Rhoda Fleming. Complete

Her eyes met Robert’s, and he said startlingly: “Just like a woman!”

“Why?” but she had caught the significance, and blushed with spite.

“He was the first to praise you.”

“You are brutal to me, Robert.”

“My name at last! You accused me of that sort of thing before, in this room.”

Rhoda stood up. “I will wish you good night.”

“And now you take my hand.”

“Good night,” they uttered simultaneously; but Robert did not give up the hand he had got in his own. His eyes grew sharp, and he squeezed the fingers.

“I’m bound,” she cried.

“Once!” Robert drew her nearer to him.

“Let me go.”

“Once!” he reiterated. “Rhoda, as I’ve never kissed you—once!”

“No: don’t anger me.”

“No one has ever kissed you?”

“Never.”

“Then, I—” His force was compelling the straightened figure.

Had he said, “Be mine!” she might have softened to his embrace; but there was no fire of divining love in her bosom to perceive her lover’s meaning. She read all his words as a placard on a board, and revolted from the outrage of submitting her lips to one who was not to be her husband. His jealousy demanded that gratification foremost. The “Be mine!” was ready enough to follow.

“Let me go, Robert.”

She was released. The cause for it was the opening of the door. Anthony stood there.

A more astounding resemblance to the phantasm of a dream was never presented. He was clad in a manner to show forth the condition of his wits, in partial night and day attire: one of the farmer’s nightcaps was on his head, surmounted by his hat. A confused recollection of the necessity for trousers, had made him draw on those garments sufficiently to permit of the movement of his short legs, at which point their subserviency to the uses ended. Wrinkled with incongruous clothing from head to foot, and dazed by the light, he peered on them, like a mouse magnified and petrified.

“Dearest uncle!” Rhoda went to him.

Anthony nodded, pointing to the door leading out of the house.

“I just want to go off—go off. Never you mind me. I’m only going off.”

“You must go to your bed, uncle.”

“Oh, Lord! no. I’m going off, my dear. I’ve had sleep enough for forty. I—” he turned his mouth to Rhoda’s ear, “I don’t want t’ see th’ old farmer.” And, as if he had given a conclusive reason for his departure, he bored towards the door, repeating it, and bawling additionally, “in the morning.”

“You have seen him, uncle. You have seen him. It’s over,” said Rhoda.

Anthony whispered: “I don’t want t’ see th’ old farmer.”

“But, you have seen him, uncle.”

“In the morning, my dear. Not in the morning. He’ll be looking and asking, ‘Where away, brother Tony?’ ‘Where’s your banker’s book, brother Tony?’ ‘How’s money-market, brother Tony?’ I can’t see th’ old farmer.”

It was impossible to avoid smiling: his imitation of the farmer’s country style was exact.

She took his hands, and used every persuasion she could think of to induce him to return to his bed; nor was he insensible to argument, or superior to explanation.

“Th’ old farmer thinks I’ve got millions, my dear. You can’t satisfy him. He… I don’t want t’ see him in the morning. He thinks I’ve got millions. His mouth’ll go down. I don’t want… You don’t want him to look… And I can’t count now; I can’t count a bit. And every post I see ‘s a policeman. I ain’t hiding. Let ‘em take the old man. And he was a faithful servant, till one day he got up on a regular whirly-go-round, and ever since…such a little boy! I’m frightened o’ you, Rhoda.”

“I will do everything for you,” said Rhoda, crying wretchedly.

“Because, the young squire says,” Anthony made his voice mysterious.

“Yes, yes,” Rhoda stopped him; “and I consent:” she gave a hurried half-glance behind her. “Come, uncle. Oh! pity! don’t let me think your reason’s gone. I can get you the money, but if you go foolish, I cannot help you.”

Her energy had returned to her with the sense of sacrifice. Anthony eyed her tears. “We’ve sat on a bank and cried together, haven’t we?” he said. “And counted ants, we have. Shall we sit in the sun together to-morrow? Say, we shall. Shall we? A good long day in the sun and nobody looking at me ‘s my pleasure.”

Rhoda gave him the assurance, and he turned and went upstairs with her, docile at the prospect of hours to be passed in the sunlight.

Yet, when morning came, he had disappeared. Robert also was absent from the breakfast-table. The farmer made no remarks, save that he reckoned Master Gammon was right—in allusion to the veteran’s somnolent observation overnight; and strange things were acted before his eyes.

There came by the morning delivery of letters one addressed to “Miss Fleming.” He beheld his daughters rise, put their hands out, and claim it, in a breath; and they gazed upon one another like the two women demanding the babe from the justice of the Wise King. The letter was placed in Rhoda’s hand; Dahlia laid hers on it. Their mouths were shut; any one not looking at them would have been unaware that a supreme conflict was going on in the room. It was a strenuous wrestle of their eyeballs, like the “give way” of athletes pausing. But the delirious beat down the constitutional strength. A hard bright smile ridged the hollow of Dahlia’s cheeks. Rhoda’s dark eyes shut; she let go her hold, and Dahlia thrust the letter in against her bosom, snatched it out again, and dipped her face to roses in a jug, and kissing Mrs. Sumfit, ran from the room for a single minute; after which she came back smiling with gravely joyful eyes and showing a sedate readiness to eat and conclude the morning meal.

What did this mean? The farmer could have made allowance for Rhoda’s behaving so, seeing that she notoriously possessed intellect; and he had the habit of charging all freaks and vagaries of manner upon intellect.

But Dahlia was a soft creature, without this apology for extravagance, and what right had she to letters addressed to “Miss Fleming?” The farmer prepared to ask a question, and was further instigated to it by seeing Mrs. Sumfit’s eyes roll sympathetic under a burden of overpowering curiosity and bewilderment. On the point of speaking, he remembered that he had pledged his word to ask no questions; he feared to—that was the secret; he had put his trust in Rhoda’s assurance, and shrank from a spoken suspicion. So, checking himself, he broke out upon Mrs. Sumfit: “Now, then, mother!” which caused her to fluster guiltily, she having likewise given her oath to be totally unquestioning, even as was Master Gammon, whom she watched with a deep envy. Mrs. Sumfit excused the anxious expression of her face by saying that she was thinking of her dairy, whither, followed by the veteran, she retired.

Rhoda stood eyeing Dahlia, nerved to battle against the contents of that letter, though in the first conflict she had been beaten. “Oh, this curse of love!” she thought in her heart; and as Dahlia left the room, flushed, stupefied, and conscienceless, Rhoda the more readily told her father the determination which was the result of her interview with Robert.

No sooner had she done so, than a strange fluttering desire to look on Robert awoke within her bosom. She left the house, believing that she went abroad to seek her uncle, and walked up a small grass-knoll, a little beyond the farm-yard, from which she could see green corn-tracts and the pastures by the river, the river flowing oily under summer light, and the slow-footed cows, with their heads bent to the herbage; far-away sheep, and white hawthorn bushes, and deep hedge-ways bursting out of the trimness of the earlier season; and a nightingale sang among the hazels near by.

This scene of unthrobbing peacefulness was beheld by Rhoda with her first conscious delight in it. She gazed round on the farm, under a quick new impulse of affection for her old home. And whose hand was it that could alone sustain the working of the farm, and had done so, without reward? Her eyes travelled up to Wrexby Hall, perfectly barren of any feeling that she was to enter the place, aware only that it was full of pain for her. She accused herself, but could not accept the charge of her having ever hoped for transforming events that should twist and throw the dear old farm-life long back into the fields of memory. Nor could she understand the reason of her continued coolness to Robert. Enough of accurate reflection was given her to perceive that discontent with her station was the original cause of her discontent now. What she had sown she was reaping:—and wretchedly colourless are these harvests of our dream! The sun has not shone on them. They may have a tragic blood-hue, as with Dahlia’s; but they will never have any warm, and fresh, and nourishing sweetness—the juice which is in a single blade of grass.

A longing came upon Rhoda to go and handle butter. She wished to smell it as Mrs. Sumfit drubbed and patted and flattened and rounded it in the dairy; and she ran down the slope, meeting her father at the gate. He was dressed in his brushed suit, going she knew whither, and when he asked if she had seen her uncle, she gave for answer a plain negative, and longed more keenly to be at work with her hands, and to smell the homely creamy air under the dairy-shed.

CHAPTER XLIV

She watched her father as he went across the field and into the lane. Her breathing was suppressed till he appeared in view at different points, more and more distant, and then she sighed heavily, stopped her breathing, and hoped her unshaped hope again. The last time he was in sight, she found herself calling to him with a voice like that of a burdened sleeper: her thought being, “How can you act so cruelly to Robert!” He passed up Wrexby Heath, and over the black burnt patch where the fire had caught the furzes on a dry Maynight, and sank on the side of the Hall.

When we have looked upon a picture of still green life with a troubled soul, and the blow falls on us, we accuse Nature of our own treachery to her. Rhoda hurried from the dairy-door to shut herself up in her room and darken the light surrounding her. She had turned the lock, and was about systematically to pull down the blind, when the marvel of beholding Dahlia stepping out of the garden made her for a moment less the creature of her sickened senses. Dahlia was dressed for a walk, and she went very fast. The same paralysis of motion afflicted Rhoda as when she was gazing after her father; but her hand stretched out instinctively for her bonnet when Dahlia had crossed the green and the mill-bridge, and was no more visible. Rhoda drew her bonnet on, and caught her black silk mantle in her hand, and without strength to throw it across her shoulders, dropped before her bed, and uttered a strange prayer. “Let her die rather than go back to disgrace, my God! my God!”

She tried to rise, and failed in the effort, and superstitiously renewed her prayer. “Send death to her rather!”—and Rhoda’s vision under her shut eyes conjured up clouds and lightnings, and spheres in conflagration.

There is nothing so indicative of fevered or of bad blood as the tendency to counsel the Almighty how he shall deal with his creatures. The strain of a long uncertainty, and the late feverish weeks had distempered the fine blood of the girl, and her acts and words were becoming remoter exponents of her character.

She bent her head in a blind doze that gave her strength to rise. As swiftly as she could she went in the track of her sister.

That morning, Robert had likewise received a letter. It was from Major Waring, and contained a bank-note, and a summons to London, as also an enclosure from Mrs. Boulby of Warbeach; the nature of which was an advertisement cut out of the county paper, notifying to one Robert Eccles that his aunt Anne had died, and that there was a legacy for him, to be paid over upon application. Robert crossed the fields, laughing madly at the ironical fate which favoured him a little and a little, and never enough, save just to keep him swimming.

The letter from Major Waring said:—

“I must see you immediately. Be quick and come. I begin to be of your opinion—there are some things which we must take into our own hands and deal summarily with.”

“Ay!—ay!” Robert gave tongue in the clear morning air, scenting excitement and eager for it as a hound.

More was written, which he read subsequently

“I wrong,” Percy’s letter continued, “the best of women. She was driven to my door. There is, it seems, some hope that Dahlia will find herself free. At any rate, keep guard over her, and don’t leave her. Mrs. Lovell has herself been moving to make discoveries down at Warbeach. Mr. Blancove has nearly quitted this sphere. She nursed him—I was jealous!—the word’s out. Truth, courage, and suffering touch Margaret’s heart.

“Yours,“Percy.”

Jumping over a bank, Robert came upon Anthony, who was unsteadily gazing at a donkey that cropped the grass by a gate.

“Here you are,” said Robert, and took his arm.

Anthony struggled, though he knew the grasp was friendly; but he was led along: nor did Robert stop until they reached Greatham, five miles beyond Wrexby, where he entered the principal inn and called for wine.

“You want spirit: you want life,” said Robert.

Anthony knew that he wanted no wine, whatever his needs might be. Yet the tender ecstacy of being paid for was irresistible, and he drank, saying, “Just one glass, then.”

Robert pledged him. They were in a private room, of which, having ordered up three bottles of sherry, Robert locked the door. The devil was in him. He compelled Anthony to drink an equal portion with himself, alternately frightening and cajoling the old man.

“Drink, I tell you. You’ve robbed me, and you shall drink!”

“I haven’t, I haven’t,” Anthony whined.

“Drink, and be silent. You’ve robbed me, and you shall drink! and by heaven! if you resist, I’ll hand you over to bluer imps than you’ve ever dreamed of, old gentleman! You’ve robbed me, Mr. Hackbut. Drink! I tell you.”

Anthony wept into his glass.

“That’s a trick I could never do,” said Robert, eyeing the drip of the trembling old tear pitilessly. “Your health, Mr. Hackbut. You’ve robbed me of my sweetheart. Never mind. Life’s but the pop of a gun. Some of us flash in the pan, and they’re the only ones that do no mischief. You’re not one of them, sir; so you must drink, and let me see you cheerful.”

By degrees, the wine stirred Anthony’s blood, and he chirped feebly, as one who half remembered that he ought to be miserable. Robert listened to his maundering account of his adventure with the Bank money, sternly replenishing his glass. His attention was taken by the sight of Dahlia stepping forth from a chemist’s shop in the street nearly opposite to the inn. “This is my medicine,” said Robert; “and yours too,” he addressed Anthony.

The sun had passed its meridian when they went into the streets again. Robert’s head was high as a cock’s, and Anthony leaned on his arm; performing short half-circles headlong to the front, until the mighty arm checked and uplifted him. They were soon in the fields leading to Wrexby. Robert saw two female figures far ahead. A man was hastening to join them. The women started and turned suddenly: one threw up her hands, and darkened her face. It was in the pathway of a broad meadow, deep with grass, wherein the red sorrel topped the yellow buttercup, like rust upon the season’s gold. Robert hastened on. He scarce at the moment knew the man whose shoulder he seized, but he had recognised Dahlia and Rhoda, and he found himself face to face with Sedgett.

“It’s you!”

“Perhaps you’ll keep your hands off; before you make sure, another time.”

Robert said: “I really beg your pardon. Step aside with me.”

“Not while I’ve a ha’p’orth o’ brains in my noddle,” replied Sedgett, drawling an imitation of his enemy’s courteous tone. “I’ve come for my wife. I’m just down by train, and a bit out of my way, I reckon. I’m come, and I’m in a hurry. She shall get home, and have on her things—boxes packed, and we go.”

Robert waved Dahlia and Rhoda to speed homeward. Anthony had fallen against the roots of a banking elm, and surveyed the scene with philosophic abstractedness. Rhoda moved, taking Dahlia’s hand.

“Stop,” cried Sedgett. “Do you people here think me a fool? Eccles, you know me better ‘n that. That young woman’s my wife. I’ve come for her, I tell ye.”

“You’ve no claim on her,” Rhoda burst forth weakly, and quivered, and turned her eyes supplicatingly on Robert. Dahlia was a statue of icy fright.

“You’ve thrown her off, man, and sold what rights you had,” said Robert, spying for the point of his person where he might grasp the wretch and keep him off.

“That don’t hold in law,” Sedgett nodded. “A man may get in a passion, when he finds he’s been cheated, mayn’t he?”

“I have your word of honour,” said Rhoda; muttering, “Oh! devil come to wrong us!”

“Then, you shouldn’t ha’ run ferreting down in my part o’ the country. You, or Eccles—I don’t care who ‘tis—you’ve been at my servants to get at my secrets. Some of you have. You’ve declared war. You’ve been trying to undermine me. That’s a breach, I call it. Anyhow, I’ve come for my wife. I’ll have her.”

“None of us, none of us; no one has been to your house,” said Rhoda, vehemently. “You live in Hampshire, sir, I think; I don’t know any more. I don’t know where. I have not asked my sister. Oh! spare us, and go.”

“No one has been down into your part of the country,” said Robert, with perfect mildness.

To which Sedgett answered bluffly, “There ye lie, Bob Eccles;” and he was immediately felled by a tremendous blow. Robert strode over him, and taking Dahlia by the elbow, walked three paces on, as to set her in motion. “Off!” he cried to Rhoda, whose eyelids cowered under the blaze of his face.

It was best that her sister should be away, and she turned and walked swiftly, hurrying Dahlia, and touching her. “Oh! don’t touch my arm,” Dahlia said, quailing in the fall of her breath. They footed together, speechless; taking the woman’s quickest gliding step. At the last stile of the fields, Rhoda saw that they were not followed. She stopped, panting: her heart and eyes were so full of that flaming creature who was her lover. Dahlia took from her bosom the letter she had won in the morning, and held it open in both hands to read it. The pause was short. Dahlia struck the letter into her bosom again, and her starved features had some of the bloom of life. She kept her right hand in her pocket, and Rhoda presently asked,—

“What have you there?”

“You are my enemy, dear, in some things,” Dahlia replied, a muscular shiver passing over her.

“I think,” said Rhoda, “I could get a little money to send you away. Will you go? I am full of grief for what I have done. God forgive me.”

“Pray, don’t speak so; don’t let us talk,” said Dahlia.

Scorched as she felt both in soul and body, a touch or a word was a wound to her. Yet she was the first to resume: “I think I shall be saved. I can’t quite feel I am lost. I have not been so wicked as that.”

Rhoda gave a loving answer, and again Dahlia shrank from the miserable comfort of words.

As they came upon the green fronting the iron gateway, Rhoda perceived that the board proclaiming the sale of Queen Anne’s Farm had been removed, and now she understood her father’s readiness to go up to Wrexby Hall. “He would sell me to save the farm.” She reproached herself for the thought, but she could not be just; she had the image of her father plodding relentlessly over the burnt heath to the Hall, as conceived by her agonized sensations in the morning, too vividly to be just, though still she knew that her own indecision was to blame.

Master Gammon met them in the garden.

Pointing aloft, over the gateway, “That’s down,” he remarked, and the three green front teeth of his quiet grin were stamped on the impressionable vision of the girls in such a way that they looked at one another with a bare bitter smile. Once it would have been mirth.

“Tell father,” Dahlia said, when they were at the back doorway, and her eyes sparkled piteously, and she bit on her underlip. Rhoda tried to detain her; but Dahlia repeated, “Tell father,” and in strength and in will had become more than a match for her sister.

CHAPTER XLV

Rhoda spoke to her father from the doorway, with her hand upon the lock of the door.

At first he paid little attention to her, and, when he did so, began by saying that he hoped she knew that she was bound to have the young squire, and did not intend to be prankish and wilful; because the young squire was eager to settle affairs, that he might be settled himself. “I don’t deny it’s honour to us, and it’s a comfort,” said the farmer. “This is the first morning I’ve thought easily in my chair for years. I’m sorry about Robert, who’s a twice unlucky ‘un; but you aimed at something higher, I suppose.”

Rhoda was prompted to say a word in self-defence, but refrained, and again she told Dahlia’s story, wondering that her father showed no excitement of any kind. On the contrary, there was the dimple of one of his voiceless chuckles moving about the hollow of one cheek, indicating some slow contemplative action that was not unpleasant within. He said: “Ah! well, it’s very sad;—that is, if ‘tis so,” and no more, for a time.

She discovered that he was referring to her uncle Anthony, concerning whose fortunate position in the world, he was beginning to entertain some doubts. “Or else,” said the farmer, with a tap on his forehead, “he’s going here. It ‘d be odd after all, if commercially, as he ‘d call it, his despised brother-in-law—and I say it in all kindness—should turn out worth, not exactly millions, but worth a trifle.”

The farmer nodded with an air of deprecating satisfaction.

Rhoda did not gain his ear until, as by an instinct, she perceived what interest the story of her uncle and the money-bags would have for him. She related it, and he was roused. Then, for the third time, she told him of Dahlia.

Rhoda saw her father’s chest grow large, while his eyes quickened with light. He looked on her with quite a strange face. Wrath, and a revived apprehension, and a fixed will were expressed in it, and as he catechized her for each particular of the truth which had been concealed from him, she felt a respectfulness that was new in her personal sensations toward her father, but it was at the expense of her love.

When he had heard and comprehended all, he said, “Send the girl down to me.”

But Rhoda pleaded, “She is too worn, she is tottering. She cannot endure a word on this; not even of kindness and help.”

“Then, you,” said the farmer, “you tell her she’s got a duty’s her first duty now. Obedience to her husband! Do you hear? Then, let her hear it. Obedience to her husband! And welcome’s the man when he calls on me. He’s welcome. My doors are open to him. I thank him. I honour him. I bless his name. It’s to him I owe—You go up to her and say, her father owes it to the young man who’s married her that he can lift up his head. Go aloft. Ay! for years I’ve been suspecting something of this. I tell ye, girl, I don’t understand about church doors and castin’ of her off—he’s come for her, hasn’t he? Then, he shall have her. I tell ye, I don’t understand about money: he’s married her. Well, then, she’s his wife; and how can he bargain not to see her?”

“The base wretch!” cried Rhoda.

“Hasn’t he married her?” the farmer retorted. “Hasn’t he given the poor creature a name? I’m not for abusing her, but him I do thank, and I say, when he calls, here’s my hand for him. Here, it’s out and waiting for him.”

“Father, if you let me see it—” Rhoda checked the intemperate outburst. “Father, this is a bad—a bad man. He is a very wicked man. We were all deceived by him. Robert knows him. He has known him for years, and knows that he is very wicked. This man married our Dahlia to get—” Rhoda gasped, and could not speak it. “He flung her off with horrible words at the church door. After this, how can he claim her? I paid him all he had to expect with uncle’s money, for his promise by his sacred oath never, never to disturb or come near my sister. After that he can’t, can’t claim her. If he does—”

“He’s her husband,” interrupted the farmer; “when he comes here, he’s welcome. I say he’s welcome. My hand’s out to him:—If it’s alone that he’s saved the name of Fleming from disgrace! I thank him, and my daughter belongs to him. Where is he now? You talk of a scuffle with Robert. I do hope Robert will not forget his proper behaviour. Go you up to your sister, and say from me—All’s forgotten and forgiven; say, It’s all underfoot; but she must learn to be a good girl from this day. And, if she’s at the gate to welcome her husband, so much the better ‘ll her father be pleased;—say that. I want to see the man. It’ll gratify me to feel her husband’s flesh and blood. His being out of sight so long’s been a sore at my heart; and when I see him I’ll welcome him, and so must all in my house.”