Rhoda Fleming. Complete

“Is that the christian name of my girl’s seducer?”

He did not wait for an answer, but turned and went into the breakfast-table, when he ordered a tray with breakfast for Dahlia to betaken up to her bed-room; and that done, he himself turned the key of the door, and secured her. Mute woe was on Mrs. Sumfit’s face at all these strange doings, but none heeded her, and she smothered her lamentations. The farmer spoke nothing either of Robert or of Anthony. He sat in his chair till the dinner hour, without book or pipe, without occupation for eyes or hands; silent, but acute in his hearing.

The afternoon brought relief to Rhoda’s apprehensions. A messenger ran up to the farm bearing a pencilled note to her from Robert, which said that he, in company with her uncle, was holding Sedgett at a distance by force of arm, and that there was no fear. Rhoda kissed the words, hurrying away to the fields for a few minutes to thank and bless and dream of him who had said that there was no fear. She knew that Dahlia was unconscious of her imprisonment, and had less compunction in counting the minutes of her absence. The sun spread in yellow and fell in red before she thought of returning, so sweet it had become to her to let her mind dwell with Robert; and she was half a stranger to the mournfulness of the house when she set her steps homeward. But when she lifted the latch of the gate, a sensation, prompted by some unwitting self-accusal, struck her with alarm. She passed into the room, and beheld her father, and Mrs. Sumfit, who was sitting rolling, with her apron over her head.

The man Sedgett was between them.

CHAPTER XLVI

No sooner had Rhoda appeared than her father held up the key of Dahlia’s bed-room, and said, “Unlock your sister, and fetch her down to her husband.”

Mechanically Rhoda took the key.

“And leave our door open,” he added.

She went up to Dahlia, sick with a sudden fright lest evil had come to Robert, seeing that his enemy was here; but that was swept from her by Dahlia’s aspect.

“He is in the house,” Dahlia said; and asked, “Was there no letter—no letter; none, this morning?”

Rhoda clasped her in her arms, seeking to check the convulsions of her trembling.

“No letter! no letter! none? not any? Oh! no letter for me!”

The strange varying tones of musical interjection and interrogation were pitiful to hear.

“Did you look for a letter?” said Rhoda, despising herself for so speaking.

“He is in the house! Where is my letter?”

“What was it you hoped? what was it you expected, darling?”

Dahlia moaned: “I don’t know. I’m blind. I was told to hope. Yesterday I had my letter, and it told me to hope. He is in the house!”

“Oh, my dear, my love!” cried Rhoda; “come down a minute. See him. It is father’s wish. Come only for a minute. Come, to gain time, if there is hope.”

“But there was no letter for me this morning, Rhoda. I can’t hope. I am lost. He is in the house!”

“Dearest, there was a letter,” said Rhoda, doubting that she did well in revealing it.

Dahlia put out her hands dumb for the letter.

“Father opened it, and read it, and keeps it,” said Rhoda, clinging tight to the stricken form.

“Then, he is against me? Oh, my letter!” Dahlia wrung her hands.

While they were speaking, their father’s voice was heard below calling for Dahlia to descend. He came thrice to the foot of the stairs, and shouted for her.

The third time he uttered a threat that sprang an answer from her bosom in shrieks.

Rhoda went out on the landing and said softly, “Come up to her, father.”

After a little hesitation, he ascended the stairs.

“Why, girl, I only ask you to come down and see your husband,” he remarked with an attempt at kindliness of tone. “What’s the harm, then? Come and see him; that’s all; come and see him.”

Dahlia was shrinking out of her father’s sight as he stood in the doorway. “Say,” she communicated to Rhoda, “say, I want my letter.”

“Come!” William Fleming grew impatient.

“Let her have her letter, father,” said Rhoda. “You have no right to withhold it.”

“That letter, my girl” (he touched Rhoda’s shoulder as to satisfy her that he was not angry), “that letter’s where it ought to be. I’ve puzzled out the meaning of it. That letter’s in her husband’s possession.”

Dahlia, with her ears stretching for all that might be uttered, heard this. Passing round the door, she fronted her father.

“My letter gone to him!” she cried. “Shameful old man! Can you look on me? Father, could you give it? I’m a dead woman.”

She smote her bosom, stumbling backward upon Rhoda’s arm.

“You have been a wicked girl,” the ordinarily unmoved old man retorted. “Your husband has come for you, and you go with him. Know that, and let me hear no threats. He’s a modest-minded, quiet young man, and a farmer like myself, and needn’t be better than he is. Come you down to him at once. I’ll tell you: he comes to take you away, and his cart’s at the gate. To the gate you go with him. When next I see you—you visiting me or I visiting you—I shall see a respected creature, and not what you have been and want to be. You have racked the household with fear and shame for years. Now come, and carry out what you’ve begun in the contrary direction. You’ve got my word o’ command, dead woman or live woman. Rhoda, take one elbow of your sister. Your aunt’s coming up to pack her box. I say I’m determined, and no one stops me when I say that. Come out, Dahlia, and let our parting be like between parent and child. Here’s the dark falling, and your husband’s anxious to be away. He has business, and ‘ll hardly get you to the station for the last train to town. Hark at him below! He’s naturally astonished, he is, and you’re trying his temper, as you’d try any man’s. He wants to be off. Come, and when next we meet I shall see you a happy wife.”

He might as well have spoken to a corpse.

“Speak to her still, father,” said Rhoda, as she drew a chair upon which she leaned her sister’s body, and ran down full of the power of hate and loathing to confront Sedgett; but great as was that power within her, it was overmatched by his brutal resolution to take his wife away. No argument, no irony, no appeals, can long withstand the iteration of a dogged phrase. “I’ve come for my wife,” Sedgett said to all her instances. His voice was waxing loud and insolent, and, as it sounded, Mrs. Sumfit moaned and flapped her apron.

“Then, how could you have married him?”

They heard the farmer’s roar of this unanswerable thing, aloft.

“Yes—how! how!” cried Rhoda below, utterly forgetting the part she had played in the marriage.

“It’s too late to hate a man when you’ve married him, my girl.”

Sedgett went out to the foot of the stairs.

“Mr. Fleming—she’s my wife. I’ll teach her about hating and loving. I’ll behave well to her, I swear. I’m in the midst of enemies; but I say I do love my wife, and I’ve come for her, and have her I will. Now, in two minutes’ time. Mr. Fleming, my cart’s at the gate, and I’ve got business, and she’s my wife.”

The farmer called for Mrs. Sumfit to come up and pack Dahlia’s box, and the forlorn woman made her way to the bedroom. All the house was silent. Rhoda closed her sight, and she thought: “Does God totally abandon us?”

She let her father hear: “Father, you know that you are killing your child.”

“I hear ye, my lass,” said he.

“She will die, father.”

“I hear ye, I hear ye.”

“She will die, father.”