"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 compa.s.sion 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.
CHAPTER XLIX
"My brother tells me it is your wish to see Mr. Wilfrid Pole."
Emilia"s "Yes" came faintly in answer to Georgiana"s cold accents.
"Have you considered what you are doing in expressing such a desire?"
Another "Yes" was heard from under an uplifted head:--a culprit affirmative, whereat the just take fire.
"Be honest, Emilia. Seek counsel and guidance to-night, as you have done before with me, and profited, I think. If I write to bid him come, what will it mean?"
"Nothing more," breathed Emilia.
"To him--for in his way he seems to care for you fitfully--it will mean--stop! hear me. The words you speak will have no part of the meaning, even if you restrain your tongue. To him it will imply that his power over you is unaltered. I suppose that the task of making you perceive the effect it really will have on you is hopeless."
"I have seen him, and I know," said Emilia, in a corresponding tone.
"You saw him that night of our return from Penarvon? Judge of him by that. He would not spare you. To gratify I know not what wildness in his nature, he did not hesitate to open your old wound. And to what purpose?
A freak of pa.s.sion!"
"He could not help it. I told him he would come, and he came."
"This, possibly, you call love; do you not?"
Emilia was about to utter a plain affirmative, but it was checked. The novelty of the idea of its not being love arrested her imagination.
"If he comes to you here," resumed Georgiana--
"He must come!" cried Emilia.
"My brother has sanctioned it, so his coming or not will rest with him.
If he comes, let me know the good that you think will result from an interview? Ah! you have not weighed that question. Do so;--or you give no heed to it? In any ease, try to look into your own breast. You were not born to live unworthily. You can be, or will be, if you follow your better star, self-denying and n.o.ble. Do you not love your country? Judge of this love by that. Your love, if you have this power over him, is merely a madness to him; and his--what has it done for you? If he comes, and this begins again, there will be a similar if not the same destiny for you."
Emilia panted in her reply. "No; it will not begin again." She threw out both arms, shaking her head. "It cannot, I know. What am I now? It is what I was that he loves. He will not know what I am till he sees me.
And I know that I have done things that he cannot forgive. You have forgiven it, and Merthyr, because he is my friend; but I am sure Wilfrid will not. He might pardon the poor "me," but not his Emilia! I shall have to tell him what I did; so" (and she came closer to Georgiana) "there is some pain for me in seeing him."
Georgiana was not proof against this simplicity of speech, backed by a little dying dimple, which seemed a continuation of the plain sadness of Emilia"s tone.
She said, "My poor child!" almost fondly, and then Emilia looked in her face, murmuring, "You sometimes doubt me."
"Not your truth, but the accuracy of your perceptions and your knowledge of your real designs. You are certainly deceiving yourself at this instant. In the first place, the relation of that madness--no, poor child, not wickedness--but if you tell it to him, it is a wilful and unnecessary self-abas.e.m.e.nt. If he is to be your husband, unburden your heart at once. Otherwise, why? why? You are but working up a scene, provoking needless excesses: you are storing misery in retrospect, or wretchedness to be endured. Had you the habit of prayer! By degrees it will give you the thirst for purity, and that makes you a fountain of prayer, in whom these blind deceits cannot hide."
Georgiana paused emphatically; as when, by our unrolling out of our ideas, we have more thoroughly convinced ourselves.
"You pray to heaven," said Emilia, and then faltered, and blushed. "I must be loved!" she cried. "Will you not put your arms round me?"
Georgiana drew her to her bosom, bidding her continue. Emilia lay whispering under her chin. "You pray, and you wish to be seen as you are, do you not? You do. Well, if you knew what love is, you would see it is the same. You wish him to see and know you: you wish to be sure that he loves nothing but exactly you; it must be yourself. You are jealous of his loving an idea of you that is not you. You think, "He will wake up and find his mistake;" or you think, "That kiss was not intended for me; not for me as I am." Those are tortures!"
Her discipline had transformed her, when she could utter such sentiments as these!
Feeling her shudder, and not knowing how imagination forestalls experience in pa.s.sionate blood, Georgiana said, "You speak like one who has undergone them. But now at least you have thrown off the mask. You love him still, this man! And with as little strength of will! Do you not see impiety in the comparison you have made?"
"Oh! what I see is, that I wish I could say to him, "Look on me, for I need not be ashamed--I am like Miss Ford!""
The young lady"s cheeks took fire, and the clear path of speech becoming confused in her head she said, "Miss Ford?"
"Georgiana," said Emilia, and feeling that her friend"s cold manner had melted; "Georgey! my beloved! my darling in Italy, where will we go! I envy no woman but you who have seen my dear ones fight. You and I, and Merthyr! Nothing but Austrian shot shall part us."
"And so we make up a pretty dream!" interjected Georgiana. "The Austrian shot, I think, will be fired by one who is now in the Austrian service, or who will soon be."
"Wilfrid?" Emilia called out. "No; that is what I am going to stop. Why did I not tell you so at first? But I never know what I say or do when I am with you, and everything seems chance. I want to see him to prevent him from doing that. I can."
"Why should you?" asked Georgiana; and one to whom the faces of the two had been displayed at that moment would have p.r.o.nounced them a hostile couple.
"Why should I prevent him?" Emilia doled out the question slowly, and gave herself no further thought of replying to it.
Apparently Georgiana understood the significance of this odd silence: she was perhaps touched by it. She said, "You feel that you have a power over him. You wish to exercise it. Never mind wherefore. If you do--if you try, and succeed--if, by the aid of this love presupposed to exist, you win him to what you require of him--do you honestly think the love is then immediately to be dropped?"
Emilia meditated. She caught up her voice hastily. "I think so. Yes. I hope so. I mean it to be."
"With a n.o.ble lover, Emilia. Not with a selfish one. In showing him the belief you have in your power over him, you betray that he has power over you. And it is to no object. His family, his position, his prospects--all tell you that he cannot marry you if he would. And he is, besides, engaged--"
"Let her suffer!" Emilia"s eyes flashed.
"Ah!" and Georgiana thought, "Have I come upon your nature at last?"
However it might be, Emilia was determined to show it.
"She took my lover from me, and I say, let her suffer! I would not hurt her myself--I would not lay my finger on her: but she has eyes like blue stones, and such a mouth!--I think the Austrian executioner has one like it. If she suffers, and goes all dark as I did, she will show a better face. Let her keep my lover. He is not mine, but he was; and she took him from me. That woman cannot feed on him as I did. I know she has no hunger for love. He will look at those blue bits of ice, and think of me. I told him so. Did I not tell him that in Devon? I saw her eyelids move as fast as I spoke. I think I look on Winter when I see her lips.
Poor, wretched Wilfrid!"
Emilia half-sobbed this exclamation out. "I don"t wish to hurt either of them," she added, with a smile of such abrupt opposition to her words that Georgiana was in perplexity. A lady who has a.s.sumed the office of lecturer, will, in such a frame of mind, lecture on, if merely to vindicate to herself her own preconceptions. Georgiana laid her finger severely upon Wilfrid"s manifest faults; and, in fine, she spoke a great deal of the common sense that the situation demanded. Nevertheless, Emilia held to her scheme. But, in the meantime, Georgiana had seen more clearly into the girl"s heart; and she had been won, also, by a natural gracefulness that she now perceived in her, and which led her to think, "Is Merthyr again to show me that he never errs in his judgement?"
An unaccountable movement of tenderness to Emilia made her drop a few kisses on her forehead. Emilia shut her eyes, waiting for more. Then she looked up, and said, "Have you felt this love for me very long?" at which the puny flame, scarce visible, sprang up, and warmed to a great heat.