Rhoda Fleming, v4
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George Meredith >> Rhoda Fleming, v4
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"My sister, Dahlia Fleming, lives there," she said.
"Then, you are Rhoda?"
"My name is Rhoda."
"Mine--I fear it will not give you pleasure to hear it--is Edward
Blancove. I returned late last night from abroad."
She walked to a distance, out of hearing and out of sight of the house,
and he silently followed. The streets were empty, save for the solitary
footing of an early workman going to his labour.
She stopped, and he said, "I hope your sister is well."
"She is quite well."
"Thank heaven for that! I heard of some illness."
"She has quite recovered."
"Did she--tell me the truth--did she get a letter that I sent two days
ago, to her? It was addressed to 'Miss Fleming, Wrexby, Kent, England.'
Did it reach her?"
"I have not seen it."
"I wrote," said Edward.
His scrutiny of her features was not reassuring to him. But he had a
side-thought, prompted by admiration of her perfect build of figure, her
succinct expression of countenance, and her equable manner of speech: to
the effect, that the true English yeomanry can breed consummate women.
Perhaps--who knows? even resolute human nature is the stronger for an
added knot--it approved the resolution he had formed, or stamped with a
justification the series of wild impulses, the remorse, and the returned
tenderness and manliness which had brought him to that spot.
"You know me, do you not?" he said.
"Yes," she answered shortly.
"I wish to see Dahlia."
"You cannot."
"Not immediately, of course. But when she has risen later in the
morning. If she has received my letter, she will, she must see me."
"No, not later; not at all," said Rhoda.
"Not at all? Why not?"
Rhoda controlled the surging of her blood for a vehement reply; saying
simply, "You will not see her."
"My child, I must."
"I am not a child, and I say what I mean."
"But why am I not to see her? Do you pretend that it is her wish not to
see me? You can't. I know her perfectly. She is gentleness itself."
"Yes; you know that," said Rhoda, with a level flash of her eyes, and
confronting him in a way so rarely distinguishing girls of her class,
that he began to wonder and to ache with an apprehension.
"She has not changed? Rhoda--for we used to talk of you so often! You
will think better of me, by-and-by.
"Naturally enough, you detest me at present. I have been a brute. I
can't explain it, and I don't excuse myself. I state the fact to you--
her sister. My desire is to make up for the past. Will you take a
message to her from me?"
"I will not."
"You are particularly positive."
Remarks touching herself Rhoda passed by.
"Why are you so decided?" he said more urgently. "I know I have deeply
offended and hurt you. I wish, and intend to repair the wrong to the
utmost of my power. Surely it's mere silly vindictiveness on your part
to seek to thwart me. Go to her; say I am here. At all events, let it
be her choice not to see me, if I am to be rejected at the door. She
can't have had my letter. Will you do that much?"
"She knows that you are here; she has seen you."
"Has seen me?" Edward drew in his breath sharply. "Well? and she sends
you out to me?"
Rhoda did not answer. She was strongly tempted to belie Dahlia's frame
of mind.
"She does send you to speak to me," Edward insisted.
"She knows that I have come."
"And you will not take one message in?"
"I will take no message from you."
"You hate me, do you not?"
Again she controlled the violent shock of her heart to give him hard
speech. He went on:--
"Whether you hate me or not is beside the matter. It lies between Dahlia
and me. I will see her. When I determine, I allow of no obstacles, not
even of wrong-headed girls. First, let me ask, is your father in
London?"
Rhoda threw a masculine meaning into her eyes.
"Do not come before him, I advise you."
"If," said Edward, with almost womanly softness, "you could know what I
have passed through in the last eight-and-forty hours, you would
understand that I am equal to any meeting; though, to speak truth, I
would rather not see him until I have done what I mean to do. Will you
be persuaded? Do you suppose that I have ceased to love your sister?"
This, her execrated word, coming from his mouth, vanquished her
self-possession.
"Are you cold?" he said, seeing the ripple of a trembling run over her.
"I am not cold. I cannot remain here." Rhoda tightened her
intertwisting fingers across under her bosom. "Don't try to kill my
sister outright. She's the ghost of what she was. Be so good as to go.
She will soon be out of your reach. You will have to kill me first, if
you get near her. Never! you never shall. You have lied to herbrought
disgrace on her poor head. We poor people read our Bibles, and find
nothing that excuses you. You are not punished, because there is no
young man in our family. Go."
Edward gazed at her for some time. "Well, I've deserved worse," he said,
not sorry, now that he saw an opponent in her, that she should waste her
concentrated antagonism in this fashion, and rejoiced by the testimony it
gave him that he was certainly not too late.
"You know, Rhoda, she loves me."
"If she does, let her pray to God on her knees."
"My good creature, be reasonable. Why am I here? To harm her? You take
me for a kind of monster. You look at me very much, let me say, like a
bristling cat. Here are the streets getting full of people, and you
ought not to be seen. Go to Dahlia. Tell her I am here. Tell her I am
come to claim her for good, and that her troubles are over. This is a
moment to use your reason. Will you do what I ask?"
"I would cut my tongue out, if it did you a service," said Rhoda.
"Citoyenne Corday," thought Edward, and observed: "Then I will dispense
with your assistance."
He moved in the direction of the house. Rhoda swiftly outstripped him.
They reached the gates together. She threw herself in the gateway. He
attempted to parley, but she was dumb to it.
"I allow nothing to stand between her and me," he said, and seized her
arm. She glanced hurriedly to right and left. At that moment Robert
appeared round a corner of the street. He made his voice heard, and,
coming up at double quick, caught Edward Blancove by the collar, swinging
him off. Rhoda, with a sign, tempered him to muteness, and the three
eyed one another.
"It's you," said Robert, and, understanding immediately the tactics
desired by Rhoda, requested Edward to move a step or two away in his
company.
Edward settled the disposition of his coat-collar, as a formula wherewith
to regain composure of mind, and passed along beside Robert, Rhoda
following.
"What does this mean?" said Robert sternly.
Edward's darker nature struggled for ascendancy within him. It was this
man's violence at Fairly which had sickened him, and irritated him
against Dahlia, and instigated him, as he remembered well, more than Mrs.
Lovell's witcheries, to the abhorrent scheme to be quit of her, and rid
of all botheration, at any cost.
"You're in some conspiracy to do her mischief, all of you," he cried.
"If you mean Dahlia Fleming," said Robert, "it'd be a base creature that
would think of doing harm to her now."
He had a man's perception that Edward would hardly have been found in
Dahlia's neighbourhood with evil intentions at this moment, though it was
a thing impossible to guess. Generous himself, he leaned to the more
generous view.
"I think your name is Eccles," said Edward. "Mr. Eccles, my position
here is a very sad one. But first, let me acknowledge that I have done
you personally a wrong. I am ready to bear the burden of your
reproaches, or what you will. All that I beg is, that you will do me the
favour to grant me five minutes in private. It is imperative."
Rhoda burst in--"No, Robert!" But Robert said, "It is a reasonable
request;" and, in spite of her angry eyes, he waved her back, and walked
apart with Edward.
She stood watching them, striving to divine their speech by their
gestures, and letting her savage mood interpret the possible utterances.
It went ill with Robert in her heart that he did not suddenly grapple and
trample the man, and so break away from him. She was outraged to see
Robert's listening posture. "Lies! lies!" she said to herself, "and he
doesn't know them to be lies." The window-blinds in Dahlia's
sitting-room continued undisturbed; but she feared the agency of the
servant of the house in helping to release her sister. Time was flowing
to dangerous strands. At last Robert turned back singly. Rhoda
fortified her soul to resist.
"He has fooled you," she murmured, inaudibly, before he spoke.
"Perhaps, Rhoda, we ought not to stand in his way. He wishes to do what
a man can do in his case. So he tells me, and I'm bound not to
disbelieve him. He says he repents--says the word; and gentlemen seem to
mean it when they use it. I respect the word, and them when they're up
to that word. He wrote to her that he could not marry her, and it did
the mischief, and may well be repented of; but he wishes to be forgiven
and make amends--well, such as he can. He's been abroad, and only
received Dahlia's letters within the last two or three days. He seems to
love her, and to be heartily wretched. Just hear me out; you'll decide;
but pray, pray don't be rash. He wishes to marry her; says he has spoken
to his father this very night; came straight over from France, after he
had read her letters. He says--and it seems fair--he only asks to see
Dahlia for two minutes. If she bids him go, he goes. He's not a friend
of mine, as I could prove to you; but I do think he ought to see her. He
says he looks on her as his wife; always meant her to be his wife, but
things were against him when he wrote that letter. Well, he says so; and
it's true that gentlemen are situated--they can't always, or think they
can't, behave quite like honest men. They've got a hundred things to
consider for our one. That's my experience, and I know something of the
best among 'em. The question is about this poor young fellow who's to
marry her to-day. Mr. Blancove talks of giving him a handsome sum--a
thousand pounds--and making him comfortable--"
"There!" Rhoda exclaimed, with a lightning face. "You don't see what he
is, after that? Oh!--" She paused, revolted.
"Will you let me run off to the young man, wherever he's to be found, and
put the case to him--that is, from Dahlia? And you know she doesn't like
the marriage overmuch, Rhoda. Perhaps he may think differently when he
comes to hear of things. As to Mr. Blancove, men change and change when
they're young. I mean, gentlemen. We must learn to forgive. Either
he's as clever as the devil, or he's a man in earnest, and deserves pity.
If you'd heard him!"
"My poor sister!" sighed Rhoda. The mentioning of money to be paid had
sickened and weakened her, as with the very physical taste of
degradation.
Hearing the sigh, Robert thought she had become subdued. Then Rhoda
said: "We are bound to this young man who loves my sister--bound to him
in honour: and Dahlia must esteem him, to have consented. As for the
other..." She waved the thought of his claim on her sister aside with a
quick shake of her head. "I rely on you to do this:--I will speak to Mr.
Blancove myself. He shall not see her there." She indicated the house.
"Go to my sister; and lose no time in taking her to your lodgings.
Father will not arrive till twelve. Wait and comfort her till I come,
and answer no questions. Robert," she gave him her hand gently, and,
looking sweetly, "if you will do this!"
"If I will!" cried Robert, transported by the hopeful tenderness. The
servant girl of the house had just opened the front door, intent on
scrubbing, and he passed in. Rhoda walked on to Edward.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A profound belief in the efficacy of his eloquence, when he chose to
expend it, was one of the principal supports of Edward's sense of
mastery; a secret sense belonging to certain men in every station of
life, and which is the staff of many an otherwise impressible and
fluctuating intellect. With this gift, if he trifled, or slid downward
in any direction, he could right himself easily, as he satisfactorily
conceived. It is a gift that may now and then be the ruin of promising
youths, though as a rule they find it helpful enough. Edward had exerted
it upon his father, and upon Robert. Seeing Rhoda's approach, he thought
of it as a victorious swordsman thinks of his weapon, and aimed his
observation over her possible weak and strong points, studying her
curiously even when she was close up to him. With Robert, the
representative of force, to aid her, she could no longer be regarded in
the light of a despicable hindrance to his wishes. Though inclined
strongly to detest, he respected her. She had decision, and a worthy
bearing, and a marvellously blooming aspect, and a brain that worked
withal. When she spoke, desiring him to walk on by her side, he was
pleased by her voice, and recognition of the laws of propriety, and
thought it a thousand pities that she likewise should not become the wife
of a gentleman. By degrees, after tentative beginnings, he put his spell
upon her ears, for she was attentive, and walked with a demure forward
look upon the pavement; in reality taking small note of what things he
said, until he quoted, as against himself, sentences from Dahlia's
letters; and then she fixed her eyes on him, astonished that he should
thus heap condemnation on his own head. They were most pathetic scraps
quoted by him, showing the wrestle of love with a petrifying conviction
of its hopelessness, and with the stealing on of a malady of the blood.
They gave such a picture of Dahlia's reverent love for this man, her long
torture, her chastity of soul and simple innocence, and her gathering
delirium of anguish, as Rhoda had never taken at all distinctly to her
mind. She tried to look out on him from a mist of tears.
"How could you bear to read the letters?" she sobbed.
"Could any human being read them and not break his heart for her?" said
he.
"How could you bear to read them and leave her to perish!"
His voice deepened to an impressive hollow: "I read them for the first
time yesterday morning, in France, and I am here!"
It was undeniably, in its effect on Rhoda, a fine piece of pleading
artifice. It partially excused or accounted for his behaviour, while it
filled her with emotions which she felt to be his likewise, and therefore
she could not remain as an unsympathetic stranger by his side.
With this, he flung all artifice away. He told her the whole story,
saving the one black episode of it--the one incomprehensible act of a
desperate baseness that, blindly to get free, he had deliberately
permitted, blinked at, and had so been guilty of. He made a mental pause
as he was speaking, to consider in amazement how and by what agency he
had been reduced to shame his manhood, and he left it a marvel.
Otherwise, he in no degree exonerated himself. He dwelt sharply on his
vice of ambition, and scorned it as a misleading light. "Yet I have done
little since I have been without her!" And then, with a persuasive
sincerity, he assured her that he could neither study nor live apart from
Dahlia. "She is the dearest soul to me on earth; she is the purest
woman. I have lived with her, I have lived apart from her, and I cannot
live without her. I love her with a husband's love. Now, do you suppose
I will consent to be separated from her? I know that while her heart
beats, it's mine. Try to keep her from me--you kill her."
"She did not die," said Rhoda. It confounded his menaces.
"This time she might," he could not refrain from murmuring.
"Ah!" Rhoda drew off from him.
"But I say," cried he, "that I will see her."
"We say, that she shall do what is for her good."
"You have a project? Let me hear it. You are mad, if you have."
"It is not our doing, Mr. Blancove. It was--it was by her own choice.
She will not always be ashamed to look her father in the face. She dare
not see him before she is made worthy to see him. I believe her to have
been directed right."
"And what is her choice?"
"She has chosen for herself to marry a good and worthy man."
Edward called out, "Have you seen him--the man?"
Rhoda, thinking he wished to have the certainty of the stated fact
established, replied, "I have."
"A good and worthy man," muttered Edward. "Illness, weakness, misery,
have bewildered her senses. She thinks him a good and worthy man?"
"I think him so."
"And you have seen him?"
"I have."
"Why, what monstrous delusion is this? It can't be! My good creature,
you're oddly deceived, I imagine. What is the man's name? I can
understand that she has lost her will and distinct sight; but you are
clear-sighted, and can estimate. What is the man's name?"
"I can tell you," said Rhoda; "his name is Mr. Sedgett."
"Mister--!" Edward gave one hollow stave of laughter. "And you have seen
him, and think him--"
"I know he is not a gentleman," said Rhoda. "He has been deeply good to
my sister, and I thank him, and do respect him."
"Deeply!" Edward echoed. He was prompted to betray and confess himself:
courage failed.
They looked around simultaneously on hearing an advancing footstep.
The very man appeared--in holiday attire, flushed, smiling, and with a
nosegay of roses in his hand. He studied the art of pleasing women. His
eye struck on Edward, and his smile vanished. Rhoda gave him no word of
recognition. As he passed on, he was led to speculate from his having
seen Mr. Edward instead of Mr. Algernon, and from the look of the former,
that changes were in the air, possibly chicanery, and the proclaiming of
himself as neatly diddled by the pair whom, with another, he heartily
hoped to dupe.
After he had gone by, Edward and Rhoda changed looks. Both knew the
destination of that lovely nosegay. The common knowledge almost kindled
an illuminating spark in her brain; but she was left in the dark, and
thought him strangely divining, or only strange. For him, a horror
cramped his limbs. He felt that he had raised a devil in that abominable
smirking ruffian. It may not, perhaps, be said that he had distinctly
known Sedgett to be the man. He had certainly suspected the possibility
of his being the man. It is out of the power of most wilful and selfish
natures to imagine, so as to see accurately, the deeds they prompt or
permit to be done. They do not comprehend them until these black
realities stand up before their eyes.
Ejaculating "Great heaven!" Edward strode some steps away, and returned.
"It's folly, Rhoda!--the uttermost madness ever conceived! I do not
believe--I know that Dahlia would never consent--first, to marry any man
but myself; secondly, to marry a man who is not a perfect gentleman. Her
delicacy distinguishes her among women."
"Mr. Blancove, my sister is nearly dead, only that she is so strong. The
disgrace has overwhelmed her, it has. When she is married, she will
thank and honour him, and see nothing but his love and kindness. I will
leave you now."
"I am going to her," said Edward.
"Do not."
"There's an end of talking. I trust no one will come in my path. Where
am I?"
He looked up at the name of the street, and shot away from her. Rhoda
departed in another direction, firm, since she had seen Sedgett pass,
that his nobleness should not meet with an ill reward. She endowed him
with fair moral qualities, which she contrasted against Edward Blancove's
evil ones; and it was with a democratic fervour of contempt that she
dismissed the superior dutward attractions of the gentleman.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
This neighbourhood was unknown to Edward, and, after plunging about in
one direction and another, he found that he had missed his way. Down
innumerable dusky streets of dwarfed houses, showing soiled silent
window-blinds, he hurried and chafed; at one moment in sharp joy that he
had got a resolution, and the next dismayed by the singular petty
impediments which were tripping him. "My dearest!" his heart cried to
Dahlia, "did I wrong you so? I will make all well. It was the work of a
fiend." Now he turned to right, now to left, and the minutes flew. They
flew; and in the gathering heat of his brain he magnified things until
the sacrifice of herself Dahlia was preparing for smote his imagination
as with a blaze of the upper light, and stood sublime before him in the
grandeur of old tragedy. "She has blinded her eyes, stifled her senses,
eaten her heart. Oh! my beloved! my wife! my poor girl! and all to be
free from shame in her father's sight!" Who could have believed that a
girl of Dahlia's class would at once have felt the shame so keenly, and
risen to such pure heights of heroism? The sacrifice flouted conception;
it mocked the steady morning. He refused to believe in it, but the short
throbs of his blood were wiser.
A whistling urchin became his guide. The little lad was carelessly
giving note to a popular opera tune, with happy disregard of concord. It
chanced that the tune was one which had taken Dahlia's ear, and,
remembering it and her pretty humming of it in the old days, Edward's
wrestling unbelief with the fatality of the hour sank, so entirely was he
under the sovereignty of his sensations. He gave the boy a big fee,
desiring superstitiously to feel that one human creature could bless the
hour. The house was in view. He knocked, and there came a strange
murmur of some denial. "She is here," he said, menacingly.
"She was taken away, sir, ten minutes gone, by a gentleman," the servant
tied to assure him.
The landlady of the house, coming up the kitchen stairs, confirmed the
statement. In pity for his torpid incredulity she begged him to examine
her house from top to bottom, and herself conducted him to Dahlia's room.
"That bed has not been slept in," said the lawyer, pointing his finger to
it.
"No, sir; poor thing! she didn't sleep last night. She's been wearying
for weeks; and last night her sister came, and they hadn't met for very
long. Two whole candles they burnt out, or near upon it."
"Where?--" Edward's articulation choked.
"Where they're gone to, sir? That I do not know. Of course she will
come back."
The landlady begged him to wait; but to sit and see the minutes--the
black emissaries of perdition--fly upon their business, was torture as
big as to endure the tearing off of his flesh till the skeleton stood
out. Up to this point he had blamed himself; now he accused the just
heavens. Yea! is not a sinner their lawful quarry? and do they not slip
the hounds with savage glee, and hunt him down from wrong to evil, from
evil to infamy, from infamy to death, from death to woe everlasting? And
is this their righteousness?--He caught at the rusty garden rails to
steady his feet.
Algernon was employed in the comfortable degustation of his breakfast,
meditating whether he should transfer a further slice of ham or of
Yorkshire pie to his plate, or else have done with feeding and light a
cigar, when Edward appeared before him.
"Do you know where that man lives?"
Algernon had a prompting to respond, "Now, really! what man?" But
passion stops the breath of fools. He answered, "Yes."
"Have you the thousand in your pocket?"
Algernon nodded with a sickly grin.
"Jump up! Go to him. Give it up to him! Say, that if he leaves London
on the instant, and lets you see him off--say, it shall be doubled.
Stay, I'll write the promise, and put my signature. Tell him he shall,
on my word of honour, have another--another thousand pounds--as soon as I
can possibly obtain it, if he holds his tongue, and goes with you; and
see that he goes. Don't talk to me on any other subject, or lose one
minute."
Algernon got his limbs slackly together, trying to think of the
particular pocket in which he had left his cigar-case. Edward wrote a
line on a slip of note-paper, and signed his name beneath. With this and
an unsatisfied longing for tobacco Algernon departed, agreeing to meet
his cousin in the street where Dahlia dwelt.
"By Jove! two thousand! It's an expensive thing not to know your own
mind," he thought.
"How am I to get out of this scrape? That girl Rhoda doesn't care a
button for me. No colonies for me. I should feel like a convict if I
went alone. What on earth am I to do?"
It seemed preposterous to him that he should take a cab, when he had not
settled upon a scheme. The sight of a tobacconist's shop charmed one of
his more immediate difficulties to sleep. He was soon enabled to puff
consoling smoke.
"Ned's mad," he pursued his soliloquy. "He's a weather-cock. Do I ever
act as he does? And I'm the dog that gets the bad name. The idea of
giving this fellow two thousand--two thousand pounds! Why, he might live
like a gentleman."
And that when your friend proves himself to be distraught, the proper
friendly thing to do is to think for him, became eminently clear in
Algernon's mind.
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