Despite the pouring in of the flood of guests about the tables, Mrs. Chump and Mr. Pole sat apparently unconcerned in their places, and, as if to show their absolute indifference to observation and opinion, went through the ceremony of drinking to one another, upon which they nodded and chuckled: a suspicious eye had the option of divining that they used the shelter of the table cloth for an interchange of squeezes. This would have been further strengthened by Mrs. Chump's arresting exclamation, “Pole! Company!” Mr. Pole looked up. He recognized Lady Gosstre, and made an attempt, in his usual brisk style, to salute her. Mrs. Champ drew him back. “Nothin' but his legs, my lady,” she whispered. “There's nothin' sets 'm up like champagne, my dears!” she called out to the Three of Brookfield.
Those ladies were now in the hall, gazing, as mildly as humanity would allow, at their common destiny, thus startlingly displayed. There was no doubt in the bosom of either one of them that exposure was to follow this prelude. Mental resignation was not even demanded of them—merely physical. They did not seek comfort in an interchange of glances, but dropped their eyes, and masked their sight as they best could. Caesar assassinated did a similar thing.
“My dears!” pursued Mrs. Chump, in Irish exaggerated by wine, “I've found 'm for ye! And if ye'd seen 'm this afternoon—the little peaky, shaky fellow that he was! and a doctor, too, feelin' his pulse. 'Is ut slow,' says I, 'doctor?' and draws a bottle of champagne. He could hardly stand before his first glass. 'Pon my hon'r, my lady, ye naver saw s'ch a change in a mortal bein.—Pole, didn't ye go 'ha, ha!' now, and seem to be nut-cracking with your fingers? He did; and if ye aver saw an astonished doctor! 'Why,' says I, 'doctor, ye think ut's maguc! Why, where's the secret? drink with 'm, to be sure! And you go and do that, my lord doctor, my dear Mr. Doctor! Do ut all round, and your patients 'll bless your feet.” Why, isn't cheerful society and champagne the vary best of medicines, if onnly the blood 'll go of itself a little? The fault's in his legs; he's all right at top!—if he'd smooth his hair a bit.
Checking her tongue, Mrs. Chump performed this service lightly for him, in the midst of his muttered comments on her Irish.
The fact was manifest to the whole assembly, that they had indeed been drinking champagne to some purpose.
Wilfrid stepped up to two of his sisters, warning them hurriedly not to go to their father: Adela he arrested with a look, but she burst the restraint to fulfil a child's duty. She ran up gracefully, and taking her father's hand, murmured a caressing “Dear papa!”
“There—all right—quite right—quite well,” Mr. Pole repeated. “Glad to see you all: go away.”
He tried to look kindly out of the nervous fit into which a word, in a significant tone, from one of his daughters had instantly plunged him. Mrs. Chump admonished her: “Will ye undo all that I've been doin' this blessed day?”
“Glad you haven't missed the day altogether, sir,” Wilfrid greeted his father in an offhand way.
“Ah, my boy!” went the old man, returning him what was meant for a bluff nod.
Lady Charlotte gave Wilfrid an open look. It meant: “If you can act like that, and know as much as I know, you are worth more than I reckoned.” He talked evenly and simply, and appeared on the surface as composed as any of the guests present. Nor was he visibly disturbed when Mrs. Chump, catching his eye, addressed him aloud:—
“Ye'd have been more grateful to me to have brought little Belloni as well now, I know, Mr. Wilfrid. But I was just obliged to leave her at the hotel; for Pole can't endure her. He 'bomunates the sight of 'r. If ye aver saw a dog burnt by the fire, Pole's second to 'm, if onnly ye speak that garl's name.”
The head of a strange musician, belonging to the band stationed outside, was thrust through one of the window apertures. Mr. Pericles beckoned him imperiously to retire, and perform. He objected, and an altercation in bad English diverted the company. It was changed to Italian. “Mia figlia,” seized Wilfrid's ear. Mr. Pericles bellowed, “Allegro.” Two minutes after Braintop felt a touch on his shoulder; and Wilfrid, speaking in a tone of friend to friend, begged him to go to town by the last train and remove Miss Belloni to an hotel, which he named. “Certainly,” said Braintop; “but if I meet her father...?” Wilfrid summoned champagne for him; whereupon Mrs. Chump cried out, “Ye're kind to wait upon the young man, Mr. Wilfrid; and that Mr. Braintop's an invalu'ble young man. And what do ye want with the hotel, when we've left it, Mr. Paricles?”
The Greek raised his head from Mr. Pole, shrugging at her openly. He and Wilfrid then measured eyes a moment. “Some champagne togezer?” said Mr. Pericles. “With all my heart,” was the reply; and their glasses were filled, and they bowed, and drank. Wilfrid took his seat, drew forth his pocket-book; and while talking affably to Lady Charlotte beside him, and affecting once or twice to ponder over her remarks, or to meditate a fitting answer, wrote on a slip of paper under the table:—
“Mine! my angel! You will see me to-morrow.
“YOUR LOVER.”
This, being inserted in an envelope, with zig-zag letters of address to form Emilia's name, he contrived to pass to Braintop's hands, and resumed his conversation with Lady Charlotte, who said, when there was nothing left to discover, “But what is it you concoct down there?” “I!” cried Wilfrid, lifting his hands, and so betraying himself after the fashion of the very innocent. She despised any reading of acts not on the surface, and nodded to the explanation he gave—to wit: “By the way, do you mean—have you noticed my habit of touching my fingers' ends as I talk? I count them backwards and forwards.”
“Shows nervousness,” said Lady Charlotte; “you are a boy!”
“Exceedingly a boy.”
“Now I put a finger on his vanity,” said she; and thought indeed that she had played on him.
“Mr. Pole,” (Lady Gosstre addressed that gentleman,) “I must hope that you will leave this dining-hall as it is; there is nothing in the neighbourhood to match it!”
“Delightful!” interposed Laura Tinley; “but is it settled?”
Mr. Pole leaned forward to her ladyship; and suddenly catching the sense of her words, “Ah, why not?” he said, and reached his hand to some champagne, which he raised to his mouth, but drank nothing of. Reflection appeared to tell him that his safety lay in drinking, and he drained the glass at a gulp. Mrs. Chump had it filled immediately, and explained to a wondering neighbour, “It's that that keeps 'm on his legs.”
“We shall envy you immensely,” said Laura Tinley to Arabella; who replied, “I assure you that no decision has been come to.”
“Ah, you want to surprise us with cards on a sudden from Besworth!”
“That is not the surprise I have in store,” returned Arabella sedately.
“Then you have a surprise? Do tell me.”
“How true to her sex is the lady who seeks to turn 'what it is' into 'what it isn't!'” said Freshfield, trusty lieutenant.
“I think a little peeping makes surprises sweeter; I'm weak enough to think that,” Lady Charlotte threw in.
“That is so true!” exclaimed Laura.
“Well; and a secret shared is a fact uncommonly well aired—that is also true. But, remember, you do not desire the surprise; you are a destroying force to it;” and Freshfield bowed.
“Curiosity!” sighed some one, relieving Freshfield from a sense of the guilt of heaviness.
“I am a Pandora,” Laura smilingly said.
“To whom?” Tracy Runningbrook's shout was heard.
“With champagne in the heads of the men, and classics in the heads of the women, we shall come; to something,” remarked Lady Gosstre half to herself and Georgiana near her.
An observer of Mr. Pole might have seen that he was fretting at a restriction on his tongue. Occasionally he would sit forward erect in his chair, shake his coat-collar, frown, and sound a preparatory 'hem; but it ended in his rubbing his hair away on the back of his head. Mrs. Chump, who was herself perceiving new virtues in champagne with every glass, took the movements as indicative of a companion exploration of the spiritual resources of this vintage. She no longer called for it, but lifted a majestic finger (a Siddons or tenth-Muse finger, as Freshfield named it) behind the row of heads; upon which champagne speedily bubbled in the glasses. Laughter at the performance had fairly set in. Arabella glanced nervously round for Mr. Pericles, who looked at his watch and spread the fingers of one hand open thrice—an act that telegraphed fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes an opera troupe, with three famous chiefs and a renowned prima-donna were to arrive. The fact was known solely to Arabella and Mr. Pericles. It was the Surprise of the evening. But within fifteen minutes, what might not happen, with heads going at champagne-pace?
Arabella proposed to Freshfield to rise. “Don't the ladies go first?” the wit turned sensualist stammered; and incurred that worse than frown, a cold look of half-comprehension, which reduces indefinitely the proportions of the object gazed at. There were probably a dozen very young men in the room waiting to rise with their partners at a signal for dancing; and these could not be calculated upon to take an initiative, or follow one—as ladies, poor slaves! will do when the electric hostess rustles. The men present were non-conductors. Arabella knew that she could carry off the women, but such a proceeding would leave her father at the mercy of the wine; and, moreover, the probability was that Mrs. Chump would remain by him, and, sole in a company of males, explode her sex with ridicule, Brookfield in the bargain. So Arabella, under a prophetic sense of evil, waited; and this came of it. Mr. Pole patted Mrs. Chump's hand publicly. In spite of the steady hum of small-talk—in spite of Freshfield Sumner's circulation of a crisp anecdote—in spite of Lady Gosstre's kind effort to stop him by engaging him in conversation, Mr. Pole forced on for a speech. He said that he had not been the thing lately. It might be his legs, as his dear friend Martha, on his right, insisted; but he had felt it in his head, though as strong as any man present.
“Harrk at 'm!” cried Mrs. Chump, letting her eyes roll fondly away from him into her glass.
“Business, my lady!” Mr. Pole resumed. “Ah, you don't know what that is. We've got to work hard to keep our heads up equal with you. We don't swim with corks. And my old friend, Ralph Tinley—he sells iron, and has got a mine. That's simple. But, my God, ma'am, when a man has his eye on the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic, and the Baltic, and the Black Sea, and half-a-dozen colonies at once, he—you—”
“Well, it's a precious big eye he's got, Pole,” Mrs. Chump came to his relief.
“—he don't know whether he's a ruined dog, or a man to hold up his head in any company.”
“Oh, Lord, Pole, if ye're going to talk of beggary!” Mrs. Chump threw up her hands. “My lady, I naver could abide the name of 't. I'm a kind heart, ye know, but I can't bear a ragged friend. I hate 'm! He seems to give me a pinch.”
Having uttered this, it struck her that it was of a kind to convulse Mrs. Lupin, for whose seizures she could never accurately account; and looking round, she perceived, sure enough, that little forlorn body agitated, with a handkerchief to her mouth.
“As to Besworth,” Mr. Pole had continued, “I might buy twenty Besworths. If—if the cut shows the right card. If—” Sweat started on his forehead, and he lifted his eyebrows, blinking. “But none!” (he smote the table) “none can say I haven't been a good father! I've educated my girls to marry the best the land can show. I bought a house to marry them out of; it was their own idea.” He caught Arabella's eyes. “I thought so, at all events; for why should I have paid the money if I hadn't thought so? when then—yes, that sum...” (was he choking!) “saved me!—saved me!”
A piteous desperate outburst marked the last words, that seemed to struggle from a tightened cord.
“Not that there's anything the matter,” he resumed, with a very brisk wink. “I'm quite sound: heart's sound, lungs sound, stomach regular. I can see, and smell, and hear. Sense of touch is rather lumpy at times, I know; but the doctor says it's nothing—nothing at all; and I should be all right, if I didn't feel that I was always wearing a great leaden hat.”
“My gracious, Pole, if ye're not talkin' pos'tuv nonsense!” exclaimed Mrs. Chump.
“Well, my dear Martha” (Mr. Pole turned to her argumentatively), “how do you account for my legs? I feel it at top. I declare I've felt the edge of the brim half a yard out. Now, my lady, a man in that state—sound and strong as the youngest—but I mean a vexed man—worried man bothered man, he doesn't want a woman to look after him;—I mean, he does—he does! And why won't young girls—oh! they might, they might—see that? And when she's no extra expense, but brings him—helps him to face—and no one has said the world's a jolly world so often as I have. It's jolly!” He groaned.
Lady Charlotte saw Wilfrid gazing at one spot on the table without a change of countenance. She murmured to him, “What hits you hits me.”
Mr. Pole had recommenced, on the evident instigation of Laura Tinley, though Lady Gosstre and Freshfield Sumner had both sought to check the current. In Chump's lifetime, it appeared, he (Mr. Pole) had thought of Mrs. Chump with a respectful ardour; and albeit she was no longer what she was when Chump brought her over, a blooming Irish girl—“her hair exactly as now, the black curl half over the cheek, and a bright laugh, and a white neck, fat round arms, and—”
A shout of “Oh, Pole! ye seem to be undressin' of me before them all,” diverted the neighbours of the Beauty.
“Who would not like such praise?” Laura Tinley, to keep alive the subject, laid herself open to Freshfield by a remark.
“At the same personal peril?” he inquired smoothly.
Mr. Pericles stood up, crying “Enfin!” as the doors were flung open, and a great Signora of operatic fame entered the hall, supported on one side by a charming gentleman (a tenore), who shared her fame and more with her. In the rear were two working baritones; and behind them, outside, Italian heads might be discerned.
The names of the Queen of Song and Prince of Singers flew round the room; and Laura uttered words of real gratitude, for the delightful surprise, to Arabella, as the latter turned from her welcome of them. “She is exactly like Emilia—young,” was uttered. The thought went with a pang through Wilfrid's breast. When the Signora was asked if she would sup or take champagne, and she replied that she would sup by-and-by, and drink porter now, the likeness to Emilia was established among the Poles.
Meantime the unhappy Braintop received an indication that he must depart. As he left the hall he brushed past the chief-clerk of his office, who soon appeared bowing and elbowing among the guests. “What a substitute for me!” thought Braintop bitterly; and in the belief that this old clerk would certainly go back that night, and might undertake his commission, he lingered near the band on the verge of the lawn. A touch at his elbow startled him. In the half-light he discerned Emilia. “Don't say you have seen me,” were her first words. But when he gave her the letter, she drew him aside, and read it by the aid of lighted matches held in Braintop's hat drawing in her fervent breath to a “Yes! yes!” at the close, while she pressed the letter to her throat. Presently the singing began in an upper room, that had shortly before flashed with sudden light. Braintop entreated Emilia to go in, and then rejoiced that she had refused. They stood in a clear night-air, under a yellowing crescent, listening to the voice of an imperial woman. Impressed as he was, Braintop had, nevertheless, leisure to look out of his vinous mist and notice, with some misgiving, a parading light at a certain distance—apparently the light of cigarettes being freshly kindled. He was too much elated to feel alarm: but “If her father were to catch me again,” he thought. And with Emilia on his arm!
Mr. Pole's chief-clerk had brought discomposing news. He was received by an outburst of “No business, Payne; I won't have business!”
Turning to Mr. Pericles, the old clerk said: “I came rather for you, sir, not expecting to find Mr. Pole.” He was told by Mr. Pericles to speak what he had to say: and then the guests, who had fallen slightly back, heard a cavernous murmur; and some, whose eyes where on Mr. Pole, observed a sharp conflict of white and red in his face.
“There, there, there, there!” went Mr. Pole. “'Hem, Pericles!” His handkerchief was drawn out; and he became engaged, as it were, in wiping a moisture from the palm of his hand. “Pericles, have you got pluck now? Eh?”
Mr. Pericles had leaned down his ear for the whole of the news.
“Ten sossand,” he said, smoothing his waistbands, and then inserting his thumbs into the pits of his waistcoat. “Also a chance of forty. Let us not lose time for ze music.”
He walked away.
“I don't believe in that d—-d coolness, ma'am,” said Mr. Pole, wheeling round on Freshfield Sumner. “It's put on. That wears a mask; he's one of those confounded humbugs who wear a mask. Ten-forty! and all for a shrug; it's not human. I tell you, he does that just out of a sort of jealousy to rival me as an Englishman. Because I'm cool, he must be. Do you think a mother doesn't feel the loss of her children?”
“I fear that I must grow petticoats before I can answer purely feminine questions,” said Freshfield.
“Of course—of course,” assented Mr. Pole; “and a man feels like a mother to his money. For the moment, he does—for the moment. What are those fellows—Spartans—women who cut off their breasts—?”
Freshfield suggested, “Amazons.”
“No; they were women,” Mr. Pole corrected him; “and if anything hurt them, they never cried out. That's what—ha!—our friend Pericles is trying at. He's a fool. He won't sleep to-night. He'll lie till he gets cold in the feet, and then tuck them up like a Dutch doll, and perspire cold till his heart gives a bound, and he'll jump up and think his last hour's come. Wind on the stomach, do ye call it? I say it's wearing a mask!”
The bird's-eye of the little merchant shot decisive meaning.
Two young ladies had run from his neighbourhood, making as if to lift hands to ears. The sight of them brought Mrs. Chump to his side. “Pole! Pole!” she said, “is there annything wrong?”
“Wrong, Martha?” He bent to her, attempting Irish—“Arrah, now! and mustn't all be right if you're here?”
She smote his cheek fondly. “Ye're not a bit of an Irish-man, ye deer little fella.”
“Come along and dance,” cried he imperiously.
“A pretty spectacle—two fandangoes, when there's singing, ye silly!” Mrs. Chump led him upstairs, chafing one of his hands, and remarking loudly on the wonder it was to see his knees constantly 'give' as he walked.
On the dark lawn, pressing Wilfrid's written words for fiery nourishment to her heart, Emilia listened to the singing.
“Why do people make a noise, and not be satisfied to feel?” she said angrily to Braintop, as a great clapping of hands followed a divine aria. Her ideas on this point would have been different in the room.
By degrees a tender delirium took hold of her sense; and then a subtle emotion—which was partly prompted by dim rivalry with the voice that seemed to be speaking so richly to the man she loved—set her bosom rising and falling. She translated it to herself thus: “What a joy it will be to him to hear me now!” And in a pause she sang clear out—
“Prima d'Italia amica;”
and hung on the last note, to be sure that she would be heard by him.
Braintop saw the cigarette dash into sparks on the grass. At the same moment a snarl of critical vituperation told Emilia that she had offended taste and her father. He shouted her name, and, striding up to her, stumbled over Braintop, whom he caught with one hand, while the other fell firmly on Emilia.
“'Amica—amica-a-a,'” he burlesqued her stress of the luckless note—lowing it at her, and telling her in triumphant Italian that she was found at last. Braintop, after a short struggle, and an effort at speech, which was loosely shaken in his mouth, heard that he stood a prisoner. “Eh! you have not lost your cheeks,” insulted his better acquaintance with English slang.
Alternately in this queer tongue and in Italian the pair of victims were addressed.
Emilia knew her father's temper. He had a habit of dallying with an evil passion till it boiled over and possessed him. Believing Braintop to be in danger of harm, she beckoned to some of the faces crowding the windows; but the movement was not seen, as none of the circumstances were at all understood. Wilfrid, however, knew well who had sung those three bars, concerning which the 'Prima donna' questioned Mr. Pericles, and would not be put off by hearing that it was a startled jackdaw, or an owl, and an ole nightingale. The Greek rubbed his hands. “Now to recommence,” he said; “and we shall not notice a jackdaw again.” His eye went sideways watchfully at Wilfrid. “You like zat piece of opera?”
“Immensely,” said Wilfrid, half bowing to the Signora—to whom, as to Majesty, Mr. Pericles introduced him, and fixed him.
“Now! To seats!”
Mr. Pericles' mandates was being obeyed, when a cry of “Wilfrid!” from Emilia below, raised a flutter.
Mr. Pole had been dozing in his chair. He rose at the cry, looking hard, with a mechanical jerk of the neck, at two or three successive faces, and calling, “Somebody—somebody” to take his outstretched hand trembling in a paroxysm of nervous terror.
Hearing his son's name again, but more faintly, he raised his voice for Martha. “Don't let that girl come near me! I—I can't get on with foreign girls!”
His eyes went among the curious faces surrounding him. “Wilfrid!” he shouted. To the second summons, “Sir” was replied, in the silence. Neither saw the other as they spoke.
“Are you going out to her, Wilfrid?”
“Someone called me, sir.”
“He's got the cunning of hell,” said Mr. Pole, baffled by his own agitation.
“Oh! don't talk o' that place,” moaned Mrs. Chump.
“Stop!” cried the old man. “Are you going? Stop! you shan't do mischief. I mean—there—stop! Don't go. You're not to go. I say you're not to go out.”
Emphasis and gesticulations gave their weight to the plain words.
But rage at the upset of all sentiments and dignity that day made Wilfrid reckless, and he now felt his love to be all he had. He heard his Emilia being dragged away to misery—perhaps to be sold to shame. Maddened, he was incapable of understanding his father's state, or caring for what the world thought. His sisters gathered near him, but were voiceless.
“Is he gone?” Mr. Pole burst forward. “You're gone, sir? Wilfrid, have you gone to that girl? I ask you whether...(there's one shot at my heart,” he added in a swift undertone to one of the heads near him, while he caught at his breast with both hands). “Wilfrid, will you stay here?”
“For God's sake, go to him, Wilfrid,” murmured Adela. “I can't.”
“Because if you do—if you don't—I mean, if you go...” The old man gasped at the undertone. “Now I have got it in my throat.”
A quick physical fear caught hold of him. In a moment his voice changed to entreaty. “I beg you won't go, my dear boy. Wilfrid, I tell you, don't go. Because, you wouldn't act like a d—d—I'm not angry; but it is like acting like a—Here's company, Wilfrid; come to me, my boy; do come here. You mayn't ha—have your poor old father long, now he's got you u—up in the world. I mean accidents, for I'm sound enough; only a little nervous from brain—Is he gone?”
Wilfrid was then leaving the room.
Lady Gosstre had been speaking to Mr. Powys. She was about to say a word to Lady Charlotte, when the latter walked to the doorway, and. In a manner that smote his heart with a spasm of gratitude, said; “Don't heed these people. He will bring on a fit if you don't stop. His nerves are out, and the wine they have given him... Go to him: I will go to Emilia, and do as much for her as you could.”
Wilfrid reached his father in time to see him stagger back into the arms of Mrs. Chump, whose supplication was for the female stimulant known as 'something.'
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