George Meredith
Rhoda Fleming. Complete
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.
“Of course, it’s Ned’s money. I’d give it if I had it, but I haven’t; and the fellow won’t take a farthing less; I know him. However, it’s my duty to try.”
He summoned a vehicle. It was a boast of his proud youth that never in his life had he ridden in a close cab. Flinging his shoulders back, he surveyed the world on foot. “Odd faces one sees,” he meditated. “I suppose they’ve got feelings, like the rest; but a fellow can’t help asking—what’s the use of them? If I inherit all right, as I ought to—why shouldn’t I?—I’ll squat down at old Wrexby, garden and farm, and drink my Port. I hate London. The squire’s not so far wrong, I fancy.”
It struck him that his chance of inheriting was not so very obscure, after all. Why had he ever considered it obscure? It was decidedly next to certain, he being an only son. And the squire’s health was bad!
While speculating in this wise he saw advancing, arm-in-arm, Lord Suckling and Harry Latters. They looked at him, and evidently spoke together, but gave neither nod, nor smile, nor a word, in answer to his flying wave of the hand. Furious, and aghast at this signal of exclusion from the world, just at the moment when he was returning to it almost cheerfully in spirit, he stopped the cab, jumped out, and ran after the pair.
“I suppose I must say Mr. Latters,” Algernon commenced.
Harry deliberated a quiet second or two. “Well, according to our laws of primogeniture, I don’t come first, and therefore miss a better title,” he said.
“How are you?” Algernon nodded to Lord Suckling, who replied, “Very well, I thank you.”
Their legs were swinging forward concordantly. Algernon plucked out his purse. “I have to beg you to excuse me,” he said, hurriedly; “my cousin Ned’s in a mess, and I’ve been helping him as well as I can—bothered—not an hour my own. Fifty, I think?” That amount he tendered to Harry Latters, who took it most coolly.
“A thousand?” he queried of Lord Suckling.
“Divided by two,” replied the young nobleman, and the Blucher of bank-notes was proffered to him. He smiled queerly, hesitating to take it.
“I was looking for you at all the Clubs last night,” said Algernon.
Lord Suckling and Latters had been at theirs, playing whist till past midnight; yet is money, even when paid over in this egregious public manner by a nervous hand, such testimony to the sincerity of a man, that they shouted a simultaneous invitation for him to breakfast with them, in an hour, at the Club, or dine with them there that evening. Algernon affected the nod of haste and acquiescence, and ran, lest they should hear him groan. He told the cabman to drive Northward, instead of to the South-west. The question of the thousand pounds had been decided for him—“by fate,” he chose to affirm. The consideration that one is pursued by fate, will not fail to impart a sense of dignity even to the meanest. “After all, if I stop in England,” said he, “I can’t afford to lose my position in society; anything’s better than that an unmitigated low scoundrel like Sedgett should bag the game.” Besides, is it not somewhat sceptical to suppose that when Fate decides, she has not weighed the scales, and decided for the best? Meantime, the whole energy of his intellect was set reflecting on the sort of lie which Edward would, by nature and the occasion, be disposed to swallow. He quitted the cab, and walked in the Park, and au diable to him there! the fool has done his work.
It was now half-past ten. Robert, with a most heavy heart, had accomplished Rhoda’s commands upon him. He had taken Dahlia to his lodgings, whither, when free from Edward, Rhoda proceeded in a mood of extreme sternness. She neither thanked Robert, nor smiled upon her sister. Dahlia sent one quivering look up at her, and cowered lower in her chair near the window.
“Father comes at twelve?” Rhoda said.
Robert replied: “He does.”
After which a silence too irritating for masculine nerves filled the room.
“You will find, I hope, everything here that you may want,” said Robert. “My landlady will attend to the bell. She is very civil.”
“Thank you; we shall not want anything,” said Rhoda. “There is my sister’s Bible at her lodgings.”
Robert gladly offered to fetch it, and left them with a sense of relief that was almost joy. He waited a minute in the doorway, to hear whether Dahlia addressed him. He waited on the threshold of the house, that he might be sure Dahlia did not call for his assistance. Her cry of appeal would have fortified him to stand against Rhoda; but no cry was heard. He kept expecting it, pausing for it, hoping it would come to solve his intense perplexity. The prolonged stillness terrified him; for, away from the sisters, he had power to read the anguish of Dahlia’s heart, her frozen incapacity, and the great and remorseless mastery which lay in Rhoda’s inexorable will.
A few doors down the street he met Major blaring, on his way to him. “Here’s five minutes’ work going to be done, which we may all of us regret till the day of our deaths,” Robert said, and related what had passed during the morning hours.
Percy approved Rhoda, saying, “She must rescue her sister at all hazards. The case is too serious for her to listen to feelings, and regrets, and objections. The world against one poor woman is unfair odds, Robert. I come to tell you I leave England in a day or two. Will you join me?”
“How do I know what I shall or can do?” said Robert, mournfully: and they parted.
Rhoda’s unflickering determination to carry out, and to an end, this tragic struggle of duty against inclination; on her own sole responsibility forcing it on; acting like a Fate, in contempt of mere emotions,—seemed barely real to his mind: each moment that he conceived it vividly, he became more certain that she must break down. Was it in her power to drag Dahlia to the steps of the altar? And would not her heart melt when at last Dahlia did get her voice? “This marriage can never take place!” he said, and was convinced of its being impossible. He forgot that while he was wasting energy at Fairly, Rhoda had sat hiving bitter strength in the loneliness of the Farm; with one vile epithet clapping on her ears, and nothing but unavailing wounded love for her absent unhappy sister to make music of her pulses.
He found his way to Dahlia’s room; he put her Bible under his arm, and looked about him sadly. Time stood at a few minutes past eleven. Flinging himself into a chair, he thought of waiting in that place; but a crowd of undefinable sensations immediately beset him. Seeing Edward Blancove in the street below, he threw up the window compassionately, and Edward, casting a glance to right and left, crossed the road. Robert went down to him.
“I am waiting for my cousin.” Edward had his watch in his hand. “I think I am fast. Can you tell me the time exactly?”
“Why, I’m rather slow,” said Robert, comparing time with his own watch. “I make it four minutes past the hour.”
“I am at fourteen,” said Edward. “I fancy I must be fast.”
“About ten minutes past, is the time, I think.”
“So much as that!”
“It may be a minute or so less.”
“I should like,” said Edward, “to ascertain positively.”
“There’s a clock down in the kitchen here, I suppose,” said Robert. “Safer, there’s a clock at the church, just in sight from here.”
“Thank you; I will go and look at that.”
Robert bethought himself suddenly that Edward had better not. “I can tell you the time to a second,” he said. “It’s now twelve minutes past eleven.”
Edward held his watch balancing. “Twelve,” he repeated; and, behind this mask of common-place dialogue, they watched one another—warily, and still with pity, on Robert’s side.
“You can’t place any reliance on watches,” said Edward.
“None, I believe,” Robert remarked.
“If you could see the sun every day in this climate!” Edward looked up.
“Ah, the sun’s the best timepiece, when visible,” Robert acquiesced. “Backwoodsmen in America don’t need watches.”
“Unless it is to astonish the Indians with them.”
“Ah! yes!” hummed Robert.
“Twelve—fifteen—it must be a quarter past. Or, a three quarters to the next hour, as the Germans say.”
“Odd!” Robert ejaculated. “Foreigners have the queerest ways in the world. They mean no harm, but they make you laugh.”
“They think the same of us, and perhaps do the laughing more loudly.”
“Ah! let them,” said Robert, not without contemptuous indignation, though his mind was far from the talk.
The sweat was on Edward’s forehead. “In a few minutes it will be half-past—half-past eleven! I expect a friend; that makes me impatient. Mr. Eccles”—Edward showed his singular, smallish, hard-cut and flashing features, clear as if he had blown off a mist—“you are too much of a man to bear malice. Where is Dahlia? Tell me at once. Some one seems to be cruelly driving her. Has she lost her senses? She has:—or else she is coerced in an inexplicable and shameful manner.”
“Mr. Blancove,” said Robert, “I bear you not a bit of malice—couldn’t if I would. I’m not sure I could have said guilty to the same sort of things, in order to tell an enemy of mine I was sorry for what I had done, and I respect you for your courage. Dahlia was taken from here by me.”
Edward nodded, as if briefly assenting, while his features sharpened.
“Why?” he asked.
“It was her sister’s wish.”
“Has she no will of her own?”
“Very little, I’m afraid, just now, sir.”
“A remarkable sister! Are they of Puritan origin?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“And this father?”
“Mr. Blancove, he is one of those sort—he can’t lift up his head if he so much as suspects a reproach to his children.”
Edward brooded. “I desire—as I told you, as I told her sister, as I told my father last night—I desire to make her my wife. What can I do more? Are they mad with some absurd country pride? Half-past eleven!—it will be murder if they force her to it! Where is she? To such a man as that! Poor soul! I can hardly fear it, for I can’t imagine it. Here—the time is going. You know the man yourself.”
“I know the man?” said Robert. “I’ve never set eyes on him—I’ve never set eyes on him, and never liked to ask much about him. I had a sort of feeling. Her sister says he is a good, and kind, honourable young fellow, and he must be.”
“Before it’s too late,” Edward muttered hurriedly—“you know him—his name is Sedgett.”
Robert hung swaying over him with a big voiceless chest.
“That Sedgett?” he breathed huskily, and his look was hard to meet.
Edward frowned, unable to raise his head.
“Lord in heaven! some one has something to answer for!” cried Robert. “Come on; come to the church. That foul dog?—Or you, stay where you are. I’ll go. He to be Dahlia’s husband! They’ve seen him, and can’t see what he is!—cunning with women as that? How did they meet? Do you know?—can’t you guess?”
He flung a lightning at Edward and ran off. Bursting into the aisle, he saw the minister closing the Book at the altar, and three persons moving toward the vestry, of whom the last, and the one he discerned, was Rhoda.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Late into the afternoon, Farmer Fleming was occupying a chair in Robert’s lodgings, where he had sat since the hour of twelve, without a movement of his limbs or of his mind, and alone. He showed no sign that he expected the approach of any one. As mute and unremonstrant as a fallen tree, nearly as insensible, his eyes half closed, and his hands lying open, the great figure of the old man kept this attitude as of stiff decay through long sunny hours, and the noise of the London suburb. Although the wedding people were strangely late, it was unnoticed by him. When the door opened and Rhoda stepped into the room, he was unaware that he had been waiting, and only knew that the hours had somehow accumulated to a heavy burden upon him.
“She is coming, father; Robert is bringing her up,” Rhoda said.
“Let her come,” he answered.
Robert’s hold was tight under Dahlia’s arm as they passed the doorway, and then the farmer stood. Robert closed the door.
For some few painful moments the farmer could not speak, and his hand was raised rejectingly. The return of human animation to his heart made him look more sternly than he felt; but he had to rid himself of one terrible question before he satisfied his gradual desire to take his daughter to his breast. It came at last like a short roll of drums, the words were heard,—
“Is she an honest woman?”
“She is,” said Rhoda.
The farmer was looking on Robert.
Robert said it likewise in a murmur, but with steadfast look.
Bending his eyes now upon Dahlia, a mist of affection grew in them. He threw up his head, and with a choking, infantine cry, uttered, “Come.”
Robert placed her against her father’s bosom.
He moved to the window beside Rhoda, and whispered, and she answered, and they knew not what they said. The joint moans of father and daughter—the unutterable communion of such a meeting—filled their ears. Grief held aloof as much as joy. Neither joy nor grief were in those two hearts of parent and child; but the senseless contentment of hard, of infinite hard human craving.
The old man released her, and Rhoda undid her hands from him, and led the pale Sacrifice to another room.
“Where’s…?” Mr. Fleming asked.
Robert understood him.
“Her husband will not come.”
It was interpreted by the farmer as her husband’s pride. Or, may be, the man who was her husband now had righted her at last, and then flung her off in spite for what he had been made to do.
“I’m not being deceived, Robert?”
“No, sir; upon my soul!”
“I’ve got that here,” the farmer struck his ribs.
Rhoda came back. “Sister is tired,” she said. “Dahlia is going down home with you, for…I hope, for a long stay.”
“All the better, while home we’ve got. We mayn’t lose time, my girl. Gammon’s on ‘s way to the station now. He’ll wait. He’ll wait till midnight. You may always reckon on a slow man like Gammon for waitin’. Robert comes too?”
“Father, we have business to do. Robert gives me his rooms here for a little time; his landlady is a kind woman, and will take care of me. You will trust me to Robert.”
“I’ll bring Rhoda down on Monday evening,” Robert said to the farmer. “You may trust me, Mr. Fleming.”
“That I know. That I’m sure of. That’s a certainty,” said the farmer. “I’d do it for good, if for good was in the girl’s heart, Robert. There seems,” he hesitated; “eh, Robert, there seems a something upon us all. There’s a something to be done, is there? But if I’ve got my flesh and blood, and none can spit on her, why should I be asking ‘whats’ and ‘whys’? I bow my head; and God forgive me, if ever I complained. And you will bring Rhoda to us on Monday?”
“Yes; and try and help to make the farm look up again, if Gammon’ll do the ordering about.”
“Poor old Mas’ Gammon! He’s a rare old man. Is he changed by adversity, Robert? Though he’s awful secret, that old man! Do you consider a bit Gammon’s faithfulness, Robert!”
“Ay, he’s above most men in that,” Robert agreed.
“On with Dahlia’s bonnet—sharp!” the farmer gave command. He felt, now that he was growing accustomed to the common observation of things, that the faces and voices around him were different from such as the day brings in its usual course. “We’re all as slow as Mas’ Gammon, I reckon.”
“Father,” said Rhoda, “she is weak. She has been very unwell. Do not trouble her with any questions. Do not let any questions be asked of her at hone. Any talking fatigues; it may be dangerous to her.”
The farmer stared. “Ay, and about her hair....I’m beginning to remember. She wears a cap, and her hair’s cut off like an oakum-picker’s. That’s more gossip for neighbours!”
“Mad people! will they listen to truth?” Rhoda flamed out in her dark fashion. “We speak truth, nothing but truth. She has had a brain fever. That makes her very weak, and every one must be silent at home. Father, stop the sale of the farm, for Robert will work it into order. He has promised to be our friend, and Dahlia will get her health there, and be near mother’s grave.”
The farmer replied, as from a far thought, “There’s money in my pocket to take down two.”
He continued: “But there’s not money there to feed our family a week on; I leave it to the Lord. I sow; I dig, and I sow, and when bread fails to us the land must go; and let it go, and no crying about it. I’m astonishing easy at heart, though if I must sell, and do sell, I shan’t help thinking of my father, and his father, and the father before him—mayhap, and in most likelihood, artfuller men ‘n me—for what they was born to they made to flourish. They’ll cry in their graves. A man’s heart sticks to land, Robert; that you’ll find, some day. I thought I cared none but about land till that poor, weak, white thing put her arms on my neck.”
Rhoda had slipped away from them again.
The farmer stooped to Robert’s ear. “Had a bit of a disagreement with her husband, is it?”
Robert cleared his throat. “Ay, that’s it,” he said.
“Serious, at all?”
“One can’t tell, you know.”
“And not her fault—not my girl’s fault, Robert?”
“No; I can swear to that.”
“She’s come to the right home, then. She’ll be near her mother and me. Let her pray at night, and she’ll know she’s always near her blessed mother. Perhaps the women ‘ll want to take refreshment, if we may so far make free with your hospitality; but it must be quick, Robert—or will they? They can’t eat, and I can’t eat.”
Soon afterward Mr. Fleming took his daughter Dahlia from the house and out of London. The deeply-afflicted creature was, as the doctors had said of her, too strong for the ordinary modes of killing. She could walk and still support herself, though the ordeal she had gone through this day was such as few women could have traversed. The terror to follow the deed she had done was yet unseen by her; and for the hour she tasted, if not peace, the pause to suffering which is given by an act accomplished.
Robert and Rhoda sat in different rooms till it was dusk. When she appeared before him in the half light, the ravage of a past storm was visible on her face. She sat down to make tea, and talked with singular self command.
“Mr. Fleming mentioned the gossips down at Wrexby,” said Robert: “are they very bad down there?”
“Not worse than in other villages,” said Rhoda. “They have not been unkind. They have spoken about us, but not unkindly—I mean, not spitefully.”
“And you forgive them?”
“I do: they cannot hurt us now.”
Robert was but striving to master some comprehension of her character.
“What are we to resolve, Rhoda?”
“I must get the money promised to this man.”
“When he has flung off his wife at the church door?”
“He married my sister for the money. He said it. Oh! he said it. He shall not say that we have deceived him. I told him he should have it. He married her for money!”
“You should not have told him so, Rhoda.”
“I did, and I will not let my word be broken.”
“Pardon me if I ask you where you will get the money? It’s a large sum.”
“I will get it,” Rhoda said firmly.
“By the sale of the farm?”
“No, not to hurt father.”
“But this man’s a scoundrel. I know him. I’ve known him for years. My fear is that he will be coming to claim his wife. How was it I never insisted on seeing the man before—! I did think of asking, but fancied—a lot of things; that you didn’t wish it and he was shy. Ah, Lord! what miseries happen from our not looking straight at facts! We can’t deny she’s his wife now.”
“Not if we give him the money.”
Rhoda spoke of “the money” as if she had taken heated metal into her mouth.
“All the more likely,” said Robert. “Let him rest. Had you your eyes on him when he saw me in the vestry? For years that man has considered me his deadly enemy, because I punished him once. What a scene! I’d have given a limb, I’d have given my life, to have saved you from that scene, Rhoda.”
She replied: “If my sister could have been spared! I ought to know what wickedness there is in the world. It’s ignorance that leads to the unhappiness of girls.”
“Do you know that I’m a drunkard?”
“No.”
“He called me something like it; and he said something like the truth. There’s the sting. Set me adrift, and I drink hard. He spoke a fact, and I couldn’t answer him.”
“Yes, it’s the truth that gives such pain,” said Rhoda, shivering. “How can girls know what men are? I could not guess that you had any fault. This man was so respectful; he sat modestly in the room when I saw him last night—last night, was it? I thought, ‘he has been brought up with sisters and a mother.’ And he has been kind to my dear—and all we thought love for her, was—shameful! shameful!”
She pressed her eyelids, continuing: “He shall have the money—he shall have it. We will not be in debt to such a man. He has saved my sister from one as bad—who offered it to be rid of her. Oh, men!—you heard that?—and now pretends to love her. I think I dream. How could she ever have looked happily on that hateful face?”
“He would be thought handsome,” said Robert, marvelling how it was that Rhoda could have looked on Sedgett for an instant without reading his villanous nature. “I don’t wish you to regret anything you have done or you may do, Rhoda. But this is what made me cry out when I looked on that man, and knew it was he who had come to be Dahlia’s husband. He’ll be torture to her. The man’s temper, his habits—but you may well say you are ignorant of us men. Keep so. What I do with all my soul entreat of you is—to get a hiding-place for your sister. Never let him take her off. There’s such a thing as hell upon earth. If she goes away with him she’ll know it. His black temper won’t last. He will come for her, and claim her.”
“He shall have money.” Rhoda said no more.
On a side-table in the room stood a remarkable pile, under cover of a shawl. Robert lifted the shawl, and beheld the wooden boxes, one upon the other, containing Master Gammon’s and Mrs. Sumfit’s rival savings, which they had presented to Dahlia, in the belief that her husband was under a cloud of monetary misfortune that had kept her proud heart from her old friends. The farmer had brought the boxes and left them there, forgetting them.
“I fancy,” said Robert, “we might open these.”
“It may be a little help,” said Rhoda.
“A very little,” Robert thought; but, to relieve the oppression of the subject they had been discussing, he forthwith set about procuring tools, with which he split first the box which proved to be Mrs. Sumfit’s, for it contained, amid six gold sovereigns and much silver and pence, a slip of paper, whereon was inscribed, in a handwriting identified by Rhoda as peculiar to the loving woman,—
“And sweetest love to her ever dear.”
Altogether the sum amounted to nine pounds, three shillings, and a farthing.
“Now for Master Gammon—he’s heavy,” said Robert; and he made the savings of that unpretentious veteran bare. Master Gammon had likewise written his word. It was discovered on the blank space of a bit of newspaper, and looked much as if a fat lobworm had plunged himself into a bowl of ink, and in his literary delirium had twisted uneasily to the verge of the paper. With difficulty they deciphered,—
“Complemens.”
Robert sang, “Bravo, Gammon!” and counted the hoard. All was in copper coinage, Lycurgan and severe, and reached the sum of one pound, seventeen shillings. There were a number of farthings of Queen Anne’s reign, and Robert supposed them to be of value. “So that, as yet, we can’t say who’s the winner,” he observed.
Rhoda was in tears.
“Be kind to him, please, when you see him,” she whispered. The smaller gift had touched her heart more tenderly.
“Kind to the old man!” Robert laughed gently, and tied the two hoards in separate papers, which he stowed into one box, and fixed under string. “This amount, put all in one, doesn’t go far, Rhoda.”
“No,” said she: “I hope we may not need it.” She broke out: “Dear, good, humble friends! The poor are God’s own people. Christ has said so. This is good, this is blessed money!” Rhoda’s cheeks flushed to their orange-rounded swarthy red, and her dark eyes had the fervour of an exalted earnestness. “They are my friends for ever. They save me from impiety. They help me, as if God had answered my prayer. Poor pennies! and the old man not knowing where his days may end! He gives all—he must have true faith in Providence. May it come back to him multiplied a thousand fold! While I have strength to work, the bread I earn shall be shared with him. Old man, old man, I love you—how I love you! You drag me out of deep ditches. Oh, good and dear old man, if God takes me first, may I have some power to intercede for you, if you have ever sinned! Everybody in the world is not wicked. There are some who go the ways directed by the Bible. I owe you more than I can ever pay.”
She sobbed, but told Robert it was not for sorrow. He, longing to catch her in his arms, and punctilious not to overstep the duties of his post of guardian, could merely sit by listening, and reflecting on her as a strange Biblical girl, with Hebrew hardness of resolution, and Hebrew exaltation of soul; beautiful, too, as the dark women of the East. He admitted to himself that he never could have taken it on his conscience to subdue a human creature’s struggling will, as Rhoda had not hesitated to do with Dahlia, and to command her actions, and accept all imminent responsibilities; not quailing with any outcry, or abandonment of strength, when the shock of that revelation in the vestry came violently on her. Rhoda, seeing there that it was a brute, and not a man, into whose hand she had perilously forced her sister’s, stood steadying her nerves to act promptly with advantage; less like a woman, Robert thought, than a creature born for battle. And she appeared to be still undaunted, full of her scheme, and could cry without fear of floods. Something of the chivalrous restraint he put upon the motions of his heart, sprang from the shadowy awe which overhung that impressible organ. This feeling likewise led him to place a blind reliance on her sagacity and sense of what was just, and what should be performed.
