Rhoda Fleming, v4
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George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, v4
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"I hate them," she said, and her face expressed it.
"But you make them."
"How? You torment me."
"How can I explain the magic? Are you not making one of me now, where I
stand?"
"Then, sit."
"Or kneel?"
"Oh, Percy! do nothing ridiculous."
Inveterate insight was a characteristic of Major Waring; but he was not
the less in Mrs. Lovell's net. He knew it to be a charm that she
exercised almost unknowingly. She was simply a sweet instrument for
those who could play on it, and therein lay her mighty fascination.
Robert's blunt advice that he should seize the chance, take her and make
her his own, was powerful with him. He checked the particular
appropriating action suggested by Robert.
"I owe you an explanation," he said. "Margaret, my friend."
"You can think of me as a friend, Percy?"
"If I can call you my friend, what would I not call you besides? I did
you a great and shameful wrong when you were younger. Hush! you did not
deserve that. Judge of yourself as you will; but I know now what my
feelings were then. The sublime executioner was no more than a spiteful
man. You give me your pardon, do you not? Your hand?"
She had reached her hand to him, but withdrew it quickly.
"Not your hand, Margaret? But, you must give it to some one. You will
be ruined, if you do not."
She looked at him with full eyes. "You know it then?" she said slowly;
but the gaze diminished as he went on.
"I know, by what I know of you, that you of all women should owe a direct
allegiance. Come; I will assume privileges. Are you free?"
"Would you talk to me so, if you thought otherwise?" she asked.
"I think I would," said Percy. "A little depends upon the person. Are
you pledged at all to Mr. Edward Blancove?"
"Do you suppose me one to pledge myself?"
"He is doing a base thing."
"Then, Percy, let an assurance of my knowledge of that be my answer."
"You do not love the man?"
Despise him, say!"
"Is he aware of it?"
"If clear writing can make him."
"You have told him as much?"
"To his apprehension, certainly."
"Further, Margaret, I must speak:--did he act with your concurrence, or
knowledge of it at all, in acting as he has done?"
"Heavens! Percy, you question me like a husband."
"It is what I mean to be, if I may."
The frame of the fair lady quivered as from a blow, and then her eyes
rose tenderly.
"I thought you knew me. This is not possible."
"You will not be mine? Why is it not possible?"
"I think I could say, because I respect you too much."
"Because you find you have not the courage?"
"For what?"
"To confess that you were under bad influence, and were not the Margaret
I can make of you. Put that aside. If you remain as you are, think of
the snares. If you marry one you despise, look at the pit. Yes; you
will be mine! Half my love of my country and my profession is love of
you. Margaret is fire in my blood. I used to pray for opportunities,
that Margaret might hear of me. I knew that gallant actions touched her;
I would have fallen gladly; I was sure her heart would leap when she
heard of me. Let it beat against mine. Speak!"
"I will," said Mrs. Lovell, and she suppressed the throbs of her bosom.
Her voice was harsh and her face bloodless. "How much money have you,
Percy?"
This sudden sluicing of cold water on his heat of passion petrified him.
"Money," he said, with a strange frigid scrutiny of her features. As in
the flash of a mirror, he beheld her bony, worn, sordid, unacceptable.
But he was fain to admit it to be an eminently proper demand for
enlightenment.
He said deliberately, "I possess an income of five hundred a year,
extraneous, and in addition to my pay as major in Her Majesty's service."
Then he paused, and the silence was like a growing chasm between them.
She broke it by saying, "Have you any expectations?"
This was crueller still, though no longer astonishing. He complained in
his heart merely that her voice had become so unpleasant.
With emotionless precision, he replied, "At my mother's death--"
She interposed a soft exclamation.
"At my mother's death there will come to me by reversion, five or six
thousand pounds. When my father dies, he may possibly bequeath his
property to me. On that I cannot count."
Veritable tears were in her eyes. Was she affecting to weep
sympathetically in view of these remote contingencies?
"You will not pretend that you know me now, Percy," she said, trying to
smile; and she had recovered the natural feminine key of her voice. "I
am mercenary, you see; not a mercenary friend. So, keep me as a friend--
say you will be my friend."
"Nay, you had a right to know," he protested.
"It was disgraceful--horrible; but it was necessary for me to know."
"And now that you do know?"
"Now that I know, I have only to say--be as merciful in your idea of me
as you can."
She dropped her hand in his, and it was with a thrill of dismay that he
felt the rush of passion reanimating his frozen veins.
"Be mercenary, but be mine! I will give you something better to live for
than this absurd life of fashion. You reckon on what our expenditure
will be by that standard. It's comparative poverty; but--but you can
have some luxuries. You can have a carriage, a horse to ride. Active
service may come: I may rise. Give yourself to me, and you must love me,
and regret nothing."
"Nothing! I should regret nothing. I don't want carriages, or horses,
or luxuries. I could live with you on a subaltern's pay. I can't marry
you, Percy, and for the very reason which would make me wish to marry
you."
"Charade?" said he; and the contempt of the utterance brought her head
close under his.
"Dearest friend, you have not to learn how to punish me."
The little reproach, added to the wound to his pride, required a healing
medicament; she put her lips to his fingers.
Assuredly the comedy would not have ended there, but it was stopped by an
intrusion of the squire, followed by Sir William, who, while the squire--
full of wine and vindictive humours--went on humming, "Ah! h'm--m--m!
Soh!" said in the doorway to some one behind him: "And if you have lost
your key, and Algernon is away, of what use is it to drive down to the
Temple for a bed? I make it an especial request that you sleep here
tonight. I wish it. I have to speak with you."
Mrs. Lovell was informed that the baronet had been addressing his son,
who was fresh from Paris, and not, in his own modest opinion, presentable
before a lady.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Once more Farmer Fleming and Rhoda prepared for their melancholy journey
up to London. A light cart was at the gateway, near which Robert stood
with the farmer, who, in his stiff brown overcoat, that reached to his
ankles, and broad country-hat, kept his posture of dumb expectation like
a stalled ox, and nodded to Robert's remarks on the care which the garden
had been receiving latterly, the many roses clean in bud, and the trim
blue and white and red garden beds. Every word was a blow to him; but he
took it, as well as Rhoda's apparent dilatoriness, among the things to be
submitted to by a man cut away by the roots from the home of his labour
and old associations. Above his bowed head there was a board proclaiming
that Queen Anne's Farm, and all belonging thereunto, was for sale. His
prospect in the vague wilderness of the future, was to seek for
acceptance as a common labourer on some kind gentleman's property. The
phrase "kind gentleman" was adopted by his deliberate irony of the fate
which cast him out. Robert was stamping fretfully for Rhoda to come. At
times, Mrs. Sumfit showed her head from the window of her bed-room,
crying, "D'rectly!" and disappearing.
The still aspect of the house on the shining May afternoon was otherwise
undisturbed. Besides Rhoda, Master Gammon was being waited for; on whom
would devolve the driving of the cart back from the station. Robert
heaped his vexed exclamations upon this old man. The farmer restrained
his voice in Master Gammon's defence, thinking of the comparison he could
make between him and Robert: for Master Gammon had never run away from
the farm and kept absent, leaving it to take care of itself. Gammon,
slow as he might be, was faithful, and it was not he who had made it
necessary for the farm to be sold. Gammon was obstinate, but it was not
he who, after taking a lead, and making the farm dependent on his lead,
had absconded with the brains and energy of the establishment. Such
reflections passed through the farmer's mind.
Rhoda and Mrs. Sumfit came together down the trim pathway; and Robert now
had a clear charge against Master Gammon. He recommended an immediate
departure.
"The horse 'll bring himself home quite as well and as fast as Gammon
will," he said.
"But for the shakin' and the joltin', which tells o' sovereigns and
silver," Mrs. Sumfit was observing to Rhoda, "you might carry the box--
and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a
poker and not break it, I couldn't, nor get a single one through the
slit;--the sight I was, with a poker in my hand! I do declare I felt
azactly like a housebreaker;--and no soul to notice what you carries.
Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so"--Mrs. Sumfit performed a
methodical "Ahem!" and noised the sole of her shoe on the gravel
"so, and folks 'll think it's a mistake they made."
"What's that?"--the farmer pointed at a projection under Rhoda's shawl.
"It is a present, father, for my sister," said Rhoda.
"What is it?" the farmer questioned again.
Mrs. Sumfit fawned before him penitently--"Ah! William, she's poor, and
she do want a little to spend, or she will be so nipped and like a
frost-bitten body, she will. And, perhaps, dear, haven't money in her
sight for next day's dinner, which is--oh, such a panic for a young wife!
for it ain't her hunger, dear William--her husband, she thinks of. And
her cookery at a stand-still! Thinks she, 'he will charge it on the
kitchen;' so unreasonable's men. Yes," she added, in answer to the rigid
dejection of his look, "I said true to you. I know I said, 'Not a penny
can I get, William,' when you asked me for loans; and how could I get it?
I can't get it now. See here, dear!"
She took the box from under Rhoda's shawl, and rattled it with a down
turn and an up turn.
"You didn't ask me, dear William, whether I had a money-box. I'd ha'
told you so at once, had ye but asked me. And had you said, "Gi' me your
money-box," it was yours, only for your asking. You do see, you can't
get any of it out. So, when you asked for money I was right to say, I'd
got none."
The farmer bore with her dreary rattling of the box in demonstration of
its retentive capacities. The mere force of the show stopped him from
retorting; but when, to excuse Master Gammon for his tardiness, she
related that he also had a money-box, and was in search of it, the farmer
threw up his head with the vigour of a young man, and thundered for
Master Gammon, by name, vehemently wrathful at the combined hypocrisy of
the pair. He called twice, and his face was purple and red as he turned
toward the cart, saying,--
"We'll go without the old man."
Mrs. Sumfit then intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and
Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening
over the mischances which befel poor people when they grew infirm, or met
with accident, and what "useless clays" they were; and yet they had their
feelings. It was a long and confidential talk on a summer evening; and,
at the end of it, Master Gammon walked into Wrexby, and paid a visit to
Mr. Hammond, the carpenter, who produced two strong saving-boxes
excellently manufactured by his own hand, without a lid to them, or lock
and key: so that there would be no getting at the contents until the
boxes were full, or a pressing occasion counselled the destruction of the
boxes. A constant subject of jest between Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon
was, as to which first of them would be overpowered by curiosity to know
the amount of their respective savings; and their confessions of mutual
weakness and futile endeavours to extract one piece of gold from the
hoard.
"And now, think it or not," said Mrs. Sumfit, "I got that power over him,
from doctorin' him, and cookin' for him, I persuaded him to help my poor
Dahly in my blessed's need. I'd like him to do it by halves, but he
can't."
Master Gammon appeared round a corner of the house, his box, draped by
his handkerchief, under his arm. The farmer and Robert knew, when he was
in sight, that gestures and shouts expressing extremities of the need for
haste, would fail to accelerate his steps, so they allowed him to come on
at his own equal pace, steady as Time, with the peculiar lopping bend of
knees which jerked the moveless trunk regularly upward, and the ancient
round eyes fixed contemplatively forward. There was an affectingness in
this view of the mechanical old man bearing his poor hoard to bestow it.
Robert said out, unawares, "He mustn't be let to part with h' old
pennies."
"No; the farmer took him up; "nor I won't let him."
"Yes, father!" Rhoda intercepted his address to Master Gammon. "Yes,
father!" she hardened her accent. "It is for my sister. He does a good
thing. Let him do it."
"Mas' Gammon, what ha' ye got there?" the farmer sung out.
But Master Gammon knew that he was about his own business. He was a
difficult old man when he served the farmer; he was quite unmanageable in
his private affairs.
Without replying, he said to Mrs. Sumfit,--
"I'd gummed it."
The side of the box showed that it had been made adhesive, for the sake
of security, to another substance.
"That's what's caused ye to be so long, Mas' Gammon?"
The veteran of the fields responded with a grin, designed to show a
lively cunning.
"Deary me, Mas' Gammon, I'd give a fortnight's work to know how much
you'm saved, now, I would. And, there! Your comfort's in your heart.
And it shall be paid to you. I do pray heaven in mercy to forgive me,"
she whimpered, "if ever knowin'ly I hasted you at a meal, or did deceive
you when you looked for the pickings of fresh-killed pig. But if you
only knew how--to cookit spoils the temper of a woman! I'd a aunt was
cook in a gentleman's fam'ly, and daily he dirtied his thirteen plates--
never more nor never less; and one day--was ever a woman punished so! her
best black silk dress she greased from the top to the bottom, and he sent
down nine clean plates, and no word vouchsafed of explanation. For
gentlefolks, they won't teach themselves how it do hang together with
cooks in a kitchen--"
"Jump up, Mas' Gammon," cried the farmer, wrathful at having been
deceived by two members of his household, who had sworn to him, both,
that they had no money, and had disregarded his necessity. Such being
human nature!
Mrs. Sumfit confided the termination of her story to Rhoda; or suggested
rather, at what distant point it might end; and then, giving Master
Gammon's box to her custody, with directions for Dahlia to take the boxes
to a carpenter's shop--not attempting the power of pokers upon them--and
count and make a mental note of the amount of the rival hoards, she sent
Dahlia all her messages of smirking reproof, and delighted love, and
hoped that they would soon meet and know happiness.
Rhoda, as usual, had no emotion to spare. She took possession of the
second box, and thus laden, suffered Robert to lift her into the cart.
They drove across the green, past the mill and its flashing waters, and
into the road, where the waving of Mrs. Sumfit's desolate handkerchief
was latest seen.
A horseman rode by, whom Rhoda recognized, and she blushed and had a
boding shiver. Robert marked him, and the blush as well.
It was Algernon, upon a livery-stable hack. His countenance expressed a
mighty disappointment.
The farmer saw no one. The ingratitude and treachery of Robert, and of
Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon, kept him brooding in sombre disgust of
life. He remarked that the cart jolted a good deal.
"If you goes in a cart, wi' company o' four, you expects to be jolted,"
said Master Gammon.
"You seem to like it," Robert observed to the latter.
"It don't disturb my in'ards," quoth the serenest of mankind.
"Gammon," the farmer addressed him from the front seat, without turning
his head: "you'll take and look about for a new place."
Master Gammon digested the recommendation in silence. On its being
repeated, with, "D' ye hear?" he replied that he heard well enough.
"Well, then, look about ye sharp, or maybe, you'll be out in the cold,"
said the farmer.
"Na," returned Master Gammon, "ah never frets till I'm pinched."
"I've given ye notice," said the farmer.
"No, you ha'n't," said Master Gammon.
"I give ye notice now."
"No, you don't."
"How d' ye mean?"
"Cause I don't take ne'er a notice."
"Then you'll be kicked out, old man."
"Hey! there y' have me," said Master Gammon. "I growed at the farm, and
you don't go and tell ne'er a tree t' walk."
Rhoda laid her fingers in the veteran's palm.
"You're a long-lived family, aren't you, Master Gammon?" said Robert,
eyeing Rhoda's action enviously.
Master Gammon bade him go to a certain churchyard in Sussex, and inspect
a particular tombstone, upon which the ages of his ancestry were written.
They were more like the ages of oaks than of men.
"It's the heart kills," said Robert.
"It's damned misfortune," murmured the farmer.
"It is the wickedness in the world," thought Rhoda.
"It's a poor stomach, I reckon," Master Gammon ruminated.
They took leave of him at the station, from which eminence it was a
notable thing to see him in the road beneath, making preparations for his
return, like a conqueror of the hours. Others might run, and stew, if
they liked: Master Gammon had chosen his pace, and was not of a mind to
change it for anybody or anything. It was his boast that he had never
ridden by railway: "nor ever means to, if I can help it," he would say.
He was very much in harmony with universal nature, if to be that is the
secret of human life.
Meantime, Algernon retraced his way to the station in profound chagrin:
arriving there just as the train was visible. He caught sight of the
cart with Master Gammon in it, and asked him whether all his people were
going up to London; but the reply was evidently a mile distant, and had
not started; so putting a sovereign in Master Gammon's hand, together
with the reins of his horse, Algernon bade the old man conduct the animal
to the White Bear Inn, and thus violently pushing him off the tramways of
his intelligence, left him stranded.
He had taken a first-class return-ticket, of course, being a gentleman.
In the desperate hope that he might jump into a carriage with Rhoda, he
entered one of the second-class compartments; a fact not only foreign to
his tastes and his habits, but somewhat disgraceful, as he thought. His
trust was, that the ignoble of this earth alone had beheld him: at any
rate, his ticket was first class, as the guard would instantly and
respectfully perceive, and if he had the discomforts, he had also some of
the consolations of virtue.
Once on his way, the hard seat and the contemptible society surrounding
him, assured his reflective spirit that he loved: otherwise, was it in
reason that he should endure these hardships? "I really love the girl,"
he said, fidgeting for cushions.
He was hot, and wanted the window up, to which his fellow-travellers
assented. Then, the atmosphere becoming loaded with offence to his
morbid sense of smell, he wanted the windows down; and again they
assented. "By Jove! I must love the girl," ejaculated Algernon inwardly,
as cramp, cold, and afflicted nostrils combined to astonish his physical
sensations. Nor was it displeasing to him to evince that he was
unaccustomed to bare boards.
"We're a rich country," said a man to his neighbour; "but, if you don't
pay for it, you must take your luck, and they'll make you as
uncomfortable as they can."
"Ay," said the other. "I've travelled on the Continent. The
second-class carriages there are fit for anybody to travel in. This is
what comes of the worship of money--the individual is not respected.
Pounds alone!"
"These," thought Algernon, "are beastly democrats."
Their remarks had been sympathetic with his manifestations, which had
probably suggested them. He glowered out of the window in an exceedingly
foreign manner. A plainly dressed woman requested that the window should
be closed. One of the men immediately proceeded to close it. Algernon
stopped him.
"Pardon me, sir," said the man; "it's a lady wants it done;" and he did
it.
A lady! Algernon determined that these were the sort of people he should
hate for life. "Go among them and then see what they are," he addressed
an imaginary assembly of anti-democrats, as from a senatorial chair set
in the after days. Cramp, cold, ill-ordered smells, and eternal hatred
of his fellow-passengers, convinced him, in their aggregation, that he
surmounted not a little for love of Rhoda.
The train arrived in London at dusk. Algernon saw Rhoda step from a
carriage near the engine, assisted by Robert; and old Anthony was on the
platform to welcome her; and Anthony seized her bag, and the troop of
passengers moved away. It may be supposed that Algernon had angry
sensations at sight of Robert; and to a certain extent this was the case;
but he was a mercurial youth, and one who had satisfactorily proved
superior strength enjoyed a portion of his respect. Besides, if Robert
perchance should be courting Rhoda, he and Robert would enter into
another field of controversy; and Robert might be taught a lesson.
He followed the party on foot until they reached Anthony's dwelling-
place, noted the house, and sped to the Temple. There, he found
a telegraphic message from Edward, that had been awaiting him since
the morning.
"Stop It," were the sole words of the communication brief, and if one
preferred to think so, enigmatic.
"What on earth does he mean?" cried Algernon, and affected again and
again to see what Edward meant, without success. "Stop it?--stop what?--
Stop the train? Stop my watch? Stop the universe? Oh! this is rank
humbug." He flung the paper down, and fell to counting the money in his
possession. The more it dwindled, the more imperative it became that he
should depart from his country.
Behind the figures, he calculated that, in all probability, Rhoda would
visit her sister this night. "I can't stop that," he said: and hearing a
clock strike, "nor that" a knock sounded on the door; "nor that." The
reflection inspired him with fatalistic views.
Sedgett appeared, and was welcome. Algernon had to check the impulse of
his hand to stretch out to the fellow, so welcome was he: Sedgett stated
that everything stood ready for the morrow. He had accomplished all that
had to be done.
"And it's more than many'd reckon," he said, and rubbed his hands, and
laughed. "I was aboard ship in Liverpool this morning, that I was. That
ere young woman's woke up from her dream", (he lengthened the word
inexpressibly) "by this time, that she is. I had to pay for my passage,
though;" at which recollection he swore. "That's money gone. Never
mind: there's worse gone with it. Ain't it nasty--don't you think, sir--
to get tired of a young woman you've been keepin' company with, and have
to be her companion, whether you will, or whether you won't? She's sick
enough now. We travelled all night. I got her on board; got her to go
to her bed; and, says I, I'll arrange about the luggage. I packs myself
down into a boat, and saw the ship steam away a good'n. Hanged if I
didn't catch myself singin'. And haven't touched a drop o' drink, nor
will, till tomorrow's over. Don't you think "Daehli"'s a very pretty
name, sir? I run back to her as hard as rail 'd carry me. She's had a
letter from her sister, recommending o' her to marry me: 'a noble man,'
she calls me--ha, ha! that's good. 'And what do you think, my dear?'
says I; and, bother me, if I can screw either a compliment or a kiss out
of her. She's got fine lady airs of her own. But I'm fond of her, that
I am. Well, sir, at the church door, after the ceremony, you settle our
business, honour bright--that's it, en't it?"
Algernon nodded. Sedgett's talk always produced discomfort in his
ingenuous bosom.
"By the way, what politics are you?" he asked.
Sedgett replied, staring, that he was a Tory, and Algernon nodded again,
but with brows perturbed at the thought of this ruffian being of the same
political persuasion as himself.
"Eh?" cried Sedgett; "I don't want any of your hustings pledges, though.
You'll be at the door tomorrow, or I'll have a row--mind that. A
bargain's a bargain. I like the young woman, but I must have the money.
Why not hand it over now?"
"Not till the deed's done," said Algernon, very reasonably.
Sedgett studied his features, and as a result remarked: "You put me up to
this: I'll do it, and trust you so far, but if I'm played on, I throw the
young woman over and expose you out and out. But you mean honourable?"
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