Rhoda Fleming. Complete

CHAPTER XXXIV

In the shadowy library light, when there was dawn out of doors, Edward sat with his father, and both were silent, for Edward had opened his heart, and his father had breathed some of the dry stock of wisdom on it. Many times Edward rose to go; and Sir William signalled with his finger that he should stay: an impassive motion, not succeeded by speech. And, in truth, the baronet was revolving such a problem as a long career of profitable banking refreshed by classical exercitations does not help us to solve. There sat the son of his trust and his pride, whose sound and equal temperament, whose precocious worldly wit, whose precise and broad intelligence, had been the visionary comfort of his paternal days to come; and his son had told him, reiterating it in language special and exact as that of a Chancery barrister unfolding his case to the presiding judge, that he had deceived and wronged an under-bred girl of the humbler classes; and that, after a term of absence from her, he had discovered her to be a part of his existence, and designed “You would marry her?” Sir William asked, though less forcibly than if he could have put on a moral amazement.

“That is my intention, sir, with your permission,” Edward replied firmly, and his father understood that he had never known this young man, and dealt virtually with a stranger in his son—as shrewd a blow as the vanity which is in paternal nature may have to endure.

He could not fashion the words, “Cerritus fuit,” though he thought the thing in both tenses: Edward’s wits had always been too clearly in order: and of what avail was it to repeat great and honoured prudential maxims to a hard-headed fellow, whose choice was to steer upon the rocks? He did remark, in an undertone,—

“The ‘misce stultitiam’ seems to be a piece of advice you have adopted too literally. I quote what you have observed of some one else.”

“It is possible, sir,” said Edward. “I was not particularly sparing when I sat in the high seat. ‘Non eadem est aetas, non mens.’ I now think differently.”

“I must take your present conduct as the fruit of your premature sagacity, I suppose. By the same rule, your cousin Algernon may prove to be some comfort to his father, in the end.”

“Let us hope he will, sir. His father will not have deserved it so well as mine.”

“The time is morning,” said Sir William, looking at his watch, and bestowing, in the bitterness of his reflections, a hue of triumph on the sleep of his brother upstairs. “You are your own master, Edward. I will detain you no more.”

Edward shook his limbs, rejoicing.

“You prepare for a life of hard work,” Sir William resumed, not without some instigation to sternness from this display of alacrity. “I counsel you to try the Colonial Bar.”

Edward read in the first sentence, that his income would be restricted; and in the second, that his father’s social sphere was no longer to be his.

“Exactly, sir; I have entertained that notion myself,” he said; and his breast narrowed and his features grew sharp.

“And, if I may suggest such matters to you, I would advise you to see very little company for some years to come.”

“There, sir, you only anticipate my previously formed resolution. With a knavery on my conscience, and a giddy-pated girl on my hands, and the doors of the London world open to me, I should scarcely have been capable of serious work. The precious metal, which is Knowledge, sir, is only to be obtained by mining for it; and that excellent occupation necessarily sends a man out of sight for a number of years. In the meantime, ‘mea virtute me involvo.’”

“You need not stop short,” said his father, with a sardonic look for the concluding lines.

“The continuation is becoming in the mouth of a hero; but humbler persons must content themselves not to boast the patent fact, I think.” Edward warmed as he spoke. “I am ready to bear it. I dislike poverty; but, as I say, I am ready to bear it. Come, sir; you did me the honour once to let me talk to you as a friend, with the limits which I have never consciously overstepped; let me explain myself plainly and simply.”

Sir William signified, “Pray speak,” from the arms of his chair! and Edward, standing, went on: “After all, a woman’s devotion is worth having, when one is not asked for the small change every ten minutes. I am aware of the philosophic truth, that we get nothing in life for which we don’t pay. The point is, to appreciate what we desire; and so we reach a level that makes the payment less—” He laughed. Sir William could hardly keep back the lines of an ironical smile from his lips.

“This,” pursued the orator, “is not the language for the Colonial Bar. I wish to show you that I shall understand the character of my vocation there. No, sir; my deeper wish is that you may accept my view of the sole course left to a man whose sense of honour is of accord with the inclination of his heart, and not in hostility to his clearer judgement.”

“Extremely forensic,” said Sir William, not displeased by the promise of the periods.

“Well, sir, I need not remark to you that rhetoric, though it should fail to convey, does not extinguish, or imply the absence of emotion in the speaker; but rather that his imagination is excited by his theme, and that he addresses more presences than such as are visible. It is, like the Roman mask, fashioned for large assemblages.”

“By a parity of reasoning, then,”—Sir William was seduced into colloquy,—“an eternal broad grin is not, in the instance of a dualogue, good comedy.”

“It may hide profound grief.” Edward made his eyes flash. “I find I can laugh; it would be difficult for me to smile. Sir, I pray that you will listen to me seriously, though my language is not of a kind to make you think me absolutely earnest in what I say, unless you know me.”

“Which, I must protest, I certainly do not,” interposed Sir William.

“I will do my best to instruct you, sir. Until recently, I have not known myself. I met this girl. She trusted herself to me. You are aware that I know a little of men and of women; and when I tell you that I respect her now even more than I did at first—much more—so thoroughly, that I would now put my honour in her hands, by the counsel of my experience, as she, prompted by her instinct and her faith in me, confided hers to mine,—perhaps, even if you persist in accusing me of rashness, you will allow that she must be in the possession of singularly feminine and estimable qualities. I deceived her. My object in doing so was to spare you. Those consequences followed which can hardly fail to ensue, when, of two living together, the woman is at a disadvantage, and eats her heart without complaining. I could have borne a shrewish tongue better, possibly because I could have answered it better. It is worse to see a pale sad face with a smile of unalterable tenderness. The very sweetness becomes repugnant.”

“As little boys requiring much medicine have anticipated you by noting in this world,” observed Sir William.

“I thank you for the illustration.” Edward bowed, but he smarted. “A man so situated lives with the ghost of his conscience.”

“A doubtful figure of speech,” Sir William broke in. “I think you should establish the personality before you attempt to give a feature to the essence. But, continue.”

Edward saw that by forfeiting simplicity, in order to catch his father’s peculiar cast of mind, he had left him cold and in doubt as to the existence of the powerful impulse by which he was animated. It is a prime error in the orator not to seize the emotions and subdue the humanity of his hearers first. Edward perceived his mistake. He had, however, done well in making a show of the unabated vigour of his wits. Contempt did not dwell in the baronet’s tone. On the contrary, they talked and fenced, and tripped one another as of old; and, considering the breach he had been compelled to explode between his father and himself, Edward understood that this was a real gain.

He resumed: “All figures of speech must be inadequate—”

“Ah, pardon me,” said Sir William, pertinaciously; “the figure I alluded to was not inadequate. A soap-bubble is not inadequate.”

“Plainly, sir, in God’s name, hear me out,” cried Edward. “She—what shall I call her? my mistress, my sweetheart, if you like—let the name be anything ‘wife’ it should have been, and shall be—I left her, and have left her and have not looked on her for many months. I thought I was tired of her—I was under odd influences—witchcraft, it seems. I could believe in witchcraft now. Brutal selfishness is the phrase for my conduct. I have found out my villany. I have not done a day’s sensible work, or had a single clear thought, since I parted from her. She has had brain-fever. She has been in the hospital. She is now prostrate with misery. While she suffered, I—I can’t look back on myself. If I had to plead before you for more than manly consideration, I could touch you. I am my own master, and am ready to subsist by my own efforts; there is no necessity for me to do more than say I abide by the choice I make, and my own actions. In deciding to marry her, I do a good thing—I do a just thing. I will prove to you that I have done a wise thing.

“Let me call to your recollection what you did me the honour to remark of my letters from Italy. Those were written with her by my side. Every other woman vexed me. This one alone gives me peace, and nerve to work. If I did not desire to work, should I venture to run the chances of an offence to you? Your girls of society are tasteless to me. And they don’t makes wives to working barristers. No, nor to working Members.

“They are very ornamental and excellent, and, as I think you would call them, accomplished. All England would leap to arms to defend their incontestible superiority to their mothers and their duties. I have not the wish to stand opposed to my countrymen on any question, although I go to other shores, and may be called upon to make capital out of opposition. They are admirable young persons, no doubt. I do not offer you a drab for your daughter-in-law, sir. If I rise, she will be equal to my station. She has the manners of a lady; a lady, I say; not of the modern young lady; with whom, I am happy to think, she does not come into competition. She has not been sedulously trained to pull her way, when she is to go into harness with a yokefellow.

“But I am laying myself open to the charge of feeling my position weak, seeing that I abuse the contrary one. Think what you will of me, sir, you will know that I have obeyed my best instinct and my soundest judgement in this matter; I need not be taught, that if it is my destiny to leave England I lose the association with him who must ever be my dearest friend. And few young men can say as much of one standing in the relation of father.”

With this, Edward finished; not entirely to his satisfaction; for he had spoken with too distinct a sincerity to please his own critical taste, which had been educated to delight in acute antithesis and culminating sentences—the grand Biscayan billows of rhetorical utterance, in comparison wherewith his talk was like the little chopping waves of a wind-blown lake. But he had, as he could see, produced an impression. His father stood up.

“We shall be always friends; I hope,” Sir William said. “As regards a provision for you, suitable to your estate, that will be arranged. You must have what comforts you have been taught to look to. At the same time, I claim a personal freedom for my own actions.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Edward, not conceiving any new development in these.

“You have an esteem for Mrs. Lovell, have you not?”

Edward flushed. “I should have a very perfect esteem for her, if—” he laughed slightly—“you will think I want everybody to be married and in the traces now; she will never be manageable till she is married.”

“I am also of that opinion,” said Sir William. “I will detain you no longer. It is a quarter to five in the morning. You will sleep here, of course.”

“No, I must go to the Temple. By the way, Algy prefers a petition for Sherry. He is beginning to discern good wine from bad, which may be a hopeful augury.”

“I will order Holmes to send some down to him when he has done a week’s real duty at the Bank.”

“Sooner or later, then. Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning.” Sir William shook his son’s hand.

A minute after, Edward had quitted the house. “That’s over!” he said, sniffing the morning air gratefully, and eyeing certain tinted wisps of cloud that were in a line of the fresh blue sky.

CHAPTER XXXV

A shy and humble entreaty had been sent by Dahlia through Robert to Rhoda, saying that she wished not to be seen until the ceremony was at an end; but Rhoda had become mentally stern toward her sister, and as much to uphold her in the cleansing step she was about to take, as in the desire to have the dear lost head upon her bosom, she disregarded Dahlia’s foolish prayer, and found it was well that she had done so; for, to her great amazement, Dahlia, worn, shorn, sickened, and reduced to be a mark for the scorn of the cowardice which is in the world, through the selfishness of a lying man, loved the man still, and wavered, or rather shrank with a pitiful fleshly terror from the noble husband who would wipe the spot of shame from her forehead.

When, after their long separation, the sisters met, Dahlia was mistress of herself, and pronounced Rhoda’s name softly, as she moved up to kiss her. Rhoda could not speak. Oppressed by the strangeness of the white face which had passed through fire, she gave a mute kiss and a single groan, while Dahlia gently caressed her on the shoulder. The frail touch of her hand was harder to bear than the dreary vision had been, and seemed not so real as many a dream of it. Rhoda sat by her, overcome by the awfulness of an actual sorrow, never imagined closely, though she had conjured up vague pictures of Dahlia’s face. She had imagined agony, tears, despair, but not the spectral change, the burnt-out look. It was a face like a crystal lamp in which the flame has died. The ghastly little skull-cap showed forth its wanness rigidly. Rhoda wondered to hear her talk simply of home and the old life. At each question, the then and the now struck her spirit with a lightning flash of opposing scenes. But the talk deepened. Dahlia’s martyrdom was near, and their tongues were hurried into plain converse of the hour, and then Dahlia faltered and huddled herself up like a creature swept by the torrent; Rhoda learnt that, instead of hate or loathing of the devilish man who had deceived her, love survived. Upon Dahlia’s lips it was compassion and forgiveness; but Rhoda, in her contempt for the word, called it love. Dahlia submitted gladly to the torture of interrogation; “Do you, can you care for him still?” and sighed in shame and fear of her sister, not daring to say she thought her harsh, not daring to plead for escape, as she had done with Robert.

“Why is there no place for the unhappy, who do not wish to live, and cannot die?” she moaned.

And Rhoda cruelly fixed her to the marriage, making it seem irrevocable, and barring all the faint lights to the free outer world, by praise of her—passionate praise of her—when she confessed, that half inanimate after her recovery from the fever, and in the hope that she might thereby show herself to her father, she had consented to devote her life to the only creature who was then near her to be kind to her. Rhoda made her relate how this man had seen her first, and how, by untiring diligence, he had followed her up and found her. “He—he must love you,” said Rhoda; and in proportion as she grew more conscious of her sister’s weakness, and with every access of tenderness toward her, she felt that Dahlia must be thought for very much as if she were a child.

Dahlia tried to float out some fretting words for mercy, on one or other of her heavy breathings; but her brain was under lead. She had a thirst for Rhoda’s praise in her desolation; it was sweet, though the price of it was her doing an abhorred thing. Abhorred? She did not realize the consequences of the act, or strength would have come to her to wrestle with the coil: a stir of her blood would have endued her with womanly counsel and womanly frenzy; nor could Rhoda have opposed any real vehemence of distaste to the union on Dahlia’s part. But Dahlia’s blood was frozen, her brain was under lead. She clung to the poor delight in her sister’s praise, and shuddered and thirsted. She caught at the minutes, and saw them slip from her. All the health of her thoughts went to establish a sort of blind belief that God; having punished her enough, would not permit a second great misery to befall her. She expected a sudden intervention, even though at the altar. She argued to herself that misery, which follows sin, cannot surely afflict us further when we are penitent, and seek to do right: her thought being, that perchance if she refrained from striving against the current, and if she suffered her body to be borne along, God would be the more merciful. With the small cunning of an enfeebled spirit, she put on a mute submissiveness, and deceived herself by it sufficiently to let the minutes pass with a lessened horror and alarm.

This was in the first quarter of the night. The dawn was wearing near. Sedgett had been seen by Rhoda; a quiet interview; a few words on either side, attention paid to them by neither. But the girl doated on his ugliness; she took it for plain proof of his worthiness; proof too that her sister must needs have seen the latter very distinctly, or else she could not have submitted.

Dahlia looked at the window-blinds and at the candlelight. The little which had been spoken between her and her sister in such a chasm of time, gave a terrible swiftness to the hours. Half shrieking, she dropped her head in Rhoda’s lap. Rhoda, thinking that with this demonstration she renounced the project finally, prepared to say what she had to say, and to yield. But, as was natural after a paroxysm of weakness, Dahlia’s frenzy left no courage behind it.

Dahlia said, as she swept her brows, “I am still subject to nervous attacks.”

“They will soon leave you,” said Rhoda, nursing her hand.

Dahlia contracted her lips. “Is father very unforgiving to women?”

“Poor father!” Rhoda interjected for answer, and Dahlia’s frame was taken with a convulsion.

“Where shall I see him to-morrow?” she asked; and, glancing from the beamless candle to the window-blinds “Oh! it’s day. Why didn’t I sleep! It’s day! where am I to see him?”

“At Robert’s lodgings. We all go there.”

“We all go?—he goes?”

“Your husband will lead you there.”

“My heaven! my heaven! I wish you had known what this is, a little—just a little.”

“I do know that it is a good and precious thing to do right,” said Rhoda.

“If you had only had an affection, dear! Oh I how ungrateful I am to you.”

“It is only, darling, that I seem unkind to you,” said Rhoda.

“You think I must do this? Must? Why?”

“Why?” Rhoda pressed her fingers. “Why, when you were ill, did you not write to me, that I might have come to you?”