Rhoda Fleming — Complete

CHAPTER XXIII

Over a fire in one of the upper sitting-rooms of the Pilot Inn, Robert sat with his friend, the beloved friend of whom he used to speak to Dahlia and Rhoda, too proudly not to seem betraying the weaker point of pride. This friend had accepted the title from a private soldier of his regiment; to be capable of doing which, a man must be both officer and gentleman in a sterner and less liberal sense than is expressed by that everlasting phrase in the mouth of the military parrot. Major Percy Waring, the son of a clergyman, was a working soldier, a slayer, if you will, from pure love of the profession of arms, and all the while the sweetest and gentlest of men. I call him a working soldier in opposition to the parading soldier, the coxcomb in uniform, the hero by accident, and the martial boys of wealth and station, who are of the army of England. He studied war when the trumpet slumbered, and had no place but in the field when it sounded. To him the honour of England was as a babe in his arms: he hugged it like a mother. He knew the military history of every regiment in the service. Disasters even of old date brought groans from him. This enthusiastic face was singularly soft when the large dark eyes were set musing. The cast of it being such, sometimes in speaking of a happy play of artillery upon congregated masses, an odd effect was produced. Ordinarily, the clear features were reflective almost to sadness, in the absence of animation; but an exulting energy for action would now and then light them up. Hilarity of spirit did not belong to him. He was, nevertheless, a cheerful talker, as could be seen in the glad ear given to him by Robert. Between them it was “Robert” and “Percy.” Robert had rescued him from drowning on the East Anglian shore, and the friendship which ensued was one chief reason for Robert's quitting the post of trooper and buying himself out. It was against Percy's advice, who wanted to purchase a commission for him; but the humbler man had the sturdy scruples of his rank regarding money, and his romantic illusions being dispersed by an experience of the absolute class-distinctions in the service, Robert; that he might prevent his friend from violating them, made use of his aunt's legacy to obtain release. Since that date they had not met; but their friendship was fast. Percy had recently paid a visit to Queen Anne's Farm, where he had seen Rhoda and heard of Robert's departure. Knowing Robert's birthplace, he had come on to Warbeach, and had seen Jonathan Eccles, who referred him to Mrs. Boulby, licenced seller of brandy, if he wished to enjoy an interview with Robert Eccles.

“The old man sent up regularly every day to inquire how his son was faring on the road to the next world,” said Robert, laughing. “He's tough old English oak. I'm just to him what I appear at the time. It's better having him like that than one of your jerky fathers, who seem to belong to the stage of a theatre. Everybody respects my old dad, and I can laugh at what he thinks of me. I've only to let him know I've served an apprenticeship in farming, and can make use of some of his ideas—sound! every one of 'em; every one of 'em sound! And that I say of my own father.”

“Why don't you tell him?” Percy asked.

“I want to forget all about Kent and drown the county,” said Robert. “And I'm going to, as far as my memory's concerned.”

Percy waited for some seconds. He comprehended perfectly this state of wilfulness in an uneducated sensitive man.

“She has a steadfast look in her face, Robert. She doesn't look as if she trifled. I've really never seen a finer, franker girl in my life, if faces are to be trusted.”

“It's t' other way. There's no trifling in her case. She's frank. She fires at you point blank.”

“You never mentioned her in your letters to me, Robert.”

“No. I had a suspicion from the first I was going to be a fool about the girl.”

Percy struck his hand.

“You didn't do quite right.”

“Do you say that?”

Robert silenced him with this question, for there was a woman in Percy's antecedent history.

The subject being dismissed, they talked more freely. Robert related the tale of Dahlia, and of his doings at Fairly.

“Oh! we agree,” he said, noting a curious smile that Percy could not smooth out of sight. “I know it was odd conduct. I do respect my superiors; but, believe me or not, Percy, injury done to a girl makes me mad, and I can't hold back; and she's the sister of the girl you saw. By heaven! if it weren't for my head getting blind now when my blood boils, I've the mind to walk straight up to the house and screw the secret out of one of them. What I say is—Is there a God up aloft? Then, he sees all, and society is vapour, and while I feel the spirit in me to do it, I go straight at my aim.”

“If, at the same time, there's no brandy in you,” said Percy, “which would stop your seeing clear or going straight.”

The suggestion was a cruel shock. Robert nodded. “That's true. I suppose it's my bad education that won't let me keep cool. I'm ashamed of myself after it. I shout and thunder, and the end of it is, I go away and think about the same of Robert Eccles that I've frightened other people into thinking. Perhaps you'll think me to blame in this case? One of those Mr. Blancoves—not the one you've heard of—struck me on the field before a lady. I bore it. It was part of what I'd gone out to meet. I was riding home late at night, and he stood at the corner of the lane, with an old enemy of mine, and a sad cur that is! Sedgett's his name—Nic, the Christian part of it. There'd just come a sharp snowfall from the north, and the moonlight shot over the flying edge of the rear-cloud; and I saw Sedgett with a stick in his hand; but the gentleman had no stick. I'll give Mr. Edward Blancove credit for not meaning to be active in a dastardly assault.

“But why was he in consultation with my enemy? And he let my enemy—by the way, Percy, you dislike that sort of talk of 'my enemy,' I know. You like it put plain and simple: but down in these old parts again, I catch at old habits; and I'm always a worse man when I haven't seen you for a time. Sedgett, say. Sedgett, as I passed, made a sweep at my horse's knees, and took them a little over the fetlock. The beast reared. While I was holding on he swung a blow at me, and took me here.”

Robert touched his head. “I dropped like a horse-chestnut from the tree. When I recovered, I was lying in the lane. I think I was there flat, face to the ground, for half an hour, quite sensible, looking at the pretty colour of my blood on the snow. The horse was gone. I just managed to reel along to this place, where there's always a home for me. Now, will you believe it possible? I went out next day: I saw Mr. Edward Blancove, and I might have seen a baby and felt the same to it. I didn't know him a bit. Yesterday morning your letter was sent up from Sutton farm. Somehow, the moment I'd read it, I remembered his face. I sent him word there was a matter to be settled between us. You think I was wrong?”

Major Waring had set a deliberately calculating eye on him.

“I want to hear more,” he said.

“You think I have no claim to challenge a man in his position?”

“Answer me first, Robert. You think this Mr. Blancove helped, or instigated this man Sedgett in his attack upon you?”

“I haven't a doubt that he did.”

“It's not plain evidence.”

“It's good circumstantial evidence.”

“At any rate, you are perhaps justified in thinking him capable of this: though the rule is, to believe nothing against a gentleman until it is flatly proved—when we drum him out of the ranks. But, if you can fancy it true, would you put yourself upon an equal footing with him?”

“I would,” said Robert.

“Then you accept his code of morals.”

“That's too shrewd for me: but men who preach against duelling, or any kind of man-to-man in hot earnest, always fence in that way.”

“I detest duelling,” Major Waring remarked. “I don't like a system that permits knaves and fools to exercise a claim to imperil the lives of useful men. Let me observe, that I am not a preacher against it. I think you know my opinions; and they are not quite those of the English magistrate, and other mild persons who are wrathful at the practice upon any pretence. Keep to the other discussion. You challenge a man—you admit him your equal. But why do I argue with you? I know your mind as well as my own. You have some other idea in the background.”

“I feel that he's the guilty man,” said Robert.

“You feel called upon to punish him.”

“No. Wait: he will not fight; but I have him and I'll hold him. I feel he's the man who has injured this girl, by every witness of facts that I can bring together; and as for the other young fellow I led such a dog's life down here, I could beg his pardon. This one's eye met mine. I saw it wouldn't have stopped short of murder—opportunity given. Why? Because I pressed on the right spring. I'm like a woman in seeing some things. He shall repent. By—! Slap me on the face, Percy. I've taken to brandy and to swearing. Damn the girl who made me forget good lessons! Bless her heart, I mean. She saw you, did she? Did she colour when she heard your name?”

“Very much,” said Major Waring.

“Was dressed in—?”

“Black, with a crimson ribbon round the collar.”

Robert waved the image from his eyes.

“I'm not going to dream of her. Peace, and babies, and farming, and pride in myself with a woman by my side—there! You've seen her—all that's gone. I might as well ask the East wind to blow West. Her face is set the other way. Of course, the nature and value of a man is shown by how he takes this sort of pain; and hark at me! I'm yelling. I thought I was cured. I looked up into the eyes of a lady ten times sweeter—when?—somewhen! I've lost dates. But here's the girl at me again. She cuddles into me—slips her hand into my breast and tugs at strings there. I can't help talking to you about her, now we've got over the first step. I'll soon give it up.

“She wore a red ribbon? If it had been Spring, you'd have seen roses. Oh! what a stanch heart that girl has. Where she sets it, mind! Her life where that creature sets her heart! But, for me, not a penny of comfort! Now for a whole week of her, day and night, in that black dress with the coloured ribbon. On she goes: walking to church; sitting at table; looking out of the window!

“Will you believe I thought those thick eyebrows of hers ugly once—a tremendous long time ago. Yes; but what eyes she has under them! And if she looks tender, one corner of her mouth goes quivering; and the eyes are steady, so that it looks like some wonderful bit of mercy.

“I think of that true-hearted creature praying and longing for her sister, and fearing there's shame—that's why she hates me. I wouldn't say I was certain her sister had not fallen into a pit. I couldn't. I was an idiot. I thought I wouldn't be a hypocrite. I might have said I believed as she did. There she stood ready to be taken—ready to have given herself to me, if I had only spoken a word! It was a moment of heaven, and God the Father could not give it to me twice The chance has gone.

“Oh! what a miserable mad dog I am to gabble on in this way.—Come in! come in, mother.”

Mrs. Boulby entered, with soft footsteps, bearing a letter.

“From the Park,” she said, and commenced chiding Robert gently, to establish her right to do it with solemnity.

“He will talk, sir. He's one o' them that either they talk or they hang silent, and no middle way will they take; and the doctor's their foe, and health they despise; and since this cruel blow, obstinacy do seem to have been knocked like a nail into his head so fast, persuasion have not a atom o' power over him.”

“There must be talking when friends meet, ma'am,” said Major Waring.

“Ah!” returned the widow, “if it wouldn't be all on one side.”

“I've done now, mother,” said Robert.

Mrs. Boulby retired, and Robert opened the letter.

It ran thus:—

   “Sir, I am glad you have done me the favour of addressing me
   temperately, so that I am permitted to clear myself of an unjust and
   most unpleasant imputation. I will, if you please, see you, or your
   friend; to whom perhaps I shall better be able to certify how
   unfounded is the charge you bring against me. I will call upon you
   at the Pilot Inn, where I hear that you are staying; or, if you
   prefer it, I will attend to any appointment you may choose to direct
   elsewhere. But it must be immediate, as the term of my residence in
   this neighbourhood is limited.

               “I am,

                  “Sir,

               “Yours obediently,

                    “Edward Blancove.”
 

Major Waning read the lines with a critical attention.

“It seems fair and open,” was his remark.

“Here,” Robert struck his breast, “here's what answers him. What shall I do? Shall I tell him to come?”

“Write to say that your friend will meet him at a stated place.”

Robert saw his prey escaping. “I'm not to see him?”

“No. The decent is the right way in such cases. You must leave it to me. This will be the proper method between gentlemen.”

“It appears to my idea,” said Robert, “that gentlemen are always, somehow, stopped from taking the straight-ahead measure.”

“You,” Percy rejoined, “are like a civilian before a fortress. Either he finds it so easy that he can walk into it, or he gives it up in despair as unassailable. You have followed your own devices, and what have you accomplished?”

“He will lie to you smoothly.”

“Smoothly or not, if I discover that he has spoken falsely, he is answerable to me.”

“To me, Percy.”

“No; to me. He can elude you; and will be acquitted by the general verdict. But when he becomes answerable to me, his honour, in the conventional, which is here the practical, sense, is at stake, and I have him.”

“I see that. Yes; he can refuse to fight me,” Robert sighed. “Hey, Lord! it's a heavy world when we come to methods. But will you, Percy, will you put it to him at the end of your fist—'Did you deceive the girl, and do you know where the girl now is?' Why, great heaven! we only ask to know where she is. She may have been murdered. She's hidden from her family. Let him confess, and let him go.”

Major Waring shook his head. “You see like a woman perhaps, Robert. You certainly talk like a woman. I will state your suspicions. When I have done so, I am bound to accept his reply. If we discover it to have been false, I have my remedy.”

“Won't you perceive, that it isn't my object to punish him by and by, but to tear the secret out of him on the spot—now—instantly,” Robert cried.

“I perceive your object, and you have experienced some of the results of your system. It's the primitive action of an appeal to the god of combats, that is exploded in these days. You have no course but to take his word.”

“She said”—Robert struck his knee—“she said I should have the girl's address. She said she would see her. She pledged that to me. I'm speaking of the lady up at Fairly. Come! things get clearer. If she knows where Dahlia is, who told her? This Mr. Algernon—not Edward Blancove—was seen with Dahlia in a box at the Playhouse. He was there with Dahlia, yet I don't think him the guilty man. There's a finger of light upon that other.”

“Who is this lady?” Major Waring asked, with lifted eyebrows.

“Mrs. Lovell.”

At the name, Major Waring sat stricken.

“Lovell!” he repeated, under his breath. “Lovell! Was she ever in India?”

“I don't know, indeed.”

“Is she a widow?”

“Ay; that I've heard.”

“Describe her.”

Robert entered upon the task with a dozen headlong exclamations, and very justly concluded by saying that he could give no idea of her; but his friend apparently had gleaned sufficient.

Major Waring's face was touched by a strange pallor, and his smile had vanished. He ran his fingers through his hair, clutching it in a knot, as he sat eyeing the red chasm in the fire, where the light of old days and wild memories hangs as in a crumbling world.

Robert was aware of there being a sadness in Percy's life, and that he had loved a woman and awakened from his passion. Her name was unknown to him. In that matter, his natural delicacy and his deference to Percy had always checked him from sounding the subject closely. He might be, as he had said, keen as a woman where his own instincts were in action; but they were ineffective in guessing at the cause for Percy's sudden depression.

“She said—this lady, Mrs. Lovell, whoever she may be—she said you should have the girl's address:—gave you that pledge of her word?” Percy spoke, half meditating. “How did this happen? When did you see her?”

Robert related the incident of his meeting with her, and her effort to be a peacemaker, but made no allusion to Mrs. Boulby's tale of the bet.

“A peacemaker!” Percy interjected. “She rides well?”

“Best horsewoman I ever saw in my life,” was Robert's ready answer.

Major Waring brushed at his forehead, as in impatience of thought.

“You must write two letters: one to this Mrs. Lovell. Say, you are about to leave the place, and remind her of her promise. It's incomprehensible; but never mind. Write that first. Then to the man. Say that your friend—by the way, this Mrs. Lovell has small hands, has she? I mean, peculiarly small? Did you notice, or not? I may know her. Never mind. Write to the man. Say—don't write down my name—say that I will meet him.” Percy spoke on as in a dream. “Appoint any place and hour. To-morrow at ten, down by the river—the bridge. Write briefly. Thank him for his offer to afford you explanations. Don't argue it with me any more. Write both the letters straight off.”

His back was to Robert as he uttered the injunction. Robert took pen and paper, and did as he was bidden, with all the punctilious obedience of a man who consents perforce to see a better scheme abandoned.

One effect of the equality existing between these two of diverse rank in life and perfect delicacy of heart, was, that the moment Percy assumed the lead, Robert never disputed it. Muttering simply that he was incapable of writing except when he was in a passion, he managed to produce what, in Percy's eyes, were satisfactory epistles, though Robert had horrible misgivings in regard to his letter to Mrs. Lovell—the wording of it, the cast of the sentences, even down to the character of the handwriting. These missives were despatched immediately.

“You are sure she said that?” Major Waring inquired more than once during the afternoon, and Robert assured him that Mrs. Lovell had given him her word. He grew very positive, and put it on his honour that she had said it.

“You may have heard incorrectly.”

“I've got the words burning inside me,” said Robert.

They walked together, before dark, to Sutton Farm, but Jonathan Eccles was abroad in his fields, and their welcome was from Mistress Anne, whom Major Waring had not power to melt; the moment he began speaking praise of Robert, she closed her mouth tight and crossed her wrists meekly.

“I see,” said Major Waring, as they left the farm, “your aunt is of the godly who have no forgiveness.”

“I'm afraid so,” cried Robert. “Cold blood never will come to an understanding with hot blood, and the old lady's is like frozen milk. She's right in her way, I dare say. I don't blame her. Her piety's right enough, take it as you find it.”

Mrs. Boulby had a sagacious notion that gentlemen always dined well every day of their lives, and claimed that much from Providence as their due. She had exerted herself to spread a neat little repast for Major Waring, and waited on the friends herself; grieving considerably to observe that the major failed in his duty as a gentleman, as far as the relish of eating was concerned.

“But,” she said below at her bar, “he smokes the beautifullest—smelling cigars, and drinks coffee made in his own way. He's very particular.” Which was reckoned to be in Major Waring's favour.

The hour was near midnight when she came into the room, bearing another letter from the Park. She thumped it on the table, ruffling and making that pretence at the controlling of her bosom which precedes a feminine storm. Her indignation was caused by a communication delivered by Dick Curtis, in the parlour underneath, to the effect that Nicodemus Sedgett was not to be heard of in the neighbourhood.

Robert laughed at her, and called her Hebrew woman—eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth woman.

“Leave real rascals to the Lord above, mother. He's safe to punish them. They've stepped outside the chances. That's my idea. I wouldn't go out of my way to kick them—not I! It's the half-and-half villains we've got to dispose of. They're the mischief, old lady.”

Percy, however, asked some questions about Sedgett, and seemed to think his disappearance singular. He had been examining the handwriting of the superscription to the letter. His face was flushed as he tossed it for Robert to open. Mrs. Boulby dropped her departing curtsey, and Robert read out, with odd pauses and puzzled emphasis:

   “Mrs. Lovell has received the letter which Mr. Robert Eccles has
   addressed to her, and regrets that a misconception should have
   arisen from anything that was uttered during their interview. The
   allusions are obscure, and Mrs. Lovell can only remark, that she is
   pained if she at all misled Mr. Eccles in what she either spoke or
   promised. She is not aware that she can be of any service to him.
   Should such an occasion present itself, Mr. Eccles may rest assured
   that she will not fail to avail herself of it, and do her utmost to
   redeem a pledge to which he has apparently attached a meaning she
   can in no way account for or comprehend.”
 

When Robert had finished, “It's like a female lawyer,” he said. “That woman speaking, and that woman writing, they're two different creatures—upon my soul, they are! Quick, sharp, to the point, when she speaks; and read this! Can I venture to say of a lady, she's a liar?”

“Perhaps you had better not,” said Major Waring, who took the letter in his hand and seemed to study it. After which he transferred it to his pocket.

“To-morrow? To-morrow's Sunday,” he observed. “We will go to church to-morrow.” His eyes glittered.

“Why, I'm hardly in the mood,” Robert protested. “I haven't had the habit latterly.”

“Keep up the habit,” said Percy. “It's a good thing for men like you.”

“But what sort of a fellow am I to be showing myself there among all the people who've been talking about me—and the people up at Fairly!” Robert burst out in horror of the prospect. “I shall be a sight among the people. Percy, upon my honour, I don't think I well can. I'll read the Bible at home if you like.”

“No; you'll do penance,” said Major Waring.

“Are you meaning it?”

“The penance will be ten times greater on my part, believe me.”

Robert fancied him to be referring to some idea of mocking the interposition of religion.

“Then we'll go to Upton Church,” he said. “I don't mind it at Upton.”

“I intend to go to the church attended by 'The Family,' as we say in our parts; and you must come with me to Warbeach.”

Clasping one hand across his forehead, Robert cried, “You couldn't ask me to do a thing I hate so much. Go, and sit, and look sheepish, and sing hymns with the people I've been badgering; and everybody seeing me! How can it be anything to you like what it is to me?”

“You have only to take my word for it that it is, and far more,” said Major Waring, sinking his voice. “Come; it won't do you any harm to make an appointment to meet your conscience now and then. You will never be ruled by reason, and your feelings have to teach you what you learn. At any rate, it's my request.”

This terminated the colloquy upon that topic. Robert looked forward to a penitential Sabbath-day.

“She is a widow still,” thought Major Waring, as he stood alone in his bed-room, and, drawing aside the curtains of his window, looked up at the white moon.