Rhoda Fleming, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, Complete

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Mrs. Lovell gazed at Algernon for one long meditative moment.

"Impossible," she exclaimed. "Edward has more brains than heart." And now
the lady's face was scarlet. "How did this Rhoda, with her absurd name,
think of meeting you to tell you such stuff? Indeed, there's a simplicity
in some of these young women--" She said the remainder to herself.

"She's really very innocent and good," Algernon defended Rhoda, "she is.
There isn't a particle of nonsense in her. I first met her in town, as I
stated, at the Bank; just on the steps, and we remembered I had called a
cab for her a little before; and I met her again by accident yesterday."

"You are only a boy in their hands, my cousin Algy!" said Mrs. Lovell.

Algernon nodded with a self-defensive knowingness. "I fancy there's no
doubt her sister has written to her that she's married. It's certain she
has. She's a blunt sort of girl; not one to lie, not even for a sister or
a lover, unless she had previously made up her mind to it. In that case,
she wouldn't stick at much."

"But, do you know," said Mrs. Lovell--"do you know that Edward's father
would be worse than yours over such an act of folly? He would call it an
offence against common sense, and have no mercy for it. He would be
vindictive on principle. This story of yours cannot be true. Nothing
reconciles it."

"Oh, Sir Billy will be rusty; that stands to reason," Algernon assented.
"It mayn't be true. I hope it isn't. But Ned has a madness for fair
women. He'd do anything on earth for them. He loses his head entirely."

"That he may have been imprudent--" Mrs. Lovell thus blushingly hinted at
the lesser sin of his deceiving and ruining the girl.

"Oh, it needn't be true," said Algernon; and with meaning, "Who's to
blame if it is?"

Mrs. Lovell again reddened. She touched Algernon's fingers.

"His friends mustn't forsake him, in any case."

"By Jove! you are the right sort of woman," cried Algernon.

It was beyond his faculties to divine that her not forsaking of Edward
might haply come to mean something disastrous to him. The touch of Mrs.
Lovell's hand made him forget Rhoda in a twinkling. He detained it,
audaciously, even until she frowned with petulance and stamped her foot.

There was over her bosom a large cameo-brooch, representing a tomb under
a palm-tree, and the figure of a veiled woman with her head bowed upon
the tomb. This brooch was falling, when Algernon caught it. The pin tore
his finger, and in the energy of pain he dashed the brooch to her feet,
with immediate outcries of violent disgust at himself and exclamations
for pardon. He picked up the brooch. It was open. A strange, discoloured,
folded substance lay on the floor of the carriage. Mrs. Lovell gazed down
at it, and then at him, ghastly pale. He lifted it by one corner, and the
diminutive folded squares came out, revealing a strip of red-stained
handkerchief.

Mrs. Lovell grasped it, and thrust it out of sight.

She spoke as they approached the church-door: "Mention nothing of this to
a soul, or you forfeit my friendship for ever."

When they alighted, she was smiling in her old affable manner.

CHAPTER IX

Some consideration for Robert, after all, as being the man who loved her,
sufficed to give him rank as a more elevated kind of criminal in Rhoda's
sight, and exquisite torture of the highest form was administered to him.
Her faith in her sister was so sure that she could half pardon him for
the momentary harm he had done to Dahlia with her father; but, judging
him by the lofty standard of one who craved to be her husband, she could
not pardon his unmanly hesitation and manner of speech. The old and deep
grievance in her heart as to what men thought of women, and as to the
harshness of men, was stirred constantly by the remembrance of his
irresolute looks, and his not having dared to speak nobly for Dahlia,
even though he might have had, the knavery to think evil. As the case
stood, there was still mischief to counteract. Her father had willingly
swallowed a drug, but his suspicions only slumbered, and she could not
instil her own vivid hopefulness and trust into him. Letters from Dahlia
came regularly. The first, from Lausanne, favoured Rhoda's conception of
her as of a happy spirit resting at celestial stages of her ascent upward
through spheres of ecstacy. Dahlia could see the snow-mountains in a
flying glimpse; and again, peacefully seated, she could see the
snow-mountains reflected in clear blue waters from her window, which,
Rhoda thought, must be like heaven. On these inspired occasions, Robert
presented the form of a malignant serpent in her ideas. Then Dahlia made
excursions upon glaciers with her beloved, her helpmate, and had
slippings and tumblings--little earthly casualties which gave a charming
sense of reality to her otherwise miraculous flight. The Alps were
crossed: Italy was beheld. A profusion of "Oh's!" described Dahlia's
impressions of Italy; and "Oh! the heat!" showed her to be mortal,
notwithstanding the sublime exclamations. Como received the blissful
couple. Dahlia wrote from Como:--

"Tell father that gentlemen in my Edward's position cannot always
immediately proclaim their marriage to the world. There are
reasons. I hope he has been very angry with me: then it will be
soon over, and we shall be--but I cannot look back. I shall not
look back till we reach Venice. At Venice, I know I shall see you
all as clear as day; but I cannot even remember the features of my
darling here."

Her Christian name was still her only signature.

The thin blue-and-pink paper, and the foreign postmarks--testifications
to Dahlia's journey not being a fictitious event, had a singular
deliciousness for the solitary girl at the Farm. At times, as she turned
them over, she was startled by the intoxication of her sentiments, for
the wild thought would come, that many, many whose passionate hearts she
could feel as her own, were ready to abandon principle and the bondage to
the hereafter, for such a long delicious gulp of divine life. Rhoda found
herself more than once brooding on the possible case that Dahlia had done
this thing.

The fit of languor came on her unawares, probing at her weakness, and
blinding her to the laws and duties of earth, until her conscious
womanhood checked it, and she sprang from the vision in a spasm of
terror, not knowing how far she had fallen.

After such personal experiences, she suffered great longings to be with
her sister, that the touch of her hand, the gaze of her eyes, the tone of
Dahlia's voice, might make her sure of her sister's safety.

Rhoda's devotions in church were frequently distracted by the occupants
of the Blancove pew. Mrs. Lovell had the habit of looking at her with an
extraordinary directness, an expressionless dissecting scrutiny, that was
bewildering and confusing to the country damsel. Algernon likewise
bestowed marked attention on her. Some curious hints had been thrown out
to her by this young gentleman on the day when he ventured to speak to
her in the lane, which led her to fancy distantly that he had some
acquaintance with Dahlia's husband, or that he had heard of Dahlia.

It was clear to Rhoda that Algernon sought another interview. He appeared
in the neighbourhood of the farm on Saturdays, and on Sundays he was
present in the church, sometimes with Mrs. Lovell, and sometimes without
a companion. His appearance sent her quick wits travelling through many
scales of possible conduct: and they struck one ringing note:--she
thought that by the aid of this gentleman a lesson might be given to
Robert's mean nature. It was part of Robert's punishment to see that she
was not unconscious of Algernon's admiration.

The first letter from Venice consisted of a series of interjections in
praise of the poetry of gondolas, varied by allusions to the sad smell of
the low tide water, and the amazing quality of the heat; and then Dahlia
wrote more composedly:--

"Titian the painter lived here, and painted ladies, who sat to him
without a bit of garment on, and indeed, my darling, I often think it was
more comfortable for the model than for the artist. Even modesty seems
too hot a covering for human creatures here. The sun strikes me down. I
am ceasing to have a complexion. It is pleasant to know that my Edward is
still proud of me. He has made acquaintance with some of the officers
here, and seems pleased at the compliments they pay me.

"They have nice manners, and white uniforms that fit them like a kid
glove. I am Edward's 'resplendent wife.' A colonel of one of the
regiments invited him to dinner (speaking English), 'with your
resplendent wife.' Edward has no mercy for errors of language, and he
would not take me. Ah! who knows how strange men are! Never think of
being happy unless you can always be blind. I see you all at home--Mother
Dumpling and all--as I thought I should when I was to come to Venice.

"Persuade--do persuade father that everything will be well. Some persons
are to be trusted. Make him feel it. I know that I am life itself to
Edward. He has lived as men do, and he can judge, and he knows that there
never was a wife who brought a heart to her husband like mine to him. He
wants to think, or he wants to smoke, and he leaves me; but, oh! when he
returns, he can scarcely believe that he has me, his joy is so great. He
looks like a glad thankful child, and he has the manliest of faces. It is
generally thoughtful; you might think it hard, at first sight.

"But you must be beautiful to please some men. You will laugh--I have
really got the habit of talking to my face and all myself in the glass.
Rhoda would think me cracked. And it is really true that I was never so
humble about my good looks. You used to spoil me at home--you and that
wicked old Mother Dumpling, and our own dear mother, Rhoda--oh! mother,
mother! I wish I had always thought of you looking down on me! You made
me so vain--much more vain than I let you see I was. There were times
when it is quite true I thought myself a princess. I am not worse-looking
now, but I suppose I desire to be so beautiful that nothing satisfies me.

"A spot on my neck gives me a dreadful fright. If my hair comes out much
when I comb it, it sets my heart beating; and it is a daily misery to me
that my hands are larger than they should be, belonging to Edward's
'resplendent wife.' I thank heaven that you and I always saw the
necessity of being careful of our fingernails. My feet are of moderate
size, though they are not French feet, as Edward says. No: I shall never
dance. He sent me to the dancing-master in London, but it was too late.
But I have been complimented on my walking, and that seems to please
Edward. He does not dance (or mind dancing) himself, only he does not
like me to miss one perfection. It is his love. Oh! if I have seemed to
let you suppose he does not love me as ever, do not think it. He is most
tender and true to me. Addio! I am signora, you are signorina.

"They have such pretty manners to us over here. Edward says they think
less of women: I say they think more. But I feel he must be right. Oh, my
dear, cold, loving, innocent sister! put out your arms; I shall feel them
round me, and kiss you, kiss you for ever!"

Onward from city to city, like a radiation of light from the old
farm-house, where so little of it was, Dahlia continued her journey; and
then, without a warning, with only a word to say that she neared Rome,
the letters ceased. A chord snapped in Rhoda's bosom. While she was
hearing from her sister almost weekly, her confidence was buoyed on a
summer sea. In the silence it fell upon a dread. She had no answer in her
mind for her father's unspoken dissatisfaction, and she had to conceal
her cruel anxiety. There was an interval of two months: a blank fell
charged with apprehension that was like the humming of a toneless wind
before storm; worse than the storm, for any human thing to bear.

Rhoda was unaware that Robert, who rarely looked at her, and never sought
to speak a word to her when by chance they met and were alone, studied
each change in her face, and read its signs. He was left to his own
interpretation of them, but the signs he knew accurately. He knew that
her pride had sunk, and that her heart was desolate. He believed that she
had discovered her sister's misery.

One day a letter arrived that gave her no joyful colouring, though it
sent colour to her cheeks. She opened it, evidently not knowing the
handwriting; her eyes ran down the lines hurriedly. After a time she went
upstairs for her bonnet.

At the stile leading into that lane where Robert had previously seen her,
she was stopped by him.

"No farther," was all that he said, and he was one who could have
interdicted men from advancing.

"Why may I not go by you?" said Rhoda, with a woman's affected
humbleness.

Robert joined his hands. "You go no farther, Miss Rhoda, unless you take
me with you."

"I shall not do that, Mr. Robert."

"Then you had better return home."

"Will you let me know what reasons you have for behaving in this manner
to me?"

"I'll let you know by-and-by," said Robert. "At present, You'll let the
stronger of the two have his way."

He had always been so meek and gentle and inoffensive, that her contempt
had enjoyed free play, and had never risen to anger; but violent anger
now surged against him, and she cried, "Do you dare to touch me?" trying
to force her passage by.

Robert caught her softly by the wrist. There stood at the same time a
full-statured strength of will in his eyes, under which her own fainted.

"Go back," he said; and she turned that he might not see her tears of
irritation and shame. He was treating her as a child; but it was to
herself alone that she could defend herself. She marvelled that when she
thought of an outspoken complaint against him, her conscience gave her no
support.

"Is there no freedom for a woman at all in this world?" Rhoda framed the
bitter question.

Rhoda went back as she had come. Algernon Blancove did the same. Between
them stood Robert, thinking, "Now I have made that girl hate me for
life."

It was in November that a letter, dated from London, reached the farm,
quickening Rhoda's blood anew. "I am alive," said Dahlia; and she said
little more, except that she was waiting to see her sister, and bade her
urgently to travel up alone. Her father consented to her doing so. After
a consultation with Robert, however, he determined to accompany her.

"She can't object to see me too," said the farmer; and Rhoda answered
"No." But her face was bronze to Robert when they took their departure.

CHAPTER X

Old Anthony was expecting them in London. It was now winter, and the
season for theatres; so, to show his brother-in-law the fun of a theatre
was one part of his projected hospitality, if Mr. Fleming should haply
take the hint that he must pay for himself.

Anthony had laid out money to welcome the farmer, and was shy and fidgety
as a girl who anticipates the visit of a promising youth, over his fat
goose for next day's dinner, and his shrimps for this day's tea, and his
red slice of strong cheese, called of Cheshire by the reckless
butter-man, for supper.

He knew that both Dahlia and Rhoda must have told the farmer that he was
not high up in Boyne's Bank, and it fretted him to think that the
mysterious respect entertained for his wealth by the farmer, which
delighted him with a novel emotion, might be dashed by what the farmer
would behold.

During his last visit to the farm, Anthony had talked of the Funds more
suggestively than usual. He had alluded to his own dealings in them, and
to what he would do and would not do under certain contingencies; thus
shadowing out, dimly luminous and immense, what he could do, if his
sagacity prompted the adventure. The farmer had listened through the
buzzing of his uncertain grief, only sighing for answer. "If ever you
come up to London, brother William John," said Anthony, "you mind you go
about arm-in-arm with me, or you'll be judging by appearances, and says
you, 'Lor', what a thousander fellow this is!' and 'What a millioner
fellow that is!' You'll be giving your millions and your thousands to the
wrong people, when they haven't got a penny. All London 'll be
topsy-turvy to you, unless you've got a guide, and he'll show you a
shabby-coated, head-in-the-gutter old man 'll buy up the lot. Everybody
that doesn't know him says--look at him! but they that knows him--hats
off, I can tell you. And talk about lords! We don't mind their coming
into the city, but they know the scent of cash. I've had a lord take off
his hat to me. It's a fact, I have."

In spite of the caution Anthony had impressed upon his country relative,
that he should not judge by appearances, he was nevertheless under an
apprehension that the farmer's opinion of him, and the luxurious, almost
voluptuous, enjoyment he had of it, were in peril. When he had purchased
the well-probed fat goose, the shrimps, and the cheese, he was only
half-satisfied. His ideas shot boldly at a bottle of wine, and he
employed a summer-lighted evening in going a round of wine-merchants'
placards, and looking out for the cheapest bottle he could buy. And he
would have bought one--he had sealing-wax of his own and could have
stamped it with the office-stamp of Boyne's Bank for that matter, to make
it as dignified and costly as the vaunted red seals and green seals of
the placards--he would have bought one, had he not, by one of his lucky
mental illuminations, recollected that it was within his power to procure
an order to taste wine at the Docks, where you may get as much wine as
you like out of big sixpenny glasses, and try cask after cask, walking
down gas-lit paths between the huge bellies of wine which groan to be
tapped and tried, that men may know them. The idea of paying two
shillings and sixpence for one miserable bottle vanished at the
richly-coloured prospect. "That'll show him something of what London is,"
thought Anthony; and a companion thought told him in addition that the
farmer, with a skinful of wine, would emerge into the open air imagining
no small things of the man who could gain admittance into those
marvellous caverns. "By George! it's like a boy's story-book," cried
Anthony, in his soul, and he chuckled over the vision of the farmer's
amazement--acted it with his arms extended, and his hat unseated, and
plunged into wheezy fits of laughter.

He met his guests at the station. Mr. Fleming was soberly attired in
what, to Anthony's London eye, was a curiosity costume; but the broad
brim of the hat, the square cut of the brown coat, and the leggings,
struck him as being very respectable, and worthy of a presentation at any
Bank in London.

"You stick to a leather purse, brother William John?" he inquired, with
an artistic sentiment for things in keeping.

"I do," said the farmer, feeling seriously at the button over it.

"All right; I shan't ask ye to show it in the street," Anthony rejoined,
and smote Rhoda's hand as it hung.

"Glad to see your old uncle--are ye?"

Rhoda replied quietly that she was, but had come with the principal
object of seeing her sister.

"There!" cried Anthony, "you never get a compliment out of this gal. She
gives ye the nut, and you're to crack it, and there maybe, or there
mayn't be, a kernel inside--she don't care."

"But there ain't much in it!" the farmer ejaculated, withdrawing his
fingers from the button they had been teasing for security since
Anthony's question about the purse.

"Not much--eh! brother William John?" Anthony threw up a puzzled look.
"Not much baggage--I see that--" he exclaimed; "and, Lord be thanked! no
trunks. Aha, my dear"--he turned to Rhoda--"you remember your lesson, do
ye? Now, mark me--I'll remember you for it. Do you know, my dear," he
said to Rhoda confidentially, "that sixpenn'orth of chaff which I made
the cabman pay for--there was the cream of it!--that was better than
Peruvian bark to my constitution. It was as good to me as a sniff of
sea-breeze and no excursion expenses. I'd like another, just to feel
young again, when I'd have backed myself to beat--cabmen? Ah! I've stood
up, when I was a young 'un, and shut up a Cheap Jack at a fair.
Circulation's the soul o' chaff. That's why I don't mind tackling
cabmen--they sit all day, and all they've got to say is 'rat-tat,' and
they've done. But I let the boys roar. I know what I was when a boy
myself. I've got devil in me--never you fear--but it's all on the side of
the law. Now, let's off, for the gentlemen are starin' at you, which
won't hurt ye, ye know, but makes me jealous."

Before the party moved away from the platform, a sharp tussle took place
between Anthony and the farmer as to the porterage of the bulky bag; but
it being only half-earnest, the farmer did not put out his strength, and
Anthony had his way.

"I rather astonished you, brother William John," he said, when they were
in the street.

The farmer admitted that he was stronger than he looked.

"Don't you judge by appearances, that's all," Anthony remarked, setting
down the bag to lay his finger on one side of his nose for
impressiveness.

"Now, there we leave London Bridge to the right, and we should away to
the left, and quiet parts." He seized the bag anew. "Just listen. That's
the roaring of cataracts of gold you hear, brother William John. It's a
good notion, ain't it? Hark!--I got that notion from one of your penny
papers. You can buy any amount for a penny, now-a-days--poetry up in a
corner, stories, tales o' temptation--one fellow cut his lucky with his
master's cash, dashed away to Australia, made millions, fit to be a lord,
and there he was! liable to the law! and everybody bowing their hats and
their heads off to him, and his knees knocking at the sight of a
policeman--a man of a red complexion, full habit of body, enjoyed his
dinner and his wine, and on account of his turning white so often, they
called him--'sealing-wax and Parchment' was one name; 'Carrots and
turnips' was another; 'Blumonge and something,' and so on. Fancy his
having to pay half his income in pensions to chaps who could have had him
out of his town or country mansion and popped into gaol in a jiffy. And
found out at last! Them tales set you thinking. Once I was an idle young
scaramouch. But you can buy every idea that's useful to you for a penny.
I tried the halfpenny journals. Cheapness ain't always profitable. The
moral is, Make your money, and you may buy all the rest."

Discoursing thus by the way, and resisting the farmer's occasional
efforts to relieve him of the bag, with the observation that appearances
were deceiving, and that he intended, please his Maker, to live and turn
over a little more interest yet, Anthony brought them to Mrs. Wicklow's
house. Mrs. Wicklow promised to put them into the track of the omnibuses
running toward Dahlia's abode in the Southwest, and Mary Ann Wicklow, who
had a burning desire in her bosom to behold even the outside shell of her
friend's new grandeur, undertook very disinterestedly to accompany them.
Anthony's strict injunction held them due at a lamp-post outside Boyne's
Bank, at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon.

"My love to Dahly," he said. "She was always a head and shoulders over my
size. Tell her, when she rolls by in her carriage, not to mind me. I got
my own notions of value. And if that Mr. Ayrton of hers 'll bank at
Boyne's, I'll behave to him like a customer. This here's the girl for my
money." He touched Rhoda's arm, and so disappeared.

The farmer chided her for her cold manner to her uncle, murmuring aside
to her: "You heard what he said." Rhoda was frozen with her heart's
expectation, and insensible to hints or reproof. The people who entered
the omnibus seemed to her stale phantoms bearing a likeness to every one
she had known, save to her beloved whom she was about to meet, after long
separation.

She marvelled pityingly at the sort of madness which kept the streets so
lively for no reasonable purpose. When she was on her feet again, she
felt for the first time, that she was nearing the sister for whom she
hungered, and the sensation beset her that she had landed in a foreign
country. Mary Ann Wicklow chattered all the while to the general ear. It
was her pride to be the discoverer of Dahlia's terrace.

"Not for worlds would she enter the house," she said, in a general tone;
she knowing better than to present herself where downright entreaty did
not invite her.

Rhoda left her to count the numbers along the terrace-walk, and stood out
in the road that her heart might select Dahlia's habitation from the
other hueless residences. She fixed upon one, but she was wrong, and her
heart sank. The fair Mary Ann fought her and beat her by means of a
careful reckoning, as she remarked,--

"I keep my eyes open; Number 15 is the corner house, the bow-window, to a
certainty."

Gardens were in front of the houses; or, to speak more correctly, strips
of garden walks. A cab was drawn up close by the shrub-covered iron gate
leading up to No. 15. Mary Ann hurried them on, declaring that they might
be too late even now at a couple of dozen paces distant, seeing that
London cabs, crawlers as they usually were, could, when required, and
paid for it, do their business like lightning. Her observation was
illustrated the moment after they had left her in the rear; for a
gentleman suddenly sprang across the pavement, jumped into a cab, and was
whirled away, with as much apparent magic to provincial eyes, as if a
pantomimic trick had been performed. Rhoda pressed forward a step in
advance of her father.

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