Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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Next morning came the usual short impatient scrawl on thin blue paper
from Edward, scarce worthy of a passing thought. In a postscript, he
asked: "Are there, on your oath, no letters for me? If there are, send
them immediately--every one, bills as well. Don't fail. I must have
them."

Algernon was at last persuaded to pack up Dahlia's letters, saying: "I
suppose they can't do any harm now." The expense of the postage afflicted
him; but "women always cost a dozen to our one," he remarked. On his way
to the City, he had to decide whether he would go to the Bank, or take
the train leading to Wrexby. He chose the latter course, until, feeling
that he was about to embark in a serious undertaking, he said to himself,
"No! duty first;" and postponed the expedition for the day following.

CHAPTER XXXII

Squire Blancove, having business in town, called on his brother at the
Bank, asking whether Sir William was at home, with sarcastic emphasis on
the title, which smelt to him of commerce. Sir William invited him to
dine and sleep at his house that night.

"You will meet Mrs. Lovell, and a Major Waring, a friend of hers, who
knew her and her husband in India," said the baronet.

"The deuce I shall," said the squire, and accepted maliciously.

Where the squire dined, he drank, defying ladies and the new-fangled
subserviency to those flustering teabodies. This was understood; so, when
the Claret and Port had made a few rounds, Major Waring was permitted to
follow Mrs. Lovell, and the squire and his brother settled to
conversation; beginning upon gout. Sir William had recently had a touch
of the family complaint, and spoke of it in terms which gave the squire
some fraternal sentiment. From that, they fell to talking politics, and
differed. The breach was healed by a divergence to their sons. The squire
knew his own to be a scamp.

"You'll never do anything with him," he said.

"I don't think I shall," Sir William admitted.

"Didn't I tell you so?"

"You did. But, the point is, what will you do with him?"

"Send him to Jericho to ride wild jackasses. That's all he's fit for."

The superior complacency of Sir William's smile caught the squire's
attention.

"What do you mean to do with Ned?" he asked.

"I hope," was the answer, "to have him married before the year is out."

"To the widow?"

"The widow?" Sir William raised his eyebrows.

"Mrs. Lovell, I mean."

"What gives you that idea?"

"Why, Ned has made her an offer. Don't you know that?"

"I know nothing of the sort."

"And don't believe it? He has. He's only waiting now, over there in
Paris, to get comfortably out of a scrape--you remember what I told you
at Fairly--and then Mrs. Lovell's going to have him--as he thinks; but,
by George, it strikes me this major you've got here, knows how to follow
petticoats and get in his harvest in the enemy's absence."

"I think you're quite under a delusion, in both respects," observed Sir
William.

"What makes you think that?"

"I have Edward's word."

"He lies as naturally as an infant sucks."

"Pardon me; this is my son you are speaking of."

"And this is your Port I'm drinking; so I'll say no more."

The squire emptied his glass, and Sir William thrummed on the table.

"Now, my dog has got his name," the squire resumed. "I'm not ambitious
about him. You are, about yours; and you ought to know him. He spends or
he don't spend. It's not the question whether he gets into debt, but
whether he does mischief with what he spends. If Algy's a bad fish, Ned's
a bit of a serpent; damned clever, no doubt. I suppose, you wouldn't let
him marry old Fleming's daughter, now, if he wanted to?"

"Who is Fleming?" Sir William thundered out.

"Fleming's the father of the girl. I'm sorry for him. He sells his
farm-land which I've been looking at for years; so I profit by it; but I
don't like to see a man like that broken up. Algy, I said before, 's a
bad fish. Hang me, if I think he'd have behaved like Ned. If he had, I'd
have compelled him to marry her, and shipped them both off, clean out of
the country, to try their luck elsewhere.

"You're proud; I'm practical. I don't expect you to do the same. I'm up
in London now to raise money to buy the farm--Queen's Anne's Farm; it's
advertized for sale, I see. Fleeting won't sell it to me privately,
because my name's Blancove, and I'm the father of my son, and he fancies
Algy's the man. Why? he saw Algy at the theatre in London with this girl
of his;--we were all young fellows once!--and the rascal took Ned's
burden on his shoulders. So, I shall have to compete with other buyers,
and pay, I dare say, a couple of hundred extra for the property. Do you
believe what I tell you now?"

"Not a word of it," said Sir William blandly.

The squire seized the decanter and drank in a fury.

"I had it from Algy."

"That would all the less induce me to believe it."

"H'm!" the squire frowned. "Let me tell you--he's a dog--but it's a
damned hard thing to hear one's own flesh and blood abused. Look here:
there's a couple. One of them has made a fool of a girl. It can't be my
rascal--stop a minute--he isn't the man, because she'd have been sure to
have made a fool of him, that's certain. He's a soft-hearted dog. He'd
aim at a cock-sparrow, and be glad if he missed. There you have him. He
was one of your good boys. I used to tell his poor mother, 'When you
leave off thinking for him, he'll go to the first handy villain--and
that's the devil.' And he's done it. But, here's the difference. He goes
himself; he don't send another. I'll tell you what: if you don't know
about Mr. Ned's tricks, you ought. And you ought to make him marry the
girl, and be off to New Zealand, or any of the upside-down places, where
he might begin by farming, and soon, with his abilities, be cock o' the
walk. He would, perhaps, be sending us a letter to say that he preferred
to break away from the mother country and establish a republic. He's got
the same political opinions as you. Oh! he'll do well enough over here;
of course he will. He's the very fellow to do well. Knock at him, he's
hard as nails, and 'll stick anywhere. You wouldn't listen to me, when I
told you about this at Fairly, where some old sweetheart of the girl
mistook that poor devil of a scapegoat, Algy, for him, and went pegging
at him like a madman."

"No," said Sir William; "No, I would not. Nor do I now. At least," he
struck out his right hand deprecatingly, "I listen."

"Can you tell me what he was doing when he went to Italy?"

"He went partly at my suggestion."

"Turns you round his little finger! He went off with this girl: wanted to
educate her, or some nonsense of the sort. That was Mr. Ned's business.
Upon my soul, I'm sorry for old Fleming. I'm told he takes it to heart.
It's done him up. Now, if it should turn out to be Ned, would you let him
right the girl by marrying her? You wouldn't!"

"The principle of examining your hypothesis before you proceed to decide
by it, is probably unknown to you," Sir William observed, after bestowing
a considerate smile on his brother, who muffled himself up from the
chilling sententiousness, and drank.

Sir William, in the pride of superior intellect, had heard as good as
nothing of the charge against his son.

"Well," said the squire, "think as you like, act as you like; all's one
to me. You're satisfied; that's clear; and I'm some hundred of pounds out
of pocket. This major's paying court to the widow, is he?"

"I can't say that he is."

"It would be a good thing for her to get married."

"I should be glad."

"A good thing for her, I say."

"A good thing for him, let us hope."

"If he can pay her debts."

Sir William was silent, and sipped his wine.

"And if he can keep a tight hand on the reins. That's wanted," said the
squire.

The gentleman whose road to happiness was thus prescribed stood by Mrs.
Lovell's chair, in the drawing-room. He held a letter in his hand, for
which her own was pleadingly extended.

"I know you to be the soul of truth, Percy," she was saying.

"The question is not that; but whether you can bear the truth."

"Can I not? Who would live without it?"

"Pardon me; there's more. You say, you admire this friend of mine; no
doubt you do. Mind, I am going to give you the letter. I wish you simply
to ask yourself now, whether you are satisfied at my making a confidant
of a man in Robert Eccles's position, and think it natural and just--you
do?"

"Quite just," said Mrs. Lovell; "and natural? Yes, natural; though not
common. Eccentric; which only means, hors du commun; and can be natural.
It is natural. I was convinced he was a noble fellow, before I knew that
you had made a friend of him. I am sure of it now. And did he not save
your life, Percy?"

"I have warned you that you are partly the subject of the letter."

"Do you forget that I am a woman, and want it all the more impatiently?"

Major Waring suffered the letter to be snatched from his hand, and stood
like one who is submitting to a test, or watching the effect of a potent
drug.

"It is his second letter to you," Mrs. Lovell murmured. "I see; it is a
reply to yours."

She read a few lines, and glanced up, blushing. "Am I not made to bear
more than I deserve?"

"If you can do such mischief, without meaning any, to a man who is in
love with another woman--," said Percy.

"Yes," she nodded, "I perceive the deduction; but inferences are like
shadows on the wall--they are thrown from an object, and are monstrous
distortions of it. That is why you misjudge women. You infer one thing
from another, and are ruled by the inference."

He simply bowed. Edward would have answered her in a bright strain, and
led her on to say brilliant things, and then have shown her, as by a
sudden light, that she had lost herself, and reduced her to feel the
strength and safety of his hard intellect. That was the idea in her
brain. The next moment her heart ejected it.

"Petty, when I asked permission to look at this letter, I was not aware
how great a compliment it would be to me if I was permitted to see it. It
betrays your friend."

"It betrays something more," said he.

Mrs. Lovell cast down her eyes and read, without further comment.

These were the contents:--

"My Dear Percy,--Now that I see her every day again, I am worse than
ever; and I remember thinking once or twice that Mrs. L. had cured
me. I am a sort of man who would jump to reach the top of a
mountain. I understand how superior Mrs. L. is to every woman in
the world I have seen; but Rhoda cures me on that head. Mrs. Lovell
makes men mad and happy, and Rhoda makes them sensible and
miserable. I have had the talk with Rhoda. It is all over. I have
felt like being in a big room with one candle alight ever since.
She has not looked at me, and does nothing but get by her father
whenever she can, and takes his hand and holds it. I see where the
blow has struck her: it has killed her pride; and Rhoda is almost
all pride. I suppose she thinks our plan is the best. She has not
said she does, and does not mention her sister. She is going to
die, or she turns nun, or marries a gentleman. I shall never get
her. She will not forgive me for bringing this news to her. I told
you how she coloured, the first day I came; which has all gone now.
She just opens her lips to me. You remember Corporal Thwaites--you
caught his horse, when he had his foot near wrenched off, going
through the gate--and his way of breathing through the under-row of
his teeth--the poor creature was in such pain--that's just how she
takes her breath. It makes her look sometimes like that woman's
head with the snakes for her hair. This bothers me--how is it you
and Mrs. Lovell manage to talk together of such things? Why, two
men rather hang their heads a bit. My notion is, that women--
ladies, in especial, ought never to hear of sad things of this sort.
Of course, I mean, if they do, it cannot harm them. It only upsets
me. Why are ladies less particular than girls in Rhoda's place?"

("Shame being a virtue," was Mrs. Lovell's running comment.)

"She comes up to town with her father to-morrow. The farm is
ruined. The poor old man had to ask me for a loan to pay the
journey. Luckily, Rhoda has saved enough with her pennies and
two-pences. Ever since I left the farm, it has been in the hands
of an old donkey here, who has worked it his own way. What is in
the ground will stop there, and may as well.

"I leave off writing, I write such stuff; and if I go on
writing to you, I shall be putting these things '--!--!--!' The way
you write about Mrs. Lovell, convinces me you are not in my scrape,
or else gentlemen are just as different from their inferiors as
ladies are from theirs. That's the question. What is the meaning
of your 'not being able to leave her for a day, for fear she should
fall under other influences'? Then, I copy your words, you say,
'She is all things to everybody, and cannot help it.' In that case,
I would seize my opportunity and her waist, and tell her she was
locked up from anybody else. Friendship with men--but I cannot
understand friendship with women, and watching them to keep them
right, which must mean that you do not think much of them."

Mrs. Lovell, at this point, raised her eyes abruptly from the letter and
returned it.

"You discuss me very freely with your friend," she said.

Percy drooped to her. "I warned you when you wished to read it."

"But, you see, you have bewildered him. It was scarcely wise to write
other than plain facts. Men of that class." She stopped.

"Of that class?" said he.

"Men of any class, then: you yourself: if any one wrote to you such
things, what would you think? It is very unfair. I have the honour of
seeing you daily, because you cannot trust me out of your sight? What is
there inexplicable about me? Do you wonder that I talk openly of women
who are betrayed, and do my best to help them?".

"On the contrary; you command my esteem," said Percy.

"But you think me a puppet?"

"Fond of them, perhaps?" his tone of voice queried in a manner that made
her smile.

"I hate them," she said, and her face expressed it.

"But you make them."

"How? You torment me."

"How can I explain the magic? Are you not making one of me now, where I
stand?"

"Then, sit."

"Or kneel?"

"Oh, Percy! do nothing ridiculous."

Inveterate insight was a characteristic of Major Waring; but he was not
the less in Mrs. Lovell's net. He knew it to be a charm that she
exercised almost unknowingly. She was simply a sweet instrument for those
who could play on it, and therein lay her mighty fascination. Robert's
blunt advice that he should seize the chance, take her and make her his
own, was powerful with him. He checked the particular appropriating
action suggested by Robert.

"I owe you an explanation," he said. "Margaret, my friend."

"You can think of me as a friend, Percy?"

"If I can call you my friend, what would I not call you besides? I did
you a great and shameful wrong when you were younger. Hush! you did not
deserve that. Judge of yourself as you will; but I know now what my
feelings were then. The sublime executioner was no more than a spiteful
man. You give me your pardon, do you not? Your hand?"

She had reached her hand to him, but withdrew it quickly.

"Not your hand, Margaret? But, you must give it to some one. You will be
ruined, if you do not."

She looked at him with full eyes. "You know it then?" she said slowly;
but the gaze diminished as he went on.

"I know, by what I know of you, that you of all women should owe a direct
allegiance. Come; I will assume privileges. Are you free?"

"Would you talk to me so, if you thought otherwise?" she asked.

"I think I would," said Percy. "A little depends upon the person. Are you
pledged at all to Mr. Edward Blancove?"

"Do you suppose me one to pledge myself?"

"He is doing a base thing."

"Then, Percy, let an assurance of my knowledge of that be my answer."

"You do not love the man?"

"Despise him, say!"

"Is he aware of it?"

"If clear writing can make him."

"You have told him as much?"

"To his apprehension, certainly."

"Further, Margaret, I must speak:--did he act with your concurrence, or
knowledge of it at all, in acting as he has done?"

"Heavens! Percy, you question me like a husband."

"It is what I mean to be, if I may."

The frame of the fair lady quivered as from a blow, and then her eyes
rose tenderly.

"I thought you knew me. This is not possible."

"You will not be mine? Why is it not possible?"

"I think I could say, because I respect you too much."

"Because you find you have not the courage?"

"For what?"

"To confess that you were under bad influence, and were not the Margaret
I can make of you. Put that aside. If you remain as you are, think of the
snares. If you marry one you despise, look at the pit. Yes; you will be
mine! Half my love of my country and my profession is love of you.
Margaret is fire in my blood. I used to pray for opportunities, that
Margaret might hear of me. I knew that gallant actions touched her; I
would have fallen gladly; I was sure her heart would leap when she heard
of me. Let it beat against mine. Speak!"

"I will," said Mrs. Lovell, and she suppressed the throbs of her bosom.
Her voice was harsh and her face bloodless. "How much money have you,
Percy?"

This sudden sluicing of cold water on his heat of passion petrified him.

"Money," he said, with a strange frigid scrutiny of her features. As in
the flash of a mirror, he beheld her bony, worn, sordid, unacceptable.
But he was fain to admit it to be an eminently proper demand for
enlightenment.

He said deliberately, "I possess an income of five hundred a year,
extraneous, and in addition to my pay as major in Her Majesty's service."

Then he paused, and the silence was like a growing chasm between them.

She broke it by saying, "Have you any expectations?"

This was crueller still, though no longer astonishing. He complained in
his heart merely that her voice had become so unpleasant.

With emotionless precision, he replied, "At my mother's death--"

She interposed a soft exclamation.

"At my mother's death there will come to me by reversion, five or six
thousand pounds. When my father dies, he may possibly bequeath his
property to me. On that I cannot count."

Veritable tears were in her eyes. Was she affecting to weep
sympathetically in view of these remote contingencies?

"You will not pretend that you know me now, Percy," she said, trying to
smile; and she had recovered the natural feminine key of her voice. "I am
mercenary, you see; not a mercenary friend. So, keep me as a friend--say
you will be my friend."

"Nay, you had a right to know," he protested.

"It was disgraceful--horrible; but it was necessary for me to know."

"And now that you do know?"

"Now that I know, I have only to say--be as merciful in your idea of me
as you can."

She dropped her hand in his, and it was with a thrill of dismay that he
felt the rush of passion reanimating his frozen veins.

"Be mercenary, but be mine! I will give you something better to live for
than this absurd life of fashion. You reckon on what our expenditure will
be by that standard. It's comparative poverty; but--but you can have some
luxuries. You can have a carriage, a horse to ride. Active service may
come: I may rise. Give yourself to me, and you must love me, and regret
nothing."

"Nothing! I should regret nothing. I don't want carriages, or horses, or
luxuries. I could live with you on a subaltern's pay. I can't marry you,
Percy, and for the very reason which would make me wish to marry you."

"Charade?" said he; and the contempt of the utterance brought her head
close under his.

"Dearest friend, you have not to learn how to punish me."

The little reproach, added to the wound to his pride, required a healing
medicament; she put her lips to his fingers.

Assuredly the comedy would not have ended there, but it was stopped by an
intrusion of the squire, followed by Sir William, who, while the
squire--full of wine and vindictive humours--went on humming, "Ah!
h'm--m--m! Soh!" said in the doorway to some one behind him: "And if you
have lost your key, and Algernon is away, of what use is it to drive down
to the Temple for a bed? I make it an especial request that you sleep
here tonight. I wish it. I have to speak with you."

Mrs. Lovell was informed that the baronet had been addressing his son,
who was fresh from Paris, and not, in his own modest opinion, presentable
before a lady.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Once more Farmer Fleming and Rhoda prepared for their melancholy journey
up to London. A light cart was at the gateway, near which Robert stood
with the farmer, who, in his stiff brown overcoat, that reached to his
ankles, and broad country-hat, kept his posture of dumb expectation like
a stalled ox, and nodded to Robert's remarks on the care which the garden
had been receiving latterly, the many roses clean in bud, and the trim
blue and white and red garden beds. Every word was a blow to him; but he
took it, as well as Rhoda's apparent dilatoriness, among the things to be
submitted to by a man cut away by the roots from the home of his labour
and old associations. Above his bowed head there was a board proclaiming
that Queen Anne's Farm, and all belonging thereunto, was for sale. His
prospect in the vague wilderness of the future, was to seek for
acceptance as a common labourer on some kind gentleman's property. The
phrase "kind gentleman" was adopted by his deliberate irony of the fate
which cast him out. Robert was stamping fretfully for Rhoda to come. At
times, Mrs. Sumfit showed her head from the window of her bed-room,
crying, "D'rectly!" and disappearing.

The still aspect of the house on the shining May afternoon was otherwise
undisturbed. Besides Rhoda, Master Gammon was being waited for; on whom
would devolve the driving of the cart back from the station. Robert
heaped his vexed exclamations upon this old man. The farmer restrained
his voice in Master Gammon's defence, thinking of the comparison he could
make between him and Robert: for Master Gammon had never run away from
the farm and kept absent, leaving it to take care of itself. Gammon, slow
as he might be, was faithful, and it was not he who had made it necessary
for the farm to be sold. Gammon was obstinate, but it was not he who,
after taking a lead, and making the farm dependent on his lead, had
absconded with the brains and energy of the establishment. Such
reflections passed through the farmer's mind.

Rhoda and Mrs. Sumfit came together down the trim pathway; and Robert now
had a clear charge against Master Gammon. He recommended an immediate
departure.

"The horse 'll bring himself home quite as well and as fast as Gammon
will," he said.

"But for the shakin' and the joltin', which tells o' sovereigns and
silver," Mrs. Sumfit was observing to Rhoda, "you might carry the
box--and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a
poker and not break it, I couldn't, nor get a single one through the
slit;--the sight I was, with a poker in my hand! I do declare I felt
azactly like a housebreaker;--and no soul to notice what you carries.
Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so"--Mrs. Sumfit performed a
methodical "Ahem!" and noised the sole of her shoe on the gravel "so, and
folks 'll think it's a mistake they made."

"What's that?"--the farmer pointed at a projection under Rhoda's shawl.

"It is a present, father, for my sister," said Rhoda.

"What is it?" the farmer questioned again.

Mrs. Sumfit fawned before him penitently--"Ah! William, she's poor, and
she do want a little to spend, or she will be so nipped and like a
frost-bitten body, she will. And, perhaps, dear, haven't money in her
sight for next day's dinner, which is--oh, such a panic for a young wife!
for it ain't her hunger, dear William--her husband, she thinks of. And
her cookery at a stand-still! Thinks she, 'he will charge it on the
kitchen;' so unreasonable's men. Yes," she added, in answer to the rigid
dejection of his look, "I said true to you. I know I said, 'Not a penny
can I get, William,' when you asked me for loans; and how could I get it?
I can't get it now. See here, dear!"

She took the box from under Rhoda's shawl, and rattled it with a down
turn and an up turn.

"You didn't ask me, dear William, whether I had a money-box. I'd ha' told
you so at once, had ye but asked me. And had you said, 'Gi' me your
money-box,' it was yours, only for your asking. You do see, you can't get
any of it out. So, when you asked for money I was right to say, I'd got
none."

The farmer bore with her dreary rattling of the box in demonstration of
its retentive capacities. The mere force of the show stopped him from
retorting; but when, to excuse Master Gammon for his tardiness, she
related that he also had a money-box, and was in search of it, the farmer
threw up his head with the vigour of a young man, and thundered for
Master Gammon, by name, vehemently wrathful at the combined hypocrisy of
the pair. He called twice, and his face was purple and red as he turned
toward the cart, saying,--

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