Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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"Yes! yes!"

"Yes, if I can. No, if I can't. And 'can't' it is. So, it's 'No.'"

Rhoda's bosom sank, but only as a wave in the sea-like energy of her
spirit.

"Uncle, you must."

Anthony was restrained from jumping up and running away forthwith by the
peace which was in the room, and the dread of being solitary after he had
tasted of companionship.

"You have money, uncle. You are rich. You must help me. Don't you ever
think what it is to be an old man, and no one to love you and be grateful
to you? Why do you cross your arms so close?"

Anthony denied that he crossed his arms closely.

Rhoda pointed to his arms in evidence; and he snarled out: "There, now;
'cause I'm supposed to have saved a trifle, I ain't to sit as I like.
It's downright too bad! It's shocking!"

But, seeing that he did not uncross his arms, and remained bunched up
defiantly, Rhoda silently observed him. She felt that money was in the
room.

"Don't let it be a curse to you," she said. And her voice was hoarse with
agitation.

"What?" Anthony asked. "What's a curse?"

"That."

Did she know? Had she guessed? Her finger was laid in a line at the bags.
Had she smelt the gold?

"It will be a curse to you, uncle. Death is coming. What's money then?
Uncle, uncross your arms. You are afraid; you dare not. You carry it
about; you have no confidence anywhere. It eats your heart. Look at me. I
have nothing to conceal. Can you imitate me, and throw your hands
out--so? Why, uncle, will you let me be ashamed of you? You have the
money there.

"You cannot deny it. Me crying to you for help! What have we talked
together?--that we would sit in a country house, and I was to look to the
flower-beds, and always have dishes of green peas for you-plenty, in
June; and you were to let the village boys know what a tongue you have,
if they made a clatter of their sticks along the garden-rails; and you
were to drink your tea, looking on a green and the sunset. Uncle! Poor
old, good old soul! You mean kindly. You must be kind. A day will make it
too late. You have the money there. You get older and older every minute
with trying to refuse me. You know that I can make you happy. I have the
power, and I have the will. Help me, I say, in my great trouble. That
money is a burden. You are forced to carry it about, for fear. You look
guilty as you go running in the streets, because you fear everybody. Do
good with it. Let it be money with a blessing on it! It will save us from
horrid misery! from death! from torture and death! Think, uncle! look,
uncle! You with the money--me wanting it. I pray to heaven, and I meet
you, and you have it. Will you say that you refuse to give it, when I
see--when I show you, you are led to meet me and help me? Open;--put down
that arm."

Against this storm of mingled supplication and shadowy menace, Anthony
held out with all outward firmness until, when bidding him to put down
his arm, she touched the arm commandingly, and it fell paralyzed.

Rhoda's eyes were not beautiful as they fixed on the object of her quest.
In this they were of the character of her mission. She was dealing with
an evil thing, and had chosen to act according to her light, and by the
counsel of her combative and forceful temper. At each step new
difficulties had to be encountered by fresh contrivances; and money
now--money alone had become the specific for present use. There was a
limitation of her spiritual vision to aught save to money; and the money
being bared to her eyes, a frightful gleam of eagerness shot from them.
Her hands met Anthony's in a common grasp of the money-bags.

"It's not mine!" Anthony cried, in desperation.

"Whose money is it?" said Rhoda, and caught up her hands as from fire.

"My Lord!" Anthony moaned, "if you don't speak like a Court o' Justice.
Hear yourself!"

"Is the money yours, uncle?"

"It--is," and "isn't" hung in the balance.

"It is not?" Rhoda dressed the question for him in the terror of
contemptuous horror.

"It is. I--of course it is; how could it help being mine? My money? Yes.
What sort o' thing's that to ask--whether what I've got's mine or yours,
or somebody else's? Ha!"

"And you say you are not rich, uncle?"

A charming congratulatory smile was addressed to him, and a shake of the
head of tender reproach irresistible to his vanity.

"Rich! with a lot o' calls on me; everybody wantin' to borrow--I'm rich!
And now you coming to me! You women can't bring a guess to bear upon the
right nature o' money."

"Uncle, you will decide to help me, I know."

She said it with a staggering assurance of manner.

"How do you know?" cried Anthony.

"Why do you carry so much money about with you in bags, uncle?"

"Hear it, my dear." He simulated miser's joy.

"Ain't that music? Talk of operas! Hear that; don't it talk? don't it
chink? don't it sing?" He groaned "Oh, Lord!" and fell back.

This transition from a state of intensest rapture to the depths of pain
alarmed her.

"Nothing; it's nothing." Anthony anticipated her inquiries. "They bags is
so heavy."

"Then why do you carry them about?"

"Perhaps it's heart disease," said Anthony, and grinned, for he knew the
soundness of his health.

"You are very pale, uncle."

"Eh? you don't say that?"

"You are awfully white, dear uncle."

"I'll look in the glass," said Anthony. "No, I won't." He sank back in
his chair. "Rhoda, we're all sinners, ain't we? All--every man and woman
of us, and baby, too. That's a comfort; yes, it is a comfort. It's a
tremendous comfort--shuts mouths. I know what you're going to say--some
bigger sinners than others. If they're sorry for it, though, what then?
They can repent, can't they?"

"They must undo any harm they may have done. Sinners are not to repent
only in words, uncle."

"I've been feeling lately," he murmured.

Rhoda expected a miser's confession.

"I've been feeling, the last two or three days," he resumed.

"What, uncle?"

"Sort of taste of a tremendous nice lemon in my mouth, my dear, and liked
it, till all of a sudden I swallowed it whole--such a gulp! I felt it
just now. I'm all right."

"No, uncle," said Rhoda: "you are not all right: this money makes you
miserable. It does; I can see that it does. Now, put those bags in my
hands. For a minute, try; it will do you good. Attend to me; it will. Or,
let me have them. They are poison to you. You don't want them."

"I don't," cried Anthony. "Upon my soul, I don't. I don't want 'em. I'd
give--it is true, my dear, I don't want 'em. They're poison."

"They're poison to you," said Rhoda; "they're health, they're life to me.
I said, 'My uncle Anthony will help me. He is not--I know his heart--he
is not a miser.' Are you a miser, uncle?"

Her hand was on one of his bags. It was strenuously withheld: but while
she continued speaking, reiterating the word "miser," the hold relaxed.
She caught the heavy bag away, startled by its weight.

He perceived the effect produced on her, and cried; "Aha! and I've been
carrying two of 'em--two!"

Rhoda panted in her excitement.

"Now, give it up," said he. She returned it. He got it against his breast
joylessly, and then bade her to try the weight of the two. She did try
them, and Anthony doated on the wonder of her face.

"Uncle, see what riches do! You fear everybody--you think there is no
secure place--you have more? Do you carry about all your money?"

"No," he chuckled at her astonishment. "I've...Yes. I've got more of my
own." Her widened eyes intoxicated him. "More. I've saved. I've put by.
Say, I'm an old sinner. What'd th' old farmer say now? Do you love your
uncle Tony? 'Old Ant,' they call me down at--" "The Bank," he was on the
point of uttering; but the vision of the Bank lay terrific in his
recollection, and, summoned at last, would not be wiped away. The
unbearable picture swam blinking through accumulating clouds; remote and
minute as the chief scene of our infancy, but commanding him with the
present touch of a mighty arm thrown out. "I'm honest," he cried. "I
always have been honest. I'm known to be honest. I want no man's money.
I've got money of my own. I hate sin. I hate sinners. I'm an honest man.
Ask them, down at--Rhoda, my dear! I say, don't you hear me? Rhoda, you
think I've a turn for misering. It's a beastly mistake: poor savings, and
such a trouble to keep honest when you're poor; and I've done it for
years, spite o' temptation 't 'd send lots o' men to the hulks. Safe into
my hand, safe out o' my hands! Slip once, and there ain't mercy in men.
And you say, 'I had a whirl of my head, and went round, and didn't know
where I was for a minute, and forgot the place I'd to go to, and come
away to think in a quiet part.'..." He stopped abruptly in his ravings.
"You give me the money, Rhoda!"

She handed him the money-bags.

He seized them, and dashed them to the ground with the force of madness.
Kneeling, he drew out his penknife, and slit the sides of the bags, and
held them aloft, and let the gold pour out in torrents, insufferable to
the sight; and uttering laughter that clamoured fierily in her ears for
long minutes afterwards, the old man brandished the empty bags, and
sprang out of the room.

She sat dismayed in the centre of a heap of gold.

CHAPTER XLI

On the Monday evening, Master Gammon was at the station with the cart.
Robert and Rhoda were a train later, but the old man seemed to be unaware
of any delay, and mildly staring, received their apologies, and nodded.
They asked him more than once whether all was well at the Farm; to which
he replied that all was quite well, and that he was never otherwise.
About half-an-hour after, on the road, a gradual dumb chuckle overcame
his lower features. He flicked the horse dubitatively, and turned his
head, first to Robert, next to Rhoda; and then he chuckled aloud:

"The last o' they mel'ns rotted yest'day afternoon!"

"Did they?" said Robert. "You'll have to get fresh seed, that's all."

Master Gammon merely showed his spirit to be negative.

"You've been playing the fool with the sheep," Robert accused him.

It hit the old man in a very tender part.

"I play the fool wi' ne'er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert. Animals likes their
'customed food, and don't like no other. I never changes my food, nor'd
e'er a sheep, nor'd a cow, nor'd a bullock, if animals was masters. I'd
as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed--of my own will,
that's to say--a mel'n. They rots."

Robert smiled, though he was angry. The delicious unvexed country-talk
soothed Rhoda, and she looked fondly on the old man, believing that he
could not talk on in his sedate way, if all were not well at home.

The hills of the beacon-ridge beyond her home, and the line of stunted
firs, which she had named "the old bent beggarmen," were visible in the
twilight. Her eyes flew thoughtfully far over them, with the feeling that
they had long known what would come to her and to those dear to her, and
the intense hope that they knew no more, inasmuch as they bounded her
sight.

"If the sheep thrive," she ventured to remark, so that the comforting old
themes might be kept up.

"That's the particular 'if!'" said Robert, signifying something that had
to be leaped over.

Master Gammon performed the feat with agility.

"Sheep never was heartier," he pronounced emphatically.

"Lots of applications for melon-seed, Gammon?"

To this the veteran's tardy answer was: "More fools 'n one about, I
reckon"; and Robert allowed him the victory implied by silence.

"And there's no news in Wrexby? none at all?" said Rhoda.

A direct question inevitably plunged Master Gammon so deep amid the
soundings of his reflectiveness, that it was the surest way of precluding
a response from him; but on this occasion his honest deliberation bore
fruit.

"Squire Blancove, he's dead."

The name caused Rhoda to shudder.

"Found dead in 's bed, Sat'day morning," Master Gammon added, and, warmed
upon the subject, went on: "He's that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is,
he'll have to get into a rounded coffin: he's just like half a hoop. He
was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with 's bolster, and got th' wust of
it. But, be 't the seizure, or be 't gout in 's belly, he's gone clean
dead. And he wunt buy th' Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut up at the
Hall. He'll go burying about Wednesday. Men that drinks don't keep."

Rhoda struck at her brain to think in what way this death could work and
show like a punishment of the heavens upon that one wrong-doer; but it
was not manifest as a flame of wrath, and she laid herself open to the
peace of the fields and the hedgeways stepping by. The farm-house came in
sight, and friendly old Adam and Eve turning from the moon. She heard the
sound of water. Every sign of peace was around the farm. The cows had
been milked long since; the geese were quiet. There was nothing but the
white board above the garden-gate to speak of the history lying in her
heart.

They found the farmer sitting alone, shading his forehead. Rhoda kissed
his cheeks and whispered for tidings of Dahlia.

"Go up to her," the farmer said.

Rhoda grew very chill. She went upstairs with apprehensive feet, and
recognizing Mrs. Sumfit outside the door of Dahlia's room, embraced her,
and heard her say that Dahlia had turned the key, and had been crying
from mornings to nights. "It can't last," Mrs. Sumfit sobbed: "lonesome
hysterics, they's death to come. She's falling into the trance. I'll go,
for the sight o' me shocks her."

Rhoda knocked, waited patiently till her persistent repetition of her
name gained her admission. She beheld her sister indeed, but not the
broken Dahlia from whom she had parted. Dahlia was hard to her caress,
and crying, "Has he come?" stood at bay, white-eyed, and looking like a
thing strung with wires.

"No, dearest; he will not trouble you. Have no fear."

"Are you full of deceit?" said Dahlia, stamping her foot.

"I hope not, my sister."

Dahlia let fall a long quivering breath. She went to her bed, upon which
her mother's Bible was lying, and taking it in her two hands, held it
under Rhoda's lips.

"Swear upon that?"

"What am I to swear to, dearest?"

"Swear that he is not in the house."

"He is not, my own sister; believe me. It is no deceit. He is not. He
will not trouble you. See; I kiss the Book, and swear to you, my beloved!
I speak truth. Come to me, dear." Rhoda put her arms up entreatingly, but
Dahlia stepped back.

"You are not deceitful? You are not cold? You are not inhuman? Inhuman!
You are not? You are not? Oh, my God! Look at her!"

The toneless voice was as bitter for Rhoda to hear as the accusations.
She replied, with a poor smile: "I am only not deceitful. Come, and see.
You will not be disturbed."

"What am I tied to?" Dahlia struggled feebly as against a weight of
chains. "Oh! what am I tied to? It's on me, tight like teeth. I can't
escape. I can't breathe for it. I was like a stone when he asked
me--marry him!--loved me! Some one preached--my duty! I am lost, I am
lost! Why? you girl!--why?--What did you do? Why did you take my hand
when I was asleep and hurry me so fast? What have I done to you? Why did
you push me along?--I couldn't see where. I heard the Church babble. For
you--inhuman! inhuman! What have I done to you? What have you to do with
punishing sin? It's not sin. Let me be sinful, then. I am. I am sinful.
Hear me. I love him; I love my lover, and," she screamed out, "he loves
me!"

Rhoda now thought her mad.

She looked once at the rigid figure of her transformed sister, and
sitting down, covered her eyes and wept.

To Dahlia, the tears were at first an acrid joy; but being weak, she fell
to the bed, and leaned against it, forgetting her frenzy for a time.

"You deceived me," she murmured; and again, "You deceived me." Rhoda did
not answer. In trying to understand why her sister should imagine it, she
began to know that she had in truth deceived Dahlia. The temptation to
drive a frail human creature to do the thing which was right, had led her
to speak falsely for a good purpose. Was it not righteously executed?
Away from the tragic figure in the room, she might have thought so, but
the horror in the eyes and voice of this awakened Sacrifice, struck away
the support of theoretic justification. Great pity for the poor enmeshed
life, helpless there, and in a woman's worst peril,--looking either to
madness, or to death, for an escape--drowned her reason in a heavy cloud
of tears. Long on toward the stroke of the hour, Dahlia heard her weep,
and she murmured on, "You deceived me;" but it was no more to reproach;
rather, it was an exculpation of her reproaches. "You did deceive me,
Rhoda." Rhoda half lifted her head; the slight tone of a change to
tenderness swelled the gulfs of pity, and she wept aloud. Dahlia
untwisted her feet, and staggered up to her, fell upon her shoulder, and
called her, "My love!--good sister!" For a great mute space they clung
together. Their lips met and they kissed convulsively. But when Dahlia
had close view of Rhoda's face, she drew back, saying in an
under-breath,--

"Don't cry. I see my misery when you cry."

Rhoda promised that she would check her tears, and they sat quietly, side
by side, hand in hand. Mrs. Sumfit, outside, had to be dismissed twice
with her fresh brews of supplicating tea and toast, and the cakes which,
when eaten warm with good country butter and a sprinkle of salt,
reanimate (as she did her utmost to assure the sisters through the closed
door) humanity's distressed spirit. At times their hands interchanged a
fervent pressure, their eyes were drawn to an equal gaze.

In the middle of the night Dahlia said: "I found a letter from Edward
when I came here."

"Written--Oh, base man that he is!" Rhoda could not control the impulse
to cry it out.

"Written before," said Dahlia, divining her at once. "I read it; did not
cry. I have no tears. Will you see it? It is very short-enough; it said
enough, and written before--" She crumpled her fingers in Rhoda's; Rhoda,
to please her, saying "Yes," she went to the pillow of the bed, and drew
the letter from underneath.

"I know every word," she said; "I should die if I repeated it. 'My wife
before heaven,' it begins. So, I was his wife. I must have broken his
heart--broken my husband's." Dahlia cast a fearful eye about her; her
eyelids fluttered as from a savage sudden blow. Hardening her mouth to
utter defiant spite: "My lover's," she cried. "He is. If he loves me and
I love him, he is my lover, my lover, my lover! Nothing shall stop me
from saying it--lover! and there is none to claim me but he. Oh,
loathsome! What a serpent it is I've got round me! And you tell me God
put it. Do you? Answer that; for I want to know, and I don't know where I
am. I am lost! I am lost! I want to get to my lover. Tell me, Rhoda, you
would curse me if I did. And listen to me. Let him open his arms to me, I
go; I follow him as far as my feet will bear me. I would go if it
lightened from heaven. If I saw up there the warning, 'You shall not!' I
would go. But, look on me!" she smote contempt upon her bosom. "He would
not call to such a thing as me. Me, now? My skin is like a toad's to him.
I've become like something in the dust. I could hiss like adders. I am
quite impenitent. I pray by my bedside, my head on my Bible, but I only
say, 'Yes, yes; that's done; that's deserved, if there's no mercy.' Oh,
if there is no mercy, that's deserved! I say so now. But this is what I
say, Rhoda (I see nothing but blackness when I pray), and I say, 'Permit
no worse!' I say, 'Permit no worse, or take the consequences.' He calls
me his wife. I am his wife. And if--" Dahlia fell to speechless panting;
her mouth was open; she made motion with her hands; horror, as of a
blasphemy struggling to her lips, kept her dumb, but the prompting
passion was indomitable.... "Read it," said her struggling voice; and
Rhoda bent over the letter, reading and losing thought of each sentence
as it passed. To Dahlia, the vital words were visible like evanescent
blue gravelights. She saw them rolling through her sister's mind; and
just upon the conclusion, she gave out, as in a chaunt: "And I who have
sinned against my innocent darling, will ask her to pray with me that our
future may be one, so that may make good to her what she has suffered,
and to the God whom we worship, the offence I have committed."

Rhoda looked up at the pale penetrating eyes.

"Read. Have you read to the last?" said Dahlia. "Speak it. Let me hear
you. He writes it.... Yes? you will not? 'Husband,' he says," and then
she took up the sentences of the letter backwards to the beginning,
pausing upon each one with a short moan, and smiting her bosom. "I found
it here, Rhoda. I found his letter here when I came.. I came a dead
thing, and it made me spring up alive. Oh, what bliss to be dead! I've
felt nothing...nothing, for months." She flung herself on the bed,
thrusting her handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the outcry. "I'm
punished. I'm punished, because I did not trust to my darling. No, not
for one year! Is it that since we parted? I am an impatient creature, and
he does not reproach me. I tormented my own, my love, my dear, and he
thought I--I was tired of our life together. No; he does not accuse me,"
Dahlia replied to her sister's unspoken feeling, with the shrewd
divination which is passion's breathing space. "He accuses himself. He
says it--utters it--speaks it 'I sold my beloved.' There is no guile in
him. Oh, be just to us, Rhoda! Dearest," she came to Rhoda's side, "you
did deceive me, did you not? You are a deceiver, my love?"

Rhoda trembled, and raising her eyelids, answered, "Yes."

"You saw him in the street that morning?"

Dahlia smiled a glittering tenderness too evidently deceitful in part,
but quite subduing.

"You saw him, my Rhoda, and he said he was true to me, and sorrowful; and
you told him, dear one, that I had no heart for him, and wished to go to
hell--did you not, good Rhoda? Forgive me; I mean 'good;' my true, good
Rhoda. Yes, you hate sin; it is dreadful; but you should never speak
falsely to sinners, for that does not teach them to repent. Mind you
never lie again. Look at me. I am chained, and I have no repentance in
me. See me. I am nearer it...the other--sin, I mean. If that man
comes...will he?"

"No--no!" Rhoda cried.

"If that man comes--"

"He will not come!"

"He cast me off at the church door, and said he had been cheated. Money!
Oh, Edward!"

Dahlia drooped her head.

"He will keep away. You are safe," said Rhoda.

"Because, if no help comes, I am lost--I am lost for ever!"

"But help will come. I mean peace will come. We will read; we will work
in the garden. You have lifted poor father up, my dear."

"Ah! that old man!" Dahlia sighed.

"He is our father."

"Yes, poor old man!" and Dahlia whispered: "I have no pity for him. If I
am dragged away, I'm afraid I shall curse him. He seems a stony old man.
I don't understand fathers. He would make me go away. He talks the
Scriptures when he is excited. I'm afraid he would shut my Bible for me.
Those old men know nothing of the hearts of women. Now, darling, go to
your room."

Rhoda begged earnestly for permission to stay with her, but Dahlia said:
"My nights are fevers. I can't have arms about me."

They shook hands when they separated, not kissing.

CHAPTER XLII

Three days passed quietly at the Farm, and each morning Dahlia came down
to breakfast, and sat with the family at their meals; pale, with the
mournful rim about her eyelids, but a patient figure. No questions were
asked. The house was guarded from visitors, and on the surface the home
was peaceful. On the Wednesday Squire Blancove was buried, when Master
Gammon, who seldom claimed a holiday or specified an enjoyment of which
he would desire to partake, asked leave to be spared for a couple of
hours, that he might attend the ceremonious interment of one to whom a
sort of vagrant human sentiment of clanship had made him look up, as to
the chief gentleman of the district, and therefore one having claims on
his respect. A burial had great interest for the old man.

"I'll be home for dinner; it'll gi'e me an appetite," Master Gammon said
solemnly, and he marched away in his serious Sunday hat and careful coat,
blither than usual.

After his departure, Mrs. Sumfit sat and discoursed on deaths and
burials, the certain end of all: at least, she corrected herself, the
deaths were. The burials were not so certain. Consequently, we might take
the burials, as they were a favour, to be a blessing, except in the event
of persons being buried alive. She tried to make her hearers understand
that the idea of this calamity had always seemed intolerable to her, and
told of numerous cases which, the coffin having been opened, showed by
the convulsed aspect of the corpse, or by spots of blood upon the shroud,
that the poor creature had wakened up forlorn, "and not a kick allowed to
him, my dears."

"It happens to women, too, does it not, mother?" said Dahlia.

"They're most subject to trances, my sweet. From always imitatin' they
imitates their deaths at last; and, oh!" Mrs. Sumfit was taken with
nervous chokings of alarm at the thought. "Alone--all dark! and hard wood
upon your chest, your elbows, your nose, your toes, and you under heaps
o' gravel! Not a breath for you, though you snap and catch for one--worse
than a fish on land."

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