thousand times! And now let Britomart disarm."
He sought to get his reward by gentle muscular persuasion. Her arms alone yielded: and he judged from the angle of the neck, ultra-sharp though it was, that her averted face might be her form of exhibiting maidenly reluctance, feminine modesty. Suddenly the fingers in his grasp twisted, and not being at once released, she turned round to him.
"For G.o.d"s sake, spare the girl!"
Emilia stood in the doorway.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
A knock at Merthyr"s chamber called him out while he sat writing to Marini on the national business. He heard Georgiana"s voice begging him to come to her quickly. When he saw her face the stain of tears was there.
"Anything the matter with Charlotte?" was his first question.
"No. But, come: I will tell you on the way. Do not look at me."
"No personal matter of any kind?"
"Oh, no! I can have none;" and she took his hand for a moment.
They pa.s.sed into the dark windy street smelling of the sea.
"Emilia is here," said Georgiana. "I want you to persuade her--you will have influence with her. Oh, Merthyr! my darling brother! I thank G.o.d I love my brother with all my love! What a dreadful thing it is for a woman to love a man:"
"I suppose it is, while she has nothing else to do," said Merthyr. "How did she come?--why?"
"If you had seen Emilia to-night, you would have felt that the difference is absolute." Georgiana dealt first with the general case, "she came, I think, by some appointment."
"Also just as absolute between her and her s.e.x," he rejoined, controlling himself, not to be less cool. "What has happened?"
Georgiana pointed to the hotel whither their steps were bent. "That is where Charlotte sleeps. Her going there was not a freak; she had an object. She wished to cure Emilia of her love for Mr. Wilfrid Pole.
Emilia had come down to see him. Charlotte put her in an adjoining room to hear him say--what I presume they do say when the fit is on them! Was it not singular folly?"
It was a folly that Merthyr could not understand in his friend Charlotte. He said so, and then he gave a kindly sad exclamation of Emilia"s name.
"You do pity her still!" cried Georgiana, her heart leaping to hear it expressed so simply.
"Why, what other feeling can I have?" said he unsuspiciously.
"No, dear Merthyr," she replied; and only by her tone he read the guilty little rejoicing in her heart, marvelling at jealousy that could twist so straight a stem as his sister"s spirit. This had taught her, who knew nothing of love, that a man loving does not pity in such a case.
"I hope you will find her here:" Georgiana hurried her steps. "Say anything to comfort her. I will have her with me, and try and teach her what self-control means, and how it is to be won. If ever she can act on the stage as she spoke to-night, she will be a great dramatic genius.
She was transformed. She uses strange forcible expressions that one does not hear in every-day life. She crushed Charlotte as if she had taken her up in one hand, and without any display at all: no gesture, or spasm. I noticed, as they stood together, that there is such a contrast between animal courage and imaginative fire."
"Charlotte could meet a great occasion, I should think," said Merthyr; and, taking his sister by the elbow: "You speak as if you had observed very coolly. Did Emilia leave you so cold? Did she seem to speak from head, not from heart?"
"No; she moved me--poor child! Only, how humiliating to hear her beg for love!--before us."
Merthyr smiled: "I thought it must be the woman"s feeling that would interfere to stop a natural emotion. Is it true--or did I not see that certain eyes were red just now?"
"That was for him," said Georgiana, hastily. "I am sure that no man has stood in such a position as he did. To see a man made publicly ashamed, and bearing it. I have never had to endure so painful a sight."
"To stand between two women, claimed by both, like Solomon"s babe! A man might as well at once have Solomon"s judgement put into execution upon him. You wept for him! Do you know, Georgey, that charity of your s.e.x, which makes you cry at any "affecting situation," must have been designed to compensate to us for the severities of Providence."
"No, Merthyr;" she arrested his raillery. "Do I ever cry? But I thought--if it had been my brother! and almost at the thought I felt the tears rush at my eyelids, as if the shame had been mine."
"The probability of its not being your brother seemed distant at the moment," said Merthyr, with his half-melancholy smile. "Tell me--I can conjure up the scene: but tell me whether you saw more pa.s.sions than one in her face?"
"Emilia"s? No. Her face reminded me of the sombre--that dull glow of a fire that you leave burning in the grate late on winter nights. Was that natural? It struck me that her dramatic instinct was as much alive as her pa.s.sion."