Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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The letter ran thus:--

"My Own Innocent!--I am married. We leave England to-day. I must not love
you too much, for I have all my love to give to my Edward, my own now,
and I am his trustingly for ever. But he will let me give you some of
it--and Rhoda is never jealous. She shall have a great deal. Only I am
frightened when I think how immense my love is for him, so that
anything--everything he thinks right is right to me. I am not afraid to
think so. If I were to try, a cloud would come over me--it does, if only
I fancy for half a moment I am rash, and a straw. I cannot exist except
through him. So I must belong to him, and his will is my law. My prayer
at my bedside every night is that I may die for him. We used to think the
idea of death so terrible! Do you remember how we used to shudder
together at night when we thought of people lying in the grave? And now,
when I think that perhaps I may some day die for him, I feel like a
crying in my heart with joy.

"I have left a letter--sent it, I mean--enclosed to uncle for father. He
will see Edward by-and-by. Oh! may heaven spare him from any grief. Rhoda
will comfort him. Tell him how devoted I am. I am like drowned to
everybody but one.

"We are looking on the sea. In half an hour I shall have forgotten the
tread of English earth. I do not know that I breathe. All I know is a
fear that I am flying, and my strength will not continue. That is when I
am not touching his hand. There is France opposite. I shut my eyes and
see the whole country, but it is like what I feel for Edward--all in dark
moonlight. Oh! I trust him so! I bleed for him. I could make all my veins
bleed out at a sad thought about him. And from France to Switzerland and
Italy. The sea sparkles just as if it said 'Come to the sun;' and I am
going. Edward calls. Shall I be punished for so much happiness? I am too
happy, I am too happy.

"God bless my beloved at home! That is my chief prayer now. I shall think
of her when I am in the cathedrals.

"Oh, my Father in heaven! bless them all! bless Rhoda! forgive me!

"I can hear the steam of the steamer at the pier. Here is Edward. He says
I may send his love to you.

"Address:--

"Mrs. Edward Ayrton,
"Poste Restante,
"Lausanne,
"Switzerland.

"P.S.--Lausanne is where--but another time, and I will always tell you
the history of the places to instruct you, poor heart in dull England.
Adieu! Good-bye and God bless my innocent at home, my dear sister. I love
her. I never can forget her. The day is so lovely. It seems on purpose
for us. Be sure you write on thin paper to Lausanne. It is on a blue
lake; you see snow mountains, and now there is a bell ringing--kisses
from me! we start. I must sign.

"Dahlia."

By the reading of this letter, Rhoda was caught vividly to the shore, and
saw her sister borne away in the boat to the strange countries; she
travelled with her, following her with gliding speed through a
multiplicity of shifting scenes, opal landscapes, full of fire and
dreams, and in all of them a great bell towered. "Oh, my sweet! my own
beauty!" she cried in Dahlia's language. Meeting Mrs. Sumfit, she called
her "Mother Dumpling," as Dahlia did of old, affectionately, and kissed
her, and ran on to Master Gammon, who was tramping leisurely on to the
oatfield lying on toward the millholms.

"My sister sends you her love," she said brightly to the old man. Master
Gammon responded with no remarkable flash of his eyes, and merely opened
his mouth and shut it, as when a duck divides its bill, but fails to emit
the customary quack.

"And to you, little pigs; and to you, Mulberry; and you, Dapple; and you,
and you, and you."

Rhoda nodded round to all the citizens of the farmyard; and so eased her
heart of its laughing bubbles. After which, she fell to a meditative walk
of demurer joy, and had a regret. It was simply that Dahlia's hurry in
signing the letter, had robbed her of the delight of seeing "Dahlia
Ayrton" written proudly out, with its wonderful signification of the
change in her life.

That was a trifling matter; yet Rhoda felt the letter was not complete in
the absence of the bridal name. She fancied Dahlia to have meant,
perhaps, that she was Dahlia to her as of old, and not a stranger.
"Dahlia ever; Dahlia nothing else for you," she heard her sister say. But
how delicious and mournful, how terrible and sweet with meaning would
"Dahlia Ayrton," the new name in the dear handwriting, have looked! "And
I have a brother-in-law," she thought, and her cheeks tingled. The banks
of fern and foxglove, and the green young oaks fringing the copse, grew
rich in colour, as she reflected that this beloved unknown husband of her
sister embraced her and her father as well; even the old bent beggarman
on the sandy ridge, though he had a starved frame and carried pitiless
faggots, stood illumined in a soft warmth. Rhoda could not go back to the
house.

It chanced that the farmer that morning had been smitten with the virtue
of his wife's opinion of Robert, and her parting recommendation
concerning him.

"Have you a mind to either one of my two girls?" he put the question
bluntly, finding himself alone with Robert.

Robert took a quick breath, and replied, "I have."

"Then make your choice," said the farmer, and tried to go about his
business, but hung near Robert in the fields till he had asked: "Which
one is it, my boy?"

Robert turned a blade of wheat in his mouth.

"I think I shall leave her to tell that," was his answer.

"Why, don't ye know which one you prefer to choose, man?" quoth Mr.
Fleming.

"I mayn't know whether she prefers to choose me," said Robert.

The farmer smiled.

"You never can exactly reckon about them; that's true."

He was led to think: "Dahlia's the lass;" seeing that Robert had not had
many opportunities of speaking with her.

"When my girls are wives, they'll do their work in the house," he
pursued. "They may have a little bit o' property in land, ye know, and
they may have a share in--in gold. That's not to be reckoned on. We're an
old family, Robert, and I suppose we've our pride somewhere down. Anyhow,
you can't look on my girls and not own they're superior girls. I've no
notion of forcing them to clean, and dish up, and do dairying, if it's
not to their turn. They're handy with th' needle. They dress conformably,
and do the millinery themselves. And I know they say their prayers of a
night. That I know, if that's a comfort to ye, and it should be, Robert.
For pray, and you can't go far wrong; and it's particularly good for
girls. I'll say no more."

At the dinner-table, Rhoda was not present. Mr. Fleming fidgeted, blamed
her and excused her, but as Robert appeared indifferent about her
absence, he was confirmed in his idea that Dahlia attracted his fancy.

They had finished dinner, and Master Gammon had risen, when a voice
immediately recognized as the voice of Anthony Hackbut was heard in the
front part of the house. Mr. Fleming went round to him with a dismayed
face.

"Lord!" said Mrs. Sumfit, "how I tremble!"

Robert, too, looked grave, and got away from the house. The dread of evil
news of Dahlia was common to them all; yet none had mentioned it, Robert
conceiving that it would be impertinence on his part to do so; the
farmer, that the policy of permitting Dahlia's continued residence in
London concealed the peril; while Mrs. Sumfit flatly defied the
threatening of a mischance to one so sweet and fair, and her favourite.
It is the insincerity of persons of their class; but one need not lay
stress on the wilfulness of uneducated minds. Robert walked across the
fields, walking like a man with an object in view. As he dropped into one
of the close lanes which led up to Wrexby Hall, he saw Rhoda standing
under an oak, her white morning-dress covered with sun-spots. His impulse
was to turn back, the problem, how to speak to her, not being settled
within him. But the next moment his blood chilled; for he had perceived,
though he had not felt simultaneously, that two gentlemen were standing
near her, addressing her. And it was likewise manifest that she listened
to them. These presently raised their hats and disappeared. Rhoda came on
toward Robert.

"You have forgotten your dinner," he said, with a queer sense of shame at
dragging in the mention of that meal.

"I have been too happy to eat," Rhoda replied.

Robert glanced up the lane, but she gave no heed to this indication, and
asked: "Has uncle come?"

"Did you expect him?"

"I thought he would come."

"What has made you happy?"

"You will hear from uncle."

"Shall I go and hear what those--"

Robert checked himself, but it would have been better had he spoken out.
Rhoda's face, from a light of interrogation, lowered its look to
contempt.

She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily
misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature. Doubtless
her sharp instinct served her by telling her that her contempt would hurt
him shrewdly now. The foolishness of a man having much to say to a woman,
and not knowing how or where the beginning of it might be, was
perceptible about him. A shout from her father at the open garden-gate,
hurried on Rhoda to meet him. Old Anthony was at Mr. Fleming's elbow.

"You know it? You have her letter, father?" said Rhoda, gaily, beneath
the shadow of his forehead.

"And a Queen of the Egyptians is what you might have been," said Anthony,
with a speculating eye upon Rhoda's dark bright face.

Rhoda put out her hand to him, but kept her gaze on her father.

William Fleeting relaxed the knot of his brows and lifted the letter.

"Listen all! This is from a daughter to her father."

And he read, oddly accentuating the first syllables of the sentences:--

Dear Father,--

"My husband will bring me to see you when I return to dear England.
I ought to have concealed nothing, I know. Try to forgive me. I
hope you will. I shall always think of you. God bless you!

"I am,
"Ever with respect,
"Your dearly loving Daughter,

"Dahlia."

"Dahlia Blank!" said the farmer, turning his look from face to face.

A deep fire of emotion was evidently agitating him, for the letter
rustled in his hand, and his voice was uneven. Of this, no sign was given
by his inexpressive features. The round brown eyes and the ruddy varnish
on his cheeks were a mask upon grief, if not also upon joy.

"Dahlia--what? What's her name?" he resumed. "Here--'my husband will
bring me to see you'--who's her husband? Has he got a name? And a blank
envelope to her uncle here, who's kept her in comfort for so long! And
this is all she writes to me! Will any one spell out the meaning of it?"

"Dahlia was in great haste, father," said Rhoda.

"Oh, ay, you!--you're the one, I know," returned the farmer. "It's sister
and sister, with you."

"But she was very, very hurried, father. I have a letter from her, and I
have only 'Dahlia' written at the end--no other name."

"And you suspect no harm of your sister."

"Father, how can I imagine any kind of harm?"

"That letter, my girl, sticks to my skull, as though it meant to say,
'You've not understood me yet.' I've read it a matter of twenty times,
and I'm no nearer to the truth of it. But, if she's lying, here in this
letter, what's she walking on? How long are we to wait for to hear? I
give you my word, Robert, I'm feeling for you as I am for myself. Or,
wasn't it that one? Is it this one?" He levelled his finger at Rhoda. "In
any case, Robert, you'll feel for me as a father. I'm shut in a dark room
with the candle blown out. I've heard of a sort of fear you have in that
dilemmer, lest you should lay your fingers on edges of sharp knives, and
if I think a step--if I go thinking a step, and feel my way, I do cut
myself, and I bleed, I do. Robert, just take and say, it wasn't that
one."

Such a statement would carry with it the confession that it was this one
for whom he cared this scornful one, this jilt, this brazen girl who
could make appointments with gentlemen, or suffer them to speak to her,
and subsequently look at him with innocence and with anger.

"Believe me, Mr. Fleming, I feel for you as much as a man can," he said,
uneasily, swaying half round as he spoke.

"Do you suspect anything bad?" The farmer repeated the question, like one
who only wanted a confirmation of his own suspicions to see the fact
built up. "Robert, does this look like the letter of a married woman? Is
it daughter-like--eh, man? Help another: I can't think for myself--she
ties my hands. Speak out."

Robert set his eyes on Rhoda. He would have given much to have been able
to utter, "I do." Her face was like an eager flower straining for light;
the very beauty of it swelled his jealous passion, and he flattered
himself with his incapacity to speak an abject lie to propitiate her.

"She says she is married. We're bound to accept what she says."

That was his answer.

"Is she married?" thundered the farmer. "Has she been and disgraced her
mother in her grave? What am I to think? She's my flesh and blood. Is
she--"

"Oh, hush, father!" Rhoda laid her hand on his arm. "What doubt can there
be of Dahlia? You have forgotten that she is always truthful. Come away.
It is shameful to stand here and listen to unmanly things."

She turned a face of ashes upon Robert.

"Come away, father. She is our own. She is my sister. A doubt of her is
an insult to us."

"But Robert don't doubt her--eh?" The farmer was already half distracted
from his suspicions. "Have you any real doubt about the girl, Robert?"

"I don't trust myself to doubt anybody," said Robert.

"You don't cast us off, my boy?"

"I'm a labourer on the farm," said Robert, and walked away.

"He's got reason to feel this more 'n the rest of us, poor lad! It's a
blow to him." With which the farmer struck his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.

"I wish he'd set his heart on a safer young woman."

Rhoda's shudder of revulsion was visible as she put her mouth up to kiss
her father's cheek.

CHAPTER VIII

That is Wrexby Hall, upon the hill between Fenhurst and Wrexby: the white
square mansion, with the lower drawing-room windows one full bow of glass
against the sunlight, and great single trees spotting the distant green
slopes. From Queen Anne's Farm you could read the hour by the stretching
of their shadows. Squire Blancove, who lived there, was an irascible,
gouty man, out of humour with his time, and beginning, alas for him! to
lose all true faith in his Port, though, to do him justice, he wrestled
hard with this great heresy. His friends perceived the decay in his
belief sooner than he did himself. He was sour in the evening as in the
morning. There was no chirp in him when the bottle went round. He had
never one hour of a humane mood to be reckoned on now. The day, indeed,
is sad when we see the skeleton of the mistress by whom we suffer, but
cannot abandon her. The squire drank, knowing that the issue would be the
terrific, curse-begetting twinge in his foot; but, as he said, he was a
man who stuck to his habits. It was over his Port that he had quarrelled
with his rector on the subject of hopeful Algernon, and the system he
adopted with that young man. This incident has something to do with
Rhoda's story, for it was the reason why Mrs. Lovell went to Wrexby
Church, the spirit of that lady leading her to follow her own impulses,
which were mostly in opposition. So, when perchance she visited the Hall,
she chose not to accompany the squire and his subservient guests to
Fenhurst, but made a point of going down to the unoccupied Wrexby pew.
She was a beauty, and therefore powerful; otherwise her act of
nonconformity would have produced bad blood between her and the squire.

It was enough to have done so in any case; for now, instead of sitting at
home comfortably, and reading off the week's chronicle of sport while he
nursed his leg, the unfortunate gentleman had to be up and away to
Fenhurst every Sunday morning, or who would have known that the old cause
of his general abstention from Sabbath services lay in the detestable
doctrine of Wrexby's rector?

Mrs. Lovell was now at the Hall, and it was Sunday morning after
breakfast. The lady stood like a rival head among the other guests,
listening, gloved and bonneted, to the bells of Wrexby, West of the
hills, and of Fenhurst, Northeast. The squire came in to them, groaning
over his boots, cross with his fragile wife, and in every mood for
satire, except to receive it.

"How difficult it is to be gouty and good!" murmured Mrs. Lovell to the
person next her.

"Well," said the squire, singling out his enemy, "you're going to that
fellow, I suppose, as usual--eh?"

"Not 'as usual,'" replied Mrs. Lovell, sweetly; "I wish it were!"

"Wish it were, do you?--you find him so entertaining? Has he got to
talking of the fashions?"

"He talks properly; I don't ask for more." Mrs. Lovell assumed an air of
meekness under persecution.

"I thought you were Low Church."

"Lowly of the Church, I trust you thought," she corrected him. "But, for
that matter, any discourse, plainly delivered, will suit me."

"His elocution's perfect," said the squire; "that is, before dinner."

"I have only to do with him before dinner, you know."

"Well, I've ordered a carriage out for you."

"That is very honourable and kind."

"It would be kinder if I contrived to keep you away from the fellow."

"Would it not be kinder to yourself," Mrs. Lovell swam forward to him in
all tenderness, taking his hands, and fixing the swimming blue of her
soft eyes upon him pathetically, "if you took your paper and your
slippers, and awaited our return?"

The squire felt the circulating smile about the room. He rebuked the
woman's audacity with a frown; "Tis my duty to set an example," he said,
his gouty foot and irritable temper now meeting in a common fire.

"Since you are setting an example," rejoined the exquisite widow, "I have
nothing more to say."

The squire looked what he dared not speak. A woman has half, a beauty has
all, the world with her when she is self-contained, and holds her place;
and it was evident that Mrs. Lovell was not one to abandon her
advantages.

He snapped round for a victim, trying his wife first. Then his eyes
rested upon Algernon.

"Well, here we are; which of us will you take?" he asked Mrs. Lovell in
blank irony.

"I have engaged my cavalier, who is waiting, and will be as devout as
possible." Mrs. Lovell gave Algernon a smile.

"I thought I hit upon the man," growled the squire. "You're going in to
Wrexby, sir! Oh, go, by all means, and I shan't be astonished at what
comes of it. Like teacher, like pupil!"

"There!" Mrs. Lovell gave Algernon another smile. "You have to bear the
sins of your rector, as well as your own. Can you support it?"

The flimsy fine dialogue was a little above Algernon's level in the
society of ladies; but he muttered, bowing, that he would endeavour to
support it, with Mrs. Lovell's help, and this did well enough; after
which, the slight strain on the intellects of the assemblage relaxed, and
ordinary topics were discussed. The carriages came round to the door;
gloves, parasols, and scent-bottles were securely grasped; whereupon the
squire, standing bare-headed on the steps, insisted upon seeing the party
of the opposition off first, and waited to hand Mrs. Lovell into her
carriage, an ironic gallantry accepted by the lady with serenity
befitting the sacred hour.

"Ah! my pencil, to mark the text for you, squire," she said, taking her
seat; and Algernon turned back at her bidding, to get a pencil; and she,
presenting a most harmonious aspect in the lovely landscape, reclined in
the carriage as if, like the sweet summer air, she too were quieted by
those holy bells, while the squire stood, fuming, bareheaded, and with
boiling blood, just within the bounds of decorum on the steps. She was
more than his match.

She was more than a match for most; and it was not a secret. Algernon
knew it as well as Edward, or any one. She was a terror to the soul of
the youth, and an attraction. Her smile was the richest flattery he could
feel; the richer, perhaps, from his feeling it to be a thing impossible
to fix. He had heard tales of her; he remembered Edward's warning; but he
was very humbly sitting with her now, and very happy.

"I'm in for it," he said to his fair companion; "no cheque for me next
quarter, and no chance of an increase. He'll tell me I've got a salary. A
salary! Good Lord! what a man comes to! I've done for myself with the
squire for a year."

"You must think whether you have compensation," said the lady, and he
received it in a cousinly squeeze of his hand.

He was about to raise the lank white hand to his lips.

"Ah!" she said, "there would be no compensation to me, if that were
seen;" and her dainty hand was withdrawn. "Now, tell me," she changed her
tone. "How do the loves prosper?"

Algernon begged her not to call them 'loves.' She nodded and smiled.

"Your artistic admirations," she observed. "I am to see her in church, am
I not? Only, my dear Algy, don't go too far. Rustic beauties are as
dangerous as Court Princesses. Where was it you saw her first?"

"At the Bank," said Algernon.

"Really! at the Bank! So your time there is not absolutely wasted. What
brought her to London, I wonder?"

"Well, she has an old uncle, a queer old fellow, and he's a sort of
porter--money porter--in the Bank, awfully honest, or he might half break
it some fine day, if he chose to cut and run. She's got a sister,
prettier than this girl, the fellows say; I've never seen her. I expect
I've seen a portrait of her, though."

"Ah!" Mrs. Lovell musically drew him on. "Was she dark, too?"

"No, she's fair. At least, she is in her portrait."

"Brown hair; hazel eyes?"

"Oh--oh! You guess, do you?"

"I guess nothing, though it seems profitable. That Yankee betting man
'guesses,' and what heaps of money he makes by it!"

"I wish I did," Algernon sighed. "All my guessing and reckoning goes
wrong. I'm safe for next Spring, that's one comfort. I shall make twenty
thousand next Spring."

"On Templemore?"

"That's the horse. I've got a little on Tenpenny Nail as well. But I'm
quite safe on Templemore; unless the Evil Principle comes into the
field."

"Is he so sure to be against you, if he does appear?" said Mrs. Lovell.

"Certain!" ejaculated Algernon, in honest indignation.

"Well, Algy, I don't like to have him on my side. Perhaps I will take a
share in your luck, to make it--? to make it?"--She played prettily as a
mistress teasing her lap-dog to jump for a morsel; adding: "Oh! Algy, you
are not a Frenchman. To make it divine, sir! you have missed your
chance."

"There's one chance I shouldn't like to miss," said the youth.

"Then, do not mention it," she counselled him. "And, seriously, I will
take a part of your risk. I fear I am lucky, which is ruinous. We will
settle that, by-and-by. Do you know, Algy, the most expensive position in
the world is a widow's."

"You needn't be one very long," growled he.

"I'm so wretchedly fastidious, don't you see? And it's best not to sigh
when we're talking of business, if you'll take me for a guide. So, the
old man brought this pretty rustic Miss Rhoda to the Bank?"

"Once," said Algernon. "Just as he did with her sister. He's proud of his
nieces; shows them and then hides them. The fellows at the Bank never saw
her again."

"Her name is--?"

"Dahlia."

"Ah, yes!--Dahlia. Extremely pretty. There are brown dahlias--dahlias of
all colours. And the portrait of this fair creature hangs up in your
chambers in town?"

"Don't call them my chambers," Algernon protested.

"Your cousin's, if you like. Probably Edward happened to be at the Bank
when fair Dahlia paid her visit. Once seems to have been enough for both
of you."

Algernon was unread in the hearts of women, and imagined that Edward's
defection from Mrs. Lovell's sway had deprived him of the lady's sympathy
and interest in his fortunes.

"Poor old Ned's in some scrape, I think," he said.

"Where is he?" the lady asked, languidly.

"Paris."

"Paris? How very odd! And out of the season, in this hot weather. It's
enough to lead me to dream that he has gone over--one cannot realize
why."

"Upon my honour!" Algernon thumped on his knee; "by jingo!" he adopted a
less compromising interjection; "Ned's fool enough. My idea is, he's gone
and got married."

Mrs. Lovell was lying back with the neglectful grace of incontestable
beauty; not a line to wrinkle her smooth soft features. For one sharp
instant her face was all edged and puckered, like the face of a fair
witch. She sat upright.

"Married! But how can that be when we none of us have heard a word of
it?"

"I daresay you haven't," said Algernon; "and not likely to. Ned's the
closest fellow of my acquaintance. He hasn't taken me into his
confidence, you maybe sure; he knows I'm too leaky. There's no bore like
a secret! I've come to my conclusion in this affair by putting together a
lot of little incidents and adding them up. First, I believe he was at
the Bank when that fair girl was seen there. Secondly, from the
description the fellows give of her, I should take her to be the original
of the portrait. Next, I know that Rhoda has a fair sister who has run
for it. And last, Rhoda has had a letter from her sister, to say she's
away to the Continent and is married. Ned's in Paris. Those are my facts,
and I give you my reckoning of them."

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