Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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She bowed her head.

"Poor?"

"He is very poor."

"Is he, or ain't he, a gentleman?"

Dahlia seemed torn by a new anguish.

"I see," said Anthony. "He goes and persuades you he is, and you've been
and found out he's nothin' o' the sort--eh? That'd be a way of accounting
for your queerness, more or less. Was it that fellow that Wicklow gal saw
ye with?"

Dahlia signified vehemently, "No."

"Then, I've guessed right; he turns out not to be a gentleman--eh, Dahly?
Go on noddin', if ye like. Never mind the shop people; we're
well-conducted, and that's all they care for. I say, Dahly, he ain't a
gentleman? You speak out or nod your head. You thought you'd caught a
gentleman and 'taint the case. Gentlemen ain't caught so easy. They all
of 'em goes to school, and that makes 'em knowin'. Come; he ain't a
gentleman?"

Dahlia's voice issued, from a terrible inward conflict, like a voice of
the tombs. "No," she said.

"Then, will you show him to me? Let me have a look at him."

Pushed from misery to misery, she struggled within herself again, and
again in the same hollow manner said, "Yes."

"You will?"

"Yes."

"Seein's believin'. If you'll show him to me, or me to him..."

"Oh! don't talk of it." Dahlia struck her fingers in a tight lock.

"I only want to set eye on him, my gal. Whereabouts does he live?"

"Down--down a great--very great way in the West."

Anthony stared.

She replied to the look: "In the West of London--a long way down."

"That's where he is?"

"Yes."

"I thought--hum!" went the old man suspiciously. "When am I to see him?
Some day?"

"Yes; some day."

"Didn't I say, Sunday?"

"Next Sunday?"--Dahlia gave a muffled cry.

"Yes, next Sunday. Day after to-morrow. And I'll write off to-morrow, and
ease th' old farmer's heart, and Rhoda 'll be proud for you. She don't
care about gentleman--or no gentleman. More do th' old farmer. It's let
us, live and die respectable, and not disgrace father nor mother.
Old-fashioned's best-fashioned about them things, I think. Come, you
bring him--your husband--to me on Sunday, if you object to my callin' on
you. Make up your mind to."

"Not next Sunday--the Sunday after," Dahlia pleaded. "He is not here
now."

"Where is he?" Anthony asked.

"He's in the country."

Anthony pounced on her, as he had done previously.

"You said to me he was abroad."

"In the country--abroad. Not--not in the great cities. I could not make
known your wishes to him."

She gave this cool explanation with her eyelids fluttering timorously,
and rose as she uttered it, but with faint and ill-supporting limbs, for
during the past hour she had gone through the sharpest trial of her life,
and had decided for the course of her life. Anthony was witless thereof,
and was mystified by his incapability of perceiving where and how he had
been deluded; but he had eaten all the muffin on the plate, and her
rising proclaimed that she had no intention of making him call for
another; which was satisfactory. He drank off her cup of tea at a gulp.

The waitress named the sum he was to pay, and receiving a meditative look
in return for her air of expectancy after the amount had been laid on the
table, at once accelerated their passage from the shop by opening the
door.

"If ever I did give pennies, I'd give 'em to you," said Anthony, when he
was out of her hearing. "Women beat men in guessing at a man by his face.
Says she--you're honourable--you're legal--but prodigal ain't your
portion. That's what she says, without the words, unless she's a reader.
Now, then, Dahly, my lass, you take my arm. Buckle to. We'll to the West.
Don't th' old farmer pronounce like 'toe' the West? We'll 'toe' the West.
I can afford to laugh at them big houses up there.

"Where's the foundation, if one of them's sound? Why, in the City.

"I'll take you by our governor's house. You know--you know--don't ye,
Dahly, know we been suspecting his nephew? 'cause we saw him with you at
the theatre.

"I didn't suspect. I knew he found you there by chance, somehow. And I
noticed your dress there. No wonder your husband's poor. He wanted to
make you cut a figure as one of the handsomes, and that's as ruinous as
cabs--ha! ha!"

Anthony laughed, but did not reveal what had struck him.

"Sir William Blancove's house is a first-rater. I've been in it. He lives
in the library. All the other rooms--enter 'em, and if 'taint like a sort
of, a social sepulchre! Dashed if he can get his son to live with him;
though they're friends, and his son'll get all the money, and go into
Parliament, and cut a shine, never fear.

"By the way, I've seen Robert, too. He called on me at the Bank. Asked
after you.

"'Seen her?' says he.

"'No,' I says.

"'Ever see Mr. Edward Blancove here?' he says.

"I told him, I'd heard say, Mr. Edward was Continentalling. And then
Robert goes off. His opinion is you ain't in England; 'cause a policeman
he spoke to can't find you nowhere.

"'Come," says I, 'let's keep our detectives to catch thieves, and not go
distracting of 'em about a parcel o' women.'

"He's awfully down about Rhoda. She might do worse than take him. I don't
think he's got a ounce of a chance now Religion's set in, though he's the
mildest big 'un I ever come across. I forgot to haul him over about what
he 'd got to say about Mr. Edward. I did remark, I thought--ain't I
right?--Mr. Algernon's not the man?--eh? How come you in the theatre with
him?"

Dahlia spoke huskily. "He saw me. He had seen me at home. It was an
accident."

"Exactly how I put it to Robert. And he agreed with me. There's sense in
that young man. Your husband wouldn't let you come to us there--eh?
because he...why was that?"

Dahlia had it on her lips to say it "Because he was poorer than I
thought;" but in the intensity of her torment, the wretchedness of this
lie, revolted her. "Oh! for God's sake, uncle, give me peace about that."

The old man murmured: "Ay, ay;" and thought it natural that she should
shun an allusion to the circumstance.

They crossed one of the bridges, and Dahlia stopped and said: "Kiss me,
uncle."

"I ain't ashamed," said Anthony.

This being over, she insisted on his not accompanying her farther.

Anthony made her pledge her word of honour as a married woman, to bring
her husband to the identical spot where they stood at three o'clock in
the afternoon of Sunday week. She promised it.

"I'll write home to th' old farmer--a penny," said Anthony, showing that
he had considered the outlay and was prepared for it.

"And uncle," she stipulated in turn, "they are not to see me yet. Very
soon; but not yet. Be true to me, and come alone, or it will be your
fault--I shall not appear. Now, mind. And beg them not to leave the farm.
It will kill father. Can you not," she said, in the faded sweetness of
her speech, "could you not buy it, and let father be your tenant, uncle?
He would pay you regularly."

Anthony turned a rough shoulder on her.

"Good-bye, Dahly. You be a good girl, and all 'll go right. Old farmer
talks about praying. If he didn't make it look so dark to a chap, I'd be
ready to fancy something in that. You try it. You try, Dahly. Say a bit
of a prayer to-night."

"I pray every night," Dahlia answered.

Her look of meek despair was hauntingly sad with Anthony on his way home.

He tracked her sorrowfulness to the want of money; and another of his
terrific vague struggles with the money-demon set in.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sir William Blancove did business at his Bank till the hour of three in
the afternoon, when his carriage conveyed him to a mews near the park of
Fashion, where he mounted horse and obeyed the bidding of his doctor for
a space, by cantering in a pleasant, portly, cock-horsey style, up and
down the Row.

It was the day of the great race on Epsom Downs, and elderly gentlemen
pricked by the doctors were in the ascendant in all London congregations
on horseback.

Like Achilles (if the bilious Shade will permit the impudent comparison),
they dragged their enemy, Gout, at their horses' heels for a term, and
vengeance being accomplished went to their dinners and revived him.

Sir William was disturbed by his son's absence from England. A youth to
whom a baronetcy and wealth are to be bequeathed is an important
organism; and Sir William, though his faith reposed in his son, was
averse to his inexplicably prolonged residence in the French metropolis,
which, a school for many things, is not a school for the study of our
Parliamentary system, and still less for that connubial career Sir
William wished him to commence.

Edward's delightful cynical wit--the worldly man's profundity--and his
apt quotations of the wit of others, would have continued to exercise
their charm, if Sir William had not wanted to have him on the spot that
he might answer certain questions pertinaciously put by Mama Gosling on
behalf of her daughter.

"There is no engagement," Edward wrote; "let the maiden wait and discern
her choice: let her ripen;" and he quoted Horace up to a point.

Nor could his father help smiling and completing the lines. He laughed,
too, as he read the jog of a verse: "Were I to marry the Gosling, pray,
which would be the goose?"

He laughed, but with a shade of disappointment in the fancy that he
perceived a wearing away of the robust mental energy which had
characterized his son: and Sir William knew the danger of wit, and how
the sharp blade cuts the shoots of the sapling. He had thought that
Edward was veritable tough oak, and had hitherto encouraged his light
play with the weapon.

It became a question with him now, whether Wit and Ambition may dwell
together harmoniously in a young man: whether they will not give such
manifestation of their social habits as two robins shut in a cage will
do: of which pretty birds one will presently be discovered with a
slightly ruffled bosom amid the feathers of his defunct associate.

Thus painfully revolving matters of fact and feeling, Sir William
cantered, and, like a cropped billow blown against by the wind, drew up
in front of Mrs. Lovell, and entered into conversation with that lady,
for the fine needles of whose brain he had the perfect deference of an
experienced senior. She, however, did not give him comfort. She informed
him that something was wrong with Edward; she could not tell what. She
spoke of him languidly, as if his letters contained wearisome trifling.

"He strains to be Frenchy," she said. "It may be a good compliment for
them to receive: it's a bad one for him to pay."

"Alcibiades is not the best of models," murmured Sir William. "He doesn't
mention Miss Gosling."

"Oh dear, yes. I have a French acrostic on her name."

"An acrostic!"

A more contemptible form of mental exercise was not to be found,
according to Sir William's judgement.

"An acrostic!" he made it guttural. "Well!"

"He writes word that he hears Moliere every other night. That can't harm
him. His reading is principally Memoirs, which I think I have heard you
call 'The backstairs of history.' We are dull here, and I should not
imagine it to be a healthy place to dwell in, if the absence of friends
and the presence of sunshine conspire to dullness. Algy, of course, is
deep in accounts to-day?"

Sir William remarked that he had not seen the young man at the office,
and had not looked for him; but the mention of Algernon brought something
to his mind, and he said,--

"I hear he is continually sending messengers from the office to you
during the day. You rule him with a rod of iron. Make him discontinue
that practice. I hear that he despatched our old porter to you yesterday
with a letter marked 'urgent.'"

Mrs. Lovell laughed pleadingly for Algernon.

"No; he shall not do it again. It occurred yesterday, and on no other
occasion that I am aware of. He presumes that I am as excited as he is
himself about the race--"

The lady bowed to a passing cavalier; a smarting blush dyed her face.

"He bets, does he!" said Sir William. "A young man, whose income, at the
extreme limit, is two hundred pounds a year."

"May not the smallness of the amount in some degree account for the
betting?" she asked whimsically. "You know, I bet a little--just a
little. If I have but a small sum, I already regard it as a stake; I am
tempted to bid it fly."

"In his case, such conduct puts him on the high road to rascality," said
Sir William severely. "He is doing no good."

"Then the squire is answerable for such conduct, I think."

"You presume to say that he is so because he allows his son very little
money to squander? How many young men have to contain their expenses
within two hundred pounds a year!"

"Not sons of squires and nephews of baronets," said Mrs. Lovell. "Adieu!
I think I see a carrier-pigeon flying overhead, and, as you may suppose,
I am all anxiety."

Sir William nodded to her. He disliked certain of her ways; but they were
transparent bits of audacity and restlessness pertaining to a youthful
widow, full of natural dash; and she was so sweetly mistress of herself
in all she did, that he never supposed her to be needing caution against
excesses. Old gentlemen have their pets, and Mrs. Lovell was a pet of Sir
William's.

She was on the present occasion quite mistress of herself, though the
stake was large. She was mistress of herself when Lord Suckling, who had
driven from the Downs and brushed all save a spot of white dust out of
his baby moustache to make himself presentable, rode up to her to say
that the horse Templemore was beaten, and that his sagacity in always
betting against favourites would, in this last instance, transfer a "pot
of money" from alien pockets to his own.

"Algy Blancove's in for five hundred to me," he said; adding with energy,
"I hope you haven't lost? No, don't go and dash my jolly feeling by
saying you have. It was a fine heat; neck-and-neck past the Stand. Have
you?"

"A little," she confessed. "It's a failing of mine to like favourites.
I'm sorry for Algy."

"I'm afraid he's awfully hit."

"What makes you think so?"

"He took it so awfully cool."

"That may mean the reverse."

"It don't with him. But, Mrs. Lovell, do tell me you haven't lost. Not
much, is it? Because, I know there's no guessing, when you are
concerned."

The lady trifled with her bridle-rein.

"I really can't tell you yet. I may have lost. I haven't won. I'm not
cool-blooded enough to bet against favourites. Addio, son of Fortune! I'm
at the Opera to-night."

As she turned her horse from Lord Suckling, the cavalier who had saluted
her when she was with Sir William passed again. She made a signal to her
groom, and sent the man flying in pursuit of him, while she turned and
cantered. She was soon overtaken.

"Madam, you have done me the honour."

"I wish to know why it is your pleasure to avoid me, Major Waring?"

"In this place?"

"Wherever we may chance to meet."

"I must protest."

"Do not. The thing is evident."

They rode together silently.

Her face was toward the sunset. The light smote her yellow hair, and
struck out her grave and offended look, as in a picture.

"To be condemned without a hearing!" she said. "The most dastardly
criminal gets that. Is it imagined that I have no common feelings? Is it
manly to follow me with studied insult? I can bear the hatred of fools.
Contempt I have not deserved. Dead! I should be dead, if my conscience
had once reproached me. I am a mark for slander, and brave men should
beware of herding with despicable slanderers."

She spoke, gazing frontward all the while. The pace she maintained in no
degree impeded the concentrated passion of her utterance.

But it was a more difficult task for him, going at that pace, to make
explanations, and she was exquisitely fair to behold! The falling beams
touched her with a mellow sweetness that kindled bleeding memories.

"If I defend myself?" he said.

"No. All I ask is that you should Accuse me. Let me know what I have
done--done, that I have not been bitterly punished for? What is it? what
is it? Why do you inflict a torture on me whenever you see me? Not by
word, not by look. You are too subtle in your cruelty to give me anything
I can grasp. You know how you wound me. And I am alone."

"That is supposed to account for my behaviour?"

She turned her face to him. "Oh, Major blaring! say nothing unworthy of
yourself. That would be a new pain to me."

He bowed. In spite of a prepossessing anger, some little softness crept
through his heart.

"You may conceive that I have dropped my pride," she said. "That is the
case, or my pride is of a better sort."

"Madam, I fully hope and trust," said he.

"And believe," she added, twisting his words to the ironic tongue. "You
certainly must believe that my pride has sunk low. Did I ever speak to
you in this manner before?"

"Not in this manner, I can attest."

"Did I speak at all, when I was hurt?" She betrayed that he had planted a
fresh sting.

"If my recollection serves me," said he, "your self-command was
remarkable."

Mrs. Lovell slackened her pace.

"Your recollection serves you too well, Major Waring. I was a girl. You
judged the acts of a woman. I was a girl, and you chose to put your own
interpretation on whatever I did. You scourged me before the whole army.
Was not that enough? I mean, enough for you? For me, perhaps not, for I
have suffered since, and may have been set apart to suffer. I saw you in
that little church at Warbeach; I met you in the lanes; I met you on the
steamer; on the railway platform; at the review. Everywhere you kept up
the look of my judge. You! and I have been 'Margaret' to you. Major
Waring, how many a woman in my place would attribute your relentless
condemnation of her to injured vanity or vengeance? In those days I
trifled with everybody. I played with fire. I was ignorant of life. I was
true to my husband; and because I was true, and because I was ignorant, I
was plunged into tragedies I never suspected. This is to be what you call
a coquette. Stamping a name saves thinking. Could I read my husband's
temper? Would not a coquette have played her cards differently? There
never was need for me to push my husband to a contest. I never had the
power to restrain him. Now I am wiser; and now is too late; and now you
sit in judgement on me. Why? It is not fair; it is unkind."

Tears were in her voice, though not in her eyes.

Major Waring tried to study her with the coolness of a man who has learnt
to doubt the truth of women; but he had once yearned in a young man's
frenzy of love to take that delicate shape in his arms, and he was not
proof against the sedate sweet face and keen sad ring of the voice.

He spoke earnestly.

"You honour me by caring for my opinion. The past is buried. I have some
forgiveness to ask. Much, when I think of it--very much. I did you a
public wrong. From a man to a woman it was unpardonable. It is a blot on
my career. I beg you humbly to believe that I repent it."

The sun was flaming with great wings red among the vapours; and in the
recollection of the two, as they rode onward facing it, arose that day of
the forlorn charge of English horse in the Indian jungle, the thunder and
the dust, the fire and the dense knot of the struggle. And like a ghost
sweeping across her eyeballs, Mrs. Lovell beheld, part in his English
freshness, part ensanguined, the image of the gallant boy who had ridden
to perish at the spur of her mad whim. She forgot all present
surroundings.

"Percy!" she said.

"Madam?"

"Percy!"

"Margaret?"

"Oh, what an undying day, Percy!"

And then she was speechless.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Park had been empty, but the opera-house was full; and in the
brilliance of the lights and divine soaring of the music, the genius of
Champagne luncheons discussed the fate of the horse Templemore; some, as
a matter of remote history; some, as another delusion in horse-flesh the
greater number, however, with a determination to stand by the beaten
favourite, though he had fallen, and proclaim him the best of racers and
an animal foully mishandled on the course. There were whispers, and
hints, and assertions; now implicating the jockey, now the owner of
Templemore. The Manchester party, and the Yorkshire party, and their
diverse villanous tricks, came under review. Several offered to back
Templemore at double the money they had lost, against the winner. A
favourite on whom money has been staked, not only has friends, but in
adversity he is still believed in; nor could it well be otherwise, for
the money, no doubt, stands for faith, or it would never have been put up
to the risks of a forfeit.

Foremost and wildest among the excited young men who animated the stalls,
and rushed about the lobby, was Algernon. He was the genius of Champagne
luncheon incarnate. On him devolves, for a time, the movement of this
story, and we shall do well to contemplate him, though he may seem
possibly to be worthless. What is worthless, if it be well looked at?
Nay, the most worthless creatures are most serviceable for examination,
when the microscope is applied to them, as a simple study of human
mechanism. This youth is one of great Nature's tom-fools: an elegant
young gentleman outwardly, of the very large class who are simply the
engines of their appetites, and, to the philosophic eye, still run wild
in woods, as did the primitive nobleman that made a noise in the earlier
world.

Algernon had this day lost ten times more than he could hope to be in a
position to pay within ten years, at the least, if his father continued
to argue the matter against Providence, and live. He had lost, and might
speedily expect to be posted in all good betting circles as something not
pleasantly odoriferous for circles where there is no betting.
Nevertheless, the youth was surcharged with gaiety. The soul of mingled
chicken and wine illumined his cheeks and eyes. He laughed and joked
about the horse--his horse, as he called Templemore--and meeting Lord
Suckling, won five sovereigns of him by betting that the colours of one
of the beaten horses, Benloo, were distinguished by a chocolate bar. The
bet was referred to a dignified umpire, who, a Frenchman, drew his right
hand down an imperial tuft of hair dependent from his chin, and gave a
decision in Algernon's favour. Lord Suckling paid the money on the spot,
and Algernon pocketed it exulting. He had the idea that it was the first
start in his making head against the flood. The next instant he could
have pitched himself upon the floor and bellowed. For, a soul of chicken
and wine, lightly elated, is easily dashed; and if he had but said to
Lord Suckling that, it might as well be deferred, the thing would have
become a precedent, and his own debt might have been held back. He went
on saying, as he rushed forward alone: "Never mind, Suckling. Oh, hang
it! put it in your pocket;" and the imperative necessity for talking, and
fancying what was adverse to fact, enabled him to feel for a time as if
he had really acted according to the prompting of his wisdom. It amazed
him to see people sitting and listening. The more he tried it, the more
unendurable it became. Those sitters and loungers appeared like absurd
petrifactions to him. If he abstained from activity for ever so short a
term, he was tormented by a sense of emptiness; and, as he said to
himself, a man who has eaten a chicken, and part of a game-pie, and drunk
thereto Champagne all day, until the popping of the corks has become as
familiar as minute-guns, he can hardly be empty. It was peculiar. He
stood, just for the sake of investigating the circumstance--it was so
extraordinary. The music rose in a triumphant swell. And now he was sure
that he was not to be blamed for thinking this form of entertainment
detestable. How could people pretend to like it? "Upon my honour!" he
said aloud. The hypocritical nonsense of pretending to like opera-music
disgusted him.

"Where is it, Algy?" a friend of his and Suckling's asked, with a languid
laugh.

"Where's what?"

"Your honour."

"My honour? Do you doubt my honour?" Algernon stared defiantly at the
inoffensive little fellow.

"Not in the slightest. Very sorry to, seeing that I have you down in my
book."

"Latters? Ah, yes," said Algernon, musically, and letting his under-lip
hang that he might restrain the impulse to bite it. "Fifty, or a hundred,
is it? I lost my book on the Downs."

"Fifty; but wait till settling-day, my good fellow, and don't fiddle at
your pockets as if I'd been touching you up for the money. Come and sup
with me to-night."

Algernon muttered a queer reply in a good-tempered tone, and escaped him.

He was sobered by that naming of settling-day. He could now listen to the
music with attention, if not with satisfaction. As he did so, the head of
drowned memory rose slowly up through the wine-bubbles in his brain, and
he flung out a far thought for relief: "How, if I were to leave England
with that dark girl Rhoda at Wrexby, marry her like a man, and live a
wild ramping life in the colonies?" A curtain closed on the prospect, but
if memory was resolved that it would not be drowned, he had at any rate
dosed it with something fresh to occupy its digestion.

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