Sandra Belloni (originally Emilia in England). Complete. George Meredith
note which came from the gallant cornet then. But, in the meadows, or kindly conducting Emilia’s horse, he yielded pretty music. Emilia wore Arabella’s riding-habit, Adela’s hat, and Cornelia’s gloves. Politic as the ladies of Brookfield were, they were full of natural kindness; and Wilfrid, albeit a diplomatist, was not yet mature enough to control and guide a very sentimental heart. There was an element of dim imagination in all the family: and it was this that consciously elevated them over the world in prospect, and made them unconsciously subject to what I must call the spell of the poetic power.
Wilfrid in his soul wished that Emilia should date from the day she had entered Brookfield. But at times it seemed to him that a knowledge of her antecedents might relieve him from his ridiculous perplexity of feeling. Besides though her voice struck emotion, she herself was unimpressionable. “Cold by nature,” he said; looking at the unkindled fire. She shook hands like a boy. If her fingers were touched and retained, they continued to be fingers for as long as you pleased. Murmurs and whispers passed by her like the breeze. She appeared also to have no enthusiasm for her Art, so that not even there could Wilfrid find common ground. Italy, however, he discovered to be the subject that made her light up. Of Italy he would speak frequently, and with much simulated fervour.
“Mr. Pericles is going to take me there,” said Emilia. “He told me to keep it secret. I have no secrets from my friends. I am to learn in the academy at Milan.”
“Would you not rather let me take you?”
“Not quite.” She shook her head. “No; because you do not understand music as he does. And are you as rich? I cost a great deal of money even for eating alone. But you will be glad when you hear me when I come back. Do you hear that nightingale? It must be a nightingale.”
She listened. “What things he makes us feel!”
Bending her head, she walked on silently. Wilfrid, he knew not why, had got a sudden hunger for all the days of her life. He caught her hand and, drawing her to a garden seat, said: “Come; now tell me all about yourself before I knew you. Do you mind?”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to hear,” said Emilia.
He enjoined her to begin from the beginning.
“Everything about myself?” she asked.
“Everything. I have your permission to smoke?”
Emilia smiled. “I wish I had some Italian cigars to give you. My father sometimes has plenty given to him.”
Wilfrid did not contemplate his havannah with less favour.
“Now,” said Emilia, taking a last sniff of the flowers before surrendering her nostril to the invading smoke. She looked at the scene fronting her under a blue sky with slow flocks of clouds: “How I like this!” she exclaimed. “I almost forget that I long for Italy, here.”
Beyond a plot of flowers, a gold-green meadow dipped to a ridge of gorse bordered by dark firs and the tips of greenest larches.
CHAPTER VI
Wilfrid lifted an eyelid.
“He is one of the first-violins at the Italian Opera!”
The gallant cornet’s critical appreciation of this impressive announcement was expressed in a spiral ebullition of smoke from his mouth.
“He is such a proud man! And I don’t wonder at that: he has reason to be proud.”
Again Wilfrid lifted an eyelid, and there is no knowing but that ideas of a connection with foreign Counts, Cardinals, and Princes passed hopefully through him.
“Would you believe that he is really the own nephew of Andronizetti!”
“Deuce he is!” said Wilfrid, in a mist. “Which one?”
“The composer!”
Wilfrid emitted more smoke.
“Who composed—how I love him!—that lovely ‘la, la, la, la,’ and the ‘te-de, ta-da, te-dio,’ that pleases you, out of ‘Il Maladetto.’ And I am descended from him! Let me hope I shall not be unworthy of him. You will never tell it till people think as much of me, or nearly. My father says I shall never be so great, because I am half English. It’s not my fault. My mother was English. But I feel that I am much more Italian than English. How I long for Italy—like a thing underground! My father did something against the Austrians, when he was a young man. Would not I have done it? I am sure I would—I don’t know what. Whenever I think of Italy, night or day, pant-pant goes my heart. The name of Italy is my nightingale: I feel that somebody lives that I love, and is ill-treated shamefully, crying out to me for help. My father had to run away to save his life. He was fifteen days lying in the rice-fields to escape from the soldiers—which makes me hate a white coat. There was my father; and at night he used to steal out to one of the villages, where was a good, true woman—so they are, most, in Italy! She gave him food; maize-bread and wine, sometimes meat; sometimes a bottle of good wine. When my father thinks of it he cries, if there is gin smelling near him. At last my father had to stop there day and night. Then that good woman’s daughter came to him to keep him from starving; she risked being stripped naked and beaten with rods, to keep my father from starving. When my father speaks of Sandra now, it makes my mother—she does not like it. I am named after her: Emilia Alessandra Belloni. ‘Sandra’ is short for it. She did not know why I was christened that, and will never call me anything but Emilia, though my father says Sandra, always. My father never speaks of that dear Sandra herself, except when he is tipsy. Once I used to wish him to be tipsy; for then I used to sit at my piano while he talked, and I made all his words go into music. One night I did it so well, my father jumped right up from his chair, shouting ‘Italia!’ and he caught his wig off his head, and threw it into the fire, and rushed out into the street quite bald, and people thought him mad.
“It was the beginning of all our misfortunes! My father was taken and locked up in a place as a tipsy man. That he has never forgiven the English for! It has made me and my mother miserable ever since. My mother is sure it is all since that night. Do you know, I remember, though I was so young, that I felt the music—oh! like a devil in my bosom? Perhaps it was, and it passed out of me into him. Do you think it was?”
Wilfrid answered: “Well, no! I shouldn’t think you had anything to do with the devil.” Indeed, he was beginning to think her one of the smallest of frocked female essences.
“I lost my piano through it,” she went on. “I could not practise. I was the most miserable creature in all the world till I fell in love with my harp. My father would not play to get money. He sat in his chair, and only spoke to ask about meal-time, and we had no money for food, except by selling everything we had. Then my piano went. So then I said to my mother, I will advertize to give lessons, as other people do, and make money for us all, myself. So we paid money for a brass-plate, and our landlady’s kind son put it up on the door for nothing, and we waited for pupils to come. I used to pray to the Virgin that she would blessedly send me pupils, for my poor mother’s complaints were so shrill and out of tune it’s impossible to tell you what I suffered. But by-and-by my father saw the brass-plate. He fell into one of his dreadful passions. We had to buy him another wig. His passions were so expensive: my mother used to say, ‘There goes our poor dinner out of the window!’ But, well! he went to get employment now. He can, always, when he pleases; for such a touch on the violin as my father has, you never heard. You feel yourself from top to toe, when my father plays. I feel as if I breathed music like air. One day came news from Italy, all in the newspaper, of my father’s friends and old companions shot and murdered by the Austrians. He read it in the evening, after we had a quiet day. I thought he did not mind it much, for he read it out to us quite quietly; and then he made me sit on his knee and read it out. I cried with rage, and he called to me, ‘Sandra! Peace!’ and began walking up and down the room, while my mother got the bread and cheese and spread it on the table, for we were beginning to be richer. I saw my father take out his violin. He put it on the cloth and looked at it. Then he took it up, and laid his chin on it like a man full of love, and drew the bow across just once. He whirled away the bow, and knocked down our candle, and in the