Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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After months of a division that was like the division of her living
veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having
previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why it
was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful that
her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted in
gratitude. She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was
impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs. Sumfit, who peeped in awe,
and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly. Why it was to be kept
secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without its
delights to them. Tears were shed again when the portrait had to be
packed up and despatched. Rhoda lived on abashed by the adorable new
refinement of Dahlia's features, and her heart yearned to her uncle for
so caring to decorate the lovely face.

One day Rhoda was at her bed-room window, on the point of descending to
encounter the daily dumpling, which was the principal and the unvarying
item of the midday meal of the house, when she beheld a stranger trying
to turn the handle of the iron gate. Her heart thumped. She divined
correctly that it was her uncle. Dahlia had now been absent for very many
months, and Rhoda's growing fretfulness sprang the conviction in her mind
that something closer than letters must soon be coming. She ran
downstairs, and along the gravel-path. He was a little man, square-built,
and looking as if he had worn to toughness; with an evident Sunday suit
on: black, and black gloves, though the day was only antecedent to
Sunday.

"Let me help you, sir," she said, and her hands came in contact with his,
and were squeezed.

"How is my sister?" She had no longer any fear in asking.

"Now, you let me through, first," he replied, imitating an arbitrary
juvenile. "You're as tight locked in as if you was in dread of all the
thieves of London. You ain't afraid o' me, miss? I'm not the party
generally outside of a fortification; I ain't, I can assure you. I'm a
defence party, and a reg'lar lion when I've got the law backing me."

He spoke in a queer, wheezy voice, like a cracked flute, combined with
the effect of an ill-resined fiddle-bow.

"You are in the garden of Queen Anne's Farm," said Rhoda.

"And you're my pretty little niece, are you? 'the darkie lass,' as your
father says. 'Little,' says I; why, you needn't be ashamed to stand
beside a grenadier. Trust the country for growing fine gals."

"You are my uncle, then?" said Rhoda. "Tell me how my sister is. Is she
well? Is she quite happy?"

"Dahly?" returned old Anthony, slowly.

"Yes, yes; my sister!" Rhoda looked at him with distressful eagerness.

"Now, don't you be uneasy about your sister Dahly." Old Anthony, as he
spoke, fixed his small brown eyes on the girl, and seemed immediately to
have departed far away in speculation. A question recalled him.

"Is her health good?"

"Ay; stomach's good, head's good, lungs, brain, what not, all good. She's
a bit giddy, that's all."

"In her head?"

"Ay; and on her pins. Never you mind. You look a steady one, my dear. I
shall take to you, I think."

"But my sister--" Rhoda was saying, when the farmer came out, and sent a
greeting from the threshold,--

"Brother Tony!"

"Here he is, brother William John."

"Surely, and so he is, at last." The farmer walked up to him with his
hand out.

"And it ain't too late, I hope. Eh?"

"It's never too late--to mend," said the farmer.

"Eh? not my manners, eh?" Anthony struggled to keep up the ball; and in
this way they got over the confusion of the meeting after many years and
some differences.

"Made acquaintance with Rhoda, I see," said the farmer, as they turned to
go in.

"The 'darkie lass' you write of. She's like a coal nigh a candle. She
looks, as you'd say, 't' other side of her sister.' Yes, we've had a
talk."

"Just in time for dinner, brother Tony. We ain't got much to offer, but
what there is, is at your service. Step aside with me."

The farmer got Anthony out of hearing a moment, questioned, and was
answered: after which he looked less anxious, but a trifle perplexed, and
nodded his head as Anthony occasionally lifted his, to enforce certain
points in some halting explanation. You would have said that a debtor was
humbly putting his case in his creditor's ear, and could only now and
then summon courage to meet the censorious eyes. They went in to Mrs.
Sumfit's shout that the dumplings were out of the pot: old Anthony bowed
upon the announcement of his name, and all took seats. But it was not the
same sort of dinner-hour as that which the inhabitants of the house were
accustomed to; there was conversation.

The farmer asked Anthony by what conveyance he had come. Anthony shyly,
but not without evident self-approbation, related how, having come by the
train, he got into conversation with the driver of a fly at a station,
who advised him of a cart that would be passing near Wrexby. For
threepennyworth of beer, he had got a friendly introduction to the
carman, who took him within two miles of the farm for one shilling, a
distance of fifteen miles. That was pretty good!

"Home pork, brother Tony," said the farmer, approvingly.

"And home-made bread, too, brother William John," said Anthony, becoming
brisk.

"Ay, and the beer, such as it is." The farmer drank and sighed.

Anthony tried the beer, remarking, "That's good beer; it don't cost
much."

"It ain't adulterated. By what I read of your London beer, this stuff's
not so bad, if you bear in mind it's pure. Pure's my motto. 'Pure, though
poor!'"

"Up there, you pay for rank poison," said Anthony. "So, what do I do? I
drink water and thank 'em, that's wise."

"Saves stomach and purse." The farmer put a little stress on 'purse.'

"Yes, I calculate I save threepence a day in beer alone," said Anthony.

"Three times seven's twenty-one, ain't it?"

Mr. Fleming said this, and let out his elbow in a small perplexity, as
Anthony took him up: "And fifty-two times twenty-one?"

"Well, that's, that's--how much is that, Mas' Gammon?" the farmer asked
in a bellow.

Master Gammon was laboriously and steadily engaged in tightening himself
with dumpling. He relaxed his exertions sufficiently to take this new
burden on his brain, and immediately cast it off.

"Ah never thinks when I feeds--Ah was al'ays a bad hand at 'counts. Gi'es
it up."

"Why, you're like a horse that never was rode! Try again, old man," said
the farmer.

"If I drags a cart," Master Gammon replied, "that ain't no reason why I
should leap a gate."

The farmer felt that he was worsted as regarded the illustration, and
with a bit of the boy's fear of the pedagogue, he fought Anthony off by
still pressing the arithmetical problem upon Master Gammon; until the old
man, goaded to exasperation, rolled out thunderingly,--

"If I works fer ye, that ain't no reason why I should think fer ye,"
which caused him to be left in peace.

"Eh, Robert?" the farmer transferred the question; "Come! what is it?"

Robert begged a minute's delay, while Anthony watched him with hawk eyes.

"I tell you what it is--it's pounds," said Robert.

This tickled Anthony, who let him escape, crying: "Capital! Pounds it is
in your pocket, sir, and you hit that neatly, I will say. Let it be five.
You out with your five at interest, compound interest; soon comes another
five; treat it the same: in ten years--eh? and then you get into figures;
you swim in figures!"

"I should think you did!" said the farmer, winking slyly.

Anthony caught the smile, hesitated and looked shrewd, and then covered
his confusion by holding his plate to Mrs. Sumfit for a help. The
manifest evasion and mute declaration that dumpling said "mum" on that
head, gave the farmer a quiet glow.

"When you are ready to tell me all about my darlin', sir," Mrs. Sumfit
suggested, coaxingly.

"After dinner, mother--after dinner," said the farmer.

"And we're waitin', are we, till them dumplings is finished?" she
exclaimed, piteously, with a glance at Master Gammon's plate.

"After dinner we'll have a talk, mother."

Mrs. Sumfit feared from this delay that there was queer news to be told
of Dahlia's temper; but she longed for the narrative no whit the less,
and again cast a sad eye on the leisurely proceedings of Master Gammon.
The veteran was still calmly tightening. His fork was on end, with a vast
mouthful impaled on the prongs. Master Gammon, a thoughtful eater, was
always last at the meal, and a latent, deep-lying irritation at Mrs.
Sumfit for her fidgetiness, day after day, toward the finish of the dish,
added a relish to his engulfing of the monstrous morsel. He looked at her
steadily, like an ox of the fields, and consumed it, and then holding his
plate out, in a remorseless way, said, "You make 'em so good, marm."

Mrs. Sumfit, fretted as she was, was not impervious to the sound sense of
the remark, as well as to the compliment.

"I don't want to hurry you, Mas' Gammon," she said; "Lord knows, I like
to see you and everybody eat his full and be thankful; but, all about my
Dahly waitin',--I feel pricked wi' a pin all over, I do; and there's my
blessed in London," she answered, "and we knowin' nothin' of her, and one
close by to tell me! I never did feel what slow things dumplin's was,
afore now!"

The kettle simmered gently on the hob. Every other knife and fork was
silent; so was every tongue. Master Gammon ate and the kettle hummed.
Twice Mrs. Sumfit sounded a despairing, "Oh, deary me!" but it was
useless. No human power had ever yet driven Master Gammon to a
demonstration of haste or to any acceleration of the pace he had chosen
for himself. At last, she was not to be restrained from crying out,
almost tearfully,--

"When do you think you'll have done, Mas' Gammon?"

Thus pointedly addressed, Master Gammon laid down his knife and fork. He
half raised his ponderous, curtaining eyelids, and replied,--

"When I feels my buttons, marm."

After which he deliberately fell to work again.

Mrs. Sumfit dropped back in her chair as from a blow.

But even dumplings, though they resist so doggedly for a space, do
ultimately submit to the majestic march of Time, and move. Master Gammon
cleared his plate. There stood in the dish still half a dumpling. The
farmer and Rhoda, deeming that there had been a show of inhospitality,
pressed him to make away with this forlorn remainder.

The vindictive old man, who was as tight as dumpling and buttons could
make him, refused it in a drooping tone, and went forth, looking at none.
Mrs. Sumfit turned to all parties, and begged them to say what more, to
please Master Gammon, she could have done? When Anthony was ready to
speak of her Dahlia, she obtruded this question in utter dolefulness.
Robert was kindly asked by the farmer to take a pipe among them. Rhoda
put a chair for him, but he thanked them both, and said he could not
neglect some work to be done in the fields. She thought that he feared
pain from hearing Dahlia's name, and followed him with her eyes
commiseratingly.

"Does that young fellow attend to business?" said Anthony.

The farmer praised Robert as a rare hand, but one affected with bees in
his nightcap,--who had ideas of his own about farming, and was obstinate
with them; "pays you due respect, but's got a notion as how his way of
thinking's better 'n his seniors. It's the style now with all young
folks. Makes a butt of old Mas' Gammon; laughs at the old man. It ain't
respectful t' age, I say. Gammon don't understand nothing about new feeds
for sheep, and dam nonsense about growing such things as melons,
fiddle-faddle, for 'em. Robert's a beginner. What he knows, I taught the
young fellow. Then, my question is, where's his ideas come from, if
they're contrary to mine? If they're contrary to mine, they're contrary
to my teaching. Well, then, what are they worth? He can't see that. He's
a good one at work--I'll say so much for him."

Old Anthony gave Rhoda a pat on the shoulder.

CHAPTER III

"Pipes in the middle of the day's regular revelry," ejaculated Anthony,
whose way of holding the curved pipe-stem displayed a mind bent on
reckless enjoyment, and said as much as a label issuing from his mouth,
like a figure in a comic woodcut of the old style:--"that's," he pursued,
"that's if you haven't got to look up at the clock every two minutes, as
if the devil was after you. But, sitting here, you know, the afternoon's
a long evening; nobody's your master. You can on wi' your slippers, up
wi' your legs, talk, or go for'ard, counting, twicing, and
three-timesing; by George! I should take to drinking beer if I had my
afternoons to myself in the city, just for the sake of sitting and doing
sums in a tap-room; if it's a big tap-room, with pew sort o' places, and
dark red curtains, a fire, and a smell of sawdust; ale, and tobacco, and
a boy going by outside whistling a tune of the day. Somebody comes in.
'Ah, there's an idle old chap,' he says to himself, (meaning me), and
where, I should like to ask him, 'd his head be if he sat there dividing
two hundred and fifty thousand by forty-five and a half!"

The farmer nodded encouragingly. He thought it not improbable that a
short operation with these numbers would give the sum in Anthony's
possession, the exact calculation of his secret hoard, and he set to work
to stamp them on his brain, which rendered him absent in manner, while
Mrs. Sumfit mixed liquor with hot water, and pushed at his knee, doubling
in her enduring lips, and lengthening her eyes to aim a side-glance of
reprehension at Anthony's wandering loquacity.

Rhoda could bear it no more.

"Now let me hear of my sister, uncle," she said.

"I'll tell you what," Anthony responded, "she hasn't got such a pretty
sort of a sweet blackbirdy voice as you've got."

The girl blushed scarlet.

"Oh, she can mount them colours, too," said Anthony.

His way of speaking of Dahlia indicated that he and she had enough of one
another; but of the peculiar object of his extraordinary visit not even
the farmer had received a hint. Mrs. Sumfit ventured to think aloud that
his grog was not stiff enough, but he took a gulp under her eyes, and
smacked his lips after it in a most convincing manner.

"Ah! that stuff wouldn't do for me in London, half-holiday or no
half-holiday," said Anthony.

"Why not?" the farmer asked.

"I should be speculating--deep--couldn't hold myself in: Mexicans,
Peroovians, Venzeshoolians, Spaniards, at 'em I should go. I see bonds in
all sorts of colours, Spaniards in black and white, Peruvians--orange,
Mexicans--red as the British army. Well, it's just my whim. If I like
red, I go at red. I ain't a bit of reason. What's more, I never
speculate."

"Why, that's safest, brother Tony," said the farmer.

"And safe's my game--always was, always will be! Do you think"--Anthony
sucked his grog to the sugar-dregs, till the spoon settled on his
nose--"do you think I should hold the position I do hold, be trusted as I
am trusted? Ah! you don't know much about that. Should I have money
placed in my hands, do you think--and it's thousands at a time, gold, and
notes, and cheques--if I was a risky chap? I'm known to be thoroughly
respectable. Five and forty years I've been in Boyne's Bank, and thank
ye, ma'am, grog don't do no harm down here. And I will take another
glass. 'When the heart of a man!'--but I'm no singer."

Mrs. Sumfit simpered, "Hem; it's the heart of a woman, too: and she have
one, and it's dying to hear of her darlin' blessed in town, and of who
cuts her hair, and where she gets her gownds, and whose pills--"

The farmer interrupted her irritably.

"Divide a couple o' hundred thousand and more by forty-five and a half,"
he said. "Do wait, mother; all in good time. Forty-five and a-half,
brother Tony; that was your sum--ah!--you mentioned it some time
back--half of what? Is that half a fraction, as they call it? I haven't
forgot fractions, and logareems, and practice, and so on to algebrae,
where it always seems to me to blow hard, for, whizz goes my head in a
jiffy, as soon as I've mounted the ladder to look into that country. How
'bout that forty-five and a half, brother Tony, if you don't mind
condescending to explain?"

"Forty-five and a half?" muttered Anthony, mystified.

"Oh, never mind, you know, if you don't like to say, brother Tony." The
farmer touched him up with his pipe-stem.

"Five and a half," Anthony speculated. "That's a fraction you got hold
of, brother William John,--I remember the parson calling out those names
at your wedding: 'I, William John, take thee, Susan;' yes, that's a
fraction, but what's the good of it?"

"What I mean is, it ain't forty-five and half of forty-five. Half of one,
eh? That's identical with a fraction. One--a stroke--and two under it."

"You've got it correct," Anthony assented.

"How many thousand divide it by?"

"Divide what by, brother William John? I'm beat."

"Ah! out comes the keys: lockup everything; it's time!" the farmer
laughed, rather proud of his brother-in-law's perfect wakefulness after
two stiff tumblers. He saw that Anthony was determined with all due
friendly feeling to let no one know the sum in his possession.

"If it's four o'clock, it is time to lock up," said Anthony, "and bang to
go the doors, and there's the money for thieves to dream of--they can't
get a-nigh it, let them dream as they like. What's the hour, ma'am?"

"Not three, it ain't," returned Mrs. Sumfit; "and do be good creatures,
and begin about my Dahly, and where she got that Bumptious gownd, and the
bonnet with blue flowers lyin' by on the table: now, do!"

Rhoda coughed.

"And she wears lavender gloves like a lady," Mrs. Sumfit was continuing.

Rhoda stamped on her foot.

"Oh! cruel!" the comfortable old woman snapped in pain, as she applied
her hand to the inconsolable fat foot, and nursed it. "What's roused ye,
you tiger girl? I shan't be able to get about, I shan't, and then who's
to cook for ye all? For you're as ignorant as a raw kitchen wench, and
knows nothing."

"Come, Dody, you're careless," the farmer spoke chidingly through Mrs.
Sumfit's lamentations.

"She stops uncle Anthony when he's just ready, father," said Rhoda.

"Do you want to know?" Anthony set his small eyes on her: "do you want to
know, my dear?" He paused, fingering his glass, and went on: "I, Susan,
take thee, William John, and you've come of it. Says I to myself, when I
hung sheepish by your mother and by your father, my dear, says I to
myself, I ain't a marrying man: and if these two, says I, if any progeny
comes to 'em--to bless them, some people'd say, but I know what life is,
and what young ones are--if--where was I? Liquor makes you talk, brother
William John, but where's your ideas? Gone, like hard cash! What I meant
was, I felt I might some day come for'ard and help the issue of your
wife's weddin', and wasn't such a shady object among you, after all. My
pipe's out."

Rhoda stood up, and filled the pipe, and lit it in silence. She divined
that the old man must be allowed to run on in his own way, and for a long
time he rambled, gave a picture of the wedding, and of a robbery of
Boyne's Bank: the firm of Boyne, Burt, Hamble, and Company. At last, he
touched on Dahlia.

"What she wants, I can't make out," he said; "and what that good lady
there, or somebody, made mention of--how she manages to dress as she do!
I can understand a little goin' a great way, if you're clever in any way;
but I'm at my tea"--Anthony laid his hand out as to exhibit a picture. "I
ain't a complaining man, and be young, if you can, I say, and walk about
and look at shops; but, I'm at my tea: I come home rather tired there's
the tea-things, sure enough, and tea's made, and, maybe, there's a shrimp
or two; she attends to your creature comforts. When everything's locked
up and tight and right, I'm gay, and ask for a bit of society: well, I'm
at my tea: I hear her foot thumping up and down her bed-room overhead: I
know the meaning of that: I'd rather hear nothing: down she runs: I'm at
my tea, and in she bursts."--Here followed a dramatic account of Dahlia's
manner of provocation, which was closed by the extinction of his pipe.

The farmer, while his mind still hung about thousands of pounds and a
certain incomprehensible division of them to produce a distinct
intelligible total, and set before him the sum of Anthony's riches, could
see that his elder daughter was behaving flightily and neglecting the
true interests of the family, and he was chagrined. But Anthony, before
he entered the house, had assured him that Dahlia was well, and that
nothing was wrong with her. So he looked at Mrs. Sumfit, who now took
upon herself to plead for Dahlia: a young thing, and such a handsome
creature! and we were all young some time or other; and would heaven have
mercy on us, if we were hard upon the young, do you think? The motto of a
truly religious man said, try 'em again. And, maybe, people had been a
little hard upon Dahlia, and the girl was apt to take offence. In
conclusion, she appealed to Rhoda to speak up for her sister. Rhoda sat
in quiet reserve.

She was sure her sister must be justified in all she did but the picture
of the old man coming from his work every night to take his tea quite
alone made her sad. She found herself unable to speak, and as she did
not, Mrs. Sumfit had an acute twinge from her recently trodden foot, and
called her some bitter names; which was not an unusual case, for the kind
old woman could be querulous, and belonged to the list of those whose
hearts are as scales, so that they love not one person devotedly without
a corresponding spirit of opposition to another. Rhoda merely smiled.

By-and-by, the women left the two men alone.

Anthony turned and struck the farmer's knee.

"You've got a jewel in that gal, brother William John."

"Eh! she's a good enough lass. Not much of a manager, brother Tony. Too
much of a thinker, I reckon. She's got a temper of her own too. I'm a bit
hurt, brother Tony, about that other girl. She must leave London, if she
don't alter. It's flightiness; that's all. You mustn't think ill of poor
Dahly. She was always the pretty one, and when they know it, they act up
to it: she was her mother's favourite."

"Ah! poor Susan! an upright woman before the Lord."

"She was," said the farmer, bowing his head.

"And a good wife," Anthony interjected.

"None better--never a better; and I wish she was living to look after her
girls."

"I came through the churchyard, hard by," said Anthony; "and I read that
writing on her tombstone. It went like a choke in my throat. The first
person I saw next was her child, this young gal you call Rhoda; and,
thinks I to myself, you might ask me, I'd do anything for ye--that I
could, of course."

The farmer's eye had lit up, but became overshadowed by the
characteristic reservation.

"Nobody'd ask you to do more than you could," he remarked, rather coldly.

"It'll never be much," sighed Anthony.

"Well, the world's nothing, if you come to look at it close," the farmer
adopted a similar tone.

"What's money!" said Anthony.

The farmer immediately resumed his this-worldliness:

"Well, it's fine to go about asking us poor devils to answer ye that," he
said, and chuckled, conceiving that he had nailed Anthony down to a
partial confession of his ownership of some worldly goods.

"What do you call having money?" observed the latter, clearly in the
trap. "Fifty thousand?"

"Whew!" went the farmer, as at a big draught of powerful stuff.

"Ten thousand?"

Mr. Fleming took this second gulp almost contemptuously, but still
kindly.

"Come," quoth Anthony, "ten thousand's not so mean, you know. You're a
gentleman on ten thousand. So, on five. I'll tell ye, many a gentleman'd
be glad to own it. Lor' bless you! But, you know nothing of the world,
brother William John. Some of 'em haven't one--ain't so rich as you!"

"Or you, brother Tony?" The farmer made a grasp at his will-o'-the-wisp.

"Oh! me!" Anthony sniggered. "I'm a scraper of odds and ends. I pick up
things in the gutter. Mind you, those Jews ain't such fools, though a
curse is on 'em, to wander forth. They know the meaning of the
multiplication table. They can turn fractions into whole numbers. No; I'm
not to be compared to gentlemen. My property's my respectability. I said
that at the beginning, and I say it now. But, I'll tell you what, brother
William John, it's an emotion when you've got bags of thousands of pounds
in your arms."

Ordinarily, the farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of
dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the
riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted him to
childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony himself
furnished the incitement, he was quite lifted from the earth. He had,
besides, taken more of the strong mixture than he was ever accustomed to
take in the middle of the day; and as it seemed to him that Anthony was
really about to be seduced into a particular statement of the extent of
the property which formed his respectability (as Anthony had chosen to
put it), he got up a little game in his head by guessing how much the
amount might positively be, so that he could subsequently compare his
shrewd reckoning with the avowed fact. He tamed his wild ideas as much as
possible; thought over what his wife used to say of Anthony's saving ways
from boyhood, thought of the dark hints of the Funds, of many bold
strokes for money made by sagacious persons; of Anthony's close style of
living, and of the lives of celebrated misers; this done, he resolved to
make a sure guess, and therefore aimed below the mark.

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