And what were to be his proceedings? They were so manifestly in the hands of fate, that he declined to be troubled on that head.
Next morning came the usual short impatient scrawl on thin blue paper from Edward, scarce worthy of a passing thought. In a postscript, he asked: “Are there, on your oath, no letters for me? If there are, send them immediately—every one, bills as well. Don't fail. I must have them.”
Algernon was at last persuaded to pack up Dahlia's letters, saying: “I suppose they can't do any harm now.” The expense of the postage afflicted him; but “women always cost a dozen to our one,” he remarked. On his way to the City, he had to decide whether he would go to the Bank, or take the train leading to Wrexby. He chose the latter course, until, feeling that he was about to embark in a serious undertaking, he said to himself, “No! duty first;” and postponed the expedition for the day following.
CHAPTER XXXII
Squire Blancove, having business in town, called on his brother at the Bank, asking whether Sir William was at home, with sarcastic emphasis on the title, which smelt to him of commerce. Sir William invited him to dine and sleep at his house that night.
“You will meet Mrs. Lovell, and a Major Waring, a friend of hers, who knew her and her husband in India,” said the baronet.
“The deuce I shall,” said the squire, and accepted maliciously.
Where the squire dined, he drank, defying ladies and the new-fangled subserviency to those flustering teabodies. This was understood; so, when the Claret and Port had made a few rounds, Major Waring was permitted to follow Mrs. Lovell, and the squire and his brother settled to conversation; beginning upon gout. Sir William had recently had a touch of the family complaint, and spoke of it in terms which gave the squire some fraternal sentiment. From that, they fell to talking politics, and differed. The breach was healed by a divergence to their sons. The squire knew his own to be a scamp.
“You'll never do anything with him,” he said.
“I don't think I shall,” Sir William admitted.
“Didn't I tell you so?”
“You did. But, the point is, what will you do with him?”
“Send him to Jericho to ride wild jackasses. That's all he's fit for.”
The superior complacency of Sir William's smile caught the squire's attention.
“What do you mean to do with Ned?” he asked.
“I hope,” was the answer, “to have him married before the year is out.”
“To the widow?”
“The widow?” Sir William raised his eyebrows.
“Mrs. Lovell, I mean.”
“What gives you that idea?”
“Why, Ned has made her an offer. Don't you know that?”
“I know nothing of the sort.”
“And don't believe it? He has. He's only waiting now, over there in Paris, to get comfortably out of a scrape—you remember what I told you at Fairly—and then Mrs. Lovell's going to have him—as he thinks; but, by George, it strikes me this major you've got here, knows how to follow petticoats and get in his harvest in the enemy's absence.”
“I think you're quite under a delusion, in both respects,” observed Sir William.
“What makes you think that?”
“I have Edward's word.”
“He lies as naturally as an infant sucks.”
“Pardon me; this is my son you are speaking of.”
“And this is your Port I'm drinking; so I'll say no more.”
The squire emptied his glass, and Sir William thrummed on the table.
“Now, my dog has got his name,” the squire resumed. “I'm not ambitious about him. You are, about yours; and you ought to know him. He spends or he don't spend. It's not the question whether he gets into debt, but whether he does mischief with what he spends. If Algy's a bad fish, Ned's a bit of a serpent; damned clever, no doubt. I suppose, you wouldn't let him marry old Fleming's daughter, now, if he wanted to?”
“Who is Fleming?” Sir William thundered out.
“Fleming's the father of the girl. I'm sorry for him. He sells his farm-land which I've been looking at for years; so I profit by it; but I don't like to see a man like that broken up. Algy, I said before, 's a bad fish. Hang me, if I think he'd have behaved like Ned. If he had, I'd have compelled him to marry her, and shipped them both off, clean out of the country, to try their luck elsewhere.
“You're proud; I'm practical. I don't expect you to do the same. I'm up in London now to raise money to buy the farm—Queen's Anne's Farm; it's advertized for sale, I see. Fleeting won't sell it to me privately, because my name's Blancove, and I'm the father of my son, and he fancies Algy's the man. Why? he saw Algy at the theatre in London with this girl of his;—we were all young fellows once!—and the rascal took Ned's burden on his shoulders. So, I shall have to compete with other buyers, and pay, I dare say, a couple of hundred extra for the property. Do you believe what I tell you now?”
“Not a word of it,” said Sir William blandly.
The squire seized the decanter and drank in a fury.
“I had it from Algy.”
“That would all the less induce me to believe it.”
“H'm!” the squire frowned. “Let me tell you—he's a dog—but it's a damned hard thing to hear one's own flesh and blood abused. Look here: there's a couple. One of them has made a fool of a girl. It can't be my rascal—stop a minute—he isn't the man, because she'd have been sure to have made a fool of him, that's certain. He's a soft-hearted dog. He'd aim at a cock-sparrow, and be glad if he missed. There you have him. He was one of your good boys. I used to tell his poor mother, 'When you leave off thinking for him, he'll go to the first handy villain—and that's the devil.' And he's done it. But, here's the difference. He goes himself; he don't send another. I'll tell you what: if you don't know about Mr. Ned's tricks, you ought. And you ought to make him marry the girl, and be off to New Zealand, or any of the upside-down places, where he might begin by farming, and soon, with his abilities, be cock o' the walk. He would, perhaps, be sending us a letter to say that he preferred to break away from the mother country and establish a republic. He's got the same political opinions as you. Oh! he'll do well enough over here; of course he will. He's the very fellow to do well. Knock at him, he's hard as nails, and 'll stick anywhere. You wouldn't listen to me, when I told you about this at Fairly, where some old sweetheart of the girl mistook that poor devil of a scapegoat, Algy, for him, and went pegging at him like a madman.”
“No,” said Sir William; “No, I would not. Nor do I now. At least,” he struck out his right hand deprecatingly, “I listen.”
“Can you tell me what he was doing when he went to Italy?”
“He went partly at my suggestion.”
“Turns you round his little finger! He went off with this girl: wanted to educate her, or some nonsense of the sort. That was Mr. Ned's business. Upon my soul, I'm sorry for old Fleming. I'm told he takes it to heart. It's done him up. Now, if it should turn out to be Ned, would you let him right the girl by marrying her? You wouldn't!”
“The principle of examining your hypothesis before you proceed to decide by it, is probably unknown to you,” Sir William observed, after bestowing a considerate smile on his brother, who muffled himself up from the chilling sententiousness, and drank.
Sir William, in the pride of superior intellect, had heard as good as nothing of the charge against his son.
“Well,” said the squire, “think as you like, act as you like; all's one to me. You're satisfied; that's clear; and I'm some hundred of pounds out of pocket. This major's paying court to the widow, is he?”
“I can't say that he is.”
“It would be a good thing for her to get married.”
“I should be glad.”
“A good thing for her, I say.”
“A good thing for him, let us hope.”
“If he can pay her debts.”
Sir William was silent, and sipped his wine.
“And if he can keep a tight hand on the reins. That's wanted,” said the squire.
The gentleman whose road to happiness was thus prescribed stood by Mrs. Lovell's chair, in the drawing-room. He held a letter in his hand, for which her own was pleadingly extended.
“I know you to be the soul of truth, Percy,” she was saying.
“The question is not that; but whether you can bear the truth.”
“Can I not? Who would live without it?”
“Pardon me; there's more. You say, you admire this friend of mine; no doubt you do. Mind, I am going to give you the letter. I wish you simply to ask yourself now, whether you are satisfied at my making a confidant of a man in Robert Eccles's position, and think it natural and just—you do?”
“Quite just,” said Mrs. Lovell; “and natural? Yes, natural; though not common. Eccentric; which only means, hors du commun; and can be natural. It is natural. I was convinced he was a noble fellow, before I knew that you had made a friend of him. I am sure of it now. And did he not save your life, Percy?”
“I have warned you that you are partly the subject of the letter.”
“Do you forget that I am a woman, and want it all the more impatiently?”
Major Waring suffered the letter to be snatched from his hand, and stood like one who is submitting to a test, or watching the effect of a potent drug.
“It is his second letter to you,” Mrs. Lovell murmured. “I see; it is a reply to yours.”
She read a few lines, and glanced up, blushing. “Am I not made to bear more than I deserve?”
“If you can do such mischief, without meaning any, to a man who is in love with another woman—,” said Percy.
“Yes,” she nodded, “I perceive the deduction; but inferences are like shadows on the wall—they are thrown from an object, and are monstrous distortions of it. That is why you misjudge women. You infer one thing from another, and are ruled by the inference.”
He simply bowed. Edward would have answered her in a bright strain, and led her on to say brilliant things, and then have shown her, as by a sudden light, that she had lost herself, and reduced her to feel the strength and safety of his hard intellect. That was the idea in her brain. The next moment her heart ejected it.
“Petty, when I asked permission to look at this letter, I was not aware how great a compliment it would be to me if I was permitted to see it. It betrays your friend.”
“It betrays something more,” said he.
Mrs. Lovell cast down her eyes and read, without further comment.
These were the contents:—
ever; and I remember thinking once or twice that Mrs. L. had cured
me. I am a sort of man who would jump to reach the top of a
mountain. I understand how superior Mrs. L. is to every woman in
the world I have seen; but Rhoda cures me on that head. Mrs. Lovell
makes men mad and happy, and Rhoda makes them sensible and
miserable. I have had the talk with Rhoda. It is all over. I have
felt like being in a big room with one candle alight ever since.
She has not looked at me, and does nothing but get by her father
whenever she can, and takes his hand and holds it. I see where the
blow has struck her: it has killed her pride; and Rhoda is almost
all pride. I suppose she thinks our plan is the best. She has not
said she does, and does not mention her sister. She is going to
die, or she turns nun, or marries a gentleman. I shall never get
her. She will not forgive me for bringing this news to her. I told
you how she coloured, the first day I came; which has all gone now.
She just opens her lips to me. You remember Corporal Thwaites—you
caught his horse, when he had his foot near wrenched off, going
through the gate—and his way of breathing through the under-row of
his teeth—the poor creature was in such pain—that's just how she
takes her breath. It makes her look sometimes like that woman's
head with the snakes for her hair. This bothers me—how is it you
and Mrs. Lovell manage to talk together of such things? Why, two
men rather hang their heads a bit. My notion is, that women—
ladies, in especial, ought never to hear of sad things of this sort.
Of course, I mean, if they do, it cannot harm them. It only upsets
me. Why are ladies less particular than girls in Rhoda's place?”
(“Shame being a virtue,” was Mrs. Lovell's running comment.)
“She comes up to town with her father to-morrow. The farm is
ruined. The poor old man had to ask me for a loan to pay the
journey. Luckily, Rhoda has saved enough with her pennies and
two-pences. Ever since I left the farm, it has been in the hands
of an old donkey here, who has worked it his own way. What is in
the ground will stop there, and may as well.
“I leave off writing, I write such stuff; and if I go on
writing to you, I shall be putting these things '—!—!—!' The way
you write about Mrs. Lovell, convinces me you are not in my scrape,
or else gentlemen are just as different from their inferiors as
ladies are from theirs. That's the question. What is the meaning
of your 'not being able to leave her for a day, for fear she should
fall under other influences'? Then, I copy your words, you say,
'She is all things to everybody, and cannot help it.' In that case,
I would seize my opportunity and her waist, and tell her she was
locked up from anybody else. Friendship with men—but I cannot
understand friendship with women, and watching them to keep them
right, which must mean that you do not think much of them.”
Mrs. Lovell, at this point, raised her eyes abruptly from the letter and returned it.
“You discuss me very freely with your friend,” she said.
Percy drooped to her. “I warned you when you wished to read it.”
“But, you see, you have bewildered him. It was scarcely wise to write other than plain facts. Men of that class.” She stopped.
“Of that class?” said he.
“Men of any class, then: you yourself: if any one wrote to you such things, what would you think? It is very unfair. I have the honour of seeing you daily, because you cannot trust me out of your sight? What is there inexplicable about me? Do you wonder that I talk openly of women who are betrayed, and do my best to help them?”.
“On the contrary; you command my esteem,” said Percy.
“But you think me a puppet?”
“Fond of them, perhaps?” his tone of voice queried in a manner that made her smile.
“I hate them,” she said, and her face expressed it.
“But you make them.”
“How? You torment me.”
“How can I explain the magic? Are you not making one of me now, where I stand?”
“Then, sit.”
“Or kneel?”
“Oh, Percy! do nothing ridiculous.”
Inveterate insight was a characteristic of Major Waring; but he was not the less in Mrs. Lovell's net. He knew it to be a charm that she exercised almost unknowingly. She was simply a sweet instrument for those who could play on it, and therein lay her mighty fascination. Robert's blunt advice that he should seize the chance, take her and make her his own, was powerful with him. He checked the particular appropriating action suggested by Robert.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said. “Margaret, my friend.”
“You can think of me as a friend, Percy?”
“If I can call you my friend, what would I not call you besides? I did you a great and shameful wrong when you were younger. Hush! you did not deserve that. Judge of yourself as you will; but I know now what my feelings were then. The sublime executioner was no more than a spiteful man. You give me your pardon, do you not? Your hand?”
She had reached her hand to him, but withdrew it quickly.
“Not your hand, Margaret? But, you must give it to some one. You will be ruined, if you do not.”
She looked at him with full eyes. “You know it then?” she said slowly; but the gaze diminished as he went on.
“I know, by what I know of you, that you of all women should owe a direct allegiance. Come; I will assume privileges. Are you free?”
“Would you talk to me so, if you thought otherwise?” she asked.
“I think I would,” said Percy. “A little depends upon the person. Are you pledged at all to Mr. Edward Blancove?”
“Do you suppose me one to pledge myself?”
“He is doing a base thing.”
“Then, Percy, let an assurance of my knowledge of that be my answer.”
“You do not love the man?”
“Despise him, say!”
“Is he aware of it?”
“If clear writing can make him.”
“You have told him as much?”
“To his apprehension, certainly.”
“Further, Margaret, I must speak:—did he act with your concurrence, or knowledge of it at all, in acting as he has done?”
“Heavens! Percy, you question me like a husband.”
“It is what I mean to be, if I may.”
The frame of the fair lady quivered as from a blow, and then her eyes rose tenderly.
“I thought you knew me. This is not possible.”
“You will not be mine? Why is it not possible?”
“I think I could say, because I respect you too much.”
“Because you find you have not the courage?”
“For what?”
“To confess that you were under bad influence, and were not the Margaret I can make of you. Put that aside. If you remain as you are, think of the snares. If you marry one you despise, look at the pit. Yes; you will be mine! Half my love of my country and my profession is love of you. Margaret is fire in my blood. I used to pray for opportunities, that Margaret might hear of me. I knew that gallant actions touched her; I would have fallen gladly; I was sure her heart would leap when she heard of me. Let it beat against mine. Speak!”
“I will,” said Mrs. Lovell, and she suppressed the throbs of her bosom. Her voice was harsh and her face bloodless. “How much money have you, Percy?”
This sudden sluicing of cold water on his heat of passion petrified him.
“Money,” he said, with a strange frigid scrutiny of her features. As in the flash of a mirror, he beheld her bony, worn, sordid, unacceptable. But he was fain to admit it to be an eminently proper demand for enlightenment.
He said deliberately, “I possess an income of five hundred a year, extraneous, and in addition to my pay as major in Her Majesty's service.”
Then he paused, and the silence was like a growing chasm between them.
She broke it by saying, “Have you any expectations?”
This was crueller still, though no longer astonishing. He complained in his heart merely that her voice had become so unpleasant.
With emotionless precision, he replied, “At my mother's death—”
She interposed a soft exclamation.
“At my mother's death there will come to me by reversion, five or six thousand pounds. When my father dies, he may possibly bequeath his property to me. On that I cannot count.”
Veritable tears were in her eyes. Was she affecting to weep sympathetically in view of these remote contingencies?
“You will not pretend that you know me now, Percy,” she said, trying to smile; and she had recovered the natural feminine key of her voice. “I am mercenary, you see; not a mercenary friend. So, keep me as a friend—say you will be my friend.”
“Nay, you had a right to know,” he protested.
“It was disgraceful—horrible; but it was necessary for me to know.”
“And now that you do know?”
“Now that I know, I have only to say—be as merciful in your idea of me as you can.”
She dropped her hand in his, and it was with a thrill of dismay that he felt the rush of passion reanimating his frozen veins.
“Be mercenary, but be mine! I will give you something better to live for than this absurd life of fashion. You reckon on what our expenditure will be by that standard. It's comparative poverty; but—but you can have some luxuries. You can have a carriage, a horse to ride. Active service may come: I may rise. Give yourself to me, and you must love me, and regret nothing.”
“Nothing! I should regret nothing. I don't want carriages, or horses, or luxuries. I could live with you on a subaltern's pay. I can't marry you, Percy, and for the very reason which would make me wish to marry you.”
“Charade?” said he; and the contempt of the utterance brought her head close under his.
“Dearest friend, you have not to learn how to punish me.”
The little reproach, added to the wound to his pride, required a healing medicament; she put her lips to his fingers.
Assuredly the comedy would not have ended there, but it was stopped by an intrusion of the squire, followed by Sir William, who, while the squire—full of wine and vindictive humours—went on humming, “Ah! h'm—m—m! Soh!” said in the doorway to some one behind him: “And if you have lost your key, and Algernon is away, of what use is it to drive down to the Temple for a bed? I make it an especial request that you sleep here tonight. I wish it. I have to speak with you.”
Mrs. Lovell was informed that the baronet had been addressing his son, who was fresh from Paris, and not, in his own modest opinion, presentable before a lady.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Once more Farmer Fleming and Rhoda prepared for their melancholy journey up to London. A light cart was at the gateway, near which Robert stood with the farmer, who, in his stiff brown overcoat, that reached to his ankles, and broad country-hat, kept his posture of dumb expectation like a stalled ox, and nodded to Robert's remarks on the care which the garden had been receiving latterly, the many roses clean in bud, and the trim blue and white and red garden beds. Every word was a blow to him; but he took it, as well as Rhoda's apparent dilatoriness, among the things to be submitted to by a man cut away by the roots from the home of his labour and old associations. Above his bowed head there was a board proclaiming that Queen Anne's Farm, and all belonging thereunto, was for sale. His prospect in the vague wilderness of the future, was to seek for acceptance as a common labourer on some kind gentleman's property. The phrase “kind gentleman” was adopted by his deliberate irony of the fate which cast him out. Robert was stamping fretfully for Rhoda to come. At times, Mrs. Sumfit showed her head from the window of her bed-room, crying, “D'rectly!” and disappearing.
The still aspect of the house on the shining May afternoon was otherwise undisturbed. Besides Rhoda, Master Gammon was being waited for; on whom would devolve the driving of the cart back from the station. Robert heaped his vexed exclamations upon this old man. The farmer restrained his voice in Master Gammon's defence, thinking of the comparison he could make between him and Robert: for Master Gammon had never run away from the farm and kept absent, leaving it to take care of itself. Gammon, slow as he might be, was faithful, and it was not he who had made it necessary for the farm to be sold. Gammon was obstinate, but it was not he who, after taking a lead, and making the farm dependent on his lead, had absconded with the brains and energy of the establishment. Such reflections passed through the farmer's mind.
Rhoda and Mrs. Sumfit came together down the trim pathway; and Robert now had a clear charge against Master Gammon. He recommended an immediate departure.
“The horse 'll bring himself home quite as well and as fast as Gammon will,” he said.
“But for the shakin' and the joltin', which tells o' sovereigns and silver,” Mrs. Sumfit was observing to Rhoda, “you might carry the box—and who would have guessed how stout it was, and me to hit it with a poker and not break it, I couldn't, nor get a single one through the slit;—the sight I was, with a poker in my hand! I do declare I felt azactly like a housebreaker;—and no soul to notice what you carries. Where you hear the gold, my dear, go so”—Mrs. Sumfit performed a methodical “Ahem!” and noised the sole of her shoe on the gravel “so, and folks 'll think it's a mistake they made.”
“What's that?”—the farmer pointed at a projection under Rhoda's shawl.
“It is a present, father, for my sister,” said Rhoda.
“What is it?” the farmer questioned again.
Mrs. Sumfit fawned before him penitently—“Ah! William, she's poor, and she do want a little to spend, or she will be so nipped and like a frost-bitten body, she will. And, perhaps, dear, haven't money in her sight for next day's dinner, which is—oh, such a panic for a young wife! for it ain't her hunger, dear William—her husband, she thinks of. And her cookery at a stand-still! Thinks she, 'he will charge it on the kitchen;' so unreasonable's men. Yes,” she added, in answer to the rigid dejection of his look, “I said true to you. I know I said, 'Not a penny can I get, William,' when you asked me for loans; and how could I get it? I can't get it now. See here, dear!”
She took the box from under Rhoda's shawl, and rattled it with a down turn and an up turn.
“You didn't ask me, dear William, whether I had a money-box. I'd ha' told you so at once, had ye but asked me. And had you said, 'Gi' me your money-box,' it was yours, only for your asking. You do see, you can't get any of it out. So, when you asked for money I was right to say, I'd got none.”
The farmer bore with her dreary rattling of the box in demonstration of its retentive capacities. The mere force of the show stopped him from retorting; but when, to excuse Master Gammon for his tardiness, she related that he also had a money-box, and was in search of it, the farmer threw up his head with the vigour of a young man, and thundered for Master Gammon, by name, vehemently wrathful at the combined hypocrisy of the pair. He called twice, and his face was purple and red as he turned toward the cart, saying,—
“We'll go without the old man.”
Mrs. Sumfit then intertwisted her fingers, and related how that she and Master Gammon had one day, six years distant, talked on a lonely evening over the mischances which befel poor people when they grew infirm, or met with accident, and what “useless clays” they were; and yet they had their feelings. It was a long and confidential talk on a summer evening; and, at the end of it, Master Gammon walked into Wrexby, and paid a visit to Mr. Hammond, the carpenter, who produced two strong saving-boxes excellently manufactured by his own hand, without a lid to them, or lock and key: so that there would be no getting at the contents until the boxes were full, or a pressing occasion counselled the destruction of the boxes. A constant subject of jest between Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon was, as to which first of them would be overpowered by curiosity to know the amount of their respective savings; and their confessions of mutual weakness and futile endeavours to extract one piece of gold from the hoard.
“And now, think it or not,” said Mrs. Sumfit, “I got that power over him, from doctorin' him, and cookin' for him, I persuaded him to help my poor Dahly in my blessed's need. I'd like him to do it by halves, but he can't.”
Master Gammon appeared round a corner of the house, his box, draped by his handkerchief, under his arm. The farmer and Robert knew, when he was in sight, that gestures and shouts expressing extremities of the need for haste, would fail to accelerate his steps, so they allowed him to come on at his own equal pace, steady as Time, with the peculiar lopping bend of knees which jerked the moveless trunk regularly upward, and the ancient round eyes fixed contemplatively forward. There was an affectingness in this view of the mechanical old man bearing his poor hoard to bestow it.
Robert said out, unawares, “He mustn't be let to part with h'old pennies.”
“No;” the farmer took him up; “nor I won't let him.”
“Yes, father!” Rhoda intercepted his address to Master Gammon. “Yes, father!” she hardened her accent. “It is for my sister. He does a good thing. Let him do it.”
“Mas' Gammon, what ha' ye got there?” the farmer sung out.
But Master Gammon knew that he was about his own business. He was a difficult old man when he served the farmer; he was quite unmanageable in his private affairs.
Without replying, he said to Mrs. Sumfit,—
“I'd gummed it.”
The side of the box showed that it had been made adhesive, for the sake of security, to another substance.
“That's what's caused ye to be so long, Mas' Gammon?”
The veteran of the fields responded with a grin, designed to show a lively cunning.
“Deary me, Mas' Gammon, I'd give a fortnight's work to know how much you'm saved, now, I would. And, there! Your comfort's in your heart. And it shall be paid to you. I do pray heaven in mercy to forgive me,” she whimpered, “if ever knowin'ly I hasted you at a meal, or did deceive you when you looked for the pickings of fresh-killed pig. But if you only knew how—to cookit spoils the temper of a woman! I'd a aunt was cook in a gentleman's fam'ly, and daily he dirtied his thirteen plates—never more nor never less; and one day—was ever a woman punished so! her best black silk dress she greased from the top to the bottom, and he sent down nine clean plates, and no word vouchsafed of explanation. For gentlefolks, they won't teach themselves how it do hang together with cooks in a kitchen—”
“Jump up, Mas' Gammon,” cried the farmer, wrathful at having been deceived by two members of his household, who had sworn to him, both, that they had no money, and had disregarded his necessity. Such being human nature!
Mrs. Sumfit confided the termination of her story to Rhoda; or suggested rather, at what distant point it might end; and then, giving Master Gammon's box to her custody, with directions for Dahlia to take the boxes to a carpenter's shop—not attempting the power of pokers upon them—and count and make a mental note of the amount of the rival hoards, she sent Dahlia all her messages of smirking reproof, and delighted love, and hoped that they would soon meet and know happiness.
Rhoda, as usual, had no emotion to spare. She took possession of the second box, and thus laden, suffered Robert to lift her into the cart. They drove across the green, past the mill and its flashing waters, and into the road, where the waving of Mrs. Sumfit's desolate handkerchief was latest seen.
A horseman rode by, whom Rhoda recognized, and she blushed and had a boding shiver. Robert marked him, and the blush as well.
It was Algernon, upon a livery-stable hack. His countenance expressed a mighty disappointment.
The farmer saw no one. The ingratitude and treachery of Robert, and of Mrs. Sumfit and Master Gammon, kept him brooding in sombre disgust of life. He remarked that the cart jolted a good deal.
“If you goes in a cart, wi' company o' four, you expects to be jolted,” said Master Gammon.
“You seem to like it,” Robert observed to the latter.
“It don't disturb my in'ards,” quoth the serenest of mankind.
“Gammon,” the farmer addressed him from the front seat, without turning his head: “you'll take and look about for a new place.”
Master Gammon digested the recommendation in silence. On its being repeated, with, “D' ye hear?” he replied that he heard well enough.
“Well, then, look about ye sharp, or maybe, you'll be out in the cold,” said the farmer.
“Na,” returned Master Gammon, “ah never frets till I'm pinched.”
“I've given ye notice,” said the farmer.
“No, you ha'n't,” said Master Gammon.
“I give ye notice now.”
“No, you don't.”
“How d' ye mean?”
“Cause I don't take ne'er a notice.”
“Then you'll be kicked out, old man.”
“Hey! there y' have me,” said Master Gammon. “I growed at the farm, and you don't go and tell ne'er a tree t' walk.”
Rhoda laid her fingers in the veteran's palm.
“You're a long-lived family, aren't you, Master Gammon?” said Robert, eyeing Rhoda's action enviously.
Master Gammon bade him go to a certain churchyard in Sussex, and inspect a particular tombstone, upon which the ages of his ancestry were written. They were more like the ages of oaks than of men.
“It's the heart kills,” said Robert.
“It's damned misfortune,” murmured the farmer.
“It is the wickedness in the world,” thought Rhoda.
“It's a poor stomach, I reckon,” Master Gammon ruminated.
They took leave of him at the station, from which eminence it was a notable thing to see him in the road beneath, making preparations for his return, like a conqueror of the hours. Others might run, and stew, if they liked: Master Gammon had chosen his pace, and was not of a mind to change it for anybody or anything. It was his boast that he had never ridden by railway: “nor ever means to, if I can help it,” he would say. He was very much in harmony with universal nature, if to be that is the secret of human life.
Meantime, Algernon retraced his way to the station in profound chagrin: arriving there just as the train was visible. He caught sight of the cart with Master Gammon in it, and asked him whether all his people were going up to London; but the reply was evidently a mile distant, and had not started; so putting a sovereign in Master Gammon's hand, together with the reins of his horse, Algernon bade the old man conduct the animal to the White Bear Inn, and thus violently pushing him off the tramways of his intelligence, left him stranded.
He had taken a first-class return-ticket, of course, being a gentleman. In the desperate hope that he might jump into a carriage with Rhoda, he entered one of the second-class compartments; a fact not only foreign to his tastes and his habits, but somewhat disgraceful, as he thought. His trust was, that the ignoble of this earth alone had beheld him: at any rate, his ticket was first class, as the guard would instantly and respectfully perceive, and if he had the discomforts, he had also some of the consolations of virtue.
Once on his way, the hard seat and the contemptible society surrounding him, assured his reflective spirit that he loved: otherwise, was it in reason that he should endure these hardships? “I really love the girl,” he said, fidgeting for cushions.
He was hot, and wanted the window up, to which his fellow-travellers assented. Then, the atmosphere becoming loaded with offence to his morbid sense of smell, he wanted the windows down; and again they assented. “By Jove! I must love the girl,” ejaculated Algernon inwardly, as cramp, cold, and afflicted nostrils combined to astonish his physical sensations. Nor was it displeasing to him to evince that he was unaccustomed to bare boards.
“We're a rich country,” said a man to his neighbour; “but, if you don't pay for it, you must take your luck, and they'll make you as uncomfortable as they can.”
“Ay,” said the other. “I've travelled on the Continent. The second-class carriages there are fit for anybody to travel in. This is what comes of the worship of money—the individual is not respected. Pounds alone!”
“These,” thought Algernon, “are beastly democrats.”
Their remarks had been sympathetic with his manifestations, which had probably suggested them. He glowered out of the window in an exceedingly foreign manner. A plainly dressed woman requested that the window should be closed. One of the men immediately proceeded to close it. Algernon stopped him.
“Pardon me, sir,” said the man; “it's a lady wants it done;” and he did it.
A lady! Algernon determined that these were the sort of people he should hate for life. “Go among them and then see what they are,” he addressed an imaginary assembly of anti-democrats, as from a senatorial chair set in the after days. Cramp, cold, ill-ordered smells, and eternal hatred of his fellow-passengers, convinced him, in their aggregation, that he surmounted not a little for love of Rhoda.
The train arrived in London at dusk. Algernon saw Rhoda step from a carriage near the engine, assisted by Robert; and old Anthony was on the platform to welcome her; and Anthony seized her bag, and the troop of passengers moved away. It may be supposed that Algernon had angry sensations at sight of Robert; and to a certain extent this was the case; but he was a mercurial youth, and one who had satisfactorily proved superior strength enjoyed a portion of his respect. Besides, if Robert perchance should be courting Rhoda, he and Robert would enter into another field of controversy; and Robert might be taught a lesson.
He followed the party on foot until they reached Anthony's dwelling-place, noted the house, and sped to the Temple. There, he found a telegraphic message from Edward, that had been awaiting him since the morning.
“Stop It,” were the sole words of the communication brief, and if one preferred to think so, enigmatic.
“What on earth does he mean?” cried Algernon, and affected again and again to see what Edward meant, without success. “Stop it?—stop what?—Stop the train? Stop my watch? Stop the universe? Oh! this is rank humbug.” He flung the paper down, and fell to counting the money in his possession. The more it dwindled, the more imperative it became that he should depart from his country.
Behind the figures, he calculated that, in all probability, Rhoda would visit her sister this night. “I can't stop that,” he said: and hearing a clock strike, “nor that” a knock sounded on the door; “nor that.” The reflection inspired him with fatalistic views.
Sedgett appeared, and was welcome. Algernon had to check the impulse of his hand to stretch out to the fellow, so welcome was he: Sedgett stated that everything stood ready for the morrow. He had accomplished all that had to be done.
“And it's more than many'd reckon,” he said, and rubbed his hands, and laughed. “I was aboard ship in Liverpool this morning, that I was. That ere young woman's woke up from her dream”, (he lengthened the word inexpressibly) “by this time, that she is. I had to pay for my passage, though;” at which recollection he swore. “That's money gone. Never mind: there's worse gone with it. Ain't it nasty—don't you think, sir—to get tired of a young woman you've been keepin' company with, and have to be her companion, whether you will, or whether you won't? She's sick enough now. We travelled all night. I got her on board; got her to go to her bed; and, says I, I'll arrange about the luggage. I packs myself down into a boat, and saw the ship steam away a good'n. Hanged if I didn't catch myself singin'. And haven't touched a drop o' drink, nor will, till tomorrow's over. Don't you think 'Daehli's' a very pretty name, sir? I run back to her as hard as rail 'd carry me. She's had a letter from her sister, recommending o' her to marry me: 'a noble man,' she calls me—ha, ha! that's good. 'And what do you think, my dear?' says I; and, bother me, if I can screw either a compliment or a kiss out of her. She's got fine lady airs of her own. But I'm fond of her, that I am. Well, sir, at the church door, after the ceremony, you settle our business, honour bright—that's it, en't it?”
Algernon nodded. Sedgett's talk always produced discomfort in his ingenuous bosom.
“By the way, what politics are you?” he asked.
Sedgett replied, staring, that he was a Tory, and Algernon nodded again, but with brows perturbed at the thought of this ruffian being of the same political persuasion as himself.
“Eh?” cried Sedgett; “I don't want any of your hustings pledges, though. You'll be at the door tomorrow, or I'll have a row—mind that. A bargain's a bargain. I like the young woman, but I must have the money. Why not hand it over now?”
“Not till the deed's done,” said Algernon, very reasonably.
Sedgett studied his features, and as a result remarked: “You put me up to this: I'll do it, and trust you so far, but if I'm played on, I throw the young woman over and expose you out and out. But you mean honourable?”
“I do,” Algernon said of his meaning.
Another knock sounded on the door. It proved to be a footman in Sir William's livery, bearing a letter from Edward; an amplification of the telegram: