Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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"How could you bear to read the letters?" she sobbed.

"Could any human being read them and not break his heart for her?" said
he.

"How could you bear to read them and leave her to perish!"

His voice deepened to an impressive hollow: "I read them for the first
time yesterday morning, in France, and I am here!"

It was undeniably, in its effect on Rhoda, a fine piece of pleading
artifice. It partially excused or accounted for his behaviour, while it
filled her with emotions which she felt to be his likewise, and therefore
she could not remain as an unsympathetic stranger by his side.

With this, he flung all artifice away. He told her the whole story,
saving the one black episode of it--the one incomprehensible act of a
desperate baseness that, blindly to get free, he had deliberately
permitted, blinked at, and had so been guilty of. He made a mental pause
as he was speaking, to consider in amazement how and by what agency he
had been reduced to shame his manhood, and he left it a marvel.
Otherwise, he in no degree exonerated himself. He dwelt sharply on his
vice of ambition, and scorned it as a misleading light. "Yet I have done
little since I have been without her!" And then, with a persuasive
sincerity, he assured her that he could neither study nor live apart from
Dahlia. "She is the dearest soul to me on earth; she is the purest woman.
I have lived with her, I have lived apart from her, and I cannot live
without her. I love her with a husband's love. Now, do you suppose I will
consent to be separated from her? I know that while her heart beats, it's
mine. Try to keep her from me--you kill her."

"She did not die," said Rhoda. It confounded his menaces.

"This time she might," he could not refrain from murmuring.

"Ah!" Rhoda drew off from him.

"But I say," cried he, "that I will see her."

"We say, that she shall do what is for her good."

"You have a project? Let me hear it. You are mad, if you have."

"It is not our doing, Mr. Blancove. It was--it was by her own choice. She
will not always be ashamed to look her father in the face. She dare not
see him before she is made worthy to see him. I believe her to have been
directed right."

"And what is her choice?"

"She has chosen for herself to marry a good and worthy man."

Edward called out, "Have you seen him--the man?"

Rhoda, thinking he wished to have the certainty of the stated fact
established, replied, "I have."

"A good and worthy man," muttered Edward. "Illness, weakness, misery,
have bewildered her senses. She thinks him a good and worthy man?"

"I think him so."

"And you have seen him?"

"I have."

"Why, what monstrous delusion is this? It can't be! My good creature,
you're oddly deceived, I imagine. What is the man's name? I can
understand that she has lost her will and distinct sight; but you are
clear-sighted, and can estimate. What is the man's name?"

"I can tell you," said Rhoda; "his name is Mr. Sedgett."

"Mister--!" Edward gave one hollow stave of laughter. "And you have seen
him, and think him--"

"I know he is not a gentleman," said Rhoda. "He has been deeply good to
my sister, and I thank him, and do respect him."

"Deeply!" Edward echoed. He was prompted to betray and confess himself:
courage failed.

They looked around simultaneously on hearing an advancing footstep.

The very man appeared--in holiday attire, flushed, smiling, and with a
nosegay of roses in his hand. He studied the art of pleasing women. His
eye struck on Edward, and his smile vanished. Rhoda gave him no word of
recognition. As he passed on, he was led to speculate from his having
seen Mr. Edward instead of Mr. Algernon, and from the look of the former,
that changes were in the air, possibly chicanery, and the proclaiming of
himself as neatly diddled by the pair whom, with another, he heartily
hoped to dupe.

After he had gone by, Edward and Rhoda changed looks. Both knew the
destination of that lovely nosegay. The common knowledge almost kindled
an illuminating spark in her brain; but she was left in the dark, and
thought him strangely divining, or only strange. For him, a horror
cramped his limbs. He felt that he had raised a devil in that abominable
smirking ruffian. It may not, perhaps, be said that he had distinctly
known Sedgett to be the man. He had certainly suspected the possibility
of his being the man. It is out of the power of most wilful and selfish
natures to imagine, so as to see accurately, the deeds they prompt or
permit to be done. They do not comprehend them until these black
realities stand up before their eyes.

Ejaculating "Great heaven!" Edward strode some steps away, and returned.

"It's folly, Rhoda!--the uttermost madness ever conceived! I do not
believe--I know that Dahlia would never consent--first, to marry any man
but myself; secondly, to marry a man who is not a perfect gentleman. Her
delicacy distinguishes her among women."

"Mr. Blancove, my sister is nearly dead, only that she is so strong. The
disgrace has overwhelmed her, it has. When she is married, she will thank
and honour him, and see nothing but his love and kindness. I will leave
you now."

"I am going to her," said Edward.

"Do not."

"There's an end of talking. I trust no one will come in my path. Where am
I?"

He looked up at the name of the street, and shot away from her. Rhoda
departed in another direction, firm, since she had seen Sedgett pass,
that his nobleness should not meet with an ill reward. She endowed him
with fair moral qualities, which she contrasted against Edward Blancove's
evil ones; and it was with a democratic fervour of contempt that she
dismissed the superior outward attractions of the gentleman.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

This neighbourhood was unknown to Edward, and, after plunging about in
one direction and another, he found that he had missed his way. Down
innumerable dusky streets of dwarfed houses, showing soiled silent
window-blinds, he hurried and chafed; at one moment in sharp joy that he
had got a resolution, and the next dismayed by the singular petty
impediments which were tripping him. "My dearest!" his heart cried to
Dahlia, "did I wrong you so? I will make all well. It was the work of a
fiend." Now he turned to right, now to left, and the minutes flew. They
flew; and in the gathering heat of his brain he magnified things until
the sacrifice of herself Dahlia was preparing for smote his imagination
as with a blaze of the upper light, and stood sublime before him in the
grandeur of old tragedy. "She has blinded her eyes, stifled her senses,
eaten her heart. Oh! my beloved! my wife! my poor girl! and all to be
free from shame in her father's sight!" Who could have believed that a
girl of Dahlia's class would at once have felt the shame so keenly, and
risen to such pure heights of heroism? The sacrifice flouted conception;
it mocked the steady morning. He refused to believe in it, but the short
throbs of his blood were wiser.

A whistling urchin became his guide. The little lad was carelessly giving
note to a popular opera tune, with happy disregard of concord. It chanced
that the tune was one which had taken Dahlia's ear, and, remembering it
and her pretty humming of it in the old days, Edward's wrestling unbelief
with the fatality of the hour sank, so entirely was he under the
sovereignty of his sensations. He gave the boy a big fee, desiring
superstitiously to feel that one human creature could bless the hour. The
house was in view. He knocked, and there came a strange murmur of some
denial. "She is here," he said, menacingly.

"She was taken away, sir, ten minutes gone, by a gentleman," the servant
tied to assure him.

The landlady of the house, coming up the kitchen stairs, confirmed the
statement. In pity for his torpid incredulity she begged him to examine
her house from top to bottom, and herself conducted him to Dahlia's room.

"That bed has not been slept in," said the lawyer, pointing his finger to
it.

"No, sir; poor thing! she didn't sleep last night. She's been wearying
for weeks; and last night her sister came, and they hadn't met for very
long. Two whole candles they burnt out, or near upon it."

"Where?--" Edward's articulation choked.

"Where they're gone to, sir? That I do not know. Of course she will come
back."

The landlady begged him to wait; but to sit and see the minutes--the
black emissaries of perdition--fly upon their business, was torture as
big as to endure the tearing off of his flesh till the skeleton stood
out. Up to this point he had blamed himself; now he accused the just
heavens. Yea! is not a sinner their lawful quarry? and do they not slip
the hounds with savage glee, and hunt him down from wrong to evil, from
evil to infamy, from infamy to death, from death to woe everlasting? And
is this their righteousness?--He caught at the rusty garden rails to
steady his feet.

Algernon was employed in the comfortable degustation of his breakfast,
meditating whether he should transfer a further slice of ham or of
Yorkshire pie to his plate, or else have done with feeding and light a
cigar, when Edward appeared before him.

"Do you know where that man lives?"

Algernon had a prompting to respond, "Now, really! what man?" But passion
stops the breath of fools. He answered, "Yes."

"Have you the thousand in your pocket?"

Algernon nodded with a sickly grin.

"Jump up! Go to him. Give it up to him! Say, that if he leaves London on
the instant, and lets you see him off--say, it shall be doubled. Stay,
I'll write the promise, and put my signature. Tell him he shall, on my
word of honour, have another--another thousand pounds--as soon as I can
possibly obtain it, if he holds his tongue, and goes with you; and see
that he goes. Don't talk to me on any other subject, or lose one minute."

Algernon got his limbs slackly together, trying to think of the
particular pocket in which he had left his cigar-case. Edward wrote a
line on a slip of note-paper, and signed his name beneath. With this and
an unsatisfied longing for tobacco Algernon departed, agreeing to meet
his cousin in the street where Dahlia dwelt.

"By Jove! two thousand! It's an expensive thing not to know your own
mind," he thought.

"How am I to get out of this scrape? That girl Rhoda doesn't care a
button for me. No colonies for me. I should feel like a convict if I went
alone. What on earth am I to do?"

It seemed preposterous to him that he should take a cab, when he had not
settled upon a scheme. The sight of a tobacconist's shop charmed one of
his more immediate difficulties to sleep. He was soon enabled to puff
consoling smoke.

"Ned's mad," he pursued his soliloquy. "He's a weather-cock. Do I ever
act as he does? And I'm the dog that gets the bad name. The idea of
giving this fellow two thousand--two thousand pounds! Why, he might live
like a gentleman."

And that when your friend proves himself to be distraught, the proper
friendly thing to do is to think for him, became eminently clear in
Algernon's mind.

"Of course, it's Ned's money. I'd give it if I had it, but I haven't; and
the fellow won't take a farthing less; I know him. However, it's my duty
to try."

He summoned a vehicle. It was a boast of his proud youth that never in
his life had he ridden in a close cab. Flinging his shoulders back, he
surveyed the world on foot. "Odd faces one sees," he meditated. "I
suppose they've got feelings, like the rest; but a fellow can't help
asking--what's the use of them? If I inherit all right, as I ought
to--why shouldn't I?--I'll squat down at old Wrexby, garden and farm, and
drink my Port. I hate London. The squire's not so far wrong, I fancy."

It struck him that his chance of inheriting was not so very obscure,
after all. Why had he ever considered it obscure? It was decidedly next
to certain, he being an only son. And the squire's health was bad!

While speculating in this wise he saw advancing, arm-in-arm, Lord
Suckling and Harry Latters. They looked at him, and evidently spoke
together, but gave neither nod, nor smile, nor a word, in answer to his
flying wave of the hand. Furious, and aghast at this signal of exclusion
from the world, just at the moment when he was returning to it almost
cheerfully in spirit, he stopped the cab, jumped out, and ran after the
pair.

"I suppose I must say Mr. Latters," Algernon commenced.

Harry deliberated a quiet second or two. "Well, according to our laws of
primogeniture, I don't come first, and therefore miss a better title," he
said.

"How are you?" Algernon nodded to Lord Suckling, who replied, "Very well,
I thank you."

Their legs were swinging forward concordantly. Algernon plucked out his
purse. "I have to beg you to excuse me," he said, hurriedly; "my cousin
Ned's in a mess, and I've been helping him as well as I
can--bothered--not an hour my own. Fifty, I think?" That amount he
tendered to Harry Latters, who took it most coolly.

"A thousand?" he queried of Lord Suckling.

"Divided by two," replied the young nobleman, and the Blucher of
bank-notes was proffered to him. He smiled queerly, hesitating to take
it.

"I was looking for you at all the Clubs last night," said Algernon.

Lord Suckling and Latters had been at theirs, playing whist till past
midnight; yet is money, even when paid over in this egregious public
manner by a nervous hand, such testimony to the sincerity of a man, that
they shouted a simultaneous invitation for him to breakfast with them, in
an hour, at the Club, or dine with them there that evening. Algernon
affected the nod of haste and acquiescence, and ran, lest they should
hear him groan. He told the cabman to drive Northward, instead of to the
South-west. The question of the thousand pounds had been decided for
him--"by fate," he chose to affirm. The consideration that one is pursued
by fate, will not fail to impart a sense of dignity even to the meanest.
"After all, if I stop in England," said he, "I can't afford to lose my
position in society; anything's better than that an unmitigated low
scoundrel like Sedgett should bag the game." Besides, is it not somewhat
sceptical to suppose that when Fate decides, she has not weighed the
scales, and decided for the best? Meantime, the whole energy of his
intellect was set reflecting on the sort of lie which Edward would, by
nature and the occasion, be disposed to swallow. He quitted the cab, and
walked in the Park, and au diable to him there! the fool has done his
work.

It was now half-past ten. Robert, with a most heavy heart, had
accomplished Rhoda's commands upon him. He had taken Dahlia to his
lodgings, whither, when free from Edward, Rhoda proceeded in a mood of
extreme sternness. She neither thanked Robert, nor smiled upon her
sister. Dahlia sent one quivering look up at her, and cowered lower in
her chair near the window.

"Father comes at twelve?" Rhoda said.

Robert replied: "He does."

After which a silence too irritating for masculine nerves filled the
room.

"You will find, I hope, everything here that you may want," said Robert.
"My landlady will attend to the bell. She is very civil."

"Thank you; we shall not want anything," said Rhoda. "There is my
sister's Bible at her lodgings."

Robert gladly offered to fetch it, and left them with a sense of relief
that was almost joy. He waited a minute in the doorway, to hear whether
Dahlia addressed him. He waited on the threshold of the house, that he
might be sure Dahlia did not call for his assistance. Her cry of appeal
would have fortified him to stand against Rhoda; but no cry was heard. He
kept expecting it, pausing for it, hoping it would come to solve his
intense perplexity. The prolonged stillness terrified him; for, away from
the sisters, he had power to read the anguish of Dahlia's heart, her
frozen incapacity, and the great and remorseless mastery which lay in
Rhoda's inexorable will.

A few doors down the street he met Major blaring, on his way to him.
"Here's five minutes' work going to be done, which we may all of us
regret till the day of our deaths," Robert said, and related what had
passed during the morning hours.

Percy approved Rhoda, saying, "She must rescue her sister at all hazards.
The case is too serious for her to listen to feelings, and regrets, and
objections. The world against one poor woman is unfair odds, Robert. I
come to tell you I leave England in a day or two. Will you join me?"

"How do I know what I shall or can do?" said Robert, mournfully: and they
parted.

Rhoda's unflickering determination to carry out, and to an end, this
tragic struggle of duty against inclination; on her own sole
responsibility forcing it on; acting like a Fate, in contempt of mere
emotions,--seemed barely real to his mind: each moment that he conceived
it vividly, he became more certain that she must break down. Was it in
her power to drag Dahlia to the steps of the altar? And would not her
heart melt when at last Dahlia did get her voice? "This marriage can
never take place!" he said, and was convinced of its being impossible. He
forgot that while he was wasting energy at Fairly, Rhoda had sat hiving
bitter strength in the loneliness of the Farm; with one vile epithet
clapping on her ears, and nothing but unavailing wounded love for her
absent unhappy sister to make music of her pulses.

He found his way to Dahlia's room; he put her Bible under his arm, and
looked about him sadly. Time stood at a few minutes past eleven. Flinging
himself into a chair, he thought of waiting in that place; but a crowd of
undefinable sensations immediately beset him. Seeing Edward Blancove in
the street below, he threw up the window compassionately, and Edward,
casting a glance to right and left, crossed the road. Robert went down to
him.

"I am waiting for my cousin." Edward had his watch in his hand. "I think
I am fast. Can you tell me the time exactly?"

"Why, I'm rather slow," said Robert, comparing time with his own watch.
"I make it four minutes past the hour."

"I am at fourteen," said Edward. "I fancy I must be fast."

"About ten minutes past, is the time, I think."

"So much as that!"

"It may be a minute or so less."

"I should like," said Edward, "to ascertain positively."

"There's a clock down in the kitchen here, I suppose," said Robert.
"Safer, there's a clock at the church, just in sight from here."

"Thank you; I will go and look at that."

Robert bethought himself suddenly that Edward had better not. "I can tell
you the time to a second," he said. "It's now twelve minutes past
eleven."

Edward held his watch balancing. "Twelve," he repeated; and, behind this
mask of common-place dialogue, they watched one another--warily, and
still with pity, on Robert's side.

"You can't place any reliance on watches," said Edward.

"None, I believe," Robert remarked.

"If you could see the sun every day in this climate!" Edward looked up.

"Ah, the sun's the best timepiece, when visible," Robert acquiesced.
"Backwoodsmen in America don't need watches."

"Unless it is to astonish the Indians with them."

"Ah! yes!" hummed Robert.

"Twelve--fifteen--it must be a quarter past. Or, a three quarters to the
next hour, as the Germans say."

"Odd!" Robert ejaculated. "Foreigners have the queerest ways in the
world. They mean no harm, but they make you laugh."

"They think the same of us, and perhaps do the laughing more loudly."

"Ah! let them," said Robert, not without contemptuous indignation, though
his mind was far from the talk.

The sweat was on Edward's forehead. "In a few minutes it will be
half-past--half-past eleven! I expect a friend; that makes me impatient.
Mr. Eccles"--Edward showed his singular, smallish, hard-cut and flashing
features, clear as if he had blown off a mist--"you are too much of a man
to bear malice. Where is Dahlia? Tell me at once. Some one seems to be
cruelly driving her. Has she lost her senses? She has:--or else she is
coerced in an inexplicable and shameful manner."

"Mr. Blancove," said Robert, "I bear you not a bit of malice--couldn't if
I would. I'm not sure I could have said guilty to the same sort of
things, in order to tell an enemy of mine I was sorry for what I had
done, and I respect you for your courage. Dahlia was taken from here by
me."

Edward nodded, as if briefly assenting, while his features sharpened.

"Why?" he asked.

"It was her sister's wish."

"Has she no will of her own?"

"Very little, I'm afraid, just now, sir."

"A remarkable sister! Are they of Puritan origin?"

"Not that I am aware of."

"And this father?"

"Mr. Blancove, he is one of those sort--he can't lift up his head if he
so much as suspects a reproach to his children."

Edward brooded. "I desire--as I told you, as I told her sister, as I told
my father last night--I desire to make her my wife. What can I do more?
Are they mad with some absurd country pride? Half-past eleven!--it will
be murder if they force her to it! Where is she? To such a man as that!
Poor soul! I can hardly fear it, for I can't imagine it. Here--the time
is going. You know the man yourself."

"I know the man?" said Robert. "I've never set eyes on him--I've never
set eyes on him, and never liked to ask much about him. I had a sort of
feeling. Her sister says he is a good, and kind, honourable young fellow,
and he must be."

"Before it's too late," Edward muttered hurriedly--"you know him--his
name is Sedgett."

Robert hung swaying over him with a big voiceless chest.

"That Sedgett?" he breathed huskily, and his look was hard to meet.

Edward frowned, unable to raise his head.

"Lord in heaven! some one has something to answer for!" cried Robert.
"Come on; come to the church. That foul dog?--Or you, stay where you are.
I'll go. He to be Dahlia's husband! They've seen him, and can't see what
he is!--cunning with women as that? How did they meet? Do you
know?--can't you guess?"

He flung a lightning at Edward and ran off. Bursting into the aisle, he
saw the minister closing the Book at the altar, and three persons moving
toward the vestry, of whom the last, and the one he discerned, was Rhoda.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Late into the afternoon, Farmer Fleming was occupying a chair in Robert's
lodgings, where he had sat since the hour of twelve, without a movement
of his limbs or of his mind, and alone. He showed no sign that he
expected the approach of any one. As mute and unremonstrant as a fallen
tree, nearly as insensible, his eyes half closed, and his hands lying
open, the great figure of the old man kept this attitude as of stiff
decay through long sunny hours, and the noise of the London suburb.
Although the wedding people were strangely late, it was unnoticed by him.
When the door opened and Rhoda stepped into the room, he was unaware that
he had been waiting, and only knew that the hours had somehow accumulated
to a heavy burden upon him.

"She is coming, father; Robert is bringing her up," Rhoda said.

"Let her come," he answered.

Robert's hold was tight under Dahlia's arm as they passed the doorway,
and then the farmer stood. Robert closed the door.

For some few painful moments the farmer could not speak, and his hand was
raised rejectingly. The return of human animation to his heart made him
look more sternly than he felt; but he had to rid himself of one terrible
question before he satisfied his gradual desire to take his daughter to
his breast. It came at last like a short roll of drums, the words were
heard,--

"Is she an honest woman?"

"She is," said Rhoda.

The farmer was looking on Robert.

Robert said it likewise in a murmur, but with steadfast look.

Bending his eyes now upon Dahlia, a mist of affection grew in them. He
threw up his head, and with a choking, infantine cry, uttered, "Come."

Robert placed her against her father's bosom.

He moved to the window beside Rhoda, and whispered, and she answered, and
they knew not what they said. The joint moans of father and daughter--the
unutterable communion of such a meeting--filled their ears. Grief held
aloof as much as joy. Neither joy nor grief were in those two hearts of
parent and child; but the senseless contentment of hard, of infinite hard
human craving.

The old man released her, and Rhoda undid her hands from him, and led the
pale Sacrifice to another room.

"Where's...?" Mr. Fleming asked.

Robert understood him.

"Her husband will not come."

It was interpreted by the farmer as her husband's pride. Or, may be, the
man who was her husband now had righted her at last, and then flung her
off in spite for what he had been made to do.

"I'm not being deceived, Robert?"

"No, sir; upon my soul!"

"I've got that here," the farmer struck his ribs.

Rhoda came back. "Sister is tired," she said. "Dahlia is going down home
with you, for...I hope, for a long stay."

"All the better, while home we've got. We mayn't lose time, my girl.
Gammon's on 's way to the station now. He'll wait. He'll wait till
midnight. You may always reckon on a slow man like Gammon for waitin'.
Robert comes too?"

"Father, we have business to do. Robert gives me his rooms here for a
little time; his landlady is a kind woman, and will take care of me. You
will trust me to Robert."

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