THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH: ‘RICHARD FEVEREL’ AND ‘RHODA FLEMING.’
As this little book is written for those who have the misfortune not to
be acquainted with the novels of Mr. Meredith, I do not think it will
be inadvisable to add to my essay a slight sketch of each one, hoping
thereby to send readers to the head source. Those who allow themselves
to be persuaded thereto will have reason to thank me, even should they
be among the common majority, unable to appreciate to its full value
the new chapter in English literature offered them.
Much mention has been made of ‘Richard Feverel,’ the novel of Mr.
Meredith’s youth, and, we are told, his own special favourite. The
plot of this powerful story turns from a mixture of graceful mirth,
delicious wit, and profound reflection, to tragedy, upon what I
humbly conceive to be an impossible situation. And this is the sudden
separation of Richard from his young bride. But after noting the
crudities and errors of taste and judgment, which are frequent enough
in the book, and which never once hide from us the lambent flame of
genius that steadily burns through the whole, our fear is lest our
desire to praise adequately should drop us into hyperbole. It is so
much easier to blame than to praise with taste--above all, to praise
judiciously. Our wits will always devise fresh methods for a successful
use of the whip of censure, but in admiration it is less easy to get
beyond the exclamatory period, and the end of simple epithets is soon
reached.
The stamp of a breathless originality lies upon each character, however
minor, and commingled in their creation is an indescribable mixture
of weight and delicacy, of solid, massive strength and finish to a
hair’s breadth--the finish of a purely-cut cameo. Of the wise youth,
that delightful cynic, turning to obesity, and devoted to his stomach,
it would be impossible to say enough. Every sentence, long and short,
that he utters is a gem of matchless and irresistible wit. Adrian
Harley’s wit is unique, and beside him Sheridan himself must be content
with a lower place. If he breeds a sceptical thought in our breast,
it is the doubt that any man in real life could be so continuously
and unpremeditatedly witty throughout a reasonably long record of
utterances. Though not purposely a leading character, he becomes so by
force of his own individuality, and the pronounced part he plays in the
development of Richard’s career.
The story opens with a description of the inmates of Raynham Abbey, the
seat of Sir Austin Feverel, the hero’s father. This quaint individual
is introduced to us as the anonymous author of a notable book, ‘The
Pilgrim’s Scrip,’ with one aphorism of which we are startled on the
first page: ‘I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by
man.’ We see at once that we have to deal with a gentleman who, like
Plato and Schopenhauer, and a long list of intervening philosophers,
holds the amiable sex in scorn. Here we have ‘the imperfect animal’
of the one and ‘the ugly sex’ of the other more courteously, but not
less contemptuously, defined. There is no pretension to novelty, for he
admits that ‘our new thoughts have thrilled dead bosoms.’
Reading further, we discover the clue to his scorn of woman. The poor
gentleman has been wronged upon his hearth, and is a widower while
yet his wife lives. He once had a wife he loved devotedly, and a
friend, a poet, whom he trusted. The one betrayed his love and the
other his confidence. The story is not new, but novel indeed is its
effect upon Sir Austin Feverel. Bankrupt in love and friendship, he
fell upon bitterness. To keep his heart alive, while presenting a mask
of indifference to intimates and relatives, he concentrated all his
hopes upon his baby boy, and, for the child’s ultimate misfortune,
resolved to found a system for his benefit. But he wishes his paternal
tenderness to remain unsuspected by others, and dismisses the nurse who
caught him sobbing over his son’s cradle.
The inmates of Raynham are certainly a queer collection of specimens:
Hippias, once thought to be the genius of the family, but a premature
victim to strong appetites and a weak stomach, living in the embraces
of dyspepsia, and engaged in a perpetual contention with his dinner.
Algernon Feverel, whose career as a gentleman of the Guards lay in
his legs, until it was irrevocably cut short by the loss of one on
a cricket-ground, when he devoted himself to the direction of his
nephew’s animal vigour ‘with a melancholy vivacity.’ A venerable lady,
known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who spent the day preparing for dinner
and the night in remembering it. Mrs. Doria Forey, the baronet’s eldest
sister, who fixed herself at the Abbey with the intention of marrying
her only daughter, Clare, to the Hope of Raynham. There are two other
Feverel ladies, known as the mothers of two remarkable sons, one our
delightful wise youth, Adrian Harley, and the other, Austin Wentworth,
a noble youth, who had nobly redeemed a common fault in the lives of
young men, by marriage, and ‘was condemned to undergo the world’s harsh
judgment, not for the fault--for its atonement.’ ‘Adrian was noted for
his sagacity, which carried the world, but brought him no friends. His
problem for life was to satisfy his appetites without rashly staking
his character.’ He was polished, luxurious, and happy at the cost of
others, and, while pursuing the maids of earth, enjoyed a reputation
for virtue. The world declared him moral and wise, ‘and the pleasing
converse every way of his disgraced cousin Austin.’ And we ever greet
him cordially, for all his vices, and the ‘edge to his smile, which
cuts much like a sneer.’
In this varied domestic circle Richard is brought up, the victim of a
system. He was carefully kept from the corruption of public schools,
and destined to enter upon manhood immaculate and perfect. On his
fourteenth birthday we meet him in revolt against the system, and
flying with his serf, Ripton, from a medical examination proposed by
his father, who understands physical perfection to be wedded to moral
perfection. Ripton tells him that his sentiments are those of a girl,
whereupon the lads quarrel, as only boys and other barbarians quarrel,
and make it up in gallant fashion when they hear voices coming in their
search. Their running leads them to trespass, and brings them into
ugly collision with one Farmer Blaize, who gives them a taste of the
whip, and thus rouses a passion of indignation in Richard’s breast.
He threatens to shoot the farmer, and instead conspires for revenge
by arson. Here we are introduced to a silent and unobtrusive little
maid, Richard’s cousin Clare, who passes through the book a maidenly
phantom, only tragically revealed to Richard and to us by her death and
sorrowful little diary. Her offence with Richard on his birthday for
his neglect of her, and her penetration at night into his chamber, is
the second occasion in her short life for departing from the curious
negation and reserve of her character. She drifts with circumstances,
guided by her mother, and holds her tongue. Of her feelings and
sentiments we are in the dark, until the despair of silence stretches
her upon her deathbed in search of rest. Silent, white, not understood,
she remains for us the most pathetic figure in the book. Neither she
nor the author choose to court our sympathies by any of the ordinary
sensational methods, and her cold pride and his reserve are equally
powerful in securing them.
Meanwhile, the conspiring Richard, unmindful of Clare, is exciting
profound reflection in the bosom of the wise youth. ‘My respected
chief,’ the latter apostrophizes Sir Austin, ‘combustibles are only
the more dangerous for compression. This boy will be ravenous for
earth when he is let loose, and very soon make his share of it look as
foolish as yonder game-pie!’ Hearing Sir Austin make the round of the
house at night, he remarks: ‘A monomaniac at large, watching over sane
people in slumber.’
Sir Austin, marching onward, hears strange talk, between his son and
Master Ripton, of fire and delay, and violence and vengeance, when
Sir Austin condescends to play the spy. He discovers that the Hope
of Raynham has embarked in his own vessel upon the waters of life. A
sensation of infinite pity overcomes the poor baronet, asking himself
what the years will do when one day has done so much; but he is
consoled by the consciousness of his own part of Providence to his
son. Baited and worried by his sagacious cousin, who shrewdly suspects
his guilt, Richard takes refuge in lies. He lies upon a gigantic scale,
to the horror of his father and the amusement of his cousin. But there
is a fine and captivating manliness in his lies. He is a perfect
boy in all his moods--an English boy, barbaric, brave, and pure.
Observing him, Adrian says: ‘Boys are like monkeys, the gravest actors
of farcical nonsense that the world possesses’--which philosophizing
leads him to Hamlet and Ophelia. ‘She, poor maid! asks for marriage and
smiling babes, while my lord lover stands questioning the Infinite and
rants to the Impalpable.’ And when reminded of his responsibilities as
Richard’s tutor, he replies: ‘I take my young prince as I find him: a
Julian or a Caracalla, a Constantine or a Nero. Then if he will play
the fiddle to a conflagration, he shall play it well; if he must be a
disputatious apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and men,
and have the habit of saying his prayers.’
After the arson adventure, the shifts and lies, the failure of a scheme
to help Tom Bakewell out of prison for his own crime, confession, and
the bitter cup of an apology to Farmer Blaize, forced upon him by his
father, Richard comes through the first stage of his ordeal a wiser
and a better youth. There is a solemn reconciliation between him and
the ruffled system-creator; tears, embraces, and a new aphorism on the
part of Sir Austin: ‘Expediency is man’s wisdom; doing right is God’s.’
Reviewing affairs in an ingenuous letter to his fellow-conspirator,
Richard says of his future divinity: ‘Wherever there’s mischief, there
are girls, I think. She had the insolence to notice my face, and ask me
not to be unhappy. I was polite, of course (British-boy fashion), but I
would not look at her.’
This brings us to the blossoming and critical season of the system.
Behold him on the edge of youth, beautiful and strong in body,
guileless and pure. He takes to blushing, long vigils, and consumes
paper--all dangerous signs. The father is distressed, and orders him
to burn his poetic effusions, deciding, since the mention of love is
dangerous at this age, to put everyone at Raynham on their guard.
Servants in love are dismissed, the others are ordered to be discreet
and avoid kissing. The visits of a hopeless curate, in love with
Mrs. Doria, are interdicted, and this excellent lady is ordered to
remove her daughter from the Abbey. In this virtuous solitude Richard
becomes wayward and miserable, rides like fire about the country, and
has discovered the nothingness of all things. Adrian reports him as
extraordinarily cynical. He startles Sir Austin in sentimental fooling
with Lady Blandish’s hand, and finds he has discovered the secret of
life. He discourses pensively with other stricken males about women’s
names, and here we come upon the beautiful introduction of Lucy, the
second of the immortal duet of Meredith. Who does not remember that
lovely passage beginning?--
‘Above green, flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder
below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the
reeds.’ This preludes the divine love-scenes, the sweet romance of boy
and maid, in a setting of fair landscape, described as no other pen
can describe English scenery. To analyze these chapters, or select any
passages by preference, were as idle as to attempt to catch a sunray
or sketch a flying cloud. They are written in sunlight to the music of
love. To quote from them would be to spoil their beauty. As we read, it
is not only on Richard that the gracious glory of heaven has fallen.
We, too, are under the spell, and, while we read on, remember all we
had thought forgotten and dead in the fold of forgotten years.
But Lucy is Farmer Blaize’s niece, and consequently no match for a
baronet’s son. Sir Austin has gone up to London in search of a bride
worthy the high gift of his son’s untainted youth. His adventures
are inimitably recorded. We delight in his interviews with Lawyer
Thompson, in his unmasking of that harmless young scamp Master Ripton,
and, above all, in his discovery of a suitable bride, when a few years
have been added, in the daughter of one Mrs. Caroline Grandison, a
female system-creator, whom the author presents as less amiable than
her brother-perfecter of humanity. ‘A perfect woman mirrored in her
progeny,’ Adrian describes her, and admits that he would prefer her to
her progeny. The fates and his father conspire awhile against Richard,
and after separation, illness and other discomposing events, he outwits
his enemies and runs off with a bride of his own choice--Lucy, the
rustic maid.
Up to this point the book is perfect. But here comes the
stumbling-block. Would a youth, whose purity and innocence would be
sure to give added strength to his first sweeping passion, in the
middle of an ideal honeymoon, still bewildered by his bliss, allow
himself, upon such a flimsy pretext as his father’s indirectly-conveyed
wish, to be separated from his bride? To be kept for months in London
through the shallowest subterfuges? Would either of this passionate
pair, seeing with the eyes of instinct that never errs, submit to this
absurd and unreasonable separation? The Richard we know would have
found a way to balk his elders and keep his bride by his side, or he
would have seen through the plot, and would have flown back to her
after a week’s fretting and fuming in town. This would mean the loss
of a great and tragic scene--his last parting with Lucy--though the
probabilities would not have been outraged. But Shakespeare himself may
incur such a reproach and be not less great, and a poignant situation
may be reached by the road of gross inconsistency and thrill us not
the less.
Having so far assisted at the launching of youth upon the waters
of happiness, we are invited to assist at something still more
interesting--Richard’s undertaking in the reform of spotted woman, his
fall, his repentance, and his expiation. We are introduced to many
new characters who do not edify us, but only one of whom is nearly
irredeemably bad--one satellite of a worthless but not inhuman peer,
the Hon. Peter Brayder. We have met the famous Berry, anciently the
dismissed nurse, who caught Sir Austin sobbing, and own to finding
her Dickensonian volubility and humour depressing in the extreme. We
greet her with a grimace that does duty for a smile, which broadens
into cheerfulness upon her exit. Much of the society of Mrs. Berry
would, we own, fit us for Bedlam. The book is so living that it breeds
the strong aversions and preferences of actual existence. The very
air of reality about the woman provokes an added weariness. We endure
her and listen to her as a living bore, wondering when and where she
will stop, without the least inclination to skip a line devoted to her
prolonged and disconnected utterances. The humour of her matrimonial
differences and of the final _dénouement_ escapes us, but we tolerate
it as we tolerate the rest of the infinite trials of life. In feeling
that the book would be better without her, we feel it just as we
feel that our sojourn in a certain place, where we spent the summer
or winter, would have been the better for the absence of some other
tiresome sojourner, that is all. We cannot remember the place without
remembering the obnoxious visitor. So we cannot remember ‘Richard
Feverel’ without recalling Mrs. Berry--an excellent woman, in the
main, and an instrument of reconciliation between Sir Austin and his
daughter-in-law; devoted, as bores usually are, and full of all the
virtues. Mr. Meredith loves her, and for that reason we make shift to
put up with her. But we could wish her less obtrusive, and, above all,
less garrulous and gross.
Richard’s experiences in town, illuminated by the mild lamp of Adrian’s
wit, carry us along with him. He claims our undivided sympathies
whenever he appears, and we are not sorry to have him to ourselves
without his bride. Lucy may conquer the wise youth by the cookery-book,
but as we are not invited to eat of her dinners, we prefer the
unedifying sight of Richard upon the Thames and dining with guardsmen
and light ladies at Richmond, or escorting his Sir Julian by way of
conversion of that indecorous lady to the path of virtue. We like less
Lady Judith, the ardent female Radical who married a decrepit lord to
carry out her principles, and took Richard in hand, until he succumbed,
upon champagne and song, into the arms of the siren. The father who had
given him to the world an immaculate youth was the first instrument of
his fall. He desired him to see what Adrian calls the ‘demi, or damned
monde,’ before entering upon housekeeping--an amiable desire on the
part of a virtuous old gentleman.
After his fall, Richard awakes to a state of desperate remorse, and
disappears to a remote part of Germany. He has found his mother, as
well as perversion where he had intended to convert, had discovered
the sad little secret of his cousin Clare in her death, and now ‘he is
trying the German waters, preparatory to his undertaking the release
of Italy from the subjugation of the Teuton,’ in company with the
sentimental politician, Lady Judith Felle. When questioned about him,
Adrian says ‘he was going to reform the world--unfortunately he began
with the feminine side of it. Cupid, proud of Phœbus newly slain, or
Pluto, wishing to people his kingdom, put it into the soft head of one
of the guileless, grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work. Oh
horror! he never expected that. Conceive the system in the flesh, and
you have our Richard. The consequence is that this male Peri refuses
to enter his paradise, though the gates are open for him, the trumpets
blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful within.’ He views
his fault as a pure woman would, and though knowing of Sir Austin’s
reconcilement to his marriage and his bride, learning, too, of his
paternity, he shrinks from returning to her as unworthy. The scene in
the German forest, after he learns the news, is most beautiful, and a
worthy prelude to that grandly tragic last scene between Richard and
Lucy, when, upon his return, he discovers the plot to ruin his wife, in
which the baleful enchantress proves the most respectable and honest
of the actors. Richard has challenged her husband, Lord Montfalcon,
and hurries down to Raynham, where the fatted calf is ready, as well
as numerous open arms, the kisses of wife and child. The strength of
this parting scene is awful. We feel the wrench of it, and the horror,
and sorrow itself seems too full for tears. After it the catastrophe
of the last chapter is smoothly bridged, and the sadness of Lucy’s
death and Richard’s rise from a sick-bed, numbed with grief, is but a
softly-appropriate drop-scene.
As a story, ‘Rhoda Fleming’ is, perhaps, the simplest and strongest
work of Mr. Meredith. Certainly it is the best-told story from the
artistic point of view. Like ‘Richard Feverel,’ it ends tragically,
only here the tragic effects are not concentrated upon the end. They
pervade the entire book, and the termination is led up to consistently
almost from the beginning, where we meet the two sisters, with minds
and beauty above their sphere, and see them silently watched by
two young gentlemen. The foreboding is unanalyzable, but it is a
foreboding, and we apprehend storm and contention and sombre lights.
Sombre the book is throughout, and we regard it as almost impertinent
to yield to the occasional pricks of humour that tickle us into quiet
laughter. How can we bear to laugh at the oddities of mankind, even
at the bidding of such a master, when we see a sweet and pure girl’s
life going to ruin, and understand that the very nature of her is such
that there is no return from the wreck, no after-sunshine to restore
the ravages of storm? Here is no picturesque mingling of lights and
shadows, no lyrical romance, no melodies of the upper spheres, to
imperil the dark remembrance of the _dénouement_.
The very opening is shadowed. At a village feast, when children danced
upon a mirthful May Day on a green, lapped in the soft beauty of
Kentish landscape, appeared a young woman, who had left her home with a
spotted name, and who was left in silence humbly apart. Dahlia Fleming,
pitying her, expresses to her father a wish to speak to her. The father
stoutly forbade her, and when Rhoda, the stronger, defied him, and
went and stood by the poor girl, he punished her by not speaking to
her for a week. And the girls, reflecting on this, marvelled at the
cruelty of even the kindest men to offending or repentant women. This
is where Mr. Meredith is so original and so just. It is impossible to
go far on the road of life without being frequently confronted with the
unrecognised fact that it is men, and not women, who are hardest and
most cruel to fallen women. It is they in their capacity of householder
who pronounce the verdict of damnation, as this Kentish farmer did,
and it is soft and innocent women who, like these country maidens,
would fain offer them the hand of sympathy and sisterhood. Mr. Meredith
never follows the beaten track of generalities. When he gives us a
generality, it is one of his own discovery, and you may depend upon
finding a very sound truth at the bottom of it.
One of the drollest and completest of Mr. Meredith’s odd characters
is the uncle of these girls, Anthony Hackbut, a mythical millionaire,
understood by the rustic mind to be vaguely residing in London, and
amassing quantities of gold and genial banknotes. The family look to
him for elevation and fortune. He passes for a miser because he refused
to advance the farmer one hundred pounds in times of difficulties, and
sowed ill-will upon the death of the girl’s mother by urging as plea
his position of great trust in a wealthy bank that prevented him from
assisting at his sister’s funeral; nobly offering, in his opinion,
to defray half the funeral expenses. He referred to funds as worldly
things, and hoped to meet his family in heaven, ‘where brotherly
love, as well as money, was ready made, and not always in the next
street.’ He ended by a hint of susceptibility to the friendliness of
an invitation to spend a vacation in Kent, and offered one of his
nieces the post of housekeeper, should she wish to see London, and
make acquaintance with the world. The seductions were fruit at stalls,
oysters and whelks and winkles, pictures in shops, sights of muslin
and silks, and rides on omnibuses, with an occasional glimpse of the
military on horseback.
Dahlia is surpassingly fair, and the question of her departure is
submitted to grave deliberation in an assembly composed of Farmer
Fleming, held between a desire to secure the miser’s money and a dread
of London for his daughter; Robert, the sedate and handsome assistant,
in love with the dark Rhoda; Mrs. Sumfit, the cook, a very fat and
loving woman; and Master Gammon, an aged foreman, with the cast of
eye of an antediluvian lizard, who remarked ‘that he never had much
opinion of London.’ Policy and Dahlia’s entreaties prevail, and the
fair girl goes up to the great city forebodingly, we believe. It is
like a division of souls for the two sisters so devotedly attached. A
lovely miniature is sent down to Rhoda in secret, who marvels at its
beauty and at the secrecy. And the next paragraph brings down to Kent
old Anthony Hackbut. The scene is inimitable. The queer old fellow,
with a disconcerting reserve, tosses Dahlia off upon a charge of
giddiness, drinks his beer, because he has not paid for it, propounds
an arithmetical problem to Master Gammon, who retorts ‘that he is paid
to work, and not to think,’ and continues to eat his dumplings to the
fret of nerves of the watchers impatiently waiting for news of Dahlia.
We learn of vestiary elegances and temper, and of an old man left to
take his tea alone; and, like Rhoda, we understand the sadness of it
and, unlike her, suspect its meaning. It is the sadder because of the
farmer’s pride in his handsome daughters, so greatly superior to their
station, and of a conviction that he will prove a cruel judge when
the hour for mercy comes. Rhoda goes to London to rejoin her darling,
her one fear lest this sumptuously-attired young woman should be
ashamed of her rustic garb. Robert, a very masterful and extraordinary
young farmer, the intimate friend of a major and a polished English
gentleman, the prize drinker in his own village and a water-drinker
here, a man of double life and double character, and at the same
time single and truthful in both, has already sharpened her acute
sensibilities for the penetration of doubt of Dahlia. She is dropped
into a bitter depth of brooding by the fact that Dahlia is not there
to meet her when she arrives. It is late at night when Dahlia comes
to fetch away her mother’s Bible, and finds her sister. The surprise
decides her destiny for that night. She stays with her sister, and
sends away the young man waiting for her on the pavement below.
This young man is the son of Sir William Blancove, in whose bank
Anthony is employed as a clerk. Thus had he met Dahlia, to her cost. He
and his cousin Algernon, son of the neighbouring squire at Wrexham,
were the youths who stood watching the girls one May Day feast.
Algernon is a flippant sinner of the well-known school, generally
beset with debts, and not much troubled with morals. Edward, Dahlia’s
lover, is of other texture--of a perilous superiority, cold-brained,
legal, sharp, and unyouthfully serious. They have a cousin, Mrs.
Margaret Lovell, whose part in the story it is difficult to define.
She does harm, and sometimes appears to wish to do well. Fabulously
fair, brilliant and proud, she plays with both young men, and seems to
play the mischief all round. In the first scene between the youths we
are dashed from a conviction of Edward’s cynicism by a very human and
sincere cry: ‘Virtue, by heaven! I wish I were entitled to preach it
to any man on earth.’ And yet this cry and the flush are contradicted
by his cold perusal of Dahlia’s heart-broken letter explaining why she
sent him away alone. ‘The poor child threatens to eat no dinner if I
don’t write,’ he says, and we pity the girl doubly.
After this it is no surprise to find Dahlia abroad, and writing home
letters breathing frantic worship of the husband she does not name.
Rhoda’s trusting joy in the news is pitiful--more pitiful still her
loyal endeavour to shield her beloved sister when the farmer’s wrath
explodes over an unsigned announcement of the marriage. In reply to
his cry, ‘Dahlia Blank! Who’s her husband? Has he got a name?’ she
protests: ‘She was 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 harm?’
And then the man in his wretched perplexity appeals to Robert, to
whom he had hoped to marry Dahlia: ‘I’m shut in a dark room with the
candle blown out. I’ve a sort of fear you have in that dilemma, lest
you should lay your finger 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, does this look like the letter of a married
woman? I can’t think for myself. She ties my hands.’ To please Rhoda
Robert would have lied, and said it did. ‘Her face was like an eager
flower straining for life,’ but all he could reply was, ‘She says
she’s married, and we’re bound to accept what she says.’ His answer is
remembered wrathfully by Rhoda.
Hearing that Edward is married to Dahlia, Mrs. Lovell exclaims,
‘Impossible! Edward has more heart than brains.’ She resolves not
to forsake him in his folly, which means disaster for Dahlia, and
ultimately for him. A letter from Dahlia in London brings up Rhoda to
her, accompanied by this uncompromising father. Lugubrious portent,
Dahlia is not visible to them when they call at her lodgings. Her
letter shows that she saw them from the window. The next chapter
unfolds the mystery. Dahlia is weeping and miserable, Edward
uncomfortable and protesting. Like young men who embark lightly upon
such perilous waters, he is irritated by the discovery that women are
‘pieces of machinery that, for want of proper oiling, creak, stick,
threaten convulsions, and are tragic and stir us the wrong way.’ By
way of medicine he suggests champagne and the theatre. To the same
theatre Algernon and Dahlia’s family have gone, and we may imagine the
sensation of their recognition of Dahlia in a box where Algernon has
joined his cousin to help the fainting girl. Algernon only is seen, and
is believed to be Dahlia’s seducer. There is sorrow and the face of
stricken and humbled pride in the Kentish farm upon their return. The
farmer’s sole aim now is to marry his remaining daughter respectably
and forget the sinner. The scene between Rhoda and Robert, in which
she still implores him to say that he thinks Dahlia innocent, is
unforgettable--sharp, strong, and conflicting. He is sorry for Dahlia,
and ready to marry the woman he loves if she will have him. Rhoda
heard him not, ‘her brain was beating at the mystery and misery wherein
Dahlia lay engulphed.’ She will not marry a man who fancies he has
anything to pardon, and when he lamely protests that Dahlia has nothing
to do with her, she bursts out: ‘We are one, and will be till we die.
I feel my sister’s hand in mine, though she’s away and lost. She’s my
darling forever and ever. We’re one.’
Pushed by admiration and love, Robert unmasks himself. Some of his
phrases have a Shakesperean ring. He half conquers the fierce, proud
girl by a promise to help Dahlia. He shows himself still stronger in
his interview with Squire Blancove, when the farmer calls to accuse
Algernon and beg to have his daughter found; and still more startlingly
when he returns to his birth-place, and dodges the young men, flinging
written and public insolences at them. Edward, returned to his natural
element, shows a mixture of cynicism and lingering conscience that
he only loses in the fiery ordeal awaiting him, when to his and our
surprise he finds himself in possession of a passionately-stirred
heart. In Robert’s native village, where Edward is staying, we meet
one slimy wretch called Sedgett, who is destined to be the hero of a
horrid conspiracy against Dahlia. Everyone seems to be more or less
mixed up in it--Robert, Rhoda, and Farmer Fleming with a sense of duty,
Algernon in idle villainy, Mrs. Lovett through intrigue, and Edward
as a door of escape from his own responsibilities. Was ever one poor
unhappy girl so beset by friends and foes and cruel circumstances
to drive her to madness? On the part of her family, strength and
stern tenderness resolve for her greater misery; on that of Edward,
vanity and cowardice. Abandoned, she falls ill, goes to a hospital,
and comes out a broken flower, permanently bent by the storm. What
refuge in the eyes of those who unkindly desire her good is there
for her but marriage--with any man whose name she may bear? As for
Edward, in his profound remorse and repentance, all Kentish faces
are turned ruthlessly against him, against his offer of atonement,
and poor Dahlia’s cry for his tenderness. Rhoda is his fiercest and
most pitiless enemy. Dahlia’s letters to him have been suppressed by
Algernon, who himself has pleasurable visions of marriage with the
victim’s sister, and the wild ramping life of the colonies. The general
decision is that Dahlia shall marry the loathsome yokel Sedgett,
without any thought of the barbarous sacrifice, worse than death for
her. And the ruffian is to get a thousand pounds for taking this
tarnished jewel--such is the morality of the majority. Pass a woman
straight from illegal arms into those of a husband, and you wash her
white. The legal repetition transforms the position into virtue.
Edward himself, though desirous of the conclusion, is wounded and
astonished by it. Dahlia’s silence startles him, and he continually
asks for her letters. He cannot help thinking of her while seeking
the distractions of Paris to forget her. Never for one moment does
he alienate our sympathies completely, and we understand from the
beginning that he is neither a vulgar sinner nor cynic. Indeed, it
is with a sense of personal satisfaction that we greet his return to
England, resolved upon a courageous and manly atonement--a changed man,
unable to get the thought of his unfortunate victim out of his head. In
that fine interview with his father we are proud that he has surpassed
our predictions of him, and we wish he would be left to warm the poor
heart he has chilled to stone.
But Rhoda is there to shield her sister from what she regards as
perfidious tenderness. Nothing will induce her to believe in the
sincerity of Edward’s repentance, nor accept his atonement. The unhappy
girl, between all these ill-advised friends and protectors, is forced
to an abhorred ceremony, where at the church door she is submitted to
the indignity of being flung off by the ruffian who has married her for
money. Is this human retribution? for it is worse even than God’s! When
later Sedgett comes down to Kent to claim his scorned wife, Dahlia,
to escape him, drinks poison, and when Edward comes, showing upon his
pallid face the touch of wasting grief for all the wringing sorrows
brought about by his own temporary baseness, and Rhoda, melted to him,
calls her sister down to happiness, Dahlia is found by the side of the
bed, ‘inanimate and pale as a sister of death.’ She is brought back
to life, but not to happiness. Wasted and weak, passion in her was
extinguished, and neither the touch of her lover’s hand nor his voice
could ever again thrill her. Robert and Rhoda marry, but neither Edward
nor Dahlia marry. Her heart was among the ashes, and her last words to
Robert are, ‘Help poor girls!’