CHAPTER IV

Mr. Fleming kept his forehead from his daughter's good-night kiss until

the room was cleared, after supper, and then embracing her very heartily,

he informed her that her uncle had offered to pay her expenses on a visit

to London, by which he contrived to hint that a golden path had opened to

his girl, and at the same time entreated her to think nothing of it; to

dismiss all expectations and dreams of impossible sums from her mind, and

simply to endeavour to please her uncle, who had a right to his own, and

a right to do what he liked with his own, though it were forty, fifty

times as much as he possessed--and what that might amount to no one knew.

In fact, as is the way with many experienced persons, in his attempt to

give advice to another, he was very impressive in lecturing himself, and

warned that other not to succumb to a temptation principally by

indicating the natural basis of the allurement. Happily for young and for

old, the intense insight of the young has much to distract or soften it.

Rhoda thanked her father, and chose to think that she had listened to

good and wise things.

"Your sister," he said--"but we won't speak of her. If I could part with

you, my lass, I'd rather she was the one to come back."

"Dahlia would be killed by our quiet life now," said Rhoda.

"Ay," the farmer mused. "If she'd got to pay six men every Saturday

night, she wouldn't complain o' the quiet. But, there--you neither of you

ever took to farming or to housekeeping; but any gentleman might be proud

to have one of you for a wife. I said so when you was girls. And if,

you've been dull, my dear, what's the good o' society? Tea-cakes mayn't

seem to cost money, nor a glass o' grog to neighbours; but once open the

door to that sort o' thing and your reckoning goes. And what I said to

your poor mother's true. I said: Our girls, they're mayhap not equals of

the Hollands, the Nashaws, the Perrets, and the others about here--no;

they're not equals, because the others are not equals o' them, maybe."

The yeoman's pride struggled out in this obscure way to vindicate his

unneighbourliness and the seclusion of his daughters from the society of

girls of their age and condition; nor was it hard for Rhoda to assure

him, as she earnestly did, that he had acted rightly.

Rhoda, assisted by Mrs. Sumfit, was late in the night looking up what

poor decorations she possessed wherewith to enter London, and be worthy

of her sister's embrace, so that she might not shock the lady Dahlia had

become.

"Depend you on it, my dear," said Mrs. Sumfit, "my Dahly's grown above

him. That's nettles to your uncle, my dear. He can't abide it. Don't you

see he can't? Some men's like that. Others 'd see you dressed like a

princess, and not be satisfied. They vary so, the teasin' creatures! But

one and all, whether they likes it or not, owns a woman's the better for

bein' dressed in the fashion. What do grieve me to my insidest heart, it

is your bonnet. What a bonnet that was lying beside her dear round arm in

the po'trait, and her finger up making a dimple in her cheek, as if she

was thinking of us in a sorrowful way. That's the arts o' being

lady-like--look sad-like. How could we get a bonnet for you?"

"My own must do," said Rhoda.

"Yes, and you to look like lady and servant-gal a-goin' out for an

airin'; and she to feel it! Pretty, that'd be!"

"She won't be ashamed of me," Rhoda faltered; and then hummed a little

tune, and said firmly--"It's no use my trying to look like what I'm not."

"No, truly;" Mrs. Sumfit assented. "But it's your bein' behind the

fashions what hurt me. As well you might be an old thing like me, for any

pleasant looks you'll git. Now, the country--you're like in a coalhole

for the matter o' that. While London, my dear, its pavement and gutter,

and omnibus traffic; and if you're not in the fashion, the little wicked

boys of the streets themselves 'll let you know it; they've got such eyes

for fashions, they have. And I don't want my Dahly's sister to be laughed

at, and called 'coal-scuttle,' as happened to me, my dear, believe it or

not--and shoved aside, and said to--'Who are you?' For she reely is

nice-looking. Your uncle Anthony and Mr. Robert agreed upon that."

Rhoda coloured, and said, after a time, "It would please me if people

didn't speak about my looks."

The looking-glass probably told her no more than that she was nice to the

eye, but a young man who sees anything should not see like a mirror, and

a girl's instinct whispers to her, that her image has not been taken to

heart when she is accurately and impartially described by him.

The key to Rhoda at this period was a desire to be made warm with praise

of her person. She beheld her face at times, and shivered. The face was

so strange with its dark thick eyebrows, and peculiarly straight-gazing

brown eyes; the level long red under-lip and curved upper; and the chin

and nose, so unlike Dahlia's, whose nose was, after a little dip from the

forehead, one soft line to its extremity, and whose chin seemed shaped to

a cup. Rhoda's outlines were harder. There was a suspicion of a

heavenward turn to her nose, and of squareness to her chin. Her face,

when studied, inspired in its owner's mind a doubt of her being even nice

to the eye, though she knew that in exercise, and when smitten by a

blush, brightness and colour aided her claims. She knew also that her

head was easily poised on her neck; and that her figure was reasonably

good; but all this was unconfirmed knowledge, quickly shadowed by the

doubt. As the sun is wanted to glorify the right features of a landscape,

this girl thirsted for a dose of golden flattery. She felt, without envy

of her sister, that Dahlia eclipsed her: and all she prayed for was that

she might not be quite so much in the background and obscure.

But great, powerful London--the new universe to her spirit--was opening

its arms to her. In her half sleep that night she heard the mighty

thunder of the city, crashing, tumults of disordered harmonies, and the

splendour of the lamp-lighted city appeared to hang up under a dark-blue

heaven, removed from earth, like a fresh planet to which she was being

beckoned.

At breakfast on the Sunday morning, her departure was necessarily spoken

of in public. Robert talked to her exactly as he had talked to Dahlia, on

the like occasion. He mentioned, as she remembered in one or two

instances, the names of the same streets, and professed a similar anxiety

as regarded driving her to the station and catching the train. "That's a

thing which makes a man feel his strength's nothing," he said. "You can't

stop it. I fancy I could stop a four-in-hand at full gallop. Mind, I only

fancy I could; but when you come to do with iron and steam, I feel like a

baby. You can't stop trains."

"You can trip 'em," said Anthony, a remark that called forth general

laughter, and increased the impression that he was a man of resources.

Rhoda was vexed by Robert's devotion to his strength. She was going, and

wished to go, but she wished to be regretted as well; and she looked at

him more. He, on the contrary, scarcely looked at her at all. He threw

verbal turnips, oats, oxen, poultry, and every possible melancholy

matter-of-fact thing, about the table, described the farm and his

fondness for it and the neighbourhood; said a farmer's life was best, and

gave Rhoda a week in which to be tired of London.

She sneered in her soul, thinking "how little he knows of the constancy

in the nature of women!" adding, "when they form attachments."

Anthony was shown at church, in spite of a feeble intimation he

expressed, that it would be agreeable to him to walk about in the March

sunshine, and see the grounds and the wild flowers, which never gave

trouble, nor cost a penny, and were always pretty, and worth twenty of

your artificial contrivances.

"Same as I say to Miss Dahly," he took occasion to remark; "but no!--no

good. I don't believe women hear ye, when you talk sense of that kind.

'Look,' says I, 'at a violet.' 'Look,' says she, 'at a rose.' Well, what

can ye say after that? She swears the rose looks best. You swear the

violet costs least. Then there you have a battle between what it costs

and how it looks."

Robert pronounced a conventional affirmative, when called on for it by a

look from Anthony. Whereupon Rhoda cried out,--

"Dahlia was right--she was right, uncle."

"She was right, my dear, if she was a ten-thousander. She wasn't right as

a farmer's daughter with poor expectations.--I'd say humble, if humble

she were. As a farmer's daughter, she should choose the violet side.

That's clear as day. One thing's good, I admit; she tells me she makes

her own bonnets, and they're as good as milliners', and that's a proud

matter to say of your own niece. And to buy dresses for herself, I

suppose, she's sat down and she made dresses for fine ladies. I've found

her at it. Save the money for the work, says I. What does she reply--she

always has a reply: 'Uncle, I know the value of money better. 'You mean,

you spend it,' I says to her. 'I buy more than it's worth,' says she. And

I'll tell you what, Mr. Robert Armstrong, as I find your name to be, sir;

if you beat women at talking, my lord! you're a clever chap."

Robert laughed. "I give in at the first mile."

"Don't think much of women--is that it, sir?"

"I'm glad to say I don't think of them at all."

"Do you think of one woman, now, Mr. Robert Armstrong?"

"I'd much rather think of two."

"And why, may I ask?"

"It's safer."

"Now, I don't exactly see that," said Anthony.

"You set one to tear the other," Robert explained.

"You're a Grand Turk Mogul in your reasonings of women, Mr. Robert

Armstrong. I hope as your morals are sound, sir?"

They were on the road to church, but Robert could not restrain a swinging

outburst.

He observed that he hoped likewise that his morals were sound.

"Because," said Anthony, "do you see, sir, two wives--"

"No, no; one wife," interposed Robert. "You said 'think about;' I'd

'think about' any number of women, if I was idle. But the woman you mean

to make your wife, you go to at once, and don't 'think about' her or the

question either."

"You make sure of her, do you, sir?"

"No: I try my luck; that is all."

"Suppose she won't have ye?"

"Then I wait for her."

"Suppose she gets married to somebody else?"

"Well, you know, I shouldn't cast eye on a woman who was a fool."

"Well, upon my--" Anthony checked his exclamation, returning to the

charge with, "Just suppose, for the sake of supposing--supposing she was

a fool, and gone and got married, and you thrown back'ard on one leg,

starin' at the other, stupified-like?"

"I don't mind supposing it," said Robert. "Say, she's a fool. Her being a

fool argues that I was one in making a fool's choice. So, she jilts me,

and I get a pistol, or I get a neat bit of rope, or I take a clean header

with a cannon-ball at my heels, or I go to the chemist's and ask for

stuff to poison rats,--anything a fool'd do under the circumstances, it

don't matter what."

Old Anthony waited for Rhoda to jump over a stile, and said to her,--

"He laughs at the whole lot of ye."

"Who?" she asked, with betraying cheeks.

"This Mr. Robert Armstrong of yours."

"Of mine, uncle!"

"He don't seem to care a snap o' the finger for any of ye."

"Then, none of us must care for him, uncle."

"Now, just the contrary. That always shows a young fellow who's attending

to his business. If he'd seen you boil potatoes, make dumplings, beds,

tea, all that, you'd have had a chance. He'd have marched up to ye before

you was off to London."

"Saying, 'You are the woman.'" Rhoda was too desperately tickled by the

idea to refrain from uttering it, though she was angry, and suffering

internal discontent. "Or else, 'You are the cook,'" she muttered, and

shut, with the word, steel bars across her heart, calling him, mentally,

names not justified by anything he had said or done--such as mercenary,

tyrannical, and such like.

Robert was attentive to her in church. Once she caught him with his eyes

on her face; but he betrayed no confusion, and looked away at the

clergyman. When the text was given out, he found the place in his Bible,

and handed it to her pointedly--"There shall be snares and traps unto

you;" a line from Joshua. She received the act as a polite pawing

civility; but when she was coming out of church, Robert saw that a blush

swept over her face, and wondered what thoughts could be rising within

her, unaware that girls catch certain meanings late, and suffer a fiery

torture when these meanings are clear to them. Rhoda called up the pride

of her womanhood that she might despise the man who had dared to distrust

her. She kept her poppy colour throughout the day, so sensitive was this

pride. But most she was angered, after reflection, by the doubts which

Robert appeared to cast on Dahlia, in setting his finger upon that

burning line of Scripture. It opened a whole black kingdom to her

imagination, and first touched her visionary life with shade. She was

sincere in her ignorance that the doubts were her own, but they lay deep

in unawakened recesses of the soul; it was by a natural action of her

reason that she transferred and forced them upon him who had chanced to

make them visible.