CHAPTER II

Mrs. Fleming had a brother in London, who had run away from his Kentish

home when a small boy, and found refuge at a Bank. The position of

Anthony Hackbut in that celebrated establishment, and the degree of

influence exercised by him there, were things unknown; but he had stuck

to the Bank for a great number of years, and he had once confessed to his

sister that he was not a beggar. Upon these joint facts the farmer

speculated, deducing from them that a man in a London Bank, holding money

of his own, must have learnt the ways of turning it over--farming golden

ground, as it were; consequently, that amount must now have increased to

a very considerable sum. You ask, What amount? But one who sits brooding

upon a pair of facts for years, with the imperturbable gravity of

creation upon chaos, will be as successful in evoking the concrete from

the abstract. The farmer saw round figures among the possessions of the

family, and he assisted mentally in this money-turning of Anthony's,

counted his gains for him, disposed his risks, and eyed the pile of

visionary gold with an interest so remote, that he was almost correct in

calling it disinterested. The brothers-in-law had a mutual plea of

expense that kept them separate. When Anthony refused, on petition, to

advance one hundred pounds to the farmer, there was ill blood to divide

them. Queen Anne's Farm missed the flourishing point by one hundred

pounds exactly. With that addition to its exchequer, it would have made

head against its old enemy, Taxation, and started rejuvenescent. But the

Radicals were in power to legislate and crush agriculture, and "I've got

a miser for my brother-in-law," said the farmer. Alas! the hundred pounds

to back him, he could have sowed what he pleased, and when it pleased

him, partially defying the capricious clouds and their treasures, and

playing tunefully upon his land, his own land. Instead of which, and

while too keenly aware that the one hundred would have made excesses in

any direction tributary to his pocket, the poor man groaned at continuous

falls of moisture, and when rain was prayed for in church, he had to be

down on his knees, praying heartily with the rest of the congregation. It

was done, and bitter reproaches were cast upon Anthony for the enforced

necessity to do it.

On the occasion of his sister's death, Anthony informed his bereaved

brother-in-law that he could not come down to follow the hearse as a

mourner. "My place is one of great trust;" he said, "and I cannot be

spared." He offered, however, voluntarily to pay half the expenses of the

funeral, stating the limit of the cost. It is unfair to sound any man's

springs of action critically while he is being tried by a sorrow; and the

farmer's angry rejection of Anthony's offer of aid must pass. He remarked

in his letter of reply, that his wife's funeral should cost no less than

he chose to expend on it. He breathed indignant fumes against

"interferences." He desired Anthony to know that he also was "not a

beggar," and that he would not be treated as one. The letter showed a

solid yeoman's fist. Farmer Fleming told his chums, and the shopkeeper of

Wrexby, with whom he came into converse, that he would honour his dead

wife up to his last penny. Some month or so afterward it was generally

conjectured that he had kept his word.

Anthony's rejoinder was characterized by a marked humility. He expressed

contrition for the farmer's misunderstanding of his motives. His

fathomless conscience had plainly been reached. He wrote again, without

waiting for an answer, speaking of the Funds indeed, but only to

pronounce them worldly things, and hoping that they all might meet in

heaven, where brotherly love, as well as money, was ready made, and not

always in the next street. A hint occurred that it would be a

gratification to him to be invited down, whether he could come or no; for

holidays were expensive, and journeys by rail had to be thought over

before they were undertaken; and when you are away from your post, you

never knew who maybe supplanting you. He did not promise that he could

come, but frankly stated his susceptibility to the friendliness of an

invitation. The feeling indulged by Farmer Fleming in refusing to notice

Anthony's advance toward a reconciliation, was, on the whole, not

creditable to him. Spite is more often fattened than propitiated by

penitence. He may have thought besides (policy not being always a vacant

space in revengeful acts) that Anthony was capable of something stronger

and warmer, now that his humanity had been aroused. The speculation is

commonly perilous; but Farmer Fleming had the desperation of a man who

has run slightly into debt, and has heard the first din of dunning, which

to the unaccustomed imagination is fearful as bankruptcy (shorn of the

horror of the word). And, moreover, it was so wonderful to find Anthony

displaying humanity at all, that anything might be expected of him.

"Let's see what he will do," thought the farmer in an interval of his

wrath; and the wrath is very new which has none of these cool intervals.

The passions, do but watch them, are all more or less intermittent.

As it chanced, he acted sagaciously, for Anthony at last wrote to say

that his home in London was cheerless, and that he intended to move into

fresh and airier lodgings, where the presence of a discreet young

housekeeper, who might wish to see London, and make acquaintance with the

world, would be agreeable to him. His project was that one of his nieces

should fill this office, and he requested his brother-in-law to reflect

on it, and to think of him as of a friend of the family, now and in the

time to come. Anthony spoke of the seductions of London quite unctuously.

Who could imagine this to be the letter of an old crabbed miser? "Tell

her," he said, "there's fruit at stalls at every street-corner all the

year through--oysters and whelks, if she likes--winkles, lots of pictures

in shops--a sight of muslin and silks, and rides on omnibuses--bands of

all sorts, and now and then we can take a walk to see the military on

horseback, if she's for soldiers." Indeed, he joked quite comically in

speaking of the famous horse-guards--warriors who sit on their horses to

be looked at, and do not mind it, because they are trained so thoroughly.

"Horse-guards blue, and horse-guards red," he wrote--"the blue only want

boiling." There is reason to suppose that his disrespectful joke was not

original in him, but it displayed his character in a fresh light. Of

course, if either of the girls was to go, Dahlia was the person. The

farmer commenced his usual process of sitting upon the idea. That it

would be policy to attach one of the family to this chirping old miser,

he thought incontestable. On the other hand, he had a dread of London,

and Dahlia was surpassingly fair. He put the case to Robert, in

remembrance of what his wife had spoken, hoping that Robert would

amorously stop his painful efforts to think fast enough for the occasion.

Robert, however, had nothing to say, and seemed willing to let Dahlia

depart. The only opponents to the plan were Mrs. Sumfit, a kindly, humble

relative of the farmer's, widowed out of Sussex, very loving and fat; the

cook to the household, whose waist was dimly indicated by her

apron-string; and, to aid her outcries, the silently-protesting Master

Gammon, an old man with the cast of eye of an antediluvian lizard, the

slowest old man of his time--a sort of foreman of the farm before Robert

had come to take matters in hand, and thrust both him and his master into

the background. Master Gammon remarked emphatically, once and for all,

that "he never had much opinion of London." As he had never visited

London, his opinion was considered the less weighty, but, as he advanced

no further speech, the sins and backslidings of the metropolis were

strongly brought to mind by his condemnatory utterance. Policy and

Dahlia's entreaties at last prevailed with the farmer, and so the fair

girl went up to the great city.

After months of a division that was like the division of her living

veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having

previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why it

was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful that

her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted in

gratitude. She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was

impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs. Sumfit, who peeped in awe,

and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly. Why it was to be kept

secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without its

delights to them. Tears were shed again when the portrait had to be

packed up and despatched. Rhoda lived on abashed by the adorable new

refinement of Dahlia's features, and her heart yearned to her uncle for

so caring to decorate the lovely face.

One day Rhoda was at her bed-room window, on the point of descending to

encounter the daily dumpling, which was the principal and the unvarying

item of the midday meal of the house, when she beheld a stranger trying

to turn the handle of the iron gate. Her heart thumped. She divined

correctly that it was her uncle. Dahlia had now been absent for very many

months, and Rhoda's growing fretfulness sprang the conviction in her mind

that something closer than letters must soon be coming. She ran

downstairs, and along the gravel-path. He was a little man, square-built,

and looking as if he had worn to toughness; with an evident Sunday suit

on: black, and black gloves, though the day was only antecedent to

Sunday.

"Let me help you, sir," she said, and her hands came in contact with his,

and were squeezed.

"How is my sister?" She had no longer any fear in asking.

"Now, you let me through, first," he replied, imitating an arbitrary

juvenile. "You're as tight locked in as if you was in dread of all the

thieves of London. You ain't afraid o' me, miss? I'm not the party

generally outside of a fortification; I ain't, I can assure you. I'm a

defence party, and a reg'lar lion when I've got the law backing me."

He spoke in a queer, wheezy voice, like a cracked flute, combined with

the effect of an ill-resined fiddle-bow.

"You are in the garden of Queen Anne's Farm," said Rhoda.

"And you're my pretty little niece, are you? 'the darkie lass,' as your

father says. 'Little,' says I; why, you needn't be ashamed to stand

beside a grenadier. Trust the country for growing fine gals."

"You are my uncle, then?" said Rhoda. "Tell me how my sister is. Is she

well? Is she quite happy?"

"Dahly?" returned old Anthony, slowly.

"Yes, yes; my sister!" Rhoda looked at him with distressful eagerness.

"Now, don't you be uneasy about your sister Dahly." Old Anthony, as he

spoke, fixed his small brown eyes on the girl, and seemed immediately to

have departed far away in speculation. A question recalled him.

"Is her health good?"

"Ay; stomach's good, head's good, lungs, brain, what not, all good. She's

a bit giddy, that's all."

"In her head?"

"Ay; and on her pins. Never you mind. You look a steady one, my dear. I

shall take to you, I think."

"But my sister--" Rhoda was saying, when the farmer came out, and sent a

greeting from the threshold,--

"Brother Tony!"

"Here he is, brother William John."

"Surely, and so he is, at last." The farmer walked up to him with his

hand out.

"And it ain't too late, I hope. Eh?"

"It's never too late--to mend," said the farmer.

"Eh? not my manners, eh?" Anthony struggled to keep up the ball; and in

this way they got over the confusion of the meeting after many years and

some differences.

"Made acquaintance with Rhoda, I see," said the farmer, as they turned to

go in.

"The 'darkie lass' you write of. She's like a coal nigh a candle. She

looks, as you'd say, 't' other side of her sister.' Yes, we've had a

talk."

"Just in time for dinner, brother Tony. We ain't got much to offer, but

what there is, is at your service. Step aside with me."

The farmer got Anthony out of hearing a moment, questioned, and was

answered: after which he looked less anxious, but a trifle perplexed, and

nodded his head as Anthony occasionally lifted his, to enforce certain

points in some halting explanation. You would have said that a debtor was

humbly putting his case in his creditor's ear, and could only now and

then summon courage to meet the censorious eyes. They went in to Mrs.

Sumfit's shout that the dumplings were out of the pot: old Anthony bowed

upon the announcement of his name, and all took seats. But it was not the

same sort of dinner-hour as that which the inhabitants of the house were

accustomed to; there was conversation.

The farmer asked Anthony by what conveyance he had come. Anthony shyly,

but not without evident self-approbation, related how, having come by the

train, he got into conversation with the driver of a fly at a station,

who advised him of a cart that would be passing near Wrexby. For

threepennyworth of beer, he had got a friendly introduction to the

carman, who took him within two miles of the farm for one shilling, a

distance of fifteen miles. That was pretty good!

"Home pork, brother Tony," said the farmer, approvingly.

"And home-made bread, too, brother William John," said Anthony, becoming

brisk.

"Ay, and the beer, such as it is." The farmer drank and sighed.

Anthony tried the beer, remarking, "That's good beer; it don't cost

much."

"It ain't adulterated. By what I read of your London beer, this stuff's

not so bad, if you bear in mind it's pure. Pure's my motto. 'Pure, though

poor!'"

"Up there, you pay for rank poison," said Anthony. "So, what do I do? I

drink water and thank 'em, that's wise."

"Saves stomach and purse." The farmer put a little stress on 'purse.'

"Yes, I calculate I save threepence a day in beer alone," said Anthony.

"Three times seven's twenty-one, ain't it?"

Mr. Fleming said this, and let out his elbow in a small perplexity, as

Anthony took him up: "And fifty-two times twenty-one?"

"Well, that's, that's--how much is that, Mas' Gammon?" the farmer asked

in a bellow.

Master Gammon was laboriously and steadily engaged in tightening himself

with dumpling. He relaxed his exertions sufficiently to take this new

burden on his brain, and immediately cast it off.

"Ah never thinks when I feeds--Ah was al'ays a bad hand at 'counts. Gi'es

it up."

"Why, you're like a horse that never was rode! Try again, old man," said

the farmer.

"If I drags a cart," Master Gammon replied, "that ain't no reason why I

should leap a gate."

The farmer felt that he was worsted as regarded the illustration, and

with a bit of the boy's fear of the pedagogue, he fought Anthony off by

still pressing the arithmetical problem upon Master Gammon; until the old

man, goaded to exasperation, rolled out thunderingly,--

"If I works fer ye, that ain't no reason why I should think fer ye,"

which caused him to be left in peace.

"Eh, Robert?" the farmer transferred the question; "Come! what is it?"

Robert begged a minute's delay, while Anthony watched him with hawk eyes.

"I tell you what it is--it's pounds," said Robert.

This tickled Anthony, who let him escape, crying: "Capital! Pounds it is

in your pocket, sir, and you hit that neatly, I will say. Let it be five.

You out with your five at interest, compound interest; soon comes another

five; treat it the same: in ten years--eh? and then you get into figures;

you swim in figures!"

"I should think you did!" said the farmer, winking slyly.

Anthony caught the smile, hesitated and looked shrewd, and then covered

his confusion by holding his plate to Mrs. Sumfit for a help. The

manifest evasion and mute declaration that dumpling said "mum" on that

head, gave the farmer a quiet glow.

"When you are ready to tell me all about my darlin', sir," Mrs. Sumfit

suggested, coaxingly.

"After dinner, mother--after dinner," said the farmer.

"And we're waitin', are we, till them dumplings is finished?" she

exclaimed, piteously, with a glance at Master Gammon's plate.

"After dinner we'll have a talk, mother."

Mrs. Sumfit feared from this delay that there was queer news to be told

of Dahlia's temper; but she longed for the narrative no whit the less,

and again cast a sad eye on the leisurely proceedings of Master Gammon.

The veteran was still calmly tightening. His fork was on end, with a vast

mouthful impaled on the prongs. Master Gammon, a thoughtful eater, was

always last at the meal, and a latent, deep-lying irritation at Mrs.

Sumfit for her fidgetiness, day after day, toward the finish of the dish,

added a relish to his engulfing of the monstrous morsel. He looked at her

steadily, like an ox of the fields, and consumed it, and then holding his

plate out, in a remorseless way, said, "You make 'em so good, marm."

Mrs. Sumfit, fretted as she was, was not impervious to the sound sense of

the remark, as well as to the compliment.

"I don't want to hurry you, Mas' Gammon," she said; "Lord knows, I like

to see you and everybody eat his full and be thankful; but, all about my

Dahly waitin',--I feel pricked wi' a pin all over, I do; and there's my

blessed in London," she answered, "and we knowin' nothin' of her, and one

close by to tell me! I never did feel what slow things dumplin's was,

afore now!"

The kettle simmered gently on the hob. Every other knife and fork was

silent; so was every tongue. Master Gammon ate and the kettle hummed.

Twice Mrs. Sumfit sounded a despairing, "Oh, deary me!" but it was

useless. No human power had ever yet driven Master Gammon to a

demonstration of haste or to any acceleration of the pace he had chosen

for himself. At last, she was not to be restrained from crying out,

almost tearfully,--

"When do you think you'll have done, Mas' Gammon?"

Thus pointedly addressed, Master Gammon laid down his knife and fork. He

half raised his ponderous, curtaining eyelids, and replied,--

"When I feels my buttons, marm."

After which he deliberately fell to work again.

Mrs. Sumfit dropped back in her chair as from a blow.

But even dumplings, though they resist so doggedly for a space, do

ultimately submit to the majestic march of Time, and move. Master Gammon

cleared his plate. There stood in the dish still half a dumpling. The

farmer and Rhoda, deeming that there had been a show of inhospitality,

pressed him to make away with this forlorn remainder.

The vindictive old man, who was as tight as dumpling and buttons could

make him, refused it in a drooping tone, and went forth, looking at none.

Mrs. Sumfit turned to all parties, and begged them to say what more, to

please Master Gammon, she could have done? When Anthony was ready to

speak of her Dahlia, she obtruded this question in utter dolefulness.

Robert was kindly asked by the farmer to take a pipe among them. Rhoda

put a chair for him, but he thanked them both, and said he could not

neglect some work to be done in the fields. She thought that he feared

pain from hearing Dahlia's name, and followed him with her eyes

commiseratingly.

"Does that young fellow attend to business?" said Anthony.

The farmer praised Robert as a rare hand, but one affected with bees in

his nightcap,--who had ideas of his own about farming, and was obstinate

with them; "pays you due respect, but's got a notion as how his way of

thinking's better 'n his seniors. It's the style now with all young

folks. Makes a butt of old Mas' Gammon; laughs at the old man. It ain't

respectful t' age, I say. Gammon don't understand nothing about new feeds

for sheep, and dam nonsense about growing such things as melons,

fiddle-faddle, for 'em. Robert's a beginner. What he knows, I taught the

young fellow. Then, my question is, where's his ideas come from, if

they're contrary to mine? If they're contrary to mine, they're contrary

to my teaching. Well, then, what are they worth? He can't see that. He's

a good one at work--I'll say so much for him."

Old Anthony gave Rhoda a pat on the shoulder.