Rhoda Fleming

“ With tears rolling down her cheeks, and with moans of anguish, she spoke of the deliciousness of loving: of knowing one to whom she abandoned her will and her destiny, until, seeing how beautiful a bloom love threw upon the tearful worn face of her sister, Rhoda was impressed by a mystical veneration for this man, and readily believed him to be above all other men, if not superhuman: for she was of an age and an imagination to conceive a spiritual pre-eminence over the weakness of mortality. ”

“ If my sister cannot look on me without! He is good, and it is unselfish to take a moneyless, disgraced creature: but, my misery!—If my sister will see me, without my doing this!—Go to her, Mr. Robert. Say, Dahlia was false, and repents, and has worked with her needle to subsist, and can, and will, for her soul strives to be clean. Try to make her understand. If Rhoda could love you, she would know. She is locked up—she is only ideas. My sweet is so proud. I love her for her pride, if she will only let me creep to her feet, kiss her feet. Dear Mr. Robert, help me! ”

“ Blancove, men change and change when they're young. I mean, gentlemen. We must learn to forgive. Either he's as clever as the devil, or he's a man in earnest, and deserves pity. If you'd heard him!"
"My poor sister!" sighed Rhoda. The mentioning of money to be paid had sickened and weakened her, as with the very physical taste of degradation.
Hearing the sigh, Robert thought she had become subdued. Then Rhoda said: "We are bound to this young man who loves my sister—bound to him in honour: and Dahlia must esteem him, to have consented. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Rhoda's face, from a light of interrogation, lowered its look to contempt.
She did not affect the feminine simplicity which can so prettily misunderstand and put by an implied accusation of that nature. Doubtless her sharp instinct served her by telling her that her contempt would hurt him shrewdly now. The foolishness of a man having much to say to a woman, and not knowing how or where the beginning of it might be, was perceptible about him. A shout from her father at the open garden-gate, hurried on Rhoda to meet him. Old Anthony was at Mr. Fleming's elbow. ”

“ Rhoda murmured, in anger, but more in fear.
She was sternly bidden to read, and she read,—
Dahlia,—There is mercy for us. You are not lost to me.
"Edward."
After this, was appended in a feminine hand:—
"There is really hope. A few hours will tell us. But keep firm. If he comes near you, keep from him. You are not his. Run, hide, go anywhere, if you have reason to think he is near. I dare not write what it is we expect. Yesterday I told you to hope; to-day I can say, believe that you will be saved. You are not lost. Everything depends on your firmness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rhoda made her relate how this man had seen her first, and how, by untiring diligence, he had followed her up and found her. "He—he must love you," said Rhoda; and in proportion as she grew more conscious of her sister's weakness, and with every access of tenderness toward her, she felt that Dahlia must be thought for very much as if she were a child. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The dawn was wearing near. Sedgett had been seen by Rhoda; a quiet interview; a few words on either side, attention paid to them by neither. But the girl doated on his ugliness; she took it for plain proof of his worthiness; proof too that her sister must needs have seen the latter very distinctly, or else she could not have submitted.
Dahlia looked at the window-blinds and at the candlelight. The little which had been spoken between her and her sister in such a chasm of time, gave a terrible swiftness to the hours. Half shrieking, she dropped her head in Rhoda's lap. ”

“ Robert did not ask what had happened.
Mr. Fleming remained by the door, and shut his mouth from a further word till he heard Rhoda's returning footstep. He closed the door again behind her, and went up to the square deal table, leaned his body forward on the knuckles of his trembling fist, and said, “We're pretty well broken up, as it is. I've lost my taste for life.” ”

“ I am ready. I will submit, and then father will not be ashamed to remain at the Farm. I am ready. Dear, I am ready. Rhoda, I am ready. It is not much.” She blew the candle out. “See. No one will do that for me. We are not to live for ourselves. I have done wrong, and I am going to be humble; yes, I am. I never was when I was happy, and that proves I had no right to be happy. All I ask is for another night with you. Why did we not lie down together and sleep? We can't sleep now—it's day.”
“Come and lie down with me for a few hours, my darling,” said Rhoda. ”

“ Rhoda sat in quiet reserve.
She was sure her sister must be justified in all she did but the picture of the old man coming from his work every night to take his tea quite alone made her sad. She found herself unable to speak, and as she did not, Mrs. Sumfit had an acute twinge from her recently trodden foot, and called her some bitter names; which was not an unusual case, for the kind old woman could be querulous, and belonged to the list of those whose hearts are as scales, so that they love not one person devotedly without a corresponding spirit of opposition to another. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ By good desert, the fervent woman gained a prize at a flower-show for one of her dahlias, and `Dahlia' was the name uttered at the christening of her eldest daughter, at which all Wrexby parish laughed as long as the joke could last. There was laughter also when Mrs. Fleming's second daughter received the name of 'Rhoda;' but it did not endure for so long a space, as it was known that she had taken more to the solitary and reflective reading of her Bible, and to thoughts upon flowers eternal. Country people are not inclined to tolerate the display of a passion for anything. ”

“ Rhoda burst forth weakly, and quivered, and turned her eyes supplicatingly on Robert. Dahlia was a statue of icy fright.
"You've thrown her off, man, and sold what rights you had," said Robert, spying for the point of his person where he might grasp the wretch and keep him off.
"That don't hold in law," Sedgett nodded. "A man may get in a passion, when he finds he's been cheated, mayn't he?"
"I have your word of honour," said Rhoda; muttering, "Oh! devil come to wrong us!" ”

“ Rhoda Fleming is one of the least known of the novels, and in a sense it is one of the most disagreeable. To the general it has always been caviare, and caviare it is likely to remain; for the general is before all things respectable, and no such savage and scathing attack upon the superstitions of respectability as Rhoda Fleming has been written. And besides, the emotions developed are too tragic, the personages too elementary in kind and too powerful in degree, the effects too poignant and too sorrowful. In these days people read to be amused. ”

“ I lay in bed one night, and with my eyes open, I saw the dangers of women, and the trouble of my father and sister; and pits of wickedness. I saw like places full of snakes. I had such a yearning for protection. I gave him my word I would be his wife, if he was not ashamed of a wife like me. I wished to look once in father's face. I had fancied that Rhoda would spurn me, when she discovered my falsehood. She—sweet dear! would she ever? Go to her. Say, I do not love any man. I am heart-dead. I have no heart except for her. I cannot love a husband. He is good, and it is kind: but, oh! ”

“ 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. ”

“ She marvelled that when she thought of an outspoken complaint against him, her conscience gave her no support.
"Is there no freedom for a woman at all in this world?" Rhoda framed the bitter question.
Rhoda went back as she had come. Algernon Blancove did the same. Between them stood Robert, thinking, "Now I have made that girl hate me for life."
It was in November that a letter, dated from London, reached the farm, quickening Rhoda's blood anew. "I am alive," said Dahlia; and she said little more, except that she was waiting to see her sister, and bade her urgently to travel up alone. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As he did so, the head of drowned memory rose slowly up through the wine-bubbles in his brain, and he flung out a far thought for relief: "How, if I were to leave England with that dark girl Rhoda at Wrexby, marry her like a man, and live a wild ramping life in the colonies?" A curtain closed on the prospect, but if memory was resolved that it would not be drowned, he had at any rate dosed it with something fresh to occupy its digestion.
His opera-glass had been scouring the house for a sight of Mrs. Lovell, and at last she appeared in Lord Elling's box. ”

“ I do, I declare, clean forget Rhoda; I forget the girl, if only I see Mrs. Lovell at a distance. How's that? I'm not a fool, with nonsensical fancies of any kind. I know what loving a woman is; and a man in my position might be ass enough to—all sorts of things. It isn't that; it's fascination. I'm afraid of her. If she talks to me, I feel something like having gulped a bottle of wine. Some women you have a respect for; some you like or you love; some you despise: with her, I just feel I'm intoxicated."
Major Waring eyed him steadily. ”

“ 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 God! my God!"
She tried to rise, and failed in the effort, and superstitiously 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. ”