"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 n.o.body looking at me "s my pleasure."
Rhoda gave him the a.s.surance, and he turned and went upstairs with her, docile at the prospect of hours to be pa.s.sed 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s, like the "give way" of athletes pausing. But the delirious beat down the const.i.tutional 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.surance, and shrank from a spoken suspicion. So, checking himself, he broke out upon Mrs. Sumfit: "Now, then, mother!" which caused her to fl.u.s.ter 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 gra.s.s-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 dream! The sun has not shone on them. They may have a tragic blood-hue, as with Dahlia"s; but they will never have any warm, and fresh, and nourishing sweetness--the juice which is in a single blade of gra.s.s.
A longing came upon Rhoda to go and handle b.u.t.ter. She wished to smell it as Mrs. Sumfit drubbed and patted and flattened and rounded it in the dairy; and she ran down the slope, meeting her father at the gate. He was dressed in his brushed suit, going she knew whither, and when he asked if she had seen her uncle, she gave for answer a plain negative, and longed more keenly to be at work with her hands, and to smell the homely creamy air under the dairy-shed.
CHAPTER XLIV
She watched her father as he went across the field and into the lane.
Her breathing was suppressed till he appeared in view at different points, more and more distant, and then she sighed heavily, stopped her breathing, and hoped her unshaped hope again. The last time he was in sight, she found herself calling to him with a voice like that of a burdened sleeper: her thought being, "How can you act so cruelly to Robert!" He pa.s.sed up Wrexby Heath, and over the black burnt patch where the fire had caught the furzes on a dry Maynight, and sank on the side of the Hall.
When we have looked upon a picture of still green life with a troubled soul, and the blow falls on us, we accuse Nature of our own treachery to her. Rhoda hurried from the dairy-door to shut herself up in her room and darken the light surrounding her. She had turned the lock, and was about systematically to pull down the blind, when the marvel of beholding Dahlia stepping out of the garden made her for a moment less the creature of her sickened senses. Dahlia was dressed for a walk, and she went very fast. The same paralysis of motion afflicted Rhoda as when she was gazing after her father; but her hand stretched out instinctively for her bonnet when Dahlia had crossed the green and the mill-bridge, and was no more visible. Rhoda drew her bonnet on, and caught her black silk mantle in her hand, and without strength to throw it across her shoulders, dropped before her bed, and uttered a strange prayer. "Let her die rather than go back to disgrace, my G.o.d! my G.o.d!"
She tried to rise, and failed in the effort, and superst.i.tiously renewed her prayer. "Send death to her rather!"--and Rhoda"s vision under her shut eyes conjured up clouds and lightnings, and spheres in conflagration.
There is nothing so indicative of fevered or of bad blood as the tendency to counsel the Almighty how he shall deal with his creatures.
The strain of a long uncertainty, and the late feverish weeks had distempered the fine blood of the girl, and her acts and words were becoming remoter exponents of her character.
She bent her head in a blind doze that gave her strength to rise. As swiftly as she could she went in the track of her sister.
That morning, Robert had likewise received a letter. It was from Major Waring, and contained a bank-note, and a summons to London, as also an enclosure from Mrs. Boulby of Warbeach; the nature of which was an advertis.e.m.e.nt cut out of the county paper, notifying to one Robert Eccles that his aunt Anne had died, and that there was a legacy for him, to be paid over upon application. Robert crossed the fields, laughing madly at the ironical fate which favoured him a little and a little, and never enough, save just to keep him swimming.
The letter from Major Waring said:--
"I must see you immediately. Be quick and come. I begin to be of your opinion--there are some things which we must take into our own hands and deal summarily with."
"Ay!--ay!" Robert gave tongue in the clear morning air, scenting excitement and eager for it as a hound.
More was written, which he read subsequently
"I wrong," Percy"s letter continued, "the best of women. She was driven to my door. There is, it seems, some hope that Dahlia will find herself free. At any rate, keep guard over her, and don"t leave her. Mrs. Lovell has herself been moving to make discoveries down at Warbeach. Mr. Blancove has nearly quitted this sphere. She nursed him--I was jealous!--the word"s out. Truth, courage, and suffering touch Margaret"s heart.
"Yours,
"Percy."
Jumping over a bank, Robert came upon Anthony, who was unsteadily gazing at a donkey that cropped the gra.s.s by a gate.
"Here you are," said Robert, and took his arm.
Anthony struggled, though he knew the grasp was friendly; but he was led along: nor did Robert stop until they reached Greatham, five miles beyond Wrexby, where he entered the princ.i.p.al inn and called for wine.
"You want spirit: you want life," said Robert.
Anthony knew that he wanted no wine, whatever his needs might be. Yet the tender ecstacy of being paid for was irresistible, and he drank, saying, "Just one gla.s.s, then."
Robert pledged him. They were in a private room, of which, having ordered up three bottles of sherry, Robert locked the door. The devil was in him. He compelled Anthony to drink an equal portion with himself, alternately frightening and cajoling the old man.
"Drink, I tell you. You"ve robbed me, and you shall drink!"