Rhoda Fleming. Complete

“Well, Missis,” he said, nodding to her; “you win, you see. I thought you would; I’d have sworn you would. Brandy’s stronger than blood, with some of our young fellows.”

“If you please, Mr. Eccles,” she replied, “Robert’s sending of me was to know if the horse was unhurt and safe.”

“Won’t his legs carry him yet, Missis?”

“His legs have been graciously spared, Mr. Eccles; it’s his head.”

“That’s where the liquor flies, I’m told.”

“Pray, Mr. Eccles, believe me when I declare he hasn’t touched a drop of anything but tea in my house this past night.”

“I’m sorry for that; I’d rather have him go to you. If he takes it, let him take it good; and I’m given to understand that you’ve a reputation that way. Just tell him from me, he’s at liberty to play the devil with himself, but not with my beasts.”

The farmer continued his labour.

“No, you ain’t a hard man, surely,” cried the widow. “Not when I say he was sober, Mr. Eccles; and was thrown, and made insensible?”

“Never knew such a thing to happen to him, Missis, and, what’s more, I don’t believe it. Mayhap you’re come for his things: his Aunt Anne’s indoors, and she’ll give ‘em up, and gladly. And my compliments to Robert, and the next time he fancies visiting Warbeach, he’d best forward a letter to that effect.”

Mrs. Boulby curtseyed humbly. “You think bad of me, sir, for keeping a public; but I love your son as my own, and if I might presume to say so, Mr. Eccles, you will be proud of him too before you die. I know no more than you how he fell yesterday, but I do know he’d not been drinking, and have got bitter bad enemies.”

“And that’s not astonishing, Missis.”

“No, Mr. Eccles; and a man who’s brave besides being good soon learns that.”

“Well spoken, Missis.”

“Is Robert to hear he’s denied his father’s house?”

“I never said that, Mrs. Boulby. Here’s my principle—My house is open to my blood, so long as he don’t bring downright disgrace on it, and then any one may claim him that likes I won’t give him money, because I know of a better use for it; and he shan’t ride my beasts, because he don’t know how to treat ‘em. That’s all.”

“And so you keep within the line of your duty, sir,” the widow summed his speech.

“So I hope to,” said the farmer.

“There’s comfort in that,” she replied.

“As much as there’s needed,” said he.

The widow curtseyed again. “It’s not to trouble you, sir, I called. Robert—thanks be to Above!—is not hurt serious, though severe.”

“Where’s he hurt?” the farmer asked rather hurriedly.

“In the head, it is.”

“What have you come for?”

“First, his best hat.”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the farmer. “Well, if that ‘ll mend his head it’s at his service, I’m sure.”

Sick at his heartlessness, the widow scattered emphasis over her concluding remarks. “First, his best hat, he wants; and his coat and clean shirt; and they mend the looks of a man, Mr. Eccles; and it’s to look well is his object: for he’s not one to make a moan of himself, and doctors may starve before he’d go to any of them. And my begging prayer to you is, that when you see your son, you’ll not tell him I let you know his head or any part of him was hurt. I wish you good morning, Mr. Eccles.”

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Boulby. You’re a respectable woman.”

“Not to be soaped,” she murmured to herself in a heat.

The apparently medicinal articles of attire were obtained from Aunt Anne, without a word of speech on the part of that pale spinster. The deferential hostility between the two women acknowledged an intervening chasm. Aunt Anne produced a bundle, and placed the hat on it, upon which she had neatly pinned a tract, “The Drunkard’s Awakening!” Mrs. Boulby glanced her eye in wrath across this superscription, thinking to herself, “Oh, you good people! how you make us long in our hearts for trouble with you.” She controlled the impulse, and mollified her spirit on her way home by distributing stray leaves of the tract to the outlying heaps of rubbish, and to one inquisitive pig, who was looking up from a badly-smelling sty for what the heavens might send him.

She found Robert with his arm doubled over a basin, and Susan sponging cold water on it.

“No bones broken, mother!” he sang out. “I’m sound; all right again. Six hours have done it this time. Is it a thaw? You needn’t tell me what the old dad has been saying. I shall be ready to breakfast in half an hour.”

“Lord, what a big arm it is!” exclaimed the widow. “And no wonder, or how would you be a terror to men? You naughty boy, to think of stirring! Here you’ll lie.”

“Ah, will I?” said Robert: and he gave a spring, and sat upright in the bed, rather white with the effort, which seemed to affect his mind, for he asked dubiously, “What do I look like, mother?”

She brought him the looking-glass, and Susan being dismissed, he examined his features.

“Dear!” said the widow, sitting down on the bed; “it ain’t much for me to guess you’ve got an appointment.”

“At twelve o’clock, mother.”

“With her?” she uttered softly.

“It’s with a lady, mother.”

“And so many enemies prowling about, Robert, my dear! Don’t tell me they didn’t fall upon you last night. I said nothing, but I’d swear it on the Book. Do you think you can go?”

“Why, mother, I go by my feelings, and there’s no need to think at all, or God knows what I should think.”

The widow shook her head. “Nothing ‘ll stop you, I suppose?”

“Nothing inside of me will, mother.”

“Doesn’t she but never mind. I’ve no right to ask, Robert; and if I have curiosity, it’s about last night, and why you should let villains escape. But there’s no accounting for a man’s notions; only, this I say, and I do say it, Nic Sedgett, he’s at the bottom of any mischief brewed against you down here. And last night Stephen Bilton, or somebody, declared that Nic Sedgett had been seen up at Fairly.”

“Selling eggs, mother. Why shouldn’t he? We mustn’t complain of his getting an honest livelihood.”

“He’s black-blooded, Robert; and I never can understand why the Lord did not make him a beast in face. I’m told that creature’s found pleasing by the girls.”

“Ugh, mother, I’m not.”

“She won’t have you, Robert?”

He laughed. “We shall see to-day.”

“You deceiving boy!” cried the widow; “and me not know it’s Mrs. Lovell you’re going to meet! and would to heaven she’d see the worth of ye, for it’s a born lady you ought to marry.”

“Just feel in my pockets, mother, and you won’t be so ready with your talk of my marrying. And now I’ll get up. I feel as if my legs had to learn over again how to bear me. The old dad, bless his heart! gave me sound wind and limb to begin upon, so I’m not easily stumped, you see, though I’ve been near on it once or twice in my life.”

Mrs. Boulby murmured, “Ah! are you still going to be at war with those gentlemen, Robert?”

He looked at her steadily, while a shrewd smile wrought over his face, and then taking her hand, he said, “I’ll tell you a little; you deserve it, and won’t tattle. My curse is, I’m ashamed to talk about my feelings; but there’s no shame in being fond of a girl, even if she refuses to have anything to say to you, is there? No, there isn’t. I went with my dear old aunt’s money to a farmer in Kent, and learnt farming; clear of the army first, by—But I must stop that burst of swearing. Half the time I’ve been away, I was there. The farmer’s a good, sober, downhearted man—a sort of beaten Englishman, who don’t know it, tough, and always backing. He has two daughters: one went to London, and came to harm, of a kind. The other I’d prick this vein for and bleed to death, singing; and she hates me! I wish she did. She thought me such a good young man! I never drank; went to bed early, was up at work with the birds. Mr. Robert Armstrong! That changeing of my name was like a lead cap on my head. I was never myself with it, felt hang-dog—it was impossible a girl could care for such a fellow as I was. Mother, just listen: she’s dark as a gipsy. She’s the faithfullest, stoutest-hearted creature in the world. She has black hair, large brown eyes; see her once! She’s my mate. I could say to her, ‘Stand there; take guard of a thing;’ and I could be dead certain of her—she’d perish at her post. Is the door locked? Lock the door; I won’t be seen when I speak of her. Well, never mind whether she’s handsome or not. She isn’t a lady; but she’s my lady; she’s the woman I could be proud of. She sends me to the devil! I believe a woman ‘d fall in love with her cheeks, they are so round and soft and kindly coloured. Think me a fool; I am. And here am I, away from her, and I feel that any day harm may come to her, and she ‘ll melt, and be as if the devils of hell were mocking me. Who’s to keep harm from her when I’m away? What can I do but drink and forget? Only now, when I wake up from it, I’m a crawling wretch at her feet. If I had her feet to kiss! I’ve never kissed her—never! And no man has kissed her. Damn my head! here’s the ache coming on. That’s my last oath, mother. I wish there was a Bible handy, but I’ll try and stick to it without. My God! when I think of her, I fancy everything on earth hangs still and doubts what’s to happen. I’m like a wheel, and go on spinning. Feel my pulse now. Why is it I can’t stop it? But there she is, and I could crack up this old world to know what’s coming. I was mild as milk all those days I was near her. My comfort is, she don’t know me. And that’s my curse too! If she did, she’d know as clear as day I’m her mate, her match, the man for her. I am, by heaven!—that’s an oath permitted. To see the very soul I want, and to miss her! I’m down here, mother; she loves her sister, and I must learn where her sister’s to be found. One of those gentlemen up at Fairly’s the guilty man. I don’t say which; perhaps I don’t know. But oh, what a lot of lightnings I see in the back of my head!”

Robert fell back on the pillow. Mrs. Boulby wiped her eyes. Her feelings were overwhelmed with mournful devotion to the passionate young man; and she expressed them practically: “A rump-steak would never digest in his poor stomach!”

He seemed to be of that opinion too, for when, after lying till eleven, he rose and appeared at the breakfast-table, he ate nothing but crumbs of dry bread. It was curious to see his precise attention to the neatness of his hat and coat, and the nervous eye he cast upon the clock, while brushing and accurately fixing these garments. The hat would not sit as he was accustomed to have it, owing to the bruise on his head, and he stood like a woman petulant with her milliner before the glass; now pressing the hat down till the pain was insufferable, and again trying whether it presented him acceptably in the enforced style of his wearing it. He persisted in this, till Mrs. Boulby’s exclamation of wonder admonished him of the ideas received by other eyes than his own. When we appear most incongruous, we are often exposing the key to our characters; and how much his vanity, wounded by Rhoda, had to do with his proceedings down at Warbeach, it were unfair to measure just yet, lest his finer qualities be cast into shade, but to what degree it affected him will be seen.

Mrs. Boulby’s persuasions induced him to take a stout silver-topped walking-stick of her husband’s, a relic shaped from the wood of the Royal George; leaning upon which rather more like a Naval pensioner than he would have cared to know, he went forth to his appointment with the lady.

CHAPTER XX

The park-sward of Fairly, white with snow, rolled down in long sweeps to the salt water: and under the last sloping oak of the park there was a gorse-bushed lane, green in Summer, but now bearing cumbrous blossom—like burdens of the crisp snow-fall. Mrs. Lovell sat on horseback here, and alone, with her gauntleted hand at her waist, charmingly habited in tone with the landscape. She expected a cavalier, and did not perceive the approach of a pedestrian, but bowed quietly when Robert lifted his hat.

“They say you are mad. You see, I trust myself to you.”

“I wish I could thank you for your kindness, madam.”

“Are you ill?”

“I had a fall last night, madam.”

The lady patted her horse’s neck.

“I haven’t time to inquire about it. You understand that I cannot give you more than a minute.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Let us say five exactly. To begin: I can’t affect to be ignorant of the business which brings you down here. I won’t pretend to lecture you about the course you have taken; but, let me distinctly assure you, that the gentleman you have chosen to attack in this extraordinary manner, has done no wrong to you or to any one. It is, therefore, disgracefully unjust to single him out. You know he cannot possibly fight you. I speak plainly.”

“Yes, madam,” said Robert. “I’ll answer plainly. He can’t fight a man like me. I know it. I bear him no ill-will. I believe he’s innocent enough in this matter, as far as acts go.”

“That makes your behaviour to him worse!”

Robert looked up into her eyes.

“You are a lady. You won’t be shocked at what I tell you.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Lovell, hastily: “I have learnt—I am aware of the tale. Some one has been injured or, you think so. I don’t accuse you of madness, but, good heavens! what means have you been pursuing! Indeed, sir, let your feelings be as deeply engaged as possible, you have gone altogether the wrong way to work.”

“Not if I have got your help by it, madam.”

“Gallantly spoken.”

She smiled with a simple grace. The next moment she consulted her watch.

“Time has gone faster than I anticipated. I must leave you. Let this be our stipulation:”

She lowered her voice.

“You shall have the address you require. I will undertake to see her myself, when next I am in London. It will be soon. In return, sir, favour me with your word of honour not to molest this gentleman any further. Will you do that? You may trust me.”

“I do, madam, with all my soul!” said Robert.

“That’s sufficient. I ask no more. Good morning.”

Her parting bow remained with him like a vision. Her voice was like the tinkling of harp-strings about his ears. The colour of her riding-habit this day, harmonious with the snow-faced earth, as well as the gentle mission she had taken upon herself, strengthened his vivid fancy in blessing her as something quite divine.

He thought for the first time in his life bitterly of the great fortune which fell to gentlemen in meeting and holding equal converse with so adorable a creature; and he thought of Rhoda as being harshly earthly; repulsive in her coldness as that black belt of water contrasted against the snow on the shores.

He walked some paces in the track of Mrs. Lovell’s horse, till his doing so seemed too presumptuous, though to turn the other way and retrace his steps was downright hateful: and he stood apparently in profound contemplation of a ship of war and the trees of the forest behind the masts. Either the fatigue of standing, or emotion, caused his head to throb, so that he heard nothing, not even men’s laughter; but looking up suddenly, he beheld, as in a picture, Mrs. Lovell with some gentlemen walking their horses toward him. The lady gazed softly over his head, letting her eyes drop a quiet recognition in passing; one or two of the younger gentlemen stared mockingly.

Edward Blancove was by Mrs. Lovell’s side. His eyes fixed upon Robert with steady scrutiny, and Robert gave him a similar inspection, though not knowing why. It was like a child’s open look, and he was feeling childish, as if his brain had ceased to act. One of the older gentlemen, with a military aspect, squared his shoulders, and touching an end of his moustache, said, half challengingly,—

“You are dismounted to-day?”

“I have only one horse,” Robert simply replied.

Algernon Blancove came last. He neither spoke nor looked at his enemy, but warily clutched his whip. All went by, riding into line some paces distant; and again they laughed as they bent forward to the lady, shouting.

“Odd, to have out the horses on a day like this,” Robert thought, and resumed his musing as before. The lady’s track now led him homeward, for he had no will of his own. Rounding the lane, he was surprised to see Mrs. Boulby by the hedge. She bobbed like a beggar woman, with a rueful face.

“My dear,” she said, in apology for her presence, “I shouldn’t ha’ interfered, if there was fair play. I’m Englishwoman enough for that. I’d have stood by, as if you was a stranger. Gentlemen always give fair play before a woman. That’s why I come, lest this appointment should ha’ proved a pitfall to you. Now you’ll come home, won’t you; and forgive me?”

“I’ll come to the old Pilot now, mother,” said Robert, pressing her hand.

“That’s right; and ain’t angry with me for following of you?”

“Follow your own game, mother.”

“I did, Robert; and nice and vexed I am, if I’m correct in what I heard say, as that lady and her folk passed, never heeding an old woman’s ears. They made a bet of you, dear, they did.”

“I hope the lady won,” said Robert, scarce hearing.

“And it was she who won, dear. She was to get you to meet her, and give up, and be beaten like, as far as I could understand their chatter; gentlefolks laugh so when they talk; and they can afford to laugh, for they has the best of it. But I’m vexed; just as if I’d felt big and had burst. I want you to be peaceful, of course I do; but I don’t like my boy made a bet of.”

“Oh, tush, mother,” said Robert impatiently.

“I heard ‘em, my dear; and complimenting the lady they was, as they passed me. If it vexes you my thinking it, I won’t, dear; I reelly won’t. I see it lowers you, for there you are at your hat again. It is lowering, to be made a bet of. I’ve that spirit, that if you was well and sound, I’d rather have you fighting ‘em. She’s a pleasant enough lady to look at, not a doubt; small-boned, and slim, and fair.”

Robert asked which way they had gone.

“Back to the stables, my dear; I heard ‘em say so, because one gentleman said that the spectacle was over, and the lady had gained the day; and the snow was balling in the horses’ feet; and go they’d better, before my lord saw them out. And another said, you were a wild man she’d tamed; and they said, you ought to wear a collar, with Mrs. Lovell’s, her name, graved on it. But don’t you be vexed; you may guess they’re not my Robert’s friends. And, I do assure you, Robert, your hat’s neat, if you’d only let it be comfortable: such fidgeting worries the brim. You’re best in appearance—and I always said it—when stripped for boxing. Hats are gentlemen’s things, and becomes them like as if a title to their heads; though you’d bear being Sir Robert, that you would; and for that matter, your hat is agreeable to behold, and not like the run of our Sunday hats; only you don’t seem easy in it. Oh, oh! my tongue’s a yard too long. It’s the poor head aching, and me to forget it. It’s because you never will act invalidy; and I remember how handsome you were one day in the field behind our house, when you boxed a wager with Simon Billet, the waterman; and you was made a bet of then, for my husband betted on you; and that’s what made me think of comparisons of you out of your hat and you in it.”

Thus did Mrs. Boulby chatter along the way. There was an eminence a little out of the road, overlooking the Fairly stables. Robert left her and went to this point, from whence he beheld the horsemen with the grooms at the horses’ heads.

“Thank God, I’ve only been a fool for five minutes!” he summed up his sensations at the sight. He shut his eyes, praying with all his might never to meet Mrs. Lovell more. It was impossible for him to combat the suggestion that she had befooled him; yet his chivalrous faith in women led him to believe, that as she knew Dahlia’s history, she would certainly do her best for the poor girl, and keep her word to him. The throbbing of his head stopped all further thought. It had become violent. He tried to gather his ideas, but the effort was like that of a light dreamer to catch the sequence of a dream, when blackness follows close up, devouring all that is said and done. In despair, he thought with kindness of Mrs. Boulby’s brandy.

“Mother,” he said, rejoining her, “I’ve got a notion brandy can’t hurt a man when he’s in bed. I’ll go to bed, and you shall brew me some; and you’ll let no one come nigh me; and if I talk light-headed, it’s blank paper and scribble, mind that.”

The widow promised devoutly to obey all his directions; but he had begun to talk light-headed before he was undressed. He called on the name of a Major Waring, of whom Mrs. Boulby had heard him speak tenderly as a gentleman not ashamed to be his friend; first reproaching him for not being by, and then by the name of Percy, calling to him endearingly, and reproaching himself for not having written to him.

“Two to one, and in the dark!” he kept moaning “and I one to twenty, Percy, all in broad day. Was it fair, I ask?”

Robert’s outcries became anything but “blank paper and scribble” to the widow, when he mentioned Nic Sedgett’s name, and said: “Look over his right temple he’s got my mark a second time.”

Hanging by his bedside, Mrs. Boulby strung together, bit by bit, the history of that base midnight attack, which had sent her glorious boy bleeding to her. Nic Sedgett; she could understand, was the accomplice of one of the Fairly gentlemen; but of which one, she could not discover, and consequently set him down as Mr. Algernon Blancove.

By diligent inquiry, she heard that Algernon had been seen in company with the infamous Nic, and likewise that the countenance of Nicodemus was reduced to accept the consolation of a poultice, which was confirmation sufficient. By nightfall Robert was in the doctor’s hands, unconscious of Mrs. Boulby’s breach of agreement. His father and his aunt were informed of his condition, and prepared, both of them, to bow their heads to the close of an ungodly career. It was known over Warbeach, that Robert lay in danger, and believed that he was dying.

CHAPTER XXI

Mrs. Boulby’s ears had not deceived her; it had been a bet: and the day would have gone disastrously with Robert, if Mrs. Lovell had not won her bet. What was heroism to Warbeach, appeared very outrageous blackguardism up at Fairly. It was there believed by the gentlemen, though rather against evidence, that the man was a sturdy ruffian, and an infuriated sot. The first suggestion was to drag him before the magistrates; but against this Algernon protested, declaring his readiness to defend himself, with so vehement a magnanimity, that it was clearly seen the man had a claim on him. Lord Elling, however, when he was told of these systematic assaults upon one of his guests, announced his resolve to bring the law into operation. Algernon heard it as the knell to his visit.

He was too happy, to go away willingly; and the great Jew City of London was exceedingly hot for him at that period; but to stay and risk an exposure of his extinct military career, was not possible. In his despair, he took Mrs. Lovell entirely into his confidence; in doing which, he only filled up the outlines of what she already knew concerning Edward. He was too useful to the lady for her to afford to let him go. No other youth called her “angel” for listening complacently to strange stories of men and their dilemmas; no one fetched and carried for her like Algernon; and she was a woman who cherished dog-like adoration, and could not part with it. She had also the will to reward it.

At her intercession, Robert was spared an introduction to the magistrates. She made light of his misdemeanours, assuring everybody that so splendid a horseman deserved to be dealt with differently from other offenders. The gentlemen who waited upon Farmer Eccles went in obedience to her orders.

Then came the scene on Ditley Marsh, described to that assembly at the Pilot, by Stephen Bilton, when she perceived that Robert was manageable in silken trammels, and made a bet that she would show him tamed. She won her bet, and saved the gentlemen from soiling their hands, for which they had conceived a pressing necessity, and they thanked her, and paid their money over to Algernon, whom she constituted her treasurer. She was called “the man-tamer,” gracefully acknowledging the compliment. Colonel Barclay, the moustachioed horseman, who had spoken the few words to Robert in passing, now remarked that there was an end of the military profession.