Rhoda Fleming. Complete

Robert bethought himself suddenly that Edward had better not. “I can tell you the time to a second,” he said. “It’s now twelve minutes past eleven.”

Edward held his watch balancing. “Twelve,” he repeated; and, behind this mask of common-place dialogue, they watched one another—warily, and still with pity, on Robert’s side.

“You can’t place any reliance on watches,” said Edward.

“None, I believe,” Robert remarked.

“If you could see the sun every day in this climate!” Edward looked up.

“Ah, the sun’s the best timepiece, when visible,” Robert acquiesced. “Backwoodsmen in America don’t need watches.”

“Unless it is to astonish the Indians with them.”

“Ah! yes!” hummed Robert.

“Twelve—fifteen—it must be a quarter past. Or, a three quarters to the next hour, as the Germans say.”

“Odd!” Robert ejaculated. “Foreigners have the queerest ways in the world. They mean no harm, but they make you laugh.”

“They think the same of us, and perhaps do the laughing more loudly.”

“Ah! let them,” said Robert, not without contemptuous indignation, though his mind was far from the talk.

The sweat was on Edward’s forehead. “In a few minutes it will be half-past—half-past eleven! I expect a friend; that makes me impatient. Mr. Eccles”—Edward showed his singular, smallish, hard-cut and flashing features, clear as if he had blown off a mist—“you are too much of a man to bear malice. Where is Dahlia? Tell me at once. Some one seems to be cruelly driving her. Has she lost her senses? She has:—or else she is coerced in an inexplicable and shameful manner.”

“Mr. Blancove,” said Robert, “I bear you not a bit of malice—couldn’t if I would. I’m not sure I could have said guilty to the same sort of things, in order to tell an enemy of mine I was sorry for what I had done, and I respect you for your courage. Dahlia was taken from here by me.”

Edward nodded, as if briefly assenting, while his features sharpened.

“Why?” he asked.

“It was her sister’s wish.”

“Has she no will of her own?”

“Very little, I’m afraid, just now, sir.”

“A remarkable sister! Are they of Puritan origin?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“And this father?”

“Mr. Blancove, he is one of those sort—he can’t lift up his head if he so much as suspects a reproach to his children.”

Edward brooded. “I desire—as I told you, as I told her sister, as I told my father last night—I desire to make her my wife. What can I do more? Are they mad with some absurd country pride? Half-past eleven!—it will be murder if they force her to it! Where is she? To such a man as that! Poor soul! I can hardly fear it, for I can’t imagine it. Here—the time is going. You know the man yourself.”

“I know the man?” said Robert. “I’ve never set eyes on him—I’ve never set eyes on him, and never liked to ask much about him. I had a sort of feeling. Her sister says he is a good, and kind, honourable young fellow, and he must be.”

“Before it’s too late,” Edward muttered hurriedly—“you know him—his name is Sedgett.”

Robert hung swaying over him with a big voiceless chest.

“That Sedgett?” he breathed huskily, and his look was hard to meet.

Edward frowned, unable to raise his head.

“Lord in heaven! some one has something to answer for!” cried Robert. “Come on; come to the church. That foul dog?—Or you, stay where you are. I’ll go. He to be Dahlia’s husband! They’ve seen him, and can’t see what he is!—cunning with women as that? How did they meet? Do you know?—can’t you guess?”

He flung a lightning at Edward and ran off. Bursting into the aisle, he saw the minister closing the Book at the altar, and three persons moving toward the vestry, of whom the last, and the one he discerned, was Rhoda.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Late into the afternoon, Farmer Fleming was occupying a chair in Robert’s lodgings, where he had sat since the hour of twelve, without a movement of his limbs or of his mind, and alone. He showed no sign that he expected the approach of any one. As mute and unremonstrant as a fallen tree, nearly as insensible, his eyes half closed, and his hands lying open, the great figure of the old man kept this attitude as of stiff decay through long sunny hours, and the noise of the London suburb. Although the wedding people were strangely late, it was unnoticed by him. When the door opened and Rhoda stepped into the room, he was unaware that he had been waiting, and only knew that the hours had somehow accumulated to a heavy burden upon him.

“She is coming, father; Robert is bringing her up,” Rhoda said.

“Let her come,” he answered.

Robert’s hold was tight under Dahlia’s arm as they passed the doorway, and then the farmer stood. Robert closed the door.

For some few painful moments the farmer could not speak, and his hand was raised rejectingly. The return of human animation to his heart made him look more sternly than he felt; but he had to rid himself of one terrible question before he satisfied his gradual desire to take his daughter to his breast. It came at last like a short roll of drums, the words were heard,—

“Is she an honest woman?”

“She is,” said Rhoda.

The farmer was looking on Robert.

Robert said it likewise in a murmur, but with steadfast look.

Bending his eyes now upon Dahlia, a mist of affection grew in them. He threw up his head, and with a choking, infantine cry, uttered, “Come.”

Robert placed her against her father’s bosom.

He moved to the window beside Rhoda, and whispered, and she answered, and they knew not what they said. The joint moans of father and daughter—the unutterable communion of such a meeting—filled their ears. Grief held aloof as much as joy. Neither joy nor grief were in those two hearts of parent and child; but the senseless contentment of hard, of infinite hard human craving.

The old man released her, and Rhoda undid her hands from him, and led the pale Sacrifice to another room.

“Where’s…?” Mr. Fleming asked.

Robert understood him.

“Her husband will not come.”

It was interpreted by the farmer as her husband’s pride. Or, may be, the man who was her husband now had righted her at last, and then flung her off in spite for what he had been made to do.

“I’m not being deceived, Robert?”