Rhoda Fleming V5 By George Meredith

RHODA FLEMING By George Meredith BOOK 5. XXXIX. DAHLIA GOES HOMEXL. A FREAK OF THE MONEY-DEMON, THAT MAY HAVE BEEN ANTICIPATED XLI. DAHLIA’S FRENZYXLII. ANTHONY IN A COLLAPSEXLIII. RHODA PLEDGES HER HANDXLIV. THE ENEMY APPEARSXLV. THE FARMER IS AWAKENEDXLVI. WHEN THE NIGHT IS DARKESTXLVII. DAWN IS NEARXLVIII. CONCLUSION CHAPTER XXXIX Late into the afternoon, Farmer Fleming was occupying a chair in Robert’s lodgings, where he had sat since the hour of twelve, without a movement of his limbs or of his mind, and alone. He showed no sign that he expected the approach of any one. As mute and unremonstrant as a fallen tree, nearly as insensible, his eyes half closed, and his hands lying open, the great figure of the old man kept this attitude as of stiff decay through long sunny hours, and the noise of the London suburb. Although the wedding people were strangely late, it was unnoticed by him. When the door opened and Rhoda stepped into the room, he was unaware that he had been waiting, and only knew that the hours had somehow accumulated to a heavy burden upon him. “She is coming, father; Robert is bringing her up,” Rhoda said. “Let her come,” he answered. Robert’s hold was tight under Dahlia’s arm as they passed the doorway, and then the farmer stood. Robert closed the door. For some few painful moments the farmer could not speak, and his hand was raised rejectingly. The return of human animation to his heart made him look more sternly than he felt; but he had to rid himself of one terrible question before he satisfied his gradual desire to take his daughter to his breast. It came at last like a short roll of drums, the words were heard,– “Is she an honest woman?” “She is,” said Rhoda. The farmer was looking on Robert. Robert said it likewise in a murmur, but with steadfast look. Bending his eyes now upon Dahlia, a mist of affection grew in them. He threw up his head, and with a choking, infantine cry, uttered, “Come.” Robert placed her against her father’s bosom. He moved to the window beside Rhoda, and whispered, and she answered, and they knew not what they said. The joint moans of father and daughter– the unutterable communion of such a meeting–filled their ears. Grief held aloof as much as joy. Neither joy nor grief were in those two hearts of parent and child; but the senseless contentment of hard, of infinite hard human craving. The old man released her, and Rhoda undid her hands from him, and led the pale Sacrifice to another room. “Where’s…?” Mr. Fleming asked. Robert understood him. “Her husband will not come.” It was interpreted by the farmer as her husband’s pride. Or, may be, the man who was her husband now had righted her at last, and then flung her off in spite for what he had been made to do. “I’m not being deceived, Robert?” “No, sir; upon my soul!” “I’ve got that here,” the farmer struck his ribs. Rhoda came back. “Sister is tired,” she said. “Dahlia is going down home with you, for…I hope, for a long stay.” “All the better, while home we’ve got. We mayn’t lose time, my girl. Gammon’s on ‘s way to the station now. He’ll wait. He’ll wait till midnight. You may always reckon on a slow man like Gammon for waitin’. Robert comes too?” “Father, we have business to do. Robert gives me his rooms here for a little time; his landlady is a kind woman, and will take care of me. You will trust me to Robert.” “I’ll bring Rhoda down on Monday evening,” Robert said to the farmer. “You may trust me, Mr. Fleming.” “That I know. That I’m sure of. That’s a certainty,” said the farmer. “I’d do it for good, if for good was in the girl’s heart, Robert. There seems,” he hesitated; “eh, Robert, there seems a something upon us all. There’s a something to be done, is there? But if I’ve got my flesh and blood, and none can spit on her, why should I be asking ‘whats’ and ‘whys’? I bow my head; and God forgive me, if ever I complained. And you will bring Rhoda to us on Monday?” “Yes; and try and help to make the farm look up again, if Gammon’ll do the ordering about.” “Poor old Mas’ Gammon! He’s a rare old man. Is he changed by adversity, Robert? Though he’s awful secret, that old man! Do you consider a bit Gammon’s faithfulness, Robert!” “Ay, he’s above most men in that,” Robert agreed. “On with Dahlia’s bonnet–sharp!” the farmer gave command. He felt, now that he was growing accustomed to the common observation of things, that the faces and voices around him were different from such as the day brings in its usual course. “We’re all as slow as Mas’ Gammon, I reckon.” “Father,” said Rhoda, “she is weak. She has been very unwell. Do not trouble her with any questions. Do not let any questions be asked of her at hone. Any talking fatigues; it may be dangerous to her.” The farmer stared. “Ay, and about her hair….I’m beginning to remember. She wears a cap, and her hair’s cut off like an oakum-picker’s. That’s more gossip for neighbours!” “Mad people! will they listen to truth?” Rhoda flamed out in her dark fashion. “We speak truth, nothing but truth. She has had a brain fever. That makes her very weak, and every one must be silent at home. Father, stop the sale of the farm, for Robert will work it into order. He has promised to be our friend, and Dahlia will get her health there, and be near mother’s grave.” The farmer replied, as from a far thought, “There’s money in my pocket to take down two.” He continued: “But there’s not money there to feed our family a week on; I leave it to the Lord. I sow; I dig, and I sow, and when bread fails to us the land must go; and let it go, and no crying about it. I’m astonishing easy at heart, though if I must sell, and do sell, I shan’t help thinking of my father, and his father, and the father before him– mayhap, and in most likelihood, artfuller men ‘n me–for what they was born to they made to flourish. They’ll cry in their graves. A man’s heart sticks to land, Robert; that you’ll find, some day. I thought I cared none but about land till that poor, weak, white thing put her arms on my neck.” Rhoda had slipped away from them again. The farmer stooped to Robert’s ear. “Had a bit of a disagreement with her husband, is it?” Robert cleared his throat. “Ay, that’s it,” he said. “Serious, at all?” “One can’t tell, you know.” “And not her fault–not my girl’s fault, Robert?” “No; I can swear to that.” “She’s come to the right home, then. She’ll be near her mother and me. Let her pray at night, and she’ll know she’s always near her blessed mother. Perhaps the women ‘ll want to take refreshment, if we may so far make free with your hospitality; but it must be quick, Robert–or will they? They can’t eat, and I can’t eat.” Soon afterward Mr. Fleming took his daughter Dahlia from the house and out of London. The deeply-afflicted creature was, as the doctors had said of her, too strong for the ordinary modes of killing. She could walk and still support herself, though the ordeal she had gone through this day was such as few women could have traversed. The terror to follow the deed she had done was yet unseen by her; and for the hour she tasted, if not peace, the pause to suffering which is given by an act accomplished. Robert and Rhoda sat in different rooms till it was dusk. When she appeared before him in the half light, the ravage of a past storm was visible on her face. She sat down to make tea, and talked with singular self command. “Mr. Fleming mentioned the gossips down at Wrexby,” said Robert: “are they very bad down there?” “Not worse than in other villages,” said Rhoda. “They have not been unkind. They have spoken about us, but not unkindly–I mean, not spitefully.” “And you forgive them?” “I do: they cannot hurt us now.” Robert was but striving to master some comprehension of her character. “What are we to resolve, Rhoda?” “I must get the money promised to this man.” “When he has flung off his wife at the church door?” “He married my sister for the money. He said it. Oh! he said it. He shall not say that we have deceived him. I told him he should have it. He married her for money!” “You should not have told him so, Rhoda.” “I did, and I will not let my word be broken.” “Pardon me if I ask you where you will get the money? It’s a large sum.” “I will get it,” Rhoda said firmly. “By the sale of the farm?” “No, not to hurt father.” “But this man’s a scoundrel. I know him. I’ve known him for years. My fear is that he will be coming to claim his wife. How was it I never insisted on seeing the man before–! I did think of asking, but fancied- -a lot of things; that you didn’t wish it and he was shy. Ah, Lord! what miseries happen from our not looking straight at facts! We can’t deny she’s his wife now.” “Not if we give him the money.” Rhoda spoke of “the money” as if she had taken heated metal into her mouth. “All the more likely,” said Robert. “Let him rest. Had you your eyes on him when he saw me in the vestry? For years that man has considered me his deadly enemy, because I punished him once. What a scene! I’d have given a limb, I’d have given my life, to have saved you from that scene, Rhoda.” She replied: “If my sister could have been spared! I ought to know what wickedness there is in the world. It’s ignorance that leads to the unhappiness of girls.” “Do you know that I’m a drunkard?” “No.” “He called me something like it; and he said something like the truth. There’s the sting. Set me adrift, and I drink hard. He spoke a fact, and I couldn’t answer him.” “Yes, it’s the truth that gives such pain,” said Rhoda, shivering. “How can girls know what men are? I could not guess that you had any fault. This man was so respectful; he sat modestly in the room when I saw him last night–last night, was it? I thought, ‘he has been brought up with sisters and a mother.’ And he has been kind to my dear–and all we thought love for her, was–shameful! shameful!” She pressed her eyelids, continuing: “He shall have the money–he shall have it. We will not be in debt to such a man. He has saved my sister from one as bad–who offered it to be rid of her. Oh, men!–you heard that?–and now pretends to love her. I think I dream. How could she ever have looked happily on that hateful face?” “He would be thought handsome,” said Robert, marvelling how it was that Rhoda could have looked on Sedgett for an instant without reading his villanous nature. “I don’t wish you to regret anything you have done or you may do, Rhoda. But this is what made me cry out when I looked on that man, and knew it was he who had come to be Dahlia’s husband. He’ll be torture to her. The man’s temper, his habits–but you may well say you are ignorant of us men. Keep so. What I do with all my soul entreat of you is–to get a hiding-place for your sister. Never let him take her off. There’s such a thing as hell upon earth. If she goes away with him she’ll know it. His black temper won’t last. He will come for her, and claim her.” “He shall have money.” Rhoda said no more. On a side-table in the room stood a remarkable pile, under cover of a shawl. Robert lifted the shawl, and beheld the wooden boxes, one upon the other, containing Master Gammon’s and Mrs. Sumfit’s rival savings, which they had presented to Dahlia, in the belief that her husband was under a cloud of monetary misfortune that had kept her proud heart from her old friends. The farmer had brought the boxes and left them there, forgetting them. “I fancy,” said Robert, “we might open these.” “It may be a little help,” said Rhoda. “A very little,” Robert thought; but, to relieve the oppression of the subject they had been discussing, he forthwith set about procuring tools, with which he split first the box which proved to be Mrs. Sumfit’s, for it contained, amid six gold sovereigns and much silver and pence, a slip of paper, whereon was inscribed, in a handwriting identified by Rhoda as peculiar to the loving woman,– “And sweetest love to her ever dear.” Altogether the sum amounted to nine pounds, three shillings, and a farthing. “Now for Master Gammon–he’s heavy,” said Robert; and he made the savings of that unpretentious veteran bare. Master Gammon had likewise written his word. It was discovered on the blank space of a bit of newspaper, and looked much as if a fat lobworm had plunged himself into a bowl of ink, and in his literary delirium had twisted uneasily to the verge of the paper. With difficulty they deciphered,– “Complemens.” Robert sang, “Bravo, Gammon!” and counted the hoard. All was in copper coinage, Lycurgan and severe, and reached the sum of one pound, seventeen shillings. There were a number of farthings of Queen Anne’s reign, and Robert supposed them to be of value. “So that, as yet, we can’t say who’s the winner,” he observed. Rhoda was in tears. “Be kind to him, please, when you see him,” she whispered. The smaller gift had touched her heart more tenderly. “Kind to the old man!” Robert laughed gently, and tied the two hoards in separate papers, which he stowed into one box, and fixed under string. “This amount, put all in one, doesn’t go far, Rhoda.” “No,” said she: “I hope we may not need it.” She broke out: “Dear, good, humble friends! The poor are God’s own people. Christ has said so. This is good, this is blessed money!” Rhoda’s cheeks flushed to their orange-rounded swarthy red, and her dark eyes had the fervour of an exalted earnestness. “They are my friends for ever. They save me from impiety. They help me, as if God had answered my prayer. Poor pennies! and the old man not knowing where his days may end! He gives all–he must have true faith in Providence. May it come back to him multiplied a thousand fold! While I have strength to work, the bread I earn shall be shared with him. Old man, old man, I love you–how I love you! You drag me out of deep ditches. Oh, good and dear old man, if God takes me first, may I have some power to intercede for you, if you have ever sinned! Everybody in the world is not wicked. There are some who go the ways directed by the Bible. I owe you more than I can ever pay.” She sobbed, but told Robert it was not for sorrow. He, longing to catch her in his arms, and punctilious not to overstep the duties of his post of guardian, could merely sit by listening, and reflecting on her as a strange Biblical girl, with Hebrew hardness of resolution, and Hebrew exaltation of soul; beautiful, too, as the dark women of the East. He admitted to himself that he never could have taken it on his conscience to subdue a human creature’s struggling will, as Rhoda had not hesitated to do with Dahlia, and to command her actions, and accept all imminent responsibilities; not quailing with any outcry, or abandonment of strength, when the shock of that revelation in the vestry came violently on her. Rhoda, seeing there that it was a brute, and not a man, into whose hand she had perilously forced her sister’s, stood steadying her nerves to act promptly with advantage; less like a woman, Robert thought, than a creature born for battle. And she appeared to be still undaunted, full of her scheme, and could cry without fear of floods. Something of the chivalrous restraint he put upon the motions of his heart, sprang from the shadowy awe which overhung that impressible organ. This feeling likewise led him to place a blind reliance on her sagacity and sense of what was just, and what should be performed. “You promised this money to him,” he said, half thinking it incredible. “On Monday,” said Rhoda. “You must get a promise from him in return.” She answered: “Why? when he could break it the instant he cared to, and a promise would tempt him to it. He does not love her.” “No; he does not love her,” said Robert, meditating whether he could possibly convey an idea of the character of men to her innocent mind. “He flung her off. Thank heaven for it! I should have been punished too much–too much. He has saved her from the perils of temptation. He shall be paid for it. To see her taken away by such a man! Ah!” She shuddered as at sight of a hideous pit. But Robert said: “I know him, Rhoda. That was his temper. It’ll last just four-and-twenty hours, and then we shall need all our strength and cunning. My dear, it would be the death of Dahlia. You’ve seen the man as he is. Take it for a warning. She belongs to him. That’s the law, human and divine.” “Not when he has flung her off, Robert?” Rhoda cried piteously. “Let us take advantage of that. He did fling her off, spat at us all, and showed the blackest hellish plot I ever in my life heard of. He’s not the worst sinner, scoundrel as he is. Poor girl! poor soul! a hard lot for women in this world! Rhoda, I suppose I may breakfast with you in the morning? I hear Major Waring’s knock below. I want a man to talk to.” “Do come, Robert,” Rhoda said, and gave him her hand. He strove to comprehend why it was that her hand was merely a hand, and no more to him just then; squeezed the cold fingers, and left her. CHAPTER XI So long as we do not know that we are performing any remarkable feat, we may walk upon the narrowest of planks between precipices with perfect security; but when we suffer our minds to eye the chasm underneath, we begin to be in danger, and we are in very great fear of losing our equal balance the moment we admit the insidious reflection that other men, placed as we are, would probably topple headlong over. Anthony Hackbut, of Boyne’s Bank, had been giving himself up latterly to this fatal comparison. The hour when gold was entrusted to his charge found him feverish and irritable. He asked himself whether he was a mere machine to transfer money from spot to spot, and he spurned at the pittance bestowed upon honesty in this life. Where could Boyne’s Bank discover again such an honest man as he? And because he was honest he was poor! The consideration that we alone are capable of doing the unparalleled thing may sometimes inspire us with fortitude; but this will depend largely upon the antecedent moral trials of a man. It is a temptation when we look on what we accomplish at all in that light. The temptation being inbred, is commonly a proof of internal corruption. “If I take a step, suppose now, to the right, or to the left,” Anthony had got into the habit of saying, while he made his course, and after he had deposited his charge he would wipe his moist forehead, in a state of wretched exultation over his renowned trustworthiness. He had done the thing for years. And what did the people in the streets know about him? Formerly, he had used to regard the people in the streets, and their opinions, with a voluptuous contempt; but he was no longer wrapped in sweet calculations of his savings, and his chances, and his connection with a mighty Bank. The virtue had gone out of him. Yet he had not the slightest appetite for other men’s money; no hunger, nor any definite notion of enjoyment to be derived from money not his own. Imagination misled the old man. There have been spotless reputations gained in the service of virtue before now; and chaste and beautiful persons have walked the narrow plank, envied and admired; and they have ultimately tottered and all but fallen; or they have quite fallen, from no worse an incitement than curiosity. Cold curiosity, as the directors of our human constitution tell us, is, in the colder condition of our blood, a betraying vice, leading to sin at a period when the fruits of sin afford the smallest satisfaction. It is, in fact, our last probation, and one of our latest delusions. If that is passed successfully, we may really be pronounced as of some worth. Anthony wished to give a light indulgence to his curiosity; say, by running away and over London Bridge on one side, and back on the other, hugging the money. For two weeks, he thought of this absurd performance as a comical and agreeable diversion. How would he feel when going in the direction of the Surrey hills? And how, when returning, and when there was a prospect of the Bank, where the money was to be paid in, being shut? Supposing that he was a minute behind his time, would the Bank-doors remain open, in expectation of him? And if the money was not paid in, what would be thought? What would be thought at Boyne’s, if, the next day, he was late in making his appearance? “Holloa! Hackbut, how’s this?”–“I’m a bit late, sir, morning.”–“Late! you were late yesterday evening, weren’t you?”–“Why, sir, the way the clerks at that Bank of Mortimer and Pennycuick’s rush away from business and close the doors after ’em, as if their day began at four p.m., and business was botheration: it’s a disgrace to the City o’ London. And I beg pardon for being late, but never sleeping a wink all night for fear about this money, I am late this morning, I humbly confess. When I got to the Bank, the doors were shut. Our clock’s correct; that I know. My belief, sir, is, the clerks at Mortimer and Pennycuick’s put on the time.”–“Oh! we must have this inquired into.” Anthony dramatized the farcical scene which he imagined between himself and Mr. Sequin, the head clerk at Boyne’s, with immense relish; and terminated it by establishing his reputation for honesty higher than ever at the Bank, after which violent exercise of his fancy, the old man sank into a dulness during several days. The farmer slept at his lodgings for one night, and talked of money, and of selling his farm; and half hinted that it would be a brotherly proceeding on Anthony’s part to buy it, and hold it, so as to keep it in the family. The farmer’s deep belief in the existence of his hoards always did Anthony peculiar mischief. Anthony grew conscious of a giddiness, and all the next day he was scarcely fit for his work. But the day following that he was calm and attentive. Two bags of gold were placed in his hands, and he walked with caution down the steps of the Bank, turned the corner, and went straight on to the West, never once hesitating, or casting a thought behind upon Mortimer and Pennycuick’s. He had not, in truth, one that was loose to be cast. All his thoughts were boiling in his head, obfuscating him with a prodigious steam, through which he beheld the city surging, and the streets curving like lines in water, and the people mixing and passing into and out of one another in an astonishing manner–no face distinguishable; the whole thick multitude appearing to be stirred like glue in a gallipot. The only distinct thought which he had sprang from a fear that the dishonest ruffians would try to steal his gold, and he hugged it, and groaned to see that villany was abroad. Marvellous, too, that the clocks on the churches, all the way along the Westward thoroughfare, stuck at the hour when Banks are closed to business! It was some time, or a pretence at some time, before the minute-hands surmounted that difficulty. Having done so, they rushed ahead to the ensuing hour with the mad precipitation of pantomimic machinery. The sight of them presently standing on the hour, like a sentinel presenting arms, was startling–laughable. Anthony could not have flipped with his fingers fifty times in the interval; he was sure of it, “or not much more,” he said. So the City was shut to him behind iron bars. Up in the West there is not so much to be dreaded from the rapacity of men. You do not hear of such alarming burglaries there every day; every hand is not at another’s throat there, or in another’s pocket; at least, not until after nightfall; and when the dark should come on, Anthony had determined to make for his own quarter with all speed. Darkness is horrible in foreign places, but foreign places are not so accusing to you by daylight. The Park was vastly pleasant to the old man. “Ah!” he sniffed, “country air,” and betook himself to a seat. “Extraordinary,” he thought, “what little people they look on their horses and in their carriages! That’s the aristocracy, is it!” The aristocracy appeared oddly diminutive to him. He sneered at the aristocracy, but, beholding a policeman, became stolid of aspect. The policeman was a connecting link with his City life, the true lord of his fearful soul. Though the moneybags were under his arm, beneath his buttoned coat, it required a deep pause before he understood what he had done; and then the Park began to dance and curve like the streets, and there was a singular curtseying between the heavens and the earth. He had to hold his money-bags tight, to keep them from plunging into monstrous gulfs. “I don’t remember that I’ve taken a drink of any sort,” he said, “since I and the old farmer took our turn down in the Docks. How’s this?” He seemed to rock. He was near upon indulging in a fit of terror; but the impolicy of it withheld him from any demonstration, save an involuntary spasmodic ague. When this had passed, his eyesight and sensations grew clearer, and he sat in a mental doze, looking at things with quiet animal observation. His recollection of the state, after a lapse of minutes, was pleasurable. The necessity for motion, however, set him on his feet, and off he went, still Westward, out of the Park, and into streets. He trotted at a good pace. Suddenly came a call of his name in his ear, and he threw up one arm in self-defence. “Uncle Anthony, don’t you know me?” “Eh? I do; to be sure I do,” he answered, peering dimly upon Rhoda: “I’m always meeting one of you.” “I’ve been down in the City, trying to find you all day, uncle. I meet you–I might have missed! It is direction from heaven, for I prayed.” Anthony muttered, “I’m out for a holiday.” “This”–Rhoda pointed to a house–“is where I am lodging.” “Oh!” said Anthony; “and how’s your family?” Rhoda perceived that he was rather distraught. After great persuasion, she got him to go upstairs with her. “Only for two seconds,” he stipulated. “I can’t sit.” “You will have a cup of tea with me, uncle?” “No; I don’t think I’m equal to tea.” “Not with Rhoda?” “It’s a name in Scripture,” said Anthony, and he drew nearer to her. “You’re comfortable and dark here, my dear. How did you come here? What’s happened? You won’t surprise me.” “I’m only stopping for a day or two in London, uncle.” “Ah! a wicked place; that it is. No wickeder than other places, I’ll be bound. Well; I must be trotting. I can’t sit, I tell you. You’re as dark here as a gaol.” “Let me ring for candles, uncle.” “No; I’m going.” She tried to touch him, to draw him to a chair. The agile old man bounded away from her, and she had to pacify him submissively before he would consent to be seated. The tea-service was brought, and Rhoda made tea, and filled a cup for him. Anthony began to enjoy the repose of the room. But it made the money-bags’ alien to him, and serpents in his bosom. Fretting–on his chair, he cried: “Well! well! what’s to talk about? We can’t drink tea and not talk!” Rhoda deliberated, and then said: “Uncle, I think you have always loved me.” It seemed to him a merit that he should have loved her. He caught at the idea. “So I have, Rhoda, my dear; I have. I do.” “You do love me, dear uncle!” “Now I come to think of it, Rhoda–my Dody, I don’t think ever I’ve loved anybody else. Never loved e’er a young woman in my life. As a young man.” “Tell me, uncle; are you not very rich?” “No, I ain’t; not ‘very’; not at all.” “You must not tell untruths, uncle.” “I don’t,” said Anthony; only, too doggedly to instil conviction. “I have always felt, uncle, that you love money too much. What is the value of money, except to give comfort, and help you to be a blessing to others in their trouble? Does not God lend it you for that purpose? It is most true! And if you make a store of it, it will only be unhappiness to yourself. Uncle, you love me.I am in great trouble for money.” Anthony made a long arm over the projection of his coat, and clasped it securely; sullenly refusing to answer. “Dear uncle; hear me out. I come to you, because I know you are rich. I was on my way to your lodgings when we met; we were thrown together. You have more money than you know what to do with. I am a beggar to you for money. I have never asked before; I never shall ask again. Now I pray for your help. My life, and the life dearer to me than any other, depend on you. Will you help me, Uncle Anthony? Yes!” “No!” Anthony shouted. “Yes! yes!” “Yes, if I can. No, if I can’t. And ‘can’t’ it is. So, it’s ‘No.’” Rhoda’s bosom sank, but only as a wave in the sea-like energy of her spirit. “Uncle, you must.” Anthony was restrained from jumping up and running away forthwith by the peace which was in the room, and the dread of being solitary after he had tasted of companionship. “You have money, uncle. You are rich. You must help me. Don’t you ever think what it is to be an old man, and no one to love you and be grateful to you? Why do you cross your arms so close?” Anthony denied that he crossed his arms closely. Rhoda pointed to his arms in evidence; and he snarled out: “There, now; ’cause I’m supposed to have saved a trifle, I ain’t to sit as I like. It’s downright too bad! It’s shocking!” But, seeing that he did not uncross his arms, and remained bunched up defiantly, Rhoda silently observed him. She felt that money was in the room. “Don’t let it be a curse to you,” she said. And her voice was hoarse with agitation. “What?” Anthony asked. “What’s a curse?” “That.” Did she know? Had she guessed? Her finger was laid in a line at the bags. Had she smelt the gold? “It will be a curse to you, uncle. Death is coming. What’s money then? Uncle, uncross your arms. You are afraid; you dare not. You carry it about; you have no confidence anywhere. It eats your heart. Look at me. I have nothing to conceal. Can you imitate me, and throw your hands out –so? Why, uncle, will you let me be ashamed of you? You have the money there. “You cannot deny it. Me crying to you for help! What have we talked together?–that we would sit in a country house, and I was to look to the flower-beds, and always have dishes of green peas for you-plenty, in June; and you were to let the village boys know what a tongue you have, if they made a clatter of their sticks along the garden-rails; and you were to drink your tea, looking on a green and the sunset. Uncle! Poor old, good old soul! You mean kindly. You must be kind. A day will make it too late. You have the money there. You get older and older every minute with trying to refuse me. You know that I can make you happy. I have the power, and I have the will. Help me, I say, in my great trouble. That money is a burden. You are forced to carry it about, for fear. You look guilty as you go running in the streets, because you fear everybody. Do good with it. Let it be money with a blessing on it! It will save us from horrid misery! from death! from torture and death! Think, uncle! look, uncle! You with the money–me wanting it. I pray to heaven, and I meet you, and you have it. Will you say that you refuse to give it, when I see–when I show you, you are led to meet me and help me? Open;–put down that arm.” Against this storm of mingled supplication and shadowy menace, Anthony held out with all outward firmness until, when bidding him to put down his arm, she touched the arm commandingly, and it fell paralyzed. Rhoda’s eyes were not beautiful as they fixed on the object of her quest. In this they were of the character of her mission. She was dealing with an evil thing, and had chosen to act according to her light, and by the counsel of her combative and forceful temper. At each step new difficulties had to be encountered by fresh contrivances; and money now– money alone had become the specific for present use. There was a limitation of her spiritual vision to aught save to money; and the money being bared to her eyes, a frightful gleam of eagerness shot from them. Her hands met Anthony’s in a common grasp of the money-bags. “It’s not mine!” Anthony cried, in desperation. “Whose money is it?” said Rhoda, and caught up her hands as from fire. “My Lord!” Anthony moaned, “if you don’t speak like a Court o’ Justice. Hear yourself!” “Is the money yours, uncle?” “It–is,” and “isn’t” hung in the balance. “It is not?” Rhoda dressed the question for him in the terror of contemptuous horror. “It is. I–of course it is; how could it help being mine? My money? Yes. What sort o’ thing’s that to ask–whether what I’ve got’s mine or yours, or somebody else’s? Ha!” “And you say you are not rich, uncle?” A charming congratulatory smile was addressed to him, and a shake of the head of tender reproach irresistible to his vanity. “Rich! with a lot o’ calls on me; everybody wantin’ to borrow–I’m rich! And now you coming to me! You women can’t bring a guess to bear upon the right nature o’ money.” “Uncle, you will decide to help me, I know.” She said it with a staggering assurance of manner. “How do you know?” cried Anthony. “Why do you carry so much money about with you in bags, uncle?” “Hear it, my dear.” He simulated miser’s joy. “Ain’t that music? Talk of operas! Hear that; don’t it talk? don’t it chink? don’t it sing?” He groaned “Oh, Lord!” and fell back. This transition from a state of intensest rapture to the depths of pain alarmed her. “Nothing; it’s nothing.” Anthony anticipated her inquiries. “They bags is so heavy.” “Then why do you carry them about?” “Perhaps it’s heart disease,” said Anthony, and grinned, for he knew the soundness of his health. “You are very pale, uncle.” “Eh? you don’t say that?” “You are awfully white, dear uncle.” “I’ll look in the glass,” said Anthony. “No, I won’t.” He sank back in his chair. “Rhoda, we’re all sinners, ain’t we? All–every man and woman of us, and baby, too. That’s a comfort; yes, it is a comfort. It’s a tremendous comfort–shuts mouths. I know what you’re going to say–some bigger sinners than others. If they’re sorry for it, though, what then? They can repent, can’t they?” “They must undo any harm they may have done. Sinners are not to repent only in words, uncle.” “I’ve been feeling lately,” he murmured. Rhoda expected a miser’s confession. “I’ve been feeling, the last two or three days,” he resumed. “What, uncle?” “Sort of taste of a tremendous nice lemon in my mouth, my dear, and liked it, till all of a sudden I swallowed it whole–such a gulp! I felt it just now. I’m all right.” “No, uncle,” said Rhoda: “you are not all right: this money makes you miserable. It does; I can see that it does. Now, put those bags in my hands. For a minute, try; it will do you good. Attend to me; it will. Or, let me have them. They are poison to you. You don’t want them.” “I don’t,” cried Anthony. “Upon my soul, I don’t. I don’t want ’em. I’d give–it is true, my dear, I don’t want ’em. They’re poison.” “They’re poison to you,” said Rhoda; “they’re health, they’re life to me. I said, ‘My uncle Anthony will help me. He is not–I know his heart–he is not a miser.’ Are you a miser, uncle?” Her hand was on one of his bags. It was strenuously withheld: but while she continued speaking, reiterating the word “miser,” the hold relaxed. She caught the heavy bag away, startled by its weight. He perceived the effect produced on her, and cried; “Aha! and I’ve been carrying two of ’em–two!” Rhoda panted in her excitement. “Now, give it up,” said he. She returned it. He got it against his breast joylessly, and then bade her to try the weight of the two. She did try them, and Anthony doated on the wonder of her face. “Uncle, see what riches do! You fear everybody–you think there is no secure place–you have more? Do you carry about all your money?” “No,” he chuckled at her astonishment. “I’ve…Yes. I’ve got more of my own.” Her widened eyes intoxicated him. “More. I’ve saved. I’ve put by. Say, I’m an old sinner. What’d th’ old farmer say now? Do you love your uncle Tony? ‘Old Ant,’ they call me down at–” “The Bank,” he was on the point of uttering; but the vision of the Bank lay terrific in his recollection, and, summoned at last, would not be wiped away. The unbearable picture swam blinking through accumulating clouds; remote and minute as the chief scene of our infancy, but commanding him with the present touch of a mighty arm thrown out. “I’m honest,” he cried. “I always have been honest. I’m known to be honest. I want no man’s money. I’ve got money of my own. I hate sin. I hate sinners. I’m an honest man. Ask them, down at–Rhoda, my dear! I say, don’t you hear me? Rhoda, you think I’ve a turn for misering. It’s a beastly mistake: poor savings, and such a trouble to keep honest when you’re poor; and I’ve done it for years, spite o’ temptation ‘t ‘d send lots o’ men to the hulks. Safe into my hand, safe out o’ my hands! Slip once, and there ain’t mercy in men. And you say, ‘I had a whirl of my head, and went round, and didn’t know where I was for a minute, and forgot the place I’d to go to, and come away to think in a quiet part.’…” He stopped abruptly in his ravings. “You give me the money, Rhoda!” She handed him the money-bags. He seized them, and dashed them to the ground with the force of madness. Kneeling, he drew out his penknife, and slit the sides of the bags, and held them aloft, and let the gold pour out in torrents, insufferable to the sight; and uttering laughter that clamoured fierily in her ears for long minutes afterwards, the old man brandished the empty bags, and sprang out of the room. She sat dismayed in the centre of a heap of gold. CHAPTER XLI On the Monday evening, Master Gammon was at the station with the cart. Robert and Rhoda were a train later, but the old man seemed to be unaware of any delay, and mildly staring, received their apologies, and nodded. They asked him more than once whether all was well at the Farm; to which he replied that all was quite well, and that he was never otherwise. About half-an-hour after, on the road, a gradual dumb chuckle overcame his lower features. He flicked the horse dubitatively, and turned his head, first to Robert, next to Rhoda; and then he chuckled aloud: “The last o’ they mel’ns rotted yest’day afternoon!” “Did they?” said Robert. “You’ll have to get fresh seed, that’s all.” Master Gammon merely showed his spirit to be negative. “You’ve been playing the fool with the sheep,” Robert accused him. It hit the old man in a very tender part. “I play the fool wi’ ne’er a sheep alive, Mr. Robert. Animals likes their ‘customed food, and don’t like no other. I never changes my food, nor’d e’er a sheep, nor’d a cow, nor’d a bullock, if animals was masters. I’d as lief give a sheep beer, as offer him, free-handed–of my own will, that’s to say–a mel’n. They rots.” Robert smiled, though he was angry. The delicious unvexed country-talk soothed Rhoda, and she looked fondly on the old man, believing that he could not talk on in his sedate way, if all were not well at home. The hills of the beacon-ridge beyond her home, and the line of stunted firs, which she had named “the old bent beggarmen,” were visible in the twilight. Her eyes flew thoughtfully far over them, with the feeling that they had long known what would come to her and to those dear to her, and the intense hope that they knew no more, inasmuch as they bounded her sight. “If the sheep thrive,” she ventured to remark, so that the comforting old themes might be kept up. “That’s the particular ‘if!’” said Robert, signifying something that had to be leaped over. Master Gammon performed the feat with agility. “Sheep never was heartier,” he pronounced emphatically. “Lots of applications for melon-seed, Gammon?” To this the veteran’s tardy answer was: “More fools ‘n one about, I reckon”; and Robert allowed him the victory implied by silence. “And there’s no news in Wrexby? none at all?” said Rhoda. A direct question inevitably plunged Master Gammon so deep amid the soundings of his reflectiveness, that it was the surest way of precluding a response from him; but on this occasion his honest deliberation bore fruit. “Squire Blancove, he’s dead.” The name caused Rhoda to shudder. “Found dead in ‘s bed, Sat’day morning,” Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on: “He’s that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he’ll have to get into a rounded coffin: he’s just like half a hoop. He was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with ‘s bolster, and got th’ wust of it. But, be ‘t the seizure, or be ‘t gout in ‘s belly, he’s gone clean dead. And he wunt buy th’ Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut up at the Hall. He’ll go burying about Wednesday. Men that drinks don’t keep.” Rhoda struck at her brain to think in what way this death could work and show like a punishment of the heavens upon that one wrong-doer; but it was not manifest as a flame of wrath, and she laid herself open to the peace of the fields and the hedgeways stepping by. The farm-house came in sight, and friendly old Adam and Eve turning from the moon. She heard the sound of water. Every sign of peace was around the farm. The cows had been milked long since; the geese were quiet. There was nothing but the white board above the garden-gate to speak of the history lying in her heart. They found the farmer sitting alone, shading his forehead. Rhoda kissed his cheeks and whispered for tidings of Dahlia. “Go up to her,” the farmer said. Rhoda grew very chill. She went upstairs with apprehensive feet, and recognizing Mrs. Sumfit outside the door of Dahlia’s room, embraced her, and heard her say that Dahlia had turned the key, and had been crying from mornings to nights. “It can’t last,” Mrs. Sumfit sobbed: “lonesome hysterics, they’s death to come. She’s falling into the trance. I’ll go, for the sight o’ me shocks her.” Rhoda knocked, waited patiently till her persistent repetition of her name gained her admission. She beheld her sister indeed, but not the broken Dahlia from whom she had parted. Dahlia was hard to her caress, and crying, “Has he come?” stood at bay, white-eyed, and looking like a thing strung with wires. “No, dearest; he will not trouble you. Have no fear.” “Are you full of deceit?” said Dahlia, stamping her foot. “I hope not, my sister.” Dahlia let fall a long quivering breath. She went to her bed, upon which her mother’s Bible was lying, and taking it in her two hands, held it under Rhoda’s lips. “Swear upon that?” “What am I to swear to, dearest?” “Swear that he is not in the house.” “He is not, my own sister; believe me. It is no deceit. He is not. He will not trouble you. See; I kiss the Book, and swear to you, my beloved! I speak truth. Come to me, dear.” Rhoda put her arms up entreatingly, but Dahlia stepped back. “You are not deceitful? You are not cold? You are not inhuman? Inhuman! You are not? You are not? Oh, my God! Look at her!” The toneless voice was as bitter for Rhoda to hear as the accusations. She replied, with a poor smile: “I am only not deceitful. Come, and see. You will not be disturbed.” “What am I tied to?” Dahlia struggled feebly as against a weight of chains. “Oh! what am I tied to? It’s on me, tight like teeth. I can’t escape. I can’t breathe for it. I was like a stone when he asked me– marry him!–loved me! Some one preached–my duty! I am lost, I am lost! Why? you girl!–why?–What did you do? Why did you take my hand when I was asleep and hurry me so fast? What have I done to you? Why did you push me along?–I couldn’t see where. I heard the Church babble. For you–inhuman! inhuman! What have I done to you? What have you to do with punishing sin? It’s not sin. Let me be sinful, then. I am. I am sinful. Hear me. I love him; I love my lover, and,” she screamed out, “he loves me!” Rhoda now thought her mad. She looked once at the rigid figure of her transformed sister, and sitting down, covered her eyes and wept. To Dahlia, the tears were at first an acrid joy; but being weak, she fell to the bed, and leaned against it, forgetting her frenzy for a time. “You deceived me,” she murmured; and again, “You deceived me.” Rhoda did not answer. In trying to understand why her sister should imagine it, she began to know that she had in truth deceived Dahlia. The temptation to drive a frail human creature to do the thing which was right, had led her to speak falsely for a good purpose. Was it not righteously executed? Away from the tragic figure in the room, she might have thought so, but the horror in the eyes and voice of this awakened Sacrifice, struck away the support of theoretic justification. Great pity for the poor enmeshed life, helpless there, and in a woman’s worst peril,–looking either to madness, or to death, for an escape–drowned her reason in a heavy cloud of tears. Long on toward the stroke of the hour, Dahlia heard her weep, and she murmured on, “You deceived me;” but it was no more to reproach; rather, it was an exculpation of her reproaches. “You did deceive me, Rhoda.” Rhoda half lifted her head; the slight tone of a change to tenderness swelled the gulfs of pity, and she wept aloud. Dahlia untwisted her feet, and staggered up to her, fell upon her shoulder, and called her, “My love!–good sister!” For a great mute space they clung together. Their lips met and they kissed convulsively. But when Dahlia had close view of Rhoda’s face, she drew back, saying in an under-breath,– “Don’t cry. I see my misery when you cry.” Rhoda promised that she would check her tears, and they sat quietly, side by side, hand in hand. Mrs. Sumfit, outside, had to be dismissed twice with her fresh brews of supplicating tea and toast, and the cakes which, when eaten warm with good country butter and a sprinkle of salt, reanimate (as she did her utmost to assure the sisters through the closed door) humanity’s distressed spirit. At times their hands interchanged a fervent pressure, their eyes were drawn to an equal gaze. In the middle of the night Dahlia said: “I found a letter from Edward when I came here.” “Written–Oh, base man that he is!” Rhoda could not control the impulse to cry it out. “Written before,” said Dahlia, divining her at once. “I read it; did not cry. I have no tears. Will you see it? It is very short-enough; it said enough, and written before–” She crumpled her fingers in Rhoda’s; Rhoda, to please her, saying “Yes,” she went to the pillow of the bed, and drew the letter from underneath. “I know every word,” she said; “I should die if I repeated it. ‘My wife before heaven,’ it begins. So, I was his wife. I must have broken his heart–broken my husband’s.” Dahlia cast a fearful eye about her; her eyelids fluttered as from a savage sudden blow. Hardening her mouth to utter defiant spite: “My lover’s,” she cried. “He is. If he loves me and I love him, he is my lover, my lover, my lover! Nothing shall stop me from saying it–lover! and there is none to claim me but he. Oh, loathsome! What a serpent it is I’ve got round me! And you tell me God put it. Do you? Answer that; for I want to know, and I don’t know where I am. I am lost! I am lost! I want to get to my lover. Tell me, Rhoda, you would curse me if I did. And listen to me. Let him open his arms to me, I go; I follow him as far as my feet will bear me. I would go if it lightened from heaven. If I saw up there the warning, ‘You shall not!’ I would go. But, look on me!” she smote contempt upon her bosom. “He would not call to such a thing as me. Me, now? My skin is like a toad’s to him. I’ve become like something in the dust. I could hiss like adders. I am quite impenitent. I pray by my bedside, my head on my Bible, but I only say, ‘Yes, yes; that’s done; that’s deserved, if there’s no mercy.’ Oh, if there is no mercy, that’s deserved! I say so now. But this is what I say, Rhoda (I see nothing but blackness when I pray), and I say, ‘Permit no worse!’ I say, ‘Permit no worse, or take the consequences.’ He calls me his wife. I am his wife. And if–” Dahlia fell to speechless panting; her mouth was open; she made motion with her hands; horror, as of a blasphemy struggling to her lips, kept her dumb, but the prompting passion was indomitable…. “Read it,” said her struggling voice; and Rhoda bent over the letter, reading and losing thought of each sentence as it passed. To Dahlia, the vital words were visible like evanescent blue gravelights. She saw them rolling through her sister’s mind; and just upon the conclusion, she gave out, as in a chaunt: “And I who have sinned against my innocent darling, will ask her to pray with me that our future may be one, so that may make good to her what she has suffered, and to the God whom we worship, the offence I have committed.” Rhoda looked up at the pale penetrating eyes. “Read. Have you read to the last?” said Dahlia. “Speak it. Let me hear you. He writes it…. Yes? you will not? ‘Husband,’ he says,” and then she took up the sentences of the letter backwards to the beginning, pausing upon each one with a short moan, and smiting her bosom. “I found it here, Rhoda. I found his letter here when I came.. I came a dead thing, and it made me spring up alive. Oh, what bliss to be dead! I’ve felt nothing…nothing, for months.” She flung herself on the bed, thrusting her handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the outcry. “I’m punished. I’m punished, because I did not trust to my darling. No, not for one year! Is it that since we parted? I am an impatient creature, and he does not reproach me. I tormented my own, my love, my dear, and he thought I–I was tired of our life together. No; he does not accuse me,” Dahlia replied to her sister’s unspoken feeling, with the shrewd divination which is passion’s breathing space. “He accuses himself. He says it–utters it–speaks it ‘I sold my beloved.’ There is no guile in him. Oh, be just to us, Rhoda! Dearest,” she came to Rhoda’s side, “you did deceive me, did you not? You are a deceiver, my love?” Rhoda trembled, and raising her eyelids, answered, “Yes.” “You saw him in the street that morning?” Dahlia smiled a glittering tenderness too evidently deceitful in part, but quite subduing. “You saw him, my Rhoda, and he said he was true to me, and sorrowful; and you told him, dear one, that I had no heart for him, and wished to go to hell–did you not, gbod Rhoda? Forgive me; I mean ‘good;’ my true, good Rhoda. Yes, you hate sin; it is dreadful; but you should never speak falsely to sinners, for that does not teach them to repent. Mind you never lie again. Look at me. I am chained, and I have no repentance in me. See me. I am nearer it…the other–sin, I mean. If that man comes…will he?” “No–no!” Rhoda cried. “If that man comes–“ “He will not come!” “He cast me off at the church door, and said he had been cheated. Money! Oh, Edward!” Dahlia drooped her head. “He will keep away. You are safe,” said Rhoda. “Because, if no help comes, I am lost–I am lost for ever!” “But help will come. I mean peace will come. We will read; we will work in the garden. You have lifted poor father up, my dear.” “Ah! that old man!” Dahlia sighed. “He is our father.” “Yes, poor old man!” and Dahlia whispered: “I have no pity for him. If I am dragged away, I’m afraid I shall curse him. He seems a stony old man. I don’t understand fathers. He would make me go away. He talks the Scriptures when he is excited. I’m afraid he would shut my Bible for me. Those old men know nothing of the hearts of women. Now, darling, go to your room.” Rhoda begged earnestly for permission to stay with her, but Dahlia said: “My nights are fevers. I can’t have arms about me.” They shook hands when they separated, not kissing. CHAPTER XLII Three days passed quietly at the Farm, and each morning Dahlia came down to breakfast, and sat with the family at their meals; pale, with the mournful rim about her eyelids, but a patient figure. No questions were asked. The house was guarded from visitors, and on the surface the home was peaceful. On the Wednesday Squire Blancove was buried, when Master Gammon, who seldom claimed a holiday or specified an enjoyment of which he would desire to partake, asked leave to be spared for a couple of hours, that he might attend the ceremonious interment of one to whom a sort of vagrant human sentiment of clanship had made him look up, as to the chief gentleman of the district, and therefore one having claims on his respect. A burial had great interest for the old man. “I’ll be home for dinner; it’ll gi’e me an appetite,” Master Gammon said solemnly, and he marched away in his serious Sunday hat and careful coat, blither than usual. After his departure, Mrs. Sumfit sat and discoursed on deaths and burials, the certain end of all: at least, she corrected herself, the deaths were. The burials were not so certain. Consequently, we might take the burials, as they were a favour, to be a blessing, except in the event of persons being buried alive. She tried to make her hearers understand that the idea of this calamity had always seemed intolerable to her, and told of numerous cases which, the coffin having been opened, showed by the convulsed aspect of the corpse, or by spots of blood upon the shroud, that the poor creature had wakened up forlorn, “and not a kick allowed to him, my dears.” “It happens to women, too, does it not, mother?” said Dahlia. “They’re most subject to trances, my sweet. From always imitatin’ they imitates their deaths at last; and, oh!” Mrs. Sumfit was taken with nervous chokings of alarm at the thought. “Alone–all dark! and hard wood upon your chest, your elbows, your nose, your toes, and you under heaps o’ gravel! Not a breath for you, though you snap and catch for one–worse than a fish on land.” “It’s over very soon, mother,” said Dahlia. “The coldness of you young women! Yes; but it’s the time–you feeling, trying for air; it’s the horrid ‘Oh, dear me!’ You set your mind on it!” “I do,” said Dahlia. “You see coffin-nails instead of stars. You’d give the world to turn upon one side. You can’t think. You can only hate those who put you there. You see them taking tea, saying prayers, sleeping in bed, putting on bonnets, walking to church, kneading dough, eating–all at once, like the firing of a gun. They’re in one world; you’re in another.” “Why, my goodness, one’d say she’d gone through it herself,” ejaculated Mrs. Sumfit, terrified. Dahlia sent her eyes at Rhoda. “I must go and see that poor man covered.” Mrs. Sumfit succumbed to a fit of resolution much under the pretence that it had long been forming. “Well, and mother,” said Dahlia, checking her, “promise me. Put a feather on my mouth; put a glass to my face, before you let them carry me out. Will you? Rhoda promises. I have asked her.” “Oh! the ideas of this girl!” Mrs. Sumfit burst out. “And looking so, as she says it. My love, you didn’t mean to die?” Dahlia soothed her, and sent her off. “I am buried alive!” she said. “I feel it all–the stifling! the hopeless cramp! Let us go and garden. Rhoda, have you got laudanum in the house?” Rhoda shook her head, too sick at heart to speak. They went into the garden, which was Dahlia’s healthfullest place. It seemed to her that her dead mother talked to her there. That was not a figure of speech, when she said she felt buried alive. She was in the state of sensational delusion. There were times when she watched her own power of motion curiously: curiously stretched out her hands, and touched things, and moved them. The sight was convincing, but the shudder came again. In a frame less robust the brain would have given way. It was the very soundness of the brain which, when her blood was a simple tide of life in her veins, and no vital force, had condemned her to see the wisdom and the righteousness of the act of sacrifice committed by her, and had urged her even up to the altar. Then the sudden throwing off of the mask by that man to whom she had bound herself, and the reading of Edward’s letter of penitence and love, thwarted reason, but without blinding or unsettling it. Passion grew dominant; yet against such deadly matters on all sides had passion to strive, that, under a darkened sky, visibly chained, bound down, and hopeless, she felt between-whiles veritably that she was a living body buried. Her senses had become semi-lunatic. She talked reasonably; and Rhoda, hearing her question and answer at meal-times like a sane woman, was in doubt whether her sister wilfully simulated a partial insanity when they were alone together. Now, in the garden, Dahlia said: “All those flowers, my dear, have roots in mother and me. She can’t feel them, for her soul’s in heaven. But mine is down there. The pain is the trying to get your soul loose. It’s the edge of a knife that won’t cut through. Do you know that?” Rhoda said, as acquiescingly as she could, “Yes.” “Do you?” Dahlia whispered. “It’s what they call the ‘agony.’ Only, to go through it in the dark, when you are all alone! boarded round! you will never know that. And there’s an angel brings me one of mother’s roses, and I smell it. I see fields of snow; and it’s warm there, and no labour for breath. I see great beds of flowers; I pass them like a breeze. I’m shot, and knock on the ground, and they bury me for dead again. Indeed, dearest, it’s true.” She meant, true as regarded her sensations. Rhoda could barely give a smile for response; and Dahlia’s intelligence being supernaturally active, she read her sister’s doubt, and cried out,– “Then let me talk of him!” It was the fiery sequence to her foregone speech, signifying that if her passion had liberty to express itself, she could clear understandings. But even a moment’s free wing to passion renewed the blinding terror within her. Rhoda steadied her along the walks, praying for the time to come when her friends, the rector and his wife, might help in the task of comforting this poor sister. Detestation of the idea of love made her sympathy almost deficient, and when there was no active work to do in aid, she was nearly valueless, knowing that she also stood guilty of a wrong. The day was very soft and still. The flowers gave light for light. They heard through the noise of the mill-water the funeral bell sound. It sank in Rhoda like the preaching of an end that was promise of a beginning, and girdled a distancing land of trouble. The breeze that blew seemed mercy. To live here in forgetfulness with Dahlia was the limit of her desires. Perhaps, if Robert worked among them, she would gratefully give him her hand. That is, if he said not a word of love. Master Gammon and Mrs. Sumfit were punctual in their return near the dinnerhour; and the business of releasing the dumplings and potatoes, and spreading out the cold meat and lettuces, restrained for some period the narrative of proceedings at the funeral. Chief among the incidents was, that Mrs. Sumfit had really seen, and only wanted, by corroboration of Master Gammon, to be sure she had positively seen, Anthony Hackbut on the skirts of the funeral procession. Master Gammon, however, was no supporter of conjecture. What he had thought he had thought; but that was neither here nor there. He would swear to nothing that he had not touched;–eyes deceived;–he was never a guesser. He left Mrs. Sumfit to pledge herself in perturbation of spirit to an oath that her eyes had seen Anthony Hackbut; and more, which was, that after the close of the funeral service, the young squire had caught sight of Anthony crouching in a corner of the churchyard, and had sent a man to him, and they had disappeared together. Mrs. Sumfit was heartily laughed at and rallied both by Robert and the farmer. “Tony at a funeral! and train expenses!” the farmer interjected. “D’ye think, mother, Tony’d come to Wrexby churchyard ‘fore he come Queen Anne’s Farm? And where’s he now, mayhap?” Mrs. Sumfit appealed in despair to Master Gammon, with entreaties, and a ready dumpling. “There, Mas’ Gammon; and why you sh’d play at ‘do believe’ and at ‘don’t believe,’ after that awesome scene, the solem’est of life’s, when you did declare to me, sayin’, it was a stride for boots out o’ London this morning. Your words, Mas’ Gammon! and ‘boots’-=it’s true, if by that alone! For, ‘boots,’ I says to myself–he thinks by ‘boots,’ there being a cord’er in his family on the mother’s side; which you yourself told to me, as you did, Mas’ Gammon, and now holds back, you did, like a bad horse.” “Hey! does Gammon jib?” said the farmer, with the ghost of old laughter twinkling in his eyes. “He told me this tale,” Mrs. Sumfit continued, daring her irresponsive enemy to contradict her, with a threatening gaze. “He told me this tale, he did; and my belief’s, his game ‘s, he gets me into a corner–there to be laughed at! Mas’ Gammon, if you’re not a sly old man, you said, you did, he was drownded; your mother’s brother’s wife’s brother; and he had a brother, and what he was to you–that brother–” Mrs. Sumfit smote her hands–“Oh, my goodness, my poor head! but you shan’t slip away, Mas’ Gammon; no, try you ever so much. Drownded he was, and eight days in the sea, which you told me over a warm mug of ale by the fire years back. And I do believe them dumplings makes ye obstinate; for worse you get, and that fond of ’em, I sh’ll soon not have enough in our biggest pot. Yes, you said he was eight days in the sea, and as for face, you said, poor thing! he was like a rag of towel dipped in starch, was your own words, and all his likeness wiped out; and Joe, the other brother, a cord’er–bootmaker, you call ’em–looked down him, as he was stretched out on the shore of the sea, all along, and didn’t know him till he come to the boots, and he says, ‘It’s Abner;’ for there was his boots to know him by. Now, will you deny, Mas’ Gammon, you said, Mr. Hackbut’s boots, and a long stride it was for ’em from London? And I won’t be laughed at through arts of any sly old man!” The circumstantial charge made no impression on Master Gammon, who was heard to mumble, as from the inmost recesses of tight-packed dumpling; but he left the vindication of his case to the farmer’s laughter. The mention of her uncle had started a growing agitation in Rhoda, to whom the indication of his eccentric behaviour was a stronger confirmation of his visit to the neighbourhood. And wherefore had he journeyed down? Had he come to haunt her on account of the money he had poured into her lap? Rhoda knew in a moment that she was near a great trial of her strength and truth. She had more than once, I cannot tell you how distantly, conceived that the money had been money upon which the mildest word for “stolen” should be put to express the feeling she had got about it, after she had parted with the bulk of it to the man Sedgett. Not “stolen,” not “appropriated,” but money that had perhaps been entrusted, and of which Anthony had forgotten the rightful ownership. This idea of hers had burned with no intolerable fire; but, under a weight of all discountenancing appearances, feeble though it was, it had distressed her. The dealing with money, and the necessity for it, had given Rhoda a better comprehension of its nature and value. She had taught herself to think that her suspicion sprang from her uncle’s wild demeanour, and the scene of the gold pieces scattered on the floor, as if a heart had burst at her feet. No sooner did she hear that Anthony had been, by supposition, seen, than the little light of secret dread flamed a panic through her veins. She left the table before Master Gammon had finished, and went out of the house to look about for her uncle. He was nowhere in the fields, nor in the graveyard. She walked over the neighbourhood desolately, until her quickened apprehension was extinguished, and she returned home relieved, thinking it folly to have imagined her uncle was other than a man of hoarded wealth, and that he was here. But, in the interval, she had experienced emotions which warned her of a struggle to come. Who would be friendly to her, and an arm of might? The thought of the storm she had sown upon all sides made her tremble foolishly. When she placed her hand in Robert’s, she gave his fingers a confiding pressure, and all but dropped her head upon his bosom, so sick she was with weakness. It would have been a deceit toward him, and that restrained her; perhaps, yet more, she was restrained by the gloomy prospect of having to reply to any words of love, without an idea of what to say, and with a loathing of caresses. She saw herself condemned to stand alone, and at a season when she was not strengthened by pure self-support. Rhoda had not surrendered the stern belief that she had done well by forcing Dahlia’s hand to the marriage, though it had resulted evilly. In reflecting on it, she had still a feeling of the harsh joy peculiar to those who have exercised command with a conscious righteousness upon wilful, sinful, and erring spirits, and have thwarted the wrongdoer. She could only admit that there was sadness in the issue; hitherto, at least, nothing worse than sad disappointment. The man who was her sister’s husband could no longer complain that he had been the victim of an imposition. She had bought his promise that he would leave the country, and she had rescued the honour of the family by paying him. At what cost? She asked herself that now, and then her self-support became uneven. Could her uncle have parted with the great sum–have shed it upon her, merely beneficently, and because he loved her? Was it possible that he had the habit of carrying his own riches through the streets of London? She had to silence all questions imperiously, recalling exactly her ideas of him, and the value of money in the moment when money was an object of hunger–when she had seized it like a wolf, and its value was quite unknown, unguessed at. Rhoda threw up her window before she slept, that she might breathe the cool night air; and, as she leaned out, she heard steps moving away, and knew them to be Robert’s, in whom that pressure of her hand had cruelly resuscitated his longing for her. She drew back, wondering at the idleness of men–slaves while they want a woman’s love, savages when they have won it. She tried to pity him, but she had not an emotion to spare, save perhaps one of dull exultation, that she, alone of women, was free from that wretched mess called love; and upon it she slept. It was between the breakfast and dinner hours, at the farm, next day, when the young squire, accompanied by Anthony Hackbut, met farmer Fleming in the lane bordering one of the outermost fields of wheat. Anthony gave little more than a blunt nod to his relative, and slouched on, leaving the farmer in amazement, while the young squire stopped him to speak with him. Anthony made his way on to the house. Shortly after, he was seen passing through the gates of the garden, accompanied by Rhoda. At the dinner-hour, Robert was taken aside by the farmer. Neither Rhoda nor Anthony presented themselves. They did not appear till nightfall. When Anthony came into the room, he took no greetings and gave none. He sat down on the first chair by the door, shaking his head, with vacant eyes. Rhoda took off her bonnet, and sat as strangely silent. In vain Mrs. Sumfit asked her; “Shall it be tea, dear, and a little cold meat?” The two dumb figures were separately interrogated, but they had no answer. “Come! brother Tony?” the farmer tried to rally him. Dahlia was knitting some article of feminine gear. Robert stood by the musk-pots at the window, looking at Rhoda fixedly. Of this gaze she became conscious, and glanced from him to the clock. “It’s late,” she said, rising. “But you’re empty, my dear. And to think o’ going to bed without a dinner, or your tea, and no supper! You’ll never say prayers, if you do,” said Mrs. Sumfit. The remark engendered a notion in the farmer’s head, that Anthony promised to be particularly prayerless. “You’ve been and spent a night at the young squire’s, I hear, brother Tony. All right and well. No complaints on my part, I do assure ye. If you’re mixed up with that family, I won’t bring it in you’re anyways mixed up with this family; not so as to clash, do you see. Only, man, now you are here, a word’d be civil, if you don’t want a doctor.” “I was right,” murmured Mrs. Sumfit. “At the funeral, he was; and Lord be thanked! I thought my eyes was failin’. Mas’ Gammon, you’d ha’ lost no character by sidin’ wi’ me.” “Here’s Dahlia, too,” said the farmer. “Brother Tony, don’t you see her? She’s beginning to be recognizable, if her hair’d grow a bit faster. She’s…well, there she is.” A quavering, tiny voice, that came from Anthony, said: “How d’ ye do–how d’ ye do;” sounding like the first effort of a fife. But Anthony did not cast eye on Dahlia. “Will you eat, man?–will you smoke a pipe?–won’t you talk a word?–will you go to bed?” These several questions, coming between pauses, elicited nothing from the staring oldman. “Is there a matter wrong at the Bank?” the farmer called out, and Anthony jumped in a heap. “Eh?” persisted the farmer. Rhoda interposed: “Uncle is tired; he is unwell. Tomorrow he will talk to you.” “No, but is there anything wrong up there, though?” the farmer asked with eager curiosity, and a fresh smile at the thought that those Banks and city folk were mortal, and could upset, notwithstanding their crashing wheels. “Brother Tony, you speak out; has anybody been and broke? Never mind a blow, so long, o’ course, as they haven’t swallowed your money. How is it? Why, I never saw such a sight as you. You come down from London; you play hide and seek about your relation’s house; and here, when you do condescend to step in–eh? how is it? You ain’t, I hope, ruined, Tony, are ye?” Rhoda stood over her uncle to conceal him. “He shall not speak till he has had some rest. And yes, mother, he shall have some warm tea upstairs in bed. Boil some water. Now, uncle, come with me.” “Anybody broke?” Anthony rolled the words over, as Rhoda raised his arm. “I’m asked such a lot, my dear, I ain’t equal to it. You said here ‘d be a quiet place. I don’t know about money. Try my pockets. Yes, mum, if you was forty policemen, I’m empty; you’d find it. And no objection to nod to prayers; but never was taught one of my own. Where am I going, my dear?” “Upstairs with me, uncle.” Rhoda had succeeded in getting him on his feet. The farmer tapped at his forehead, as a signification to the others that Anthony had gone wrong in the head, which reminded him that he had prophesied as much. He stiffened out his legs, and gave a manful spring, crying, “Hulloa, brother Tony! why, man, eh? Look here. What, goin’ to bed? What, you, Tony? I say–I say–dear me!” And during these exclamations intricate visions of tripping by means of gold wires danced before him. Rhoda hurried Anthony out. After the door had shut, the farmer said: “That comes of it; sooner or later, there it is! You give your heart to money–you insure in a ship, and as much as say, here’s a ship, and, blow and lighten, I defy you. Whereas we day-by-day people, if it do blow and if it do lighten, and the waves are avilanches, we’ve nothing to lose. Poor old Tony–a smash, to a certainty. There’s been a smash, and he’s gone under the harrow. Any o’ you here might ha’ heard me say, things can’t last for ever. Ha’n’t you, now?” The persons present meekly acquiesced in his prophetic spirit to this extent. Mrs. Sumfit dolorously said, “Often, William dear,” and accepted the incontestable truth in deep humiliation of mind. “Save,” the farmer continued, “save and store, only don’t put your heart in the box.” “It’s true, William;” Mrs. Sumfit acted clerk to the sermon. Dahlia took her softly by the neck, and kissed her. “Is it love for the old woman?” Mrs. Sumfit murmured fondly; and Dahlia kissed her again. The farmer had by this time rounded to the thought of how he personally might be affected by Anthony’s ill-luck, supposing; perchance, that Anthony was suffering from something more than a sentimental attachment to the Bank of his predilection: and such a reflection instantly diverted his tendency to moralize. “We shall hear to-morrow,” he observed in conclusion; which, as it caused a desire for the morrow to spring within his bosom, sent his eyes at Master Gammon, who was half an hour behind his time for bed, and had dropped asleep in his chair. This unusual display of public somnolence on Master Gammon’s part, together with the veteran’s reputation for slowness, made the farmer fret at him as being in some way an obstruction to the lively progress of the hours. “Hoy, Gammon!” he sang out, awakeningly to ordinary ears; but Master Gammon was not one who took the ordinary plunge into the gulf of sleep, and it was required to shake him and to bellow at him–to administer at once earthquake and thunder–before his lizard eyelids would lift over the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate. Brought at last to a condition of stale consciousness, he looked at his master long, and uttered surprisingly “Farmer, there’s queer things going on in this house,” and then relapsed to a combat with Mrs. Sumfit, regarding the candle; she saying that it was not to be entrusted to him, and he sullenly contending that it was. “Here, we’ll all go to bed,” said the farmer. “What with one person queer, and another person queer, I shall be in for a headache, if I take to thinking. Gammon’s a man sees in ‘s sleep what he misses awake. Did you ever know,” he addressed anybody, “such a thing as Tony Hackbut coming into a relation’s house, and sitting there, and not a word for any of us? It’s, I call it, dumbfoundering. And that’s me: why didn’t I go up and shake his hand, you ask. Well, why not? If he don’t know he’s welcome, without ceremony, he’s no good. Why, I’ve got matters t’ occupy my mind, too, haven’t I? Every man has, and some more’n others, let alone crosses. There’s something wrong with my brother-in-law, Tony, that’s settled. Odd that we country people, who bide, and take the Lord’s gifts–” The farmer did not follow out this reflection, but raising his arms, shepherd-wise, he puffed as if blowing the two women before him to their beds, and then gave a shy look at Robert, and nodded good-night to him. Robert nodded in reply. He knew the cause of the farmer’s uncommon blitheness. Algernon Blancove, the young squire, had proposed for Rhoda’s hand. CHAPTER XLIII Anthony had robbed the Bank. The young squire was aware of the fact, and had offered to interpose for him, and to make good the money to the Bank, upon one condition. So much, Rhoda had gathered from her uncle’s babbling interjections throughout the day. The farmer knew only of the young squire’s proposal, which had been made direct to him; and he had left it to Robert to state the case to Rhoda, and plead for himself. She believed fully, when she came downstairs into the room where Robert was awaiting her, that she had but to speak and a mine would be sprung; and shrinking from it, hoping for it, she entered, and tried to fasten her eyes upon Robert distinctly, telling him the tale. Robert listened with a calculating seriousness of manner that quieted her physical dread of his passion. She finished; and he said “It will, perhaps, save your uncle: I’m sure it will please your father.” She sat down, feeling that a warmth had gone, and that she was very bare. “Must I consent, then?” “If you can, I suppose.” Both being spirits formed for action, a perplexity found them weak as babes. He, moreover, was stung to see her debating at all upon such a question; and he was in despair before complicated events which gave nothing for his hands and heart to do. Stiff endurance seemed to him to be his lesson; and he made a show of having learnt it. “Were you going out, Robert?” “I usually make the rounds of the house, to be sure all’s safe.” His walking about the garden at night was not, then, for the purpose of looking at her window. Rhoda coloured in all her dark crimson with shame for thinking that it had been so. “I must decide to-morrow morning.” “They say, the pillow’s the best counsellor.” A reply that presumed she would sleep appeared to her as bitterly unfriendly. “Did father wish it?” “Not by what he spoke.” “You suppose he does wish it?” “Where’s the father who wouldn’t? Of course, he wishes it. He’s kind enough, but you may be certain he wishes it.” “Oh! Dahlia, Dahlia!” Rhoda moaned, under a rush of new sensations, unfilial, akin to those which her sister had distressed her by speaking shamelessly out. “Ah! poor soul!” added Robert. “My darling must be brave: she must have great courage. Dahlia cannot be a coward. I begin to see.” Rhoda threw up her face, and sat awhile as one who was reading old matters by a fresh light. “I can’t think,” she said, with a start. “Have I been dreadfully cruel? Was I unsisterly? I have such a horror of some things–disgrace. And men are so hard on women; and father–I felt for him. And I hated that base man. It’s his cousin and his name! I could almost fancy this trial is brought round to me for punishment.” An ironic devil prompted Robert to say, “You can’t let harm come to your uncle.” The thing implied was the farthest in his idea of any woman’s possible duty. “Are you of that opinion?” Rhoda questioned with her eyes, but uttered nothing. Now, he had spoken almost in the ironical tone. She should have noted that. And how could a true-hearted girl suppose him capable of giving such counsel to her whom he loved? It smote him with horror and anger; but he was much too manly to betray these actual sentiments, and continued to dissemble. You see, he had not forgiven her for her indifference to him. “You are no longer your own mistress,” he said, meaning exactly the reverse. This–that she was bound in generosity to sacrifice herself–was what Rhoda feared. There was no forceful passion in her bosom to burst through the crowd of weak reasonings and vanities, to bid her be a woman, not a puppet; and the passion in him, for which she craved, that she might be taken up by it and whirled into forgetfulness, with a seal of betrothal upon her lips, was absent so that she thought herself loved no more by Robert. She was weary of thinking and acting on her own responsibility, and would gladly have abandoned her will; yet her judgement, if she was still to exercise it, told her that the step she was bidden to take was one, the direct consequence and the fruit of her other resolute steps. Pride whispered, “You could compel your sister to do that which she abhorred;” and Pity pleaded for her poor old uncle Anthony. She looked back in imagination at that scene with him in London, amazed at her frenzy of power, and again, from that contemplation, amazed at her present nervelessness. “I am not fit to be my own mistress,” she said. “Then, the sooner you decide the better,” observed Robert, and the room became hot and narrow to him. “Very little time is given me,” she murmured. The sound was like a whimper; exasperating to one who had witnessed her remorseless energy. “I dare say you won’t find the hardship so great,” said he. “Because,” she looked up quickly, “I went out one day to meet him? Do you mean that, Robert? I went to hear news of my sister. I had received no letters from her. And he wrote to say that he could tell me about her. My uncle took me once to the Bank. I saw him there first. He spoke of Wrexby, and of my sister. It is pleasant to inexperienced girls to hear themselves praised. Since the day when you told me to turn back I have always respected you.” Her eyelids lowered softly. Could she have humbled herself more? But she had, at the same time, touched his old wound: and his rival then was the wooer now, rich, and a gentleman. And this room, Robert thought as he looked about it, was the room in which she had refused him, when he first asked her to be his. “I think,” he said, “I’ve never begged your pardon for the last occasion of our being alone here together. I’ve had my arm round you. Don’t be frightened. That’s my marriage, and there was my wife. And there’s an end of my likings and my misconduct. Forgive me for calling it to mind.” “No, no, Robert,” Rhoda lifted her hands, and, startled by the impulse, dropped them, saying: “What forgiveness? Was I ever angry with you?” A look of tenderness accompanied the words, and grew into a dusky crimson rose under his eyes. “When you went into the wood, I saw you going: I knew it was for some good object,” he said, and flushed equally. But, by the recurrence to that scene, he had checked her sensitive developing emotion. She hung a moment in languor, and that oriental warmth of colour ebbed away from her cheeks. “You are very kind,” said she. Then he perceived in dimmest fashion that possibly a chance had come to ripeness, withered, and fallen, within the late scoffing seconds of time. Enraged at his blindness, and careful, lest he had wrongly guessed, not to expose his regret (the man was a lover), he remarked, both truthfully and hypocritically: “I’ve always thought you were born to be a lady.” (You had that ambition, young madam.) She answered: “That’s what I don’t understand.” (Your saying it, O my friend!) “You will soon take to your new duties.” (You have small objection to them even now.) “Yes, or my life won’t be worth much.” (Know, that you are driving me to it.) “And I wish you happiness, Rhoda.” (You are madly imperilling the prospect thereof.) To each of them the second meaning stood shadowy behind the utterances. And further,– “Thank you, Robert.” (I shall have to thank you for the issue.) “Now it’s time to part.” (Do you not see that there’s a danger for me in remaining?) “Good night.” (Behold, I am submissive.) “Good night, Rhoda.” (You were the first to give the signal of parting.) “Good night.” (I am simply submissive.) “Why not my name? Are you hurt with me?” Rhoda choked. The indirectness of speech had been a shelter to her, permitting her to hint at more than she dared clothe in words. Again the delicious dusky rose glowed beneath his eyes. But he had put his hand out to her, and she had not taken it. “What have I done to offend you? I really don’t know, Rhoda.” “Nothing.” The flower had closed. He determined to believe that she was gladdened at heart by the prospect of a fine marriage, and now began to discourse of Anthony’s delinquency, saying,– “It was not money taken for money’s sake: any one can see that. It was half clear to me, when you told me about it, that the money was not his to give, but I’ve got the habit of trusting you to be always correct.” “And I never am,” said Rhoda, vexed at him and at herself. “Women can’t judge so well about money matters. Has your uncle no account of his own at the Bank? He was thought to be a bit of a miser.” “What he is, or what he was, I can’t guess. He has not been near the Bank since that day; nor to his home. He has wandered down on his way here, sleeping in cottages. His heart seems broken. I have still a great deal of the money. I kept it, thinking it might be a protection for Dahlia. Oh! my thoughts and what I have done! Of course, I imagined him to be rich. A thousand pounds seemed a great deal to me, and very little for one who was rich. If I had reflected at all, I must have seen that Uncle Anthony would never have carried so much through the streets. I was like a fiend for money. I must have been acting wrongly. Such a craving as that is a sign of evil.” “What evil there is, you’re going to mend, Rhoda.” “I sell myself, then.” “Hardly so bad as that. The money will come from you instead of from your uncle.” Rhoda bent forward in her chair, with her elbows on her knees, like a man brooding. Perhaps, it was right that the money should come from her. And how could she have hoped to get the money by any other means? Here at least was a positive escape from perplexity. It came at the right moment; was it a help divine? What cowardice had been prompting her to evade it? After all, could it be a dreadful step that she was required to take? Her eyes met Robert’s, and he said startlingly: “Just like a woman!” “Why?” but she had caught the significance, and blushed with spite. “He was the first to praise you.” “You are brutal to me, Robert.” “My name at last! You accused me of that sort of thing before, in this room.” Rhoda stood up. “I will wish you good night.” “And now you take my hand.” “Good night,” they uttered simultaneously; but Robert did not give up the hand he had got in his own. His eyes grew sharp, and he squeezed the fingers. “I’m bound,” she cried. “Once!” Robert drew her nearer to him. “Let me go.” “Once!” he reiterated. “Rhoda, as I’ve never kissed you–once!” “No: don’t anger me.” “No one has ever kissed you?” “Never.” “Then, I–” His force was compelling the straightened figure. Had he said, “Be mine!” she might have softened to his embrace; but there was no fire of divining love in her bosom to perceive her lover’s meaning. She read all his words as a placard on a board, and revolted from the outrage of submitting her lips to one who was not to be her husband. His jealousy demanded that gratification foremost. The “Be mine!” was ready enough to follow. “Let me go, Robert.” She was released. The cause for it was the opening of the door. Anthony stood there. A more astounding resemblance to the phantasm of a dream was never presented. He was clad in a manner to show forth the condition of his wits, in partial night and day attire: one of the farmer’s nightcaps was on his head, surmounted by his hat. A confused recollection of the necessity for trousers, had made him draw on those garments sufficiently to permit of the movement of his short legs, at which point their subserviency to the uses ended. Wrinkled with incongruous clothing from head to foot, and dazed by the light, he peered on them, like a mouse magnified and petrified. “Dearest uncle!” Rhoda went to him. Anthony nodded, pointing to the door leading out of the house. “I just want to go off–go off. Never you mind me. I’m only going off.” “You must go to your bed, uncle.” “Oh, Lord! no. I’m going off, my dear. I’ve had sleep enough for forty. I–” he turned his mouth to Rhoda’s ear, “I don’t want t’ see th’ old farmer.” And, as if he had given a conclusive reason for his departure, he bored towards the door, repeating it, and bawling additionally, “in the morning.” “You have seen him, uncle. You have seen him. It’s over,” said Rhoda. Anthony whispered: “I don’t want t’ see th’ old farmer.” “But, you have seen him, uncle.” “In the morning, my dear. Not in the morning. He’ll be looking and asking, ‘Where away, brother Tony?’ ‘Where’s your banker’s book, brother Tony?’ ‘How’s money-market, brother Tony?’ I can’t see th’ old farmer.” It was impossible to avoid smiling: his imitation of the farmer’s country style was exact. She took his hands, and used every persuasion she could think of to induce him to return to his bed; nor was he insensible to argument, or superior to explanation. “Th’ old farmer thinks I’ve got millions, my dear. You can’t satisfy him. He… I don’t want t’ see him in the morning. He thinks I’ve got millions. His mouth’ll go down. I don’t want… You don’t want him to look… And I can’t count now; I can’t count a bit. And every post I see ‘s a policeman. I ain’t hiding. Let ’em take the old man. And he was a faithful servant, till one day he got up on a regular whirly-go- round, and ever since…such a little boy! I’m frightened o’ you, Rhoda.” “I will do everything for you,” said Rhoda, crying wretchedly. “Because, the young squire says,” Anthony made his voice mysterious. “Yes, yes,” Rhoda stopped him; “and I consent:” she gave a hurried half-glance behind her. “Come, uncle. Oh! pity! don’t let me think your reason’s gone. I can get you the money, but if you go foolish, I cannot help you.” Her energy had returned to her with the sense of sacrifice. Anthony eyed her tears. “We’ve sat on a bank and cried together, haven’t we?” he said. “And counted ants, we have. Shall we sit in the sun together to-morrow? Say, we shall. Shall we? A good long day in the sun and nobody looking at me ‘s my pleasure.” Rhoda gave him the assurance, and he turned and went upstairs with her, docile at the prospect of hours to be passed in the sunlight. Yet, when morning came, he had disappeared. Robert also was absent from the breakfast-table. The farmer made no remarks, save that he reckoned Master Gammon was right–in allusion to the veteran’s somnolent observation overnight; and strange things were acted before his eyes. There came by the morning delivery of letters one addressed to “Miss Fleming.” He beheld his daughters rise, put their hands out, and claim it, in a breath; and they gazed upon one another like the two women demanding the babe from the justice of the Wise King. The letter was placed in Rhoda’s hand; Dahlia laid hers on it. Their mouths were shut; any one not looking at them would have been unaware that a supreme conflict was going on in the room. It was a strenuous wrestle of their eyeballs, like the “give way” of athletes pausing. But the delirious beat down the constitutional strength. A hard bright smile ridged the hollow of Dahlia’s cheeks. Rhoda’s dark eyes shut; she let go her hold, and Dahlia thrust the letter in against her bosom, snatched it out again, and dipped her face to roses in a jug, and kissing Mrs. Sumfit, ran from the room for a single minute; after which she came back smiling with gravely joyful eyes and showing a sedate readiness to eat and conclude the morning meal. What did this mean? The farmer could have made allowance for Rhoda’s behaving so, seeing that she notoriously possessed intellect; and he had the habit of charging all freaks and vagaries of manner upon intellect. But Dahlia was a soft creature, without this apology for extravagance, and what right had she to letters addressed to “Miss Fleming?” The farmer prepared to ask a question, and was further instigated to it by seeing Mrs. Sumfit’s eyes roll sympathetic under a burden of overpowering curiosity and bewilderment. On the point of speaking, he remembered that he had pledged his word to ask no questions; he feared to–that was the secret; he had put his trust in Rhoda’s assurance, and shrank from a spoken suspicion. So, checking himself, he broke out upon Mrs. Sumfit: “Now, then, mother!” which caused her to fluster guiltily, she having likewise given her oath to be totally unquestioning, even as was Master Gammon, whom she watched with a deep envy. Mrs. Sumfit excused the anxious expression of her face by saying that she was thinking of her dairy, whither, followed by the veteran, she retired. Rhoda stood eyeing Dahlia, nerved to battle against the contents of that letter, though in the first conflict she had been beaten. “Oh, this curse of love!” she thought in her heart; and as Dahlia left the room, flushed, stupefied, and conscienceless, Rhoda the more readily told her father the determination which was the result of her interview with Robert. No sooner had she done so, than a strange fluttering desire to look on Robert awoke within her bosom. She left the house, believing that she went abroad to seek her uncle, and walked up a small grass-knoll, a little beyond the farm-yard, from which she could see green corn-tracts and the pastures by the river, the river flowing oily under summer light, and the slow-footed cows, with their heads bent to the herbage; far-away sheep, and white hawthorn bushes, and deep hedge-ways bursting out of the trimness of the earlier season; and a nightingale sang among the hazels near by. This scene of unthrobbing peacefulness was beheld by Rhoda with her first conscious delight in it. She gazed round on the farm, under a quick new impulse of affection for her old home. And whose hand was it that could alone sustain the working of the farm, and had done so, without reward? Her eyes travelled up to Wrexby Hall, perfectly barren of any feeling that she was to enter the place, aware only that it was full of pain for her. She accused herself, but could not accept the charge of her having ever hoped for transforming events that should twist and throw the dear old farm-life long back into the fields of memory. Nor could she understand the reason of her continued coolness to Robert. Enough of accurate reflection was given her to perceive that discontent with her station was the original cause of her discontent now. What she had sown she was reaping:–and wretchedly colourless are these harvests of our