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.”
She turned a face of ashes upon Robert.
“Come away, father. She is our own. She is my sister. A doubt of her is
an insult to us.”
“But Robert don't doubt her--eh?” The farmer was already half distracted
from his suspicions. “Have you any real doubt about the girl, Robert?”
“I don't trust myself to doubt anybody,” said Robert.
“You don't cast us off, my boy?”
“I'm a labourer on the farm,” said Robert, and walked away.
“He's got reason to feel this more 'n the rest of us, poor lad! It's a
blow to him.” With which the farmer struck his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.
“I wish he'd set his heart on a safer young woman.”
Rhoda's shudder of revulsion was visible as she put her mouth up to kiss
her father's cheek.