George Meredith
Rhoda Fleming. Complete
CHAPTER XXIV
When the sun takes to shining in winter, and the Southwest to blowing, the corners of the earth cannot hide from him—the mornings are like halls full of light. Robert had spent his hopes upon a wet day that would have kept the congregation sparse and the guests at Fairly absent from public devotions.
He perceived at once that he was doomed to be under everybody’s eyes when he walked down the aisle, for everybody would attend the service on such a morning as this.
Already he had met his conscience, in so far as that he shunned asking Percy again what was the reason for their going to church, and he had not the courage to petition to go in the afternoon instead of the morning.
The question, “Are you ashamed of yourself, then?” sang in his ears as a retort ready made.
There was no help for it; so he set about assisting his ingenuity to make the best appearance possible—brushing his hat and coat with extraordinary care.
Percy got him to point out the spot designated for the meeting, and telling him to wait in the Warbeach churchyard, or within sight of it, strolled off in the direction of the river. His simple neatness and quiet gentlemanly air abashed Robert, and lured him from his intense conception of abstract right and wrong, which had hitherto encouraged and incited him, so that he became more than ever crestfallen at the prospect of meeting the eyes of the church people, and with the trembling sensitiveness of a woman who weighs the merits of a lover when passion is having one of its fatal pauses, he looked at himself, and compared himself with the class of persons he had outraged, and tried to think better of himself, and to justify himself, and sturdily reject comparisons. They would not be beaten back. His enemies had never suggested them, but they were forced on him by the aspect of his friend.
Any man who takes the law into his own hands, and chooses to stand against what is conventionally deemed fitting:—against the world, as we say, is open to these moods of degrading humility. Robert waited for the sound of the bells with the emotions of a common culprit. Could he have been driven to the church and deposited suddenly in his pew, his mind would have been easier.
It was the walking there, the walking down the aisle, the sense of his being the fellow who had matched himself against those well-attired gentlemen, which entirely confused him. And not exactly for his own sake—for Percy’s partly. He sickened at the thought of being seen by Major Waring’s side. His best suit and his hat were good enough, as far as they went, only he did not feel that he wore them—he could not divine how it was—with a proper air, an air of signal comfort. In fact, the graceful negligence of an English gentleman’s manner had been unexpectedly revealed to him; and it was strange, he reflected, that Percy never appeared to observe how deficient he was, and could still treat him as an equal, call him by his Christian name, and not object to be seen with him in public.
Robert did not think at the same time that illness had impoverished his blood. Your sensational beings must keep a strong and a good flow of blood in their veins to be always on a level with the occasion which they provoke. He remembered wonderingly that he had used to be easy in gait and ready of wit when walking from Queen Anne’s Farm to Wrexby village church. Why was he a different creature now? He could not answer the question.
Two or three of his Warbeach acquaintances passed him in the lanes. They gave him good day, and spoke kindly, and with pleasant friendly looks.
Their impression when they left him was that he was growing proud.
The jolly butcher of Warbeach, who had a hearty affection for him, insisted upon clapping his hand, and showing him to Mrs. Billing, and showing their two young ones to Robert. With a kiss to the children, and a nod, Robert let them pass.
Here and there, he was hailed by young fellows who wore their hats on one side, and jaunty-fashioned coats—Sunday being their own bright day of exhibition. He took no notice of the greetings.
He tried to feel an interest in the robins and twittering wrens, and called to mind verses about little birds, and kept repeating them, behind a face that chilled every friendly man who knew him.
Moody the boat-builder asked him, with a stare, if he was going to church, and on Robert’s replying that perhaps he was, said “I’m dashed!” and it was especially discouraging to one in Robert’s condition.
Further to inspirit him, he met Jonathan Eccles, who put the same question to him, and getting the same answer, turned sharp round and walked homeward.
Robert had a great feeling of relief when the bells were silent, and sauntered with a superior composure round the holly and laurel bushes concealing the church. Not once did he ponder on the meeting between Major Waring and Mr. Edward Blancove, until he beheld the former standing alone by the churchyard gate, and then he thought more of the empty churchyard and the absence of carriages, proclaiming the dreadful admonition that he must immediately consider as to the best way of comporting himself before an observant and censorious congregation.
Major Waring remarked, “You are late.”
“Have I kept you waiting?” said Robert.
“Not long. They are reading the lessons.”
“Is it full inside?”
“I dare say it is.”
“You have seen him, I suppose?”
“Oh yes; I have seen him.”
Percy was short in his speech, and pale as Robert had never seen him before. He requested hastily to be told the situation of Lord Elling’s pew.
“Don’t you think of going into the gallery?” said Robert, but received no answer, and with an inward moan of “Good God! they’ll think I’ve come here in a sort of repentance,” he found himself walking down the aisle; and presently, to his amazement, settled in front of the Fairly pew, and with his eyes on Mrs. Lovell.
What was the matter with her? Was she ill? Robert forgot his own tribulation in an instant. Her face was like marble, and as she stood with the prayer-book in her hand, her head swayed over it: her lips made a faint effort at smiling, and she sat quietly down, and was concealed. Algernon and Sir John Capes were in the pew beside her, as well as Lady Elling, who, with a backward-turned hand and disregarding countenance, reached out her smelling-bottle.
“Is this because she fancies I know of her having made a bet of me?” thought Robert, and it was not his vanity prompted the supposition, though his vanity was awakened by it. “Or is she ashamed of her falsehood?” he thought again, and forgave her at the sight of her sweet pale face. The singing of the hymns made her evident suffering seem holy as a martyr’s. He scarce had the power to conduct himself reverently, so intense was his longing to show her his sympathy.
“That is Mrs. Lovell—did you see her just now?” he whispered.
“Ah?” said Major Waring.
“I’m afraid she has fainted.”
“Possibly.”
But Mrs. Lovell had not fainted. She rose when the time for rising came again, and fixing her eyes with a grave devotional collectedness upon the vicar at his reading-desk, looked quite mistress of herself—but mistress of herself only when she kept them so fixed. When they moved, it was as if they had relinquished some pillar of support, and they wavered; livid shades chased her face, like the rain-clouds on a grey lake-water. Some one fronting her weighed on her eyelids. This was evident. Robert thought her a miracle of beauty. She was in colour like days he had noted thoughtfully: days with purple storm, and with golden horizon edges. She had on a bonnet of black velvet, with a delicate array of white lace, that was not suffered to disturb the contrast to her warm yellow hair. Her little gloved hands were both holding the book; at times she perused it, or, the oppression becoming unendurable, turned her gaze toward the corner of the chancel, and thence once more to her book. Robert rejected all idea of his being in any way the cause of her strange perturbation. He cast a glance at his friend. He had begun to nourish a slight suspicion; but it was too slight to bear up against Percy’s self-possession; for, as he understood the story, Percy had been the sufferer, and the lady had escaped without a wound. How, then, if such were the case, would she be showing emotion thus deep, while he stood before her with perfect self-command?
Robert believed that if he might look upon that adorable face for many days together, he could thrust Rhoda’s from his memory. The sermon was not long enough for him; and he was angry with Percy for rising before there was any movement for departure in the Fairly pew. In the doorway of the church Percy took his arm, and asked him to point out the family tombstone. They stood by it, when Lady Elling and Mrs. Lovell came forth and walked to the carriage, receiving respectful salutes from the people of Warbeach.
“How lovely she is!” said Robert.
“Do you think her handsome?” said Major Waring.
“I can’t understand such a creature dying.” Robert stepped over an open grave.
The expression of Percy’s eyes was bitter.
“I should imagine she thinks it just as impossible.”
The Warbeach villagers waited for Lady Elling’s carriage to roll away, and with a last glance at Robert, they too went off in gossiping groups. Robert’s penance was over, and he could not refrain from asking what good his coming to church had done.
“I can’t assist you,” said Percy. “By the way, Mr. Blancove denies everything. He thinks you mad. He promises, now that you have adopted reasonable measures, to speak to his cousin, and help, as far as he can, to discover the address you are in search of.”
“That’s all?” cried Robert.
“That is all.”
“Then where am I a bit farther than when I began?”
“You are only at the head of another road, and a better one.”
“Oh, why do I ever give up trusting to my right hand—” Robert muttered.
But the evening brought a note to him from Algernon Blancove. It contained a dignified condemnation of Robert’s previous insane behaviour, and closed by giving Dahlia’s address in London.
“How on earth was this brought about?” Robert now questioned.
“It’s singular, is it not?” said Major blaring; “but if you want a dog to follow you, you don’t pull it by the collar; and if you want a potato from the earth, you plant the potato before you begin digging. You are a soldier by instinct, my good Robert: your first appeal is to force. I, you see, am a civilian: I invariably try the milder methods. Do you start for London tonight? I remain. I wish to look at the neighbourhood.”
Robert postponed his journey to the morrow, partly in dread of his approaching interview with Dahlia, but chiefly to continue a little longer by the side of him whose gracious friendship gladdened his life. They paid a second visit to Sutton Farm. Robert doggedly refused to let a word be said to his father about his having taken to farming, and Jonathan listened to all Major Waring said of his son like a man deferential to the accomplishment of speaking, but too far off to hear more than a chance word. He talked, in reply, quite cheerfully of the weather and the state of the ground; observed that the soil was a perpetual study, but he knew something of horses and dogs, and Yorkshiremen were like Jews in the trouble they took to over-reach in a bargain. “Walloping men is poor work, if you come to compare it with walloping Nature,” he said, and explained that, according to his opinion, “to best a man at buying and selling was as wholesome an occupation as frowzlin’ along the gutters for parings and strays.” He himself preferred to go to the heart of things: “Nature makes you rich, if your object is to do the same for her. Yorkshire fellows never think except of making theirselves rich by fattening on your blood, like sheep-ticks.” In fine, Jonathan spoke sensibly, and abused Yorkshire, without hesitating to confess that a certain Yorkshireman, against whom he had matched his wits in a purchase of horseflesh, had given him a lively recollection of the encounter.
Percy asked him what he thought of his country. “I’ll tell you,” said Jonathan; “Englishmen’s business is to go to war with the elements, and so long as we fight them, we’re in the right academy for learnin’ how the game goes. Our vulnerability commences when we think we’ll sit down and eat the fruits, and if I don’t see signs o’ that, set me mole-tunnelling. Self-indulgence is the ruin of our time.”
This was the closest remark he made to his relations with Robert, who informed him that he was going to London on the following day. Jonathan shook his hand heartily, without troubling himself about any inquiries.
“There’s so much of that old man in me,” said Robert, when Percy praised him, on their return, “that I daren’t call him a Prince of an old boy: and never a spot of rancour in his soul. Have a claim on him—and there’s your seat at his table: take and offend him—there’s your seat still. Eat and drink, but you don’t get near his heart. I’ll surprise him some day. He fancies he’s past surprises.”
“Well,” said Percy, “you’re younger than I am, and may think the future belongs to you.”
Early next morning they parted. Robert was in town by noon. He lost no time in hurrying to the Western suburb. As he neared the house where he was to believe Dahlia to be residing, he saw a man pass through the leafless black shrubs by the iron gate; and when he came to the gate himself the man was at the door. The door opened and closed on this man. It was Nicodemus Sedgett, or Robert’s eyes did him traitorous service. He knocked at the door violently, and had to knock a second and a third time. Dahlia was denied to him. He was told that Mrs. Ayrton had lived there, but had left, and her present address was unknown. He asked to be allowed to speak a word to the man who had just entered the house. No one had entered for the last two hours, was the reply. Robert had an impulse to rush by the stolid little female liar, but Percy’s recent lesson to him acted as a restraint; though, had it been a brawny woman or a lacquey in his path, he would certainly have followed his natural counsel. He turned away, lingering outside till it was dusk and the bruise on his head gave great throbs, and then he footed desolately farther and farther from the house. To combat with evil in his own country village had seemed a simple thing enough, but it appeared a superhuman task in giant London.
CHAPTER XXV
It requires, happily, many years of an ordinary man’s life to teach him to believe in the exceeding variety and quantity of things money can buy: yet, when ingenuous minds have fully comprehended the potent character of the metal, they are likely enough to suppose that it will buy everything: after which comes the groaning anxiety to possess it.
This stage of experience is a sublime development in the great souls of misers. It is their awakening moment, and it is their first real sense of a harvest being in their hands. They have begun under the influence of the passion for hoarding, which is but a blind passion of the finger-ends. The idea that they have got together, bit by bit, a power, travels slowly up to their heavy brains. Once let it be grasped, however, and they clutch a god. They feed on everybody’s hunger for it. And, let us confess, they have in that a mighty feast.
Anthony Hackbut was not a miser. He was merely a saving old man. His vanity was, to be thought a miser, envied as a miser. He lived in daily hearing of the sweet chink of gold, and loved the sound, but with a poetical love, rather than with the sordid desire to amass gold pieces. Though a saving old man, he had his comforts; and if they haunted him and reproached him subsequently, for indulging wayward appetites for herrings and whelks and other sea-dainties that render up no account to you when they have disappeared, he put by copper and silver continually, weekly and monthly, and was master of a sum.
He knew the breadth of this sum with accuracy, and what it would expand to this day come a year, and probably this day come five years. He knew it only too well. The sum took no grand leaps. It increased, but did not seem to multiply. And he was breathing in the heart of the place, of all places in the world, where money did multiply.
He was the possessor of twelve hundred pounds, solid, and in haven; that is, the greater part in the Bank of England, and a portion in Boyne’s Bank. He had besides a few skirmishing securities, and some such bits of paper as Algernon had given him in the public-house on that remarkable night of his visit to the theatre.
These, when the borrowers were defaulters in their payments and pleaded for an extension of time, inspired him with sentiments of grandeur that the solid property could not impart. Nevertheless, the anti-poetical tendency within him which warred with the poetical, and set him reducing whatsoever he claimed to plain figures, made it but a fitful hour of satisfaction.
He had only to fix his mind upon Farmer Fleming’s conception of his wealth, to feel the miserable smallness of what seemed legitimately his own; and he felt it with so poignant an emotion that at times his fears of death were excited by the knowledge of a dead man’s impotence to suggest hazy margins in the final exposure of his property. There it would lie, dead as himself! contracted, coffined, contemptible!
What would the farmer think when he came to hear that his brother Tony’s estate was not able to buy up Queen Anne’s Farm?—when, in point of fact, he found that he had all along been the richer man of the two!
Anthony’s comfort was in the unfaltering strength of his constitution. He permitted his estimate of it to hint at the probability of his outlasting his brother William John, to whom he wished no earthly ill, but only that he should not live with a mitigated veneration for him. He was really nourished by the farmer’s gluttonous delight in his supposed piles of wealth. Sometimes, for weeks, he had the gift of thinking himself one of the Bank with which he had been so long connected; and afterward a wretched reaction set in.
It was then that his touch upon Bank money began to intoxicate him strangely. He had at times thousands hugged against his bosom, and his heart swelled to the money-bags immense. He was a dispirited, but a grateful creature, after he had delivered them up. The delirium came by fits, as if a devil lurked to surprise him.
“With this money,” said the demon, “you might speculate, and in two days make ten times the amount.”
To which Anthony answered: “My character’s worth fifty times the amount.”
Such was his reply, but he did not think it. He was honest, and his honesty had become a habit; but the money was the only thing which acted on his imagination; his character had attained to no sacred halo, and was just worth his annual income and the respect of the law for his person. The money fired his brain!
“Ah! if it was mine!” he sighed. “If I could call it mine for just forty or fifty hours! But it ain’t, and I can’t.”
He fought dogged battles with the tempter, and beat him off again and again. One day he made a truce with him by saying that if ever the farmer should be in town of an afternoon he would steal ten minutes or so, and make an appointment with him somewhere and show him the money-bags without a word: let him weigh and eye them: and then the plan was for Anthony to talk of politics, while the farmer’s mind was in a ferment.
With this arrangement the infernal Power appeared to be content, and Anthony was temporarily relieved of his trouble. In other words, the intermittent fever of a sort of harmless rascality was afflicting this old creature. He never entertained the notion of running clear away with the money entrusted to him.
Whither could an aged man fly? He thought of foreign places as of spots that gave him a shivering sense of its being necessary for him to be born again in nakedness and helplessness, if ever he was to see them and set foot on them.
London was his home, and clothed him about warmly and honourably, and so he said to the demon in their next colloquy.
Anthony had become guilty of the imprudence of admitting him to conferences and arguing with him upon equal terms. They tell us, that this is the imprudence of women under temptation; and perhaps Anthony was pushed to the verge of the abyss from causes somewhat similar to those which imperil them, and employed the same kind of efforts in his resistance.
In consequence of this compromise, the demon by degrees took seat at his breakfast-table, when Mrs. Wicklow, his landlady, could hear Anthony talking in the tone of voice of one who was pushed to his sturdiest arguments. She conceived that the old man’s head was softening.
He was making one of his hurried rushes with the porterage of money on an afternoon in Spring, when a young female plucked at his coat, and his wrath at offenders against the law kindled in a minute into fury.
“Hands off, minx!” he cried. “You shall be given in charge. Where’s a policeman?”
“Uncle!” she said.
“You precious swindler in petticoats!” Anthony fumed.
But he had a queer recollection of her face, and when she repeated piteously: “Uncle!” he peered at her features, saying,—
“No!” in wonderment, several times.
Her hair was cut like a boy’s. She was in common garments, with a close-shaped skull-cap and a black straw bonnet on her head; not gloved, of ill complexion, and with deep dark lines slanting down from the corners of her eyes. Yet the inspection convinced him that he beheld Dahlia, his remembering the niece. He was amazed; but speedily priceless trust in his arms, and the wickedness of the streets, he bade her follow him. She did so with some difficulty, for he ran, and dodged, and treated the world as his enemy, suddenly vanished, and appeared again breathing freely.
“Why, my girl?” he said: “Why, Dahl—Mrs. What’s-your-name? Why, who’d have known you? Is that”—he got his eyes close to her hair; “is that the ladies’ fashion now? ‘Cause, if it is, our young street scamps has only got to buy bonnets, and—I say, you don’t look the Pomp. Not as you used to, Miss Ma’am, I mean—no, that you don’t. Well, what’s the news? How’s your husband?”
“Uncle,” said Dahlia; “will you, please, let me speak to you somewhere?”
“Ain’t we standing together?”
“Oh! pray, out of the crowd!”
“Come home with me, if my lodgings ain’t too poor for you,” said Anthony.
“Uncle, I can’t. I have been unwell. I cannot walk far. Will you take me to some quiet place?”
“Will you treat me to a cab?” Anthony sneered vehemently.
“I have left off riding, uncle.”
“What! Hulloa!” Anthony sang out. “Cash is down in the mouth at home, is it? Tell me that, now?”
Dahlia dropped her eyelids, and then entreated him once more to conduct her to a quiet place where they might sit together, away from noise. She was very earnest and very sad, not seeming to have much strength.
“Do you mind taking my arm?” said Anthony.
She leaned her hand on his arm, and he dived across the road with her, among omnibuses and cabs, shouting to them through the roar,—
“We’re the Independence on two legs, warranted sound, and no competition;” and saying to Dahlia: “Lor’ bless you! there’s no retort in ‘em, or I’d say something worth hearing. It’s like poking lions in cages with raw meat, afore you get a chaffing-match out o’ them. Some of ‘em know me. They’d be good at it, those fellows. I’ve heard of good things said by ‘em. But there they sit, and they’ve got no circulation—ain’t ready, except at old women, or when they catch you in a mess, and getting the worst of it. Let me tell you; you’ll never get manly chaff out of big bundles o’ fellows with ne’er an atom o’ circulation. The river’s the place for that. I’ve heard uncommon good things on the river—not of ‘em, but heard ‘em. T’ other’s most part invention. And, they tell me, horseback’s a prime thing for chaff. Circulation, again. Sharp and lively, I mean; not bawl, and answer over your back—most part impudence, and nothing else—and then out of hearing. That sort o’ chaff’s cowardly. Boys are stiff young parties—circulation—and I don’t tackle them pretty often, ‘xcept when I’m going like a ball among nine-pins. It’s all a matter o’ circulation. I say, my dear,” Anthony addressed her seriously, “you should never lay hold o’ my arm when you see me going my pace of an afternoon. I took you for a thief, and worse—I did. That I did. Had you been waiting to see me?”
“A little,” Dahlia replied, breathless.
“You have been ill?”
“A little,” she said.
“You’ve written to the farm? O’ course you have!”
“Oh! uncle, wait,” moaned Dahlia.
“But, ha’ you been sick, and not written home?”
“Wait; please, wait,” she entreated him.
“I’ll wait,” said Anthony; “but that’s no improvement to queerness; and ‘queer’’s your motto. Now we cross London Bridge. There’s the Tower that lived in times when no man was safe of keeping his own money, ‘cause of grasping kings—all claws and crown. I’m Republican as far as ‘none o’ them’—goes. There’s the ships. The sun rises behind ‘em, and sets afore ‘em, and you may fancy, if you like, there’s always gold in their rigging. Gals o’ your sort think I say, come! tell me, if you are a lady?”
“No, uncle, no!” Dahlia cried, and then drawing in her breath, added: “not to you.”
“Last time I crossed this bridge with a young woman hanging on my arm, it was your sister; they say she called on you, and you wouldn’t see her; and a gal so good and a gal so true ain’t to be got for a sister every day in the year! What are you pulling me for?”
Dahlia said nothing, but clung to him with a drooping head, and so they hurried along, until Anthony stopped in front of a shop displaying cups and muffins at the window, and leprous-looking strips of bacon, and sausages that had angled for appetites till they had become pallid sodden things, like washed-out bait.
Into this shop he led her, and they took possession of a compartment, and ordered tea and muffins.
The shop was empty.
“It’s one of the expenses of relationship,” Anthony sighed, after probing Dahlia unsatisfactorily to see whether she intended to pay for both, or at least for herself; and finding that she had no pride at all. “My sister marries your father, and, in consequence—well! a muffin now and then ain’t so very much. We’ll forget it, though it is a breach, mind, in counting up afterwards, and two-pences every day’s equal to a good big cannonball in the castle-wall at the end of the year. Have you written home?”
Dahlia’s face showed the bright anguish of unshed tears.
“Uncle-oh! speak low. I have been near death. I have been ill for so long a time. I have come to you to hear about them—my father and Rhoda. Tell me what they are doing, and do they sleep and eat well, and are not in trouble? I could not write. I was helpless. I could not hold a pen. Be kind, dear uncle, and do not reproach me. Please, tell me that they have not been sorrowful.”
A keenness shot from Anthony’s eyes. “Then, where’s your husband?” he asked.
She made a sad attempt at smiling. “He is abroad.”
“How about his relations? Ain’t there one among ‘em to write for you when you’re ill?”
“He… Yes, he has relatives. I could not ask them. Oh! I am not strong, uncle; if you will only leave following me so with questions; but tell me, tell me what I want to know.”
“Well, then, you tell me where your husband banks,” returned Anthony.
“Indeed, I cannot say.”
“Do you,” Anthony stretched out alternative fingers, “do you get money from him to make payments in gold, or, do you get it in paper?”
She stared as in terror of a pit-fall. “Paper,” she said at a venture.
“Well, then, name your Bank.”
There was no cunning in her eye as she answered: “I don’t know any bank, except the Bank of England.”
“Why the deuce didn’t you say so at once—eh?” cried Anthony. “He gives you bank-notes. Nothing better in the world. And he a’n’t been givin’ you many lately—is that it? What’s his profession, or business?”
“He is…he is no profession.”
“Then, what is he? Is he a gentleman?”
“Yes,” she breathed plaintively.
“Your husband’s a gentleman. Eh?—and lost his money?”
“Yes.”
“How did he lose it?”
The poor victim of this pertinacious interrogatory now beat about within herself for succour. “I must not say,” she replied.
“You’re going to try to keep a secret, are ye?” said Anthony; and she, in her relief at the pause to her torment, said: “I am,” with a little infantile, withering half-smile.
“Well, you’ve been and kept yourself pretty secret,” the old man pursued. “I suppose your husband’s proud? He’s proud, ain’t he? He’s of a family, I’ll be bound. Is he of a family? How did he like your dressing up like a mill’ner gal to come down in the City and see me?”
Dahlia’s guile was not ready. “He didn’t mind,” she said.
“He didn’t mind, didn’t he? He don’t mind your cutting of your hair so?—didn’t mind that?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Anthony was down upon her like a hawk.
“Why, he’s abroad!”
“Yes; I mean, he did not see me.”
With which, in a minute, she was out of his grasp; but her heart beat thick, her lips were dry, and her thoughts were in disorder.
“Then, he don’t know you’ve been and got shaved, and a poll like a turnip-head of a thief? That’s something for him to learn, is it?”
The picture of her beauty gone, seared her eyes like heated brass. She caught Anthony’s arm with one firm hand to hold him silent, and with the other hand covered her sight and let the fit of weeping pass.
When the tears had spent themselves, she relinquished her hold of the astonished old man, who leaned over the table to her, and dominated by the spirit of her touch, whispered, like one who had accepted a bond of secresy: “Th’ old farmer’s well. So’s Rhoda—my darkie lass. They’ve taken on a bit. And then they took to religion for comfort. Th’ old farmer attends Methody meetin’s, and quotes Scriptur’ as if he was fixed like a pump to the Book, and couldn’t fetch a breath without quotin’. Rhoda’s oftenest along with your rector’s wife down there, and does works o’ charity, sicknussin’, readin’—old farmer does the preachin’. Old mother Sumfit’s fat as ever, and says her money’s for you. Old Gammon goes on eatin’ of the dumplins. Hey! what a queer old ancient he is. He seems to me to belong to a time afore ever money was. That Mr. Robert’s off…never been down there since he left, ‘cause my darkie lass thought herself too good for him. So she is!—too good for anybody. They’re going to leave the farm; sell, and come to London.”
