CHAPTER XLII

Three days passed quietly at the Farm, and each morning Dahlia came down

to breakfast, and sat with the family at their meals; pale, with the

mournful rim about her eyelids, but a patient figure. No questions were

asked. The house was guarded from visitors, and on the surface the home

was peaceful. On the Wednesday Squire Blancove was buried, when Master

Gammon, who seldom claimed a holiday or specified an enjoyment of which

he would desire to partake, asked leave to be spared for a couple of

hours, that he might attend the ceremonious interment of one to whom a

sort of vagrant human sentiment of clanship had made him look up, as to

the chief gentleman of the district, and therefore one having claims on

his respect. A burial had great interest for the old man.

"I'll be home for dinner; it'll gi'e me an appetite," Master Gammon said

solemnly, and he marched away in his serious Sunday hat and careful coat,

blither than usual.

After his departure, Mrs. Sumfit sat and discoursed on deaths and

burials, the certain end of all: at least, she corrected herself, the

deaths were. The burials were not so certain. Consequently, we might take

the burials, as they were a favour, to be a blessing, except in the event

of persons being buried alive. She tried to make her hearers understand

that the idea of this calamity had always seemed intolerable to her, and

told of numerous cases which, the coffin having been opened, showed by

the convulsed aspect of the corpse, or by spots of blood upon the shroud,

that the poor creature had wakened up forlorn, "and not a kick allowed to

him, my dears."

"It happens to women, too, does it not, mother?" said Dahlia.

"They're most subject to trances, my sweet. From always imitatin' they

imitates their deaths at last; and, oh!" Mrs. Sumfit was taken with

nervous chokings of alarm at the thought. "Alone--all dark! and hard wood

upon your chest, your elbows, your nose, your toes, and you under heaps

o' gravel! Not a breath for you, though you snap and catch for one--worse

than a fish on land."

"It's over very soon, mother," said Dahlia.

"The coldness of you young women! Yes; but it's the time--you feeling,

trying for air; it's the horrid 'Oh, dear me!' You set your mind on it!"

"I do," said Dahlia. "You see coffin-nails instead of stars. You'd give

the world to turn upon one side. You can't think. You can only hate those

who put you there. You see them taking tea, saying prayers, sleeping in

bed, putting on bonnets, walking to church, kneading dough, eating--all

at once, like the firing of a gun. They're in one world; you're in

another."

"Why, my goodness, one'd say she'd gone through it herself," ejaculated

Mrs. Sumfit, terrified.

Dahlia sent her eyes at Rhoda.

"I must go and see that poor man covered." Mrs. Sumfit succumbed to a fit

of resolution much under the pretence that it had long been forming.

"Well, and mother," said Dahlia, checking her, "promise me. Put a feather

on my mouth; put a glass to my face, before you let them carry me out.

Will you? Rhoda promises. I have asked her."

"Oh! the ideas of this girl!" Mrs. Sumfit burst out. "And looking so, as

she says it. My love, you didn't mean to die?"

Dahlia soothed her, and sent her off.

"I am buried alive!" she said. "I feel it all--the stifling! the hopeless

cramp! Let us go and garden. Rhoda, have you got laudanum in the house?"

Rhoda shook her head, too sick at heart to speak. They went into the

garden, which was Dahlia's healthfullest place. It seemed to her that her

dead mother talked to her there. That was not a figure of speech, when

she said she felt buried alive. She was in the state of sensational

delusion. There were times when she watched her own power of motion

curiously: curiously stretched out her hands, and touched things, and

moved them. The sight was convincing, but the shudder came again. In a

frame less robust the brain would have given way. It was the very

soundness of the brain which, when her blood was a simple tide of life in

her veins, and no vital force, had condemned her to see the wisdom and

the righteousness of the act of sacrifice committed by her, and had urged

her even up to the altar. Then the sudden throwing off of the mask by

that man to whom she had bound herself, and the reading of Edward's

letter of penitence and love, thwarted reason, but without blinding or

unsettling it. Passion grew dominant; yet against such deadly matters on

all sides had passion to strive, that, under a darkened sky, visibly

chained, bound down, and hopeless, she felt between-whiles veritably that

she was a living body buried. Her senses had become semi-lunatic.

She talked reasonably; and Rhoda, hearing her question and answer at

meal-times like a sane woman, was in doubt whether her sister wilfully

simulated a partial insanity when they were alone together. Now, in the

garden, Dahlia said: "All those flowers, my dear, have roots in mother

and me. She can't feel them, for her soul's in heaven. But mine is down

there. The pain is the trying to get your soul loose. It's the edge of a

knife that won't cut through. Do you know that?"

Rhoda said, as acquiescingly as she could, "Yes."

"Do you?" Dahlia whispered. "It's what they call the 'agony.' Only, to go

through it in the dark, when you are all alone! boarded round! you will

never know that. And there's an angel brings me one of mother's roses,

and I smell it. I see fields of snow; and it's warm there, and no labour

for breath. I see great beds of flowers; I pass them like a breeze. I'm

shot, and knock on the ground, and they bury me for dead again. Indeed,

dearest, it's true."

She meant, true as regarded her sensations. Rhoda could barely give a

smile for response; and Dahlia's intelligence being supernaturally

active, she read her sister's doubt, and cried out,--

"Then let me talk of him!"

It was the fiery sequence to her foregone speech, signifying that if her

passion had liberty to express itself, she could clear understandings.

But even a moment's free wing to passion renewed the blinding terror

within her. Rhoda steadied her along the walks, praying for the time to

come when her friends, the rector and his wife, might help in the task of

comforting this poor sister. Detestation of the idea of love made her

sympathy almost deficient, and when there was no active work to do in

aid, she was nearly valueless, knowing that she also stood guilty of a

wrong.

The day was very soft and still. The flowers gave light for light. They

heard through the noise of the mill-water the funeral bell sound. It sank

in Rhoda like the preaching of an end that was promise of a beginning,

and girdled a distancing land of trouble. The breeze that blew seemed

mercy. To live here in forgetfulness with Dahlia was the limit of her

desires. Perhaps, if Robert worked among them, she would gratefully give

him her hand. That is, if he said not a word of love.

Master Gammon and Mrs. Sumfit were punctual in their return near the

dinnerhour; and the business of releasing the dumplings and potatoes, and

spreading out the cold meat and lettuces, restrained for some period the

narrative of proceedings at the funeral. Chief among the incidents was,

that Mrs. Sumfit had really seen, and only wanted, by corroboration of

Master Gammon, to be sure she had positively seen, Anthony Hackbut on the

skirts of the funeral procession. Master Gammon, however, was no

supporter of conjecture. What he had thought he had thought; but that was

neither here nor there. He would swear to nothing that he had not

touched;--eyes deceived;--he was never a guesser. He left Mrs. Sumfit to

pledge herself in perturbation of spirit to an oath that her eyes had

seen Anthony Hackbut; and more, which was, that after the close of the

funeral service, the young squire had caught sight of Anthony crouching

in a corner of the churchyard, and had sent a man to him, and they had

disappeared together. Mrs. Sumfit was heartily laughed at and rallied

both by Robert and the farmer. "Tony at a funeral! and train expenses!"

the farmer interjected. "D'ye think, mother, Tony'd come to Wrexby

churchyard 'fore he come Queen Anne's Farm? And where's he now, mayhap?"

Mrs. Sumfit appealed in despair to Master Gammon, with entreaties, and a

ready dumpling.

"There, Mas' Gammon; and why you sh'd play at 'do believe' and at 'don't

believe,' after that awesome scene, the solem'est of life's, when you did

declare to me, sayin', it was a stride for boots out o' London this

morning. Your words, Mas' Gammon! and 'boots'-=it's true, if by that

alone! For, 'boots,' I says to myself--he thinks by 'boots,' there being

a cord'er in his family on the mother's side; which you yourself told to

me, as you did, Mas' Gammon, and now holds back, you did, like a bad

horse."

"Hey! does Gammon jib?" said the farmer, with the ghost of old laughter

twinkling in his eyes.

"He told me this tale," Mrs. Sumfit continued, daring her irresponsive

enemy to contradict her, with a threatening gaze. "He told me this tale,

he did; and my belief's, his game 's, he gets me into a corner--there to

be laughed at! Mas' Gammon, if you're not a sly old man, you said, you

did, he was drownded; your mother's brother's wife's brother; and he had

a brother, and what he was to you--that brother--" Mrs. Sumfit smote her

hands--"Oh, my goodness, my poor head! but you shan't slip away, Mas'

Gammon; no, try you ever so much. Drownded he was, and eight days in the

sea, which you told me over a warm mug of ale by the fire years back. And

I do believe them dumplings makes ye obstinate; for worse you get, and

that fond of 'em, I sh'll soon not have enough in our biggest pot. Yes,

you said he was eight days in the sea, and as for face, you said, poor

thing! he was like a rag of towel dipped in starch, was your own words,

and all his likeness wiped out; and Joe, the other brother, a

cord'er--bootmaker, you call 'em--looked down him, as he was stretched

out on the shore of the sea, all along, and didn't know him till he come

to the boots, and he says, 'It's Abner;' for there was his boots to know

him by. Now, will you deny, Mas' Gammon, you said, Mr. Hackbut's boots,

and a long stride it was for 'em from London? And I won't be laughed at

through arts of any sly old man!"

The circumstantial charge made no impression on Master Gammon, who was

heard to mumble, as from the inmost recesses of tight-packed dumpling;

but he left the vindication of his case to the farmer's laughter. The

mention of her uncle had started a growing agitation in Rhoda, to whom

the indication of his eccentric behaviour was a stronger confirmation of

his visit to the neighbourhood. And wherefore had he journeyed down? Had

he come to haunt her on account of the money he had poured into her lap?

Rhoda knew in a moment that she was near a great trial of her strength

and truth. She had more than once, I cannot tell you how distantly,

conceived that the money had been money upon which the mildest word for

"stolen" should be put to express the feeling she had got about it, after

she had parted with the bulk of it to the man Sedgett. Not "stolen," not

"appropriated," but money that had perhaps been entrusted, and of which

Anthony had forgotten the rightful ownership. This idea of hers had

burned with no intolerable fire; but, under a weight of all

discountenancing appearances, feeble though it was, it had distressed

her. The dealing with money, and the necessity for it, had given Rhoda a

better comprehension of its nature and value. She had taught herself to

think that her suspicion sprang from her uncle's wild demeanour, and the

scene of the gold pieces scattered on the floor, as if a heart had burst

at her feet.

No sooner did she hear that Anthony had been, by supposition, seen, than

the little light of secret dread flamed a panic through her veins. She

left the table before Master Gammon had finished, and went out of the

house to look about for her uncle. He was nowhere in the fields, nor in

the graveyard. She walked over the neighbourhood desolately, until her

quickened apprehension was extinguished, and she returned home relieved,

thinking it folly to have imagined her uncle was other than a man of

hoarded wealth, and that he was here. But, in the interval, she had

experienced emotions which warned her of a struggle to come. Who would be

friendly to her, and an arm of might? The thought of the storm she had

sown upon all sides made her tremble foolishly. When she placed her hand

in Robert's, she gave his fingers a confiding pressure, and all but

dropped her head upon his bosom, so sick she was with weakness. It would

have been a deceit toward him, and that restrained her; perhaps, yet

more, she was restrained by the gloomy prospect of having to reply to any

words of love, without an idea of what to say, and with a loathing of

caresses. She saw herself condemned to stand alone, and at a season when

she was not strengthened by pure self-support.

Rhoda had not surrendered the stern belief that she had done well by

forcing Dahlia's hand to the marriage, though it had resulted evilly. In

reflecting on it, she had still a feeling of the harsh joy peculiar to

those who have exercised command with a conscious righteousness upon

wilful, sinful, and erring spirits, and have thwarted the wrongdoer. She

could only admit that there was sadness in the issue; hitherto, at least,

nothing worse than sad disappointment. The man who was her sister's

husband could no longer complain that he had been the victim of an

imposition. She had bought his promise that he would leave the country,

and she had rescued the honour of the family by paying him. At what cost?

She asked herself that now, and then her self-support became uneven.

Could her uncle have parted with the great sum--have shed it upon her,

merely beneficently, and because he loved her? Was it possible that he

had the habit of carrying his own riches through the streets of London?

She had to silence all questions imperiously, recalling exactly her ideas

of him, and the value of money in the moment when money was an object of

hunger--when she had seized it like a wolf, and its value was quite

unknown, unguessed at.

Rhoda threw up her window before she slept, that she might breathe the

cool night air; and, as she leaned out, she heard steps moving away, and

knew them to be Robert's, in whom that pressure of her hand had cruelly

resuscitated his longing for her. She drew back, wondering at the

idleness of men--slaves while they want a woman's love, savages when they

have won it. She tried to pity him, but she had not an emotion to spare,

save perhaps one of dull exultation, that she, alone of women, was free

from that wretched mess called love; and upon it she slept.

It was between the breakfast and dinner hours, at the farm, next day,

when the young squire, accompanied by Anthony Hackbut, met farmer Fleming

in the lane bordering one of the outermost fields of wheat. Anthony gave

little more than a blunt nod to his relative, and slouched on, leaving

the farmer in amazement, while the young squire stopped him to speak with

him. Anthony made his way on to the house. Shortly after, he was seen

passing through the gates of the garden, accompanied by Rhoda. At the

dinner-hour, Robert was taken aside by the farmer. Neither Rhoda nor

Anthony presented themselves. They did not appear till nightfall. When

Anthony came into the room, he took no greetings and gave none. He sat

down on the first chair by the door, shaking his head, with vacant eyes.

Rhoda took off her bonnet, and sat as strangely silent. In vain Mrs.

Sumfit asked her; "Shall it be tea, dear, and a little cold meat?" The

two dumb figures were separately interrogated, but they had no answer.

"Come! brother Tony?" the farmer tried to rally him.

Dahlia was knitting some article of feminine gear. Robert stood by the

musk-pots at the window, looking at Rhoda fixedly. Of this gaze she

became conscious, and glanced from him to the clock.

"It's late," she said, rising.

"But you're empty, my dear. And to think o' going to bed without a

dinner, or your tea, and no supper! You'll never say prayers, if you do,"

said Mrs. Sumfit.

The remark engendered a notion in the farmer's head, that Anthony

promised to be particularly prayerless.

"You've been and spent a night at the young squire's, I hear, brother

Tony. All right and well. No complaints on my part, I do assure ye. If

you're mixed up with that family, I won't bring it in you're anyways

mixed up with this family; not so as to clash, do you see. Only, man, now

you are here, a word'd be civil, if you don't want a doctor."

"I was right," murmured Mrs. Sumfit. "At the funeral, he was; and Lord be

thanked! I thought my eyes was failin'. Mas' Gammon, you'd ha' lost no

character by sidin' wi' me."

"Here's Dahlia, too," said the farmer. "Brother Tony, don't you see her?

She's beginning to be recognizable, if her hair'd grow a bit faster.

She's...well, there she is."

A quavering, tiny voice, that came from Anthony, said: "How d' ye do--how

d' ye do;" sounding like the first effort of a fife. But Anthony did not

cast eye on Dahlia.

"Will you eat, man?--will you smoke a pipe?--won't you talk a word?--will

you go to bed?"

These several questions, coming between pauses, elicited nothing from the

staring oldman.

"Is there a matter wrong at the Bank?" the farmer called out, and Anthony

jumped in a heap.

"Eh?" persisted the farmer.

Rhoda interposed: "Uncle is tired; he is unwell. Tomorrow he will talk to

you."

"No, but is there anything wrong up there, though?" the farmer asked with

eager curiosity, and a fresh smile at the thought that those Banks and

city folk were mortal, and could upset, notwithstanding their crashing

wheels. "Brother Tony, you speak out; has anybody been and broke? Never

mind a blow, so long, o' course, as they haven't swallowed your money.

How is it? Why, I never saw such a sight as you. You come down from

London; you play hide and seek about your relation's house; and here,

when you do condescend to step in--eh? how is it? You ain't, I hope,

ruined, Tony, are ye?"

Rhoda stood over her uncle to conceal him.

"He shall not speak till he has had some rest. And yes, mother, he shall

have some warm tea upstairs in bed. Boil some water. Now, uncle, come

with me."

"Anybody broke?" Anthony rolled the words over, as Rhoda raised his arm.

"I'm asked such a lot, my dear, I ain't equal to it. You said here 'd be

a quiet place. I don't know about money. Try my pockets. Yes, mum, if you

was forty policemen, I'm empty; you'd find it. And no objection to nod to

prayers; but never was taught one of my own. Where am I going, my dear?"

"Upstairs with me, uncle."

Rhoda had succeeded in getting him on his feet.

The farmer tapped at his forehead, as a signification to the others that

Anthony had gone wrong in the head, which reminded him that he had

prophesied as much. He stiffened out his legs, and gave a manful spring,

crying, "Hulloa, brother Tony! why, man, eh? Look here. What, goin' to

bed? What, you, Tony? I say--I say--dear me!" And during these

exclamations intricate visions of tripping by means of gold wires danced

before him.

Rhoda hurried Anthony out.

After the door had shut, the farmer said: "That comes of it; sooner or

later, there it is! You give your heart to money--you insure in a ship,

and as much as say, here's a ship, and, blow and lighten, I defy you.

Whereas we day-by-day people, if it do blow and if it do lighten, and the

waves are avilanches, we've nothing to lose. Poor old Tony--a smash, to a

certainty. There's been a smash, and he's gone under the harrow. Any o'

you here might ha' heard me say, things can't last for ever. Ha'n't you,

now?"

The persons present meekly acquiesced in his prophetic spirit to this

extent. Mrs. Sumfit dolorously said, "Often, William dear," and accepted

the incontestable truth in deep humiliation of mind.

"Save," the farmer continued, "save and store, only don't put your heart

in the box."

"It's true, William;" Mrs. Sumfit acted clerk to the sermon.

Dahlia took her softly by the neck, and kissed her.

"Is it love for the old woman?" Mrs. Sumfit murmured fondly; and Dahlia

kissed her again.

The farmer had by this time rounded to the thought of how he personally

might be affected by Anthony's ill-luck, supposing; perchance, that

Anthony was suffering from something more than a sentimental attachment

to the Bank of his predilection: and such a reflection instantly diverted

his tendency to moralize.

"We shall hear to-morrow," he observed in conclusion; which, as it caused

a desire for the morrow to spring within his bosom, sent his eyes at

Master Gammon, who was half an hour behind his time for bed, and had

dropped asleep in his chair. This unusual display of public somnolence on

Master Gammon's part, together with the veteran's reputation for

slowness, made the farmer fret at him as being in some way an obstruction

to the lively progress of the hours.

"Hoy, Gammon!" he sang out, awakeningly to ordinary ears; but Master

Gammon was not one who took the ordinary plunge into the gulf of sleep,

and it was required to shake him and to bellow at him--to administer at

once earthquake and thunder--before his lizard eyelids would lift over

the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to

be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and

to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate.

Brought at last to a condition of stale consciousness, he looked at his

master long, and uttered surprisingly "Farmer, there's queer things going

on in this house," and then relapsed to a combat with Mrs. Sumfit,

regarding the candle; she saying that it was not to be entrusted to him,

and he sullenly contending that it was.

"Here, we'll all go to bed," said the farmer. "What with one person

queer, and another person queer, I shall be in for a headache, if I take

to thinking. Gammon's a man sees in 's sleep what he misses awake. Did

you ever know," he addressed anybody, "such a thing as Tony Hackbut

coming into a relation's house, and sitting there, and not a word for any

of us? It's, I call it, dumbfoundering. And that's me: why didn't I go up

and shake his hand, you ask. Well, why not? If he don't know he's

welcome, without ceremony, he's no good. Why, I've got matters t' occupy

my mind, too, haven't I? Every man has, and some more'n others, let alone

crosses. There's something wrong with my brother-in-law, Tony, that's

settled. Odd that we country people, who bide, and take the Lord's

gifts--" The farmer did not follow out this reflection, but raising his

arms, shepherd-wise, he puffed as if blowing the two women before him to

their beds, and then gave a shy look at Robert, and nodded good-night to

him. Robert nodded in reply. He knew the cause of the farmer's uncommon

blitheness. Algernon Blancove, the young squire, had proposed for Rhoda's

hand.