The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
him if she had failed in winning the assembly, Wilfrid stepped into the garden, where he expected to find her, and to be the first to pet and console her. Threading the scented shrubs, he came upon a turn in one of the alleys, from which point he had a view of her figure, as she stood near a Portugal laurel on the lawn. Mr. Pericles was by her side. Wilfrid's intention was to join them. A loud sob from Emilia checked his foot.
"You are cruel," he heard her say.
"If it is good, I tell it you; if it is bad; abominable, I tell it you, juste ze same," responded Mr. Pericles.
"The others did not think it very bad."
"Ah! bah!" Mr. Pericles cut her short.
Had they been talking of matters secret and too sweet, Wilfrid would have retired, like a man of honour. As it was, he continued to listen. The tears of his poor little friend, moreover, seemed to hold him there in the hope that he might afford some help.
"Yes; I do not care for the others," she resumed. "You praised me the night I first saw you."
"It is perhaps zat you can sing to z' moon," returned Mr. Pericles. "But, what! a singer, she must sing in a house. To-night it is warm, to-morrow it is cold. If you sing through a cold, what noise do we hear? It is a nose, not a voice. It is a trompet."
Emilia, with a whimpering firmness, replied: "You said I am lazy. I am not."
"Not lazy," Mr. Pericles assented.
"Do I care for praise from people who do not understand music? It is not true. I only like to please them."
"Be a street-organ," Mr. Pericles retorted.
"I must like to see them pleased when I sing," said Emilia desperately.
"And you like ze clap of ze hands. Yez. It is quite natural. Yess. You are a good child, it is clear. But, look. You are a voice uncultivated, sauvage. You go wrong: I hear you: and dese claps of zese noodels send you into squeaks and shrills, and false! false away you go. It is a gallop ze wrong way."
Here Mr. Pericles attempted the most horrible reproduction of Emilia's failure. She cried out as if she had been bitten.
"What am I to do?" she asked sadly.
"Not now," Mr. Pericles answered. "You live in London?--at where?"
"Must I tell you?"
"Certainly, you must tell me."
"But, I am not going there; I mean, not yet."
"You are going to sing to z' moon through z' nose. Yez. For how long?"
"These ladies have asked me to stay with them. They make me so happy. When I leave them--then!"
Emilia sighed.
"And zen?" quoth Mr. Pericles.
"Then, while my money lasts, I shall stay in the country."
"How much money?"
"How much money have I?" Emilia frankly and accurately summed up the condition of her treasury. "Four pounds and nineteen shillings."
"Hom! it is spent, and you go to your father again?"
"Yes."
"To ze old Belloni?"
"My father."
"No!" cried Mr. Pericles, upon Emilia's melancholy utterance. He bent to her ear and rapidly spoke, in an undertone, what seemed to be a vivid sketch of a new course of fortune for her. Emilia gave one joyful outcry; and now Wilfrid retreated, questioning within himself whether he should have remained so long. But, as he argued, if he was convinced that the rascally Greek fellow meant mischief to her, was he not bound to employ every stratagem to be her safeguard? The influence of Mr. Pericles already exercised over her was immense and mysterious. Within ten minutes she was singing triumphantly indoors. Wilfrid could hear that her voice was firm and assured. She was singing the song of the woods. He found to his surprise that his heart dropped under some burden, as if he had no longer force to sustain it.
By-and-by some of the members of the company issued forth. Carriages were heard on the gravel, and young men in couples, preparing to light the ensign of happy release from the ladies (or of indemnification for their absence, if you please), strolled about the grounds.
"Did you see that little passage between Laura Tinley and Bella Pole?" said one, and forthwith mimicked them: "Laura commencing:-'We must have her over to us.' 'I fear we have pre-engaged her.'--'Oh, but you, dear, will do us the favour to come, too?' 'I fear, dear, our immediate engagements will preclude the possibility.'--'Surely, dear Miss Pole, we may hope that you have not abandoned us?'--'That, my dear Miss Tinley, is out of the question.'--'May we not name a day?'--'If it depends upon us, frankly, we cannot bid you do so.'"
The other joined him in laughter, adding: "'Frankly' 's capital! What absurd creatures women are! How the deuce did you manage to remember it all?"
"My sister was at my elbow. She repeated it, word for word."
"Pon my honour, women are wonderful creatures!"
The two young men continued their remarks, with a sense of perfect consistency.
Lady Gosstre, as she was being conducted to her carriage, had pronounced aloud that Emilia was decidedly worth hearing.
"She's better worth knowing," said Tracy Runningbrook. "I see you are all bent on spoiling her. If you were to sit and talk with her, you would perceive that she's meant for more than to make a machine of her throat. What a throat it is! She has the most comical notion of things. I fancy I'm looking at the budding of my own brain. She's a born artist, but I'm afraid everybody's conspiring to ruin her."
"Surely," said Adela, "we shall not do that, if we encourage her in her Art."
"He means another kind of art," said Lady Gosstre. "The term 'artist,' applied to our sex, signifies 'Frenchwoman' with him. He does not allow us to be anything but women. As artists then we are largely privileged, I assure you."
"Are we placed under a professor to learn the art?" Adela inquired, pleased with the subject under such high patronage.
"Each new experience is your accomplished professor," said Tracy. "One I'll call Cleopatra a professor: she's but an illustrious example."
"Imp! you are corrupt." With which my lady tapped farewell on his shoulder. Leaning from the carriage window, she said: "I suppose I shall see you at Richford? Merthyr Powys is coming this week. And that reminds me: he would be the man to appreciate your 'born artist.' Bring her to me. We will have a dinner. I will despatch a formal invitation to-morrow. The season's bad out of town for getting decent people to meet you. I will do my best."
She bowed to Adela and Tracy. Mr. Pole, who had hovered around the unfamiliar dialogue to attend the great lady to the door, here came in for a recognition, and bowed obsequiously to the back of the carriage.
Arabella did not tell her sisters what weapons she had employed to effect the rout of Mrs. Chump. She gravely remarked that the woman had consented to go, and her sisters thanked her. They were mystified by Laura's non-recognition of Emilia, and only suspected Wilfrid so faintly that they were able to think they did not suspect him at all. On the whole, the evening had been a success. It justified the ladies in repeating a well-known Brookfield phrase: "We may be wrong in many things, but never in our judgement of the merits of any given person." In the case of Tracy Runningbrook, they had furnished a signal instance of their discernment. Him they had met at the house of a friend of the Tinleys (a Colonel's wife distantly connected with great houses). The Tinleys laughed at his flaming head and him, but the ladies of Brookfield had ears and eyes for a certain tone and style about him, before they learnt that he was of the blood of dukes, and would be a famous poet.