Rhoda Fleming | Page 6

them became a precocious tribulation. Rhoda, at the age of fifteen, was
distracted by it, owing to her sister's habit of masking her own dismal
internal forebodings on the subject, under the guise of a settled anxiety
concerning her sad chance.
In dress, the wife of the rector of Wrexby was their model. There came

once to Squire Blancove's unoccupied pew a dazzling vision of a fair
lady. They heard that she was a cousin of his third wife, and a widow,
Mrs. Lovell by name. They looked at her all through the service, and
the lady certainly looked at them in return; nor could they, with any
distinctness, imagine why, but the look dwelt long in their hearts, and
often afterward, when Dahlia, upon taking her seat in church, shut her
eyes, according to custom, she strove to conjure up the image of herself,
as she had appeared to the beautiful woman in the dress of grey-shot
silk, with violet mantle and green bonnet, rose-trimmed; and the picture
she conceived was the one she knew herself by, for many ensuing
years.
Mrs. Fleming fought her battle with a heart worthy of her
countrywomen, and with as much success as the burden of a
despondent husband would allow to her. William John Fleming was
simply a poor farmer, for whom the wheels of the world went too
fast:--a big man, appearing to be difficult to kill, though deeply smitten.
His cheeks bloomed in spite of lines and stains, and his large, quietly
dilated, brown ox-eyes, that never gave out a meaning, seldom showed
as if they had taken one from what they saw. Until his wife was lost to
him, he believed that he had a mighty grievance against her; but as he
was not wordy, and was by nature kind, it was her comfort to die and
not to know it. This grievance was rooted in the idea that she was
ruinously extravagant. The sight of the plentiful table was sore to him;
the hungry mouths, though he grudged to his offspring nothing that he
could pay for, were an afflicting prospect. "Plump 'em up, and make
'em dainty," he advanced in contravention of his wife's talk of bread
and beef.
But he did not complain. If it came to an argument, the farmer sidled
into a secure corner of prophecy, and bade his wife to see what would
come of having dainty children. He could not deny that bread and beef
made blood, and were cheaper than the port-wine which doctors were
in the habit of ordering for this and that delicate person in the
neighbourhood; so he was compelled to have recourse to secret
discontent. The attention, the time, and the trifles of money shed upon
the flower garden, were hardships easier to bear. He liked flowers, and

he liked to hear the praise of his wife's horticultural skill. The garden
was a distinguishing thing to the farm, and when on a Sunday he
walked home from church among full June roses, he felt the odour of
them to be so like his imagined sensations of prosperity, that the
deception was worth its cost. Yet the garden in its bloom revived a
cruel blow. His wife had once wounded his vanity. The massed vanity
of a silent man, when it does take a wound, desires a giant's vengeance;
but as one can scarcely seek to enjoy that monstrous gratification when
one's wife is the offender, the farmer escaped from his dilemma by
going apart into a turnip-field, and swearing, with his fist outstretched,
never to forget it. His wife had asked him, seeing that the garden
flourished and the farm decayed, to yield the labour of the farm to the
garden; in fact, to turn nurseryman under his wife's direction. The
woman could not see that her garden drained the farm already,
distracted the farm, and most evidently impoverished him. She could
not understand, that in permitting her, while he sweated fruitlessly, to
give herself up to the occupation of a lady, he had followed the
promptings of his native kindness, and certainly not of his native
wisdom. That she should deem herself `best man' of the two, and
suggest his stamping his name to such an opinion before the world, was
an outrage.
Mrs. Fleming was failing in health. On that plea, with the solemnity
suited to the autumn of her allotted days, she persuaded her husband to
advertise for an assistant, who would pay a small sum of money to
learn sound farming, and hear arguments in favour of the Corn Laws.
To please her, he threw seven shillings away upon an advertisement,
and laughed when the advertisement was answered, remarking that he
doubted much whether good would come of dealings with strangers. A
young man, calling