Mr. Fleming kept his forehead from his daughter's good-night kiss
until the room was cleared, after supper, and then embracing her very
heartily, he informed her that her uncle had offered to pay her expenses
on a visit to London, by which he contrived to hint that a golden path
had opened to his girl, and at the same time entreated her to think
nothing of it; to dismiss all expectations and dreams of impossible sums
from her mind, and simply to endeavour to please her uncle, who had a
right to his own, and a right to do what he liked with his own, though
it were forty, fifty times as much as he possessed--and what that might
amount to no one knew. In fact, as is the way with many experienced
persons, in his attempt to give advice to another, he was very
impressive in lecturing himself, and warned that other not to succumb
to a temptation principally by indicating the natural basis of the
allurement. Happily for young and for old, the intense insight of the
young has much to distract or soften it. Rhoda thanked her father, and
chose to think that she had listened to good and wise things.
“Your sister,” he said--“but we won't speak of her. If I could part with
you, my lass, I'd rather she was the one to come back.”
“Dahlia would be killed by our quiet life now,” said Rhoda.
“Ay,” the farmer mused. “If she'd got to pay six men every Saturday
night, she wouldn't complain o' the quiet. But, there--you neither of
you ever took to farming or to housekeeping; but any gentleman might be
proud to have one of you for a wife. I said so when you was girls. And
if, you've been dull, my dear, what's the good o' society? Tea-cakes
mayn't seem to cost money, nor a glass o' grog to neighbours; but once
open the door to that sort o' thing and your reckoning goes. And what I
said to your poor mother's true. I said: Our girls, they're mayhap not
equals of the Hollands, the Nashaws, the Perrets, and the others about
here--no; they're not equals, because the others are not equals o' them,
maybe.”
The yeoman's pride struggled out in this obscure way to vindicate his
unneighbourliness and the seclusion of his daughters from the society
of girls of their age and condition; nor was it hard for Rhoda to assure
him, as she earnestly did, that he had acted rightly.
Rhoda, assisted by Mrs. Sumfit, was late in the night looking up what
poor decorations she possessed wherewith to enter London, and be worthy
of her sister's embrace, so that she might not shock the lady Dahlia had
become.
“Depend you on it, my dear,” said Mrs. Sumfit, “my Dahly's grown above
him. That's nettles to your uncle, my dear. He can't abide it. Don't
you see he can't? Some men's like that. Others 'd see you dressed like a
princess, and not be satisfied. They vary so, the teasin' creatures! But
one and all, whether they likes it or not, owns a woman's the better for
bein' dressed in the fashion. What do grieve me to my insidest heart, it
is your bonnet. What a bonnet that was lying beside her dear round arm
in the po'trait, and her finger up making a dimple in her cheek, as
if she was thinking of us in a sorrowful way. That's the arts o' being
lady-like--look sad-like. How could we get a bonnet for you?”
“My own must do,” said Rhoda.
“Yes, and you to look like lady and servant-gal a-goin' out for an
airin'; and she to feel it! Pretty, that'd be!”
“She won't be ashamed of me,” Rhoda faltered; and then hummed a little
tune, and said firmly--“It's no use my trying to look like what I'm
not.”
“No, truly;” Mrs. Sumfit assented. “But it's your bein' behind the
fashions what hurt me. As well you might be an old thing like me,
for any pleasant looks you'll git. Now, the country--you're like in a
coalhole for the matter o' that. While London, my dear, its pavement
and gutter, and omnibus traffic; and if you're not in the fashion,
the little wicked boys of the streets themselves 'll let you know it;
they've got such eyes for fashions, they have. And I don't want my
Dahly's sister to be laughed at, and called 'coal-scuttle,' as happened
to me, my dear, believe it or not--and shoved aside, and said to--'Who
are you?' For she reely is nice-looking. Your uncle Anthony and Mr.
Robert agreed upon that.”
Rhoda coloured, and said, after a time, “It would please me if people
didn't speak about my looks.”
The looking-glass probably told her no more than that she was nice to
the eye, but a young man who sees anything should not see like a mirror,
and a girl's instinct whispers to her, that her image has not been taken
to heart when she is accurately and impartially described by him.
The key to Rhoda at this period was a desire to be made warm with praise
of her person. She beheld her face at times, and shivered. The face was
so strange with its dark thick eyebrows, and peculiarly straight-gazing
brown eyes; the level long red under-lip and curved upper; and the chin
and nose, so unlike Dahlia's, whose nose was, after a little dip from
the forehead, one soft line to its extremity, and whose chin seemed
shaped to a cup. Rhoda's outlines were harder. There was a suspicion of
a heavenward turn to her nose, and of squareness to her chin. Her face,
when studied, inspired in its owner's mind a doubt of her being even
nice to the eye, though she knew that in exercise, and when smitten by
a blush, brightness and colour aided her claims. She knew also that her
head was easily poised on her neck; and that her figure was reasonably
good; but all this was unconfirmed knowledge, quickly shadowed by
the doubt. As the sun is wanted to glorify the right features of a
landscape, this girl thirsted for a dose of golden flattery. She felt,
without envy of her sister, that Dahlia eclipsed her: and all she
prayed for was that she might not be quite so much in the background and
obscure.
But great, powerful London--the new universe to her spirit--was opening
its arms to her. In her half sleep that night she heard the mighty
thunder of the city, crashing, tumults of disordered harmonies, and the
splendour of the lamp-lighted city appeared to hang up under a dark-blue
heaven, removed from earth, like a fresh planet to which she was being
beckoned.
At breakfast on the Sunday morning, her departure was necessarily spoken
of in public. Robert talked to her exactly as he had talked to Dahlia,
on the like occasion. He mentioned, as she remembered in one or two
instances, the names of the same streets, and professed a similar
anxiety as regarded driving her to the station and catching the train.
“That's a thing which makes a man feel his strength's nothing,” he said.
“You can't stop it. I fancy I could stop a four-in-hand at full gallop.
Mind, I only fancy I could; but when you come to do with iron and steam,
I feel like a baby. You can't stop trains.”
“You can trip 'em,” said Anthony, a remark that called forth general
laughter, and increased the impression that he was a man of resources.
Rhoda was vexed by Robert's devotion to his strength. She was going, and
wished to go, but she wished to be regretted as well; and she looked at
him more. He, on the contrary, scarcely looked at her at all. He threw
verbal turnips, oats, oxen, poultry, and every possible melancholy
matter-of-fact thing, about the table, described the farm and his
fondness for it and the neighbourhood; said a farmer's life was best,
and gave Rhoda a week in which to be tired of London.
She sneered in her soul, thinking “how little he knows of the constancy
in the nature of women!” adding, “when they form attachments.”
Anthony was shown at church, in spite of a feeble intimation he
expressed, that it would be agreeable to him to walk about in the March
sunshine, and see the grounds and the wild flowers, which never gave
trouble, nor cost a penny, and were always pretty, and worth twenty of
your artificial contrivances.
“Same as I say to Miss Dahly,” he took occasion to remark; “but no!--no
good. I don't believe women hear ye, when you talk sense of that kind.
'Look,' says I, 'at a violet.' 'Look,' says she, 'at a rose.' Well, what
can ye say after that? She swears the rose looks best. You swear the
violet costs least. Then there you have a battle between what it costs
and how it looks.”
Robert pronounced a conventional affirmative, when called on for it by a
look from Anthony. Whereupon Rhoda cried out,--
“Dahlia was right--she was right, uncle.”
“She was right, my dear, if she was a ten-thousander. She wasn't right
as a farmer's daughter with poor expectations.--I'd say humble, if
humble she were. As a farmer's daughter, she should choose the violet
side. That's clear as day. One thing's good, I admit; she tells me she
makes her own bonnets, and they're as good as milliners', and that's a
proud matter to say of your own niece. And to buy dresses for herself, I
suppose, she's sat down and she made dresses for fine ladies. I've found
her at it. Save the money for the work, says I. What does she reply--she
always has a reply: 'Uncle, I know the value of money better. 'You mean,
you spend it,' I says to her. 'I buy more than it's worth,' says she.
And I'll tell you what, Mr. Robert Armstrong, as I find your name to be,
sir; if you beat women at talking, my lord! you're a clever chap.”
Robert laughed. “I give in at the first mile.”
“Don't think much of women--is that it, sir?”
“I'm glad to say I don't think of them at all.”
“Do you think of one woman, now, Mr. Robert Armstrong?”
“I'd much rather think of two.”
“And why, may I ask?”
“It's safer.”
“Now, I don't exactly see that,” said Anthony.
“You set one to tear the other,” Robert explained.
“You're a Grand Turk Mogul in your reasonings of women, Mr. Robert
Armstrong. I hope as your morals are sound, sir?”
They were on the road to church, but Robert could not restrain a
swinging outburst.
He observed that he hoped likewise that his morals were sound.
“Because,” said Anthony, “do you see, sir, two wives--”
“No, no; one wife,” interposed Robert. “You said 'think about;' I'd
'think about' any number of women, if I was idle. But the woman you mean
to make your wife, you go to at once, and don't 'think about' her or the
question either.”
“You make sure of her, do you, sir?”
“No: I try my luck; that is all.”
“Suppose she won't have ye?”
“Then I wait for her.”
“Suppose she gets married to somebody else?”
“Well, you know, I shouldn't cast eye on a woman who was a fool.”
“Well, upon my--” Anthony checked his exclamation, returning to the
charge with, “Just suppose, for the sake of supposing--supposing she was
a fool, and gone and got married, and you thrown back'ard on one leg,
starin' at the other, stupified-like?”
“I don't mind supposing it,” said Robert. “Say, she's a fool. Her being
a fool argues that I was one in making a fool's choice. So, she jilts
me, and I get a pistol, or I get a neat bit of rope, or I take a clean
header with a cannon-ball at my heels, or I go to the chemist's and ask
for stuff to poison rats,--anything a fool'd do under the circumstances,
it don't matter what.”
Old Anthony waited for Rhoda to jump over a stile, and said to her,--
“He laughs at the whole lot of ye.”
“Who?” she asked, with betraying cheeks.
“This Mr. Robert Armstrong of yours.”
“Of mine, uncle!”
“He don't seem to care a snap o' the finger for any of ye.”
“Then, none of us must care for him, uncle.”
“Now, just the contrary. That always shows a young fellow who's
attending to his business. If he'd seen you boil potatoes, make
dumplings, beds, tea, all that, you'd have had a chance. He'd have
marched up to ye before you was off to London.”
“Saying, 'You are the woman.'” Rhoda was too desperately tickled by the
idea to refrain from uttering it, though she was angry, and suffering
internal discontent. “Or else, 'You are the cook,'” she muttered, and
shut, with the word, steel bars across her heart, calling him, mentally,
names not justified by anything he had said or done--such as mercenary,
tyrannical, and such like.
Robert was attentive to her in church. Once she caught him with his
eyes on her face; but he betrayed no confusion, and looked away at the
clergyman. When the text was given out, he found the place in his Bible,
and handed it to her pointedly--“There shall be snares and traps unto
you;” a line from Joshua. She received the act as a polite pawing
civility; but when she was coming out of church, Robert saw that a blush
swept over her face, and wondered what thoughts could be rising within
her, unaware that girls catch certain meanings late, and suffer a fiery
torture when these meanings are clear to them. Rhoda called up the
pride of her womanhood that she might despise the man who had dared to
distrust her. She kept her poppy colour throughout the day, so sensitive
was this pride. But most she was angered, after reflection, by the
doubts which Robert appeared to cast on Dahlia, in setting his finger
upon that burning line of Scripture. It opened a whole black kingdom to
her imagination, and first touched her visionary life with shade. She
was sincere in her ignorance that the doubts were her own, but they lay
deep in unawakened recesses of the soul; it was by a natural action of
her reason that she transferred and forced them upon him who had chanced
to make them visible.