George Meredith
Rhoda Fleming. Complete
“Now, then,” said Algernon, squaring up to his cousin in good style, “now’s the time for that unwholesome old boy underneath to commence groaning.”
“Step as light as you can,” replied Edward, meeting him with the pretty motion of the gloves.
“I’ll step as light as a French dancing-master. Let’s go to Paris and learn the savate, Ned. It must be a new sensation to stand on one leg and knock a fellow’s hat off with the other.”
“Stick to your fists.”
“Hang it! I wish your fists wouldn’t stick to me so.”
“You talk too much.”
“Gad, I don’t get puffy half so soon as you.”
“I want country air.”
“You said you were going out, old Ned.”
“I changed my mind.”
Saying which, Edward shut his teeth, and talked for two or three hot minutes wholly with his fists. The room shook under Algernon’s boundings to right and left till a blow sent him back on the breakfast-table, shattered a cup on the floor, and bespattered his close flannel shirt with a funereal coffee-tinge.
“What the deuce I said to bring that on myself, I don’t know,” Algernon remarked as he rose. “Anything connected with the country disagreeable to you, Ned? Come! a bout of quiet scientific boxing, and none of these beastly rushes, as if you were singling me out of a crowd of magsmen. Did you go to church yesterday, Ned? Confound it, you’re on me again, are you?”
And Algernon went on spouting unintelligible talk under a torrent of blows. He lost his temper and fought out at them; but as it speedily became evident to him that the loss laid him open to punishment, he prudently recovered it, sparred, danced about, and contrived to shake the room in a manner that caused Edward to drop his arms, in consideration for the distracted occupant of the chambers below. Algernon accepted the truce, and made it peace by casting off one glove.
“There! that’s a pleasant morning breather,” he said, and sauntered to the window to look at the river. “I always feel the want of it when I don’t get it. I could take a thrashing rather than not on with the gloves to begin the day. Look at those boats! Fancy my having to go down to the city. It makes me feel like my blood circulating the wrong way. My father’ll suffer some day, for keeping me at this low ebb of cash, by jingo!”
He uttered this with a prophetic fierceness.
“I cannot even scrape together enough for entrance money to a Club. It’s sickening! I wonder whether I shall ever get used to banking work? There’s an old clerk in our office who says he should feel ill if he missed a day. And the old porter beats him—bangs him to fits. I believe he’d die off if he didn’t see the house open to the minute. They say that old boy’s got a pretty niece; but he don’t bring her to the office now. Reward of merit!—Mr. Anthony Hackbut is going to receive ten pounds a year extra. That’s for his honesty. I wonder whether I could earn a reputation for the sake of a prospect of ten extra pounds to my salary. I’ve got a salary! hurrah! But if they keep me to my hundred and fifty per annum, don’t let them trust me every day with the bags, as they do that old fellow. Some of the men say he’s good to lend fifty pounds at a pinch.—Are the chops coming, Ned?”
“The chops are coming,” said Edward, who had thrown on a boating-coat and plunged into a book, and spoke echoing.
“Here’s little Peggy Lovell.” Algernon faced this portrait. “It don’t do her justice. She’s got more life, more change in her, more fire. She’s starting for town, I hear.”
“She is starting for town,” said Edward.
“How do you know that?” Algernon swung about to ask.
Edward looked round to him. “By the fact of your not having fished for a holiday this week. How did you leave her yesterday, Algy? Quite well, I hope.”
The ingenuous face of the young gentleman crimsoned.
“Oh, she was well,” he said. “Ha! I see there can be some attraction in your dark women.”
“You mean that Judith? Yes, she’s a good diversion.” Edward gave a two-edged response. “What train did you come up by last night?”
“The last from Wrexby. That reminds me: I saw a young Judith just as I got out. She wanted a cab. I called it for her. She belongs to old Hackbut of the Bank—the old porter, you know. If it wasn’t that there’s always something about dark women which makes me think they’re going to have a moustache, I should take to that girl’s face.”
Edward launched forth an invective against fair women.
“What have they done to you-what have they done?” said Algernon.
“My good fellow, they’re nothing but colour. They’ve no conscience. If they swear a thing to you one moment, they break it the next. They can’t help doing it. You don’t ask a gilt weathercock to keep faith with anything but the wind, do you? It’s an ass that trusts a fair woman at all, or has anything to do with the confounded set. Cleopatra was fair; so was Delilah; so is the Devil’s wife. Reach me that book of Reports.”
“By jingo!” cried Algernon, “my stomach reports that if provision doesn’t soon approach–why don’t you keep a French cook here, Ned? Let’s give up the women, and take to a French cook.”
Edward yawned horribly. “All in good time. It’s what we come to. It’s philosophy—your French cook! I wish I had it, or him. I’m afraid a fellow can’t anticipate his years—not so lucky!”
“By Jove! we shall have to be philosophers before we breakfast!” Algernon exclaimed. “It’s nine. I’ve to be tied to the stake at ten, chained and muzzled—a leetle-a dawg! I wish I hadn’t had to leave the service. It was a vile conspiracy against me there, Ned. Hang all tradesmen! I sit on a stool, and add up figures. I work harder than a nigger in the office. That’s my life: but I must feed. It’s no use going to the office in a rage.”
“Will you try on the gloves again?” was Edward’s mild suggestion.
Algernon thanked him, and replied that he knew him. Edward hit hard when he was empty.
They now affected patience, as far as silence went to make up an element of that sublime quality. The chops arriving, they disdained the mask. Algernon fired his glove just over the waiter’s head, and Edward put the ease to the man’s conscience; after which they sat and ate, talking little. The difference between them was, that Edward knew the state of Algernon’s mind and what was working within it, while the latter stared at a blank wall as regarded Edward’s.
“Going out after breakfast, Ned?” said Algernon. “We’ll walk to the city together, if you like.”
Edward fixed one of his intent looks upon his cousin. “You’re not going to the city to-day?”
“The deuce, I’m not!”
“You’re going to dance attendance on Mrs. Lovell, whom it’s your pleasure to call Peggy, when you’re some leagues out of her hearing.”
Algernon failed to command his countenance. He glanced at one of the portraits, and said, “Who is that girl up there? Tell us her name. Talking of Mrs. Lovell, has she ever seen it?”
“If you’ll put on your coat, my dear Algy, I will talk to you about Mrs. Lovell.” Edward kept his penetrative eyes on Algernon. “Listen to me: you’ll get into a mess there.”
“If I must listen, Ned, I’ll listen in my shirt-sleeves, with all respect to the lady.”
“Very well. The shirt-sleeves help the air of bravado. Now, you know that I’ve what they call ‘knelt at her feet.’ She’s handsome. Don’t cry out. She’s dashing, and as near being a devil as any woman I ever met. Do you know why we broke? I’ll tell you. Plainly, because I refused to believe that one of her men had insulted her. You understand what that means. I declined to be a chief party in a scandal.”
“Declined to fight the fellow?” interposed Algernon. “More shame to you!”
“I think you’re a year younger than I am, Algy. You have the privilege of speaking with that year’s simplicity. Mrs. Lovell will play you as she played me. I acknowledge her power, and I keep out of her way. I don’t bet; I don’t care to waltz; I can’t keep horses; so I don’t lose much by the privation to which I subject myself.”
“I bet, I waltz, and I ride. So,” said Algernon, “I should lose tremendously.”
“You will lose, mark my words.”
“Is the lecture of my year’s senior concluded?” said Algernon.
“Yes; I’ve done,” Edward answered.
“Then I’ll put on my coat, Ned, and I’ll smoke in it. That’ll give you assurance I’m not going near Mrs. Lovell, if anything will.”
“That gives me assurance that Mrs. Lovell tolerates in you what she detests,” said Edward, relentless in his insight; “and, consequently, gives me assurance that she finds you of particular service to her at present.”
Algernon had a lighted match in his hand. He flung it into the fire. “I’m hanged if I don’t think you have the confounded vanity to suppose she sets me as a spy upon you!”
A smile ran along Edward’s lips. “I don’t think you’d know it, if she did.”
“Oh, you’re ten years older; you’re twenty,” bawled Algernon, in an extremity of disgust. “Don’t I know what game you’re following up? Isn’t it clear as day you’ve got another woman in your eye?”
“It’s as clear as day, my good Algy, that you see a portrait hanging in my chambers, and you have heard Mrs. Lovell’s opinion of the fact. So much is perfectly clear. There’s my hand. I don’t blame you. She’s a clever woman, and like many of the sort, shrewd at guessing the worst. Come, take my hand. I tell you, I don’t blame you. I’ve been little dog to her myself, and fetched and carried, and wagged my tail. It’s charming while it lasts. Will you shake it?”
“Your tail, man?” Algernon roared in pretended amazement.
Edward eased him back to friendliness by laughing. “No; my hand.”
They shook hands.
“All right,” said Algernon. “You mean well. It’s very well for you to preach virtue to a poor devil; you’ve got loose, or you’re regularly in love.”
“Virtue! by heaven!” Edward cried; “I wish I were entitled to preach it to any man on earth.”
His face flushed. “There, good-bye, old fellow,” he added.
“Go to the city. I’ll dine with you to-night, if you like; come and dine with me at my Club. I shall be disengaged.”
Algernon mumbled a flexible assent to an appointment at Edward’s Club, dressed himself with care, borrowed a sovereign, for which he nodded his acceptance, and left him.
Edward set his brain upon a book of law.
It may have been two hours after he had sat thus in his Cistercian stillness, when a letter was delivered to him by one of the Inn porters. Edward read the superscription, and asked the porter who it was that brought it. Two young ladies, the porter said.
These were the contents:—
“I am not sure that you will ever forgive me. I cannot forgive myself when I think of that one word I was obliged to speak to you in the cold street, and nothing to explain why, and how much I love, you. Oh! how I love you! I cry while I write. I cannot help it. I was a sop of tears all night long, and oh! if you had seen my face in the morning. I am thankful you did not. Mother’s Bible brought me home. It must have been guidance, for in my bed there lay my sister, and I could not leave her, I love her so. I could not have got down stairs again after seeing her there; and I had to say that cold word and shut the window on you. May I call you Edward still? Oh, dear Edward, do make allowance for me. Write kindly to me. Say you forgive me. I feel like a ghost to-day. My life seems quite behind me somewhere, and I hardly feel anything I touch. I declare to you, dearest one, I had no idea my sister was here. I was surprised when I heard her name mentioned by my landlady, and looked on the bed; suddenly my strength was gone, and it changed all that I was thinking. I never knew before that women were so weak, but now I see they are, and I only know I am at my Edward’s mercy, and am stupid! Oh, so wretched and stupid. I shall not touch food till I hear from you. Oh, if, you are angry, write so; but do write. My suspense would make you pity me. I know I deserve your anger. It was not that I do not trust you, Edward. My mother in heaven sees my heart and that I trust, I trust my heart and everything I am and have to you. I would almost wish and wait to see you to-day in the Gardens, but my crying has made me such a streaked thing to look at. If I had rubbed my face with a scrubbing-brush, I could not look worse, and I cannot risk your seeing me. It would excuse you for hating me. Do you? Does he hate her? She loves you. She would die for you, dear Edward. Oh! I feel that if I was told to-day that I should die for you to-morrow, it would be happiness. I am dying—yes, I am dying till I hear from you.
“Believe me,
“Your tender, loving, broken-hearted,
“Dahlia.”
There was a postscript:—
“May I still go to lessons?”
Edward finished the letter with a calmly perusing eye. He had winced triflingly at one or two expressions contained in it; forcible, perhaps, but not such as Mrs. Lovell smiling from the wall yonder would have used.
“The poor child threatens to eat no dinner, if I don’t write to her,” he said; and replied in a kind and magnanimous spirit, concluding—“Go to lessons, by all means.”
Having accomplished this, he stood up, and by hazard fell to comparing the rival portraits; a melancholy and a comic thing to do, as you will find if you put two painted heads side by side, and set their merits contesting, and reflect on the contest, and to what advantages, personal, or of the artist’s, the winner owes the victory. Dahlia had been admirably dealt with by the artist; the charm of pure ingenuousness without rusticity was visible in her face and figure. Hanging there on the wall, she was a match for Mrs. Lovell.
CHAPTER VII
Rhoda returned home the heavier for a secret that she bore with her. All through the first night of her sleeping in London, Dahlia’s sobs, and tender hugs, and self-reproaches, had penetrated her dreams, and when the morning came she had scarcely to learn that Dahlia loved some one. The confession was made; but his name was reserved. Dahlia spoke of him with such sacredness of respect that she seemed lost in him, and like a creature kissing his feet. With tears rolling down her cheeks, and with moans of anguish, she spoke of the deliciousness of loving: of knowing one to whom she abandoned her will and her destiny, until, seeing how beautiful a bloom love threw upon the tearful worn face of her sister, Rhoda was impressed by a mystical veneration for this man, and readily believed him to be above all other men, if not superhuman: for she was of an age and an imagination to conceive a spiritual pre-eminence over the weakness of mortality. She thought that one who could so transform her sister, touch her with awe, and give her gracefulness and humility, must be what Dahlia said he was. She asked shyly for his Christian name; but even so little Dahlia withheld. It was his wish that Dahlia should keep silence concerning him.
“Have you sworn an oath?” said Rhoda, wonderingly.
“No, dear love,” Dahlia replied; “he only mentioned what he desired.”
Rhoda was ashamed of herself for thinking it strange, and she surrendered her judgement to be stamped by the one who knew him well.
As regarded her uncle, Dahlia admitted that she had behaved forgetfully and unkindly, and promised amendment. She talked of the Farm as of an old ruin, with nothing but a thin shade of memory threading its walls, and appeared to marvel vaguely that it stood yet. “Father shall not always want money,” she said. She was particular in prescribing books for Rhoda to read; good authors, she emphasized, and named books of history, and poets, and quoted their verses. “For my darling will some day have a dear husband, and he must not look down on her.” Rhoda shook her head, full sure that she could never be brought to utter such musical words naturally. “Yes, dearest, when you know what love is,” said Dahlia, in an underbreath.
Could Robert inspire her with the power? Rhoda looked upon that poor homely young man half-curiously when she returned, and quite dismissed the notion. Besides she had no feeling for herself. Her passion was fixed upon her sister, whose record of emotions in the letters from London placed her beyond dull days and nights. The letters struck many chords. A less subservient reader would have set them down as variations of the language of infatuation; but Rhoda was responsive to every word and change of mood, from the, “I am unworthy, degraded, wretched,” to “I am blest above the angels.” If one letter said, “We met yesterday,” Rhoda’s heart beat on to the question, “Shall I see him again to-morrow?” And will she see him?—has she seen him?—agitated her and absorbed her thoughts.
So humbly did she follow her sister, without daring to forecast a prospect for her, or dream of an issue, that when on a summer morning a letter was brought in at the breakfast-table, marked “urgent and private,” she opened it, and the first line dazzled her eyes—the surprise was a shock to her brain. She rose from her unfinished meal, and walked out into the wide air, feeling as if she walked on thunder.
The letter ran thus:—
“My Own Innocent!—I am married. We leave England to-day. I must not love you too much, for I have all my love to give to my Edward, my own now, and I am his trustingly for ever. But he will let me give you some of it—and Rhoda is never jealous. She shall have a great deal. Only I am frightened when I think how immense my love is for him, so that anything—everything he thinks right is right to me. I am not afraid to think so. If I were to try, a cloud would come over me—it does, if only I fancy for half a moment I am rash, and a straw. I cannot exist except through him. So I must belong to him, and his will is my law. My prayer at my bedside every night is that I may die for him. We used to think the idea of death so terrible! Do you remember how we used to shudder together at night when we thought of people lying in the grave? And now, when I think that perhaps I may some day die for him, I feel like a crying in my heart with joy.
“I have left a letter—sent it, I mean—enclosed to uncle for father. He will see Edward by-and-by. Oh! may heaven spare him from any grief. Rhoda will comfort him. Tell him how devoted I am. I am like drowned to everybody but one.
“We are looking on the sea. In half an hour I shall have forgotten the tread of English earth. I do not know that I breathe. All I know is a fear that I am flying, and my strength will not continue. That is when I am not touching his hand. There is France opposite. I shut my eyes and see the whole country, but it is like what I feel for Edward—all in dark moonlight. Oh! I trust him so! I bleed for him. I could make all my veins bleed out at a sad thought about him. And from France to Switzerland and Italy. The sea sparkles just as if it said ‘Come to the sun;’ and I am going. Edward calls. Shall I be punished for so much happiness? I am too happy, I am too happy.
“God bless my beloved at home! That is my chief prayer now. I shall think of her when I am in the cathedrals.
“Oh, my Father in heaven! bless them all! bless Rhoda! forgive me!
“I can hear the steam of the steamer at the pier. Here is Edward. He says I may send his love to you.
“Address:—
“Mrs. Edward Ayrton,
“Poste Restante,
“Lausanne,
“Switzerland.
“P.S.—Lausanne is where—but another time, and I will always tell you the history of the places to instruct you, poor heart in dull England. Adieu! Good-bye and God bless my innocent at home, my dear sister. I love her. I never can forget her. The day is so lovely. It seems on purpose for us. Be sure you write on thin paper to Lausanne. It is on a blue lake; you see snow mountains, and now there is a bell ringing—kisses from me! we start. I must sign.
“Dahlia.”
By the reading of this letter, Rhoda was caught vividly to the shore, and saw her sister borne away in the boat to the strange countries; she travelled with her, following her with gliding speed through a multiplicity of shifting scenes, opal landscapes, full of fire and dreams, and in all of them a great bell towered. “Oh, my sweet! my own beauty!” she cried in Dahlia’s language. Meeting Mrs. Sumfit, she called her “Mother Dumpling,” as Dahlia did of old, affectionately, and kissed her, and ran on to Master Gammon, who was tramping leisurely on to the oatfield lying on toward the millholms.
“My sister sends you her love,” she said brightly to the old man. Master Gammon responded with no remarkable flash of his eyes, and merely opened his mouth and shut it, as when a duck divides its bill, but fails to emit the customary quack.
“And to you, little pigs; and to you, Mulberry; and you, Dapple; and you, and you, and you.”
Rhoda nodded round to all the citizens of the farmyard; and so eased her heart of its laughing bubbles. After which, she fell to a meditative walk of demurer joy, and had a regret. It was simply that Dahlia’s hurry in signing the letter, had robbed her of the delight of seeing “Dahlia Ayrton” written proudly out, with its wonderful signification of the change in her life.
That was a trifling matter; yet Rhoda felt the letter was not complete in the absence of the bridal name. She fancied Dahlia to have meant, perhaps, that she was Dahlia to her as of old, and not a stranger. “Dahlia ever; Dahlia nothing else for you,” she heard her sister say. But how delicious and mournful, how terrible and sweet with meaning would “Dahlia Ayrton,” the new name in the dear handwriting, have looked! “And I have a brother-in-law,” she thought, and her cheeks tingled. The banks of fern and foxglove, and the green young oaks fringing the copse, grew rich in colour, as she reflected that this beloved unknown husband of her sister embraced her and her father as well; even the old bent beggarman on the sandy ridge, though he had a starved frame and carried pitiless faggots, stood illumined in a soft warmth. Rhoda could not go back to the house.
It chanced that the farmer that morning had been smitten with the virtue of his wife’s opinion of Robert, and her parting recommendation concerning him.
“Have you a mind to either one of my two girls?” he put the question bluntly, finding himself alone with Robert.
Robert took a quick breath, and replied, “I have.”
“Then make your choice,” said the farmer, and tried to go about his business, but hung near Robert in the fields till he had asked: “Which one is it, my boy?”
Robert turned a blade of wheat in his mouth.
“I think I shall leave her to tell that,” was his answer.
“Why, don’t ye know which one you prefer to choose, man?” quoth Mr. Fleming.
“I mayn’t know whether she prefers to choose me,” said Robert.
The farmer smiled.
“You never can exactly reckon about them; that’s true.”
He was led to think: “Dahlia’s the lass;” seeing that Robert had not had many opportunities of speaking with her.
“When my girls are wives, they’ll do their work in the house,” he pursued. “They may have a little bit o’ property in land, ye know, and they may have a share in—in gold. That’s not to be reckoned on. We’re an old family, Robert, and I suppose we’ve our pride somewhere down. Anyhow, you can’t look on my girls and not own they’re superior girls. I’ve no notion of forcing them to clean, and dish up, and do dairying, if it’s not to their turn. They’re handy with th’ needle. They dress conformably, and do the millinery themselves. And I know they say their prayers of a night. That I know, if that’s a comfort to ye, and it should be, Robert. For pray, and you can’t go far wrong; and it’s particularly good for girls. I’ll say no more.”
At the dinner-table, Rhoda was not present. Mr. Fleming fidgeted, blamed her and excused her, but as Robert appeared indifferent about her absence, he was confirmed in his idea that Dahlia attracted his fancy.
They had finished dinner, and Master Gammon had risen, when a voice immediately recognized as the voice of Anthony Hackbut was heard in the front part of the house. Mr. Fleming went round to him with a dismayed face.
“Lord!” said Mrs. Sumfit, “how I tremble!”
Robert, too, looked grave, and got away from the house. The dread of evil news of Dahlia was common to them all; yet none had mentioned it, Robert conceiving that it would be impertinence on his part to do so; the farmer, that the policy of permitting Dahlia’s continued residence in London concealed the peril; while Mrs. Sumfit flatly defied the threatening of a mischance to one so sweet and fair, and her favourite. It is the insincerity of persons of their class; but one need not lay stress on the wilfulness of uneducated minds. Robert walked across the fields, walking like a man with an object in view. As he dropped into one of the close lanes which led up to Wrexby Hall, he saw Rhoda standing under an oak, her white morning-dress covered with sun-spots. His impulse was to turn back, the problem, how to speak to her, not being settled within him. But the next moment his blood chilled; for he had perceived, though he had not felt simultaneously, that two gentlemen were standing near her, addressing her. And it was likewise manifest that she listened to them. These presently raised their hats and disappeared. Rhoda came on toward Robert.
“You have forgotten your dinner,” he said, with a queer sense of shame at dragging in the mention of that meal.
“I have been too happy to eat,” Rhoda replied.
Robert glanced up the lane, but she gave no heed to this indication, and asked: “Has uncle come?”
“Did you expect him?”
“I thought he would come.”
“What has made you happy?”
“You will hear from uncle.”
“Shall I go and hear what those—”
Robert checked himself, but it would have been better had he spoken out. Rhoda’s face, from a light of interrogation, lowered its look to contempt.
She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature. Doubtless her sharp instinct served her by telling her that her contempt would hurt him shrewdly now. The foolishness of a man having much to say to a woman, and not knowing how or where the beginning of it might be, was perceptible about him. A shout from her father at the open garden-gate, hurried on Rhoda to meet him. Old Anthony was at Mr. Fleming’s elbow.
“You know it? You have her letter, father?” said Rhoda, gaily, beneath the shadow of his forehead.
“And a Queen of the Egyptians is what you might have been,” said Anthony, with a speculating eye upon Rhoda’s dark bright face.
Rhoda put out her hand to him, but kept her gaze on her father.
William Fleeting relaxed the knot of his brows and lifted the letter.
“Listen all! This is from a daughter to her father.”
And he read, oddly accentuating the first syllables of the sentences:—
Dear Father,—
“My husband will bring me to see you when I return to dear England.
I ought to have concealed nothing, I know. Try to forgive me. I
hope you will. I shall always think of you. God bless you!
“I am,
“Ever with respect,
“Your dearly loving Daughter,
“Dahlia.”
“Dahlia Blank!” said the farmer, turning his look from face to face.
A deep fire of emotion was evidently agitating him, for the letter rustled in his hand, and his voice was uneven. Of this, no sign was given by his inexpressive features. The round brown eyes and the ruddy varnish on his cheeks were a mask upon grief, if not also upon joy.
“Dahlia—what? What’s her name?” he resumed. “Here—‘my husband will bring me to see you’—who’s her husband? Has he got a name? And a blank envelope to her uncle here, who’s kept her in comfort for so long! And this is all she writes to me! Will any one spell out the meaning of it?”
“Dahlia was in great haste, father,” said Rhoda.
“Oh, ay, you!—you’re the one, I know,” returned the farmer. “It’s sister and sister, with you.”
“But she was very, very hurried, father. I have a letter from her, and I have only ‘Dahlia’ written at the end—no other name.”
“And you suspect no harm of your sister.”
“Father, how can I imagine any kind of harm?”
“That letter, my girl, sticks to my skull, as though it meant to say, ‘You’ve not understood me yet.’ I’ve read it a matter of twenty times, and I’m no nearer to the truth of it. But, if she’s lying, here in this letter, what’s she walking on? How long are we to wait for to hear? I give you my word, Robert, I’m feeling for you as I am for myself. Or, wasn’t it that one? Is it this one?” He levelled his finger at Rhoda. “In any case, Robert, you’ll feel for me as a father. I’m shut in a dark room with the candle blown out. I’ve heard of a sort of fear you have in that dilemmer, lest you should lay your fingers on edges of sharp knives, and if I think a step—if I go thinking a step, and feel my way, I do cut myself, and I bleed, I do. Robert, just take and say, it wasn’t that one.”
Such a statement would carry with it the confession that it was this one for whom he cared this scornful one, this jilt, this brazen girl who could make appointments with gentlemen, or suffer them to speak to her, and subsequently look at him with innocence and with anger.
“Believe me, Mr. Fleming, I feel for you as much as a man can,” he said, uneasily, swaying half round as he spoke.
“Do you suspect anything bad?” The farmer repeated the question, like one who only wanted a confirmation of his own suspicions to see the fact built up. “Robert, does this look like the letter of a married woman? Is it daughter-like—eh, man? Help another: I can’t think for myself—she ties my hands. Speak out.”
Robert set his eyes on Rhoda. He would have given much to have been able to utter, “I do.” Her face was like an eager flower straining for light; the very beauty of it swelled his jealous passion, and he flattered himself with his incapacity to speak an abject lie to propitiate her.
“She says she is married. We’re bound to accept what she says.”
That was his answer.
“Is she married?” thundered the farmer. “Has she been and disgraced her mother in her grave? What am I to think? She’s my flesh and blood. Is she—”
“Oh, hush, father!” Rhoda laid her hand on his arm. “What doubt can there be of Dahlia? You have forgotten that she is always truthful. Come away. It is shameful to stand here and listen to unmanly things.”
