Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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Edward breathed and swallowed, and never went beyond the prescription,
save by talking. No other junior could enter the library, without
encountering the scorn of his elders; so he enjoyed the privilege of
hearing all the scandal, and his natural cynicism was plentifully fed. It
was more of a school to him than he knew.

These veterans, in their arm-chairs, stripped the bloom from life, and
showed it to be bare bones: They took their wisdom for an experience of
the past: they were but giving their sensations in the present. Not to
perceive this, is Youth's, error when it hears old gentlemen talking at
their ease.

On the third morning of their stay at Fairly, Algernon came into Edward's
room with a letter in his hand.

"There! read that!" he said. "It isn't ill-luck; it's infernal
persecution! What, on earth!--why, I took a close cab to the station. You
saw me get out of it. I'll swear no creditor of mine knew I was leaving
London. My belief is that the fellows who give credit have spies about at
every railway terminus in the kingdom. They won't give me three days'
peace. It's enough to disgust any man with civilized life; on my soul, it
is!"

Edward glanced at the superscription of the letter. "Not posted," he
remarked.

"No; delivered by some confounded bailiff, who's been hounding me."

"Bailiffs don't generally deal in warnings."

"Will you read it!" Algernon shouted.

The letter ran thus:--

"Mr. Algernon Blancove,--

"The writer of this intends taking the first opportunity of meeting
you, and gives you warning, you will have to answer his question
with a Yes or a No; and speak from your conscience. The
respectfulness of his behaviour to you as a gentleman will depend
upon that."

Algernon followed his cousin's eye down to the last letter in the page.

"What do you think of it?" he asked eagerly.

Edward's broad thin-lined brows were drawn down in gloom. Mastering some
black meditation in his brain, he answered Algernon's yells for an
opinion,--

"I think--well, I think bailiffs have improved in their manners, and show
you they are determined to belong to the social march in an age of
universal progress. Nothing can be more comforting."

"But, suppose this fellow comes across me?"

"Don't know him."

"Suppose he insists on knowing me?"

"Don't know yourself."

"Yes; but hang it! if he catches hold of me?"

"Shake him off."

"Suppose he won't let go?"

"Cut him with your horsewhip."

"You think it's about a debt, then?"

"Intimidation, evidently."

"I shall announce to him that the great Edward Blancove is not to be
intimidated. You'll let me borrow your name, old Ned. I've stood by you
in my time. As for leaving Fairly, I tell you I can't. It's too
delightful to be near Peggy Lovell."

Edward smiled with a peculiar friendliness, and Algernon went off, very
well contented with his cousin.

CHAPTER XVII

Within a mile of Fairly Park lay the farm of another yeoman; but he was
of another character. The Hampshireman was a farmer of renown in his
profession; fifth of a family that had cultivated a small domain of one
hundred and seventy acres with sterling profit, and in a style to make
Sutton the model of a perfect farm throughout the country. Royal eyes had
inspected his pigs approvingly; Royal wits had taken hints from Jonathan
Eccles in matters agricultural; and it was his comforting joke that he
had taught his Prince good breeding. In return for the service, his
Prince had transformed a lusty Radical into a devoted Royalist. Framed on
the walls of his parlours were letters from his Prince, thanking him for
specimen seeds and worthy counsel: veritable autograph letters of the
highest value. The Prince had steamed up the salt river, upon which the
Sutton harvests were mirrored, and landed on a spot marked in honour of
the event by a broad grey stone; and from that day Jonathan Eccles stood
on a pinnacle of pride, enabling him to see horizons of despondency
hitherto unknown to him. For he had a son, and the son was a riotous
devil, a most wild young fellow, who had no taste for a farmer's life,
and openly declared his determination not to perpetuate the Sutton farm
in the hands of the Eccleses, by running off one day and entering the
ranks of the British army.

Those framed letters became melancholy objects for contemplation, when
Jonathan thought that no posterity of his would point them out gloryingly
in emulation. Man's aim is to culminate; but it is the saddest thing in
the world to feel that we have accomplished it. Mr. Eccles shrugged with
all the philosophy he could summon, and transferred his private
disappointment to his country, whose agricultural day was, he said,
doomed. "We shall be beaten by those Yankees." He gave Old England twenty
years of continued pre-eminence (due to the impetus of the present
generation of Englishmen), and then, said he, the Yankees will flood the
market. No more green pastures in Great Britain; no pretty clean-footed
animals; no yellow harvests; but huge chimney pots everywhere; black
earth under black vapour, and smoke-begrimed faces. In twenty years'
time, sooty England was to be a gigantic manufactory, until the Yankees
beat us out of that field as well; beyond which Jonathan Eccles did not
care to spread any distinct border of prophecy; merely thanking the Lord
that he should then be under grass. The decay of our glory was to be
edged with blood; Jonathan admitted that there would be stuff in the
fallen race to deliver a sturdy fight before they went to their doom.

For this prodigious curse, England had to thank young Robert, the erratic
son of Jonathan.

It was now two years since Robert had inherited a small legacy of money
from an aunt, and spent it in waste, as the farmer bitterly supposed. He
was looking at some immense seed-melons in his garden, lying about in
morning sunshine--a new feed for sheep, of his own invention,--when the
call of the wanderer saluted his ears, and he beheld his son Robert at
the gate.

"Here I am, sir," Robert sang out from the exterior.

"Stay there, then," was his welcome.

They were alike in their build and in their manner of speech. The accost
and the reply sounded like reports from the same pistol. The old man was
tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular--a grey edition of the son, upon
whose disorderly attire he cast a glance, while speaking, with settled
disgust. Robert's necktie streamed loose; his hair was uncombed; a
handkerchief dangled from his pocket. He had the look of the prodigal,
returned with impudence for his portion instead of repentance.

"I can't see how you are, sir, from this distance," said Robert, boldly
assuming his privilege to enter.

"Are you drunk?" Jonathan asked, as Robert marched up to him.

"Give me your hand, sir."

"Give me an answer first. Are you drunk?"

Robert tried to force the complacent aspect of a mind unabashed, but felt
that he made a stupid show before that clear-headed, virtuously-living
old, man of iron nerves. The alternative to flying into a passion, was
the looking like a fool.

"Come, father," he said, with a miserable snigger, like a yokel's smile;
"here I am at last. I don't say, kill the fatted calf, and take a lesson
from Scripture, but give me your hand. I've done no man harm but
myself--damned if I've done a mean thing anywhere! and there's no shame
to you in shaking your son's hand after a long absence."

Jonathan Eccles kept both hands firmly in his pockets.

"Are you drunk?" he repeated.

Robert controlled himself to answer, "I'm not."

"Well, then, just tell me when you were drunk last."

"This is a pleasant fatherly greeting!" Robert interjected.

"You get no good by fighting shy of a simple question, Mr. Bob," said
Jonathan.

Robert cried querulously, "I don't want to fight shy of a simple
question."

"Well, then; when were you drunk last? answer me that."

"Last night."

Jonathan drew his hand from his pocket to thump his leg.

"I'd have sworn it!"

All Robert's assurance had vanished in a minute, and he stood like a
convicted culprit before his father.

"You know, sir, I don't tell lies. I was drunk last night. I couldn't
help it."

"No more could the little boy."

"I was drunk last night. Say, I'm a beast."

"I shan't!" exclaimed Jonathan, making his voice sound as a defence to
this vile charge against the brutish character.

"Say, I'm worse than a beast, then," cried Robert, in exasperation. "Take
my word that it hasn't happened to me to be in that state for a year and
more. Last night I was mad. I can't give you any reasons. I thought I was
cured but I've trouble in my mind, and a tide swims you over the
shallows--so I felt. Come, sir--father, don't make me mad again."

"Where did you get the liquor?" inquired Jonathan.

"I drank at 'The Pilot.'"

"Ha! there's talk there of 'that damned old Eccles' for a month to
come--'the unnatural parent.' How long have you been down here?"

"Eight and twenty hours."

"Eight and twenty hours. When are you going?"

"I want lodging for a night."

"What else?"

"The loan of a horse that'll take a fence."

"Go on."

"And twenty pounds."

"Oh!" said Jonathan. "If farming came as easy to you as face, you'd be a
prime agriculturalist. Just what I thought! What's become of that money
your aunt Jane was fool enough to bequeath to you?"

"I've spent it."

"Are you a Deserter?"

For a moment Robert stood as if listening, and then white grew his face,
and he swayed and struck his hands together. His recent intoxication had
unmanned him.

"Go in--go in," said his father in some concern, though wrath was
predominant.

"Oh, make your mind quiet about me." Robert dropped his arms. "I'm
weakened somehow--damned weak, I am--I feel like a woman when my father
asks me if I've been guilty of villany. Desert? I wouldn't desert from
the hulks. Hear the worst, and this is the worst: I've got no money--I
don't owe a penny, but I haven't got one."

"And I won't give you one," Jonathan appended; and they stood facing one
another in silence.

A squeaky voice was heard from the other side of the garden hedge of
clipped yew.

"Hi! farmer, is that the missing young man?" and presently a neighbour,
by name John Sedgett, came trotting through the gate, and up the garden
path.

"I say," he remarked, "here's a rumpus. Here's a bobbery up at Fairly.
Oh! Bob Eccles! Bob Eccles! At it again!"

Mr. Sedgett shook his wallet of gossip with an enjoying chuckle. He was a
thin-faced creature, rheumy of eye, and drawing his breath as from a
well; the ferret of the village for all underlying scandal and tattle,
whose sole humanity was what he called pitifully 'a peakin' at his chest,
and who had retired from his business of grocer in the village upon the
fortune brought to him in the energy and capacity of a third wife to
conduct affairs, while he wandered up and down and knitted people
together--an estimable office in a land where your house is so grievously
your castle.

"What the devil have you got in you now?" Jonathan cried out to him.

Mr. Sedgett was seized by his complaint and demanded commiseration, but,
recovering, he chuckled again.

"Oh, Bob Eccles! Don't you never grow older? And the first day down among
us again, too. Why, Bob, as a military man, you ought to acknowledge your
superiors. Why, Stephen Bilton, the huntsman, says, Bob, you pulled the
young gentleman off his horse--you on foot, and him mounted. I'd ha'
given pounds to be there. And ladies present! Lord help us! I'm glad
you're returned, though. These melons of the farmer's, they're a
wonderful invention; people are speaking of 'em right and left, and says,
says they, Farmer Eccles, he's best farmer going--Hampshire ought to be
proud of him--he's worth two of any others: that they are fine ones! And
you're come back to keep 'em up, eh, Bob? Are ye, though, my man?"

"Well, here I am, Mr. Sedgett," said Robert, "and talking to my father."

"Oh! I wouldn't be here to interrupt ye for the world." Mr. Sedgett made
a show of retiring, but Jonathan insisted upon his disburdening himself
of his tale, saying: "Damn your raw beginnings, Sedgett! What's been up?
Nobody can hurt me."

"That they can't, neighbour; nor Bob neither, as far as stand up man to
man go. I give him three to one--Bob Eccles! He took 'em when a boy. He
may, you know, he may have the law agin him, and by George! if he
do--why, a man's no match for the law. No use bein' a hero to the law.
The law masters every man alive; and there's law in everything, neighbour
Eccles; eh, sir? Your friend, the Prince, owns to it, as much as you or
me. But, of course, you know what Bob's been doing. What I dropped in to
ask was, why did ye do it, Bob? Why pull the young gentleman off his
horse? I'd ha' given pounds to be there!"

"Pounds o' tallow candles don't amount to much," quoth Robert.

"That's awful bad brandy at 'The Pilot,'" said Mr. Sedgett, venomously.

"Were you drunk when you committed this assault?" Jonathan asked his son.

"I drank afterwards," Robert replied.

"'Pilot' brandy's poor consolation," remarked Mr. Sedgett.

Jonathan had half a mind to turn his son out of the gate, but the
presence of Sedgett advised him that his doings were naked to the world.

"You kicked up a shindy in the hunting-field--what about? Who mounted
ye?"

Robert remarked that he had been on foot.

"On foot--eh? on foot!" Jonathan speculated, unable to realize the image
of his son as a foot-man in the hunting-field, or to comprehend the
insolence of a pedestrian who should dare to attack a mounted huntsman.
"You were on foot? The devil you were on foot! Foot? And caught a man out
of his saddle?"

Jonathan gave up the puzzle. He laid out his fore finger decisively,--

"If it's an assault, mind, you stand damages. My land gives and my land
takes my money, and no drunken dog lives on the produce. A row in the
hunting-field's un-English, I call it."

"So it is, sir," said Robert.

"So it be, neighbour," said Mr. Sedgett.

Whereupon Robert took his arm, and holding the scraggy wretch forward,
commanded him to out with what he knew.

"Oh, I don't know no more than what I've told you." Mr. Sedgett twisted a
feeble remonstrance of his bones, that were chiefly his being, at the
gripe; "except that you got hold the horse by the bridle, and wouldn't
let him go, because the young gentleman wouldn't speak as a gentleman,
and--oh! don't squeeze so hard--"

"Out with it!" cried Robert.

"And you said, Steeve Bilton said, you said, 'Where is she?' you said,
and he swore, and you swore, and a lady rode up, and you pulled, and she
sang out, and off went the gentleman, and Steeve said she said, 'For
shame.'"

"And it was the truest word spoken that day!" Robert released him. "You
don't know much, Mr. Sedgett; but it's enough to make me explain the
cause to my father, and, with your leave, I'll do so."

Mr. Sedgett remarked: "By all means, do;" and rather preferred that his
wits should be accused of want of brightness, than that he should miss a
chance of hearing the rich history of the scandal and its origin.
Something stronger than a hint sent him off at a trot, hugging in his
elbows.

"The postman won't do his business quicker than Sedgett 'll tap this tale
upon every door in the parish," said Jonathan.

"I can only say I'm sorry, for your sake;" Robert was expressing his
contrition, when his father caught him up,--

"Who can hurt me?--my sake? Have I got the habits of a sot?--what you'd
call 'a beast!' but I know the ways o' beasts, and if you did too, you
wouldn't bring them in to bear your beastly sins. Who can hurt
me?--You've been quarrelling with this young gentleman about a woman--did
you damage him?"

"If knuckles could do it, I should have brained him, sir," said Robert.

"You struck him, and you got the best of it?"

"He got the worst of it any way, and will again."

"Then the devil take you for a fool! why did you go and drink I could
understand it if you got licked. Drown your memory, then, if that filthy
soaking's to your taste; but why, when you get the prize, we'll say, you
go off headlong into a manure pond?--There! except that you're a damned
idiot!" Jonathan struck the air, as to observe that it beat him, but for
the foregoing elucidation: thundering afresh, "Why did you go and drink?"

"I went, sir, I went--why did I go?" Robert slapped his hand despairingly
to his forehead. "What on earth did I go for?--because I'm at sea, I
suppose. Nobody cares for me. I'm at sea, and no rudder to steer me. I
suppose that's it. So, I drank. I thought it best to take spirits on
board. No; this was the reason--I remember: that lady, whoever she was,
said something that stung me. I held the fellow under her eyes, and shook
him, though she was begging me to let him off. Says she--but I've drunk
it clean out of my mind."

"There, go in and look at yourself in the glass," said Jonathan.

"Give me your hand first,"--Robert put his own out humbly.

"I'll be hanged if I do," said Jonathan firmly. "Bed and board you shall
have while I'm alive, and a glass to look at yourself in; but my hand's
for decent beasts. Move one way or t' other: take your choice."

Seeing Robert hesitate, he added, "I shall have a damned deal more
respect for you if you toddle." He waved his hand away from the premises.

"I'm sorry you've taken so to swearing of late, sir," said Robert.

"Two flints strike fire, my lad. When you keep distant, I'm quiet enough
in my talk to satisfy your aunt Anne."

"Look here, sir; I want to make use of you, so I'll go in."

"Of course you do," returned Jonathan, not a whit displeased by his son's
bluntness; "what else is a father good for? I let you know the limit, and
that's a brick wall; jump it, if you can. Don't fancy it's your aunt Jane
you're going in to meet."

Robert had never been a favourite with his aunt Anne, who was Jonathan's
housekeeper.

"No, poor old soul! and may God bless her in heaven!" he cried.

"For leaving you what you turned into a thundering lot of liquor to
consume--eh?"

"For doing all in her power to make a man of me; and she was close on
it--kind, good old darling, that she was! She got me with that money of
hers to the best footing I've been on yet--bless her heart, or her
memory, or whatever a poor devil on earth may bless an angel for! But
here I am."

The fever in Robert blazed out under a pressure of extinguishing tears.

"There, go along in," said Jonathan, who considered drunkenness to be the
main source of water in a man's eyes. "It's my belief you've been at it
already this morning."

Robert passed into the house in advance of his father, whom he quite
understood and appreciated. There was plenty of paternal love for him,
and a hearty smack of the hand, and the inheritance of the farm, when he
turned into the right way. Meantime Jonathan was ready to fulfil his
parental responsibility, by sheltering, feeding, and not publicly abusing
his offspring, of whose spirit he would have had a higher opinion if
Robert had preferred, since he must go to the deuce, to go without
troubling any of his relatives; as it was, Jonathan submitted to the
infliction gravely. Neither in speech nor in tone did he solicit from the
severe maiden, known as Aunt Anne, that snub for the wanderer whom he
introduced, which, when two are agreed upon the infamous character of a
third, through whom they are suffering, it is always agreeable to hear.
He said, "Here, Anne; here's Robert. He hasn't breakfasted."

"He likes his cold bath beforehand," said Robert, presenting his cheek to
the fleshless, semi-transparent woman.

Aunt Anne divided her lips to pronounce a crisp, subdued "Ow!" to
Jonathan after inspecting Robert; and she shuddered at sight of Robert,
and said "Ow!" repeatedly, by way of an interjectory token of
comprehension, to all that was uttered; but it was a horrified "No!" when
Robert's cheek pushed nearer.

"Then, see to getting some breakfast for him," said Jonathan. "You're not
anyway bound to kiss a drunken--"

"Dog's the word, sir," Robert helped him. "Dogs can afford it. I never
saw one in that state; so they don't lose character."

He spoke lightly, but dejection was in his attitude. When his aunt Anne
had left the room, he exclaimed,--

"By jingo! women make you feel it, by some way that they have. She's a
religious creature. She smells the devil in me."

"More like, the brandy," his father responded.

"Well! I'm on the road, I'm on the road!" Robert fetched a sigh.

"I didn't make the road," said his father.

"No, sir; you didn't. Work hard: sleep sound that's happiness. I've known
it for a year. You're the man I'd imitate, if I could. The devil came
first the brandy's secondary. I was quiet so long. I thought myself a
safe man."

He sat down and sent his hair distraught with an effort at smoothing it.

"Women brought the devil into the world first. It's women who raise the
devil in us, and why they--"

He thumped the table just as his aunt Anne was preparing to spread the
cloth.

"Don't be frightened, woman," said Jonathan, seeing her start fearfully
back. "You take too many cups of tea, morning and night--hang the stuff!"

"Never, never till now have you abused me, Jonathan," she whimpered,
severely.

"I don't tell you to love him; but wait on him. That's all. And I'll
about my business. Land and beasts--they answer to you."

Robert looked up.

"Land and beasts! They sound like blessed things. When next I go to
church, I shall know what old Adam felt. Go along, sir. I shall break
nothing in the house."

"You won't go, Jonathan?" begged the trembling spinster.

"Give him some of your tea, and strong, and as much of it as he can
take--he wants bringing down," was Jonathan's answer; and casting a
glance at one of the framed letters, he strode through the doorway, and
Aunt Anne was alone with the flushed face and hurried eyes of her nephew,
who was to her little better than a demon in the flesh. But there was a
Bible in the room.

An hour later, Robert was mounted and riding to the meet of hounds.

CHAPTER XVIII

A single night at the Pilot Inn had given life and vigour to Robert's old
reputation in Warbeach village, as the stoutest of drinkers and dear
rascals throughout a sailor-breeding district, where Dibdin was still
thundered in the ale-house, and manhood in a great degree measured by the
capacity to take liquor on board, as a ship takes ballast. There was a
profound affectation of deploring the sad fact that he drank as hard as
ever, among the men, and genuine pity expressed for him by the women of
Warbeach; but his fame was fresh again. As the Spring brings back its
flowers, Robert's presence revived his youthful deeds. There had not been
a boxer in the neighbourhood like Robert Eccles, nor such a champion in
all games, nor, when he set himself to it, such an invincible drinker. It
was he who thrashed the brute, Nic Sedgett, for stabbing with his
clasp-knife Harry Boulby, son of the landlady of the Pilot Inn; thrashed
him publicly, to the comfort of all Warbeach. He had rescued old Dame
Garble from her burning cottage, and made his father house the old
creature, and worked at farming, though he hated it, to pay for her
subsistence. He vindicated the honour of Warbeach by drinking a match
against a Yorkshire skipper till four o'clock in the morning, when it was
a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire steadying the defeated
North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to his flattish-bottomed
billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise on the river--yo-ho! ahoy!

Glorious Robert had tried, first the sea, and then soldiering. Now let us
hope he'll settle to farming, and follow his rare old father's ways, and
be back among his own people for good. So chimed the younger ones, and
many of the elder.

Danish blood had settled round Warbeach. To be a really popular hero
anywhere in Britain, a lad must still, I fear, have something of a
Scandinavian gullet; and if, in addition to his being a powerful drinker,
he is pleasant in his cups, and can sing, and forgive, be freehanded, and
roll out the grand risky phrases of a fired brain, he stamps himself, in
the apprehension of his associates, a king.

Much of the stuff was required to deal King Robert of Warbeach the
capital stroke, and commonly he could hold on till a puff of cold air
from the outer door, like an admonitory messenger, reminded him that he
was, in the greatness of his soul, a king of swine; after which his way
of walking off, without a word to anybody, hoisting his whole stature,
while others were staggering, or roaring foul rhymes, or feeling
consciously mortal in their sensation of feverishness, became a theme for
admiration; ay, and he was fresh as an orchard apple in the morning!
there lay his commandership convincingly. What was proved overnight was
confirmed at dawn.

Mr. Robert had his contrast in Sedgett's son, Nicodemus Sedgett, whose
unlucky Christian name had assisted the wits of Warbeach in bestowing on
him a darkly-luminous relationship. Young Nic loved also to steep his
spirit in the bowl; but, in addition to his never paying for his luxury,
he drank as if in emulation of the colour of his reputed patron, and
neighbourhood to Nic Sedgett was not liked when that young man became
thoughtful over his glass.

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