CHAPTER I
It was a brilliant afternoon towards the end of May The spring had been unusually cold and late and it was evident from the general aspect of the lonely Westmoreland valley of Long Whindale that warmth and sunshine had only just penetrated to its bare green recesses where the few scattered trees were fast rushing into their full summer dress while at their feet and along the bank of the stream the flowers of March and April still lingered as though they found it impossible to believe that their rough brother the east wind had at last deserted them The narrow road which was the only link between the farmhouses sheltered by the crags at the head of the valley and those faraway regions of town and civilisation suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on the southern horizon was lined with masses of the white heckberry or birdcherry and ran an arrowy line of white through the greenness of the sloping pastures The sides of some of the little becks running down into the main river and many of the plantations round the farms were gay with the same tree so that the farmhouses grayroofed and graywalled standing in the hollows of the fells seemed here and there to have been robbed of all their natural austerity of aspect and to be masquerading in a dainty garb of white and green imposed upon them by the caprice of the spring
During the greater part of its course the valley of Long Whindale is tame and featureless The hills at the lower part are low and rounded and the sheep and cattle pasture over slopes unbroken either by wood or rock The fields are bare and close shaven by the flocks which feed on them the walls run either perpendicularly in many places up the fells or horizontally along them so that save for the wooded course of the tumbling river and the bushgrown hedges of the road the whole valley looks like a green map divided by regular lines of grayish black But as the walker penetrates farther beyond a certain bend which the stream makes half way from the head of the dale the hills grow steeper the breadth between them contracts the enclosure lines are broken and deflected by rocks and patches of plantation and the few farms stand more boldly and conspicuouslyPg 4 forward each on its spur of land looking up to or away from the great masses of frowning crag which close in the head of the valley and which from the moment they come into sight give it dignity and a wild beauty
On one of these solitary houses the afternoon sun about to descend before very long behind the hills dividing Long Whindale from Shanmoor was still lingering on this May afternoon we are describing bringing out the whitewashed porch and the broad bands of white edging the windows into relief against the gray stone of the main fabric the gray roof overhanging it and the group of sycamores and Scotch firs which protected it from the cold east and north The western light struck full on a copper beech which made a welcome patch of warm colour in front of a long gray line of outhouses standing level with the house and touched the heckberry blossom which marked the upward course of the little lane connecting the old farm with the road above it rose the green fell broken here and there by jutting crags and below it the ground sank rapidly through a piece of young hazel plantation at this present moment a sheet of bluebells towards the level of the river There was a dainty and yet sober brightness about the whole picture Summer in the North is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is elsewhere but there is none of that opulence that sudden splendour and superabundance which mark it in the South In these bare green valleys there is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer the memory of winter seems to be still lingering about these windswept fells about the farmhouses with their rough serviceable walls of the same stone as the crags behind them and the ravines in which the shrunken becks trickle musically down through the débris of innumerable Decembers The country is blithe but soberly blithe Nature shows herself delightful to man but there is nothing absorbing or intoxicating about her Man is still well able to defend himself against her to live his own independent life of labour and of will and to develop the tenacity of hidden feeling that slowly growing intensity of purpose which is so often wiled out of him by the spells of the South
The distant aspect of Burwood Farm differed in nothing from that of the few other farmhouses which dotted the fells or clustered beside the river between it and the rocky end of the valley But as one came nearer certain signs of difference became visible The garden instead of being the oldfashioned medley of phloxes lavender bushes monthly roses gooseberry trees herbs and pampas grass with which the farmers wives of Long Whindale loved to fill their little front enclosures was trimly laid down in turf dotted with neat flowerbeds full at the moment we are writing of with orderly patches of scarlet and purple anemones wallflowers and pansies At the side of the house a new bow window modest enough in dimensions and make had been thrown out on to another closeshaven piece of lawn and by itsPg 5 suggestion of a distant sophisticated order of things disturbed the homely impression left by the untouched ivygrown walls the unpretending porch and wide slate windowsills of the front And evidently the line of sheds standing level with the dwellinghouse no longer sheltered the animals the carts or the tools which make the small capital of a Westmoreland farmer The windows in them were new the doors fresh painted and closely shut curtains of some soft outlandish make showed themselves in what had once been a stable and the turf stretched smoothly up to a narrow gravelled path in front of them unbroken by a single footmark No evidently the old farm for such it undoubtedly was had been but lately or comparatively lately transformed to new and softer uses that rough patriarchal life of which it had once been a symbol and centre no longer bustled and clattered through it It had become the shelter of new ideals the home of another and a milder race than once possessed it
In a stranger coming upon the house for the first time on this particular evening the sense of a changing social order and a vanishing past produced by the slight but significant modifications it had undergone would have been greatly quickened by certain sounds which were streaming out on to the evening air from one of the divisions of that long onestoried addition to the main dwelling we have already described Some indefatigable musician inside was practising the violin with surprising energy and vigour and within the little garden the distant murmur of the river and the gentle breathing of the west wind round the fell were entirely conquered and banished by these triumphant shakes and turns or by the flourishes and the broad cantabile passages of one of Spohrs Andantes For a while as the sun sank lower and lower towards the Shanmoor hills the hidden artist had it all his or her own way the valley and its green spaces seemed to be possessed by this stream of eddying sound and no other sign of life broke the gray quiet of the house But at last just as the golden ball touched the summit of the craggy fell which makes the western boundary of the dale at its higher end the house door opened and a young girl shawled and holding some soft burden in her arms appeared on the threshold and stood there for a moment as though trying the quality of the air outside Her pause of inspection seemed to satisfy her for she moved forward leaving the door open behind her and stepping across the lawn settled herself in a wicker chair under an appletree which had only just shed its blossoms on the turf below She had hardly done so when one of the distant doors opening on the gravel path flew open and another maiden a slim creature garbed in æsthetic blue a mass of reddish brown hair flying back from her face also stepped out into the garden
Agnes cried the newcomer who had the strenuous and dishevelled air natural to one just emerged from a long violin practice Has Catherine come back yet
Pg 6
Not that I know of Do come here and look at pussie did you ever see anything so comfortable
You and she look about equally lazy What have you been doing all the afternoon
We look what we are my dear Doing Why I have been attending to my domestic duties arranging the flowers mending my pink dress for tomorrow night and helping to keep mamma in good spirits she is depressed because she has been finding Elizabeth out in some waste or other and I have been preaching to her to make Elizabeth uncomfortable if she likes but not to worrit herself And after all pussie and I have come out for a rest Weve earned it havent we Chattie And as for you Miss Artistic I should like to know what youve been doing for the good of your kind since dinner I suppose you had tea at the vicarage
The speaker lifted inquiring eyes to her sister as she spoke her cheek plunged in the warm fur of a splendid Persian cat her whole look and voice expressing the very highest degree of quiet comfort and selfpossession Agnes Leyburn was not pretty the lower part of the face was a little heavy in outline and moulding the teeth were not as they should have been and the nose was unsatisfactory But the eyes under their long lashes were shrewdness itself and there was an individuality in the voice a cheery eventemperedness in look and tone which had a pleasing effect on the bystander Her dress was neat and dainty every detail of it bespoke a young woman who respected both herself and the fashion
Her sister on the other hand was guiltless of the smallest trace of fashion Her skirts were cut with the most engaging naïveté she was much adorned with amber beads and her red brown hair had been tortured and frizzled to look as much like an aureole as possible But on the other hand she was a beauty though at present you felt her a beauty in disguise a stage Cinderella as it were in very becoming rags waiting for the godmother
Yes I had tea at the vicarage said this young person throwing herself on the grass in spite of a murmured protest from Agnes who had an inherent dislike of anything physically rash and I had the greatest difficulty to get away Mrs Thornburgh is in such a flutter about this visit One would think it was the Bishop and all his Canons and promotion depending on it she has baked so many cakes and put out so many dinner napkins I dont envy the young man She will have no wits left at all to entertain him with I actually wound up by administering some salvolatile to her
Well and after the salvolatile did you get anything coherent out of her on the subject of the young man
By degrees said the girl her eyes twinkling if one can only remember the thread between whiles one gets at the facts somehow In between the death of Mr Elsmeres father andPg 7 his going to college we had let me see—the spare room curtains the making of them and the cleaning of them Sarahs idiocy in sticking to her black sheep of a young man the price of tea when she married Mr Thornburghs singular preference of boiled mutton to roast the poems she had written to her when she was eighteen and I cant tell you what else besides But I held fast and every now and then I brought her up to the point again gently but firmly and now I think I know all I want to know about the interesting stranger
My ideas about him are not many said Agnes rubbing her cheek gently up and down the purring cat and there doesnt seem to be much order in them He is very accomplished—a teetotaller—he has been to the Holy Land and his hair has been cut close after a fever It sounds odd but I am not curious I can very well wait till tomorrow evening
Oh well as to ideas about a person one doesnt get that sort of thing from Mrs Thornburgh But I know how old he is where he went to college where his mother lives a certain number of his mothers peculiarities which seem to be Irish and curious where his living is how much it is worth likewise the colour of his eyes as near as Mrs Thornburgh can get
What a start you have been getting said Agnes lazily But what is it makes the poor old thing so excited
Rose sat up and began to fling the fir cones lying about her at a distant mark with an energy worthy of her physical perfections and the æsthetic freedom of her attire
Because my dear Mrs Thornburgh at the present moment is always seeing herself as the conspirator sitting match in hand before a mine Mr Elsmere is the match—we are the mine
Agnes looked at her sister and they both laughed the bright rippling laugh of young women perfectly aware of their own value and in no hurry to force an estimate of it on the male world
Well said Rose deliberately her delicate cheek flushed with her gymnastics her eyes sparkling there is no saying Propinquity does it—as Mrs Thornburgh is always reminding us—But where can Catherine be She went out directly after lunch
She has gone out to see that youth who hurt his back at the Tysons—at least I heard her talking to mamma about him and she went out with a basket that looked like beeftea
Rose frowned a little
And I suppose I ought to have been to the school or to see Mrs Robson instead of fiddling all the afternoon I daresay I ought—only unfortunately I like my fiddle and I dont like stuffy cottages and as for the goody books I read them so badly that the old women themselves come down upon me
I seem to have been making the best of both worlds said Agnes placidly I havent been doing anything I dont likePg 8 but I got hold of that dress she brought home to make for little Emma Payne and nearly finished the skirt so that I feel as good as one when one has been twice to church on a wet Sunday Ah there is Catherine I heard the gate
As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the clump of trees which sheltered the little entrance gate and as Rose sprang to her feet a tall figure in white and gray appeared against the background of the sycamores and came quickly towards the sisters
Dears I am so sorry I am afraid you have been waiting for me But poor Mrs Tyson wanted me so badly that I could not leave her She had no one else to help her or to be with her till that eldest girl of hers came home from work
It doesnt matter said Rose as Catherine put her arm round her shoulder mamma hasnt been fidgeting and as for Agnes she looks as if she never wanted to move again
Catherines clear eyes which at the moment seemed to be full of inward light kindled in them by some foregoing experience rested kindly but only half consciously on her younger sister as Agnes softly nodded and smiled to her Evidently she was a good deal older than the other two—she looked about sixandtwenty a young and vigorous woman in the prime of health and strength The lines of the form were rather thin and spare but they were softened by the loose bodice and long full skirt of her dress and by the folds of a large white muslin handkerchief which was crossed over her breast The face sheltered by the plain shady hat was also a little spoilt from the point of view of beauty by the sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth and by a slight prominence of the cheekbones but the eyes of a dark bluish gray were fine the nose delicately cut the brow smooth and beautiful while the complexion had caught the freshness and purity of Westmoreland air and Westmoreland streams About face and figure there was a delicate austere charm something which harmonised with the bare stretches and lonely crags of the fells something which seemed to make her a true daughter of the mountains partaker at once of their gentleness and their severity She was in her place here beside the homely Westmoreland house and under the shelter of the fells When you first saw the other sisters you wondered what strange chance had brought them into that remote sparelypeopled valley they were plainly exiles and conscious exiles from the movement and exhilarations of a fuller social life But Catherine impressed you as only a refined variety of the local type you could have found many like her in a sense among the sweetfaced serious women of the neighbouring farms
Now as she and Rose stood together her hand still resting lightly on the others shoulder a question from Agnes banished the faint smile on her lips and left only the look of inward illumination the expression of one who had just passed as itPg 9 were through a strenuous and heroic moment of life and was still living in the exaltation of memory
So the poor fellow is worse
Yes Doctor Baker whom they have got today says the spine is hopelessly injured He may live on paralysed for a few months or longer but there is no hope of cure
Both girls uttered a shocked exclamation That fine strong young man said Rose under her breath Does he know
Yes when I got there the doctor had just gone and Mrs Tyson who was quite unprepared for anything so dreadful seemed to have almost lost her wits poor thing I found her in the front kitchen with her apron over her head rocking to and fro and poor Arthur in the inner room—all alone—waiting in suspense
And who told him He has been so hopeful
I did said Catherine gently they made me He would know and she couldnt—she ran out of the room I never saw anything so pitiful
Oh Catherine exclaimed Roses moved voice while Agnes got up and Chattie jumped softly down from her lap unheeded
How did he bear it
Dont ask me said Catherine while the quiet tears filled her eyes and her voice broke as the hidden feeling would have its way It was terrible I dont know how we got through that halfhour—his mother and I It was like wrestling with some one in agony At last he was exhausted—he let me say the Lords Prayer I think it soothed him but one couldnt tell He seemed half asleep when I left Oh she cried laying her hand in a close grasp on Roses arm if you had seen his eyes and his poor hands—there was such despair in them They say though he was so young he was thinking of getting married and he was so steady such a good son
A silence fell upon the three Catherine stood looking out across the valley towards the sunset Now that the demand upon her for calmness and fortitude was removed and that the religious exaltation in which she had gone through the last three hours was becoming less intense the pure human pity of the scene she had just witnessed seemed to be gaining upon her Her lip trembled and two or three tears silently overflowed Rose turned and gently kissed her cheek and Agnes touched her hand caressingly She smiled at them for it was not in her nature to let any sign of love pass unheeded and in a few more seconds she had mastered herself
Dears we must go in Is mother in her room Oh Rose in that thin dress on the grass I oughtnt to have kept you out It is quite cold by now
And she hurried them in leaving them to superintend the preparations for supper downstairs while she ran up to her mother
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A quarter of an hour afterwards they were all gathered round the suppertable the windows open to the garden and the May twilight At Catherines right hand sat Mrs Leyburn a tall delicatelooking woman wrapped in a white shawl about whom there were only three things to be noticed—an amiable temper a sufficient amount of weak health to excuse her all the more tiresome duties of life and an incorrigible tendency to sing the praises of her daughters at all times and to all people The daughters winced under it Catherine because it was a positive pain to her to hear herself brought forward and talked about the others because youth infinitely prefers to make its own points in its own way Nothing however could mend this defect of Mrs Leyburns Catherines strength of will could keep it in check sometimes but in general it had to be borne with A sharp word would have silenced the mothers wellmeant chatter at any time—for she was a fragile nervous woman entirely dependent on her surroundings—but none of them were capable of it and their mere refractoriness counted for nothing
The diningroom in which they were gathered had a good deal of homely dignity and was to the Leyburns full of associations The oak settle near the fire the oak sideboard running along one side of the room the black oak table with carved legs at which they sat were genuine pieces of old Westmoreland work which had belonged to their grandfather The heavy carpet covering the stone floor of what twenty years before had been the kitchen of the farmhouse was a survival from a southcountry home which had sheltered their lives for eight happy years Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of the girls father a long serious face not unlike Wordsworths face in outline and bearing a strong resemblance to Catherine a line of silhouettes adorned the mantelpiece on the walls were prints of Winchester and Worcester Cathedrals photographs of Greece and two oldfashioned engravings of Dante and Milton while a bookcase filled apparently with the fathers college books and college prizes and the favourite authors—mostly poets philosophers and theologians—of his later years gave a final touch of habitableness to the room The little meal and its appointments—the eggs the homemade bread and preserves the tempting butter and oldfashioned silver gleaming among the flowers which Rose arranged with fanciful skill in Japanese pots of her own providing—suggested the same family qualities as the room Frugality a dainty personal selfrespect a family consciousness tenacious of its memories and tenderly careful of all the little material objects which were to it the symbols of those memories—clearly all these elements entered into the Leyburn tradition
And of this tradition with its implied assertions and denials clearly Catherine Leyburn the elder sister was of all the persons gathered in this little room the most pronouncedPg 11 embodiment She sat at the head of the table the little basket of her own and her mothers keys beside her Her dress was a soft black brocade with lace collar and cuff which had once belonged to an aunt of her mothers It was too old for her both in fashion and material but it gave her a gentle almost matronly dignity which became her Her long thin hands full of character and delicacy moved nimbly among the cups all her ways were quiet and yet decided It was evident that among this little party she and not the plaintive mother was really in authority Tonight however her looks were specially soft The scene she had gone through in the afternoon had left her pale with traces of patient fatigue round the eyes and mouth but all her emotion was gone and she was devoting herself to the others responding with quick interest and ready smiles to all they had to say and contributing the little experiences of her own day in return
Rose sat on her left hand in yet another gown of strange tint and archaic outline Roses gowns were legion They were manufactured by a farmers daughter across the valley under her strict and precise supervision She was accustomed as she boldly avowed to shut herself up at the beginning of each season of the year for two days meditation on the subject And now thanks to the spring warmth she was entering at last with infinite zest on the results of her April vigils
Catherine had surveyed her as she entered the room with a smile but a smile not altogether to Roses taste
What another Röschen she had said with the slightest lifting of the eyebrows You never confided that to me Did you think I was unworthy of anything so artistic
Not at all said Rose calmly seating herself I thought you were better employed
But a flush flew over her transparent cheek and she presently threw an irritated look at Agnes who had been looking from her to Catherine with amused eyes
I met Mr Thornburgh and Mr Elsmere driving from the station Catherine announced presently at least there was a gentleman in a clerical wideawake with a portmanteau behind so I imagine it must have been he
Did he look promising inquired Agnes
I dont think I noticed said Catherine simply but with a momentary change of expression The sisters remembering how she had come in upon them with that look of one lifted up understood why she had not noticed and refrained from further questions
Well it is to be hoped the young man is recovered enough to stand Long Whindale festivities said Rose Mrs Thornburgh means to let them loose on his devoted head tomorrow night
Who are coming asked Mrs Leyburn eagerly The occasional tea parties of the neighbourhood were an unfailing excitePg 12ment to her simply because by dint of the small adornings natural to the occasion they showed her daughters to her under slightly new aspects To see Catherine who never took any thought for her appearance forced to submit to a white dress a line of pearls round the shapely throat a flower in the brown hair put there by Roses imperious fingers to sit in a corner well out of draughts watching the effect of Roses halffledged beauty and drinking in the compliments of the neighbourhood on Roses playing or Agness conversation or Catherines practical ability—these were Mrs Leyburns passions and a tea party always gratified them to the full
Mamma asks as if really she wanted an answer remarked Agnes drily Dear mother cant you by now make up a tea party at the Thornburghs out of your head
The Seatons inquired Mrs Leyburn
Mrs Seaton and Miss Barks replied Rose The rector wont come And I neednt say that having moved heaven and earth to get Mrs Seaton Mrs Thornburgh is now miserable because she has got her Her ambition is gratified but she knows that she has spoilt the party Well then Mr Mayhew of course his son and his flute
You to play his accompaniments put in Agnes slily Roses lip curled
Not if Miss Barks knows it she said emphatically nor if I know it The Bakers of course ourselves and the unknown
Dr Baker is always pleasant said Mrs Leyburn leaning back and drawing her white shawl languidly round her He told me the other day Catherine that if it werent for you he should have to retire He regards you as his junior partner Marvellous nursing gift your eldest daughter has Mrs Leyburn he said to me the other day A most agreeable man
I wonder if I shall be able to get any candid opinions out of Mr Elsmere the day after tomorrow said Rose musing It is difficult to avoid having an opinion of some sort about Mrs Seaton
Oxford dons dont gossip and are never candid remarked Agnes severely
Then Oxford dons must be very dull cried Rose However and her countenance brightened if he stays here four weeks we can teach him
Catherine meanwhile sat watching the two girls with a soft elder sisters indulgence Was it in connection with their bright attractive looks that the thought flitted through her head I wonder what the young man will be like
Oh by the way said Rose presently I had nearly forgotten Mrs Thornburghs two messages I informed her Agnes that you had given up watercolour and meant to try oils and she told me to implore you not to because watercolour is so much more ladylike than oils And as for you Catherine she sent you a most special message I was to tell you that she justPg 13 loved the way you had taken to plaiting your hair lately—that it was exactly like the picture of Jeanie Deans she has in the drawingroom and that she would never forgive you if you didnt plait it so tomorrow night
Catherine flushed faintly as she got up from the table
Mrs Thornburgh has eagleeyes she said moving away to give her arm to her mother who looked fondly at her making some remark in praise of Mrs Thornburghs taste
Rose cried Agnes indignantly when the other two had disappeared you and Mrs Thornburgh have not the sense you were born with What on earth did you say that to Catherine for
Rose stared then her face fell a little
I suppose it was foolish she admitted Then she leant her head on one hand and drew meditative patterns on the tablecloth with the other You know Agnes she said presently looking up there are drawbacks to having a St Elizabeth for a sister
Agnes discreetly made no reply and Rose was left alone She sat dreaming a few minutes the corners of the red mouth drooping Then she sprang up with a long sigh A little life she said halfaloud a little wickedness and she shook her curly head defiantly
A few minutes later in the little drawingroom on the other side of the hall Catherine and Rose stood together by the open window For the first time in a lingering spring the air was soft and balmy a tender grayness lay over the valley it was not night though above the clear outlines of the fell the stars were just twinkling in the pale blue Far away under the crag on the farther side of High Fell a light was shining As Catherines eyes caught it there was a quick response in the fine Madonnalike face
Any news for me from the Backhouses this afternoon she asked Rose
No I heard of none How is she
Dying said Catherine simply and stood a moment looking out Rose did not interrupt her She knew that the house from which the light was shining sheltered a tragedy she guessed with the vagueness of nineteen that it was a tragedy of passion and sin but Catherine had not been communicative on the subject and Rose had for some time past set up a dumb resistance to her sisters most characteristic ways of life and thought which prevented her now from asking questions She wished nervously to give Catherines extraordinary moral strength no greater advantage over her than she could help
Presently however Catherine threw her arm round her with a tender protectingness
What did you do with yourself all the afternoon Röschen
I practised for two hours said the girl shortly and two hours this morning My Spohr is nearly perfect
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And you didnt look into the school asked Catherine hesitating I know Miss Merry expected you
No I didnt When one can play the violin and cant teach any more than a cockatoo whats the good of wasting ones time in teaching
Catherine did not reply A minute after Mrs Leyburn called her and she went to sit on a stool at her mothers feet her hands resting on the elder womans lap the whole attitude of the tall active figure one of beautiful and childlike abandonment Mrs Leyburn wanted to confide in her about a new cap and Catherine took up the subject with a zest which kept her mother happy till bedtime
Why couldnt she take as much interest in my Spohr thought Rose
Late that night long after she had performed all a maids offices for her mother Catherine Leyburn was busy in her own room arranging a large cupboard containing medicines and ordinary medical necessaries a storehouse whence all the simpler emergencies of their end of the valley were supplied She had put on a white flannel dressinggown and moved noiselessly about in it the very embodiment of order of purity of quiet energy The little whitecurtained room was bareness and neatness itself There were a few bookshelves along the walls holding the books which her father had given her Over the bed were two enlarged portraits of her parents and a line of queer little faded monstrosities representing Rose and Agnes in different stages of childhood On the table beside the bed was a pile of wellworn books—Keble Jeremy Taylor the Bible—connected in the mind of the mistress of the room with the intensest moments of the spiritual life There was a strip of carpet by the bed a plain chair or two a large press otherwise no furniture that was not absolutely necessary and no ornaments And yet for all its emptiness the little room in its order and spotlessness had the look and spell of a sanctuary
When her task was finished Catherine came forward to the infinitesimal dressingtable and stood a moment before the common cottage lookingglass upon it The candle behind her showed her the outlines of her head and face in shadow against the white ceiling Her soft brown hair was plaited high above the broad white brow giving to it an added stateliness while it left unmasked the pure lines of the neck Mrs Thornburgh and her mother were quite right Simple as the new arrangement was it could hardly have been more effective
But the lookingglass got no smile in return for its information Catherine Leyburn was young she was alone she was being very plainly told that taken as a whole she was or might be at any moment a beautiful woman And all her answer was a frown and a quick movement away from the glass Putting up her hands she began to undo the plaits with haste almost with impatience she smoothed the whole mass then set freePg 15 into the severest order plaited it closely together and then putting out her light threw herself on her knees beside the window which was partly open to the starlight and the mountains The voice of the river far away wafted from the mistcovered depths of the valley and the faint rustling of the trees just outside were for long after the only sounds which broke the silence
When Catherine appeared at breakfast next morning her hair was plainly gathered into a close knot behind which had been her way or dressing it since she was thirteen Agnes threw a quick look at Rose Mrs Leyburn as soon as she had made out through her spectacles what was the matter broke into warm expostulations
It is more comfortable dear mother and takes much less time said Catherine reddening
Poor Mrs Thornburgh remarked Agnes drily
Oh Rose will make up said Catherine glancing not without a spark of mischief in her gray eyes at Roses tortured locks and mammas new cap which will be superb
CHAPTER II
About four oclock on the afternoon of the day which was to be marked in the annals of Long Whindale as that of Mrs Thornburghs high tea that lady was seated in the vicarage garden her spectacles on her nose a large couvrepied over her knees and the Whinborough newspaper on her lap The neighbourhood of this last enabled her to make an intermittent pretence of reading but in reality the energies of her housewifely mind were taken up with quite other things The vicars wife was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest All her solid preparations for the evening were over and in her own mind she decided that with them there was no possible fault to be found The cook Sarah had gone about her work in a spirit at once lavish and fastidious breathed into her by her mistress No better tongue no plumper chickens than those which would grace her board tonight were to be found so Mrs Thornburgh was persuaded in the district And so with everything else of a substantial kind On this head the hostess felt no anxieties
But a tea in the north country depends for distinction not on its solids or its savouries but on its sweets A rural hostess earns her reputation not by a discriminating eye for butchersmeat but by her inventiveness in cakes and custards And it was just here with regard to this bubble reputation that the vicars wife of Long Whindale was particularly sensitive Was she not expecting Mrs Seaton the wife of the Rector of Whinborough—odious woman—to tea Was it not incumbent on herPg 16 to do well nay to do brilliantly in the eyes of this local magnate And how was it possible to do brilliantly in this matter with a cook whose recipes were hopelessly oldfashioned and who had an exasperating belief in the sufficiency of buttered whigs and homemade marmalade for all requirements
Stung by these thoughts Mrs Thornburgh had gone prowling about the neighbouring town of Whinborough till the shop window of a certain newlyarrived confectioner had been revealed to her stored with the most airy and appetising trifles—of a make and colouring quite metropolitan She had flattened her gray curls against the window for one deliberative moment had then rushed in and as soon as the carriers cart of Long Whindale which she was now anxiously awaiting should have arrived bearing with it the produce of that adventure Mrs Thornburgh would be a proud woman prepared to meet a legion of rectors wives without flinching Not indeed in all respects a woman at peace with herself and the world In the country where every household should be selfcontained a certain discredit attaches in every wellregulated mind to getting things in Mrs Thornburgh was also nervous at the thought of the bill It would have to be met gradually out of the weekly money For William was to know nothing of the matter except so far as a few magnificent generalities and the testimony of his own dazzled eyes might inform him But after all in this as in everything else one must suffer to be distinguished
The carrier however lingered And at last the drowsiness of the afternoon overcame even those pleasing expectations we have described and Mrs Thornburghs newspaper dropped unheeded to her feet The vicarage under the shade of which she was sitting was a new gray stone building with wooden gables occupying the site of what had once been the earlier vicarage house of Long Whindale the primitive dwellinghouse of an incumbent whose chapelry after sundry augmentations amounted to just twentyseven pounds a year The modern house though it only contained sufficient accommodation for Mr and Mrs Thornburgh one guest and two maids would have seemed palatial to those rustic clerics of the past from whose ministrations the lonely valley had drawn its spiritual sustenance in times gone by They indeed had belonged to another race—a race sprung from the soil and content to spend the whole of life in very close contact and very homely intercourse with their mother earth Mr Thornburgh who had come to the valley only a few years before from a parish in one of the large manufacturing towns and who had no inherited interest in the Cumbrian folk and their ways had only a very faint idea and that a distinctly depreciatory one of what these mythical predecessors of his with their strange social status and unbecoming occupations might be like But there were one or two old men still lingering in the dale who could have told himPg 17 a great deal about them whose memory went back to the days when the relative social importance of the dale parsons was exactly expressed by the characteristic Westmoreland saying Ef yell nobbut send us a gude schulemeaster a verra moderate parson ull dea and whose slow minds therefore were filled with a strong inarticulate sense of difference as they saw him pass along the road and recalled the incumbent of their childhood dropping in for his crack and his glass of yale at this or that farmhouse on any occasion of local festivity or driving his sheep to Whinborough market with his own hands like any other peasant of the dale
Within the last twenty years however the few remaining survivors of this primitive clerical order in the Westmoreland and Cumberland valleys have dropped into their quiet unremembered graves and new men of other ways and other modes of speech reign in their stead And as at Long Whindale so almost everywhere the change has been emphasised by the disappearance of the old parsonage houses with their stone floors their parlours lustrous with oak carving on chest or dresser and their encircling farmbuildings and meadows in favour of an upgrowth of new trim mansions designed to meet the needs not of peasants but of gentlefolks
And naturally the churches too have shared in the process of transformation The ecclesiastical revival of the last halfcentury has worked its will even in the remotest corners of the Cumbrian country and soon not a vestige of the homely worshippingplaces of an earlier day will remain Across the road in front of the Long Whindale parsonage for instance rose a freshly built church also peaked and gabled with a spire and two bells and a painted east window and Heaven knows what novelties besides The primitive whitewashed structure it replaced had lasted long and in the course of many generations time had clothed its mossgrown walls its slated porch and tombstones worn with rain in a certain beauty of congruity and association linking it with the purple distances of the fells and the brawling river bending round the gray enclosure But finally after a period of quiet and gradual decay the ruin of Long Whindale chapel had become a quick and hurrying ruin that would not be arrested When the rotten timbers of the roof came dropping on the farmers heads and the oak benches beneath offered gaps the geography of which had to be carefully learnt by the substantial persons who sat on them lest they should be overtaken by undignified disaster when the rain poured in on the Communion Table and the wind raged through innumerable mortarless chinks even the slowlymoving folk of the valley came to the conclusion that summat ull hev to be deun And by the help of the Bishop and Queen Annes Bounty and what not aided by just as many halfcrowns as the valley found itself unable to defend against the encroachments of a new and moiderin parson summat was done whereofPg 18 the results—namely the new church vicarage and schoolhouse—were now conspicuous
This radical change however had not been the work of Mr Thornburgh but of his predecessor a much more pushing and enterprising man whose successful efforts to improve the church accommodation in Long Whindale had moved such deep and lasting astonishment in the mind of a somewhat lethargic bishop that promotion had been readily found for him Mr Thornburgh was neither capable of the sturdy begging which had raised the church nor was he likely on other lines to reach preferment He and his wife who possessed much more salience of character than he were accepted in the dale as belonging to the established order of things Nobody wished them any harm and the few people they had specially befriended naturally thought well of them
But the old intimacy of relation which had once subsisted between the clergyman of Long Whindale and his parishioners was wholly gone They had sunk in the scale the parson had risen The old statesmen or peasant proprietors of the valley had for the most part succumbed to various destructive influences some social some economical added to a certain amount of corrosion from within and their place had been taken by leaseholders less drunken perhaps and better educated but also far less shrewd and individual and lacking in the rude dignity of their predecessors
And as the land had lost the church had gained The place of the dalesmen knew them no more but the church and parsonage had got themselves rebuilt the parson had had his income raised had let off his glebe to a neighbouring farmer kept two maids and drank claret when he drank anything His flock were friendly enough and paid their commuted tithes without grumbling But between them and a perfectly wellmeaning but rather dull man who stood on his dignity and wore a black coat all the week there was no real community Rejoice in it as we may in this final passage of Parson Primrose to social regions beyond the ken of Farmer Flamborough there are some elements of loss as there are in all changes
Wheels on the road Mrs Thornburgh woke up with a start and stumbling over newspaper and couvrepied hurried across the lawn as fast as her short squat figure would allow gray curls and capstrings flying behind her She heard a colloquy in the distance in broad Westmoreland dialect and as she turned the corner of the house she nearly ran into her tall cook Sarah whose impassive and saturnine countenance bore traces of unusual excitement
Missis theres naw cakes Theyre all left behind on t counter at Randalls Mr Backhouse says as how he told old Jim to go fur em and he niver went and Mr Backhouse he niver found oot till hed got past t bridge and than it wur too late to go back
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Mrs Thornburgh stood transfixed something of her fresh pink colour slowly deserting her face as she realised the enormity of the catastrophe And was it possible that there was the faintest twinkle of grim satisfaction on the face of that elderly minx Sarah
Mrs Thornburgh however did not stay to explore the recesses of Sarahs mind but ran with little pattering undignified steps across the front garden and down the steps to where Mr Backhouse the carrier stood bracing himself for selfdefence
Ya may weel fret mum said Mr Backhouse interrupting the flood of her reproaches with the comparative sangfroid of one who knew that after all he was the only carrier on the road and that the vicarage was five miles from the necessaries of life its a bad job and Is not goin to say it isnt But ya jest look ere mum whats a man to du wi a daft thingamy like that as caant tëak a plain order and spiles a poor mans business as caant help hissel
And Mr Backhouse pointed with withering scorn to a small shrunken old man who sat dangling his legs on the shaft of the cart and whose countenance wore a singular expression of mingled meekness and composure as his partner flourished an indignant finger towards him
Jim cried Mrs Thornburgh reproachfully I did think you would have taken more pains about my order
Yis mum said the old man placidly ya might a thowt it Is reet sorry bit ya caant help these things sumtimes—an its naw gud a hollerin ower em like a mad bull Aa tuke yur bit paper to Randalls and aa laft it wi em to mek up an than aa weel aa went to a frind an ee may hev giv me a glass of yale aa doont say ee dud—but ee may I weent sweer Hawsomiver aa niver thowt naw mair aboot it nor mair did John so ee neednt taak—till we wur jest two mile from ere An ees a gon on sence My an a larroping the poor beeast like onything
Mrs Thornburgh stood aghast at the calmness of this audacious recital As for John he looked on surveying his brothers philosophical demeanour at first with speechless wrath and then with an inscrutable mixture of expressions in which however any one accustomed to his weatherbeaten countenance would have probably read a hidden admiration
Weel aa niver he exclaimed when Jims explanatory remarks had come to an end swinging himself up on to his seat and gathering up the reins Yur a boald un to tell the missus theer to hur feeace as how ya wur tossicatit whan yur owt ta been duing yur larful business Aave doon wi yer Aa aims to please ma coostomers an aa caant abide sek wark Yur like an oald kneyfe I can mak nowt o ya nowder back nor edge
Mrs Thornburgh wrung her fat short hands in despair making little incoherent laments and suggestions as she saw himPg 20 about to depart of which John at last gathered the main purport to be that she wished him to go back to Whinborough for her precious parcel
He shook his head compassionately over the preposterous state of mind betrayed by such a demand and with a fresh burst of abuse of his brother and an assurance to the vicars wife that he meant to gie that oald man nawtice when he got haum he wasnt goan to hev his bisness spiled for nowt by an oald ijiot wi a hed as full o yale as a hayricks full of mice he raised his whip and the clattering vehicle moved forward Jim meanwhile preserving through all his brothers wrath and Mrs Thornburghs wailings the same mild and even countenance the meditative and friendly aspect of the philosopher letting the world go as een it will
So Mrs Thornburgh was left gasping watching the progress of the lumbering cart along the bit of road leading to the hamlet at the head of the valley with so limp and crestfallen an aspect that even the gaunt and secretly jubilant Sarah was moved to pity
Why missis well do very well Ill hev some scones in toven in naw time an theers finger biscuits an wi buttered toast an sum o t best jams if they dont hev enuf to eat they ought to Then dropping her voice she asked with a hurried change of tone Did ye ask un hoo his daater is
Mrs Thornburgh started Her pastoral conscience was smitten She opened the gate and waved violently after the cart John pulled his horse up and with a few quick steps she brought herself within speaking or rather shouting distance
Hows your daughter today John
The old mans face peering round the oilcloth hood of the cart was darkened by a sudden cloud as he caught the words His stern lips closed He muttered something inaudible to Mrs Thornburgh and whipped up his horse again The cart started off and Mrs Thornburgh was left staring into the receding eyes of Jim the Noodle who from his seat on the near shaft regarded her with a gaze which had passed from benevolence into a preternatural solemnity
Hes sparin ov is speach is John Backhouse said Sarah grimly as her mistress returned to her Maybe ees aboot reet Its a bad business an eell not mend it wi taakin
Mrs Thornburgh however could not apply herself to the case of Mary Backhouse At any other moment it would have excited in her breast the shuddering interest which owing to certain peculiar attendant circumstances it awakened in every other woman in Long Whindale But her mind—such are the limitations of even clergymens wives—was now absorbed by her own misfortune Her very capstrings seemed to hang limp with depression as she followed Sarah dejectedly into the kitchen and gave what attention she could to those secondbest arrangements so depressing to the idealist temper
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Poor soul All the charm and glitter of her little social adventure was gone When she once more emerged upon the lawn and languidly readjusted her spectacles she was weighed down by the thought that in two hours Mrs Seaton would be upon her Nothing of this kind ever happened to Mrs Seaton The universe obeyed her nod No carrier conveying goods to her august door ever got drunk or failed to deliver his consignment The thing was inconceivable Mrs Thornburgh was well aware of it
Should William be informed Mrs Thornburgh had a rooted belief in the brutality of husbands in all domestic crises and would have preferred not to inform him But she had also a dismal certainty that the secret would burn a hole in her till it was confessed—bill and all Besides—frightful thought—would they have to eat up all those meringues next day
Her reflections at last became so depressing that with a natural epicurean instinct she tried violently to turn her mind away from them Luckily she was assisted by a sudden perception of the roof and chimneys of Burwood the Leyburns house peeping above the trees to the left At sight of them a smile overspread her plump and gently wrinkled face She fell gradually into a train of thought as feminine as that in which she had been just indulging but infinitely more pleasing
For with regard to the Leyburns at this present moment Mrs Thornburgh felt herself in the great position of tutelary divinity or guardian angel At least if divinities and guardian angels do not concern themselves with the questions to which Mrs Thornburghs mind was now addressed it would clearly have been the opinion of the vicars wife that they ought to do so
Who else is there to look after these girls I should like to know Mrs Thornburgh inquired of herself if I dont do it As if girls married themselves People may talk of their independence nowadays as much as they like—it always has to be done for them one way or another Mrs Leyburn poor lackadaisical thing is no good whatever No more is Catherine They both behave as if husbands tumbled into your mouth for the asking Catherines too good for this world—but if she doesnt do it I must Why that girl Rose is a beauty—if they didnt let her wear those ridiculous mustardcoloured things and do her hair fit to frighten the crows Agnes too—so ladylike and wellmannered shed do credit to any man Well we shall see we shall see
And Mrs Thornburgh gently shook her gray curls from side to side while her eyes fixed on the open spare room window shone with meaning
So eligible too—private means no encumbrances and as good as gold
She sat lost a moment in a pleasing dream
Shall I bring oot the tea to you theer mum called SarahPg 22 gruffly from the garden door Master and Mr Elsmere are just coomin down t field by t steppingstones
Mrs Thornburgh signalled assent and the teatable was brought Afternoon tea was by no means a regular institution at the vicarage of Long Whindale and Sarah never supplied it without signs of protest But when a guest was in the house Mrs Thornburgh insisted upon it her obstinacy in the matter like her dreams of cakes and confections being all part of her determination to move with the times in spite of the station to which Providence had assigned her
A minute afterwards the vicar a thickset grayhaired man of sixty accompanied by a tall younger man in clerical dress emerged upon the lawn
Welcome sight cried Mr Thornburgh Robert and I have been coveting that tea for the last hour You guessed very well Emma to have it just ready for us
Oh that was Sarah She saw you coming down to the steppingstones replied his wife pleased however by any mark of appreciation from her mankind however small Robert I hope you havent been walked off your legs
What in this air cousin Emma I could walk from sunrise to sundown Let no one call me an invalid any more Henceforth I am a Hercules
And he threw himself on the rug which Mrs Thornburghs motherly providence had spread on the grass for him with a smile and a look of supreme physical contentment which did indeed almost efface the signs of recent illness in the ruddy boyish face
Mrs Thornburgh studied him her eye caught first of all by the stubble of reddish hair which as he took off his hat stood up straight and stiff all over his head with an odd wildness and aggressiveness She involuntarily thought basing her inward comment on a complexity of reasons—Dear me what a pity it spoils his appearance
I apologise I apologise cousin Emma once for all said the young man surprising her glance and despairingly smoothing down his recalcitrant locks Let us hope that mountain air will quicken the pace of it before it is necessary for me to present a dignified appearance at Murewell
He looked up at her with a merry flash in his gray eyes and her old face brightened visibly as she realised afresh that in spite of the grotesqueness of his cropped hair her guest was a most attractive creature Not that he could boast much in the way of regular good looks the mouth was large the nose of no particular outline and in general the cutting of the face though strong and characteristic had a bluntness and naïveté like a vigorous unfinished sketch This bluntness of line however was balanced by a great delicacy of tint—the pink and white complexion of a girl indeed—enhanced by the bright reddish hair and quick gray eyes
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The figure was also a little out of drawing so to speak it was tall and looselyjointed The general impression was one of agility and power But if you looked closer you saw that the shoulders were narrow the arms inordinately long and the extremities too small for the general height Robert Elsmeres hand was the hand of a woman and few people ever exchanged a first greeting with its very tall owner without a little shock of surprise
Mr Thornburgh and his guest had visited a few houses in the course of their walk and the vicar plunged for a minute or two into some conversation about local matters with his wife But Mrs Thornburgh it was soon evident was giving him but a scatterbrained attention Her secret was working in her ample breast Very soon she could contain it no longer and breaking in upon her husbands parish news she tumbled it all out pellmell with a mixture of discomfiture and defiance infinitely diverting She could not keep a secret but she also could not bear to give William an advantage
William certainly took his advantage He did what his wife in her irritation had precisely foreseen that he would do He first stared then fell into a guffaw of laughter and as soon as he had recovered breath into a series of unfeeling comments which drove Mrs Thornburgh to desperation
If you will set your mind my dear on things we plain folks can do perfectly well without—et cetera et cetera—the husbands point of view can be imagined Mrs Thornburgh could have shaken her good man especially as there was nothing new to her in his remarks she had known to a T beforehand exactly what he would say She took up her knitting in a great hurry the needles clicking angrily her gray curls quivering under the energy of her hands and arms while she launched at her husband various retorts as to his lack of consideration for her efforts and her inconvenience which were only very slightly modified by the presence of a stranger
Robert Elsmere meanwhile lay on the grass his face discreetly turned away an uncontrollable smile twitching the corners of his mouth Everything was fresh and piquant up here in this remote corner of the north country whether the mountain air or the windblown streams or the manners and customs of the inhabitants His cousins wife in spite of her ambitious conventionalities was really the child of Nature to a refreshing degree One does not see these types he said to himself in the cultivated monotony of Oxford or London She was like a bit of a bygone world—Miss Austens or Miss Ferriers—unearthed for his amusement He could not for the life of him help taking the scenes of this remote rural existence which was quite new to him as though they were the scenes of some comedy of manners
Presently however the vicar became aware that the passage of arms between himself and his spouse was becoming just aPg 24 little indecorous He got up with a Hem intended to put an end to it and deposited his cup
Well my dear have it as you please It all comes of your determination to have Mrs Seaton Why couldnt you just ask the Leyburns and let us enjoy ourselves
With this final shaft he departed to see that Jane the little maid whom Sarah ordered about had not in cleaning the study for the evenings festivities put his last sermon into the wastepaper basket His wife looked after him with eyes that spoke unutterable things
You would never think she said in an agitated voice to young Elsmere that I had consulted Mr Thornburgh as to every invitation that he entirely agreed with me that one must be civil to Mrs Seaton considering that she can make anybodys life a burden to them about here that isnt but its no use
And she fell back on her knitting with redoubled energy her face full of a halftearful intensity of meaning Robert Elsmere restrained a strong inclination to laugh and set himself instead to distract and console her He expressed sympathy with her difficulties he talked to her about her party he got from her the names and histories of the guests How Miss Austenish it sounded the managing rectors wife her still more managing old maid of a sister the neighbouring clergyman who played the flute the local doctor and a pretty daughter just out—Very pretty sighed Mrs Thornburgh who was now depressed all round but all flounces and frills and nothing to say—and last of all those three sisters the Leyburns who seemed to be on a different level and whom he had heard mentioned so often since his arrival by both husband and wife
Tell me about the Miss Leyburns he said presently You and cousin William seem to have a great affection for them Do they live near
Oh quite close cried Mrs Thornburgh brightening at last and like a great general leaving one scheme in ruins only the more ardently to take up another There is the house and she pointed out Burwood among its trees Then with her eye eagerly fixed upon him she fell into a more or less incoherent account of her favourites She laid on her colours thickly and Elsmere at once assumed extravagance
A saint a beauty and a wit all to yourselves in these wilds he said laughing What luck But what on earth brought them here—a widow and three daughters—from the south It was an odd settlement surely though you have one of the loveliest valleys and the purest airs in England
Oh as to lovely valleys said Mrs Thornburgh sighing I think it very dull I always have When one has to depend for everything on a carrier that gets drunk too Why you know they belong here Theyre real Westmoreland people
What does that mean exactly
Oh their grandfather was a farmer just like one of thePg 25 common farmers about Only his land was his own and theirs isnt
He was one of the last of the statesmen interposed Mr Thornburgh—who having rescued his sermon from Janes tender mercies and put out his modest claret and sherry for the evening had strolled out again and found himself impelled as usual to put some precision into his wifes statements—one of the small freeholders who have almost disappeared here as elsewhere The story of the Leyburns always seems to me typical of many things
Robert looked inquiry and the vicar sitting down—having first picked up his wifes ball of wool as a peaceoffering which was loftily accepted—launched into a narrative which may be here somewhat condensed
The Leyburns grandfather it appeared had been a typical northcountry peasant—honest with strong passions both of love and hate thinking nothing of knocking down his wife with the poker and frugal in all things save drink Drink however was ultimately his ruin as it was the ruin of most of the Cumberland statesmen The people about here said the vicar say he drank away an acre a year He had some fifty acres and it took about thirty years to beggar him
Meanwhile this brutal rollicking strongnatured person had sons and daughters—plenty of them Most of them even the daughters were brutal and rollicking too Of one of the daughters now dead it was reported that having on one occasion discovered her father then an old infirm man sitting calmly by the fire beside the prostrate form of his wife whom he had just felled with his crutch she had taken off her wooden shoe and given her father a clout on the head which left his gray hair streaming with blood after which she had calmly put the horse into the cart and driven off to fetch the doctor to both her parents But among this grim and earthy crew there was one exception a hop out of kin of whom all the rest made sport This was the second son Richard who showed such a persistent tendency to booklarnin and such a persistent idiocy in all matters pertaining to the land that nothing was left to the father at last but to send him with many oaths to the grammar school at Whinborough From the moment the boy got a footing in the school he hardly cost his father another penny He got a local bursary which paid his school expenses he never missed a remove or failed to gain a prize and finally won a close scholarship which carried him triumphantly to Queens College
His family watched his progress with a gaping halfcontemptuous amazement till he announced himself as safely installed at Oxford having borrowed from a Whinborough patron the modest sum necessary to pay his college valuation—a sum which wild horses could not have dragged out of his father now sunk over head and ears in debt and drink
Pg 26
From that moment they practically lost sight of him He sent the class list which contained his name among the Firsts to his father in the same way he communicated the news of his Fellowship at Queens his ordination and his appointment to the headmastership of a southcountry grammar school None of his communications were ever answered till in the very last year of his fathers life the eldest son who had a shrewder eye all round to the main chance than the rest applied to Dick for cash wherewith to meet some of the family necessities The money was promptly sent together with photographs of Dicks wife and children These last were not taken much notice of These Leyburns were a hard limited incurious set and they no longer regarded Dick as one of themselves
Then came the old mans death said Mr Thornburgh It happened the year after I took the living Richard Leyburn was sent for and came I never saw such a scene in my life as the funeral supper It was kept up in the old style Three of Leyburns sons were there two of them farmers like himself one a clerk from Manchester a daughter married to a tradesman in Whinborough a brother of the old man who was under the table before supper was half over and so on Richard Leyburn wrote to ask me to come and I went to support his cloth But I was new to the place said the vicar flushing a little and they belonged to a race that had never been used to pay much respect to parsons To see that man among the rest He was thin and dignified he looked to me as if he had all the learning imaginable and he had large absentlooking eyes which as George the eldest brother said gave you the impression of some one that had lost somethin when he was nobbut a lad and had gone seekin it iver sence He was formidable to me but between us we couldnt keep the rest of the party in order so when the orgie had gone on a certain time we left it and went out into the air It was an August night I remember Leyburn threw back his head and drank it in I havent breathed this air for fiveandtwenty years he said I thought I hated the place and in spite of that drunken crew in there it draws me to it like a magnet I feel after all that I have the fells in my blood He was a curious man a refinedlooking melancholy creature with a face that reminded you of Wordsworth and cold donnish ways except to his children and the poor I always thought his life had disappointed him somehow
Yet one would think said Robert opening his eyes that he had made a very considerable success of it
Well I dont know how it was said the vicar whose analysis of character never went very far Anyhow next day he went peering about the place and the mountains and the lands his father had lost And George the eldest brother who had inherited the farm watched him without a word in the way these Westmoreland folk have and at last offered him what remained of the place for a fancy price I told him it was a preposterousPg 27 sum but he wouldnt bargain I shall bring my wife and children here in the holidays he said and the money will set George up in California So he paid through the nose and got possession of the old house in which I should think he had passed about as miserable a childhood as it was possible to pass Theres no accounting for tastes
And then the next summer they all came down interrupted Mrs Thornburgh She disliked a long story as she disliked being read aloud to Catherine was fifteen not a bit like a child You used to see her everywhere with her father To my mind he was always exciting her brain too much but he was a man you could not say a word to I dont care what William says about his being like Wordsworth he just gave you the blues to look at
It was so strange said the vicar meditatively to see them in that house If you knew the things that used to go on there in old days—the savages that lived there And then to see those three delicately broughtup children going in and out of the parlour where old Leyburn used to sit smoking and drinking and Dick Leyburn walking about in a white tie and the same men touching their hats to him who had belaboured him when he was a boy at the village school—it was queer
A curious little bit of social history said Elsmere Well and then he died and the family lived on
Yes he died the year after he bought the place And perhaps the most interesting thing of all has been the development of his eldest daughter She has watched over her mother she has brought up her sisters but much more than that she has become a sort of Deborah in these valleys said the vicar smiling I dont count for much she counts for a great deal I cant get the people to tell me their secrets she can There is a sort of natural sympathy between them and her She nurses them she scolds them she preaches to them and they take it from her when they wont take it from us Perhaps it is the feeling of blood Perhaps they think it as mysterious a dispensation of Providence as I do that that brutal swearing whiskydrinking stock should have ended in anything so saintly and so beautiful as Catherine Leyburn
The quiet commonplace clergyman spoke with a sudden tremor of feeling His wife however looked at him with a dissatisfied expression
You always talk she said as if there were no one but Catherine People generally like the other two much better Catherine is so standoff
Oh the other two are very well said the vicar but in a different tone
Robert sat ruminating Presently his host and hostess went in and the young man went sauntering up the climbing gardenpath to the point where only a railing divided it from the fellside From here his eye commanded the whole of the upper endPg 28 of the valley—a bare desolate recess filled with evening shadow and walled round by masses of gray and purple crag except in one spot where a green intervening fell marked the course of the pass connecting the dale with the Ullswater district Below him were church and parsonage beyond the stonefilled babbling river edged by intensely green fields which melted imperceptibly into the browner stretches of the opposite mountain Most of the scene except where the hills at the end rose highest and shut out the sun was bathed in quiet light The white patches on the farmhouses the heckberry trees along the river and the road caught and emphasised the golden rays which were flooding into the lower valley as into a broad green cup Close by in the little vicarage orchard were fruit trees in blossom the air was mild and fragrant though to the young man from the warmer south there was still a bracing quality in the soft western breeze which blew about him
He stood there bathed in silent enchantment an eager nature going out to meet and absorb into itself the beauty and peace of the scene Lines of Wordsworth were on his lips the little wellworn volume was in his pocket but he did not need to bring it out and his voice had all a poets intensity of emphasis as he strolled along reciting under his breath—
It is a beauteous evening calm and free
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration
Presently his eye was once more caught by the roof of Burwood lying beneath him on its promontory of land in the quiet shelter of its protecting trees He stopped and a delicate sense of harmonious association awoke in him That girl atoning as it were by her one white life for all the crimes and coarseness of her ancestry the idea of her seemed to steal into the solemn golden evening and give it added poetry and meaning The young man felt a sudden strong curiosity to see her
CHAPTER III
The festal tea had begun and Mrs Thornburgh was presiding Opposite to her on the vicars left sat the formidable rectors wife Poor Mrs Thornburgh had said to herself as she entered the room on the arm of Mr Mayhew the incumbent of the neighbouring valley of Shanmoor that the first coup dœil was good The flowers had been arranged in the afternoon by Rose Sarahs exertions had made the silver shine again a pleasing odour of good food underlay the scent of the bluebells and fern and what with the snowy tablelinen and the pretty dresses and bright faces of the younger people the room seemed to be full of an incessant play of crisp and delicate colour
Pg 29
But just as the vicars wife was sinking into her seat with a little sigh of wearied satisfaction she caught sight suddenly of an eyeglass at the other end of the table slowly revolving in a large and jewelled hand The judicial eye behind the eyeglass travelled round the table lingering as it seemed to Mrs Thornburghs excited consciousness on every spot where cream or jelly or meringue should have been and was not When it dropped with a harsh little click the hostess unable to restrain herself rushed into desperate conversation with Mr Mayhew giving vent to incoherencies in the course of the first act of the meal which did but confirm her neighbour—a grim uncommunicative person—in his own devotion to a policy of silence Meanwhile the vicar was grappling on very unequal terms with Mrs Seaton Mrs Leyburn had fallen to young Elsmere Catherine Leyburn was paired off with Dr Baker Agnes with Mr Mayhews awkward son—a tonguetied youth lately an unattached student at Oxford but now relegated owing to an invincible antipathy to Greek verbs to his native air till some other opening into the great world should be discovered for him
Rose was on Robert Elsmeres right Agnes had coaxed her into a white dress as being the least startling garment she possessed and she was like a Stothard picture with her high waist her blue sash ribbon her slender neck and brilliant head She had already cast many curious glances at the Thornburghs guest Not a prig at any rate she thought to herself with satisfaction so Agnes is quite wrong
As for the young man who was to begin with in that state which so often follows on the long confinement of illness when the light seems brighter and scents keener and experience sharper than at other times he was inwardly confessing that Mrs Thornburgh had not been romancing The vivid creature at his elbow with her still unsoftened angles and movements was in the first dawn of an exceptional beauty the plain sister had struck him before supper in the course of twenty minutes conversation as above the average in point of manners and talk As to Miss Leyburn he had so far only exchanged a bow with her but he was watching her now as he sat opposite to her out of his quick observant eyes
She too was in white As she turned to speak to the youth at her side Elsmere caught the fine outline of the head the unusually clear and perfect moulding of the brow nose and upper lip The hollows in the cheeks struck him and the way in which the breadth of the forehead somewhat overbalanced the delicacy of the mouth and chin The face though still quite young and expressing a perfect physical health had the look of having been polished and refined away to its foundations There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it and not a vestige of Roses peachlike bloom Her profile as he saw it now had the firmness the clear whiteness of a profile on a Greek gem
She was actually making that silent awkward lad talkPg 30 Robert who out of his four years experience as an Oxford tutor had an abundant compassion for and understanding of such beings as young Mayhew watched her with a pleased amusement wondering how she did it What Had she got him on carpentering engineering—discovered his weak point Waterwheels inventors steamengines—and the lumpish lad all in a glow talking away nineteen to the dozen What tact what kindness in her grayblue eyes
But he was interrupted by Mrs Seaton who was perfectly well aware that she had beside her a stranger of some prestige an Oxford man and a member besides of a wellknown Sussex county family She was a large and commanding person clad in black moiré silk She wore a velvet diadem Honiton lace lappets and a variety of chains beads and bangles bestrewn about her that made a tinkling as she moved Fixing her neighbour with a bland majesty of eye she inquired of him if he were any relation of Sir Mowbray Elsmere Robert replied that Sir Mowbray Elsmere was his fathers cousin and the patron of the living to which he had just been appointed Mrs Seaton then graciously informed him that long ago—when I was a girl in my native Hampshire—her family and Sir Mowbray Elsmere had been on intimate terms Her father had been devoted to Sir Mowbray And I she added with an evident though lofty desire to please retain an inherited respect sir for your name
Robert bowed but it was not clear from his look that the rectors wife had made an impression His general conception of his relative and patron Sir Mowbray—who had been for many years the family black sheep—was indeed so far removed from any notions of respect that he had some difficulty in keeping his countenance under the ladys look and pose He would have been still more entertained had he known the nature of the intimacy to which she referred Mrs Seatons father in his capacity of solicitor in a small country town had acted as electioneering agent for Sir Mowbray then plain Mr Elsmere on two occasions—in 18— when his client had been triumphantly returned at a byeelection and two years later when a repetition of the tactics so successful in the previous contest led to a petition and to the disappearance of the heir to the Elsmere property from parliamentary life
Of these matters however he was ignorant and Mrs Seaton did not enlighten him Drawing herself up a little and proceeding in a more neutral tone than before she proceeded to put him through a catechism on Oxford alternately crossexamining him and expounding to him her own views and her husbands on the functions of Universities She and the Archdeacon conceived that the Oxford authorities were mainly occupied in ruining the young mens health by overexamination and poisoning their minds by freethinking opinions In her belief if it went on the mothers of England would refusePg 31 to send their sons to these ancient but deadly resorts She looked at him sternly as she spoke as though defying him to be flippant in return And he indeed did his polite best to be serious
But it somewhat disconcerted him in the middle to find Miss Leyburns eyes upon him And undeniably there was a spark of laughter in them quenched as soon as his glance crossed hers under long lashes How that spark had lit up the grave pale face He longed to provoke it again to cross over to her and say What amused you Do you think me very young and simple Tell me about these people
But instead he made friends with Rose Mrs Seaton was soon engaged in giving the vicar advice on his parochial affairs an experience which generally ended by the appearance of certain truculent elements in one of the mildest of men So Robert was free to turn to his girl neighbour and ask her what people meant by calling the Lakes rainy
I understand it is pouring at Oxford Today your sky here has been without a cloud and your rivers are running dry
And you have mastered our climate in twentyfour hours like the tourists—isnt it—that do the Irish question in three weeks
Not the answer of a breadandbutter miss he thought to himself amused and yet what a child it looks
He threw himself into a war of words with her and enjoyed it extremely Her brilliant colouring her gestures as fresh and untamed as the movements of the leaping river outside the mixture in her of girlish pertness and ignorance with the promise of a remarkable general capacity made her a most taking provoking creature Mrs Thornburgh—much recovered in mind since Dr Baker had praised the pancakes by which Sarah had sought to prove to her mistress the superfluity of naughtiness involved in her recourse to foreign cooks—watched the young man and maiden with a face which grew more and more radiant The conversation in the garden had not pleased her Why should people always talk of Catherine Mrs Thornburgh stood in awe of Catherine and had given her up in despair It was the other two whose fortunes as possibly directed by her filled her maternal heart with sympathetic emotion
Suddenly in the midst of her satisfaction she had a rude shock What on earth was the vicar doing After they had got through better than any one could have hoped thanks to a discreet silence and Sarahs makeshifts there was the master of the house pouring the whole tale of his wifes aspirations and disappointment into Mrs Seatons ear If it were ever allowable to rush upon your husband at table and stop his mouth with a dinner napkin Mrs Thornburgh could at this moment have performed such a feat She nodded and coughed and fidgeted in vain
The vicars confidences were the result of a fit of nervousPg 32 exasperation Mrs Seaton had just embarked upon an account of our charming time with Lord Fleckwood Now Lord Fleckwood was a distant cousin of Archdeacon Seaton and the great magnate of the neighbourhood not however a very respectable magnate Mr Thornburgh had heard accounts of Lupton Castle from Mrs Seaton on at least half a dozen different occasions Privately he believed them all to refer to one visit an event of immemorial antiquity periodically brought up to date by Mrs Seatons imagination But the vicar was a timid man without the courage of his opinions and in his eagerness to stop the flow of his neighbours eloquence he could think of no better device or more suitable rival subject than to plunge into the story of the drunken carrier and the pastry still reposing on the counter at Randalls
He blushed good man when he was well in it His wifes horrified countenance embarrassed him But anything was better than Lord Fleckwood Mrs Seaton listened to him with the slightest smile on her formidable lip The story was pleasing to her
At least my dear sir she said when he paused nodding her diademed head with stately emphasis Mrs Thornburghs inconvenience may have one good result You can now make an example of the carrier It is our special business as my husband always says who are in authority to bring their low vices home to these people
The vicar fidgeted in his chair What ineptitude had he been guilty of now By way of avoiding Lord Fleckwood he might have started Mrs Seaton on teetotalism Now if there was one topic on which this aweinspiring woman was more aweinspiring than another it was on the topic of teetotalism The vicar had already felt himself a criminal as he drank his modest glass of claret under her eye
Oh the drunkenness about here is pretty bad said Dr Baker from the other end of the table But there are plenty of worse things in these valleys Besides what person in his senses would think of trying to disestablish John Backhouse He and his queer brother are as much a feature of the valley as High Fell We have too few originals left to be so very particular about trifles
Trifles repeated Mrs Seaton in a deep voice throwing up her eyes But she would not venture an argument with Dr Baker He had all the cheery selfconfidence of the old established local doctor who knows himself to be a power and neither Mrs Seaton nor her restless intriguing little husband had ever yet succeeded in putting him down
You must see these two old characters said Dr Baker to Elsmere across the table They are relics of a Westmoreland which will soon have disappeared Old John who is going on for seventy is as tough an old dalesman as ever you saw He doesnt measure his cups but he would scorn to be floored byPg 33 them I dont believe he does drink much but if he does there is probably no amount of whisky that he couldnt carry Jim the other brother is about five years older He is a kind of softie—all alive on one side of his brain and a noodle on the other A single glass of rum and water puts him under the table And as he never can refuse this glass and as the temptation generally seizes him when they are on their rounds he is always getting John into disgrace John swears at him and slangs him No use Jim sits still looks—well nohow I never saw an old creature with a more singular gift of denuding his face of all expression John vows he shall go to the house he has no legal share in the business the house and the horse and cart are Johns Next day you see them on the cart again just as usual In reality neither brother can do without the other And three days after the play begins again
An improving spectacle for the valley said Mrs Seaton drily
Oh my dear madam said the doctor shrugging his shoulders we cant all be so virtuous If old Jim is a drunkard he has got a heart of his own somewhere and can nurse a dying niece like a woman Miss Leyburn can tell us something about that
And he turned round to his neighbour with a complete change of expression and a voice that had a new note in it of affectionate respect Catherine coloured as if she did not like being addressed on the subject and just nodded a little with gentle affirmative eyes
A strange case said Dr Baker again looking at Elsmere It is a family that is original and oldworld even in its ways of dying I have been a doctor in these parts for fiveandtwenty years I have seen what you may call old Westmoreland die out—costume dialect superstitions At least as to dialect the people have become bilingual I sometimes think they talk it to each other as much as ever but some of them wont talk it to you and me at all And as to superstitions the only ghost story I know that still has some hold on popular belief is the one which attaches to this mountain here High Fell at the end of this valley
He paused a moment A salutary sense has begun to penetrate even modern provincial society that no man may tell a ghost story without leave Rose threw a merry glance at him They two were very old friends Dr Baker had pulled out her first teeth and given her a sixpence afterwards for each operation The pull was soon forgotten the sixpence lived on gratefully in a childs warm memory
Tell it she said we give you leave We wont interrupt you unless you put in too many inventions
You invite me to break the first law of storytelling Miss Rose said the doctor lifting a finger at her Every man isPg 34 bound to leave a story better than he found it However I couldnt tell it if I would I dont know what makes the poor ghost walk and if you do I shall say you invent But at any rate there is a ghost and she walks along the side of High Fell at midnight every Midsummer day If you see her and she passes you in silence why you only get a fright for your pains But if she speaks to you you die within the year Old John Backhouse is a widower with one daughter This girl saw the ghost last Midsummer day and Miss Leyburn and I are now doing our best to keep her alive over the next but with very small prospect of success
What is the girl dying of—fright asked Mrs Seaton harshly
Oh no said the doctor hastily not precisely A sad story better not inquire into it But at the present moment the time of her death seems likely to be determined by the strength of her own and other peoples belief in the ghosts summons
Mrs Seatons grim mouth relaxed into an ungenial smile She put up her eyeglass and looked at Catherine An unpleasant household I should imagine she said shortly for a young lady to visit
Doctor Baker looked at the rectors wife and a kind of flame came into his eyes He and Mrs Seaton were old enemies and he was a quicktempered mercurial sort of man
I presume that ones guardian angel may have to follow one sometimes into unpleasant quarters he said hotly If this girl lives it will be Miss Leyburns doing if she dies saved and comforted instead of lost in this world and the next it will be Miss Leyburns doing too Ah my dear young lady let me alone You tie my tongue always and I wont have it
And the doctor turned his weatherbeaten elderly face upon her with a look which was half defiance and half apology She on her side had flushed painfully laying her white fingertips imploringly on his arm Mrs Seaton turned away with a little dry cough so did her spectacled sister at the other end of the table Mrs Leyburn on the other hand sat in a little ecstasy looking at Catherine and Dr Baker something glistening in her eyes Robert Elsmere alone showed presence of mind Bending across to Dr Baker he asked him a sudden question as to the history of a certain strange green mound or barrow that rose out of a flat field not far from the vicarage windows Dr Baker grasped his whiskers threw the young man a queer glance and replied Thenceforward he and Robert kept up a lively antiquarian talk on the traces of Norse settlement in the Cumbrian valleys which lasted till the ladies left the diningroom
As Catherine Leyburn went out Elsmere stood holding the door open She could not help raising her eyes upon him eyes full of a halftimid halfgrateful friendliness His own returned her look with interest
A spirit but a woman too he thought to himself with aPg 35 newborn thrill of sympathy as he went back to his seat She had not yet said a direct word to him and yet he was curiously convinced that here was one of the most interesting persons and one of the persons most interesting to him that he had ever met What mingled delicacy and strength in the hand that had lain beside her on the dinnertable—what potential depths of feeling in the full darkfringed eye
Half an hour later when Elsmere reentered the drawingroom he found Catherine Leyburn sitting by an open French window that looked out on the lawn and on the dim rocky face of the fell Adeline Baker a stooping redarmed maiden with a pretty face set off as she imagined by a vast amount of cheap finery was sitting beside her studying her with a timid adoration The doctors daughter regarded Catherine Leyburn who during the last five years had made herself almost as distinct a figure in the popular imagination of a few Westmoreland valleys as Sister Dora among her Walsall miners as a being of a totally different order from herself She was glued to the side of her idol but her shy and awkward tongue could find hardly anything to say to her Catherine however talked away gently stroking the while the girls rough hand which lay on her knee to the mingled pain and bliss of its owner who was outraged by the contrast between her own ungainly member and Miss Leyburns delicate fingers
Mrs Seaton was on the sofa beside Mrs Thornburgh amply avenging herself on the vicars wife for any checks she might have received at tea Miss Barks her sister an old maid with a face that seemed to be perpetually peering forward light colourless hair surmounted by a cap adorned with artificial nasturtiums and whitelashed eyes armed with spectacles was having her way with Mrs Leyburn inquiring into the household arrangements of Burwood with a crossexamining power which made the mild widow as pulp before her
When the gentlemen entered Mrs Thornburgh looked round hastily She herself had opened that door into the garden A garden on a warm summer night offers opportunities no schemer should neglect Agnes and Rose were chattering and laughing on the gravel path just outside it their white girlish figures showing temptingly against the dusky background of garden and fell It somewhat disappointed the vicars wife to see her tall guest take a chair and draw it beside Catherine—while Adeline Baker awkwardly got up and disappeared into the garden
Elsmere felt it an unusually interesting moment so strong had been his sense of attraction at tea but like the rest of us he could find nothing more telling to start with than a remark about the weather Catherine in her reply asked him if he were quite recovered from the attack of low fever he was understood to have been suffering from
Oh yes he said brightly I am very nearly as fit as I everPg 36 was and more eager than I ever was to get to work The idling of it is the worst part of illness However in a month from now I must be at my living and I can only hope it will give me enough to do
Catherine looked up at him with a quick impulse of liking What an eager face it was Eagerness indeed seemed to be the note of the whole man of the quick eyes and mouth the flexible hands and energetic movements Even the straight stubbly hair its owners passing torment standing up round the high open brow seemed to help the general impression of alertness and vigour
Your mother I hear is already there said Catherine
Yes My poor mother and the young man smiled half sadly It is a curious situation for both of us This living which has just been bestowed on me is my fathers old living It is in the gift of my cousin Sir Mowbray Elsmere My greatuncle—he drew himself together suddenly But I dont know why I should imagine that these things interest other people he said with a little quick almost comical accent of selfrebuke
Please go on cried Catherine hastily The voice and manner were singularly pleasant to her she wished he would not interrupt himself for nothing
Really Well then my greatuncle old Sir William wished me to have it when I grew up I was against it for a long time took orders but I wanted something more stirring than a country parish One has dreams of many things But ones dreams come to nothing I got ill at Oxford The doctors forbade the town work The old incumbent who had held the living since my fathers death died precisely at that moment I felt myself booked and gave in to various friends but it is second best
She felt a certain soreness and discomfort in his tone as though his talk represented a good deal of mental struggle in the past
But the country is not idleness she said smiling at him Her cheek was leaning lightly on her hand her eyes had an unusual animation and her long white dress guiltless of any ornament save a small oldfashioned locket hanging from a thin old chain and a pair of hair bracelets with engraved gold clasps gave her the nobleness and simplicity of a Romney picture
You do not find it so I imagine he replied bending forward to her with a charming gesture of homage He would have liked her to talk to him of her work and her interests He too mentally compared her to Saint Elizabeth He could almost have fancied the dark red flowers in her white lap But his comparison had another basis of feeling than Roses
However she would not talk to him of herself The way in which she turned the conversation brought home to his own expansive confiding nature a certain austerity and stiffness ofPg 37 fibre in her which for the moment chilled him But as he got her into talk about the neighbourhood the people and their ways the impression vanished again so far at least as there was anything repellent about it Austerity strength individuality all these words indeed he was more and more driven to apply to her She was like no other woman he had ever seen It was not at all that she was more remarkable intellectually Every now and then indeed as their talk flowed on he noticed in what she said an absence of a good many interests and attainments which in his ordinary southcountry women friends he would have assumed as a matter of course
I understand French very little and I never read any she said to him once quietly as he fell to comparing some peasant story she had told him with an episode in one of George Sands Berry novels It seemed to him that she knew her Wordsworth by heart And her own mountain life her own rich and meditative soul had taught her judgments and comments on her favourite poet which stirred Elsmere every now and then to enthusiasm—so true they were and pregnant so full often of a natural magic of expression On the other hand when he quoted a very wellknown line of Shelleys she asked him where it came from She seemed to him deeper and simpler at every moment her very limitations of sympathy and knowledge and they were evidently many began to attract him The thought of her ancestry crossed him now and then rousing in him now wonder and now a strange sense of congruity and harmony Clearly she was the daughter of a primitive unexhausted race And yet what purity what refinement what delicate perception and selfrestraint
Presently they fell on the subject of Oxford
Were you ever there he asked her
Once she said I went with my father one summer term I have only a confused memory of it—of the quadrangles and a long street a great building with a dome and such beautiful trees
Did your father often go back
No never towards the latter part of his life—and her clear eyes clouded a little nothing made him so sad as the thought of Oxford
She paused as though she had strayed on to a topic where expression was a little difficult Then his face and clerical dress seemed somehow to reassure her and she began again though reluctantly
He used to say that it was all so changed The young fellows he saw when he went back scorned everything he cared for Every visit to Oxford was like a stab to him It seemed to him as if the place was full of men who only wanted to destroy and break down everything that was sacred to him
Elsmere reflected that Richard Leyburn must have left Oxford about the beginning of the Liberal reaction which followedPg 38 Tractarianism and in twenty years transformed the University
Ah he said smiling gently He should have lived a little longer There is another turn of the tide since then The destructive wave has spent itself and at Oxford now many of us feel ourselves on the upward swell of a religious revival
Catherine looked up at him with a sweet sympathetic look That dim vision of Oxford with its gray treelined walls lay very near to her heart for her fathers sake And the keen face above her seemed to satisfy and respond to her inner feeling
I know the High Church influence is very strong she said hesitating but I dont know whether father would have liked that much better
The last words had slipped out of her and she checked herself suddenly Robert saw that she was uncertain as to his opinions and afraid lest she might have said something discourteous
It is not only the High Church influence he said quickly it is a mixture of influences from all sorts of quarters that has brought about the new state of things Some of the factors in the change were hardly Christian at all by name but they have all helped to make men think to stir their hearts to win them back to the old ways
His voice had taken to itself a singular magnetism Evidently the matters they were discussing were matters in which he felt a deep and loving interest His young boyish face had grown grave there was a striking dignity and weight in his look and manner which suddenly roused in Catherine the sense that she was speaking to a man of distinction accustomed to deal on equal terms with the large things of life She raised her eyes to him for a moment and he saw in them a beautiful mystical light—responsive lofty full of soul
The next moment it apparently struck her sharply that their conversation was becoming incongruous with its surroundings Behind them Mrs Thornburgh was bustling about with candles and musicstools preparing for a performance on the flute by Mr Mayhew the blackbrowed vicar of Shanmoor and the room seemed to be pervaded by Mrs Seatons strident voice Her strong natural reserve asserted itself and her face settled again into the slight rigidity of expression characteristic of it She rose and prepared to move farther into the room
We must listen she said to him smiling over her shoulder
And she left him settling herself by the side of Mrs Leyburn He had a momentary sense of rebuff The man quick sensitive sympathetic felt in the woman the presence of a strength a selfsufficingness which was not all attractive His vanity if he had cherished any during their conversation was not flattered by its close But as he leant against the windowframe waiting for the music to begin he could hardly keep his eyes from her He was a man who by force of temperament made friendsPg 39 readily with women though except for a passing fancy or two he had never been in love and his sense of difficulty with regard to this stifflymannered deepeyed country girl brought with it an unusual stimulus and excitement
Miss Barks seated herself deliberately after much fiddling with bracelets and gloves and tied back the ends of her cap behind her Mr Mayhew took out his flute and lovingly put it together He was a powerful swarthy man who said little and was generally alarming to the ladies of the neighbourhood To propitiate him they asked him to bring his flute and nervously praised the fierce music he made on it Miss Barks enjoyed a monopoly of his accompaniments and there were many who regarded her assiduity as a covert attack upon the widowers name and position If so it was Greek meeting Greek for with all his taciturnity the vicar of Shanmoor was well able to defend himself
Has it begun said a hurried whisper at Elsmeres elbow and turning he saw Rose and Agnes on the step of the window Roses cheeks flushed by the night breeze a shawl thrown lightly round her head
She was answered by the first notes of the flute following some powerful chords in which Miss Barks had tested at once the strength of her wrists and the vicarage piano
The girl made a little moue of disgust and turned as though to fly down the steps again But Agnes caught her and held her and the mutinous creature had to submit to be drawn inside while Mrs Thornburgh in obedience to complaints of draughts from Mrs Seaton motioned to have the window shut Rose established herself against the wall her curly head thrown back her eyes half shut her mouth expressing an angry endurance Robert watched her with amusement
It was certainly a remarkable duet After an adagio opening in which flute and piano were at magnificent cross purposes from the beginning the two instruments plunged into an allegro very long and very fast which became ultimately a desperate race between the competing performers for the final chord Mr Mayhew toiled away taxing the resources of his whole vast frame to keep his small instrument in a line with the piano and taxing them in vain For the shriller and the wilder grew the flute and the greater the exertion of the dark Hercules performing on it the fiercer grew the pace of the piano Rose stamped her little foot
Two bars ahead last page she murmured three bars this will no one stop her
But the pages flew past turned assiduously by Agnes who took a sardonic delight in these performances and every countenance in the room seemed to take a look of sharpened anxiety as to how the duet was to end and who was to be victor
Nobody knowing Miss Barks need to have been in any doubt as to that Crash came the last chord and the poor flute nearlyPg 40 half a page behind was left shrilly hanging in midair forsaken and companionless an object of derision to gods and men
Ah I took it a little fast said the lady triumphantly looking up at the discomfited clergyman
Mr Elsmere said Rose hiding herself in the window curtain beside him that she might have her laugh in safety Do they play like that in Oxford or has Long Whindale a monopoly
But before he could answer Mrs Thornburgh called to the girl—
Rose Rose Dont go out again It is your turn next
Rose advanced reluctantly her head in air Robert remembering something that Mrs Thornburgh had said to him as to her musical power supposed that she felt it an indignity to be asked to play in such company
Mrs Thornburgh motioned to him to come and sit by Mrs Leyburn a summons which he obeyed with the more alacrity as it brought him once more within reach of Mrs Leyburns eldest daughter
Are you fond of music Mr Elsmere asked Mrs Leyburn in her little mincing voice making room for his chair beside them If you are I am sure my youngest daughters playing will please you
Catherine moved abruptly Robert while he made some pleasant answer divined that the reserved and stately daughter must be often troubled by the mothers expansiveness
Meanwhile the room was again settling itself to listen Mrs Seaton was severely turning over a photograph book In her opinion the violin was an unbecoming instrument for young women Miss Barks sat upright with the studiously neutral expression which befits the artist asked to listen to a rival Mr Thornburgh sat pensive one foot drooped over the other He was very fond of the Leyburn girls but music seemed to him good man one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures As for Rose she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes after routing out from her music a couple of FantasieStücke which she had wickedly chosen as presenting the most severely classical contrast to the rubbish played by the preceding performers She stood with her lithe figure in its oldfashioned dress thrown out against the black coats of a group of gentlemen beyond one slim arched foot advanced the ends of the blue sash dangling the hand and arm beautifully formed but still wanting the roundness of womanhood raised high for action the lightly poised head thrown back with an air Robert thought her a bewitching halfgrown thing overflowing with potentialities of future brilliance and empire
Her music astonished him Where had a little provincial maiden learned to play with this intelligence this force this delicate command of her instrument He was not a musicianPg 41 and therefore could not gauge her exactly but he was more or less familiar with music and its standards as all people become nowadays who live in a highly cultivated society and he knew enough at any rate to see that what he was listening to was remarkable was out of the common range Still more evident was this when from the humorous piece with which the sisters led off—a dance of clowns but clowns of Arcady—they slid into a delicate rippling chant damour the long drawn notes of the violin rising and falling on the piano accompaniment with an exquisite plaintiveness Where did a fillette unformed inexperienced win the secret of so much eloquence—only from the natural dreams of a girls heart as to the lovers waiting in the hidden years
But when the music ceased Elsmere after a hearty clap that set the room applauding likewise turned not to the musician but the figure beside Mrs Leyburn the sister who had sat listening with an impassiveness a sort of gentle remoteness of look which had piqued his curiosity The mother meanwhile was drinking in the compliments of Dr Baker
Excellent cried Elsmere How in the name of fortune Miss Leyburn if I may ask has your sister managed to get on so far in this remote place
She goes to Manchester every year to some relations we have there said Catherine quietly I believe she has been very well taught
But surely he said warmly it is more than teaching—more even than talent—there is something like genius in it
She did not answer very readily
I dont know she said at last Every one says it is very good
He would have been repelled by her irresponsiveness but that her last words had in them a note of lingering of wistfulness as though the subject were connected with an inner debate not yet solved which troubled her He was puzzled but certainly not repelled
Twenty minutes later everybody was going The Seatons went first and the other guests lingered awhile afterwards to enjoy the sense of freedom left by their departure But at last the Mayhews father and son set off on foot to walk home over the moonlit mountains the doctor tucked himself and his daughter into his high gig and drove off with a sweeping ironical bow to Rose who had stood on the steps teasing him to the last and Robert Elsmere offered to escort the Miss Leyburns and their mother home
Mrs Thornburgh was left protesting to the vicars incredulous ears that never—never as long as she lived—would she have Mrs Seaton inside her doors again
Her manners— cried the vicars wife fuming—her manners would disgrace a Whinborough shopgirl She has none—positively none
Pg 42
Then suddenly her round comfortable face brightened and broadened out into a beaming smile—
But after all William say what you will—and you always do say the most unpleasant things you can think of—it was a great success I know the Leyburns enjoyed it And as for Robert I saw him looking—looking at that little minx Rose while she was playing as if he couldnt take his eyes off her What a picture she made to be sure
The vicar who had been standing with his back to the fireplace and his hands in his pockets received his wifes remarks first of all with lifted eyebrows and then with a low chuckle half scornful half compassionate which made her start in her chair
Rose he said impatiently Rose my dear where were your eyes
It was very rarely indeed that on her own ground so to speak the vicar ventured to take the whiphand of her like this Mrs Thornburgh looked at him in amazement
Do you mean to say he asked in raised tones that you didnt notice that from the moment you first introduced Robert to Catherine Leyburn he had practically no attention for anybody else
Mrs Thornburgh gazed at him—her memory flew back over the evening—and her impulsive contradiction died on her lips It was now her turn to ejaculate—
Catherine she said feebly Catherine how absurd
But she turned and with quickened breath looked out of the window after the retreating figures Mrs Thornburgh went up to bed that night an inch taller She had never felt herself more exquisitely indispensable more of a personage
CHAPTER IV
Before however we go on to chronicle the ultimate success or failure of Mrs Thornburgh as a matchmaker it may be well to inquire a little more closely into the antecedents of the man who had suddenly roused so much activity in her contriving mind And indeed these antecedents are important to us For the interest of an uncomplicated story will entirely depend upon the clearness with which the reader may have grasped the general outlines of a quick souls development And this development had already made considerable progress before Mrs Thornburgh set eyes upon her husbands cousin Robert Elsmere
Robert Elsmere then was well born and fairly well provided with this worlds goods up to a certain moderate point indeed a favourite of fortune in all respects His father belonged to the younger line of an old Sussex family and owed his pleasant country living to the family instincts of his uncle Sir WilliamPg 43 Elsmere in whom Whig doctrines and Conservative traditions were pretty evenly mixed with a result of the usual respectable and inconspicuous kind His virtues had descended mostly to his daughters while all his various weaknesses and fatuities had blossomed into vices in the person of his eldest son and heir the Sir Mowbray Elsmere of Mrs Seatons early recollections
Edward Elsmere rector of Murewell in Surrey and father of Robert had died before his uncle and patron and his widow and son had been left to face the world together Sir William Elsmere and his nephews wife had not much in common and rarely concerned themselves with each other Mrs Elsmere was an Irishwoman by birth with irregular Irish ways and a passion for strange garments which made her the dread of the conventional English squire and after she left the vicarage with her son she and her husbands uncle met no more But when he died it was found that the old mans sense of kinship acting blindly and irrationally but with a slow inevitableness and certainty had stirred in him at the last in behalf of his greatnephew He left him a money legacy the interest of which was to be administered by his mother till his majority and in a letter addressed to his heir he directed that should the boy on attaining manhood show any disposition to enter the Church all possible steps were to be taken to endow him with the family living of Murewell which had been his fathers and which at the time of the old Baronets death was occupied by another connection of the family already well stricken in years
Mowbray Elsmere had been hardly on speaking terms with his cousin Edward and was neither amiable nor generous but his father knew that the tenacious Elsmere instinct was to be depended on for the fulfilment of his wishes And so it proved No sooner was his father dead than Sir Mowbray curtly communicated his instructions to Mrs Elsmere then living at the town of Harden for the sake of the great public school recently transported there She was to inform him when the right moment arrived if it was the boys wish to enter the Church and meanwhile he referred her to his lawyers for particulars of such immediate benefits as were secured to her under the late Baronets will
At the moment when Sir Mowbrays letter reached her Mrs Elsmere was playing a leading part in the small society to which circumstances had consigned her She was the personal friend of half the masters and their wives and of at least a quarter of the school while in the little town which stretched up the hill covered by the new school buildings she was the helper gossip and confidante of half the parish Her vast hats strange in fashion and inordinate in brim her shawls of many colours hitched now to this side now to that her swaying gait and loopedup skirts her spectacles and the dangling parcels in which her soul delighted were the outward signs of a perPg 44sonality familiar to all For under those checked shawls which few women passed without an inward marvel there beat one of the warmest hearts that ever animated mortal clay and the prematurely wrinkled face with its small quick eyes and shrewd indulgent mouth bespoke a nature as responsive as it was vigorous
Their owner was constantly in the public eye Her house during the hours at any rate in which her boy was at school was little else than a haltingplace between two journeys Visits to the poor long watches by the sick committees in which her racy breadth of character gave her always an important place discussions with the vicar arguments with the curates a chat with this person and a walk with that—these were the incidents and occupations which filled her day Life was delightful to her action energy influence were delightful to her she could only breathe freely in the very thick of the stirring manycoloured tumult of existence Whether it was a pauper in the workhouse or boys from the school or a girl caught in the tangle of a loveaffair it was all the same to Mrs Elsmere Everything moved her everything appealed to her Her life was a perpetual giving forth and such was the inherent nobility and soundness of the nature that in spite of her curious Irish fondness for the vehement romantic sides of experience she did little harm and much good Her tongue might be overready and her championships indiscreet but her hands were helpful and her heart was true There was something contagious in her enjoyment of life and with all her strong religious faith the thought of death of any final pause and silence in the whirr of the great social machine was to her a thought of greater chill and horror than to many a less brave and spiritual soul
Till her boy was twelve years old however she had lived for him first and foremost She had taught him played with him learnt with him communicating to him through all his lessons her own fire and eagerness to a degree which every now and then taxed the physical powers of the child Whenever the signs of strain appeared however the mother would be overtaken by a fit of repentant watchfulness and for days together Robert would find her the most fascinating playmate storyteller and romp and forget all his precocious interest in history or vulgar fractions In after years when Robert looked back upon his childhood he was often reminded of the stories of Goethes bringingup He could recall exactly the same scenes as Goethe describes—mother and child sitting together in the gloaming the mothers dark eyes dancing with fun or kindling with dramatic fire as she carried an imaginary hero or heroine through a series of the raciest adventures the child all eagerness and sympathy now clapping his little hands at the fall of the giant or the defeat of the sorcerer and now arguing and suggesting in ways which gave perpetually fresh stimulusPg 45 to the mothers inventiveness He could see her dressing up with him on wet days reciting King Henry to his Prince Hal or Prospero to his Ariel or simply giving free vent to her own exuberant Irish fun till both he and she would sink exhausted into each others arms and end the evening with a long croon sitting curled up together in a big armchair in front of the fire He could see himself as a child of many crazes eager for poetry one week for natural history the next now spending all his spare time in strumming now in drawing and now forgetting everything but the delights of treeclimbing and birdnesting
And through it all he had the quick memory of his mothers companionship he could recall her rueful looks whenever the eager inaccurate ways in which he reflected certain ineradicable tendencies of her own had lost him a school advantage he could remember her exhortations with the dash in them of humorous selfreproach which made them so stirring to the childs affection and he could realise their old faroff life at Murewell the joys and the worries of it and see her now gossiping with the village folk now wearing herself impetuously to death in their service and now roaming with him over the Surrey heaths in search of all the dirty delectable things in which a boynaturalist delights And through it all he was conscious of the same vivid energetic creature disposing with some difficulty and fracas of its own excess of nervous life
To return however to this same critical moment of Sir Mowbrays offer Robert at the time was a boy of sixteen doing very well at school a favourite both with boys and masters But as to whether his development would lead him in the direction of taking orders his mother had not the slightest idea She was not herself very much tempted by the prospect There were recollections connected with Murewell and with the long death in life which her husband had passed through there which were deeply painful to her and moreover her sympathy with the clergy as a class was by no means strong Her experience had not been large but the feeling based on it promised to have all the tenacity of a favourite prejudice Fortune had handed over the parish of Harden to a ritualist vicar Mrs Elsmeres inherited Evangelicalism—she came from an Ulster county—rebelled against his doctrine but the man himself was too lovable to be disliked Mrs Elsmere knew a hero when she saw him And in his own narrow way the smallheaded emaciated vicar was a hero and he and Mrs Elsmere had soon tasted each others quality and formed a curious alliance founded on true similarity in difference
But the criticism thus warded off the vicar expended itself with all the more force on his subordinates The Harden curates were the chief crook in Mrs Elsmeres otherwise tolerable lot Her parish activities brought her across them perpetually and she could not away with them Their cassocks their pretensions their stupidities roused the IrishPg 46womans sense of humour at every turn The individuals came and went but the type it seemed to her was always the same and she made their peculiarities the basis of a pessimist theory as to the future of the English Church which was a source of constant amusement to the very broadminded young men who filled up the school staff She so ready in general to see all the worlds good points was almost blind when it was a curates virtues which were in question So that in spite of all her persistent churchgoing and her love of church performances as an essential part of the busy human spectacle Mrs Elsmere had no yearning for a clerical son The little accidents of a personal experience had led to wide generalisations as is the way with us mortals and the position of the young parson in these days of increased parsonic pretensions was to Mrs Elsmere a position in which there was an inherent risk of absurdity She wished her son to impose upon her when it came to his taking any serious step in life She asked for nothing better indeed than to be able when the time came to bow the motherly knee to him in homage and she felt a little dread lest in her flat moments a clerical son might sometimes rouse in her that sharp sense of the ludicrous which is the enemy of all happy illusions
Still of course the Elsmere proposal was one to be seriously considered in its due time and place Mrs Elsmere only reflected that it would certainly be better to say nothing of it to Robert until he should be at college His impressionable temperament and the power he had occasionally shown of absorbing himself in a subject till it produced in him a fit of intense continuous brooding unfavourable to health and nervous energy all warned her not to supply him at a period of rapid mental and bodily growth with any fresh stimulus to the sense of responsibility As a boy he had always shown himself religiously susceptible to a certain extent and his mothers religious likes and dislikes had invariably found in him a blind and chivalrous support He was content to be with her to worship with her and to feel that no reluctance or resistance divided his heart from hers But there had been nothing specially noteworthy or precocious about his religious development and at sixteen or seventeen in spite of his affectionate compliance and his natural reverence for all persons and beliefs in authority his mother was perfectly aware that many other things in his life were more real to him than religion And on this point at any rate she was certainly not the person to force him
He was such a schoolboy as a discerning master delights in—keen about everything bright docile popular excellent at games He was in the sixth moreover as soon as his age allowed that is to say as soon as he was sixteen and his pride in everything connected with the great body in which he had already a marked and important place was unbounded Very early in his school career the literary instincts which hadPg 47 always been present in him and which his mother had largely helped to develop by her own restless imaginative ways of approaching life and the world made themselves felt with considerable force Some time before his cousins letter arrived he had been taken with a craze for English poetry and but for the corrective influence of a favourite tutor would probably have thrown himself into it with the same exclusive passion as he had shown for subject after subject in his eager ebullient childhood His mother found him at thirteen inditing a letter on the subject of The Faerie Queene to a schoolfriend in which with a sincerity which made her forgive the pomposity he remarked—
I can truly say with Pope that this great work has afforded me extraordinary pleasure
And about the same time a master who was much interested in the boys prospects of getting the school prize for Latin verse a subject for which he had always shown a special aptitude asked him anxiously after an Easter holiday what he had been reading the boy ran his hands through his hair and still keeping his finger between the leaves shut a book before him from which he had been learning by heart and which was alas neither Ovid nor Virgil
I have just finished Belial he said with a sigh of satisfaction and am beginning Beelzebub
A craze of this kind was naturally followed by a feverish period of juvenile authorship when the house was littered over with stanzas from the opening canto of a great poem on Columbus or with moral essays in the manner of Pope castigating the vices of the time with an energy which sorely tried the gravity of the mother whenever she was called upon as she invariably was to play audience to the young poet At the same time the classics absorbed in reality their full share of this fast developing power Virgil and Æschylus appealed to the same fibres the same susceptibilities as Milton and Shakspeare and the boys quick imaginative sense appropriated Greek and Latin life with the same ease which it showed in possessing itself of that bygone English life whence sprung the Canterbury Tales or As You Like It So that his tutor who was much attached to him and who made it one of his main objects in life to keep the boys aspiring nose to the grindstone of grammatical minutiæ began about the time of Sir Mowbrays letter to prophesy very smooth things indeed to his mother as to his future success at college the possibility of his getting the famous St Anselms scholarship and so on
Evidently such a youth was not likely to depend for the attainment of a foothold in life on a piece of family privilege The world was all before him where to choose Mrs Elsmere thought proudly to herself as her mothers fancy wandered rashly through the coming years And for many reasons she secretly allowed herself to hope that he would find for himselfPg 48 some other post of ministry in a very various world than the vicarage of Murewell
So she wrote a civil letter of acknowledgment to Sir Mowbray informing him that the intentions of his greatuncle should be communicated to the boy when he should be of fit age to consider them and that meanwhile she was obliged to him for pointing out the procedure by which she might lay hands on the legacy bequeathed to her in trust for her son the income of which would now be doubly welcome in view of his college expenses There the matter rested and Mrs Elsmere during the two years which followed thought little more about it She became more and more absorbed in her boys immediate prospects in the care of his health which was uneven and tried somewhat by the strain of preparation for an attempt on the St Anselms scholarship and in the demands which his ardent nature oppressed with the weight of its own aspirations was constantly making upon her support and sympathy
At last the moment so long expected arrived Mrs Elsmere and her son left Harden amid a chorus of good wishes and settled themselves early in November in Oxford lodgings Robert was to have a few days complete holiday before the examination and he and his mother spent it in exploring the beautiful old town now shrouded in the pensive glooms of still gray autumn weather There was no sun to light up the misty reaches of the river the trees in the Broad Walk were almost bare the Virginian creeper no longer shone in patches of delicate crimson on the college walls the gardens were damp and forsaken But to Mrs Elsmere and Robert the place needed neither sun nor summer for beautys heightening On both of them it laid its old irresistible spell the sentiment haunting its quadrangles its libraries and its dim melodious chapels stole into the lads heart and alternately soothed and stimulated that keen individual consciousness which naturally accompanies the first entrance into manhood Here on this soil steeped in memories his problems his struggles were to be fought out in their turn Take up thy manhood said the inward voice and show what is in thee The hour and the opportunity have come
And to this thrill of vague expectation this young sense of an expanding world something of pathos and of sacredness was added by the dumb influences of the old streets and weatherbeaten stones How tenacious they were of the past The dreaming city seemed to be still brooding in the autumn calm over the long succession of her sons The continuity the complexity of human experience the unremitting effort of the race the stream of purpose running through it all these were the kind of thoughts which in more or less inchoate and fragmentary shape pervaded the boys sensitive mind as he rambled with his mother from college to college
Mrs Elsmere too was fascinated by Oxford But for all herPg 49 eager interest the historic beauty of the place aroused in her an undermood of melancholy just as it did in Robert Both had the impressionable Celtic temperament and both felt that a critical moment was upon them and that the Oxford air was charged with fate for each of them For the first time in their lives they were to be parted The mothers long guardianship was coming to an end Had she loved him enough Had she so far fulfilled the trust her dead husband had imposed upon her Would her boy love her in the new life as he had loved her in the old And could her poor craving heart bear to see him absorbed by fresh interests and passions in which her share could be only at the best secondary and indirect
One day—it was on the afternoon preceding the examination—she gave hurried halflaughing utterance to some of these misgivings of hers They were walking down the Limewalk of Trinity Gardens beneath their feet a yellow freshstrewn carpet of leaves brown interlacing branches overhead and a red misty sun shining through the trunks Robert understood his mother perfectly and the way she had of hiding a storm of feeling under these tremulous comedy airs So that instead of laughing too he took her hand and there being no spectators anywhere to be seen in the damp November garden he raised it to his lips with a few broken words of affection and gratitude which very nearly overcame the selfcommand of both of them She dashed wildly into another subject and then suddenly it occurred to her impulsive mind that the moment had come to make him acquainted with those dying intentions of his greatuncle which we have already described The diversion was a welcome one and the duty seemed clear So accordingly she made him give her all his attention while she told him the story and the terms of Sir Mowbrays letter forcing herself the while to keep her own opinions and predilections as much as possible out of sight
Robert listened with interest and astonishment the sense of a newfound manhood waxing once more strong within him as his mind admitted the strange picture of himself occupying the place which had been his fathers master of the house and the parish he had wandered over with childish steps clinging to the finger or the coat of the tall stooping figure which occupied the dim background of his recollections Poor mother he said thoughtfully when she paused it would be hard upon you to go back to Murewell
Oh you mustnt think of me when the time comes said Mrs Elsmere sighing I shall be a tiresome old woman and you will be a young man wanting a wife There put it out of your head Robert I thought I had better tell you for after all the fact may concern your Oxford life But youve got a long time yet before you need begin to worry about it
The boy drew himself up to his full height and tossed his tumbling reddish hair back from his eyes He was nearly sixPg 50 feet already with a long thin body and head which amply justified his school nickname of the darningneedle
Dont you trouble either mother he said with a tone of decision I dont feel as if I should ever take orders
Mrs Elsmere was old enough to know what importance to attach to the trenchancy of eighteen but still the words were pleasant to her
The next day Robert went up for examination and after three days of hard work and phases of alternate hope and depression in which mother and son excited one another to no useful purpose there came the anxious crowding round the college gate in the November twilight and the sudden flight of dispersing messengers bearing the news over Oxford The scholarship had been won by a precocious Etonian with an extraordinary talent for stems and all that appertained thereto But the exhibition fell to Robert and mother and son were well content
The boy was eager to come into residence at once though he would matriculate too late to keep the term The college authorities were willing and on the Saturday following the announcement of his success he was matriculated saw the Provost and was informed that rooms would be found for him without delay His mother and he gaily climbed innumerable stairs to inspect the garrets of which he was soon to take proud possession sallying forth from them only to enjoy an agitated delightful afternoon among the shops Expenditure always charming becomes under these circumstances a sacred and pontifical act Never had Mrs Elsmere bought a teapot for herself with half the fervour which she now threw into the purchase of Roberts and the young man accustomed to a rather bare home and an Irish lack of the little elegancies of life was overwhelmed when his mother actually dragged him into a printsellers and added an engraving or two to the enticing miscellaneous mass of which he was already master
They only just left themselves time to rush back to their lodgings and dress for the solemn function of a dinner with the Provost The dinner however was a great success The short shy manner of their whitehaired host thawed under the influence of Mrs Elsmeres racy unaffected ways and it was not long before everybody in the room had more or less made friends with her and forgiven her her marvellous drab poplin adorned with fresh pink ruchings for the occasion As for the Provost Mrs Elsmere had been told that he was a person of whom she must inevitably stand in awe But all her life long she had been like the youth in the fairy tale who desired to learn how to shiver and could not attain unto it Fate had denied her the capacity of standing in awe of anybody and she rushed at her host as a new type delighting in the thrill which she felt creeping over her when she found herself on the arm of one who had been the rallyingpoint of a hundredPg 51 struggles and a centre of influence over thousands of English lives
And then followed the proud moment when Robert in his exhibitioners gown took her to service in the chapel on Sunday The scores of young faces the full unison of the hymns and finally the Provosts sermon with its strange brusqueries and simplicities of manner and phrase—simplicities so suggestive so full of a rich and yet disciplined experience that they haunted her mind for weeks afterwards—completed the general impression made upon her by the Oxford life She came out tremulous and shaken leaning on her sons arm She too like the generations before her had launched her venture into the deep Her boy was putting out from her into the ocean henceforth she could but watch him from the shore Brought into contact with this imposing University organisation with all its suggestions of virile energies and functions the mother suddenly felt herself insignificant and forsaken He had been her all her own and now on this trainingground of English youth it seemed to her that the great human society had claimed him from her
CHAPTER V
In his Oxford life Robert surrendered himself to the best and most stimulating influences of the place just as he had done at school He was a youth of many friends by virtue of a natural gift of sympathy which was no doubt often abused and by no means invariably profitable to its owner but wherein at any rate his power over his fellows like the power of half the potent men in the worlds history always lay rooted He had his mothers delight in living He loved the cricketfield he loved the river his athletic instincts and his athletic friends were always fighting in him with his literary instincts and the friends who appealed primarily to the intellectual and moral side of him He made many mistakes alike in friends and in pursuits in the freshness of a young and roving curiosity he had great difficulty in submitting himself to the intellectual routine of the University a difficulty which ultimately cost him much but at the bottom of the lad all the time there was a strength of will a force and even tyranny of conscience which kept his charm and pliancy from degenerating into weakness and made it not only delightful but profitable to love him He knew that his mother was bound up in him and his being was set to satisfy so far as he could all her honourable ambitions
His many undergraduate friends strong as their influence must have been in the aggregate on a nature so receptive hardly concern us here His future life so far as we can see was most noticeably affected by two men older than himself and belongPg 52ing to the dons—both of them fellows and tutors of St Anselms though on different planes of age
The first one Edward Langham was Roberts tutor and about seven years older than himself He was a man about whom on entering the college Robert heard more than the usual crop of stories The healthy young English barbarian has an aversion to the intrusion of more manner into life than is absolutely necessary Now Langham was overburdened with manner though it was manner of the deprecating and not of the arrogant order Decisions it seemed of all sorts were abominable to him To help a friend he had once consented to be Proproctor He resigned in a month and none of his acquaintances ever afterwards dared to allude to the experience If you could have got at his inmost mind it was affirmed the persons most obnoxious there would have been found to be the scout who intrusively asked him every morning what he would have for breakfast and the college cook who till such a course was strictly forbidden him mounted to his room at halfpast nine to inquire whether he would dine in Being a scholar of considerable eminence it pleased him to assume on all questions an exasperating degree of ignorance and the wags of the college averred that when asked if it rained or if collections took place on such and such a day it was pain and grief to him to have to affirm positively without qualifications that so it was
Such a man was not very likely one would have thought to captivate an ardent impulsive boy like Elsmere Edward Langham however notwithstanding undergraduate tales was a very remarkable person In the first place he was possessed of exceptional personal beauty His colouring was vividly black and white closely curling jetblack hair and fine black eyes contrasting with a pale clear complexion and even white teeth So far he had the characteristics which certain Irishmen share with most Spaniards But the Celtic or Iberian brilliance was balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature He had the brow the nose the upper lip the finelymoulded chin which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type Certainly of Greek blitheness and directness there was no trace The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy all the movements of the tall finelybuilt frame were hesitating and doubtful It was as though the man were suffering from paralysis of some moral muscle or other as if some of the normal springs of action in him had been profoundly and permanently weakened
He had a curious history He was the only child of a doctor in a Lincolnshire country town His old parents had brought him up in strict provincial ways ignoring the boys idiosyncrasies as much as possible They did not want an exceptional and abnormal son and they tried to put down his dreamy selfconscious habits by forcing him into the common middleclass Evangelical groove As soon as he got to college however thePg 53 brooding gifted nature had a moment of sudden and as it seemed to the old people in Gainsborough most reprehensible expansion Poems were sent to them cut out of one or the other of the leading periodicals with their sons initials appended and articles of philosophical artcriticism published while the boy was still an undergraduate—which seemed to the stern father everything that was sophistical and subversive For they treated Christianity itself as an open question and showed especially scant respect for the Protestantism of the Protestant religion The father warned him grimly that he was not going to spend his hardearned savings on the support of a freethinking scribbler and the young man wrote no more till just after he had taken a double first in Greats Then the publication of an article in one of the leading Reviews on The Ideals of Modern Culture not only brought him a furious letter from home stopping all supplies but also lost him a probable fellowship His college was one of the narrowest and most backward in Oxford and it was made perfectly plain to him before the fellowship examination that he would not be elected
He left the college took pupils for a while then stood for a vacant fellowship at St Anselms the Liberal headquarters and got it with flying colours
Thenceforward one would have thought that a brilliant and favourable mental development was secured to him Not at all The moment of his quarrel with his father and his college had in fact represented a moment of energy of comparative success which never recurred It was as though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him as if some deeprooted instinct—cold critical reflective—had reasserted itself condemning him and his censors equally The uselessness of utterance the futility of enthusiasm the inaccessibility of the ideal the practical absurdity of trying to realise any of the mind's inward dreams these were the kind of considerations which descended upon him slowly and fatally crushing down the newly springing growths of action or of passion It was as though life had demonstrated to him the essential truth of a childish saying of his own which had startled and displeased his Calvinist mother years before Mother the delicate largeeyed child had said to her one day in a fit of physical weariness how is it I dislike the things I dislike so much more than I like the things I like
So he wrote no more he quarrelled no more he meddled with the great passionate things of life and expression no more On his taking up residence in St Anselms indeed and on his being appointed first lecturer and then tutor he had a momentary pleasure in the thought of teaching His mind was a storehouse of thought and fact and to the man brought up at a dull provincial dayschool and never allowed to associate freely with his kind the bright lads fresh from Eton and Harrow about him were singularly attractive But a few terms were enough toPg 54 scatter this illusion too He could not be simple he could not be spontaneous he was tormented by selfconsciousness and it was impossible to him to talk and behave as those talk and behave who have been brought up more or less in the big world from the beginning So this dream too faded for youth asks before all things simplicity and spontaneity in those who would take possession of it His lectures which were at first brilliant enough to attract numbers of men from other colleges became gradually mere dry ingenious skeletons without life or feeling It was possible to learn a great deal from him it was not possible to catch from him any contagion of that amor intellectualis which had flamed at one moment so high within him He ceased to compose but as the intellectual faculty must have some employment he became a translator a contributor to dictionaries a microscopic student of texts not in the interest of anything beyond but simply as a kind of mental stonebreaking
The only survival of that moment of glow and colour in his life was his love of music and the theatre Almost every year he disappeared to France to haunt the Paris theatres for a fortnight to Berlin or Bayreuth to drink his fill of music He talked neither of music nor of acting he made no one sharer of his enjoyment if he did enjoy It was simply his way of cheating his creative faculty which though it had grown impotent was still there still restless Altogether a melancholy pitiable man—at once thoroughgoing sceptic and thoroughgoing idealist the victim of that critical sense which says No to every impulse and is always restlessly and yet hopelessly seeking the future through the neglected and outraged present
And yet the mans instincts at this period of his life at any rate were habitually kindly and affectionate He knew nothing of women and was not liked by them but it was not his fault if he made no impression on the youth about him It seemed to him that he was always seeking in their eyes and faces for some light of sympathy which was always escaping him and which he was powerless to compel He met it for the first time in Robert Elsmere The susceptible poetical boy was struck at some favourable moment by that romantic side of the ineffective tutor—his silence his melancholy his personal beauty—which no one else with perhaps one or two exceptions among the older men cared to take into account or touched perhaps by some note in him surprised in passing of weariness or shrinking as compared with the contemptuous tone of the College towards him He showed his liking impetuously boyishly as his way was and thenceforward during his University career Langham became his slave He had no ambition for himself his motto might have been that dismal one—The small things of life are odious to me and the habit of them enslaves me the great things of life are eternally attractive to me and indolence and fear put them by but for the University chances of this lanky redhaired youth—with his eagerness his boundless curiPg 55osity his genius for all sorts of lovable mistakes—he disquieted himself greatly He tried to discipline the roving mind to infuse into the boys literary temper the delicacy the precision the subtlety of his own His fastidious critical habits of work supplied exactly that antidote which Elsmeres main faults of haste and carelessness required He was always holding up before him the inexhaustible patience and labour involved in all true knowledge and it was to the germs of critical judgment so implanted in him that Elsmere owed many of the later growths of his development—growths with which we have not yet to concern ourselves
And in return the tutor allowed himself rarely very rarely a moment of utterance from the depths of his real self One evening in the summer term following the boys matriculation Elsmere brought him an essay after Hall and they sat on talking afterwards It was a rainy cheerless evening the first contest of the Boats week had been rowed in cold wind and sleet a dreary blast whistled through the College Suddenly Langham reached out his hand for an open letter I have had an offer Elsmere he said abruptly
And he put it into his hand It was the offer of an important Scotch professorship coming from the man most influential in assigning it The last occupant of the post had been a scholar of European eminence Langhams contributions to a great foreign review and certain Oxford recommendations were the basis of the present overture which coming from one who was himself a classic of the classics was couched in terms flattering to any young mans vanity
Robert looked up with a joyful exclamation when he had finished the letter
I congratulate you sir
I have refused it said Langham abruptly
His companion sat openmouthed Young as he was he knew perfectly well that this particular appointment was one of the blue ribbons of British scholarship
Do you think— said the other in a tone of singular vibration which had in it a note of almost contemptuous irritation—do you think I am the man to get and keep a hold on a rampagious class of hundreds of Scotch lads Do you think I am the man to carry on what Reid began—Reid that old fighter that preacher of all sorts of jubilant dogmas
He looked at Elsmere under his straight black brows imperiously The youth felt the nervous tension in the elder mans voice and manner was startled by a confidence never before bestowed upon him close as that unequal bond between them had been growing during the six months of his Oxford life and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank young expostulations which really put into friendly shape all that was being said about Langham in his College and in the University Why was he so selfdistrustful so absurdly diffidentPg 56 of responsibility so bent on hiding his great gifts under a bushel
The tutor smiled sadly and sitting down buried his head in his hands and said nothing for a while Then he looked up and stretched out a hand towards a book which lay on a table near It was the Réveries of Senancour My answer is written here he said It will seem to you now Elsmere mere Midsummer madness May it always seem so to you Forgive me The pressure of solitude sometimes is too great
Elsmere looked up with one of his flashing affectionate smiles and took the book from Langhams hand He found on the open page a marked passage
Oh swiftly passing seasons of life There was a time when men seemed to be sincere when thought was nourished on friendship kindness love when dawn still kept its brilliance and the night its peace I can the soul said to itself and I will I will do all that is right—all that is natural But soon resistance difficulty unforeseen coming we know not whence arrest us undeceive us and the human yoke grows heavy on our necks Thenceforward we become merely sharers in the common woe Hemmed in on all sides we feel our faculties only to realise their impotence we have time and strength to do what we must never what we will Men go on repeating the words work genius success Fools Will all these resounding projects though they enable us to cheat ourselves enable us to cheat the icy fate which rules us and our globe wandering forsaken through the vast silence of the heavens
Robert looked up startled the book dropping from his hand The words sent a chill to the heart of one born to hope to will to crave
Suddenly Langham dashed the volume from him almost with violence
Forget that drivel Elsmere It was a crime to show it to you It is not sane neither perhaps am I But I am not going to Scotland They would request me to resign in a week
Long after Elsmere who had stayed talking a while on other things had gone Langham sat on brooding over the empty grate
Corrupter of youth he said to himself once bitterly And perhaps it was to a certain remorse in the tutors mind that Elsmere owed an experience of great importance to his after life
The name of a certain Mr Grey had for some time before his entry at Oxford been more or less familiar to Roberts ears as that of a person of great influence and consideration at St Anselms His tutor at Harden had spoken of him in the boys hearing as one of the most remarkable men of the generation and had several times impressed upon his pupil that nothing could be so desirable for him as to secure the friendship of such a man It was on the occasion of his first interview with thePg 57 Provost after the scholarship examination that Robert was first brought face to face with Mr Grey He could remember a short dark man standing beside the Provost who had been introduced to him by that name but the nervousness of the moment had been so great that the boy had been quite incapable of giving him any special attention
During his first term and a half of residence Robert occasionally met Mr Grey in the quadrangle or in the street and the tutor remembering the thin brightfaced youth would return his salutations kindly and sometimes stop to speak to him to ask him if he were comfortably settled in his rooms or make a remark about the boats But the acquaintance did not seem likely to progress for Mr Grey was a Greats tutor and Robert naturally had nothing to do with him as far as work was concerned
However a day or two after the conversation we have described Robert going to Langhams rooms late in the afternoon to return a book which had been lent to him perceived two figures standing talking on the hearthrug and by the western light beating in recognised the thickset frame and broad brow of Mr Grey
Come in Elsmere said Langham as he stood hesitating on the threshold You have met Mr Grey before I think
We first met at an anxious moment said Mr Grey smiling and shaking hands with the boy A first interview with the Provost is always formidable I remember it too well myself You did very well I remember Mr Elsmere Well Langham I must be off I shall be late for my meeting as it is I think we have settled our business Goodnight
Langham stood a moment after the door closed eyeing young Elsmere There was a curious struggle going on in the tutors mind
Elsmere he said at last abruptly would you like to go tonight and hear Grey preach
Preach exclaimed the lad I thought he was a layman
So he is It will be a lay sermon It was always the custom here with the clerical tutors to address their men once a term before Communion Sunday and some years ago when Grey first became tutor he determined though he was a layman to carry on the practice It was an extraordinary effort for he is a man to whom words on such a subject are the coining of his hearts blood and he has repeated it very rarely It is two years now since his last address
Of course I should like to go said Robert with eagerness Is it open
Strictly it is for his Greats pupils but I can take you in It is hardly meant for freshmen but—well you are far enough on to make it interesting to you
The lad will take to Greys influence like a fish to water thought the tutor to himself when he was alone not withoutPg 58 a strange reluctance Well no one can say I have not given him his opportunity to be earnest
The sarcasm of the last word was the kind of sarcasm which a man of his type in an earlier generation might have applied to the earnestness of an Arnoldian Rugby
At eight oclock that evening Robert found himself crossing the quadrangle with Langham on the way to one of the larger lecture rooms which was to be the scene of the address The room when they got in was already nearly full all the working fellows of the college were present and a body of some thirty men besides most of them already far on in their University career A minute or two afterwards Mr Grey entered The door opening on to the quadrangle where the trees undeterred by east wind were just bursting into leaf was shut and the little assembly knelt while Mr Greys voice with its broad intonation in which a strong native homeliness lingered under the gentleness of accent recited the collect Lord of all power and might a silent pause following the last words Then the audience settled itself and Mr Grey standing by a small deal table with the gaslight behind him began his address
All the main points of the experience which followed stamped themselves on Roberts mind with extraordinary intensity Nor did he ever lose the memory of the outward scene In after years memory could always recall to him at will the face and figure of the speaker the massive head the deep eyes sunk under the brows the Midland accent the make of limb and feature which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength and simplicity of a peasant ancestry and then the nobility the fire the spiritual beauty flashing through it all Here indeed was a man on whom his fellows might lean a man in whom the generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it overflowed of necessity into the poorer barrener lives around him kindling and enriching Robert felt himself seized and penetrated filled with a fervour and an admiration which he was too young and immature to analyse but which was to be none the less potent and lasting
Much of the sermon itself indeed was beyond him It was on the meaning of St Pauls great conception Death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness What did the Apostle mean by a death to sin and self What were the precise ideas attached to the words risen with Christ Are this death and this resurrection necessarily dependent upon certain alleged historical events Or are they not primarily and were they not even in the mind of St Paul two aspects of a spiritual process perpetually reenacted in the soul of man and constituting the veritable revelation of God Which is the stable and lasting witness of the Father the spiritual history of the individual and the world or the envelope of miracle to which hitherto mankind has attributed so much importance
Mr Greys treatment of these questions was clothed throughPg 59out a large portion of the lecture in metaphysical language which no boy fresh from school however intellectually quick could be expected to follow with any precision It was not therefore the argument or the logical structure of the sermon which so profoundly affected young Elsmere It was the speaker himself and the occasional passages in which addressing himself to the practical needs of his hearers he put before them the claims and conditions of the higher life with a pregnant simplicity and rugged beauty of phrase Conceit selfishness vice—how as he spoke of them they seemed to wither from his presence How the pitiful earthy self with its passions and its cravings sank into nothingness beside the great ideas and the great causes for which as Christians and as men he claimed their devotion
To the boy sitting among the crowd at the back of the room his face supported in his hands and his gleaming eyes fixed on the speaker it seemed as if all the poetry and history through which a restless curiosity and ideality had carried him so far took a new meaning from this experience It was by men like this that the moral progress of the world had been shaped and inspired he felt brought near to the great primal forces breathing through the divine workshop and in place of natural disposition and reverent compliance there sprang up in him suddenly an actual burning certainty of belief Axioms are not axioms said poor Keats till they have been proved upon our pulses and the old familiar figure of the Divine combat of the struggle in which man and God are one was proved once more upon a human pulse on that May night in the hush of that quiet lecture room
As the little moving crowd of men dispersed over the main quadrangle to their respective staircases Langham and Robert stood together a moment in the windy darkness lit by the occasional glimmering of a cloudy moon
Thank you thank you sir said the lad eager and yet afraid to speak lest he should break the spell of memory I should be sorry indeed to have missed that
Yes it was fine extraordinarily fine the best he has ever given I think Goodnight
And Langham turned away his head sunk on his breast his hands behind him Robert went to his room conscious of a momentary check of feeling But it soon passed and he sat up late thinking of the sermon or pouring out in a letter to his mother the new heroworship of which his mind was full
A few days later as it happened came an invitation to the junior exhibitioner to spend an evening at Mr Greys house Elsmere went in a state of curious eagerness and trepidation and came away with a number of fresh impressions which when he had put them into order did but quicken his newborn sense of devotion The quiet unpretending house with its exquisitePg 60 neatness and its abundance of books the family life with the hearthappiness underneath and the gentle trust and courtesy on the surface the little touches of austerity which betrayed themselves here and there in the household ways—all these surroundings stole into the lads imagination touched in him responsive fibres of taste and feeling
But there was some surprise too mingled with the charm He came still shaken as it were by the power of the sermon expecting to see in the preacher of it the outward and visible signs of a leadership which as he already knew was a great force in Oxford life His mood was that of the disciple only eager to be enrolled And what he found was a quiet friendly host surrounded by a group of men talking the ordinary pleasant Oxford chitchat—the river the schools the Union the football matches and so on Every now and then as Elsmere stood at the edge of the circle listening the rugged face in the centre of it would break into a smile or some boyish speaker would elicit the low spontaneous laugh in which there was such a sound of human fellowship such a genuine note of selfforgetfulness Sometimes the conversation strayed into politics and then Mr Grey an eager politician would throw back his head and talk with more sparkle and rapidity flashing occasionally into grim humour which seemed to throw light on the innate strength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puritan breed from which he sprang Nothing could be more unlike the inspired philosopher the mystic surrounded by an adoring school whom Robert had been picturing to himself in his walk up to the house through the soft May twilight
It was not long before the tutor had learned to take much kindly notice of the ardent and yet modest exhibitioner in whose future it was impossible not to feel a sympathetic interest
You will always find us on Sunday afternoons before chapel he said to him one day as they parted after watching a football match in the damp mists of the Park and the boys flush of pleasure showed how much he valued the permission
For three years those Sunday halfhours were the great charm of Robert Elsmeres life When he came to look back upon them he could remember nothing very definite A few interesting scraps of talk about books a good deal of talk about politics showing in the tutor a living interest in the needs and training of that broadening democracy on which the future of England rests a few graphic sayings about individuals above all a constant readiness on the hosts part to listen to sit quiet with the slight unconscious look of fatigue which was so eloquent of a strenuous intellectual life taking kindly heed of anything that sincerity even a stupid awkward sincerity had got to say—these were the sort of impressions they had left behind them reinforced always indeed by the one continuous impression of a great soul speaking with difficulty and labour but still clearlyPg 61 still effectually through an unblemished series of noble acts and efforts
Term after term passed away Mrs Elsmere became more and more proud of her boy and more and more assured that her years of intelligent devotion to him had won her his entire love and confidence so long as they both should live she came up to see him once or twice making Langham almost flee the University because she would be grateful to him in public and attending the boatraces in festive attire to which she had devoted the most anxious attention for Roberts sake and which made her dear good impracticable soul the observed of all observers When she came she and Robert talked all day so far as lectures allowed and most of the night after their own eager improvident fashion and she soon gathered with that solemn halftragic sense of change which besets a mothers heart at such a moment that there were many new forces at work in her boys mind deep undercurrents of feeling stirred in him by the Oxford influences which must before long rise powerfully to the surface
He was passing from a bright buoyant lad into a man and a man of ardour and conviction And the chief instrument in the transformation was Mr Grey
Elsmere got his first in Moderations easily But the Final Schools were a different matter In the first days of his return to Oxford in the October of his third year while he was still making up his lecture list and taking a general oversight of the work demanded from him before plunging definitely into it he was oppressed with a sense that the two years lying before him constituted a problem which would be harder to solve than any which had yet been set him It seemed to him in a moment which was one of some slackness and reaction that he had been growing too fast He had been making friends besides in far too many camps and the thought half attractive half repellent of all those midnight discussions over smouldering fires which Oxford was preparing for him those fascinating moments of intellectual fence with minds as eager and as crude as his own and of all the delightful dipping into the very latest literature which such moments encouraged and involved seemed to convey a sort of warning to the boys will that it was not equal to the situation He was neither dull enough nor great enough for a striking Oxford success How was he to prevent himself from attempting impossibilities and achieving a final mediocrity He felt a dismal certainty that he should never be able to control the strayings of will and curiosity now into this path now into that and a still stronger and genuine certainty that it is not by such digression that a man gets up the Ethics or the Annals
Langham watched him with a half irritable attention In spite of the paralysis of all natural ambitions in himself he was illogically keen that Elsmere should win the distinctions of thePg 62 place He the most laborious the most disinterested of scholars turned himself almost into a crammer for Elsmeres benefit He abused the lads multifarious reading declared it was no better than dramdrinking and even preached to him an ingenious variety of mechanical aids to memory and short cuts to knowledge till Robert would turn round upon him with some triumphant retort drawn from his own utterances at some sincerer and less discreet moment In vain Langham felt a dismal certainty before many weeks were over that Elsmere would miss his first in Greats He was too curious too restless too passionate about many things Above all he was beginning in the tutors opinion to concern himself disastrously early with that most overwhelming and most brainconfusing of all human interests—the interest of religion Grey had made him earnest with a vengeance
Elsmere was now attending Greys philosophical lectures following them with enthusiasm and making use of them as so often happens for the defence and fortification of views quite other than his teachers The whole basis of Greys thought was ardently idealist and Hegelian He had broken with the popular Christianity but for him God consciousness duty were the only realities None of the various forms of materialist thought escaped his challenge no genuine utterance of the spiritual life of man but was sure of his sympathy It was known that after having prepared himself for the Christian ministry he had remained a layman because it had become impossible to him to accept miracle and it was evident that the commoner type of Churchmen regarded him as an antagonist all the more dangerous because he was so sympathetic But the negative and critical side of him was what in reality told least upon his pupils He was reserved he talked with difficulty and his respect for the immaturity of the young lives near him was complete So that what he sowed others often reaped or to quote the expression of a wellknown rationalist about him The Tories were always carrying off his honey to their hive Elsmere for instance took in all that Grey had to give drank in all the ideal fervour the spiritual enthusiasm of the great tutor and then as Grey himself would have done some twenty years earlier carried his religious passion so stimulated into the service of the great positive tradition around him
And at that particular moment in Oxford history the passage from philosophic idealism to glad acquiescence in the received Christian system was a peculiarly easy one It was the most natural thing in the world that a young man of Elsmeres temperament should rally to the Church The place was passing through one of those periodical crises of reaction against an overdriven rationalism which show themselves with tolerable regularity in any great centre of intellectual activity It had begun to be recognised with a great burst of enthusiasm and astonishment that after all Mill and Herbert Spencer had notPg 63 said the last word on all things in heaven and earth And now there was exaggerated recoil A fresh wave of religious romanticism was fast gathering strength the spirit of Newman had reappeared in the place which Newman had loved and left religion was becoming once more popular among the most trivial souls and a deep reality among a large proportion of the nobler ones
With this movement of opinion Robert had very soon found himself in close and sympathetic contact The meagre impression left upon his boyhood by the somewhat grotesque succession of the Harden curates and by his mothers shafts of wit at their expense was soon driven out of him by the stateliness and comely beauty of the Church order as it was revealed to him at Oxford The religious air the solemn beauty of the place itself its innumerable associations with an organised and venerable faith the great public functions and expressions of that faith possessed the boys imagination more and more As he sat in the undergraduates gallery at St Marys on the Sundays when the great High Church preacher of the moment occupied the pulpit and looked down on the crowded building full of grave blackgowned figures and framed in one continuous belt of closely packed boyish faces as he listened to the preachers vibrating voice rising and falling with the orators instinct for musical effect or as he stood up with the great surrounding body of undergraduates to send the melody of some Latin hymn rolling into the far recesses of the choir the sight and the experience touched his inmost feeling and satisfied all the poetical and dramatic instincts of a passionate nature The system behind the sight took stronger and stronger hold upon him he began to wish ardently and continuously to become a part of it to cast in his lot definitely with it
One May evening he was wandering by himself along the towingpath which skirts the upper river a prey to many thoughts to forebodings about the schools which were to begin in three weeks and to speculations as to how his mother would take the news of the second class which he himself felt to be inevitable Suddenly for no apparent reason there flashed into his mind the little conversation with his mother which had taken place nearly four years before in the garden at Trinity He remembered the antagonism which the idea of a clerical life for him had raised in both of them and a smile at his own ignorance and his mothers prejudice passed over his quick young face He sat down on the grassy bank a mass of reeds at his feet the shadows of the poplars behind him lying across the still river and opposite the wide green expanse of the great townmeadow dotted with white patches of geese and herds of grazing horses There with a sense of something solemn and critical passing over him he began to dream out his future life
And when he rose half an hour afterwards and turned hisPg 64 steps homewards he knew with an inward tremor of heart that the next great step of the way was practically taken For there by the gliding river and in view of the distant Oxford spires which his fancy took to witness the act he had vowed himself in prayer and selfabasement to the ministry of the Church
During the three weeks that followed he made some frantic efforts to make up lost ground He had not been idle for a single day but he had been unwise an intellectual spendthrift living in a continuous succession of enthusiasms and now at the critical moment his stock of nerve and energy was at a low ebb He went in depressed and tired his friends watching anxiously for the result On the day of the Logic paper as he emerged into the Schools quadrangle he felt his arm caught by Mr Grey
Come with me for a walk Elsmere you look as if some air would do you good
Robert acquiesced and the two men turned into the passage way leading out on to Radcliffe Square
I have done for myself sir said the youth with a sigh half impatience half depression It seems to me today that I had neither mind nor memory If I get a second I shall be lucky
Oh you will get your second whatever happens said Mr Grey quietly and you mustnt be too much cast down about it if you dont get your first
This implied acceptance of his partial defeat coming from anothers lips struck the excitable Robert like a lash It was only what he had been saying to himself but in the most pessimist forecasts we make for ourselves there is always an under protest of hope
I have been wasting my time here lately he said hurriedly raising his college cap from his brows as if it oppressed them and pushing his hair back with a weary restless gesture
No said Mr Grey turning his kind frank eyes upon him As far as general training goes you have not wasted your time at all There are many clever men who dont get a first class and yet it is good for them to be here—so long as they are not loungers and idlers of course And you have not been a lounger you have been headstrong and a little overconfident perhaps —the speakers smile took all the sting out of the words—but you have grown into a man and you are fit now for mans work Dont let yourself be depressed Elsmere You will do better in life than you have done in examination
The young man was deeply touched This tone of personal comment and admonition was very rare with Mr Grey He felt a sudden consciousness of a shared burden which was infinitely soothing and though he made no answer his face lost something of its harassed look as the two walked on together down Oriel Street and into Merton Meadows
Have you any immediate plans said Mr Grey as they turned into the Broad Walk now in the full leafage of JunePg 65 and rustling under a brisk western wind blowing from the river
No at least I suppose it will be no good my trying for a fellowship But I meant to tell you sir of one thing—I have made up my mind to take orders
You have When
Quite lately So that fixes me I suppose to come back for divinity lectures in the autumn
Mr Grey said nothing for a while and they strolled in and out of the great shadows thrown by the elms across their path
You feel no difficulties in the way he asked at last with a certain quick brusqueness of manner
No said Robert eagerly I never had any Perhaps he added with a sudden humility it is because I have never gone deep enough What I believe might have been worth more if I had had more struggle but it has all seemed so plain
The young voice speaking with hesitation and reserve and yet with a deep inner conviction was pleasant to hear Mr Grey turned towards it and the great eyes under the furrowed brow had a peculiar gentleness of expression
You will probably be very happy in the life he said The Church wants men of your sort
But through all the sympathy of the tone Robert was conscious of a veil between them He knew of course pretty much what it was and with a sudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break through it and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others wide as was the intellectual difference between them But the tutors reticence and the younger mans respect prevented it
When the unlucky second class was actually proclaimed to the world Langham took it to heart perhaps more than either Elsmere or his mother No one knew better than he what Elsmeres gifts were It was absurd that he should not have made more of them in sight of the public Le cléricalisme voilà lennemi was about the gist of Langhams mood during the days that followed on the class list
Elsmere however did not divulge his intention of taking orders to him till ten days afterwards when he had carried off Langham to stay at Harden and he and his old tutor were smoking in his mothers little garden one moonlit night
When he had finished his statement Langham stood still a moment watching the wreaths of smoke as they curled and vanished The curious interest in Elsmeres career which during a certain number of months had made him almost practical almost energetic had disappeared He was his own languid paradoxical self
Well after all he said at last very slowly the difficulty lies in preaching anything One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else
What do you mean by a mythology cried Robert hotly
Pg 66
Simply ideas or experiences personified said Langham puffing away I take it they are the subjectmatter of all theologies
I dont understand you said Robert flushing To the Christian facts have been the medium by which ideas the world could not otherwise have come at have been communicated to man Christian theology is a system of ideas indeed but of ideas realised made manifest in facts
Langham looked at him for a moment undecided then that suppressed irritation we have already spoken of broke through How do you know they are facts he said drily
The younger man took up the challenge with all his natural eagerness and the conversation resolved itself into a discussion of Christian evidences Or rather Robert held forth and Langham kept him going by an occasional remark which acted like the prick of a spur The tutors psychological curiosity was soon satisfied He declared to himself that the intellect had precious little to do with Elsmeres Christianity He had got hold of all the stock apologetic arguments and used them his companion admitted with ability and ingenuity But they were merely the outworks of the citadel The inmost fortress was held by something wholly distinct from intellectual conviction—by moral passion by love by feeling by that mysticism in short which no healthy youth should be without
He imagines he has satisfied his intellect was the inward comment of one of the most melancholy of sceptics and he has never so much as exerted it What a brute I am to protest
And suddenly Langham threw up the sponge He held out his hand to his companion a momentary gleam of tenderness in his black eyes such as on one or two critical occasions before had disarmed the impetuous Elsmere
No use to discuss it further You have a strong case of course and you have put it well Only when you are pegging away at reforming and enlightening the world dont trample too much on the people who have more than enough to do to enlighten themselves
As to Mrs Elsmere in this new turn of her sons fortunes she realised with humorous distinctness that for some years past Robert had been educating her as well as himself Her old rebellious sense of something inherently absurd in the clerical status had been gradually slain in her by her long contact through him with the finer and more imposing aspects of church life She was still on light skirmishing terms with the Harden curates and at times she would flame out into the wildest wittiest threats and gibes for the momentary satisfaction of her own essentially lay instincts but at bottom she knew perfectly well that when the moment came no mother could be more loyal more easily imposed upon than she would be
I suppose then Robert we shall be back at Murewell beforePg 67 very long she said to him one morning abruptly studying him the while out of her small twinkling eyes What dignity there was already in the young lightlybuilt frame what frankness and character in the irregular attractive face
Mother cried Elsmere indignantly what do you take me for Do you imagine I am going to bury myself in the country at five or sixandtwenty take six hundred a year and nothing to do for it That would be a deserters act indeed
Mrs Elsmere shrugged her shoulders Oh I supposed you would insist on killing yourself to begin with To most people nowadays that seems to be the necessary preliminary of a useful career
Robert laughed and kissed her but her question had stirred him so much that he sat down that very evening to write to his cousin Mowbray Elsmere He announced to him that he was about to read for orders and that at the same time he relinquished all claim on the living of Murewell Do what you like with it when it falls vacant he wrote without reference to me My views are strong that before a clergyman in health and strength and in no immediate want of money allows himself the luxury of a country parish he is bound for some years at any rate to meet the challenge of evil and poverty where the fight is hardest—among our English town population
Sir Mowbray Elsmere replied curtly in a day or two to the effect that Roberts letter seemed to him superfluous He Sir Mowbray had nothing to do with his cousins views When the living was vacant—the present holder however was uncommon tough and did not mean dying—he should follow out the instructions of his fathers will and if Robert did not want the thing he could say so
In the autumn Robert and his mother went back to Oxford The following spring he redeemed his Oxford reputation completely by winning a Fellowship at Merton after a brilliant fight with some of the best men of his year and in June he was ordained
In the summer term some teaching work was offered him at Merton and by Mr Greys advice he accepted it thus postponing for a while that London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining Stay here a year or two Grey said bluntly you are at the beginning of your best learning time and you are not one of the natures who can do without books You will be all the better worth having afterwards and there is no lack of work here for a mans moral energies
Langham took the same line and Elsmere submitted Three happy and fruitful years followed The young lecturer developed an amazing power of work That concentration which he had been unable to achieve for himself his will was strong enough to maintain when it was a question of meeting the demands of a college class in which he was deeply interestedPg 68 He became a stimulating and successful teacher and one of the most popular of men His passionate sense of responsibility towards his pupils made him load himself with burdens to which he was constantly physically unequal and fill the vacations almost as full as the terms And as he was comparatively a man of means his generous impetuous temper was able to gratify itself in ways that would have been impossible to others The story of his summer reading parties for instance if one could have unravelled it would have been found to be one long string of acts of kindness towards men poorer and duller than himself
At the same time he formed close and eager relations with the heads of the religious party in Oxford His mothers Evangelical training of him and Mr Greys influence together perhaps with certain drifts of temperament prevented him from becoming a High Churchman The sacramental ceremonial view of the Church never took hold upon him But to the English Church as a great national institution for the promotion of Gods work on earth no one could have been more deeply loyal and none coming close to him could mistake the fervour and passion of his Christian feeling At the same time he did not know what rancour or bitterness meant so that men of all shades of Christian belief reckoned a friend in him and he went through life surrounded by an unusual perhaps a dangerous amount of liking and affection He threw himself ardently into the charitable work of Oxford now helping a High Church vicar and now toiling with Grey and one or two other Liberal fellows at the maintenance of a coffeepalace and lectureroom just started by them in one of the suburbs while in the second year of his lectureship the success of some first attempts at preaching fixed the attention of the religious leaders upon him as upon a man certain to make his mark
So the three years passed—years not perhaps of great intellectual advance for other forces in him than those of the intellect were mainly to the fore but years certainly of continuous growth in character and moral experience And at the end of them Mowbray Elsmere made his offer and it was accepted
The secret of it of course was overwork Mrs Elsmere from the little house in Merton Street where she had established herself had watched her boys meteoric career through these crowded months with very frequent misgivings No one knew better than she that Robert was constitutionally not of the toughest fibre and she realised long before he did that the Oxford life as he was bent on leading it must end for him in premature breakdown But as always happens neither her remonstrances nor Mr Greys commonsense nor Langhams fidgety protests had any effect on the young enthusiast to whom selfslaughter came so easy During the latter half of his third year of teaching he was continually being sent away by the doctors and coming back only to break down again At lastPg 69 in the January of his fourth year the collapse became so decided that he consented bribed by the prospect of the Holy Land to go away for three months to Egypt and the East accompanied by his mother and a college friend
Just before their departure news reached him of the death of the rector of Murewell followed by a formal offer of the living from Sir Mowbray At the moment when the letter arrived he was feeling desperately tired and ill and in afterlife he never forgot the halfsuperstitious thrill and deep sense of depression with which he received it For within him was a slowlyemerging despairing conviction that he was indeed physically unequal to the claims of his Oxford work and if so still more unequal to grappling with the hardest pastoral labour and the worst forms of English poverty And the coincidence of the Murewell incumbents death struck his sensitive mind as a Divine leading
But it was a painful defeat He took the letter to Grey and Grey strongly advised him to accept
You overdrive your scruples Elsmere said the Liberal tutor with emphasis No one can say a living with 1200 souls and no curate is a sinecure As for hard town work it is absurd—you couldnt stand it And after all I imagine there are some souls worth saving out of the towns
Elsmere pointed out vindictively that family livings were a corrupt and indefensible institution Mr Grey replied calmly that they probably were but that the fact did not affect so far as he could see Elsmeres competence to fulfil all the duties of rector of Murewell
After all my dear fellow he said a smile breaking over his strong expressive face it is well even for reformers to be sane
Mrs Elsmere was passive It seemed to her that she had foreseen it all along She was miserable about his health but she too had a moment of superstition and would not urge him Murewell was no name of happy omen to her—she had passed the darkest hours of her life there
In the end Robert asked for delay which was grudgingly granted him Then he and his mother and friend fled over seas he feverishly determined to get well and cheat the fates But after a halcyon time in Palestine and Constantinople a whiff of poisoned air at Cannes on their way home acting on a low constitutional state settled matters Robert was laid up for weeks with malarious fever and when he struggled out again into the hot Riviera sunshine it was clear to himself and everybody else that he must do what he could and not what he would in the Christian vineyard
Mother he said one day suddenly looking up at her as she sat near him working can you be happy at Murewell
There was a wistfulness in the long thin face and a pathetic accent of surrender in the voice which hurt the mothers heart
Pg 70
I can be happy wherever you are she said laying her brown nervous hand on his blanched one
Then give me pen and paper and let me write to Mowbray I wonder whether the place has changed at all Heigh ho How is one to preach to people who have stuffed you up with gooseberries or swung you on gates or lifted you over puddles to save your petticoats I wonder what has become of that boy whom I hit in the eye with my bow and arrow or of that other lout who pummelled me into the middle of next week for disturbing his birdtrap By the way is the Squire—is Roger Wendover—living at the Hall now
He turned to his mother with a sudden start of interest
So I hear said Mrs Elsmere drily He wont be much good to you
He sat on meditating while she went for pen and paper He had forgotten the Squire of Murewell But Roger Wendover the famous and eccentric owner of Murewell Hall hermit and scholar possessed of one of the most magnificent libraries in England and author of books which had carried a revolutionary shock into the heart of English society was not a figure to be overlooked by any rector of Murewell least of all by one possessed of Roberts culture and imagination
The young man ransacked his memory on the subject with a sudden access of interest in his new home that was to be
Six weeks later they were in England and Robert now convalescent had accepted an invitation to spend a month in Long Whindale with his mothers cousins the Thornburghs who offered him quiet and bracing air He was to enter on his duties at Murewell in July the bishop who had been made aware of his Oxford reputation welcoming the new recruit to the diocese with marked warmth of manner
CHAPTER VI
Agnes if you want any tea here it is cried Rose calling from outside through the diningroom window and tell mamma
It was the first of June and the spell of warmth in which Robert Elsmere had arrived was still maintaining itself An intelligent foreigner dropped into the flowersprinkled valley might have believed that after all England and even Northern England had a summer Early in the season as it was the sun was already drawing the colour out of the hills the young green hardly a week or two old was darkening Except the oaks They were brilliance itself against the luminous grayblue sky So were the beeches their young downy leaves just unpacked tumbling loosely open to the light But the larches and the birches and the hawthorns were already sobered by a longer acquaintance with life and Phœbus
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Rose sat fanning herself with a portentous hat which when in its proper place served her apparently both as hat and as parasol She seemed to have been running races with a fine collie who lay at her feet panting but studying her with his bright eyes and evidently ready to be off again at the first indication that his playmate had recovered her wind Chattie was coming lazily over the lawn stretching each leg behind her as she walked tail arched green eyes flaming in the sun a model of treacherous beauty
Chattie you fiend come here cried Rose holding out a hand to her if Miss Barks were ever pretty she must have looked like you at this moment
I wont have Chattie put upon said Agnes establishing herself at the other side of the little teatable she has done you no harm Come to me beastie I wont compare you to disagreeable old maids
The cat looked from one sister to the other blinking then with a sudden magnificent spring leaped on to Agness lap and curled herself up there
Nothing but cupboard love said Rose scornfully in answer to Agness laugh she knows you will give her bread and butter and I wont out of a double regard for my skirts and her morals Oh dear me Miss Barks was quite seraphic last night she never made a single remark about my clothes and she didnt even say to me as she generally does with an air of compassion that she quite understands how hard it must be to keep in tune
The amusing thing was Mrs Seaton and Mr Elsmere said Agnes I just love as Mrs Thornburgh says to hear her instructing other people in their own particular trades She didnt get much change out of him
Rose gave Agnes her tea and then bending forward with one hand on her heart said in a stage whisper with a dramatic glance round the garden My heart is whole How is yours
Intact said Agnes calmly as that French bricàbrac man in the Brompton Road used to say of his pots But he is very nice
Oh charming But when my destiny arrives—and Rose returning to her tea swept her little hand with a teaspoon in it eloquently round—he wont have his hair cut close I must have luxuriant locks and I will take no excuse Une chevelure de poète the eye of an eagle the moustache of a hero the hand of a Rubinstein and if it pleases him the temper of a fiend He will be odious insufferable for all the world besides except for me and for me he will be heaven
She threw herself back a twinkle in her bright eye but a little flush of something half real on her cheek
No doubt said Agnes drily But you cant wonder if under the circumstances I dont pine for a brotherinlaw ToPg 72 return to the subject however Catherine liked him She said so
Oh that doesnt count replied Rose discontentedly Catherine likes everybody—of a certain sort—and everybody likes Catherine
Does that mean Miss Hasty said her sister that you have made up your mind Catherine will never marry
Marry cried Rose You might as well talk of marrying Westminster Abbey
Agnes looked at her attentively Roses fun had a decided lack of sweetness After all she said demurely St Elizabeth married
Yes but then she was a princess Reasons of State If Catherine were her Royal Highness it would be her duty to marry which would just make all the difference Duty I hate the word
And Rose took up a fircone lying near and threw it at the nose of the collie who made a jump at it and then resumed an attitude of blinking and dignified protest against his mistresss follies
Agnes again studied her sister Whats the matter with you Rose
The usual thing my dear replied Rose curtly only more so I had a letter this morning from Carry Ford—the daughter you know of those nice people I stayed in Manchester with last year Well she wants me to go and stay the winter with them and study under a firstrate man Franzen who is to be in Manchester two days a week during the winter I havent said a word about it—whats the use I know all Catherines arguments by heart Manchester is not Whindale and papa wished us to live in Whindale I am not somebody else and neednt earn my bread and art is not religion and——
Wheels exclaimed Agnes Catherine I suppose home from Whinborough
Rose got up and peered through the rhododendron bushes at the top of the wall which shut them off from the road
Catherine and an unknown Catherine driving at a foots pace and the unknown walking beside her Oh I see of course—Mr Elsmere He will come in to tea so Ill go for a cup It is his duty to call on us today
When Rose came back in the wake of her mother Catherine and Robert Elsmere were coming up the drive Something had given Catherine more colour than usual and as Mrs Leyburn shook hands with the young clergyman her mothers eyes turned approvingly to her eldest daughter After all she is as handsome as Rose she said to herself—though it is quite a different style
Rose who was always teamaker dispensed her wares Catherine took her favourite low seat beside her mother clasping Mrs Leyburns thin mittened hand awhile tenderly in herPg 73 own Robert and Agnes set up a lively gossip on the subject of the Thornburghs guests in which Rose joined while Catherine looked smiling on She seemed apart from the rest Robert thought not clearly by her own will but by virtue of a difference of temperament which could not but make itself felt Yet once as Rose passed her Robert saw her stretch out her hand and touch her sister caressingly with a bright upward look and smile as though she would say Is all well have you had a good time this afternoon Röschen Clearly the strong contemplative nature was not strong enough to dispense with any of the little wants and cravings of human affection Compared to the main impression she was making on him her suppliant attitude at her mothers feet and her caress of her sister were like flowers breaking through the stern March soil and changing the whole spirit of the fields
Presently he said something of Oxford and mentioned Merton Instantly Mrs Leyburn fell upon him Had he ever seen Mr S—— who had been a Fellow there and Roses godfather
I dont acknowledge him said Rose pouting Other peoples godfathers give them mugs and corals Mine never gave me anything but a Concordance
Robert laughed and proved to their satisfaction that Mr S—— had been extinct before his day But could they ask him any other questions Mrs Leyburn became quite animated and diving into her memory produced a number of fragmentary reminiscences of her husbands Queens friends asking him for information about each and all of them The young man disentangled all her questions racked his brains to answer and showed all through a quick friendliness a charming deference as of youth to age which confirmed the liking of the whole party for him Then the mention of an associate of Richard Leyburns youth who had been one of the Tractarian leaders led him into talk of Oxford changes and the influences of the present He drew for them the famous High Church preacher of the moment described the great spectacle of his Bampton Lectures by which Oxford had been recently thrilled and gave a dramatic account of a sermon on evolution preached by the hermitveteran Pusey as though by another Elias returning to the world to deliver a last warning message to men Catherine listened absorbed her deep eyes fixed upon him And though all he said was pitched in a vivacious narrative key and addressed as much to the others as to her inwardly it seemed to him that his one object all through was to touch and keep her attention
Then in answer to inquiries about himself he fell to describing St Anselms with enthusiasm—its growth its Provost its effectiveness as a great educational machine the impression it had made on Oxford and the country This led him naturally to talk of Mr Grey then next to the Provost the most promiPg 74nent figure in the college and once embarked on this theme he became more eloquent and interesting than ever The circle of women listened to him as to a voice from the large world He made them feel the beat of the great currents of English life and thought he seemed to bring the stir and rush of our central English society into the deep quiet of their valley Even the brighthaired Rose idly swinging her pretty foot with a head full of dreams and discontent was beguiled and for the moment seemed to lose her restless self in listening
He told an exciting story of a bad election riot in Oxford which had been quelled at considerable personal risk by Mr Grey who had gained his influence in the town by a devotion of years to the policy of breaking down as far as possible the old venomous feud between city and university
When he paused Mrs Leyburn said vaguely Did you say he was a canon of somewhere
Oh no said Robert smiling he is not a clergyman
But you said he preached said Agnes
Yes—but lay sermons—addresses He is not one of us even according to your standard and mine
A Nonconformist sighed Mrs Leyburn Oh I know they have let in everybody now
Well if you like said Robert What I meant was that his opinions are not orthodox He could not be a clergyman but he is one of the noblest of men
He spoke with affectionate warmth Then suddenly Catherines eyes met his and he felt an involuntary start A veil had fallen over them her sweet moved sympathy was gone she seemed to have shrunk into herself
She turned to Mrs Leyburn Mother do you know I have all sorts of messages from Aunt Ellen—and in an undervoice she began to give Mrs Leyburn the news of her afternoon expedition
Rose and Agnes soon plunged young Elsmere into another stream of talk But he kept his feeling of perplexity His experience of other women seemed to give him nothing to go upon with regard to Miss Leyburn
Presently Catherine got up and drew her plain little black cape round her again
My dear remonstrated Mrs Leyburn Where are you off to now
To the Backhouses mother she said in a low voice I have not been there for two days I must go this evening
Mrs Leyburn said no more Catherines musts were never disputed She moved towards Elsmere with outstretched hand But he also sprang up
I too must be going he said I have paid you an unconscionable visit If you are going past the vicarage Miss Leyburn may I escort you so far
She stood quietly waiting while he made his farewells AgnesPg 75 whose eye fell on her sister during the pause was struck with a passing sense of something out of the common She could hardly have defined her impression but Catherine seemed more alive to the outer world more like other people less nunlike than usual
When they had left the garden together as they had come into it and Mrs Leyburn complaining of chilliness had retreated to the drawingroom Rose laid a quick hand on her sisters arm
You say Catherine likes him Owl what is a great deal more certain is that he likes her
Well said Agnes calmly—well I await your remarks
Poor fellow said Rose grimly and removed her hand
Meanwhile Elsmere and Catherine walked along the valley road towards the Vicarage He thought uneasily she was a little more reserved with him than she had been in those pleasant moments after he had overtaken her in the ponycarriage but still she was always kind always courteous And what a white hand it was hanging ungloved against her dress what a beautiful dignity and freedom as of mountain winds and mountain streams in every movement
You are bound for High Ghyll he said to her as they neared the vicarage gate Is it not a long way for you You have been at a meeting already your sister said and teaching this morning
He looked down on her with a charming diffidence as though aware that their acquaintance was very young and yet with a warm eagerness of feeling piercing through As she paused under his eye the slightest flush rose to Catherines cheek Then she looked up with a smile It was amusing to be taken care of by this tall stranger
It is most unfeminine I am afraid she said but I couldnt be tired if I tried
Elsmere grasped her hand
You make me feel myself more than ever a shocking example he said letting it go with a little sigh The smart of his own renunciation was still keen in him She lingered a moment could find nothing to say threw him a look all shy sympathy and lovely pity and was gone
In the evening Robert got an explanation of that sudden stiffening in his auditor of the afternoon which had perplexed him He and the vicar were sitting smoking in the study after dinner and the ingenious young man managed to shift the conversation on to the Leyburns as he had managed to shift it once or twice before that day flattering himself of course on each occasion that his manœuvres were beyond detection The vicar good soul by virtue of his original discovery detected them all and with a sense of appropriation in the matter not at all unmixed with a sense of triumph over Mrs T kept the ball rolling merrily
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Miss Leyburn seems to have very strong religious views said Robert à propos of some remark of the vicars as to the assistance she was to him in the school
Ah she is her fathers daughter said the vicar genially He had his oldest coat on his favourite pipe between his lips and a bit of domestic carpentering on his knee at which he was fiddling away and being perfectly happy was also perfectly amiable Richard Leyburn was a fanatic—as mild as you please but immovable
What line
Evangelical with a dash of Quakerism He lent me Madame Guyons Life once to read I didnt appreciate it I told him that for all her religion she seemed to me to have a deal of the vixen in her He could hardly get over it it nearly broke our friendship But I suppose he was very like her except that in my opinion his nature was sweeter He was a fatalist—saw leadings of Providence in every little thing And such a dreamer When he came to live up here just before his death and all his active life was taken off him I believe half his time he was seeing visions He used to wander over the fells and meet you with a start as though you belonged to another world than the one he was walking in
And his eldest daughter was much with him
The apple of his eye She understood him He could talk his soul out to her The others of course were children and his wife—well his wife was just what you see her now poor thing He must have married her when she was very young and very pretty She was a squires daughter somewhere near the school of which he was master—a good family I believe—shell tell you so in a ladylike way He was always fidgety about her health He loved her I suppose or had loved her But it was Catherine who had his mind Catherine who was his friend She adored him I believe there was always a sort of pity in her heart for him too But at any rate he made her and trained her He poured all his ideas and convictions into her
Which were strong
Uncommonly For all his gentle ethereal look you could neither bend nor break him I dont believe anybody but Richard Leyburn could have gone through Oxford at the height of the Oxford Movement and so to speak have known nothing about it while living all the time for religion He had a great deal in common with the Quakers as I said a great deal in common with the Wesleyans but he was very loyal to the Church all the same He regarded it as the golden mean George Herbert was his favourite poet He used to carry his poems about with him on the mountains and an expurgated Christian Year—the only thing he ever took from the High Churchmen—which he had made for himself and which he and Catherine knew by heart In some ways he was not a bigot atPg 77 all He would have had the Church make peace with the Dissenters he was all for upsetting tests so far as Nonconformity was concerned But he drew the most rigid line between belief and unbelief He would not have dined at the same table with a Unitarian if he could have helped it I remember a furious article of his in the Record against admitting Unitarians to the Universities or allowing them to sit in Parliament England is a Christian State he said they are not Christians they have no right in her except on sufferance Well I suppose he was about right said the vicar with a sigh We are all so halfhearted nowadays
Not he cried Robert hotly Who are we that because a man differs from us in opinion we are to shut him out from the education of political and civil duty But never mind Cousin William Go on
Theres no more that I remember except that of course Catherine took all these ideas from him He wouldnt let his children know any unbeliever however apparently worthy and good He impressed it upon them as their special sacred duty in a time of wicked enmity to religion to cherish the faith and the whole faith He wished his wife and daughters to live on here after his death that they might be less in danger spiritually than in the big world and that they might have more opportunity of living the oldfashioned Christian life There was also some mystical idea I think of making up through his children for the godless lives of their forefathers He used to reproach himself for having in his prosperous days neglected his family some of whom he might have helped to raise
Well but said Robert all very well for Miss Leyburn but I dont see the father in the two younger girls
Ah there is Catherines difficulty said the vicar shrugging his shoulders Poor thing How well I remember her after her fathers death She came down to see me in the diningroom about some arrangement for the funeral She was only sixteen so pale and thin with nursing I said something about the comfort she had been to her father She took my hand and burst into tears He was so good she said I loved him so Oh Mr Thornburgh help me to look after the others And thats been her one thought since then—that next to following the narrow road
The vicar had begun to speak with emotion as generally happened to him whenever he was beguiled into much speech about Catherine Leyburn There must have been something great somewhere in the insignificant elderly man A meaner soul might so easily have been jealous of this girl with her inconveniently high standards and her influence surpassing his own in his own domain
I should like to know the secret of the little musicians independence said Robert musing There might be no tie of blood at all between her and the elder so far as I can see
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Oh I dont know that Theres more than you think or Catherine wouldnt have kept her hold over her so far as she has Generally she gets her way except about the music There Rose sticks to it
And why shouldnt she
Ah well you see my dear fellow I am old enough and youre not to remember what people in the old days used to think about art Of course nowadays we all say very fine things about it but Richard Leyburn would no more have admitted that a girl who hadnt got her own bread or her familys to earn by it was justified in spending her time in fiddling than he would have approved of her spending it in dancing I have heard him take a text out of the Imitation and lecture Rose when she was quite a baby for pestering any stray person she could get hold of to give her musiclessons Woe to them—yes that was it—that inquire many curious things of men and care little about the way of serving me However he wasnt consistent Nobody is It was actually he that brought Rose her first violin from London in a green baize bag Mrs Leyburn took me in one night to see her asleep with it on her pillow and all her pretty curls lying over the strings I daresay poor man it was one of the acts towards his children that tormented his mind in his last hour
She has certainly had her way about practising it she plays superbly
Oh yes she has had her way She is a queer mixture is Rose I see a touch of the old Leyburn recklessness in her and then there is the beauty and refinement of her mothers side of the family Lately she has got quite out of hand She went to stay with some relations they have in Manchester got drawn into the musical set there took to these funny gowns and now she and Catherine are always half at war Poor Catherine said to me the other day with tears in her eyes that she knew Rose thought her as hard as iron But what can I do she said I promised papa She makes herself miserable and its no use I wish the little wild thing would get herself well married Shes not meant for this humdrum place and she may kick over the traces
Shes pretty enough for anything and anybody said Robert
The vicar looked at him sharply but the young mans critical and meditative look reassured him
The next day just before early dinner Rose and Agnes who had been for a walk were startled as they were turning into their own gate by the frantic waving of a white handkerchief from the vicarage garden It was Mrs Thornburghs accepted way of calling the attention of the Burwood inmates and the girls walked on They found the good lady waiting for them in the drive in a characteristic glow and flutter
My dears I have been looking out for you all the morning I should have come over but for the stores coming and a tirePg 79some man from Randalls Ive had to bargain with him for a whole hour about taking back those sweets I was swindled of course but we should have died if wed had to eat them up Well now my dears——
The vicars wife paused Her square short figure was between the two girls she had on arm of each and she looked significantly from one to another her gray curls flapping across her face as she did so
Go on Mrs Thornburgh cried Rose You make us quite nervous
How do you like Mr Elsmere she inquired solemnly
Very much said both in chorus
Mrs Thornburgh surveyed Roses smiling frankness with a little sigh Things were going grandly but she could imagine a disposition of affairs which would have given her personally more pleasure
How—would—you—like—him for a brotherinlaw she inquired beginning in a whisper with slow emphasis patting Roses arm and bringing out the last words with a rush
Agnes caught the twinkle in Roses eye but she answered for them both demurely
We have no objection to entertain the idea But you must explain
Explain cried Mrs Thornburgh I should think it explains itself At least if youd been in this house the last twentyfour hours youd think so Since the moment when he first met her its been Miss Leyburn Miss Leyburn all the time One might have seen it with half an eye from the beginning
Mrs Thornburgh had not seen it with two eyes as we know till it was pointed out to her but her imagination worked with equal liveliness backwards or forwards
He went to see you yesterday didnt he—yes I know he did—and he overtook her in the ponycarriage—the vicar saw them from across the valley—and he brought her back from your house and then he kept William up till nearly twelve talking of her And now he wants a picnic Oh its as plain as a pikestaff And my dears nothing to be said against him Fifteen hundred a year if hes a penny A nice living only his mother to look after and as good a young fellow as ever stepped
Mrs Thornburgh stopped choked almost by her own eloquence The girls who had by this time established her between them on a gardenseat looked at her with smiling composure They were accustomed to letting her have her budget out
And now of course she resumed taking breath and chilled a little by their silence now of course I want to know about Catherine She regarded them with anxious interrogation Rose still smiling slowly shook her head
What cried Mrs Thornburgh then with charming inconsistency oh you cant know anything in two days
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Thats just it said Agnes intervening we cant know anything in two days No one ever will know anything about Catherine if she takes to anybody till the last minute
Mrs Thornburghs face fell Its very difficult when people will be so reserved she said dolefully
The girls acquiesced but intimated that they saw no way out of it
At any rate we can bring them together she broke out brightening again We can have picnics you know and teas and all that—and watch Now listen
And the vicars wife sketched out a programme of festivities for the next fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive head which took the sisters breath away Rose bit her lip to keep in her laughter Agnes with vast selfpossession took Mrs Thornburgh in hand She pointed out firmly that nothing would be so likely to make Catherine impracticable as fuss In vain is the net spread etc She preached from the text with a worldly wisdom which quickly crushed Mrs Thornburgh
Well what am I to do my dears she said at last helplessly Look at the weather We must have some picnics if its only to amuse Robert
Mrs Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effervescence and a condition of feeling the world too much for her Rose and Agnes having now reduced her to the latter state proceeded cautiously to give her her head again They promised her two or three expeditions and one picnic at least they said they would do their best they promised they would report what they saw and be very discreet both feeling the comedy of Mrs Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion and then they departed to their early dinner leaving the vicars wife decidedly less selfconfident than they found her
The first matrimonial excitement of the family cried Agnes as they walked home So far no one can say the Miss Leyburns have been besieged
It will be all moonshine Rose replied decisively Mr Elsmere may lose his heart we may aid and abet him Catherine will live in the clouds for a few weeks and come down from them at the end with the air of an angel to give him his coup de grâce As I said before—poor fellow
Agnes made no answer She was never so positive as Rose and on the whole did not find herself the worse for it in life Besides she understood that there was a soreness at the bottom of Roses heart that was always showing itself in unexpected connections
There was no necessity indeed for elaborate schemes for assisting Providence Mrs Thornburgh had her picnics and her expeditions but without them Robert Elsmere would have been still man enough to see Catherine Leyburn every day He loitered about the roads along which she must needs pass to doPg 81 her many offices of charity he offered the vicar to take a class in the school and was naïvely exultant that the vicar curiously happened to fix an hour when he must needs see Miss Leyburn going or coming on the same errand he dropped into Burwood on any conceivable pretext till Rose and Agnes lost all inconvenient respect for his cloth and Mrs Leyburn sent him on errands and he even insisted that Catherine and the vicar should make use of him and his pastoral services in one or two of the cases of sickness or poverty under their care Catherine with a little more reserve than usual took him one day to the Tysons and introduced him to the poor crippled son who was likely to live on paralysed for some time under the weight moreover of a black cloud of depression which seldom lifted Mrs Tyson kept her talking in the room and she never forgot the scene It showed her a new aspect of a man whose intellectual life was becoming plain to her while his moral life was still something of a mystery The look in Elsmeres face as he sat bending over the maimed young farmer the strength and tenderness of the man the diffidence of the few religious things he said and yet the reality and force of them struck her powerfully He had forgotten her forgotten everything save the bitter human need and the comfort it was his privilege to offer Catherine stood answering Mrs Tyson at random the tears rising in her eyes She slipped out while he was still talking and went home strangely moved
As to the festivities she did her best to join in them The sensitive soul often reproached itself afterwards for having juggled in the matter Was it not her duty to manage a little society and gaiety for her sisters sometimes Her mother could not undertake it and was always plaintively protesting that Catherine would not be young So for a short week or two Catherine did her best to be young and climbed the mountain grass or forded the mountain streams with the energy and the grace of perfect health trembling afterwards at night as she knelt by her window to think how much sheer pleasure the day had contained Her life had always had the tension of a bent bow It seemed to her once or twice during this fortnight as though something were suddenly relaxed in her and she felt a swift Bunyanlike terror of backsliding of falling away But she never confessed herself fully she was even blind to what her perspicacity would have seen so readily in anothers case—the little arts and manœuvres of those about her It did not strike her that Mrs Thornburgh was more flighty and more ebullient than ever that the vicars wife kissed her at odd times and with a quite unwonted effusion or that Agnes and Rose when they were in the wild heart of the mountains or wandering far and wide in search of sticks for a picnic fire showed a perfect genius for avoiding Mr Elsmere whom both of them liked and that in consequence his society almost always fell to her Nor did she ever analyse what would have been thePg 82 attraction of those walks to her without that tall figure at her side that bounding step that picturesque impetuous talk There are moments when Nature throws a kind of heavenly mist and dazzlement round the soul it would fain make happy The soul gropes blindly on if it saw its way it might be timid and draw back but kind powers lead it genially onward through a golden darkness
Meanwhile if she did not know herself she and Elsmere learnt with wonderful quickness and thoroughness to know each other The two households so near together and so isolated from the world besides were necessarily in constant communication And Elsmere made a most stirring element in their common life Never had he been more keen more strenuous It gave Catherine new lights on modern character altogether to see how he was preparing himself for this Surrey living—reading up the history geology and botany of the Weald and its neighbourhood plunging into reports of agricultural commissions or spending his quick brain on village sanitation with the oddest results sometimes so far as his conversation was concerned And then in the middle of his disquisitions which would keep her breathless with a sense of being whirled through space at the tail of an electric kite the kite would come down with a run and the preacher and reformer would come hat in hand to the girl beside him asking her humbly to advise him to pour out on him some of that practical experience of hers among the poor and suffering for the sake of which he would in an instant scornfully fling out of sight all his own magnificent plannings Never had she told so much of her own life to any one her consciousness of it sometimes filled her with a sort of terror lest she might have been trading as it were for her own advantage on the sacred things of God But he would have it His sympathy his sweetness his quick spiritual feeling drew the stories out of her And then how his bright frank eyes would soften With what a reverence would he touch her hand when she said goodbye
And on her side she felt that she knew almost as much about Murewell as he did She could imagine the wild beauty of the Surrey heathland she could see the white square rectory with its sloping walled garden the juniper common just outside the straggling village she could even picture the strange squire solitary in the great Tudor Hall the author of terrible books against the religion of Christ of which she shrank from hearing and share the anxieties of the young rector as to his future relations towards a personality so marked and so important to every soul in the little community he was called to rule Here all was plain sailing she understood him perfectly and her gentle comments or her occasional sarcasms were friendliness itself
But it was when he turned to larger things—to books movements leaders of the day—that she was often puzzled sometimesPg 83 distressed Why would he seem to exalt and glorify rebellion against the established order in the person of Mr Grey Or why ardent as his own faith was would he talk as though opinion was a purely personal matter hardly in itself to be made the subject of moral judgment at all and as though right belief were a blessed privilege and boon rather than a law and an obligation When his comments on men and things took this tinge she would turn silent feeling a kind of painful opposition between his venturesome speech and his clergymans dress
And yet as we all know these ways of speech were not his own He was merely talking the natural Christian language of this generation whereas she the child of a mystic—solitary intense and deeply reflective from her earliest youth—was still thinking and speaking in the language of her fathers generation
But although as often as his unwariness brought him near to these points of jarring he would hurry away from them conscious that here was the one profound difference between them it was clear to him that insensibly she had moved further than she knew from her fathers standpoint Even among these solitudes far from men and literature she had unconsciously felt the breath of her time in some degree As he penetrated deeper into the nature he found it honeycombed as it were here and there with beautiful unexpected softnesses and diffidences Once after a long walk as they were lingering homewards under a cloudy evening sky he came upon the great problem of her life—Rose and Roses art He drew her difficulty from her with the most delicate skill She had laid it bare and was blushing to think how she had asked his counsel almost before she knew where their talk was leading How was it lawful for the Christian to spend the few short years of the earthly combat in any pursuit however noble and exquisite which merely aimed at the gratification of the senses and implied in the pursuer the emphasising rather than the surrender of self
He argued it very much as Kingsley would have argued it tried to lift her to a more intelligent view of a multifarious world dwelling on the function of pure beauty in life and on the influence of beauty on character pointing out the value to the race of all individual development and pressing home on her the natural religious question How are the artistic aptitudes to be explained unless the Great Designer meant them to have a use and function in His world She replied doubtfully that she had always supposed they were lawful for recreation and like any other trade for breadwinning but——
Then he told her much that he knew about the humanising effect of music on the poor He described to her the efforts of a London society of which he was a subscribing member to popularise the best music among the lowest class he dweltPg 84 almost with passion on the difference between the joy to be got out of such things and the common brutalising joys of the workman And you could not have art without artists In this again he was only talking the commonplaces of his day But to her they were not commonplaces at all She looked at him from time to time her great eyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with every fresh thrust of his
I am grateful to you she said at last with an involuntary outburst I am very grateful to you
And she gave a long sigh as if some burden she had long borne in patient silence had been loosened a little if only by the fact of speech about it She was not convinced exactly She was too strong a nature to relinquish a principle without a period of meditative struggle in which conscience should have all its dues But her tone made his heart leap He felt in it a momentary selfsurrender that coming from a creature of so rare a dignity filled him with an exquisite sense of power and yet at the same time with a strange humility beyond words
A day or two later he was the spectator of a curious little scene An aunt of the Leyburns living in Whinborough came to see them She was their fathers youngest sister and the wife of a man who had made some money as a builder in Whinborough When Robert came in he found her sitting on the sofa having tea a large homelylooking woman with gray hair a high brow and prominent white teeth She had unfastened her bonnet strings and a clean white handkerchief lay spread out on her lap When Elsmere was introduced to her she got up and said with some effusiveness and a distinct Westmoreland accent—
Very pleased indeed to make your acquaintance sir while she enclosed his fingers in a capacious hand
Mrs Leyburn looking fidgety and uncomfortable was sitting near her and Catherine the only member of the party who showed no sign of embarrassment when Robert entered was superintending her aunts tea and talking busily the while
Robert sat down at a little distance beside Agnes and Rose who were chattering together a little artificially and of set purpose as it seemed to him But the aunt was not to be ignored She talked too loud not to be overheard and Agnes inwardly noted that as soon as Robert Elsmere appeared she talked louder than before He gathered presently that she was an ardent Wesleyan and that she was engaged in describing to Catherine and Mrs Leyburn the evangelistic exploits of her eldest son who had recently obtained his first circuit as a Wesleyan minister He was shrewd enough too to guess after a minute or two that his presence and probably his obnoxious clerical dress gave additional zest to the recital
Oh his success at Colesbridge has been somethin marvellous he heard her say with uplifted hands and eyes somethinPg 85 marvellous The Lord has blessed him indeed It doesnt matter what it is whether its meetins or sermons or parlour work or just faithful dealins with souls one by one Satan has no cliverer foe than Edward He never shuts his eyes as Edward says himself its like trackin for game is huntin for souls Why the other day he was walkin out from Coventry to a service It was the Sabbath and he saw a man in a bit of grass by the roadside mendin his cart And he stopped did Edward and gave him the Word strong The man seemed puzzled like and said he meant no harm No harm says Edward when youre just doin the devils work every nail you put in and hammerin away mon at your own damnation But heres his letter And while Rose turned away to a far window to hide an almost hysterical inclination to laugh Mrs Fleming opened her bag took out a treasured paper and read with the emphasis and the unction peculiar to a certain type of revivalism—
Poor sinner He was much put about I left him praying the Lord my shaft might rankle in him ay might fester and burn in him till he found no peace but in Jesus He seemed very dark and destitute—no respect for the Word or its ministers A bit farther I met a boy carrying a load of turnips To him too I was faithful and he went on taking without knowing it a precious leaflet with him in his bag Glorious work If Wesleyans will but go on claiming even the highways for God sin will skulk yet
A dead silence Mrs Fleming folded up the letter and put it back into her bag
Theres your true minister she said with a large judicial utterance as she closed the snap Wherever he goes Edward must have souls
And she threw a swift searching look at the young clergyman in the window
He must have very hard work with so much walking and preaching said Catherine gently
Somehow as soon as she spoke Elsmere saw the whole odd little scene with other eyes
His work is just wearin him out said the mother fervently but a minister doesnt think of that Wherever he goes there are sinners saved He stayed last week at a house near Nuneaton At family prayer alone there were five saved And at the prayermeetins on the Sabbath such outpourins of the Spirit Edward comes home his wife tells me just ready to drop Are you acquainted sir she added turning suddenly to Elsmere and speaking in a certain tone of provocation with the labours of our Wesleyan ministers
No said Robert with his pleasant smile not personally But I have the greatest respect for them as a body of devoted men
The look of battle faded from the womans face It was notPg 86 an unpleasant face He even saw strange reminiscences of Catherine in it at times
Youre aboot right there sir Not that they dare take any credit to themselves—its grace sir all grace
Aunt Ellen said Catherine while a sudden light broke over her face I just want you to take Edward a little story from me Ministers are good things but God can do without them
And she laid her hand on her aunts knee with a smile in which there was the slightest touch of affectionate satire
I was up among the fells the other day she went on I met an elderly man cutting wood in a plantation and I stopped and asked him how he was Ah miss he said verra weel verra weel And yet it was nobbut Friday morning lasst I cam oop here awfu bad in my sperrits like For my wife shes sick an a dwinnelt away and Im gettin auld and cant wark as Id used to and it did luke to me as thoo there was naethin afore us nobbut t Union And t mist war low on t fells and I sat oonder t wall wettish and broodin like And theer—all ov a soodent the Lord found me Yes puir Reuben Judge as dawnt matter to naebody the Lord found un It war leyke as thoo His feeace cam aglisterin an ashinin through t mist An iver sence then miss aave jest felt as thoo aa could a cut an stackt all t wood on t fell in naw time at a And he waved his hand round the mountain side which was covered with plantation And all the way along the path for ever so long I could hear him singing chopping away and quavering out Rock of Ages
She paused her delicate face with just a little quiver in the lip turned to her aunt her eyes glowing as though a hidden fire had leapt suddenly outward And yet the gesture the attitude was simplicity and unconsciousness itself Robert had never heard her say anything so intimate before Nor had he ever seen her so inspired so beautiful She had transmuted the conversation at a touch It had been barbarous prose she had turned it into purest poetry Only the noblest souls have such an alchemy as this at command thought the watcher on the other side of the room with a passionate reverence
I wasnt thinkin of narrowin the Lord down to ministers said Mrs Fleming with a certain loftiness We all know He can do without us puir worms
Then seeing that no one replied the good woman got up to go Much of her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervours of revivalist anecdote and while she hunted for gloves and reticule—officiously helped by the younger girls—Robert crossed over to Catherine
You lifted us on to your own high places he said bending down to her I shall carry your story with me through the fells
She looked up and as she met his warm moved look a littlePg 87 glow and tremor crept into the face destroying its exalted expression He broke the spell she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman
You must see my old man she said with an effort he is worth a library of sermons I must introduce him to you
He could think of nothing else to say just then but could only stand impatiently wishing for Mrs Flemings disappearance that he might somehow appropriate her eldest niece But alas when she went Catherine went out with her and reappeared no more though he waited some time
He walked home in a whirl of feeling on the way he stopped and leaning over a gate which led into one of the riverfields gave himself up to the mounting tumult within Gradually from the halfarticulate chaos of hope and memory there emerged the deliberate voice of his inmost manhood
In her and her only is my hearts desire She and she only if she will and God will shall be my wife
He lifted his head and looked out on the dewy field the evening beauty of the hills with a sense of immeasurable change—
Tears
Were in his eyes and in his ears
The murmur of a thousand years
He felt himself knit to his kind to his race as he had never felt before It was as though after a long apprenticeship he had sprung suddenly into maturity—entered at last into the full human heritage But the very intensity and solemnity of his own feeling gave him a rare clearsightedness He realised that he had no certainty of success scarcely even an entirely reasonable hope But what of that Were they not together alone practically in these blessed solitudes Would they not meet tomorrow and next day and the day after Were not time and opportunity all his own How kind her looks are even now Courage And through that maidenly kindness his own passion shall send the last transmuting glow
CHAPTER VII
The following morning about noon Rose who had been coaxed and persuaded by Catherine much against her will into taking a singing class at the school closed the school door behind her with a sigh of relief and tripped up the road to Burwood
How abominably they sang this morning she said to herself with curving lip Talk of the natural northcountry gift for music What ridiculous fictions people set up Dear me what clouds Perhaps we shant get our walk to Shanmoor after all and if we dont and if—if— her cheek flushed with aPg 88 sudden excitement—if Mr Elsmere doesnt propose Mrs Thornburgh will be unmanageable It is all Agnes and I can do to keep her in bounds as it is and if something doesnt come off today shell be for reversing the usual proceeding and asking Catherine her intentions which would ruin everything
Then raising her head she swept her eyes round the sky The wind was freshening the clouds were coming up fast from the westward over the summit of High Fell and the crags on either side a gray straightedged curtain was already lowering
It will hold up yet awhile she thought and if it rains later we can get a carriage at Shanmoor and come back by the road
And she walked on homewards meditating her thin fingers clasped before her the wind blowing her skirts the blue ribbons on her hat the little gold curls on her temples in a pretty manycoloured turmoil about her When she got to Burwood she shut herself into the room which was peculiarly hers the room which had been a stable Now it was full of artistic odds and ends—her fiddle of course and piles of music her violin stand a few deal tables and cane chairs beautified by a number of chiffons bits of Liberty stuffs with the edges still ragged or cheap morsels of Syrian embroidery On the tables stood photographs of musicians and friends—the spoils of her visits to Manchester and of two visits to London which gleamed like golden points in the girls memory The plastered walls were covered with an odd medley Here was a round mirror of which Rose was enormously proud She had extracted it from a farmhouse of the neighbourhood and paid for it with her own money There a group of unfinished headlong sketches of the most fiercely impressionist description—the work and the gift of a knot of Manchester artists who had fêted and flattered the beautiful little Westmoreland girl when she was staying among them to her hearts content Manchester almost alone among our great towns of the present day has not only a musical but a pictorial life of its own; its young artists dub themselves a school study in Paris and when they come home scout the Academy and its methods and pine to set up a rival artcentre skilled in all the methods of the Salon in the murky north Roses uncle originally a clerk in a warehouse and a rough diamond enough had more or less moved with the times like his brother Richard at any rate he had grown rich had married a decent wife and was glad enough to befriend his dead brothers children who wanted nothing of him and did their uncle a credit of which he was sensible by their good manners and good looks Music was the only point at which he touched the culture of the times like so many business men but it pleased him also to pose as a patron of local art so that when Rose went to stay with her childless uncle and aunt she found longhaired artists and fiery musicians about the place who excited and encouraged her musical gift who sketched her while she played and talked to the pretty clever unformedPg 89 creature of London and Paris and Italy and set her pining for that golden vie de Bohème which she alone apparently of all artists was destined never to know
For she was an artist—she would be an artist—let Catherine say what she would She came back from Manchester restless for she knew not what thirsty for the joys and emotions of art determined to be free reckless passionate with Wagner and Brahms in her young blood and found Burwood waiting for her—Burwood the lonely house in the lonely valley of which Catherine was the presiding genius Catherine For Rose what a multitude of associations clustered round the name To her it meant everything at this moment against which her soul rebelled—the most scrupulous order the most rigid selfrepression the most determined sacrificing of this warm kind world with all its indefensible delights to a cold otherworld with its torturing inadmissible claims Even in the midst of her stolen joys at Manchester or London this mere name the mere mental image of Catherine moving through life wrapped in a religious peace and certainty as austere as they were beautiful and asking of all about her the same absolute surrender to an awful Master she gave so easily herself was enough to chill the wayward Rose and fill her with a kind of restless despair And at home as the vicar said the two sisters were always on the verge of conflict Rose had enough of her father in her to suffer in resisting but resist she must by the law of her nature
Now as she threw off her walking things she fell first upon her violin and rushed through a Brahmss Liebeslied her eyes dancing her whole light form thrilling with the joy of it and then with a sudden revulsion she stopped playing and threw herself down listlessly by the open window Close by against the wall was a little lookingglass by which she often arranged her ruffled locks she glanced at it now it showed her a brilliant face enough but drooping lips and eyes darkened with the extravagant melancholy of eighteen
It is come to a pretty pass she said to herself that I should be able to think of nothing but schemes for getting Catherine married and out of my way Considering what she is and what I am and how she has slaved for us all her life I seem to have descended pretty low Heigh ho
And with a portentous sigh she dropped her chin on her hand She was half acting acting to herself Life was not really quite unbearable and she knew it But it relieved her to overdo it
I wonder how much chance there is she mused presently Mr Elsmere will soon be ridiculous Why I saw him gather up those violets she threw away yesterday on Moor Crag And as for her I dont believe she has realised the situation a bit At least if she has she is as unlike other mortals in this as in Pg 90everything else But when she does——
She frowned and meditated but got no light on the problem Chattie jumped up on the windowsill with her usual stealthy aplomb and rubbed herself against the girls face
Oh Chattie cried Rose throwing her arms round the cat if Catherine ll only marry Mr Elsmere my dear and be happy ever afterwards and set me free to live my own life a bit Ill be so good you wont know me Chattie And you shall have a new collar my beauty and cream till you die of it
And springing up she dragged in the cat and snatching a scarlet anemone from a bunch on the table stood opposite Chattie who stood slowly waving her magnificent tail from side to side and glaring as though it were not at all to her taste to be hustled and bustled in this way
Now Chattie listen Will she
A leaf of the flower dropped on Chatties nose
Wont she Will she Wont she Will—— Tiresome flower why did Nature give it such a beggarly few petals If Id had a daisy it would have all come right Come Chattie waltz and lets forget this wicked world
And snatching up her violin the girl broke into a Strauss waltz dancing to it the while her cotton skirts flying her pretty feet twinkling till her eyes glowed and her cheeks blazed with a double intoxication—the intoxication of movement and the intoxication of sound—the cat meanwhile following her with little mincing perplexed steps as though not knowing what to make of her
Rose you madcap cried Agnes opening the door
Not at all my dear said Rose calmly stopping to take breath Excellent practice and uncommonly difficult Try if you can do it and see
The weather held up in a gray grudging sort of way and Mrs Thornburgh especially was all for braving the clouds and going on with the expedition It was galling to her that she herself would have to be driven to Shanmoor behind the fat vicarage pony while the others would be climbing the fells and all sorts of exciting things might be happening Still it was infinitely better to be half in it than not in it at all and she started by the side of the vicarage man in a most delicious flutter The skies might fall any day now Elsmere had not confided in her though she was unable to count the openings she had given him thereto For one of the frankest of men he had kept his secret so far as words went with a remarkable tenacity Probably the neighbourhood of Mrs Thornburgh was enough to make the veriest chatterbox secretive But notwithstanding no one possessing the clue could live in the same house with him these June days without seeing that the whole man was absorbed transformed and that the crisis might be reached at any moment Even the vicar was eager and watchful and playing up to his wife in fine style and if the situation had soPg 91 worked on the vicar Mrs Thornburghs state is easier imagined than described
The walk to Shanmoor need not be chronicled The party kept together Robert fancied sometimes that there was a certain note of purpose in the way in which Catherine clung to the vicar If so it did not disquiet him Never had she been kinder more gentle Nay as the walk went on a lovely gaiety broke through her tranquil manner as though she like the others had caught exhilaration from the sharpened breeze and the towering mountains restored to all their grandeur by the storm clouds
And yet she had started in some little inward trouble She had promised to join this walk to Shanmoor she had promised to go with the others on a picnic the following day but her conscience was pricking her Twice this last fortnight had she been forced to give up a nightschool she held in a little lonely hamlet among the fells because even she had been too tired to walk there and back after a day of physical exertion Were not the world and the flesh encroaching She had been conscious of a strange inner restlessness as they all stood waiting in the road for the vicar and Elsmere Agnes had thought her looking depressed and pale and even dreamt for a moment of suggesting to her to stay at home And then ten minutes after they had started it had all gone her depression blown away by the winds—or charmed away by a happy voice a manly presence a keen responsive eye
Elsmere indeed was gaiety itself He kept up an incessant war with Rose he had a number of little jokes going at the vicars expense which kept that good man in a halfprotesting chuckle most of the way he cleared every gate that presented itself in firstrate Oxford form and climbed every point of rock with a catlike agility that set the girls scoffing at the pretence of invalidism under which he had foisted himself on Whindale
How fine all this black purple is he cried as they topped the ridge and the Shanmoor valley lay before them bounded on the other side by line after line of mountain Wetherlam and the Pikes and Fairfield in the far distance piled sombrely under a sombre sky I had grown quite tired of the sun He had done his best to make you commonplace
Tired of the sun in Westmoreland said Catherine with a little mocking wonder How wanton how prodigal
Does it deserve a Nemesis he said laughing Drowning from now till I depart No matter I can bear a second deluge with an even mind On this enchanted soil all things are welcome
She looked up smiling at his vehemence taking it all as a tribute to the country or to his own recovered health He stood leaning on his stick gazing however not at the view but at her The others stood a little way off laughing and chatterPg 92ing As their eyes met a strange new pulse leapt up in Catherine
The wind is very boisterous here she said with a shiver I think we ought to be going on
And she hurried up to the others nor did she leave their shelter till they were in sight of the little Shanmoor inn where they were to have tea The pony carriage was already standing in front of the inn and Mrs Thornburghs gray curls shaking at the window
William she shouted bring them in Tea is just ready and Mr Ruskin was here last week and there are ever so many new names in the visitors book
While the girls went in Elsmere stood looking a moment at the inn the bridge and the village It was a characteristic Westmoreland scene The low whitewashed inn with its newly painted signboard was to his right the pony at the door lazily flicking off the flies and dropping its greedy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles to his left a gray stone bridge over a broad lightfilled river beyond a little huddled village backed by and apparently built out of the great slate quarry which represented the only industry of the neighbourhood and a tiny towered church—the scene on the Sabbath of Mr Mayhews ministrations Beyond the village shoulders of purple fell and behind the inn masses of broken crag rising at the very head of the valley into a fine pike along whose jagged edges the rainclouds were trailing There was a little lurid stormlight on the river but in general the colour was all dark and rich the white inn gleaming on a green and purple background He took it all into his heart covetously greedily trying to fix it there for ever
Presently he was called in by the vicar and found a tempting tea spread in a light upper room where Agnes and Rose were already making fun of the chromolithographs and rummaging the visitors book The scrambling chattering meal passed like a flash At the beginning of it Mrs Thornburghs small gray eyes had travelled restlessly from face to face as though to say What—no news yet Nothing happened As for Elsmere though it seemed to him at the time one of the brightest moments of existence he remembered little afterwards but the scene the peculiar clean mustiness of the room only just opened for the summer season a print of the Princess of Wales on the wall opposite him a stuffed fox over the mantelpiece Roses golden head and heavy amber necklace and the figure at the vicars right in a gown of a little dark blue check the broad hat shading the white brow and luminous eyes
When tea was over they lounged out on the bridge There was to be no long lingering however The clouds were deepening the rain could not be far off But if they started soon they could probably reach home before it came down Elsmere and Rose hung over the gray stone parapet mottled with the greenPg 93 and gold of innumerable mosses and looked down through a fringe of English maidenhair growing along the coping into the clear eddies of the stream Suddenly he raised himself on one elbow and shading his eyes looked to where the vicar and Catherine were standing in front of the inn touched for an instant by a beam of fitful light slipping between two great rainclouds
How well that hat and dress become your sister he said the words breaking as it were from his lips
Do you think Catherine pretty said Rose with an excellent pretence of innocence detaching a little pebble and flinging it harmlessly at a waterwagtail balancing on a stone below
He flushed Pretty You might as well apply the word to your mountains to the exquisite river to that great purple peak
Yes thought Rose she is not unlike that high cold peak But her girlish sympathy conquered her it was very exciting and she liked Elsmere She turned back to him her face overspread with a quite irrepressible smile He reddened still more then they stared into each others eyes and without a word more understood each other perfectly
Rose held out her hand to him with a little brusque bon camarade gesture He pressed it warmly in his
That was nice of you he cried Very nice of you Friends then
She nodded and drew her hand away just as Agnes and the vicar disturbed them
Meanwhile Catherine was standing by the side of the pony carriage watching Mrs Thornburghs preparations
Youre sure you dont mind driving home alone she said in a troubled voice Maynt I go with you
My dear certainly not As if I wasnt accustomed to going about alone at my time of life No no my dear you go and have your walk youll get home before the rain Ready James
The old vicarage factotum could not imagine what made his charge so anxious to be off She actually took the whip out of his hand and gave a flick to the pony who swerved and started off in a way which would have made his mistress clamorously nervous under any other circumstances Catherine stood looking after her
Now then right about face and quick march exclaimed the vicar Weve got to race that cloud over the Pike Itll be up with us in no time
Off they started and were soon climbing the slippery green slopes or crushing through the fern of the fell they had descended earlier in the afternoon Catherine for some little way walked last of the party the vicar in front of her Then Elsmere picked a stonecrop quarrelled over its precise name with Rose and waited for Catherine who had a very close and familiar knowledge of the botany of the district
Pg 94
You have crushed me he said laughing as he put the flower carefully into his pocketbook but it is worth while to be crushed by any one who can give so much ground for their knowledge How you do know your mountains—from their peasants to their plants
I have had more than ten ablebodied years living and scrambling among them she said smiling
Do you keep up all your visits and teaching in the winter
Oh not so much of course But people must be helped and taught in the winter And our winter is often not as hard as yours down south
Do you go on with that nightschool in Poll Ghyll for instance he said with another note in his voice
Catherine looked at him and coloured Rose has been telling tales she said I wish she would leave my proceedings alone Poll Ghyll is the family bone of contention at present Yes I go on with it I always take a lantern when the night is dark and I know every inch of the ground and Bob is always with me arent you Bob
And she stooped down to pat the collie beside her Bob looked up at her blinking with a proudly confidential air as though to remind her that there were a good many such secrets between them
I like to fancy you with your lantern in the dark he cried the hidden emotion piercing through the night wind blowing about you the black mountains to right and left of you some little stream perhaps running beside you for company your dog guarding you and all good angels going with you
She flushed still more deeply the impetuous words affected her strangely
Dont fancy it at all she said laughing It is a very small and very natural incident of ones life here Look back Mr Elsmere the rain has beaten us
He looked back and saw the great Pike over Shanmoor village blotted out in a moving deluge of rain The quarry opposite on the mountain side gleamed green and vivid against the inkblack fell some clothes hanging out in the field below the church flapped wildly hither and thither in the sudden gale the only spot of white in the prevailing blackness children with their petticoats over their heads ran homewards along the road the walking party had just quitted the stream beneath spreading broadly through the fields shivered and wrinkled under the blast Up it came and the rain mists with it In another minute the storm was beating in their faces
Caught cried Elsmere in a voice almost of jubilation Let me help you into your cloak Miss Leyburn
He flung it round her and struggled into his own mackintosh The vicar in front of them turned and waved his hand to them in laughing despair then hurried after the others evidentlyPg 95 with the view of performing for them the same office Elsmere had just performed for Catherine
Robert and his companion struggled on for a while in a breathless silence against the deluge which seemed to beat on them from all sides He walked behind her sheltering her by his tall form and his big umbrella as much as he could His pulses were all aglow with the joy of the storm It seemed to him that he rejoiced with the thirsty grass over which the rain streams were running that his heart filled with the shrunken becks as the flood leapt along them Let the elements thunder and rave as they pleased Could he not at a word bring the light of that face those eyes upon him Was she not his for a moment in the rain and the solitude as she had never been in the commonplace sunshine of their valley life
Suddenly he heard an exclamation and saw her run on in front of him What was the matter Then he noticed for the first time that Rose far ahead was still walking in her cotton dress The little scatterbrain had of course forgotten her cloak But monstrous There was Catherine stripping off her own Rose refusing it In vain The sisters determined arms put it round her Rose is enwrapped buttoned up before she knows where she is and Catherine falls back pursued by some shaft from Rose more sarcastic than grateful to judge by the tone of it
Miss Leyburn what have you been doing
Rose had forgotten her cloak she said briefly She has a very thin dress on and she is the only one of us that takes cold easily
You must take my mackintosh he said at once
She laughed in his face
As if I should do anything of the sort
You must he said quietly stripping it off Do you think that you are always to be allowed to go through the world taking thought of other people and allowing no one to take thought for you
He held it out to her
No no This is absurd Mr Elsmere You are not strong yet And I have often told you that nothing hurts me
He hung it deliberately over his arm Very well then there it stays
And they hurried on again she biting her lip and on the point of laughter
Mr Elsmere be sensible she said presently her look changing to one of real distress I should never forgive myself if you got a chill after your illness
You will not be called upon he said in the most matteroffact tone Mens coats are made to keep out weather and he pointed to his own closely buttoned up Your dress—I cant help being disrespectful under the circumstances—will be wet through in ten minutes
Another silence Then he overtook her
Pg 96
Please Miss Leyburn he said stopping her
There was an instants mute contest between them The rain splashed on the umbrellas She could not help it she broke down into the merriest most musical laugh of a child that can hardly stop itself and he joined
Mr Elsmere you are ridiculous
But she submitted He put the mackintosh round her thinking bold man as she turned her rosy raindewed face to him of Wordsworths Louisa and the poets cry of longing
And yet he was not so bold either Even at this moment of exhilaration he was conscious of a bar that checked and arrested Something—what was it—drew invisible lines of defence about her A sort of divine fear of her mingled with his rising passion Let him not risk too much too soon
They walked on briskly and were soon on the Whindale side of the pass To the left of them the great hollow of High Fell unfolded stormbeaten and dark the river issuing from the heart of it like an angry voice
What a change he said coming up with her as the path widened How impossible that it should have been only yesterday afternoon I was lounging up here in the heat by the pool where the stream rises watching the white butterflies on the turf and reading Laodamia
Laodamia she said half sighing as she caught the name Is it one of those you like best
Yes he said bending forward that he might see her in spite of the umbrella How superb it is—the roll the majesty of it the severe chastened beauty of the main feeling the individual lines
And he quoted line after line lingering over the cadences
It was my fathers favourite of all she said in the low vibrating voice of memory He said the last verse to me the day before he died
Robert recalled it—
Yet tears to human suffering are due
And mortal hopes defeated and oerthrown
Are mourned by man and not by man alone
As fondly we believe
Poor Richard Leyburn Yet where had the defeat lain
Was he happy in his school life he asked gently Was teaching what he liked
Oh yes—only— Catherine paused and then added hurriedly as though drawn on in spite of herself by the grave sympathy of his look I never knew anybody so good who thought himself of so little account He always believed that he had missed everything wasted everything and that anybody else would have made infinitely more out of his life He was always blaming scourging himself And all the time he was the noblest Pg 97purest most devoted——
She stopped Her voice had passed beyond her control Elsmere was startled by the feeling she showed Evidently he had touched one of the few sore places in this pure heart It was as though her memory of her father had in it elements of almost intolerable pathos as though the childs brooding love and loyalty were in perpetual protest even now after this lapse of years against the verdict which an overscrupulous despondent soul had pronounced upon itself Did she feel that he had gone uncomforted out of life—even by her—even by religion—was that the sting
Oh I can understand he said reverently—I can understand I have come across it once or twice that fierce selfjudgment of the good It is the most stirring and humbling thing in life Then his voice dropped And after the last conflict—the last quailing breath—the last onslaughts of doubt or fear—think of the Vision waiting—the Eternal Comfort—
Oh my only Light
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell all night
The words fell from the softened voice like noble music
There was a pause Then Catherine raised her eyes to his They swam in tears and yet the unspoken thanks in them were radiance itself It seemed to him as though she came closer to him like a child to an elder who has soothed and satisfied an inward smart
They walked on in silence They were just nearing the swollen river which roared below them On the opposite bank two umbrellas were vanishing through the field gate into the road but the vicar had turned and was waiting for them They could see his becloaked figure leaning on his stick through the light wreaths of mist that floated above the tumbling stream The abnormally heavy rain had ceased but the clouds seemed to be dragging along the very floor of the valley
The steppingstones came into sight He leaped on the first and held out his hand to her When they started she would have refused his help with scorn Now after a moments hesitation she yielded and he felt her dear weight on him as he guided her carefully from stone to stone In reality it is both difficult and risky to be helped over steppingstones You had much better manage for yourself and half way through Catherine had a mind to tell him so But the words died on her lips which smiled instead He could have wished that passage from stone to stone could have lasted for ever She was wrapped up grotesquely in his mackintosh her hat was all bedraggled her gloves dripped in his and in spite of all he could have vowed that anything so lovely as that delicately cut gravely smiling face swaying above the rushing brown water was never seen in Westmoreland wilds before
Pg 98
It is clearing he cried with ready optimism as they reached the bank We shall get our picnic tomorrow after all—we must get it Promise me it shall be fine—and you will be there
The vicar was only fifty yards away waiting for them against the field gate But Robert held her eagerly imperiously—and it seemed to her her head was still dizzy with the water
Promise he repeated his voice dropping
She could not stop to think of the absurdity of promising for Westmoreland weather She could only say faintly Yes and so release her hand
You are pretty wet said the vicar looking from one to the other with a curiosity which Roberts quick sense divined at once was directed to something else than the mere condition of their garments But Catherine noticed nothing she walked on wrestling blindly with she knew not what till they reached the vicarage gate There stood Mrs Thornburgh the light drizzle into which the rain had declined beating unheeded on her curls and ample shoulders She stared at Roberts drenched condition but he gave her no time to make remarks
Dont take it off he said with a laughing wave of the hand to Catherine I will come for it tomorrow morning
And he ran up the drive conscious at last that it might be prudent to get himself into something less spongelike than his present attire as quickly as possible
The vicar followed him
Dont keep Catherine my dear Theres nothing to tell Nobodys the worse
Mrs Thornburgh took no heed Opening the iron gate she went through it on to the deserted rainbeaten road laid both her hands on Catherines shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes The vicars anxious hint was useless She could contain herself no longer She had watched them from the vicarage come down the fell together had seen them cross the stepping stones lingeringly hand in hand
My dear Catherine she cried effusively kissing Catherines glowing cheek under the shelter of the laurustinus that made a bower of the gate My dear Catherine
Catherine gazed at her in astonishment Mrs Thornburghs eyes were all alive and swarming with questions If it had been Rose she would have let them out in one fell flight But Catherines personality kept her in awe And after a second as the two stood together a deep flush rose on Catherines face and an expression of halffrightened apology dawned in Mrs Thornburghs
Catherine drew herself away Will you please give Mr Elsmere his mackintosh she said taking it off I shant want it this little way
And putting it on Mrs Thornburghs arm she turned away walking quickly round the bend of the road
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Mrs Thornburgh watched her openmouthed and moved slowly back to the house in a state of complete collapse
I always knew—she said with a groan—I always knew it would never go right if it was Catherine Why was it Catherine
And she went in still hurling at Providence the same vindictive query
Meanwhile Catherine hurrying home the receding flush leaving a sudden pallor behind it was twisting her hands before her in a kind of agony
What have I been doing she said to herself What have I been doing
At the gate of Burwood something made her look up She saw the girls in their own room—Agnes was standing behind Rose had evidently rushed forward to see Catherine come in and now retreated as suddenly when she saw her sister look up
Catherine understood it all in an instant They too are on the watch she thought to herself bitterly The strong reticent nature was outraged by the perception that she had been for days the unconscious actor in a drama of which her sisters and Mrs Thornburgh had been the silent and intelligent spectators
She came down presently from her room very white and quiet admitted that she was tired and said nothing to anybody Agnes and Rose noticed the change at once whispered to each other when they found an opportunity and foreboded ill
After their teasupper Catherine unperceived slipped out of the little lane gate and climbed the stony path above the house leading on to the fell The rain had ceased but the clouds hung low and threatening and the close air was saturated with moisture As she gained the bare fell sounds of water met her on all sides The river cried hoarsely to her from below the becks in the little ghylls were full and thunderous and beside her over the smooth grass slid many a newborn rivulet the child of the storm and destined to vanish with the night Catherines soul went out to welcome the gray damp of the hills She knew them best in this mood They were thus most her own
She climbed on till at last she reached the crest of the ridge Behind her lay the valley and on its further side the fells she had crossed in the afternoon Before her spread a long green vale compared to which Whindale with its white road its church and parsonage and scattered houses was the great world itself Marrisdale had no road and not a single house As Catherine descended into it she saw not a sign of human life There were sheep grazing in the silence of the long June twilight the blackish walls ran down and up again dividing the green hollow with melancholy uniformity Here and there was a sheepfold suggesting the bleakness of winter nights and here and there a rough stone barn for storing fodder And beyond the vale eastwards and northwards Catherine lookedPg 100 out upon a wild sea of moors wrapped in mists sullen and stormbeaten while to the left the clouds hung deepest and inkiest over the high points of the Ullswater mountains
When she was once below the pass man and his world were shut out The girl figure in the blue cloak and hood was absolutely alone She descended till she reached a point where a little stream had been turned into a stone trough for cattle Above it stood a gnarled and solitary thorn Catherine sank down on a rock at the foot of the tree It was a seat she knew well she had lingered there with her father she had thought and prayed there as girl and woman she had wrestled there often with despondency or grief or some of those subtle spiritual temptations which were all her pure youth had known till the inner light had dawned again and the humble enraptured soul could almost have traced amid the shadows of that dappled moorland world between her and the clouds the white stoles and sleeping wings of ministering spirits
But no wrestle had ever been so hard as this And with what fierce suddenness had it come upon her She looked back over the day with bewilderment She could see dimly that the Catherine who had started on that Shanmoor walk had been full of vague misgivings other than those concerned with a few neglected duties There had been an undefined sense of unrest of difference of broken equilibrium She had shown it in the way in which at first she had tried to keep herself and Robert Elsmere apart
And then beyond the departure from Shanmoor she seemed to lose the thread of her own history Memory was drowned in a feeling to which the resisting soul as yet would give no name She laid her head on her knees trembling She heard again the sweet imperious tones with which he broke down her opposition about the cloak she felt again the grasp of his steadying hand on hers
But it was only for a very few minutes that she drifted thus She raised her head again scourging herself in shame and selfreproach recapturing the empire of the soul with a strong effort She set herself to a stern analysis of the whole situation Clearly Mrs Thornburgh and her sisters had been aware for some indefinite time that Mr Elsmere had been showing a peculiar interest in her Their eyes had been open She realised now with hot cheeks how many meetings and têteàtêtes had been managed for her and Elsmere and how complacently she had fallen into Mrs Thornburghs snares
Have I encouraged him she asked herself sternly
Yes cried the smarting conscience
Can I marry him
No said conscience again not without deserting your post not without betraying your trust
What post What trust Ah conscience was ready enough with the answer Was it not just ten years since as a girl ofPg 101 sixteen prematurely old and thoughtful she had sat beside her fathers deathbed while her delicate hysterical mother in a state of utter collapse was kept away from him by the doctors She could see the drawn face the restless melancholy eyes Catherine my darling you are the strong one They will look to you Support them And she could see in imagination her own young face pressed against the pillows Yes father always—always—Catherine life is harder the narrow way narrower than ever I die—and memory caught still the piteous longdrawn breath by which the voice was broken—in much—much perplexity about many things You have a clear soul an iron will Strengthen the others Bring them safe to the day of account—Yes father with Gods help Oh with Gods help
That longpast dialogue is clear and sharp to her now as though it were spoken afresh in her ears And how has she kept her pledge She looks back humbly on her life of incessant devotion on the tie of long dependence which has bound to her her weak and widowed mother on her relations to her sisters the efforts she has made to train them in the spirit of her fathers life and beliefs
Have those efforts reached their term Can it be said in any sense that her work is done her promise kept
Oh no—no she cries to herself with vehemence Her mother depends on her every day and hour for protection comfort enjoyment The girls are at the opening of life—Agnes twenty Rose eighteen with all experience to come And Rose—— Ah at the thought of Rose Catherines heart sinks deeper and deeper—she feels a culprit before her fathers memory What is it has gone so desperately wrong with her training of the child Surely she has given love enough anxious thought enough and here is Rose only fighting to be free from the yoke of her fathers wishes from the galling pressure of the family tradition
No Her task has just now reached its most difficult its most critical moment How can she leave it Impossible
What claim can she put against these supreme claims—of her promise her mothers and sisters need
His claim Oh no—no She admits with soreness and humiliation unspeakable that she has done him wrong If he loves her she has opened the way thereto she confesses in her scrupulous honesty that when the inevitable withdrawal comes she will have given him cause to think of her hardly slightingly She flinches painfully under the thought But it does not alter the matter This girl brought up in the austerest school of Christian selfgovernment knows nothing of the divine rights of passion Half modern literature is based upon them Catherine Leyburn knew of no supreme right but the right of God to the obedience of man
Oh and besides—besides—it is impossible that he should carePg 102 so very much The time is so short—there is so little in her comparatively to attract a man of such resource such attainments such access to the best things of life
She cannot—in a kind of terror—she will not believe in her own loveworthiness in her own power to deal a lasting wound
Then her own claim Has she any claim has the poor bounding heart that she cannot silence do what she will through all this strenuous debate no claim to satisfaction to joy
She locks her hands round her knees conscious poor soul that the worst struggle is here the quickest agony here But she does not waver for an instant And her weapons are all ready The inmost soul of her is a fortress well stored whence at any moment the mere personal craving of the natural man can be met repulsed slain
Man approacheth so much the nearer unto God the farther he departeth from all earthly comfort
If thou couldst perfectly annihilate thyself and empty thyself of all created love then should I be constrained to flow into thee with greater abundance of grace
When thou lookest unto the creature the sight of the Creator is withdrawn from thee
Learn in all things to overcome thyself for the love of thy Creator
She presses the sentence she has so often meditated in her long solitary walks about the mountains into her heart And one fragment of George Herbert especially rings in her ears solemnly funereally—
Thy Saviour sentenced joy
Ay sentenced it for ever—the personal craving the selfish need that must be filled at any cost In the silence of the descending night Catherine quietly with tears carried out that sentence and slew her young newborn joy at the feet of the Master
She stayed where she was for a while after this crisis in a kind of bewilderment and stupor but maintaining a perfect outward tranquillity Then there was a curious little epilogue
It is all over she said to herself tenderly But he has taught me so much—he has been so good to me—he is so good Let me take to my heart some counsel—some word of his and obey it sacredly—silently—for these days sake
Then she fell thinking again and she remembered their talk about Rose How often she had pondered it since In this intense trance of feeling it breaks upon her finally that he is right May it not be that he with his clearer thought his wider knowledge of life has laid his finger on the weak point in her guardianship of her sisters I have tried to stifle her passion she thought to push it out of the way as a hindrance Ought I not rather to have taught her to make of it a step inPg 103 the ladder—to have moved her to bring her gifts to the altar Oh let me take his word for it—be ruled by him in this one thing once
She bowed her face on her knees again It seemed to her that she had thrown herself at Elsmeres feet that her cheek was pressed against that young brown hand of his How long the moment lasted she never knew When at last she rose stiff and weary darkness was overtaking even the lingering northern twilight The angry clouds had dropped lower on the moors a few sheep beside the glimmering stone trough showed dimly white the night wind was sighing through the untenanted valley and the scanty branches of the thorn White mists lay along the hollow of the dale they moved weirdly under the breeze She could have fancied them a troop of wraiths to whom she had flung her warm crushed heart and who were bearing it away to burial
As she came slowly over the pass and down the Whindale side of the fell a clear purpose was in her mind Agnes had talked to her only that morning of Rose and Roses desire and she had received the news with her habitual silence
The house was lit up when she returned Her mother had gone upstairs Catherine went to her but even Mrs Leyburn discovered that she looked worn out and she was sent off to bed She went along the passage quickly to Roses room listening a moment at the door Yes Rose was inside crooning some German song and apparently alone She knocked and went in
Rose was sitting on the edge of her bed a white dressinggown over her shoulders her hair in a glorious confusion all about her She was swaying backwards and forwards dreamily singing and she started up when she saw Catherine
Röschen said the elder sister going up to her with a tremor of heart and putting her motherly arms round the curly golden hair and the halfcovered shoulders you never told me of that letter from Manchester but Agnes did Did you think Röschen I would never let you have your way Oh I am not so hard I may have been wrong—I think I have been wrong you shall do what you will Röschen If you want to go I will ask mother
Rose pushing herself away with one hand stood staring She was struck dumb by this sudden breaking down of Catherines long resistance And what a strange white Catherine What did it mean Catherine withdrew her arms with a little sigh and moved away
I just came to tell you that Röschen she said but I am very tired and must not stay
Catherine very tired Rose thought the skies must be falling
Cathie she cried leaping forward just as her sister gained the door Oh Cathie you are an angel and I am a nasty odious little wretch But oh tell me what is the matter
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And she flung her strong young arms round Catherine with a passionate strength
The elder sister struggled to release herself
Let me go Rose she said in a low voice Oh you must let me go
And wrenching herself free she drew her hand over her eyes as though trying to drive away the mist from them
Goodnight Sleep well
And she disappeared shutting the door noiselessly after her Rose stood staring a moment and then swept off her feet by a flood of many feelings—remorse love fear sympathy—threw herself face downwards on her bed and burst into a passion of tears
CHAPTER VIII
Catherine was much perplexed as to how she was to carry out her resolution she pondered over it through much of the night She was painfully anxious to make Elsmere understand without a scene without a definite proposal and a definite rejection It was no use letting things drift Something brusque and marked there must be She quietly made her dispositions
It was long after the gray vaporous morning stole on the hills before she fell lightly restlessly asleep To her healthful youth a sleepless night was almost unknown She wondered through the long hours of it whether now like other women she had had her story passed through her one supreme moment and she thought of one or two worthy old maids she knew in the neighbourhood with a new and curious pity Had any of them too gone down into Marrisdale and come up widowed indeed
All through no doubt there was a certain melancholy pride in her own spiritual strength It was not mine she would have said with perfect sincerity but Gods Still whatever its source it had been there at command and the reflection carried with it a sad sense of security It was as though a soldier after his first skirmish should congratulate himself on being bulletproof
To be sure there was an intense trouble and disquiet in the thought that she and Mr Elsmere must meet again probably many times The period of his original invitation had been warmly extended by the Thornburghs She believed he meant to stay another week or ten days in the valley But in the spiritual exaltation of the night she felt herself equal to any conflict any endurance and she fell asleep the hands clasped on her breast expressing a kind of resolute patience like those of some old sepulchral monument
The following morning Elsmere examined the clouds and the barometer with abnormal interest The day was sunless andPg 105 lowering but not raining and he represented to Mrs Thornburgh with a hypocritical assumption of the practical man that with rugs and mackintoshes it was possible to picnic on the dampest grass But he could not make out the vicars wife She was all sighs and flightiness She supposed they could go and didnt see what good it would do them she had twenty different views and all of them more or less mixed up with pettishness as to the best place for a picnic on a gray day and at last she grew so difficult that Robert suspected something desperately wrong with the household and withdrew lest male guests might be in the way Then she pursued him into the study and thrust a Spectator into his hands begging him to convey it to Burwood She asked it lugubriously with many sighs her cap much askew Robert could have kissed her curls and all one moment for suggesting the errand and the next could almost have signed her committal to the county lunatic asylum with a clear conscience What an extraordinary person it was
Off he went however with his Spectator under his arm whistling Mrs Thornburgh caught the sounds through an open window and tore the flannel across she was preparing for a mothers meeting with a noise like the rattle of musketry Whistling She would like to know what grounds he had for it indeed She always knew—she always said and she would go on saying—that Catherine Leyburn would die an old maid
Meanwhile Robert had strolled across to Burwood with the lightest heart By way of keeping all his anticipations within the bounds of strict reason he told himself that it was impossible he should see her in the morning She was always busy in the morning
He approached the house as a Catholic might approach a shrine That was her window that upper casement with the little Banksia rose twining round it One night when he and the vicar had been out late on the hills he had seen a light streaming from it across the valley and had thought how the mistress of the maiden solitude within shone in a naughty world
In the drive he met Mrs Leyburn who was strolling about the garden She at once informed him with much languid plaintiveness that Catherine had gone to Whinborough for the day and would not be able to join the picnic
Elsmere stood still
Gone he cried But it was all arranged with her yesterday Mrs Leyburn shrugged her shoulders She too was evidently much put out
So I told her But you know Mr Elsmere—and the gentle widow dropped her voice as though communicating a secret—when Catherines once made up her mind you may as well try to dig away High Fell as move her She asked me to tell Mrs Thornburgh—will you please—that she found it was her dayPg 106 for the orphan asylum and one or two other pieces of business and she must go
Mrs Thornburgh And not a word for him—for him to whom she had given her promise She had gone to Whinborough to avoid him and she had gone in the brusquest way that it might be unmistakable
The young man stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his long coat hearing with half an ear the remarks that Mrs Leyburn was making to him about the picnic Was the wretched thing to come off after all
He was too proud and sore to suggest an alternative But Mrs Thornburgh managed that for him When he got back he told the vicar in the hall of Miss Leyburns flight in the fewest possible words and then his long legs vanished up the stairs in a twinkling and the door of his room shut behind him A few minutes afterwards Mrs Thornburghs shrill voice was heard in the hall calling to the servant
Sarah let the hamper alone Take out the chickens
And a minute after the vicar came up to his door
Elsmere Mrs Thornburgh thinks the day is too uncertain better put it off
To which Elsmere from inside replied with a vigorous assent The vicar slowly descended to tackle his spouse who seemed to have established herself for the morning in his sanctum though the parish accounts were clamouring to be done and this morning in the week belonged to them by immemorial usage
But Mrs Thornburgh was unmanageable She sat opposite to him with one hand on each knee solemnly demanding of him if he knew what was to be done with young women nowadays because she didnt
The tormented vicar declined to be drawn into so illimitable a subject recommended patience declared that it might be all a mistake and tried hard to absorb himself in the consideration of 2s 8d plus 2s 11d minus 9d
And I suppose William said his wife to him at last with withering sarcasm that youd sit by and see Catherine break that young mans heart and send him back to his mother no better than he came here in spite of all the beeftea and jelly Sarah and I have been putting into him and never lift a finger Youd see his life blasted and youd do nothing—nothing I suppose
And she fixed him with a fiercely interrogative eye
Of course cried the vicar roused I should think so What good did an outsider ever get by meddling in a love affair Take care of yourself Emma If the girl doesnt care for him you cant make her
The vicars wife rose the upturned corners of her mouth saying unutterable things
Doesnt care for him she echoed in a tone which implied that her husbands headpiece was past praying for
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Yes doesnt care for him said the vicar nettled What else should make her give him a snub like this
Mrs Thornburgh looked at him again with exasperation Then a curious expression stole into her eyes
Oh the Lord only knows she said with a hasty freedom of speech which left the vicar feeling decidedly uncomfortable as she shut the door after her
However if the Higher Powers alone knew Mrs Thornburgh was convinced that she could make a very shrewd guess at the causes of Catherines behaviour In her opinion it was all pure cussedness Catherine Leyburn had always conducted her life on principles entirely different from those of other people Mrs Thornburgh wholly denied as she sat bridling by herself that it was a Christian necessity to make yourself and other people uncomfortable Yet this was what this perverse young woman was always doing Here was a charming young man who had fallen in love with her at first sight and had done his best to make the fact plain to her in the most chivalrous devoted ways Catherine encourages him walks with him talks with him is for a whole three weeks more gay and cheerful and more like other girls than she has ever been known to be and then at the end of it just when everybody is breathlessly awaiting the natural dénouement goes off to spend the day that should have been the day of her betrothal in pottering about orphan asylums leaving everybody but especially the poor young man to look ridiculous No Mrs Thornburgh had no patience with her—none at all It was all because she would not be happy like anybody else but must needs set herself up to be peculiar Why not live on a pillar and go into hairshirts at once Then the rest of the world would know what to be at
Meanwhile Rose was in no small excitement While her mother and Elsmere had been talking in the garden she had been discreetly waiting in the back behind the angle of the house and when she saw Elsmere walk off she followed him with eager sympathetic eyes
Poor fellow she said to herself but this time with the little tone of patronage which a girl of eighteen conscious of graces and good looks never shrinks from assuming towards an elder male especially a male in love with some one else I wonder whether he thinks he knows anything about Catherine
But her own feeling today was very soft and complex Yesterday it had been all hot rebellion Today it was all remorse and wondering curiosity What had brought Catherine into her room with that white face and that bewildering change of policy What had made her do this brusque discourteous thing today Rose having been delayed by the loss of one of her goloshes in a bog had been once near her and Elsmere during that dripping descent from Shanmoor They had been so clearly absorbed in one another that she had fled on guiltily to Agnes golosh in hand without waiting to put it on confident howPg 108ever that neither Elsmere nor Catherine had been aware of her little adventure And at the Shanmoor tea Catherine herself had discussed the picnic offering in fact to guide the party to a particular ghyll in High Fell better known to her than any one else
Oh of course its our salvation in this world and the next thats in the way thought Rose sitting crouched up in a grassy nook in the garden her shoulders up to her ears her chin in her hands I wish to goodness Catherine wouldnt think so much about mine at any rate I hate added this incorrigible young person—I hate being the third part of a moral obstacle against my will I declare I dont believe we should any of us go to perdition even if Catherine did marry And what a wretch I am to think so after last night Oh dear I wish shed let me do something for her I wish shed ask me to black her boots for her or put in her tuckers or tidy her drawers for her or anything worse still and Id do it and welcome
It was getting uncomfortably serious all round Rose admitted But there was one element of comedy besides Mrs Thornburgh and that was Mrs Leyburns unconsciousness
Mamma is too good thought the girl with a little ripple of laughter She takes it as a matter of course that all the world should admire us and shed scorn to believe that anybody did it from interested motives
Which was perfectly true Mrs Leyburn was too devoted to her daughters to feel any fidgety interest in their marrying Of course the most eligible persons would be only too thankful to marry them when the moment came Meanwhile her devotion was in no need of the confirming testimony of lovers It was sufficient in itself and kept her mind gently occupied from morning till night If it had occurred to her to notice that Robert Elsmere had been paying special attentions to any one in the family she would have suggested with perfect naïveté that it was herself For he had been to her the very pink of courtesy and consideration and she was of opinion that poor Richards views of the degeneracy of Oxford men would have been modified could he have seen this particular specimen
Later on in the morning Rose had been out giving Bob a run while Agnes drove with her mother On the way home she overtook Elsmere returning from an errand for the vicar
It is not so bad she said to him laughing pointing to the sky we really might have gone
Oh it would have been cheerless he said simply His look of depression amazed her She felt a quick movement of sympathy a wild wish to bid him cheer up and fight it out If she could just have shown him Catherine as she looked last night Why couldnt she talk it out with him Absurd conventions She had half a mind to try
But the grave look of the man beside her deterred even her young halfchildish audacity
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Catherine will have a good day for all her business she said carelessly
He assented quietly Oh after that handshake on the bridge yesterday she could not stand it—she must give him a hint how the land lay
I suppose she will spend the afternoon with Aunt Ellen Mr Elsmere what did you think of Aunt Ellen
Elsmere started and could not help smiling into the young girls beautiful eyes which were radiant with fun
A most estimable person he said Are you on good terms with her Miss Rose
Oh dear no she said with a little face Im not a Leyburn I wear æsthetic dresses and Aunt Ellen has special leadings of the spirit to the effect that the violin is a souldestroying instrument Oh dear—and the girls mouth twisted—its alarming to think if Catherine hadnt been Catherine how like Aunt Ellen she might have been
She flashed a mischievous look at him and thrilled as she caught the sudden change of expression in his face
Your sister has the Westmoreland strength in her—one can see that he said evidently speaking with some difficulty
Strength Oh yes Catherine has plenty of strength cried Rose and then was silent a moment You know Mr Elsmere she went on at last obeying some inward impulse—or perhaps you dont know—that at home we are all Catherines creatures She does exactly what she likes with us When my father died she was sixteen Agnes was ten I was eight We came here to live—we were not very rich of course and mamma wasnt strong Well she did everything she taught us—we have scarcely had any teacher but her since then she did most of the housekeeping and you can see for yourself what she does for the neighbours and poor folk She is never ill she is never idle she always knows her own mind We owe everything we are almost everything we have to her Her nursing has kept mamma alive through one or two illnesses Our lawyer says he never knew any business affairs better managed than ours and Catherine manages them The one thing she never takes any care or thought for is herself What we should do without her I cant imagine and yet sometimes I think if it goes on much longer none of us three will have any character of our own left After all you know it may be good for the weak people to struggle on their own feet if the strong would only believe it instead of always being carried The strong people neednt be always trampling on themselves—if they only knew——
She stopped abruptly flushing scarlet over her own daring Her eyes were feverishly bright and her voice vibrated under a strange mixture of feelings—sympathy reverence and a passionate inner admiration struggling with rebellion and protest
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They had reached the gate of the vicarage Elsmere stopped and looked at his companion with a singular lightening of expression He saw perfectly that the young impetuous creature understood him that she felt his cause was not prospering and that she wanted to help him He saw that what she meant by this picture of their common life was that no one need expect Catherine Leyburn to be an easy prey that she wanted to impress on him in her eager way that such lives as her sisters were not to be gathered at a touch without difficulty from the branch that bears them She was exhorting him to courage—nay he caught more than exhortation—a sort of secret message from her bright excited looks and incoherent speech that made his heart leap But pride and delicacy forbade him to put his feeling into words
You dont hope to persuade me that your sister reckons you among the weak persons of the world he said laughing his hand on the gate Rose could have blessed him for thus turning the conversation What on earth could she have said next
She stood bantering a little longer and then ran off with Bob
Elsmere passed the rest of the morning wandering meditatively over the cloudy fells After all he was only where he was before the blessed madness the upflooding hope nay almost certainty of yesterday His attack had been for the moment repulsed He gathered from Roses manner that Catherines action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaning nor accidental as on second thoughts he had been halftrying to persuade himself Evidently those about her felt it to be ominous Well then at worst when they met they would meet on a different footing with a sense of something critical between them Oh if he did but know a little more clearly how he stood He spent a noonday hour on a gray rock on the side of the fell between Whindale and Marrisdale studying the path opposite the steppingstones the bit of white road The minutes passed in a kind of trance of memory Oh that soft childlike movement to him after his speech about her father that heavenly yielding and selfforgetfulness which shone in her every look and movement as she stood balancing on the steppingstones If after all she should prove cruel to him would he not have a legitimate grievance a heavy charge to fling against her maiden gentleness He trampled on the notion Let her do with him as she would she would be his saint always unquestioned unarraigned
But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that any man least of all a man of Elsmeres temperament could be very hopeless Oh yes he had been rash foolhardy Do such divine creatures stoop to mortal men as easily as he had dreamt He recognises all the difficulties he enters into the force of all the ties that bind her—or imagines that he does But he is a man and her lover and if she loves him in the end love will conquer—must conquer For his more modern sense deeplyPg 111 Christianised as it is assumes almost without argument the sacredness of passion and its claim—wherein a vast difference between himself and that solitary wrestler in Marrisdale
Meanwhile he kept all his hopes and fears to himself Mrs Thornburgh was dying to talk to him but though his mobile boyish temperament made it impossible for him to disguise his change of mood there was in him a certain natural dignity which life greatly developed but which made it always possible for him to hold his own against curiosity and indiscretion Mrs Thornburgh had to hold her peace As for the vicar he developed what were for him a surprising number of new topics of conversation and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a run up the fells to the nearest fragment of the Roman road which runs with such magnificent disregard of the humours of Mother Earth over the very top of High Street towards Penrith and Carlisle
Next day it looked as though after many waverings the characteristic Westmoreland weather had descended upon them in good earnest From early morn till late evening the valley was wrapped in damp clouds or moving rain which swept down from the west through the great basin of the hills and rolled along the course of the river wrapping trees and fells and houses in the same misty cheerless drizzle Under the outward pall of rain indeed the valley was renewing its summer youth the river was swelling with an impetuous music through all its dwindled channels the crags flung out white waterfalls again which the heat had almost dried away and by noon the whole green hollow was vocal with the sounds of water—water flashing and foaming in the river water leaping downwards from the rocks water dripping steadily from the larches and sycamores and the slateeaves of the houses
Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system of Surrey or pretending to do so He sat in a corner of the study where he and the vicar protected each other against Mrs Thornburgh That good woman would open the door once and again in the morning and put her head through in search of prey but on being confronted with two studious men instead of one each buried up to the ears in folios she would give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited In reality Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn might be doing that morning Judging a North countrywoman by the pusillanimous Southern standard he found himself glorying in the weather She could not wander far from him today
After the early dinner he escaped just as the vicars wife was devising an excuse on which to convey both him and herself to Burwood and sallied forth with a mackintosh for a rush down the Whinborough road It was still raining but the clouds showed a momentary lightening and a few gleams of watery sunshine brought out every now and then that sparklePg 112 on the trees that iridescent beauty of distance and atmosphere which goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petulant abundance of mountain rain Elsmere passed Burwood with a thrill Should he or should he not present himself Let him push on a bit and think So on he swung measuring his tall frame against the gusts spirits and masculine energy rising higher with every step At last the passion of his mood had wrestled itself out with the weather and he turned back once more determined to seek and find her to face his fortunes like a man The warm rain beating from the west struck on his uplifted face He welcomed it as a friend Rain and storm had opened to him the gates of a spiritual citadel What could ever wholly close it against him any more He felt so strong so confident Patience and courage
Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming out from the white mists surging round it A shaft of sunlight lay across its upper end and he caught a marvellous apparition of a sunlit valley hung in air a pale strip of blue above it a white thread of stream wavering through it and all around it and below it the rolling rainclouds
Suddenly between him and that enchanters vision he saw a dark slim figure against the mists walking before him along the road It was Catherine—Catherine just emerged from a footpath across the fields battling with wind and rain and quite unconscious of any spectator Oh what a sudden thrill was that what a leaping together of joy and dread which sent the blood to his heart Alone—they two alone again—in the wild Westmoreland mists and half a mile at least of winding road between them and Burwood He flew after her dreading and yet longing for the moment when he should meet her eyes Fortune had suddenly given this hour into his hands he felt it open upon him like that mystic valley in the clouds
Catherine heard the hurrying steps behind her and turned There was an evident start when she caught sight of her pursuer—a quick change of expression She wore a closefitting waterproof dress and cap Her hair was lightly loosened her cheek freshened by the storm He came up with her he took her hand his eyes dancing with the joy he could not hide
What are you made of I wonder he said gaily Nothing certainly that minds weather
No Westmoreland native thinks of staying at home for this she said with her quiet smile moving on beside him as she spoke
He looked down upon her with an indescribable mixture of feelings No stiffness no coldness in her manner—only the even gentleness which always marked her out from others He felt as though yesterday were blotted out and would not for worlds have recalled it to her or reproached her with it Let it be as though they were but carrying on the scene of the steppingstones
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Look he said pointing to the west have you been watching that magical break in the clouds
Her eyes followed his to the delicate picture hung high among the moving mists
Ah she exclaimed her face kindling that is one of our loveliest effects and one of the rarest You are lucky to have seen it
I am conceited enough he said joyously to feel as if some enchanter were at work up there drawing pictures on the mists for my special benefit How welcome the rain is As I am afraid you have heard me say before what new charm it gives to your valley
There was something in the buoyancy and force of his mood that seemed to make Catherine shrink into herself She would not pursue the subject of Westmoreland She asked with a little stiffness whether he had good news from Mrs Elsmere
Oh yes As usual she is doing everything for me he said smiling It is disgraceful that I should be idling here while she is struggling with carpenters and paperers and puzzling out the decorations of the drawingroom She writes to me in a fury about the word artistic She declares even the little upholsterer at Churton hurls it at her every other minute and that if it werent for me she would select everything as frankly primevally hideous as she could find just to spite him As it is he has so warped her judgment that she has left the sittingroom papers till I arrive For the drawingroom she avows a passionate preference for one all cabbageroses and no stalks but she admits that it may be exasperation She wants your sister clearly to advise her By the way and his voice changed the vicar told me last night that Miss Rose is going to Manchester for the winter to study He heard it from Miss Agnes I think The news interested me greatly after our conversation
He looked at her with the most winning interrogative eyes His whole manner implied that everything which touched and concerned her touched and concerned him and moreover that she had given him in some sort a right to share her thoughts and difficulties Catherine struggled with herself
I trust it may answer she said in a low voice
But she would say no more and he felt rebuffed His buoyancy began to desert him
It must be a great trial to Mrs Elsmere she said presently with an effort once more steering away from herself and her concerns this going back to her old home
It is My fathers long struggle for life in that house is a very painful memory I wished her to put it off till I could go with her but she declared she would rather get over the first week or two by herself How I should like you to know my mother Miss Leyburn
At this she could not help meeting his glance and smilePg 114 and answering them though with a kind of constraint most unlike her
I hope I may some day see Mrs Elsmere she said
It is one of my strongest wishes he answered hurriedly to bring you together
The words were simple enough the tone was full of emotion He was fast losing control of himself She felt it through every nerve and a sort of wild dread seized her of what he might say next Oh she must she must prevent it
Your mother was with you most of your Oxford life was she not she said forcing herself to speak in her most everyday tones
He controlled himself with a mighty effort
Since I became a Fellow We have been alone in the world so long We have never been able to do without each other
Isnt it wonderful to you said Catherine after a little electric pause—and her voice was steadier and clearer than it had been since the beginning of their conversation—how little the majority of sons and daughters regard their parents when they come to grow up and want to live their own lives The one thought seems to be to get rid of them to throw off their claims to cut them adrift to escape them—decently of course and under many pretexts but still to escape them All the long years of devotion and selfsacrifice go for nothing
He looked at her quickly—a troubled questioning look
It is so often but not I think where the parents have truly understood their problem The real difficulty for father and mother is not childhood but youth how to get over that difficult time when the child passes into the man or woman and a relation of governor and governed should become the purest and closest of friendships You and I have been lucky
Yes she said looking straight before her and still speaking with a distinctness which caught his ear painfully and so are the greater debtors There is no excuse I think for any child least of all for the child who has had years of understanding love to look back upon if it puts its own claim first if it insists on satisfying itself when there is age and weakness appealing to it on the other side when it is still urgently needed to help those older to shield those younger than itself Its business first of all is to pay its debt whatever the cost
The voice was low but it had the clear vibrating ring of steel Roberts face had darkened visibly
But surely he cried goaded by a new stinging sense of revolt and pain—surely the child may make a fatal mistake if it imagines that its own happiness counts for nothing in the parents eyes What parent but must suffer from the starving of the childs nature What have mother and father been working for after all but the perfecting of the childs life Their longing is that it should fulfil itself in all directions New ties new affections on the childs part mean the enriching of thePg 115 parent What a cruel fate for the elder generation to make it the jailer and burden of the younger
He spoke with heat and anger with a sense of dashing himself against an obstacle and a dumb despairing certainty rising at the heart of him
Ah that is what we are so ready to say she answered her breath coming more quickly and her eye meeting his with a kind of antagonism in it but it is all sophistry The only safety lies in following out the plain duty The parent wants the childs help and care the child is bound to give it that is all it needs to know If it forms new ties it belongs to them not to the old ones the old ones must come to be forgotten and put aside
So you would make all life a sacrifice to the past he cried quivering under the blow she was dealing him
No not all life she said struggling hard to preserve her perfect calm of manner he could not know that she was trembling from head to foot There are many for whom it is easy and right to choose their own way their happiness robs no one There are others on whom a charge has been laid from their childhood a charge perhaps—and her voice faltered at last—impressed on them by dying lips which must govern possess their lives which it would be baseness treason to betray We are not here only to be happy
And she turned to him deadly pale the faintest sweetest smile on her lip He was for the moment incapable of speech He began phrase after phrase and broke them off A whirlwind of feeling possessed him The strangeness the unworldliness of what she had done struck him singularly He realised through every nerve that what she had just said to him she had been bracing herself to say to him ever since their last parting And now he could not tell or rather blindly could not see whether she suffered in the saying it A passionate protest rose in him not so much against her words as against her selfcontrol The man in him rose up against the womans unlookedfor unwelcome strength
But as the hot words she had dared so much in her simplicity to avert from them both were bursting from him they were checked by a sudden physical difficulty A bit of road was under water A little beck swollen by the rain had overflowed and for a few yards distance the water stood about eight inches deep from hedge to hedge Robert had splashed through the flood half an hour before but it had risen rapidly since then He had to apply his mind to the practical task of finding a way to the other side
You must climb the bank he said and get through into the field
She assented mutely He went first drew her up the bank forced his way through the loosely growing hedge himself and holding back some young hazel saplings and breaking othersPg 116 made an opening for her through which she scrambled with bent head then stretching out his hand to her he made her submit to be helped down the steep bank on the other side Her straight young figure was just above him her breath almost on his cheek
You talk of baseness and treason he began passionately conscious of a hundred wild impulses as perforce she leant her light weight upon his arm Life is not so simple It is so easy to sacrifice others with ones self to slay all claims in honour of one instead of knitting the new ones to the old Is life to be allowed no natural expansion Have you forgotten that in refusing the new bond for the old bonds sake the child may be simply wronging the parents depriving them of another affection another support which ought to have been theirs
His tone was harsh almost violent It seemed to him that she grew suddenly white and he grasped her more firmly still She reached the level of the field quickly withdrew her hand and for a moment their eyes met her pale face raised to his It seemed an age so much was said in that look There was appeal on her side passion on his Plainly she implored him to say no more to spare her and himself
In some cases she said and her voice sounded strained and hoarse to both of them one cannot risk the old bond One dare not trust ones self—or circumstance The responsibility is too great one can but follow the beaten path cling to the one thread But dont let us talk of it any more We must make for that gate Mr Elsmere It will bring us out on the road again close by home
He was quelled Speech suddenly became impossible to him He was struck again with that sense of a will firmer and more tenacious than his own which had visited him in a slight passing way on the first evening they ever met and now filled him with a kind of despair As they pushed silently along the edge of the dripping meadow he noticed with a pang that the steppingstones lay just below them The gleam of sun had died away the aërial valley in the clouds had vanished and a fresh storm of rain brought back the colour to Catherines cheek On their left hand was the roaring of the river on their right they could already hear the wind moaning and tearing through the trees which sheltered Burwood The nature which an hour ago had seemed to him so full of stimulus and exhilaration had taken to itself a note of gloom and mourning for he was at the age when Nature is the mere docile responsive mirror of the spirit when all her forces and powers are made for us and are only there to play chorus to our story
They reached the little lane leading to the gate of Burwood She paused at the foot of it
You will come in and see my mother Mr Elsmere
Her look expressed a yearning she could not crush Your pardon your friendship it cried with the usual futility of allPg 117 good women under the circumstances But as he met it for one passionate instant he recognised fully that there was not a trace of yielding in it At the bottom of the softness there was the iron of resolution
No no not now he said involuntarily and she never forgot the painful struggle of the face goodbye He touched her hand without another word and was gone
She toiled up to the gate with difficulty the gray rainwashed road the wall the trees swimming before her eyes
In the hall she came across Agnes who caught hold of her with a start
My dear Cathie you have been walking yourself to death You look like a ghost Come and have some tea at once
And she dragged her into the drawingroom Catherine submitted with all her usual outward calm faintly smiling at her sisters onslaught But she would not let Agnes put her down on the sofa She stood with her hand on the back of a chair
The weather is very close and exhausting she said gently lifting her hand to her hat But the hand dropped and she sank heavily into the chair
Cathie you are faint cried Agnes running to her
Catherine waved her away and with an effort of which none but she would have been capable mastered the physical weakness
I have been a long way dear she said as though in apology and there is no air Yes I will go upstairs and lie down a minute or two Oh no dont come I will be down for tea directly
And refusing all help she guided herself out of the room her face the colour of the foam on the beck outside Agnes stood dumfoundered Never in her life before had she seen Catherine betray any such signs of physical exhaustion
Suddenly Rose ran in shut the door carefully behind her and rushing up to Agnes put her hands on her shoulders
He has proposed to her and she has said no
He What Mr Elsmere How on earth can you know
I saw them from upstairs come to the bottom of the lane Then he rushed on and I have just met her on the stairs Its as plain as the nose on your face
Agnes sat down bewildered
It is hard on him she said at last
Yes it is very hard on him cried Rose pacing the room her long thin arms clasped behind her her eyes flashing for she loves him
Rose
She does my dear she does cried the girl frowning I know it in a hundred ways
Agnes ruminated
And its all because of us she said at last reflectively
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Of course I put it to you Agnes—and Rose stood still with a tragic air—I put it to you whether it isnt too bad that three unoffending women should have such a rôle as this assigned them against their will
The eloquence of eighteen was irresistible Agnes buried her head in the sofa cushion and shook with a kind of helpless laughter Rose meanwhile stood in the window her thin form drawn up to its full height angry with Agnes and enraged with all the world
Its absurd its insulting she exclaimed I should imagine that you and I Agnes were old enough and sane enough to look after mamma put out the stores say our prayers and prevent each other from running away with adventurers I wont be always in leadingstrings I wont acknowledge that Catherine is bound to be an old maid to keep me in order I hate it It is sacrifice run mad
And Rose turned to her sister the defiant head thrown back a passion of manifold protest in the girlish looks
It is very easy my dear to be judge in ones own case replied Agnes calmly recovering herself Suppose you tell Catherine some of these home truths
Rose collapsed at once She sat down despondently and fell head drooping into a moody silence Agnes watched her with a kind of triumph When it came to the point she knew perfectly well that there was not a will among them that could measure itself with any chance of success against that lofty but unwavering will of Catherines Rose was violent and there was much reason in her violence But as for her she preferred not to dash her head against stone walls
Well then if you wont say them to Catherine say them to mamma she suggested presently but half ironically
Mamma is no good cried Rose angrily why do you bring her in Catherine would talk her round in ten minutes
Long after every one else in Burwood even the chafing excited Rose was asleep Catherine in her dimly lighted room where the stormy northwest wind beat noisily against her window was sitting in a low chair her head leaning against her bed her little wellworn Testament open on her knee But she was not reading Her eyes were shut one hand hung down beside her and tears were raining fast and silently over her cheeks It was the stillest most restrained weeping She hardly knew why she wept she only knew that there was something within her which must have its way What did this inner smart and tumult mean this rebellion of the self against the will which had never yet found its mastery fail it It was as though from her childhood till now she had lived in a moral world whereof the aims the dangers the joys were all she knew and now the walls of this world were crumbling round her and strange lights strange voices strange colours were breaking through All the sayings of Christ which had lainPg 119 closest to her heart for years tonight for the first time seem to her no longer sayings of comfort or command but sayings of fire and flame that burn their coercing way through life and thought We recite so glibly He that loseth his life shall save it and when we come to any of the common crises of experience which are the source and the sanction of the words flesh and blood recoil This girl amid her mountains had carried religion as far as religion can be carried before it meets life in the wrestle appointed it The calm simple outlines of things are blurring before her eyes the great placid deeps of the soul are breaking up
To the purest ascetic temper a struggle of this kind is hardly real Catherine felt a bitter surprise at her own pain Yesterday a sort of mystical exaltation upheld her What had broken it down
Simply a pair of reproachful eyes a pale protesting face What trifles compared to the awful necessities of an infinite obedience And yet they haunt her till her heart aches for misery till she only yearns to be counselled to be forgiven to be at least understood
Why why am I so weak she cried in utter abasement of soul and knew not that in that weakness or rather in the founts of character from which it sprang lay the innermost safeguard of her life
CHAPTER IX
Robert was very nearly reduced to despair by the scene with Catherine we have described He spent a brooding and miserable hour in the vicars study afterwards making up his mind as to what he should do One phrase of hers which had passed almost unnoticed in the shock of the moment was now ringing in his ears maddening him by a sense of joy just within his reach and yet barred away from him by an obstacle as strong as it was intangible We are not here only to be happy she had said to him with a look of ethereal exaltation worthy of her namesake of Alexandria The words had slipped from her involuntarily in the spiritual tension of her mood They were now filling Robert Elsmeres mind with a tormenting torturing bliss What could they mean What had her paleness her evident trouble and weakness meant but that the inmost self of hers was his was conquered and that but for the shadowy obstacle between them all would be well
As for the obstacle in itself he did not admit its force for a moment No sane and practical man least of all when that man happened to be Catherine Leyburns lover could regard it as a binding obligation upon her that she should sacrifice her own life and happiness to three persons who were in no evident moral straits no physical or pecuniary need and who as RosePg 120 incoherently put it might very well be rather braced than injured by the withdrawal of her strong support
But the obstacle of character—ah there was a different matter He realised with despair the brooding scrupulous force of moral passion to which her lonely life her antecedents and her fathers nature working in her had given so rare and marked a development No temper in the world is so little open to reason as the ascetic temper How many a lover and husband how many a parent and friend have realised to their pain since history began the overwhelming attraction which all the processes of selfannihilation have for a certain order of minds Roberts heart sank before the memory of that frail indomitable look that aspect of sad yet immovable conviction with which she had bade him farewell And yet surely—surely under the willingness of the spirit there had been a pitiful a most womanly weakness of the flesh Surely now memory reproduced the scene she had been white—trembling her hand had rested on the mossgrown wall beside her for support Oh why had he been so timid why had he let that awe of her which her personality produced so readily stand between them why had he not boldly caught her to himself and with all the eloquence of a passionate nature trampled on her scruples marched through her doubts convinced—reasoned her into a blessed submission
And I will do it yet he cried leaping to his feet with a sudden access of hope and energy And he stood awhile looking out into the rainy evening all the keen irregular face and thin pliant form hardening into the intensity of resolve which had so often carried the young tutor through an Oxford difficulty breaking down antagonism and compelling consent
At the high tea which represented the late dinner of the household he was wary and selfpossessed Mrs Thornburgh got out of him that he had been for a walk and had seen Catherine but for all her ingenuities of crossexamination she got nothing more Afterwards when he and the vicar were smoking together he proposed to Mr Thornburgh that they two should go off for a couple of days on a walking tour to Ullswater
I want to go away he said with a hand on the vicars shoulder and I want to come back The deliberation of the last words was not to be mistaken The vicar emitted a contented puff looked the young man straight in the eyes and without another word began to plan a walk to Patterdale viâ High Street Martindale and Howtown and back by Haweswater
To Mrs Thornburgh Robert announced that he must leave them on the following Saturday June 24
You have given me a good time Cousin Emma he said to her with a bright friendliness which dumbfoundered her A good time indeed with everything begun and nothing finished with two households thrown into perturbation for a delusionPg 121 and a desirable marriage spoilt all for want of a little common sense and plain speaking which one person at least in the valley could have supplied them with had she not been ignored and brow beaten on all sides She contained herself however in his presence but the vicar suffered proportionately in the privacy of the connubial chamber He had never seen his wife so exasperated To think what might have been what she might have done for the race but for the whims of two stuckup superior impracticable young persons that would neither manage their own affairs nor allow other people to manage them for them The vicar behaved gallantly kept the secret of Elsmeres remark to himself like a man and allowed himself certain counsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs Thornburgh into wellsimulated slumber However in the morning he was vaguely conscious that some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded of him peremptorily When do you get back William To the best of his memory the vicar had sleepily murmured Thursday and had then heard echoed through his dreams a calculating whisper He goes Saturday—one clear day
The following morning was gloomy but fine and after breakfast the vicar and Elsmere started off Robert turned back at the top of the High Fell pass and stood leaning on his alpenstock sending a passionate farewell to the gray distant house the upper window the copper beech in the garden the bit of winding road while the vicar discreetly stepped on northward his eyes fixed on the wild regions of Martindale
Mrs Thornburgh left alone absorbed herself to all appearance in the school treat which was to come off in a fortnight in a new set of covers for the drawingroom and in Sarahs love affairs which were always passing through some tragic phase or other and into which Mrs Thornburgh was allowed a more unencumbered view than she was into Catherine Leyburns Rose and Agnes dropped in now and then and found her not at all disposed to talk to them on the great event of the day—Elsmeres absence and approaching departure They cautiously communicated to her their own suspicions as to the incident of the preceding afternoon and Rose gave vent to one fiery onslaught on the moral obstacle theory during which Mrs Thornburgh sat studying her with small attentive eyes and curls slowly waving from side to side But for once in her life the vicars wife was not communicative in return That the situation should have driven even Mrs Thornburgh to finesse was a surprising testimony to its gravity What between her sudden taciturnity and Catherines pale silence the girls sense of expectancy was roused to its highest pitch
They come back tomorrow night said Rose thoughtfully and he goes Saturday—1020 from Whinborough—one day for the Fifth Act By the way why did Mrs Thornburgh ask us to say nothing about Saturday at home
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She had asked them however and with a pleasing sense of conspiracy they complied
It was late on Thursday afternoon when Mrs Thornburgh finding the Burwood front door open made her unchallenged way into the hall and after an unanswered knock at the drawingroom door opened it and peered in to see who might be there
May I come in
Mrs Leyburn who was a trifle deaf was sitting by the window absorbed in the intricacies of a heel which seemed to her more than she could manage Her card was mislaid the girls were none of them at hand and she felt as helpless as she commonly did when left alone
Oh do come in please So glad to see you Have you been nearly blown away
For though the rain had stopped a boisterous northwest wind was still rushing through the valley and the trees round Burwood were swaying and groaning under the force of its onslaught
Well it is stormy said Mrs Thornburgh stepping in and undoing all the various safety pins and elastics which had held her dress high above the mud Are the girls out
Yes Catherine and Agnes are at the school and Rose I think is practising
Ah well said Mrs Thornburgh settling herself in a chair close by her friend I wanted to find you alone
Her face framed in bushy curls and an old garden bonnet was flushed and serious Her mittened hands were clasped nervously on her lap and there was about her such an air of forcibly restrained excitement that Mrs Leyburns mild eyes gazed at her with some astonishment The two women were a curious contrast Mrs Thornburgh short inclined as we know to be stout ample and abounding in all things whether it were curls or capstrings or conversation Mrs Leyburn tall and well proportioned well dressed with the same graceful ways and languid pretty manners as had first attracted her husbands attention thirty years before She was fond of Mrs Thornburgh but there was something in the ebullient energies of the vicars wife which always gave her a sense of bustle and fatigue
I am sure you will be sorry to hear began her visitor that Mr Elsmere is going
Going said Mrs Leyburn laying down her knitting Why I thought he was going to stay with you another ten days at least
So did I—so did he said Mrs Thornburgh nodding and then pausing with a most effective air of sudden gravity and recollection
Then why—whats the matter asked Mrs Leyburn wondering
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Mrs Thornburgh did not answer for a minute and Mrs Leyburn began to feel a little nervous her visitors eyes were fixed upon her with so much meaning Urged by a sudden impulse she bent forward so did Mrs Thornburgh and their two elderly heads nearly touched
The young man is in love said the vicars wife in a stage whisper drawing back after a pause to see the effect of her announcement
Oh with whom asked Mrs Leyburn her look brightening She liked a love affair as much as ever
Mrs Thornburgh furtively looked round to see if the door was shut and all safe—she felt herself a criminal but the sense of guilt had an exhilarating rather than a depressing effect upon her
Have you guessed nothing have the girls told you anything
No said Mrs Leyburn her eyes opening wider and wider She never guessed anything there was no need with three daughters to think for her and give her the benefit of their young brains No she said again I cant imagine what you mean
Mrs Thornburgh felt a rush of inward contempt for so much obtuseness
Well then he is in love with Catherine she said abruptly laying her hand on Mrs Leyburns knee and watching the effect
With Catherine stammered Mrs Leyburn with Catherine
The idea was amazing to her She took up her knitting with trembling fingers and went on with it mechanically a second or two Then laying it down—Are you quite sure has he told you
No but one has eyes said Mrs Thornburgh hastily William and I have seen it from the very first day And we are both certain that on Tuesday she made him understand in some way or other that she wouldnt marry him and that is why he went off to Ullswater and why he made up his mind to go south before his time is up
Tuesday cried Mrs Leyburn In that walk do you mean when Catherine looked so tired afterwards You think he proposed in that walk
She was in a maze of bewilderment and excitement
Something like it—but if he did she said No and what I want to know is why she said No
Why of course because she didnt care for him exclaimed Mrs Leyburn opening her blue eyes wider and wider Catherines not like most girls she would always know what she felt and would never keep a man in suspense
Well I dont somehow believe said Mrs Thornburgh boldly that she doesnt care for him He is just the young man Catherine might care for You can see that yourself
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Mrs Leyburn once more laid down her knitting and stared at her visitor Mrs Thornburgh after all her meditations had no very precise idea as to why she was at that moment in the Burwood drawingroom bombarding Mrs Leyburn in this fashion All she knew was that she had sallied forth determined somehow to upset the situation just as one gives a shake purposely to a bundle of spillikins on the chance of more favourable openings Mrs Leyburns mind was just now playing the part of spillikins and the vicars wife was shaking it vigorously though with occasional qualms as to the lawfulness of the process
You think Catherine does care for him resumed Mrs Leyburn tremulously
Well isnt he just the kind of man one would suppose Catherine would like repeated Mrs Thornburgh persuasively he is a clergyman and she likes serious people and hes sensible and nice and wellmannered And then he can talk about books just like her father used—Im sure William thinks he knows everything He isnt as nicelooking as he might be just now but then thats his hair and his fever poor man And then he isnt hanging about Hes got a living and thered be the poor people all ready and everything else Catherine likes And now Ill just ask you—did you ever see Catherine more—more—lively—well I know thats not just the word but you know what I mean—than she has been the last fortnight
But Mrs Leyburn only shook her head helplessly She did not know in the least what Mrs Thornburgh meant She never thought Catherine doleful and she agreed that certainly lively was not the word
Girls get so frightfully particular nowadays continued the vicars wife with reflective candour Why when William fell in love with me I just fell in love with him—at once—because he did And if it hadnt been William but somebody else it would have been the same I dont believe girls have got hearts like pebbles—if the mans nice of course
Mrs Leyburn listened to this summary of matrimonial philosophy with the same yielding flurried attention as she was always disposed to give to the last speaker
But she said still in a maze if she did care for him why should she send him away
Because she wont have him said Mrs Thornburgh energetically leaning over the arm of her chair that she might bring herself nearer to her companion
The fatuity of the answer left Mrs Leyburn staring
Because she wont have him my dear Mrs Leyburn And—and—Im sure nothing would make me interfere like this if I werent so fond of you all and if William and I didnt know for certain that there never was a better young man born And then I was just sure youd be the last person in the world if you knew to stand in young peoples way
I cried poor Mrs Leyburn—I stand in the way ShePg 125 was getting tremulous and tearful and Mrs Thornburgh felt herself a brute
Well she said plunging on desperately I have been thinking over it night and day Ive been watching him and Ive been talking to the girls and Ive been putting two and two together and Im just about sure that there might be a chance for Robert if only Catherine didnt feel that you and the girls couldnt get on without her
Mrs Leyburn took up her knitting again with agitated fingers She was so long in answering that Mrs Thornburgh sat and thought with trepidation of all sorts of unpleasant consequences which might result from this audacious move of hers
I dont know how we should get on cried Mrs Leyburn at last with a sort of suppressed sob while something very like a tear fell on the stocking she held
Mrs Thornburgh was still more frightened and rushed into a flood of apologetic speech Very likely she was wrong perhaps it was all a mistake she was afraid she had done harm and so on Mrs Leyburn took very little heed but at last she said looking up and applying a soft handkerchief gently to her eyes—
Is his mother nice Wheres his living Would he want to be married soon
The voice was weak and tearful but there was in it unmistakable eagerness to be informed Mrs Thornburgh overjoyed let loose upon her a flood of particulars painted the virtues and talents of Mrs Elsmere described Roberts Oxford career with an admirable sense for effect and a truly feminine capacity for murdering every university detail drew pictures of the Murewell living and rectory of which Robert had photographs with him threw in adroit information about the young mans private means and in general showed what may be made of a womans mind under the stimulus of one of the occupations most proper to it Mrs Leyburn brightened visibly as the flood proceeded Alas poor Catherine How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life of ours
Catherine a bride Catherine a wife and mother dim visions of a white soft morsel in which Catherines eyes and smile should live again—all these thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs Leyburns mind as she listened to Mrs Thornburgh There is so much of the artist in the maternal mind of the artist who longs to see the work of his hand in fresh combinations and under all points of view Catherine in the heat of her own selfsurrender had perhaps forgotten that her mother too had a heart
Yes it all sounds very well said Mrs Leyburn at last sighing but you know Catherine isnt easy to manage
Could you talk to her—find out a little
Well not today I shall hardly see her Doesnt it seem to you that when a girl takes up notions like Catherines shePg 126 hasnt time for thinking about the young men Why shes as full of business all day long as an eggs full of meat Well it was my poor Richards doing—it was his doing bless him I am not going to say anything against it But it was different—once
Yes I know said Mrs Thornburgh thoughtfully One had plenty of time when you and I were young to sit at home and think what one was going to wear and how one would look and whether he had been paying attention to any one else and if he had why and all that And now the young women are so superior But the marrying has got to be done somehow all the same What is she doing today
Oh shell be busy all today and tomorrow I hardly expect to see her till Saturday
Mrs Thornburgh gave a start of dismay
Why what is the matter now she cried in her most aggrieved tones My dear Mrs Leyburn one would think we had the cholera in the parish Catherine just spoils the people
Dont you remember said Mrs Leyburn staring in her turn and drawing herself up a little that tomorrow is Midsummer Day and that Mary Backhouse is as bad as she can be
Mary Backhouse Why I had forgotten all about her cried the vicars wife with sudden remorse And she sat pensively eyeing the carpet awhile
Then she got what particulars she could out of Mrs Leyburn Catherine it appeared was at this moment at High Ghyll was not to return till late and would be with the dying girl through the greater part of the following day returning for an hour or twos rest in the afternoon and staying in the evening till the twilight in which the ghost always made her appearances should have passed into night
Mrs Thornburgh listened to it all her contriving mind working the while at railway speed on the facts presented to her
How do you get her home tomorrow night she asked with sudden animation
Oh we send our man Richard at ten He takes a lantern if its dark
Mrs Thornburgh said no more Her eyes and gestures were all alive again with energy and hope She had given her shake to Mrs Leyburns mind Much good might it do But after all she had the poorest opinion of the widows capacities as an ally
She and her companion said a few more excited affectionate and apologetic things to one another and then she departed
Both mother and knitting were found by Agnes half an hour later in a state of considerable confusion But Mrs Leyburn kept her own counsel having resolved for once with a timid and yet delicious excitement to act as the head of the family
Meanwhile Mrs Thornburgh was laying plans on her own account
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Ten oclock—moonlight said that contriving person to herself going home—at least if the clouds hold up—thatll do—couldnt be better
To any person familiar with her character the signs of some unusual preoccupation were clear enough in Mrs Leyburn during this Thursday evening Catherine noticed them at once when she got back from High Ghyll about eight oclock and wondered first of all what was the matter and then with more emphasis why the trouble was not immediately communicated to her It had never entered into her head to take her mother into her confidence with regard to Elsmere Since she could remember it had been an axiom in the family to spare the delicate nervous mother all the anxieties and perplexities of life It was a system in which the subject of it had always acquiesced with perfect contentment and Catherine had no qualms about it If there was good news it was presented in its most sugared form to Mrs Leyburn but the moment any element of pain and difficulty cropped up in the common life it was pounced upon and appropriated by Catherine aided and abetted by the girls and Mrs Leyburn knew no more about it than an unweaned babe
So that Catherine was thinking at most of some misconduct of a Perth dyer with regard to her mothers best gray poplin when one of the greatest surprises of her life burst upon her
She was in Mrs Leyburns bedroom that night helping to put away her mothers things as her custom was She had just taken off the widows cap caressing as she did so the brown hair underneath which was still soft and plentiful when Mrs Leyburn turned upon her Catherine she said in an agitated voice laying a thin hand on her daughters arm Oh Catherine I want to speak to you
Catherine knelt lightly down by her mothers side and put her arms round her waist
Yes mother darling she said half smiling
Oh Catherine if—if—you like Mr Elsmere dont mind—dont think—about us dear We can manage—we can manage dear
The change that took place in Catherine Leyburns face is indescribable She rose instantly her arms falling behind her her beautiful brows drawn together Mrs Leyburn looked up at her with a pathetic mixture of helplessness alarm entreaty
Mother who has been talking to you about Mr Elsmere and me demanded Catherine
Oh never mind dear never mind said the widow hastily I should have seen it myself—oh I know I should but Im a bad mother Catherine And she caught her daughters dress and drew her towards her Do you care for him
Catherine did not answer She knelt down again and laid her head on her mothers hands
I want nothing she said presently in a low voice of intensePg 128 emotion—I want nothing but you and the girls You are my life I ask for nothing more I am abundantly—content
Mrs Leyburn gazed down on her with infinite perplexity The brown hair escaped from the cap had fallen about her still pretty neck a pink spot of excitement was on each gentlyhollowed cheek she looked almost younger than her pale daughter
But—he is very nice she said timidly And he has a good living Catherine you ought to be a clergymans wife
I ought to be and I am your daughter said Catherine smiling a little with an unsteady lip and kissing her hand
Mrs Leyburn sighed and looked straight before her Perhaps in imagination she saw the vicars wife I think—I think she said very seriously I should like it
Catherine straightened herself brusquely at that It was as though she had felt a blow
Mother she cried with a stifled accent of pain and yet still trying to smile do you want to send me away
No no cried Mrs Leyburn hastily But if a nice man wants you to marry him Catherine Your father would have liked him—oh I know your father would have liked him And his manners to me are so pretty I shouldnt mind being his motherinlaw And the girls have no brother you know dear Your father was always so sorry about that
She spoke with pleading agitation her own tempting imaginations—the pallor the latent storm of Catherines look—exciting her more and more
Catherine was silent a moment then she caught her mothers hand again
Dear little mother—dear kind little mother You are an angel you always are But I think if youll keep me Ill stay
And she once more rested her head clingingly on Mrs Leyburns knee
But do you—do you love him Catherine
I love you mother and the girls and my life here
Oh dear sighed Mrs Leyburn as though addressing a third person the tears in her mild eyes she wont and she would like it and so should I
Catherine rose stung beyond bearing
And I count for nothing to you mother her deep voice quivering You could put me aside you and the girls and live as though I had never been
But you would be a great deal to us if you did marry Catherine cried Mrs Leyburn almost with an accent of pettishness People have to do without their daughters Theres Agnes—I often think as it is you might let her do more And if Rose were troublesome why you know it might be a good thing—a very good thing—if there were a man to take her in hand
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And you mother without me cried poor Catherine choked
Oh I should come and see you said Mrs Leyburn brightening They say it is such a nice house Catherine and such pretty country and Im sure I should like his mother though she is Irish
It was the bitterest moment of Catherine Leyburns life In it the heroic dream of years broke down Nay the shrivelling ironic touch of circumstance laid upon it made it look even in her own eyes almost ridiculous What had she been living for praying for all these years She threw herself down by the widows side her face working with a passion that terrified Mrs Leyburn
Oh mother say you would miss me—say you would miss me if I went
Then Mrs Leyburn herself broke down and the two women clung to each other weeping Catherines sore heart was soothed a little by her mothers tears and by the broken words of endearment that were lavished on her But through it all she felt that the excited imaginative desire in Mrs Leyburn still persisted It was the cheapening—the vulgarising so to speak of her whole existence
In the course of their long embrace Mrs Leyburn let fall various items of news that showed Catherine very plainly who had been at work upon her mother and one of which startled her
He comes back tonight my dear—and he goes on Saturday Oh and Catherine Mrs Thornburgh says he does care so much Poor young man
And Mrs Leyburn looked up at her now standing daughter with eyes as woebegone for Elsmere as for herself
Dont talk about it any more mother Catherine implored You wont sleep and I shall be more wroth with Mrs Thornburgh than I am already
Mrs Leyburn let herself be gradually soothed and coerced and Catherine with a last kiss to the delicate emaciated fingers on which the worn weddingring lay slipping forward—in itself a history—left her at last to sleep
And I dont know much more than when I began sighed the perplexed widow to herself Oh I wish Richard was here—I do
Catherines night was a night of intense mental struggle Her struggle was one with which the modern world has perhaps but scant sympathy Instinctively we feel such things out of place in our easy indifferent generation We think them more than half unreal We are so apt to take it for granted that the world has outgrown the religious thirst for sanctification for a perfect moral consistency as it has outgrown so many of the older complications of the sentiment of honour And meanwhile half the tragedy of our time lies in this perpetual clashing ofPg 130 two estimates of life—the estimate which is the offspring of the scientific spirit and which is for ever making the visible world fairer and more desirable in mortal eyes and the estimate of Saint Augustine
As a matter of fact owing to some travelling difficulties the vicar and Elsmere did not get home till noon on Friday Catherine knew nothing of either delay or arrival Mrs Leyburn watched her with anxious timidity but she never mentioned Elsmeres name to any one on the Friday morning and no one dared speak of him to her She came home in the afternoon from the Backhouses absorbed apparently in the state of the dying girl took a couple of hours rest and hurried off again She passed the vicarage with bent head and never looked up
She is gone said Rose to Agnes as she stood at the window looking after her sisters retreating figure It is all over They cant meet now He will be off by nine tomorrow
The girl spoke with a lump in her throat and flung herself down by the window moodily watching the dark form against the fells Catherines coldness seemed to make all life colder and more chilling—to fling a hard denial in the face of the dearest claims of earth
The stormy light of the afternoon was fading towards sunset Catherine walked on fast towards the group of houses at the head of the valley in one of which lived the two old carriers who had worked such havoc with Mrs Thornburghs housekeeping arrangements She was tired physically but she was still more tired mentally She had the bruised feeling of one who has been humiliated before the world and before herself Her selfrespect was for the moment crushed and the breach made in the wholeness of personal dignity had produced a strange slackness of nerve extending both to body and mind She had been convicted it seemed to her in her own eyes and in those of her world of an egregious overestimate of her own value She walked with hung head like one ashamed the overstrung religious sense deepening her discomfiture at every step How rich her life had always been in the conviction of usefulness—nay indispensableness Her mothers persuasions had dashed it from her And religious scruple for her torment showed her her past transformed alloyed with all sorts of personal prides and cravings which stood unmasked now in a white light
And he Still near her for a few short hours Every pulse in her had thrilled as she had passed the house which sheltered him But she will see him no more And she is glad If he had stayed on he too would have discovered how cheaply they held her—those dear ones of hers for whom she had lived till now And she might have weakly yielded to his pity what she had refused to his homage The strong nature is half tortured half soothed by the prospect of his going Perhaps when he is gone she will recover something of that moral equilibrium whichPg 131 has been so shaken At present she is a riddle to herself invaded by a force she has no power to cope with feeling the moral ground of years crumbling beneath her and struggling feverishly for selfcontrol
As she neared the head of the valley the wind became less tempestuous The great wall of High Fell towards which she was walking seemed to shelter her from its worst violence But the hurrying clouds the gleams of lurid light which every now and then penetrated into the valley from the west across the dip leading to Shanmoor the voice of the river answering the voice of the wind and the deep unbroken shadow that covered the group of houses and trees towards which she was walking all served to heighten the nervous depression which had taken hold of her As she neared the bridge however leading to the little hamlet beyond which northwards all was stony loneliness and desolation and saw in front of her the gray stone house backed by the sombre red of a great copper beech and overhung by crags she had perforce to take herself by both hands try and realise her mission afresh and the scene which lay before her
CHAPTER X
Mary Backhouse the girl whom Catherine had been visiting with regularity for many weeks and whose frail life was this evening nearing a terrible and longexpected crisis was the victim of a fate sordid and common enough yet not without its elements of dark poetry Some fifteen months before this Midsummer Day she had been the mistress of the lonely old house in which her father and uncle had passed their whole lives in which she had been born and in which amid snowdrifts so deep that no doctor could reach them her mother had passed away She had been then strong and well favoured possessed of a certain masculine blackbrowed beauty and of a temper which sometimes gave to it an edge and glow such as an artist of ambition might have been glad to catch At the bottom of all the outward sauvagerie however there was a heart and strong wants which only affection and companionship could satisfy and tame Neither was to be found in sufficient measure within her home Her father and she were on fairly good terms and had for each other up to a certain point the natural instincts of kinship On her uncle whom she regarded as halfwitted she bestowed alternate tolerance and jeers She was indeed the only person whose remonstrances ever got under the wool with old Jim and her sharp tongue had sometimes a cowing effect on his curious nonchalance which nothing else had For the rest they had no neighbours with whom the girl could fraternise and Whinborough was too far off to provide anyPg 132 adequate food for her vague hunger after emotion and excitement
In this dangerous morbid state she fell a victim to the very coarse attractions of a young farmer in the neighbouring valley of Shanmoor He was a brute with a handsome face and a nature in which whatever grains of heart and conscience might have been interfused with the original composition had been long since swamped Mary who had recklessly flung herself into his power on one or two occasions from a mixture of motives partly passion partly jealousy partly ennui awoke one day to find herself ruined and a grim future hung before her She had realised her doom for the first time in its entirety on the Midsummer Day preceding that we are now describing On that day she had walked over to Shanmoor in a fever of dumb rage and despair to claim from her betrayer the fulfilment of his promise of marriage He had laughed at her and she had fled home in the warm rainy dusk a prey to all those torturing terrors which only a woman in extremis can know And on her way back she had seen the ghost or bogle of Deep Crag the ghost had spoken to her and she had reached home more dead than alive having received what she at once recognised as her death sentence
What had she seen An effect of moonlit mist—a shepherd boy bent on a practical joke—a gleam of white waterfall among the darkening rocks What had she heard The evening greeting of a passerby wafted down to her from some higher path along the fell distant voices in the farm enclosures beneath her feet or simply the eerie sounds of the mountain those weird earthwhispers which haunt the lonely places of nature Who can tell Nerves and brain were strained to their uttermost The legend of the ghost—of the girl who had thrown her baby and herself into the tarn under the frowning precipitous cliffs which marked the western end of High Fell and who had since then walked the lonely road to Shanmoor every Midsummer Night with her moaning child upon her arm—had flashed into Marys mind as she left the whitewalled village of Shanmoor behind her and climbed upward with her shame and her secret into the mists To see the bogle was merely distressing and untoward to be spoken to by the phantom voice was death No one so addressed could hope to survive the following Midsummer Day Revolving these things in her mind along with the terrible details of her own story the exhausted girl had seen her vision and as she firmly believed incurred her doom
A week later she had disappeared from home and from the neighbourhood The darkest stories were afloat She had taken some money with her and all trace of her was lost The father had a period of gloomy taciturnity during which his principal relief was got out of jeering and girding at his elder brother the noodles eyes wandered and glittered more his shrunken frame seemed more shrunken as he sat dangling his spindle legsPg 133 from the shaft of the carriers cart his absence of mind was for a time more marked and excused with less buoyancy and inventiveness than usual But otherwise all went on as before John Backhouse took no step and for nine months nothing was heard of his daughter
At last one cheerless March afternoon Jim coming back first from the Wednesday round with the cart entered the farm kitchen while John Backhouse was still wrangling at one of the other farmhouses of the hamlet about some disputed payment The old man came in cold and weary and the sight of the halftended kitchen and neglected fire—they paid a neighbour to do the housework as far as the care of her own seven children would let her—suddenly revived in his slippery mind the memory of his niece who with all her faults had had the makings of a housewife and for whom in spite of her flouts and jeers he had always cherished a secret admiration As he came in he noticed that the door to the left hand leading into what Westmoreland folk call the house or sittingroom of the farm was open The room had hardly been used since Marys flight and the few pieces of black oak and shining mahogany which adorned it had long ago fallen from their pristine polish The geraniums and fuchsias with which she had filled the window all the summer before had died into dry blackened stalks and the dust lay heavy on the room in spite of the wellmeant but wholly ineffective efforts of the charwoman next door The two old men had avoided the place for months past by common consent and the door into it was hardly ever opened
Now however it stood ajar and old Jim going up to shut it and looking in was struck dumb with astonishment For there on a wooden rockingchair which had been her mothers favourite seat sat Mary Backhouse her feet on the curved brass fender her eyes staring into the parlour grate Her clothes her face her attitude of cowering chill and mortal fatigue produced an impression which struck through the old mans dull senses and made him tremble so that his hand dropped from the handle of the door The slight sound roused Mary and she turned towards him She said nothing for a few seconds her hollow black eyes fixed upon him then with a ghastly smile and a voice so hoarse as to be scarcely audible—
Weel aave coom back Yed maybe not expect me
There was a sound behind on the cobbles outside the kitchen door
Yur feyther cried Jim between his teeth Gang upstairs wi ye And he pointed to a door in the wall concealing a staircase to the upper storey
She sprang up looked at the door and at him irresolutely and then stayed where she was gaunt pale fevereyed the wreck and ghost of her old self
The steps neared There was a rough voice in the kitchen aPg 134 surprised exclamation and her father had pushed past his brother into the room
John Backhouse no sooner saw his daughter than his dull weatherbeaten face flamed into violence With an oath he raised the heavy whip he held in his hand and flung himself towards her
Naw yell not duat cried Jim throwing himself with all his feeble strength on to his brothers arm John swore and struggled but the old man stuck like a limpet
You let un aleann said Mary drawing her tattered shawl over her breast If he aims to kill me aall not say naa But he neednt moider hisself Theres them abuve as ha taken care o that
She sank again into her chair as though her limbs could not support her and her eyes closed in the utter indifference of a fatigue which had made even fear impossible
The fathers arm dropped he stood there sullenly looking at her Jim thinking she had fainted went up to her took a glass of water out of which she had already been drinking from the mahogany table and held it to her lips She drank a little and then with a desperate effort raised herself and clutching the arm of the chair faced her father
Yell not hev to wait lang Doant ye fash yersel Maybe it ull comfort ye to knaw summat Lasst Midsummer Day aa was on t Shanmoor road i t gloaming An aa saw theer t bogle—thee knaws t bogle o Bleacliff Tarn an she turned hersel an she spoak to me
She uttered the last words with a grim emphasis dwelling on each the whole life of the wasted face concentrated in the terrible black eyes which gazed past the two figures within their immediate range into a vacancy peopled with horror Then a film came over them the grip relaxed and she fell back with a lurch of the rockingchair in a dead swoon
With the help of the neighbour from next door Jim got her upstairs into the room that had been hers She awoke from her swoon only to fall into the torpid sleep of exhaustion which lasted for twelve hours
Keep her oot o ma way said the father with an oath to Jim or aall not answer nayther for her nor me
She needed no telling She soon crept downstairs again and went to the task of housecleaning The two men lived in the kitchen as before when they were at home she ate and sat in the parlour alone Jim watched her as far as his dull brain was capable of watching and he dimly understood that she was dying Both men indeed felt a sort of superstitious awe of her she was so changed so unearthly As for the story of the ghost the old popular superstitions are almost dead in the Cumbrian mountains and the shrewd northcountry peasant is in many places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts to the Time Spirit as any bold bad haunter of scientific associaPg 135tions could wish him to be But in a few of the remoter valleys they still linger though beneath the surface Either of the Backhouses or Mary in her days of health would have suffered many things rather than allow a stranger to suppose they placed the smallest credence in the story of Bleacliff Tarn But all the same the story which each had heard in childhood on stormy nights perhaps when the mountain side was awful with the sounds of tempest had grown up with them had entered deep into the tissue of consciousness In Marys imagination the ideas and images connected with it had now under the stimulus of circumstance become instinct with a living pursuing terror But they were present though in a duller blunter state in the minds of her father and uncle and as the weeks passed on and the days lengthened towards midsummer a sort of brooding horror seemed to settle on the house
Mary grew weaker and weaker her cough kept Jim awake at nights once or twice when he went to help her with a piece of work which not even her extraordinary will could carry her through her hand burnt him like a hot cinder But she kept all other women out of the house by her mad strange ways and if her uncle showed any consciousness of her state she turned upon him with her old temper which had lost all its former stormy grace and had become ghastly by the contrast it brought out between the tempestuous vindictive soul and the shaken weakness of frame
A doctor would have discovered at once that what was wrong with her was phthisis complicated with insanity and the insanity instead of taking the hopeful optimistic tinge which is characteristic of the insanity of consumption had rather assumed the colour of the events from which the disease itself had started Cold exposure longcontinued agony of mind and body—the madness intertwined with an illness which had such roots as these was naturally a madness of despair One of its principal signs was the fixed idea as to Midsummer Day It never occurred to her as possible that her life should be prolonged beyond that limit Every night as she dragged herself up the steep little staircase to her room she checked off the day which had just passed from the days she had still to live She had made all her arrangements she had even sewed with her own hands and that without any sense of special horror but rather in the provident peasant way the dress in which she was to be carried to her grave
At last one day her father coming unexpectedly into the yard saw her carrying a heavy pail of water from the pump Something stirred within him and he went up to her and forcibly took it from her Their looks met and her poor mad eyes gazed intensely into his As he moved forward towards the house she crept after him passing him into the parlour where she sank down breathless on the settle where she had been sleeping for the last few nights rather than face climbingPg 136 the stairs For the first time he followed her watching her gasping struggle for breath in spite of her impatient motion to him to go After a few seconds he left her took his hat went out saddled his horse and rode off to Whinborough He got Dr Baker to promise to come over on the morrow and on his way back he called and requested to see Catherine Leyburn He stammeringly asked her to come and visit his daughter who was ill and lonesome and when she consented gladly he went on his way feeling a load off his mind What he had just done had been due to an undefined but still vehement prompting of conscience It did not make it any the less probable that the girl would die on or before Midsummer Day but supposing her story were true it absolved him from any charge of assistance to the designs of those grisly powers in whose clutch she was
When the doctor came next morning a change for the worse had taken place and she was too feeble actively to resent his appearance She lay there on the settle every now and then making superhuman efforts to get up which generally ended in a swoon She refused to take any medicine she would hardly take any food and to the doctors questions she returned no answer whatever In the same way when Catherine came she would be absolutely silent looking at her with glittering feverish eyes but taking no notice at all whether she read or talked or simply sat quietly beside her
After the silent period as the days went on and Midsummer Day drew nearer there supervened a period of intermittent delirium In the evenings especially when her temperature rose she became talkative and incoherent and Catherine would sometimes tremble as she caught the sentences which little by little built up the girls hidden tragedy before her eyes London streets London lights London darkness the agony of an endless wandering the little clinging puny life which could never be stilled or satisfied biting cold intolerable pain the cheerless workhouse order and finally the arms without a burden the breast without a child—these were the sharp fragments of experience so common so terrible to the end of time which rose on the troubled surface of Mary Backhouses delirium and smote the tender heart of the listener
Then in the mornings she would lie suspicious and silent watching Catherines face with the long gaze of exhaustion as though trying to find out from it whether her secret had escaped her The doctor who had gathered the story of the bogle from Catherine to whom Jim had told it briefly and reluctantly and with an absolute reservation of his own views on the matter recommended that if possible they should try and deceive her as to the date of the day and month Mere nervous excitement might he thought be enough to kill her when the actual day and hour came round But all their attempts were useless Nothing distracted the intense sleepless attention with whichPg 137 the darkened mind kept always in view that one absorbing expectation Words fell from her at night which seemed to show that she expected a summons—a voice along the fell calling her spirit into the dark And then would come the shriek the struggle to get loose the choked waking the wandering horrorstricken eyes subsiding by degrees into the old silent watch
On the morning of the 23d when Robert sitting at his work was looking at Burwood through the window in the flattering belief that Catherine was the captive of the weather she had spent an hour or more with Mary Backhouse and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had more share than she knew in determining her own mood that day The world seemed such dross the pretences of personal happiness so hollow and delusive after such a sight The girl lay dying fast with a look of extraordinary attentiveness in her face hearing every noise every footfall and as it seemed to Catherine in a mood of inward joy She took moreover some notice of her visitor As a rough tomboy of fourteen she had shown Catherine who had taught her in the school sometimes and had especially won her regard on one occasion by a present of some article of dress a good many uncouth signs of affection On the morning in question Catherine fancied she saw something of the old childish expression once or twice At any rate there was no doubt her presence was soothing as she read in her low vibrating voice or sat silently stroking the emaciated hand raising it every now and then to her lips with a rush of that intense pitifulness which was to her the most natural of all moods
The doctor whom she met there said that this state of calm was very possibly only transitory The night had been passed in a succession of paroxysms and they were almost sure to return upon her especially as he could get her to swallow none of the sedatives which might have carried her in unconsciousness past the fatal moment She would have none of them he thought that she was determined to allow of no encroachments on the troubled remnants of intelligence still left to her so the only thing to be done was to wait and see the result I will come tomorrow said Catherine briefly for the day certainly longer if necessary She had long ago established her claim to be treated seriously as a nurse and Dr Baker made no objection If she lives so long he said dubiously The Backhouses and Mrs Irwin the neighbour shall be close at hand I will come in the afternoon and try to get her to take an opiate but I cant give it her by force and there is not the smallest chance of her consenting to it
All through Catherines own struggle and pain during these two days the image of the dying girl had lain at her heart It served her as the crucifix serves the Romanist as she pressed it into her thought it recovered from time to time the failingPg 138 forces of the will Need life be empty because self was left unsatisfied Now as she neared the hamlet the quality of her nature reasserted itself The personal want tugging at her senses the personal soreness the cry of resentful love were silenced What place had they in the presence of this lonely agony of death this mystery this opening beyond The old heroic mood revived in her Her step grew swifter her carriage more erect and as she entered the farm kitchen she felt herself once more ready in spirit for what lay before her
From the next room there came a succession of husky sibilant sounds as though some one were whispering hurriedly and continuously
After her subdued greeting she looked inquiringly at Jim
Shes in a taaking way said Jim who looked more attenuated and his face more like a pink and white parchment than ever Shes been knacking an taaking a long while She woant know ye Luke ye he continued dropping his voice as he opened the house door for her ef you want ayder ov oos you jest call oot—sharp Mrs Irwin shell stay in wi ye—shes not afeeard
The superstitious excitement which the looks and gestures of the old man expressed touched Catherines imagination and she entered the room with an inward shiver
Mary Backhouse lay raised high on her pillows talking to herself or to imaginary other persons with eyes wide open but vacant and senses conscious of nothing but the dream world in which the mind was wandering Catherine sat softly down beside her unnoticed thankful for the chances of disease If this delirium lasted till the ghosthour—the time of twilight that is to say which would begin about halfpast eight and the duration of which would depend on the cloudiness of the evening—was over or better still till midnight were past the strain on the girls agonised senses might be relieved and death come at last in softer kinder guise
Has she been long like this she asked softly of the neighbour who sat quietly knitting by the evening light
The woman looked up and thought
Ay she said Aa came in at teatime an shes been maistly taakin ivver sence
The incoherent whisperings and restless movements which obliged Catherine constantly to replace the coverings over the poor wasted and fevered body went on for some time Catherine noticed presently with a little thrill that the light was beginning to change The weather was growing darker and stormier the wind shook the house in gusts and the farther shoulder of High Fell seen in distorted outline through the casemented window was almost hidden by the trailing rain clouds The mournful western light coming from behind the house struck the river here and there almost everything else was gray and dark A mountain ash just outside the windowPg 139 brushed the panes every now and then and in the silence every surrounding sound—the rare movements in the next room the voices of quarrelling children round the door of a neighbouring house the faroff barking of dogs—made itself distinctly audible
Suddenly Catherine sunk in painful reverie noticed that the mutterings from the bed had ceased for some little time She turned her chair and was startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself There was a curious malign intensity a curious triumph in them
It must be—eight oclock said the gasping voice—eight oclock and the tone became a whisper as though the idea thus half involuntarily revealed had been drawn jealously back into the strongholds of consciousness
Mary said Catherine falling on her knees beside the bed and taking one of the restless hands forcibly into her own cant you put this thought away from you We are not the playthings of evil spirits—we are the children of God We are in His hands No evil thing can harm us against His will
It was the first time for many days she had spoken openly of the thought which was in the mind of all and her whole pleading soul was in her pale beautiful face There was no response in the sick girls countenance and again that look of triumph of sinister exultation They had tried to cheat her into sleeping and living and in spite of them at the supreme moment every sense was awake and expectant To what was the materialised peasant imagination looking forward To an actual call an actual following to the free mountainside the rush of the wind the phantom figure floating on before her bearing her into the heart of the storm Dread was gone pain was gone there was only rapt excitement and fierce anticipation
Mary said Catherine again mistaking her mood for one of tense defiance and despair Mary if I were to go out now and leave Mrs Irwin with you and if I were to go up all the way to the top of Shanmoss and back again and if I could tell you there was nothing there nothing—if I were to stay out till the dark has come—it will be here in half an hour—and you could be quite sure when you saw me again that there was nothing near you but the dear old hills and the power of God could you believe me and try and rest and sleep
Mary looked at her intently If Catherine could have seen clearly in the dim light she would have caught something of the cunning of madness slipping into the dying womans expression While she waited for the answer there was a noise in the kitchen outside an opening of the outer door and a voice Catherines heart stood still She had to make a superhuman effort to keep her attention fixed on Mary
Go said the hoarse whisper close beside her and the girl lifted her wasted hand and pushed her visitor from her GoPg 140 it repeated insistently with a sort of wild beseeching then brokenly the gasping breath interrupting Theres naw fear—naw fear—fur the likes o you
Catherine rose
Im not afraid she said gently but her hand shook as she pushed her chair back God is everywhere Mary
She put on her hat and cloak said something in Mrs Irwins ear and stooped to kiss the brow which to the shuddering sense under her will seemed already cold and moist with the sweats of death Mary watched her go Mrs Irwin with the air of one bewildered drew her chair nearer to the settle and the light of the fire shooting and dancing through the June twilight threw such fantastic shadows over the face on the pillow that all expression was lost What was moving in the crazed mind Satisfaction perhaps at having got rid of one witness one jailer one of the various antagonistic forces surrounding her She had a dim frenzied notion she should have to fight for her liberty when the call came and she lay tense and rigid waiting—the images of insanity whirling through her brain while the light slowly slowly waned
Catherine opened the door into the kitchen The two carriers were standing there and Robert Elsmere also stood with his back to her talking to them in an undertone
He turned at the sound behind him and his start brought a sudden flush to Catherines cheek Her face as the candlelight struck it amid the shadows of the doorway was like an angelic vision to him—the heavenly calm of it just exquisitely broken by the wonder the shock of his presence
You here he cried coming up to her and taking her hand—what secret instinct guided him—close in both of his I never dreamt of it—so late My cousin sent me over—she wished for news
She smiled involuntarily It seemed to her she had expected this in some sort all along But her selfpossession was complete
The excited state may be over in a short time now she answered him in a quiet whisper but at present it is at its height It seemed to please her—and withdrawing her hand she turned to John Backhouse—when I suggested that I should walk up to Shanmoss and back I said I would come back to her in half an hour or so when the daylight was quite gone and prove to her there was nothing on the path
A hand caught her arm It was Mrs Irwin holding the door close with the other hand
Miss Leyburn—Miss Catherine Yur not gawin oot—not gawin oop that path The woman was fond of Catherine and looked deadly frightened
Yes I am Mrs Irwin—but I shall be back very soon Dont leave her go back And Catherine motioned her back with a little peremptory gesture
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Doant ye let ur sir said the woman excitedly to Robert Ones eneuf aam thinking And she pointed with a meaning gesture to the room behind her
Robert looked at Catherine who was moving towards the outer door
Ill go with her he said hastily his face lighting up There is nothing whatever to be afraid of only dont leave your patient
Catherine trembled as she heard the words but she made no sign and the two men and the woman watched their departure with blank uneasy wonderment A second later they were on the fellside climbing a rough stony path which in places was almost a watercourse and which wound up the fell towards a tract of level swampy moss or heath beyond which lay the descent to Shanmoor Daylight was almost gone the stormy yellow west was being fast swallowed up in cloud below them as they climbed lay the dark group of houses with a light twinkling here and there All about them were black mountain forms a desolate tempestuous wind drove a gusty rain into their faces a little beck roared beside them and in the distance from the black gulf of the valley the swollen river thundered
Elsmere looked down on his companion with an indescribable exultation a passionate sense of possession which could hardly restrain itself He had come back that morning with a mind clearly made up Catherine had been blind indeed when she supposed that any plan of his or hers would have been allowed to stand in the way of that last wrestle with her of which he had planned all the methods rehearsed all the arguments But when he reached the vicarage he was greeted with the news of her absence She was inaccessible it appeared for the day No matter The vicar and he settled in the fewest possible words that he should stay till Monday Mrs Thornburgh meanwhile looking on saying what civility demanded and surprisingly little else Then in the evening Mrs Thornburgh had asked of him with a manner of admirable indifference whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High Ghyll to inquire after Mary Backhouse The request fell in excellently with a lovers restlessness and Robert assented at once The vicar saw him go with puzzled brows and a quick look at his wife whose head was bent close over her worsted work
It never occurred to Elsmere—or if it did occur he poohpoohed the notion—that he should find Catherine still at her post far from home on this dark stormy evening But in the glow of joy which her presence had brought him he was still capable of all sorts of delicate perceptions and reasonings His quick imagination carried him through the scene from which she had just momentarily escaped He had understood the exaltation of her look and tone If love spoke at all ringed with such surroundings it must be with its most inward andPg 142 spiritual voice as those speak who feel the Eternities about them
But the darkness hid her from him so well that he had to feel out the situation for himself He could not trace it in her face
We must go right up to the top of the pass she said to him as he held a gate open for her which led them into a piece of larch plantation on the mountainside The ghost is supposed to walk along this bit of road above the houses till it reaches the heath on the top and then it turns towards Bleacliff Tarn which lies higher up to the right under High Fell
Do you imagine your report will have any effect
At any rate she said sighing it seemed to me that it might divert her thoughts a little from the actual horror of her own summons Anything is better than the torture of that one fixed idea as she lies there
What is that said Robert startled a little by some ghostly sounds in front of them The little wood was almost dark and he could see nothing
Only a horse trotting on in front of us said Catherine our voices frightened him I suppose We shall be out on the fell again directly
And as they quitted the trees a dark bulky form to the left suddenly lifted a shadowy head from the grass and clattered down the slope
A cluster of whitestemmed birches just ahead of them caught whatever light was still left in the atmosphere their feathery tops bending and swaying against the sky
How easily with mind attuned one could people this whole path with ghosts said Robert Look at those stems and that line of stream coming down to the right and listen to the wind among the fern
For they were passing a little gully deep in bracken up which the blast was tearing its tempestuous way
Catherine shivered a little and the sense of physical exhaustion which had been banished like everything else—doubt humiliation bitterness—by the one fact of his presence came back on her
There is something rather awful in this dark and storm she said and paused
Would you have faced it alone he asked his voice thrilling her with a hundred different meanings I am glad I prevented it
I have no fear of the mountains she said trembling I know them and they me
But you are tired—your voice is tired—and the walk might have been more of an effort than you thought it Do you never think of yourself
Oh dear yes said Catherine trying to smile and could find nothing else to say They walked on a few moments in silencePg 143 splashes of rain breaking in their faces Roberts inward excitement was growing fast Suddenly Catherines pulse stood still She felt her hand lifted drawn within his arm covered close with his warm trembling clasp
Catherine let it stay there Listen one moment You gave me a hard lesson yesterday too hard—I cannot learn it—I am bold—I claim you Be my wife Help me through this difficult world I have loved you from the first moment Come to me Be kind to me
She could hardly see his face but she could feel the passion in his voice and touch Her cheek seemed to droop against his arm He felt her tottering
Let me sit down she said and after one moment of dizzy silence he guided her to a rock sinking down himself beside her longing but not daring to shelter her under his broad Inverness cloak against the storm
I told you she said almost whispering that I was bound tied to others
I do not admit your plea he said passionately no not for a moment For two days have I been tramping over the mountains thinking it out for yourself and me Catherine your mother has no son—she should find one in me I have no sisters—give me yours I will cherish them as any brother could Come and enrich my life you shall still fill and shelter theirs I dare not think what my future might be with you to guide to inspire to bless—dare not lest with a word you should plunge me into an outer darkness I cannot face
He caught her unresisting hand and raised it to his lips
Is there no sacredness he said brokenly in the fate that has brought us together—out of all the world—here in this lonely valley Come to me Catherine You shall never fail the old ties I promise you and new hands shall cling to you—new voices shall call you blessed
Catherine could hardly breathe Every word had been like balm upon a wound—like a ray of intense light in the gloom about them Oh where was this softness bearing her—this emptiness of all will of all individual power She hid her eyes with her other hand struggling to recall that far away moment in Marrisdale But the mind refused to work Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of his hand—the tones of his voice
He saw her struggle and pressed on remorselessly
Speak to me—say one little kind word Oh you cannot send me away miserable and empty
She turned to him and laid her trembling free hand on his arm He clasped them both with rapture
Give me a little time
No no he said and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling time for you to escape me again my wild mountain bird time for you to think yourself and me into all sorts ofPg 144 moral mists No you shall not have it Here alone with God and the dark—bless me or undo me Send me out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful or send me out your knight your possession pledged——
But his voice failed him What a note of youth of imagination of impulsive eagerness there was through it all The more slowlymoving inarticulate nature was swept away by it There was but one object clear to her in the whole world of thought or sense everything else had sunk out of sight—drowned in a luminous mist
He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum his tall form drawn up to its full height In the east across the valley above the farther buttress of High Fell there was a clearer strip of sky visible for a moment among the moving storm clouds and a dim haloed moon shone out in it Far away a whitewalled cottage glimmered against the fell the pools at their feet shone in the weird passing light
She lifted her head and looked at him still irresolute Then she too rose and helplessly like some one impelled by a will not her own she silently held out to him two white trembling hands
Catherine—my angel—my wife
There was something in the pale virginal grace of look and form which kept his young passion in awe But he bent his head again over those yielded hands kissing them with dizzy unspeakable joy
About twenty minutes later Catherine and Robert having hurried back with all speed from the top of Shanmoss reached the farmhouse door She knocked No one answered She tried the lock it yielded and they entered No one in the kitchen She looked disturbed and consciencestricken
Oh she cried to him under her breath have we been too long And hurrying into the inner room she left him waiting
Inside was a mournful sight The two men and Mrs Irwin stood close round the settle but as she came nearer Catherine saw Mary Backhouse lying panting on her pillows her breath coming in loud gasps her dress and all the coverings of the bed showing signs of disorder and confusion her black hair tossed about her
Its bin awfu work sence you left miss whispered Mrs Irwin to Catherine excitedly as she joined them She thowt she heerd soombody fleytin and callin—it was t wind came skirlin round t place an she aw but thrown hirsel oot o t bed an aa shooted for Jim and they came and they and I—its bin as much as we could a du to hod er
Luke Steady exclaimed Jim Shell try it again
For the hands were moving restlessly from side to side and the face was working again There was one more desperatePg 145 effort to rise which the two men checked—gently enough but effectually—and then the exhaustion seemed complete The lids fell and the struggle for breath was pitiful
Catherine flew for some drugs which the doctor had left and shown her how to use After some twenty minutes they seemed to give relief and the great haunted eyes opened once more
Catherine held barleywater to the parched lips and Mary drank mechanically her gaze still intently fixed on her nurse When Catherine put down the glass the eyes followed her with a question which the lips had no power to frame
Leave her now a little said Catherine to the others The fewer people and the more air the better And please let the door be open the room is too hot
They went out silently and Catherine sank down beside the bed Her heart went out in unspeakable longing towards the poor human wreck before her For her there was no morrow possible no dawn of other and softer skies All was over life was lived and all its heavenly capabilities missed for ever Catherine felt her own joy hurt her and her tears fell fast
Mary she said laying her face close beside the chill face on the pillow Mary I went out I climbed all the path as far as Shanmoss There was nothing evil there Oh I must tell you Can I make you understand I want you to feel that it is only God and love that are real Oh think of them He would not let you be hurt and terrified in your pain poor Mary He loves you He is waiting to comfort you—to set you free from pain for ever and He has sent you a sign by me She lifted her head from the pillow trembling and hesitating Still that feverish questioning gaze on the face beneath her as it lay in deep shadow cast by a light on the windowsill some paces away
You sent me out Mary to search for something the thought of which has been tormenting and torturing you You thought God would let a dark lost spirit trouble you and take you away from Him—you His child whom He made and whom He loves And listen While you thought you were sending me out to face the evil thing you were really my kind angel—Gods messenger—sending me to meet the joy of my whole life
There was some one waiting here just now she went on hurriedly breathing her sobbing words into Marys ear Some one who has loved me and whom I love But I had made him sad and myself then when you sent me out he came too we walked up that path you remember beyond the larchwood up to the top where the stream goes under the road And there he spoke to me and I couldnt help it any more And I promised to love him and be his wife And if it hadnt been for you Mary it would never have happened God had put it into your hand this joy and I bless you for it Oh and Mary—Mary—it is only for a little little while this life of ours Nothing matters—not our worst sin and sorrow—but God and our lovePg 146 to Him I shall meet you some day—I pray I may—in His sight and all will be well the pain all forgotten—all
She raised herself again and looked down with yearning passionate pity on the shadowed form Oh blessed answer of heart to heart There were tears forming under the heavy lids the corners of the lips were relaxed and soft Slowly the feeble hand sought her own She waited in an intense expectant silence
There was a faint breathing from the lips she stooped and caught it
Kiss me said the whisper and she laid her soft fresh lips to the parched mouth of the dying When she lifted her head again Mary still held her hand Catherine softly stretched out hers for the opiate Dr Baker had left it was swallowed without resistance and a quiet to which the invalid had been a stranger for days stole little by little over the wasted frame The grasp of the fingers relaxed the laboured breath came more gently and in a few more minutes she slept Twilight was long over The ghosthour was past and the moon outside was slowly gaining a wider empire in the clearing heavens
It was a little after ten oclock when Rose drew aside the curtain at Burwood and looked out
There is the lantern she said to Agnes just by the vicarage How the night has cleared
She turned back to her book Agnes was writing letters Mrs Leyburn was sitting by the bit of fire that was generally lit for her benefit in the evenings her white shawl dropping gracefully about her a copy of the Cornhill on her lap But she was not reading she was meditating and the girls thought her out of spirits The hall door opened
There is some one with Catherine cried Rose starting up Agnes suspended her letter
Perhaps the vicar said Mrs Leyburn with a little sigh
A hand turned the drawingroom door and in the doorway stood Elsmere Rose caught a gray dress disappearing up the little stairs behind him
Elsmeres look was enough for the two girls They understood in an instant Rose flushed all over The first contact with love is intoxicating to any girl of eighteen even though the romance be not hers But Mrs Leyburn sat bewildered
Elsmere went up to her stooped and took her hand
Will you give her to me Mrs Leyburn he said his boyish looks aglow his voice unsteady Will you let me be a son to you
Mrs Leyburn rose He still held her hand She looked up at him helplessly
Oh Mr Elsmere where is Catherine
I brought her home he said gently She is mine if you will it Give her to me again
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Mrs Leyburns face worked pitifully The rectory and the wedding dress which had lingered so regretfully in her thoughts since her last sight of Catherine sank out of them altogether
She has been everything in the world to us Mr Elsmere
I know she has he said simply She shall be everything in the world to you still I have had hard work to persuade her There will be no chance for me if you dont help me
Another breathless pause Then Mrs Leyburn timidly drew him to her and he stooped his tall head and kissed her like a son
Oh I must go to Catherine she said hurrying away her pretty withered cheeks wet with tears
Then the girls threw themselves on Elsmere The talk was all animation and excitement for the moment not a tragic touch in it It was as well perhaps that Catherine was not there to hear
I give you fair warning said Rose as she bade him goodnight that I dont know how to behave to a brother And I am equally sure that Mrs Thornburgh doesnt know how to behave to a fiancé
Robert threw up his arms in mock terror at the name and departed
We are abandoned cried Rose flinging herself into the chair again—then with a little flash of half irresolute wickedness—and we are free Oh I hope she will be happy
And she caught Agnes wildly round the neck as though she would drown her first words in her last
Madcap cried Agnes struggling Leave me at least a little breath to wish Catherine joy
And they both fled upstairs
There was indeed no prouder woman in the three kingdoms than Mrs Thornburgh that night After all the agitation downstairs she could not persuade herself to go to bed She first knocked up Sarah and communicated the news then she sat down before a pierglass in her own room studying the person who had found Catherine Leyburn a husband
My doing from beginning to end she cried with a triumph beyond words William has had nothing to do with it Robert has had scarcely as much And to think how little I dreamt of it when I began Well to be sure no one could have planned marrying those two Theres no one but Providence could have foreseen it—theyre so different And after all its done Now then whom shall I have next year
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BOOK II
SURREY
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CHAPTER XI
Farewell to the mountains
The scene in which the next act of this unpretending history is to run its course is of a very different kind In place of the rugged northern nature—a nature wild and solitary indeed but still rich luxuriant and friendly to the senses of the traveller even in its loneliest places The heaths and woods of some districts of Surrey are scarcely more thickly peopled than the fells of Westmoreland the walker may wander for miles and still enjoy an untamed primitive earth guiltless of boundary or furrow the undisturbed home of all that grows and flies where the rabbits the lizards and the birds live their life as they please either ignorant of intruding man or strangely little incommoded by his neighbourhood And yet there is nothing forbidding or austere in these wide solitudes The patches of graceful birchwood the miniature lakes nestling among them the brakes of ling—pink faintly scented a feast for every sense the stretches of purple heather glowing into scarlet under the touch of the sun the scattered farmhouses so mellow in colour so pleasant in outline the general softness and lavishness of the earth and all it bears make these Surrey commons not a wilderness but a paradise Nature indeed here is like some spoilt petulant child She will bring forth nothing or almost nothing for mans grosser needs Ask her to bear corn or pasture flocks and she will be miserly and grudging But ask her only to be beautiful enticing capriciously lovely and she will throw herself into the task with all the abandonment all the energy that heart could wish
It is on the borders of one of the wilder districts of a county which is throughout a strange mixture of suburbanism and the desert that we next meet with Robert and Catherine Elsmere The rectory of Murewell occupied the highest point of a gentle swell of ground which sloped through cornfields and woods to a plain of boundless heather on the south and climbed away on the north towards the long chalk ridge of the Hogs Back It was a square white house pretending neither to beauty nor state a little awkwardly and barely placed with only a small stretch of grass and a low hedge between it and the road APg 152 few tall firs climbing above the roof gave a little grace and clothing to its southern side and behind it there was a garden sloping softly down towards the village at its foot—a garden chiefly noticeable for its grass walks the luxuriance of the fruit trees clinging to its old red walls and the masses of pink and white phloxes which now in August gave it the floweriness and the gaiety of an Elizabethan song Below in the hollow and to the right lay the picturesque medley of the village—roofs and gables and chimneys yellowgray thatch shining whitewash and mellowed brick making a bright patchwork among the softening trees thin wreaths of blue smoke like airy ribbons tangled through it all Rising over the rest was a house of some dignity It had been an old manorhouse now it was half ruinous and the village inn Some generations back the squire of the day had dismantled it jealous that so big a house should exist in the same parish as the Hall and the spoils of it had furnished the rectory so that the homely house was fitted inside with mahogany doors and carved cupboard fronts in which Robert delighted and in which even Catherine felt a proprietary pleasure
Altogether a quiet rural English spot If the house had no beauty it commanded a world of loveliness All around it—north south and west—there spread as it were a vast playground of heather and wood and grassy common in which the few workaday patches of hedge and ploughed land seemed ingulfed and lost Close under the rectory windows however was a vast sloping cornfield belonging to the glebe the largest and fruitfulest of the neighbourhood At the present moment it was just ready for the reaper—the golden ears had clearly but a few more days or hours to ripple in the sun It was bounded by a dark summerscorched belt of wood and beyond over the distance rose a blue pointed hill which seemed to be there only to attract and make a centre for the sunsets
As compared with her Westmoreland life the first twelve months of wifehood had been to Catherine Elsmere a time of rapid and changing experience A few days out of their honeymoon had been spent at Oxford It was a week before the opening of the October term but many of the senior members of the University were already in residence and the stagnation of the Long Vacation was over Langham was up so was Mr Grey and many another old friend of Roberts The bride and bridegroom were much fêted in a quiet way They dined in many common rooms and bursaries they were invited to many luncheons whereat the superabundance of food and the length of time spent upon it made the Puritan Catherine uncomfortable and Langham devoted himself to taking the wife through colleges and gardens Schools and Bodleian in most orthodox fashion indemnifying himself afterwards for the sense of constraint her presence imposed upon him by a talk and a smoke with Robert
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He could not understand the Elsmere marriage That a creature so mobile so sensitive so susceptible as Elsmere should have fallen in love with this stately silent woman with her very evident rigidities of thought and training was only another illustration of the mysteries of matrimony He could not get on with her and after a while did not try to do so
There could be no doubt as to Elsmeres devotion He was absorbed wrapped up in her
She has affected him thought the tutor at a period of life when he is more struck by the difficulty of being morally strong than by the difficulty of being intellectually clear The touch of religious genius in her braces him like the breath of an Alpine wind One can see him expanding glowing under it Bien sooner he than I To be fair however let me remember that she decidedly does not like me—which may cut me off from Elsmere However—and Langham sighed over his fire—what have he and I to do with one another in the future By all the laws of character something untoward might come out of this marriage But she will mould him rather than he her Besides she will have children—and that solves most things
Meanwhile if Langham dissected the bride as he dissected most people Robert with that keen observation which lay hidden somewhere under his careless boyish ways noticed many points of change about his old friend Langham seemed to him less human more strange than ever the points of contact between him and active life were lessening in number term by term He lectured only so far as was absolutely necessary for the retention of his post and he spoke with wholesale distaste of his pupils He had set up a book on The Schools of Athens but when Robert saw the piles of disconnected notes already accumulated he perfectly understood that the book was a mere blind a screen behind which a difficult fastidious nature trifled and procrastinated as it pleased
Again when Elsmere was an undergraduate Langham and Grey had been intimate Now Langhams tone à propos of Greys politics and Greys dreams of Church Reform was as languidly sarcastic as it was with regard to most of the strenuous things of life Nothing particular is true his manner said and all action is a degrading pisaller Get through the day somehow with as little harm to yourself and other people as may be do your duty if you like it but for heavens sake dont cant about it to other people
If the affinities of character count for much Catherine and Henry Grey should certainly have understood each other The tutor liked the look of Elsmeres wife His kindly brown eyes rested on her with pleasure he tried in his shy but friendly way to get at her and there was in both of them a touch of homeliness a sheer power of unworldliness that should have drawn them together And indeed Catherine felt the charm the spell of this born leader of men But she watched him withPg 154 a sort of troubled admiration puzzled evidently by the halo of moral dignity surrounding him which contended with something else in her mind respecting him Some words of Roberts uttered very early in their acquaintance had set her on her guard Speaking of religion Robert had said Grey is not one of us and Catherine restrained by a hundred ties of training and temperament would not surrender herself and could not if she would
Then had followed their homecoming to the rectory and that first institution of their common life never to be forgotten for the tenderness and the sacredness of it Mrs Elsmere had received them and had then retired to a little cottage of her own close by She had of course already made the acquaintance of her daughterinlaw for she had been the Thornburghs guest for ten days before the marriage in September and Catherine moreover had paid her a short visit earlier in the summer But it was now that for the first time she realised to the full the character of the woman Robert had married Catherines manner to her was sweetness itself Parted from her own mother as she was the younger womans strong filial instincts spent themselves in tending the mother who had been the guardian and life of Roberts youth And Mrs Elsmere in return was awed by Catherines moral force and purity of nature and proud of her personal beauty which was so real in spite of the severity of the type and to which marriage had given at any rate for the moment a certain added softness and brilliancy
But there were difficulties in the way Catherine was a little too apt to treat Mrs Elsmere as she would have treated her own mother But to be nursed and protected to be screened from draughts and run after with shawls and stools was something wholly new and intolerable to Mrs Elsmere She could not away with it and as soon as she had sufficiently lost her first awe of her daughterinlaw she would revenge herself in all sorts of droll ways and with occasional flashes of petulant Irish wit which would make Catherine colour and draw back Then Mrs Elsmere touched with remorse would catch her by the neck and give her a resounding kiss which perhaps puzzled Catherine no less than her sarcasm of a minute before
Moreover Mrs Elsmere felt ruefully from the first that her new daughter was decidedly deficient in the sense of humour
I believe its that father of hers she would say to herself crossly By what Robert tells me of him he must have been one of the people who get ill in their minds for want of a good mouthfilling laugh now and then The man who cant amuse himself a bit out of the world is sure to get his head addled somehow poor creature
Certainly it needed a faculty of laughter to be always able to take Mrs Elsmere on the right side For instance CatherinePg 155 was more often scandalised than impressed by her motherinlaws charitable performances
Mrs Elsmeres little cottage was filled with workhouse orphans sent to her from different London districts The training of these girls was the chief business of her life and a very odd training it was conducted in the noisiest way and on the most familiar terms It was undeniable that the girls generally did well and they invariably adored Mrs Elsmere but Catherine did not much like to think about them Their household teaching under Mrs Elsmere and her old servant Martha—as great an original as herself—was so irregular their religious training so extraordinary the clothes in which they were allowed to disport themselves so scandalous to the sober taste of the rectors wife that Catherine involuntarily regarded the little cottage on the hill as a spot of misrule in the general order of the parish She would go in say at eleven oclock in the morning find her motherinlaw in bed halfdressed with all her handmaidens about her giving her orders reading her letters and the newspaper cutting out her girls frocks instructing them in the fashions or delivering little homilies on questions suggested by the news of the day to the more intelligent of them The room the whole house would seem to Catherine in a detestable litter If so Mrs Elsmere never apologised for it On the contrary as she saw Catherine sweep a mass of miscellaneous débris off a chair in search of a seat the small bright eyes would twinkle with something that was certainly nearer amusement than shame
And in a hundred other ways Mrs Elsmeres relations with the poor of the parish often made Catherine miserable She herself had the most angelic pity and tenderness for sorrows and sinners but sin was sin to her and when she saw Mrs Elsmere more than half attracted by the stronger vices and in many cases more inclined to laugh with what was human in them than to weep over what was vile Roberts wife would go away and wrestle with herself that she might be betrayed into nothing harsh towards Roberts mother
But fate allowed their differences whether they were deep or shallow no time to develop A week of bitter cold at the beginning of January struck down Mrs Elsmere whose strange ways of living were more the result of certain longstanding delicacies of health than she had ever allowed any one to imagine A few days of acute inflammation of the lungs borne with a patience and heroism which showed the Irish character at its finest—a moment of agonised wrestling with that terror of death which had haunted the keen vivacious soul from its earliest consciousness ending in a glow of spiritual victory—and Robert found himself motherless He and Catherine had never left her since the beginning of the illness In one of the intervals towards the end when there was a faint power of speech she drew Catherines cheek down to her and kissed her
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God bless you the old womans voice said with a solemnity in it which Robert knew well but which Catherine had never heard before Be good to him Catherine—be always good to him
And she lay looking from the husband to the wife with a certain wistfulness which pained Catherine she knew not why But she answered with tears and tender words and at last the mothers face settled into a peace which death did but confirm
This great and unexpected loss which had shaken to their depths all the feelings and affections of his youth had thrown Elsmere more than ever on his wife To him made as it seemed for love and for enjoyment grief was a novel and difficult burden He felt with passionate gratitude that his wife helped him to bear it so that he came out from it not lessened but ennobled that she preserved him from many a lapse of nervous weariness and irritation into which his temperament might easily have been betrayed
And how his very dependence had endeared him to Catherine That vibrating responsive quality in him so easily mistaken for mere weakness which made her so necessary to him—there is nothing perhaps which wins more deeply upon a woman For all the while it was balanced in a hundred ways by the illimitable respect which his character and his doings compelled from those about him To be the strength the inmost joy of a man who within the conditions of his life seems to you a hero at every turn—there is no happiness more penetrating for a wife than this
On this August afternoon the Elsmeres were expecting visitors Catherine had sent the ponycarriage to the station to meet Rose and Langham who was to escort her from Waterloo For various reasons all characteristic it was Roses first visit to Catherines new home
Now she had been for six weeks in London and had been persuaded to come on to her sister at the end of her stay Catherine was looking forward to her coming with many tremors The wild ambitious creature had been not one atom appeased by Manchester and its opportunities She had gone back to Whindale in April only to fall into more hopeless discontent than ever She can hardly be civil to anybody Agnes wrote to Catherine The cry now is all London or at least Berlin and she cannot imagine why papa should ever have wished to condemn us to such a prison
Catherine grew pale with indignation as she read the words and thought of her fathers shortlived joy in the old house and its few green fields or of the confidence which had soothed his last moments that it would be well there with his wife and children far from the hubbub of the world
But Rose and her whims were not facts which could be put aside They would have to be grappled with probablyPg 157 humoured As Catherine strolled out into the garden listening alternately for Robert and for the carriage she told herself that it would be a difficult visit And the presence of Mr Langham would certainly not diminish its difficulty The mere thought of him set the wifes young form stiffening A cold breath seemed to blow from Edward Langham which chilled Catherines whole being Why was Robert so fond of him
But the more Langham cut himself off from the world the more Robert clung to him in his wistful affectionate way The more difficult their intercourse became the more determined the younger man seemed to be to maintain it Catherine imagined that he often scourged himself in secret for the fact that the gratitude which had once flowed so readily had now become a matter of reflection and resolution
Why should we always expect to get pleasure from our friends he had said to her once with vehemence It should be pleasure enough to love them And she knew very well of whom he was thinking
How late he was this afternoon He must have been a long round She had news for him of great interest The lodgekeeper from the Hall had just looked in to tell the rector that the squire and his widowed sister were expected home in four days
But interesting as the news was Catherines looks as she pondered it were certainly not looks of pleased expectation Neither of them indeed had much cause to rejoice in the squires advent Since their arrival in the parish the splendid Jacobean Hall had been untenanted The squire who was abroad with his sister at the time of their coming had sent a civil note to the new rector on his settlement in the parish naming some common Oxford acquaintances and desiring him to make what use of the famous Murewell Library he pleased I hear of you as a friend to letters he wrote do my books a service by using them The words were graceful enough Robert had answered them warmly He had also availed himself largely of the permission they had conveyed We shall see presently that the squire though absent had already made a deep impression on the young mans imagination
But unfortunately he came across the squire in two capacities Mr Wendover was not only the owner of Murewell he was also the owner of the whole land of the parish where however by a curious accident of inheritance dating some generations back and implying some very remote connection between the Wendover and Elsmere families he was not the patron of the living Now the more Elsmere studied him under this aspect the deeper became his dismay The estate was entirely in the hands of an agent who had managed it for some fifteen years and of whose character the rector before he had been two months in the parish had formed the very poorest opinion Robert entering upon his duties with the ardour of the modernPg 158 reformer armed not only with charity but with science found himself confronted by the opposition of a man who combined the shrewdness of an attorney with the callousness of a drunkard It seemed incredible that a great landowner should commit his interests and the interests of hundreds of human beings to the hands of such a person
By and by however as the rector penetrated more deeply into the situation he found his indignation transferring itself more and more from the man to the master It became clear to him that in some respects Henslowe suited the squire admirably It became also clear to him that the squire had taken pains for years to let it be known that he cared not one rap for any human being on his estate in any other capacity than as a rentpayer or wagereceiver What Live for thirty years in that great house and never care whether your tenants and labourers lived like pigs or like men whether the old people died of damp or the children of diphtheria which you might have prevented Roberts brow grew dark over it
The click of an opening gate Catherine shook off her dreaminess at once and hurried along the path to meet her husband In another moment Elsmere came in sight swinging along a holly stick in his hand his face aglow with health and exercise and kindling at the sight of his wife She hung on his arm and with his hand laid tenderly on hers he asked her how she fared She answered briefly but with a little flush her eyes raised to his She was within a few weeks of motherhood
Then they strolled along talking He gave her an account of his afternoon which to judge from the worried expression which presently effaced the joy of their meeting had been spent in some unsuccessful effort or other They paused after a while and stood looking over the plain before them to a spot beyond the nearer belt of woodland where from a little hollow about three miles off there rose a cloud of bluish smoke
He will do nothing cried Catherine incredulous
Nothing It is the policy of the estate apparently to let the old and bad cottages fall to pieces He sneers at one for supposing any landowner has money for philanthropy just now If the people dont like the houses they can go I told him I should appeal to the squire as soon as he came home
What did he say
He smiled as much as to say Do as you like and be a fool for your pains How the squire can let that man tyrannise over the estate as he does I cannot conceive Oh Catherine I am full of qualms about the squire
So am I she said with a little darkening of her clear look Old Benham has just been in to say they are expected on Thursday
Robert started Are these our last days of peace he said wistfully—the last days of our honeymoon Catherine
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She smiled at him with a little quiver of passionate feeling under the smile
Can anything touch that she said under her breath
Do you know he said presently his voice dropping that it is only a month to our wedding day Oh my wife have I kept my promise—is the new life as rich as the old
She made no answer except the dumb sweet answer that love writes on eyes and lips Then a tremor passed over her
Are we too happy Can it be well—be right
Oh let us take it like children he cried with a shiver almost petulantly There will be dark hours enough It is so good to be happy
She leant her cheek fondly against his shoulder To her life always meant selfrestraint selfrepression selfdeadening if need be The Puritan distrust of personal joy as something dangerous and ensnaring was deep ingrained in her It had no natural hold on him
They stood a moment hand in hand fronting the cornfield and the sunfilled west while the afternoon breeze blew back the mans curly reddish hair long since restored to all its natural abundance
Presently Robert broke into a broad smile
What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Rose with on the way Catherine I wouldnt miss her remarks tonight on the escort we provided her for a good deal
Catherine said nothing but her delicate eyebrows went up a little Robert stooped and lightly kissed her
You never performed a greater act of virtue even in your life Mrs Elsmere than when you wrote Langham that nice letter of invitation
And then the young rector sighed as many a boyish memory came crowding upon him
A sound of wheels Roberts long legs took him to the gate in a twinkling and he flung it open just as Rose drove up in fine style a thin dark man beside her
Rose lent her bright cheek to Catherines kiss and the two sisters walked up to the door together while Robert and Langham loitered after them talking
Oh Catherine said Rose under her breath as they got into the drawingroom with a little theatrical gesture why on earth did you inflict that man and me on each other for two mortal hours
Shsh said Catherines lips while her face gleamed with laughter
Rose sank flushed upon a chair her eyes glancing up with a little furtive anger in them as the two gentlemen entered the room
You found each other easily at Waterloo asked Robert
Mr Langham would never have found me said Rose drily but I pounced on him at last—just I believe as he was beginPg 160ning to cherish the hope of an empty carriage and the solitary enjoyment of his Saturday Review
Langham smiled nervously Miss Leyburn is too hard on a blind man he said holding up his eyeglass apologetically it was my eyes not my will that were at fault
Roses lip curled a little And Robert she cried bending forward as though something had just occurred to her do tell me—I vowed I would ask—is Mr Langham a Liberal or a Conservative He doesnt know
Robert laughed so did Langham
Your sister he said flushing will have one so very precise in all one says
He turned his handsome olive face towards her an unwonted spark of animation lighting up his black eyes It was evident that he felt himself persecuted but it was not so evident whether he enjoyed the process or disliked it
Oh dear no said Rose nonchalantly Only I have just come from a house where everybody either loathes Mr Gladstone or would die for him tomorrow There was a girl of seven and a boy of nine who were always discussing Coercion in the corners of the schoolroom So of course I have grown political too and began to catechise Mr Langham at once and when he said he didnt know I felt I should like to set those children at him They would soon put some principles into him
It is not generally lack of principle Miss Rose said her brotherinlaw that turns a man a doubter in politics but too much
And while he spoke his eyes resting on Langham his smile broadened as he recalled all those instances in their Oxford past when he had taken a humble share in one of the herculean efforts on the part of Langhams friends which were always necessary whenever it was a question of screwing a vote out of him on any debated University question
How dull it must be to have too much principle cried Rose Like a mill choked with corn No bread because the machine cant work
Defend me from my friends cried Langham roused Elsmere when did I give you a right to caricature me in this way If I were interested he added subsiding into his usual hesitating ineffectiveness I suppose I should know my own mind
And then seizing the muffins he stood presenting them to Rose as though in deprecation of any further personalities Inside him there was a hot protest against an unreasonable young beauty whom he had done his miserable best to entertain for two long hours and who in return had made him feel himself more of a fool than he had done for years Since when had young women put on all these airs In his young days they knew their place
Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister The child wasPg 161 more beautiful than ever but in other outer respects the Rose of Long Whindale had undergone much transformation The puffed sleeves the æsthetic skirts the naïve adornments of bead and shell the formless hat which it pleased her to imagine after Gainsborough had all disappeared She was clad in some soft fawncoloured garment cut very much in the fashion her hair was closely rolled and twisted about her lightlybalanced head everything about her was neat and fresh and tightfitting A year ago she had been a damsel from the Earthly Paradise now so far as an English girl can achieve it she might have been a model for Tissot In this phase as in the other there was a touch of extravagance The girl was developing fast but had clearly not yet developed The restlessness the selfconsciousness of Long Whindale were still there out they spoke to the spectator in different ways
But in her anxious study of her sister Catherine did not forget her place of hostess Did our man bring you through the park Mr Langham she asked him timidly
Yes What an exquisite old house he said turning to her and feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle matronly dignity of the one sister and the young selfassertion of the other
Ah said Robert I kept that as a surprise Did you ever see a more perfect place
What date
Early Tudor—as to the oldest part It was built by a relation of Bishop Fishers then largely rebuilt under James I Elizabeth stayed there twice There is a trace of a visit of Sidneys Waller was there and left a copy of verses in the library Evelyn laid out a great deal of the garden Lord Clarendon wrote part of his History in the garden et cetera et cetera The place is steeped in associations and as beautiful as a dream to begin with
And the owner of all this is the author of The Idols of the Marketplace
Robert nodded
Did you ever meet him at Oxford I believe he was there once or twice during my time but I never saw him
Yes said Langham thinking I met him at dinner at the ViceChancellors now I remember A bizarre and formidable person—very difficult to talk to he added reflectively
Then as he looked up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose Leyburns lip and understood it in a moment Incontinently he forgot the squire and fell to asking himself what had possessed him on that luckless journey down He had never seemed to himself more perverse more unmanageable and for once his philosophy did not enable him to swallow the certainty that this slim flashing creature must have thought him a morbid idiot with as much sangfroid as usual
Robert interrupted his reflections by some Oxford questionPg 162 and presently Catherine carried off Rose to her room On their way they passed a door beside which Catherine paused hesitating and then with a bright flush on the face which had such maternal calm in it already she threw her arm round Rose and drew her in It was a white empty room smelling of the roses outside and waiting in the evening stillness for the life that was to be Rose looked at it all—at the piles of tiny garments the cradle the pictures from Retschs Song of the Bell which had been the companion of their own childhood on the walls—and something stirred in the girls breast
Catherine I believe you have everything you want or you soon will have she cried almost with a kind of bitterness laying her hands on her sisters shoulders
Everything but worthiness said Catherine softly a mist rising in her calm gray eyes And you Röschen she added wistfully have you been getting a little more what you want
Whats the good of asking said the girl with a little shrug of impatience As if creatures like me ever got what they want London has been good fun certainly—if one could get enough of it Catherine how long is that marvellous person going to stay and she pointed in the direction of Langhams room
A week said Catherine smiling at the girls disdainful tone I was afraid you didnt take to him
I never saw such a being before declared Rose—never I thought I should never get a plain answer from him about anything He wasnt even quite certain it was a fine day I wonder if you set fire to him whether he would be sure it hurt A week you say Heigh ho what an age
Be kind to him said Catherine discreetly veiling her own feelings and caressing the curly golden head as they moved towards the door Hes a poor lone don and he was so good to Robert
Excellent reason for you Mrs Elsmere said Rose pouting but——
Her further remarks were cut short by the sound of the frontdoor bell
Oh I had forgotten Mr Newcome cried Catherine starting Come down soon Rose and help us through
Who is he inquired Rose sharply
A High Church clergyman near here whom Robert asked to tea this afternoon said Catherine escaping
Rose took her hat off very leisurely The prospect downstairs did not seem to justify despatch She lingered and thought of Lohengrin and Albani of the crowd of artistic friends that had escorted her to Waterloo of the way in which she had been applauded the night before of the joys of playing Brahms with a longhaired pupil of Rubinsteins who had dropped on one knee and kissed her hand at the endPg 163 of it etc During the last six weeks the colours of this threadbare world had been freshening before her in marvellous fashion And now as she stood looking out the quiet fields opposite the sight of a cow pushing its head through the hedge the infinite sunset sky the quiet of the house filled her with a sudden depression How dull it all seemed—how wanting in the glow of life
CHAPTER XII
Meanwhile downstairs a curious little scene was passing watched by Langham who in his usual antisocial way had retreated into a corner of his own as soon as another visitor appeared Beside Catherine sat a Ritualist clergyman in cassock and long cloak—a saint clearly though perhaps to judge from the slight restlessness of movement that seemed to quiver through him perpetually an irritable one But he had the saints wasted unearthly look the ascetic brow high and narrow the veins showing through the skin and a personality as magnetic as it was strong
Catherine listened to the newcomer and gave him his tea with an aloofness of manner which was not lost on Langham She is the Thirtynine Articles in the flesh he said to himself For her there must neither be too much nor too little How can Elsmere stand it
Elsmere apparently was not perfectly happy He sat balancing his long person over the arm of a chair listening to the recital of some of the High Churchmans parish troubles with a slight halfembarrassed smile The vicar of Nottingham was always in trouble The narrative he was pouring out took shape in Langhams sarcastic sense as a sort of classical epic with the High Churchman as a new champion of Christendom harassed on all sides by pagan parishioners crass churchwardens and treacherous bishops Catherines fine face grew more and more set nay disdainful Mr Newcome was quite blind to it Women never entered into his calculations except as sisters or as penitents At a certain diocesan conference he had discovered a sympathetic fibre in the young rector of Murewell which had been to the imperious persecuted zealot like water to the thirsty He had come today drawn by the same quality in Elsmere as had originally attracted Langham to the St Anselms undergraduate and he sat pouring himself out with as much freedom as if all his companions had been as ready as he was to die for an alb or to spend half their days in piously circumventing a bishop
But presently the conversation had slid no one knew how from Nottingham and its intrigues to London and its teeming East Robert was leading his eye now on the apostoliclookingPg 164 priest now on his wife Mr Newcome resisted but Robert had his way Then it came out that behind these battles of kites and crows at Mottringham there lay an heroic period when the pale ascetic had wrestled ten years with London poverty leaving health and youth and nerves behind him in the mêlée Robert dragged it out at last that struggle into open view but with difficulty The Ritualist may glory in the discomfiture of an Erastian bishop—what Christian dare parade ten years of love to God and man And presently round Elsmeres lip there dawned a little smile of triumph Catherine had shaken off her cold silence her Puritan aloofness was bending forward eagerly—listening Stroke by stroke as the words and facts were beguiled from him all that was futile and quarrelsome in the sharpfeatured priest sank out of sight the face glowed with inward light the stature of the man seemed to rise the angel in him unsheathed its wings Suddenly a story of the slums that Mr Newcome was telling—a story of the purest Christian heroism told in the simplest way—came to an end and Catherine leaned towards him with a long quivering breath
Oh thank you thank you That must have been a joy a privilege
Mr Newcome turned and looked at her with surprise
Yes it was a privilege he said slowly—the story had been an account of the rescue of a young country lad from a London den of thieves and profligates—you are right it was just that
And then some sensitive inner fibre of the man was set vibrating and he would talk no more of himself or his past do what they would
So Robert had hastily to provide another subject and he fell upon that of the squire
Mr Newcomes eyes flashed
He is coming back I am sorry for you Elsmere Woe is me that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar
And he fell back in his chair his lips tightening his thin long hand lying along the arm of it answering to that general impression of combat of the spiritual athlete that hung about him
I dont know said Robert brightly as he leant against the mantelpiece looking curiously at his visitor The squire is a man of strong character of vast learning His library is one of the finest in England and it is at my service I am not concerned with his opinions
Ah I see said Newcome in his driest voice but sadly You are one of the people who believe in what you call tolerance—I remember
Yes that is an impeachment to which I plead guilty said Robert perhaps with equal dryness and you—have your worries driven you to throw tolerance overboard
Newcome bent forward quickly Strange glow and intensityPg 165 of the fanatical eyes—strange beauty of the wasted persecuting lips
Tolerance he said with irritable vehemence—tolerance Simply another name for betrayal cowardice desertion—nothing else God Heaven Salvation on the one side the devil and hell on the other—and one miserable life one wretched sinstained will to win the battle with and in such a state of things you— he drooped his voice throwing out every word with a scornful sibilant emphasis—you would have us behave as though our friends were our enemies and our enemies our friends as though eternal misery were a bagatelle and our faith a mere alternative I stand for Christ and His foes are mine
By which I suppose you mean said Robert quietly that you would shut your door on the writer of The Idols of the Marketplace
Certainly
And the priest rose his whole attention concentrated on Robert as though some deeperlying motive were suddenly brought into play than any suggested by the conversation itself
Certainly Judge not—so long as a man has not judged himself—only till then As to an open enemy the Christians path is clear We are but soldiers under orders What business have we to be trucemaking on our own account The war is not ours but Gods
Roberts eyes had kindled He was about to indulge himself in such a quick passage of arms as all such natures as his delight in when his look travelled past the gaunt figure of the Ritualist vicar to his wife A sudden pang smote silenced him She was sitting with her face raised to Newcome and her beautiful gray eyes were full of a secret passion of sympathy It was like the sudden reemergence of something repressed the satisfaction of something hungry Robert moved closer to her and the colour flushed over all his young boyish face
To me he said in a low voice his eyes fixed rather on her than on Newcome a clergyman has enough to do with those foes of Christ he cannot choose but recognise There is no making truce with vice or cruelty Why should we complicate our task and spend in needless struggle the energies we might give to love and to our brother
His wife turned to him There was trouble in her look then a swift lovely dawn of something indescribable Newcome moved away with a gesture that was half bitterness half weariness
Wait my friend he said slowly till you have watched that mans books eating the very heart out of a poor creature as I have When you have once seen Christ robbed of a soul that might have been His by the infidel of genius you will loathe all this Laodicean cant of tolerance as I do
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There was an awkward pause Langham with his eyeglass on was carefully examining the make of a carved paperknife lying near him The strained preoccupied mind of the High Churchman had never taken the smallest account of his presence of which Robert had been keenly not to say humorously conscious throughout
But after a minute or so the tutor got up strolled forward and addressed Robert on some Oxford topic of common interest Newcome in a kind of dream which seemed to have suddenly descended on him stood near them his priestly cloak falling in long folds about him his ascetic face grave and rapt Gradually however the talk of the two men dissipated the mystical cloud about him He began to listen to catch the savour of Langhams modes of speech and of his languid indifferent personality
I must go he said abruptly after a minute or two breaking in upon the friends conversation I shall hardly get home before dark
He took a cold punctilious leave of Catherine and a still colder and slighter leave of Langham Elsmere accompanied him to the gate
On the way the older man suddenly caught him by the arm
Elsmere let me—I am the elder by so many years—let me speak to you My heart goes out to you
And the eagle face softened the harsh commanding presence became enveloping magnetic Robert paused and looked down upon him a quick light of foresight in his eye He felt what was coming
And down it swept upon him a hurricane of words hot from Newcomes inmost being a protest winged by the gathered passion of years against certain dangerous tendencies the elder priest discerned in the younger against the worship of intellect and science as such which appeared in Elsmeres talk in Elsmeres choice of friends It was the eternal cry of the mystic of all ages
Scholarship learning Eyes and lips flashed into a vehement scorn You allow them a value in themselves apart from the Christians test It is the modern canker the modern curse Thank God my years in London burnt it out of me Oh my friend what have you and I to do with all these curious triflings which lead men oftener to rebellion than to worship Is this a time for wholesale trust for a maudlin universal sympathy Nay rather a day of suspicion a day of repression—a time for trampling on the lusts of the mind no less than the lusts of the body a time when it is better to believe than to know to pray than to understand
Robert was silent a moment and they stood together Newcomes gaze of fiery appeal fixed upon him
We are differently made you and I said the young rector at last with difficulty Where you see temptation I see opporPg 167tunity I cannot conceive of God as the Archplotter against His own creation
Newcome dropped his hold abruptly
A groundless optimism he said with harshness On the track of the soul from birth to death there are two sleuthhounds—Sin and Satan Mankind for ever flies them is for ever vanquished and devoured I see life always as a threadlike path between abysses along which man creeps—and his gesture illustrated the words—with bleeding hands and feet towards one—narrow—solitary outlet Woe to him if he turn to the right hand or the left—I will repay saith the Lord
Elsmere drew himself up suddenly the words seemed to him a blasphemy Then something stayed the vehement answer on his lips It was a sense of profound intolerable pity What a maimed life what an indomitable soul Husbandhood fatherhood and all the sacred education that flows from human joy for ever selfforbidden and this grim creed for recompense
He caught Newcomes hand with a kind of filial eagerness
You are a perpetual lesson to me he said most gently When the world is too much with me I think of you and am rebuked God bless you But I know myself If I could see life and God as you see them for one hour I should cease to be a Christian in the next
A flush of something like sombre resentment passed over Newcomes face There is a tyrannical element in all fanaticism an element which makes opposition a torment He turned abruptly away and Robert was left alone
It was a still clear evening rich in the languid softness and balm which mark the first approaches of autumn Elsmere walked back to the house his head uplifted to the sky which lay beyond the cornfield his whole being wrought into a passionate protest—a passionate invocation of all things beautiful and strong and free a clinging to life and nature as to something wronged and outraged
Suddenly his wife stood beside him She had come down to warn him that it was late and that Langham had gone to dress but she stood lingering by his side after her message was given and he made no movement to go in He turned to her the exaltation gradually dying out of his face and at last he stooped and kissed her with a kind of timidity unlike him She clasped both hands on his arm and stood pressing towards him as though to make amends—for she knew not what Something—some sharp momentary sense of difference of antagonism had hurt that inmost fibre which is the conscience of true passion She did the most generous the most ample penance for it as she stood there talking to him of halfindifferent things but with a magic a significance of eye and voice which seemed to take all the severity from her beauty and make her womanhood itself
At the evening meal Rose appeared in pale blue and it seemedPg 168 to Langham fresh from the absolute seclusion of college rooms in vacation that everything looked flat and stale beside her beside the flash of her white arms the gleam of her hair the confident grace of every movement He thought her much too selfconscious and selfsatisfied and she certainly did not make herself agreeable to him but for all that he could hardly take his eyes off her and it occurred to him once or twice to envy Robert the easy childish friendliness she showed to him and to him alone of the party The lack of real sympathy between her and Catherine was evident to the stranger at once—what indeed could the two have in common He saw that Catherine was constantly on the point of blaming and Rose constantly on the point of rebelling He caught the wrinkling of Catherines brow as Rose presently in emulation apparently of some acquaintances she had been making in London let slip the names of some of her male friends without the Mr or launched into some bolder affectation than usual of a comprehensive knowledge of London society The girl in spite of all her beauty and her fashion and the little studied details of her dress was in reality so crude so much of a child under it all that it made her audacities and assumptions the more absurd and he could see that Robert was vastly amused by them
But Langham was not merely amused by her She was too beautiful and too full of character
It astonished him to find himself afterwards edging over to the corner where she sat with the rectory cat on her knee—an inferior animal but the best substitute for Chattie available So it was however and once in her neighbourhood he made another serious effort to get her to talk to him The Elsmeres had never seen him so conversational He dropped his paradoxical melancholy he roared as gently as any sucking dove and Robert catching from the pessimist of St Anselms as the evening went on some hesitating commonplaces worthy of a bashful undergraduate on the subject of the boats and Commemoration had to beat a hasty retreat so greatly did the situation tickle his sense of humour
But the tutor made his various ventures under a discouraging sense of failure What a capricious ambiguous creature it was how fearless how disagreeably alive to all his own damaging peculiarities Never had he been so piqued for years and as he floundered about trying to find some common ground where he and she might be at ease he was conscious throughout of her mocking indifferent eyes which seemed to be saying to him all the time You are not interesting—no not a bit You are tiresome and I see through you but I must talk to you I suppose faute de mieux
Long before the little party separated for the night Langham had given it up and had betaken himself to Catherine reminding himself with some sharpness that he had come down to study his friends life rather than the humours of a provokingPg 169 girl How still the summer night was round the isolated rectory how fresh and spotless were all the appointments of the house what a Quaker neatness and refinement everywhere He drank in the scent of air and flowers with which the rooms were filled for the first time his fastidious sense was pleasantly conscious of Catherines grave beauty and even the mystic ceremonies of family prayer had a certain charm for him pagan as he was How much dignity and persuasiveness it has still he thought to himself this commonplace country life of ours on its best sides
Halfpast ten arrived Rose just let him touch her hand Catherine gave him a quiet goodnight with various hospitable wishes for his nocturnal comfort and the ladies withdrew He saw Robert open the door for his wife and catch her thin white fingers as she passed him with all the secrecy and passion of a lover
Then they plunged into the study he and Robert and smoked their fill The study was an astonishing medley Books natural history specimens a halfwritten sermon fishingrods cricketbats a huge medicine cupboard—all the main elements of Elsmeres new existence were represented there In the drawingroom with his wife and his sisterinlaw he had been as much of a boy as ever here clearly he was a man very much in earnest What about What did it all come to Can the English country clergyman do much with his life and his energies Langham approached the subject with his usual scepticism
Robert for a while however did not help him to solve it He fell at once to talking about the squire as though it cleared his mind to talk out his difficulties even to so ineffective a counsellor as Langham Langham indeed was but faintly interested in the squires crimes as a landlord but there was a certain interest to be got out of the struggle in Elsmeres mind between the attractiveness of the squire as one of the most difficult and original personalities of English letters and that moral condemnation of him as a man of possessions and ordinary human responsibilities with which the young reforming rector was clearly penetrated So that as long as he could smoke under it he was content to let his companion describe to him Mr Wendovers connection with the property his accession to it in middle life after a long residence in Germany his ineffectual attempts to play the English country gentleman and his subsequent complete withdrawal from the life about him
You have no idea what a queer sort of existence he lives in that huge place said Robert with energy He is not unpopular exactly with the poor down here When they want to belabour anybody they lay on at the agent Henslowe On the whole I have come to the conclusion the poor like a mystery They never see him when he is here the park is shut up thePg 170 common report is that he walks at night and he lives alone in that enormous house with his books The county folk have all quarrelled with him or nearly It pleases him to get a few of the humbler people about clergy professional men and so on to dine with him sometimes And he often fills the Hall I am told with London people for a day or two But otherwise he knows no one and nobody knows him
But you say he has a widowed sister How does she relish the kind of life
Oh by all accounts said the rector with a shrug she is as little like other people as himself A queer elfish little creature they say as fond of solitude down here as the squire and full of hobbies In her youth she was about the court Then she married a canon of Warham one of the popular preachers I believe of the day There is a bright little cousin of hers a certain Lady Helen Varley who lives near here and tells me stories of her She must be the most whimsical little aristocrat imaginable She liked her husband apparently but she never got over leaving London and the fashionable world and is as hungry now after her long fast for titles and bigwigs as though she were the purest parvenu The squire of course makes mock of her and she has no influence with him However there is something naïve in the stories they tell of her I feel as if I might get on with her But the squire
And the rector having laid down his pipe took to studying his boots with a certain dolefulness
Langham however who always treated the subjects of conversation presented to him as an epicure treats foods felt at this point that he had had enough of the Wendovers and started something else
So you physic bodies as well as minds he said pointing to the medicine cupboard
I should think so cried Robert brightening at once Last winter I causticked all the diphtheritic throats in the place with my own hand Our parish doctor is an infirm old noodle and I just had to do it And if the state of part of the parish remains what it is its a pleasure I may promise myself most years But it shant remain what it is
And the rector reached out his hand again for his pipe and gave one or two energetic puffs to it as he surveyed his friend stretched before him in the depths of an armchair
I will make myself a public nuisance but the people shall have their drains
It seems to me said Langham musing that in my youth people talked about Ruskin now they talk about drains
And quite right too Dirt and drains Catherine says I have gone mad upon them Its all very well but they are the foundations of a sound religion
Dirt drains and Darwin said Langham meditatively taking up Darwins Earthworms which lay on the study tablePg 171 beside him side by side with a volume of Grant Allens Sketches I didnt know you cared for this sort of thing
Robert did not answer for a moment and a faint flush stole into his face
Imagine Langham he said presently I had never read even The Origin of Species before I came here We used to take the thing half for granted I remember at Oxford in a more or less modified sense But to drive the mind through all the details of the evidence to force ones self to understand the whole hypothesis and the grounds for it is a very different matter It is a revelation
Yes said Langham and could not forbear adding but it is a revelation my friend that has not always been held to square with other revelations
In general these two kept carefully off the religious ground The man who is religious by nature tends to keep his treasure hid from the man who is critical by nature and Langham was much more interested in other things But still it had always been understood that each was free to say what he would
There was a natural panic said Robert throwing back his head at the challenge Men shrank and will always shrink say what you will from what seems to touch things dearer to them than life But the panic is passing The smoke is clearing away and we see that the battlefield is falling into new lines But the old truth remains the same Where and when and how you will but somewhen and somehow God created the heavens and the earth
Langham said nothing It had seemed to him for long that the clergy were becoming dangerously ready to throw the Old Testament overboard and all that it appeared to him to imply was that mens logical sense is easily benumbed where their hearts are concerned
Not that every one need be troubled with the new facts resumed Robert after a while going back to his pipe Why should they We are not saved by Darwinism I should never press them on my wife for instance with all her clearness and courage of mind
His voice altered as he mentioned his wife—grew extraordinarily soft even reverential
It would distress her said Langham interrogatively and inwardly conscious of pursuing investigations begun a year before
Yes it would distress her She holds the old ideas as she was taught them It is all beautiful to her what may seem doubtful or grotesque to others And why should I or any one else trouble her I above all who am not fit to tie her shoestrings
The young husbands face seemed to gleam in the dim light which fell upon it Langham involuntarily put up his hand in silence and touched his sleeve Robert gave him a quiet friendlyPg 172 look and the two men instantly plunged into some quite trivial and commonplace subject
Langham entered his room that night with a renewed sense of pleasure in the country quiet the peaceful flowerscented house Catherine who was an admirable housewife had put out her best guestsheets for his benefit and the tutor accustomed for long years to the secondbest of college service looked at their shining surfaces and frilled edges at the freshly matted floor at the flowers on the dressingtable at the spotlessness of everything in the room with a distinct sense that matrimony had its advantages He had come down to visit the Elsmeres sustained by a considerable sense of virtue He still loved Elsmere and cared to see him It was a much colder love no doubt than that which he had given to the undergraduate But the man altogether was a colder creature who for years had been drawing in tentacle after tentacle and becoming more and more content to live without his kind Roberts parsonage however and Roberts wife had no attractions for him and it was with an effort that he had made up his mind to accept the invitation which Catherine had made an effort to write
And after all the experience promised to be pleasant His fastidious love for the quieter subtler sorts of beauty was touched by the Elsmere surroundings And whatever Miss Leyburn might be she was not commonplace The demon of convention had no large part in her Langham lay awake for a time analysing his impressions of her with some gusto and meditating with a whimsical candour which seldom tailed him on the manner in which she had trampled on him and the reasons why
He woke up however in a totally different frame of mind He was preeminently a person of moods dependent probably as all moods are on certain obscure physical variations And his mental temperature had run down in the night The house the people who had been fresh and interesting to him twelve hours before were now the burden he had more than half expected them to be He lay and thought of the unbroken solitude of his college rooms of Senancours flight from human kind of the uselessness of all friendship the absurdity of all effort and could hardly persuade himself to get up and face a futile world which had moreover the enormous disadvantage for the moment of being a new one
Convention however is master even of an Obermann That prototype of all the disillusioned had to cut himself adrift from the society of the eagles on the Dent du Midi to go and hang like any other ridiculous mortal on the Paris lawcourts Langham whether he liked it or no had to face the parsonic breakfast and the parsonic day
He had just finished dressing when the sound of a girls voice drew him to the window which was open In the garden stood Rose on the edge of the sunk fence dividing the rectory domainPg 173 from the cornfield She was stooping forward playing with Roberts Dandie Dinmont In one hand she held a mass of poppies which showed a vivid scarlet against her blue dress the other was stretched out seductively to the dog leaping round her A crystal buckle flashed at her waist the sunshine caught the curls of auburn hair the pink cheek the white moving hand the lace ruffles at her throat and wrist The lithe glittering figure stood thrown out against the heavy woods behind the gold of the cornfield the blues of the distance All the gaiety and colour which is as truly representative of autumn as the gray languor of a September mist had passed into it
Langham stood and watched hidden as he thought by the curtain till a gust of wind shook the casement window beside him and threatened to blow it in upon him He put out his hand perforce to save it and the slight noise caught Roses ear She looked up her smile vanished Go down Dandie she said severely and walked quickly into the house with as much dignity as nineteen is capable of
At breakfast the Elsmeres found their guest a difficulty But they also as we know had expected it He was languor itself none of their conversational efforts succeeded and Rose studying him out of the corners of her eyes felt that it would be of no use even to torment so strange and impenetrable a being Why on earth should people come and visit their friends if they could not keep up even the ordinary decent pretences of society
Robert had to go off to some clerical business afterwards and Langham wandered out into the garden by himself As he thought of his Greek texts and his untenanted Oxford rooms he had the same sort of craving that an opiumeater has cut off from his drugs How was he to get through
Presently he walked back into the study secured an armful of volumes and carried them out True to himself in the smallest things he could never in his life be content with the companionship of one book To cut off the possibility of choice and change in anything whatever was repugnant to him
He sat himself down under the shade of a great chestnut near the house and an hour glided pleasantly away As it happened however he did not open one of the books he had brought with him A thought had struck him as he sat down and he went groping in his pockets in search of a yellowcovered brochure which when found proved to be a new play by Dumas just about to be produced by a French company in London Langham whose passion for the French theatre supplied him as we know with a great deal of life without the trouble of living was going to see it and always made a point of reading the piece beforehand
The play turned upon a typical French situation treated in a manner rather more French than usual The reader shruggedPg 174 his shoulders a good deal as he read on Strange nation he muttered to himself after an act or two How they do revel in mud
Presently just as the fifth act was beginning to get hold of him with that force which after all only a French playwright is master of he looked up and saw the two sisters coming round the corner of the house from the great kitchen garden which stretched its grass paths and tangled flowermasses down the further slope of the hill The transition was sharp from Dumass heated atmosphere of passion and crime to the quiet English rectory its rural surroundings and the figures of the two Englishwomen advancing towards him
Catherine was in a loose white dress with a black lace scarf draped about her head and form Her look hardly suggested youth and there was certainly no touch of age in it Ripeness maturity serenity—these were the chief ideas which seemed to rise in the mind at sight of her
Are you amusing yourself Mr Langham she said stopping beside him and retaining with slight imperceptible force Roses hand which threatened to slip away
Very much I have been skimming through a play which I hope to see next week by way of preparation
Rose turned involuntarily Not wishing to discuss Marianne with either Catherine or her sister Langham had just closed the book and was returning it to his pocket But she had caught sight of it
You are reading Marianne she exclaimed the slightest possible touch of wonder in her tone
Yes it is Marianne said Langham surprised in his turn He had very oldfashioned notions about the limits of a girls acquaintance with the world knowing nothing therefore as may be supposed about the modern young woman and he was a trifle scandalised by Roses accent of knowledge
I read it last week she said carelessly and the Piersons—turning to her sister—have promised to take me to see it next winter if Desforêts comes again as every one expects
Who wrote it asked Catherine innocently The theatre not only gave her little pleasure but wounded in her a hundred deep unconquerable instincts But she had long ago given up in despair the hope of protesting against Roses dramatic instincts with success
Dumas fils said Langham drily He was distinctly a good deal astonished
Rose looked at him and something brought a sudden flame into her cheek
It is one of the best of his she said defiantly I have read a good many others Mrs Pierson lent me a volume And when I was introduced to Madame Desforêts last week she agreed with me that Marianne is nearly the best of all
All this of course with the delicate nose well in air
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You were introduced to Madame Desforêts cried Langham surprised this time quite out of discretion Catherine looked at him with anxiety The reputation of the blackeyed little French actress who had been for a year or two the idol of the theatrical public of Paris and London had reached even to her and the tone of Langhams exclamation struck her painfully
I was said Rose proudly Other people may think it a disgrace I thought it an honour
Langham could not help smiling the girls naïveté was so evident It was clear that if she had read Marianne she had never understood it
Rose you dont know exclaimed Catherine turning to her sister with a sudden trouble in her eyes I dont think Mrs Pierson ought to have done that without consulting mamma especially
Why not cried Rose vehemently Her face was burning and her heart was full of something like hatred of Langham but she tried hard to be calm
I think she said with a desperate attempt at crushing dignity that the way in which all sorts of stories are believed against a woman just because she is an actress is disgraceful Just because a woman is on the stage everybody thinks they may throw stones at her I know because—because she told me cried the speaker growing however half embarrassed as she spoke that she feels the things that are said of her deeply She has been ill very ill and one of her friends said to me You know it isnt her work or a cold or anything else thats made her ill—its calumny And so it is
The speaker flashed an angry glance at Langham She was sitting on the arm of the cane chair into which Catherine had fallen one hand grasping the back of the chair for support one pointed foot beating the ground restlessly in front of her her small full mouth pursed indignantly the greenishgray eyes flashing and brilliant
As for Langham the cynic within him was on the point of uncontrollable laughter Madame Desforêts complaining of calumny to this little Westmoreland maiden But his eyes involuntarily met Catherines and the expression of both fused into a common wonderment—amused on his side anxious on hers What a child what an infant it is they seemed to confide to one another Catherine laid her hand softly on Roses and was about to say something soothing which might secure her an opening for some sisterly advice later on when there was a sound of calling from the gate She looked up and saw Robert waving to her Evidently he had just run up from the school to deliver a message She hurried across the drive to him and afterwards into the house while he disappeared
Rose got up from her perch on the armchair and would have followed but a movement of obstinacy or Quixotic wrath or both detained her
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At any rate Mr Langham she said drawing herself up and speaking with the most lofty accent if you dont know anything personally about Madame Desforêts I think it would be much fairer to say nothing—and not to assume at once that all you hear is true
Langham had rarely felt more awkward than he did then as he sat leaning forward under the tree this slim indignant creature standing over him and his consciousness about equally divided between a sense of her absurdity and a sense of her prettiness
You are an advocate worth having Miss Leyburn he said at last an enigmatical smile he could not restrain playing about his mouth I could not argue with you I had better not try
Rose looked at him at his dark regular face at the black eyes which were much vivider than usual perhaps because they could not help reflecting some of the irrepressible memories of Madame Desforêts and her causes célèbres which were coursing through the brain behind them and with a momentary impression of rawness defeat and yet involuntary attraction which galled her intolerably she turned away and left him
In the afternoon Robert was still unavailable to his own great chagrin and Langham summoned up all his resignation and walked with the ladies The general impression left upon his mind by the performance was first that the dust of an English August is intolerable and secondly that womens society ought only to be ventured on by the men who are made for it The views of Catherine and Rose may be deduced from his with tolerable certainty
But in the late afternoon when they thought they had done their duty by him and he was again alone in the garden reading he suddenly heard the sounds of music
Who was playing and in that way He got up and strolled past the drawingroom window to find out
Rose had got hold of an accompanist the timid dowdy daughter of a local solicitor with some capacity for reading and was now in her lavish impetuous fashion rushing through a quantity of new music the accumulations of her visit to London She stood up beside the piano her hair gleaming in the shadow of the drawingroom her white brow hanging forward over her violin as she peered her way through the music her whole soul absorbed in what she was doing Langham passed unnoticed
What astonishing playing Why had no one warned him of the presence of such a gift in this dazzling prickly unripe creature He sat down against the wall of the house as close as possible but out of sight and listened All the romance of his spoilt and solitary life had come to him so far through music and through such music as this For she was playing Wagner Brahms and Rubinstein interpreting all those passionate voices of the subtlest moderns through which thePg 177 heart of our own day has expressed itself even more freely and exactly than through the voice of literature Hans Sachs immortal song echoes from the love duets in Tristan und Isolde fragments from a wild and alien dancemusic they rippled over him in a warm intoxicating stream of sound stirring association after association and rousing from sleep a hundred bygone moods of feeling
What magic and mastery in the girls touch What power of divination and of rendering Ah she too was floating in passion and romance but of a different sort altogether from the conscious reflected product of the mans nature She was not thinking of the past but of the future she was weaving her story that was to be into the flying notes playing to the unknown of her Whindale dreams the strong ardent unknown—insufferable if he pleases to all the world besides but to me heaven She had caught no breath yet of his coming but her heart was ready for him
Suddenly as she put down her violin the French window opened and Langham stood before her She looked at him with a quick stiffening of the face which a minute before had been all quivering and relaxed and his instant perception of it chilled the impulse which had brought him there
He said something banal about his enjoyment something totally different from what he had meant to say The moment presented itself but he could not seize it or her
I had no notion you cared for music she said carelessly as she shut the piano and then she went away
Langham felt a strange fierce pang of disappointment What had he meant to do or say Idiot What common ground was there between him and any such exquisite youth What girl would ever see in him anything but the dull remains of what once had been a man
CHAPTER XIII
The next day was Sunday Langham who was as depressed and homesick as ever with a certain new spice of restlessness not altogether intelligible to himself thrown in could only brace himself to the prospect by the determination to take the English rural Sunday as the subject of severe scientific investigation He would do it thoroughly
So he donned a black coat and went to church with the rest There in spite of his boredom with the whole proceeding Roberts old tutor was a good deal more interested by Roberts sermon than he had expected to be It was on the character of David and there was a note in it a note of historical imagination a power of sketching in a background of circumstance and of biting into the mind of the listener as it were by a detailPg 178 or an epithet which struck Langham as something new in his experience of Elsmere He followed it at first as one might watch a game of skill enjoying the intellectual form of it and counting the good points but by the end he was not a little carried away The peroration was undoubtedly very moving very intimate very modern and Langham up to a certain point was extremely susceptible to oratory as he was to music and acting The critical judgment however at the root of him kept coolly repeating as he stood watching the people defile out of the church This sort of thing will go down will make a mark Elsmere is at the beginning of a career
In the afternoon Robert who was feeling deeply guilty towards his wife in that he had been forced to leave so much of the entertainment of Langham to her asked his old friend to come for him to the school at four oclock and take him for a walk between two engagements Langham was punctual and Robert carried him off first to see the Sunday cricket which was in full swing During the past year the young rector had been developing a number of outdoor capacities which were probably always dormant in his Elsmere blood the blood of generations of country gentlemen but which had never had full opportunity before He talked of fishing as Kingsley might have talked of it and indeed with constant quotations from Kingsley and his cricket which had been good enough at Oxford to get him into his College eleven had stood him in specially good stead with the Murewell villagers That his play was not elegant they were not likely to find out his bowling they set small store by but his batting was of a fine slashing superior sort which soon carried the Murewell Club to a much higher position among the clubs of the neighbourhood than it had ever yet aspired to occupy
The rector had no time to play on Sundays however and after they had hung about the green a little while he took his friend over to the Workmens Institute which stood at the edge of it He explained that the Institute had been the last achievement of the agent before Henslowe a man who had done his duty to the estate according to his lights and to whom it was owing that those parts of it at any rate which were most in the public eye were still in fair condition
The Institute was now in bad repair and too small for the place But catch that man doing anything for us exclaimed Robert hotly He will hardly mend the roof now merely I believe to spite me But come and see my new Naturalists Club
And he opened the Institute door Langham followed in the temper of one getting up a subject for examination
Poor Robert His labour and his enthusiasm deserved a more appreciative eye He was wrapped up in his Club which had been the great success of his first year and he dragged Langham through it all not indeed sympathetic creature that hePg 179 was without occasional qualms But after all he would say to himself indignantly I must do something with him
Langham indeed behaved with resignation He looked at the collections for the year and was quite ready to take it for granted that they were extremely creditable Into the oldfashioned windowsills glazed compartments had been fitted and these were now fairly filled with specimens with eggs butterflies moths beetles fossils and what not A case of stuffed tropical birds presented by Robert stood in the centre of the room another containing the birds of the district was close by On a table farther on stood two large open books which served as records of observations on the part of members of the Club In one which was scrawled over with mysterious hieroglyphs any one might write what he would In the other only such facts and remarks as had passed the gauntlet of a Club meeting were recorded in Roberts neatest hand On the same table stood jars full of strange creatures—tadpoles and water larvæ of all kinds over which Robert hung now absorbed poking among them with a straw while Langham to whom only the generalisations of science were congenial stood by and mildly scoffed
As they came out a great loutish boy who had evidently been hanging about waiting for the rector came up to him boorishly touched his cap and then taking a cardboard box out of his pocket opened it with infinite caution something like a tremor of emotion passing over his gnarled countenance
The rectors eyes glistened
Hullo I say Irwin where in the name of fortune did you get that You lucky fellow Come in and lets look it out
And the two plunged back into the Club together leaving Langham to the philosophic and patient contemplation of the village green its geese its donkeys and its surrounding fringe of houses He felt that quite indisputably life would have been better worth living if like Robert he could have taken a passionate interest in rare moths or common ploughboys but Nature having denied him the possibility there was small use in grumbling
Presently the two naturalists came out again and the boy went off bearing his treasure with him
Lucky dog said Robert turning his friend into a country road leading out of the village hes found one of the rarest moths of the district Such a hero hell be in the Club tomorrow night Its extraordinary what a rational interest has done for that fellow I nearly fought him in public last winter
And he turned to his friend with a laugh and yet with a little quick look of feeling in the gray eyes
Magnificent but not war said Langham drily I wouldnt have given much for your chances against those shoulders
Oh I dont know I should have had a little science on myPg 180 side which counts for a great deal We turned him out of the Club for brutality towards the old grandmother he lives with—turned him out in public Such a scene I shall never forget the boys face It was like a corpse and the eyes burning out of it He made for me but the others closed up round and we got him put out
Hard lines on the grandmother remarked Langham
She thought so—poor old thing She left her cottage that night thinking he would murder her and went to a friend At the end of a week he came into the friends house where she was alone in bed She cowered under the bedclothes she told me expecting him to strike her Instead of which he threw his wages down beside her and gruffly invited her to come home He wouldnt do her no mischief Everybody dissuaded her but the plucky old thing went A week or two afterwards she sent for me and I found her crying She was sure the lad was ill he spoke to nobody at his work Lord sir she said it do remind me when he sits glowering at nights of those folks in the Bible when the devils inside em kep atearing em But hes like a newborn babe to me sir—never does me no arm And it do go to my heart sir to see how poorly he do take his vittles So I made tracks for that lad said Robert his eyes kindling his whole frame dilating I found him in the fields one morning I have seldom lived through so much in half an hour In the evening I walked him up to the Club and we readmitted him and since then the boy has been like one clothed and in his right mind If there is any trouble in the Club I set him on and he generally puts it right And when I was laid up with a chill in the spring and the poor fellow came trudging up every night after his work to ask for me—well never mind but it gives one a good glow at ones heart to think about it
The speaker threw back his head impulsively as though defying his own feeling Langham looked at him curiously The pastoral temper was a novelty to him and the strong development of it in the undergraduate of his Oxford recollections had its interest
A quarter to six said Robert as on their return from their walk they were descending a lowwooded hill above the village and the church clock rang out I must hurry or I shall be late for my storytelling
Storytelling said Langham with a halfexasperated shrug What next You clergy are too inventive by half
Robert laughed a trifle bitterly
I cant congratulate you on your epithets he said thrusting his hands far into his pockets Good heavens if we were—if we were inventive as a body the Church wouldnt be where she is in the rural districts My storytelling is the simplest thing in the world I began it in the winter with the object of somehow or other getting at the imagination of these rustics ForcePg 181 them for only half an hour to live some one elses life—it is the one thing worth doing with them Thats what I have been aiming at I told my stories all the winter—Shakespeare Don Quixote Dumas—Heaven knows what And on the whole it answers best But now we are reading The Talisman Come and inspect us unless youre a purist about your Scott None other of the immortals have such longueurs as he and we cut him freely
By all means said Langham lead on And he followed his companion without repugnance After all there was something contagious in so much youth and hopefulness
The storytelling was held in the Institute
A group of men and boys were hanging round the door when they reached it The two friends made their way through greeted in the dumb friendly English fashion on all sides and Langham found himself in a room halffilled with boys and youths a few grown men who had just put their pipes out lounging at the back
Langham not only endured but enjoyed the first part of the hour that followed Robert was an admirable reader as most enthusiastic imaginative people are He was a master of all those arts of look and gesture which make a spoken story telling and dramatic and Langham marvelled with what energy after his hard days work and with another service before him he was able to throw himself into such a hors dœuvre as this He was reading tonight one of the most perfect scenes that even the Wizard of the North has ever conjured the scene in the tent of Richard LionHeart when the disguised slave saves the life of the king and Richard first suspects his identity As he read on his arms resting on the high desk in front of him and his eyes full of infectious enjoyment travelling from the book to his audience surrounded by human beings whose confidence he had won and whose lives he was brightening from day to day he seemed to Langham the very type and model of a man who had found his métier found his niche in the world and the best means of filling it If to attain to an adequate and masterly expression of ones self be the aim of life Robert was fast achieving it This parish of twelve hundred souls gave him now all the scope he asked It was evident that he felt his work to be rather above than below his deserts He was content—more than content—to spend ability which would have distinguished him in public life or carried him far to the front in literature on the civilising of a few hundred of Englands rural poor The future might bring him worldly success—Langham thought it must and would Clergymen of Roberts stamp are rare among us But if so it would be in response to no conscious effort of his Here in the country living he had so long dreaded and put from him lest it should tax his young energies too lightly he was happy—deeply abundantly happy at peace with God at one with man
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Happy Langham sitting at the outer corner of one of the benches by the open door gradually ceased to listen started on other lines of thought by this realisation warm stimulating provocative of another mans happiness
Outside the shadows lengthened across the green groups of distant children or animals passed in and out of the golden lightspaces the patches of heather left here and there glowed as the sunset touched them Every now and then his eye travelled vaguely past a cottage garden gay with the pinks and carmines of the phloxes into the cool browns and bluishgrays of the raftered room beyond babies toddled across the road with stooping mothers in their train the whole air and scene seemed to be suffused with suggestions of the pathetic expansiveness and helplessness of human existence which generation after generation is still so vulnerable so confiding so eager Life after life flowers out from the darkness and sinks back into it again And in the interval what agony what disillusion All the apparatus of a universe that men may know what it is to hope and fail to win and lose Happy—in this world where men sit and hear each other groan His friends confidence only made Langham as melancholy as Job
What was it based on In the first place on Christianity—on the passionate acceptance of an exquisite fairy tale said the dreaming spectator to himself which at the first honest challenge of the critical sense withers in our grasp That challenge Elsmere has never given it and in all probability never will No A man sees none the straighter for having a wife he adores and a profession that suits him between him and unpleasant facts
In the evening Langham with the usual reaction of his afternoon self against his morning self felt that wild horses should not take him to Church again and with a longing for something purely mundane he stayed at home with a volume of Montaigne while apparently all the rest of the household went to evening service
After a warm day the evening had turned cold and stormy the west was streaked with jagged strips of angry cloud the wind was rising in the trees and the temperature had suddenly fallen so much that when Langham shut himself up in Roberts study he did what he had been admonished to do in case of need set a light to the fire which blazed out merrily into the darkening room Then he drew the curtains and threw himself down into Roberts chair with a sigh of Sybaritic satisfaction Good Now for something that takes the world less naïvely he said to himself this house is too virtuous for anything
He opened his Montaigne and read on very happily for half an hour The house seemed entirely deserted
All the servants gone too he said presently looking upPg 183 and listening Anybody who wants the spoons neednt trouble about me I dont leave this fire
And he plunged back again into his book At last there was a sound of the swing door which separated Roberts passage from the front hall opening and shutting Steps came quickly towards the study the handle was turned and there on the threshold stood Rose
He turned quickly round in his chair with a look of astonishment She also started as she saw him
I did not know any one was in she said awkwardly the colour spreading over her face I came to look for a book
She made a delicious picture as she stood framed in the darkness of the doorway her long dress caught up round her in one hand the other resting on the handle A gust of some delicate perfume seemed to enter the room with her and a thrill of pleasure passed through Langhams senses
Can I find anything for you he said springing up
She hesitated a moment then apparently made up her mind that it would be foolish to retreat and coming forward she said with an accent as coldly polite as she could make it—
Pray dont disturb yourself I know exactly where to find it
She went up to the shelves where Robert kept his novels and began running her fingers over the books with slightly knitted brows and a mouth severely shut Langham still standing watched her and presently stepped forward
You cant reach those upper shelves he said please let me
He was already beside her and she gave way
I want Charles Auchester she said still forbiddingly It ought to be there
Oh that queer musical novel—I know it quite well No sign of it here and he ran over the shelves with the practised eye of one accustomed to deal with books
Robert must have lent it said Rose with a little sigh Never mind please It doesnt matter and she was already moving away
Try some other instead he said smiling his arm still upstretched Robert has no lack of choice His manner had an animation and ease usually quite foreign to it Rose stopped and her lips relaxed a little
He is very nearly as bad as the novelreading bishop who was reduced at last to stealing the servants Family Herald out of the kitchen cupboard she said a smile dawning
Langham laughed
Has he such an episcopal appetite for them That accounts for the fact that when he and I begin to talk novels I am always nowhere
I shouldnt have supposed you ever read them said Rose obeying an irresistible impulse and biting her lip the moment afterwards
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Do you think that we poor people at Oxford are always condemned to works on the enclitic δέ he asked his fine eyes lit up with gaiety and his head of which the Greek outlines were ordinarily so much disguised by his stoop and hesitating look thrown back against the books behind him
Natures like Langhams in which the nerves are never normal have their moments of felicity balancing their weeks of timidity and depression After his melancholy of the last two days the tide of reaction had been mounting within him and the sight of Rose had carried it to its height
She gave a little involuntary stare of astonishment What had happened to Roberts silent and finicking friend
I know nothing of Oxford she said a little primly in answer to his question I never was there—but I never was anywhere I have seen nothing she added hastily and as Langham thought bitterly
Except London and the great world and Madame Desforêts he answered laughing Is that so little
She flashed a quick defiant look at him as he mentioned Madame Desforêts but his look was imperturbably kind and gay She could not help softening towards him What magic had passed over him
Do you know said Langham moving that you are standing in a draught and that it has turned extremely cold
For she had left the passagedoor wide open behind her and as the window was partially open the curtains were swaying hither and thither and her muslin dress was being blown in coils round her feet
So it has said Rose shivering I dont envy the Church people You havent found me a book Mr Langham
I will find you one in a minute if you will come and read it by the fire he said with his hand on the door
She glanced at the fire and at him irresolute His breath quickened She too had passed into another phase Was it the natural effect of night of solitude of sex At any rate she sank softly into the armchair opposite to that in which he had been sitting
Find me an exciting one please
Langham shut the door securely and went back to the bookcase his hand trembling a little as it passed along the books He found Villette and offered it to her She took it opened it and appeared deep in it at once He took the hint and went back to his Montaigne
The fire crackled cheerfully the wind outside made every now and then a sudden gusty onslaught on their silence dying away again as abruptly as it had risen Rose turned the pages of her book sitting a little stiffly in her long chair and Langham gradually began to find Montaigne impossible to read He became instead more and more alive to every detail of the situation into which he had fallen At last seeing or imaginingPg 185 that the fire wanted attending to he bent forward and thrust the poker into it A burning coal fell on the hearth and Rose hastily withdrew her foot from the fender and looked up
I am so sorry he interjected Coals never do what you want them to do Are you very much interested in Villette
Deeply said Rose letting the book however drop on her lap She laid back her head with a little sigh which she did her best to check half way through What ailed her tonight She seemed wearied for the moment there was no fight in her with anybody Her music her beauty her mutinous mocking gaiety—these things had all worked on the man beside her but this new softness this touch of childish fatigue was adorable
Charlotte Brontë wrote it out of her Brussels experience didnt she she resumed languidly How sorry she must have been to come back to that dull home and that awful brother after such a break
There were reasons more than one that must have made her sorry to come back said Langham reflectively But how she pined for her wilds all through I am afraid you dont find your wilds as interesting as she found hers
His question and his smile startled her
Her first impulse was to take up her book again as a hint to him that her likings were no concern of his But something checked it probably the new brilliancy of that look of his which had suddenly grown so personal so manly Instead Villette slid a little farther from her hand and her pretty head still lay lightly back against the cushion
No I dont find my wilds interesting at all she said forlornly
You are not fond of the people as your sister is
Fond of them cried Rose hastily I should think not and what is more they dont like me It is quite intolerable since Catherine left I have so much more to do with them My other sister and I have to do all her work It is dreadful to have to work after somebody who has a genius for doing just what you do worst
The young girls hands fell across one another with a little impatient gesture Langham had a movement of the most delightful compassion towards the petulant childish creature It was as though their relative positions had been in some mysterious way reversed During their two days together she had been the superior and he had felt himself at the mercy of her scornful sharpeyed youth Now he knew not how or why Fate seemed to have restored to him something of the mans natural advantage combined for once with the impulse to use it
Your sister I suppose has been always happy in charity he said
Pg 186
Oh dear yes said Rose irritably anything that has two legs and is ill that is all Catherine wants to make her happy
And you want something quite different something more exciting he asked his diplomatic tone showing that he felt he dared something in thus pressing her but dared it at least with his wits about him Rose met his look irresolutely a little tremor of selfconsciousness creeping over her
Yes I want something different she said in a low voice and paused then raising herself energetically she clasped her hands round her knees But it is not idleness I want I want to work but at things I was born for I cant have patience with old women but I could slave all day and all night to play the violin
You want to give yourself up to study then and live with musicians he said quietly
She shrugged her shoulders by way of answer and began nervously to play with her rings
That underself which was the work and the heritage of her father in her and which beneath all the wilfulnesses and defiances of the other self held its own moral debates in its own way well out of Catherines sight generally began to emerge wooed into the light by his friendly gentleness
But it is all so difficult you see she said despairingly Papa thought it wicked to care about anything except religion If he had lived of course I should never have been allowed to study music It has been all mutiny so far every bit of it whatever I have been able to do
He would have changed with the times said Langham
I know he would cried Rose I have told Catherine so a hundred times People—good people—think quite differently about art now dont they Mr Langham
She spoke with perfect naïveté He saw more and more of the child in her in spite of that one striking development of her art
They call it the handmaid of religion he answered smiling
Rose made a little face
I shouldnt she said with frank brevity But then theres something else You know where we live—at the very ends of the earth seven miles from a station in the very loneliest valley of all Westmoreland Whats to be done with a fiddle in such a place Of course ever since papa died Ive just been plotting and planning to get away But theres the difficulty and she crossed one white finger over another as she laid out her case That house where we live has been lived in by Leyburns ever since—the Flood Horrid set they were I know because I cant ever make mamma or even Catherine talk about them But still when papa retired he came back and bought the old place from his brother Such a dreadful dreadful mistake cried the child letting her hands fall over her knee
Had he been so happy there
Pg 187
Happy—and Roses lip curled His brothers used to kick and cuff him his father was awfully unkind to him he never had a days peace till he went to school and after he went to school he never came back for years and years and years till Catherine was fifteen What could have made him so fond of it
And again looking despondently into the fire she pondered that faroff perversity of her fathers
Blood has strange magnetisms said Langham seized as he spoke by the pensive prettiness of the bent head and neck and they show themselves in the oddest ways
Then I wish they wouldnt she said irritably But that isnt all He went there not only because he loved that place but because he hated other places I think he must have thought—and her voice dropped—he wasnt going to live long—he wasnt well when he gave up the school—and then we could grow up there safe without any chance of getting into mischief Catherine says he thought the world was getting very wicked and dangerous and irreligious and that it comforted him to know that we should be out of it
Then she broke off suddenly
Do you know she went on wistfully raising her beautiful eyes to her companion after all he gave me my first violin
Langham smiled
I like that little inconsequence he said
Then of course I took to it like a duck to water and it began to scare him that I loved it so much He and Catherine only loved religion and us and the poor So he always took it away on Sundays Then I hated Sundays and would never be good on them One Sunday I cried myself nearly into a fit on the diningroom floor because I mightnt have it Then he came in and he took me up and he tied a Scotch plaid round his neck and he put me into it and carried me away right up on to the hills and he talked to me like an angel He asked me not to make him sad before God that he had given me that violin so I never screamed again—on Sundays
Her companions eyes were not quite as clear as before
Poor little naughty child he said bending over to her I think your father must have been a man to be loved
She looked at him very near to weeping her face all working with a soft remorse
Oh so he was—so he was If he had been hard and ugly to us why it would have been much easier for me but he was so good And there was Catherine just like him always preaching to us what he wished You see what a chain its been—what a weight And as I must struggle—must because I was I—to get back into the world on the other side of the mountains and do what all the dear wicked people there were doing why I have been a criminal all my life And that isnt exhilarating always
Pg 188
And she raised her arm and let it fall beside her with the quick overtragic emotion of nineteen
I wish your father could have heard you play as I heard you play yesterday he said gently
She started
Did you hear me—that Wagner
He nodded smiling She still looked at him her lips slightly open
Do you want to know what I thought I have heard much music you know
He laughed into her eyes as much as to say I am not quite the mummy you thought me after all And she coloured slightly
I have heard every violinist of any fame in Europe play and play often and it seemed to me that with time—and work—you might play as well as any of them
The slight flush became a glow that spread from brow to chin Then she gave a long breath and turned away her face resting on her hand
And I cant help thinking he went on marvelling inwardly at his own rôle of mentor and his strange enjoyment of it that if your father had lived till now and had gone with the times a little as he must have gone he would have learnt to take pleasure in your pleasure and to fit your gift somehow into his scheme of things
Catherine hasnt moved with the times said Rose dolefully
Langham was silent Gaucherie seized him again when it became a question of discussing Mrs Elsmere his own view was so inconveniently emphatic
And you think she went on you really think without being too ungrateful to papa and too unkind to the old Leyburn ghosts—and a little laugh danced through the vibrating voice—I might try and get them to give up Burwood—I might struggle to have my way I shall of course I shall I never was a meek martyr and never shall be But one cant help having qualms though one doesnt tell them to ones sisters and cousins and aunts And sometimes—she turned her chin round on her hand and looked at him with a delicious shy impulsiveness—sometimes a stranger sees clearer Do you think me a monster as Catherine does
Even as she spoke her own words startled her—the confidence the abandonment of them But she held to them bravely only her eyelids quivered She had absurdly misjudged this man and there was a warm penitence in her heart How kind he had been how sympathetic
He rose with her last words and stood leaning against the mantelpiece looking down upon her gravely with the air as it seemed to her of her friend her confessor Her white childish brow the little curls of bright hair upon her temples her parted lips the pretty folds of the muslin dress the little foot on thePg 189 fender—every detail of the picture impressed itself once for all Langham will carry it with him to his grave
Tell me she said again smiling divinely as though to encourage him—tell me quite frankly down to the bottom what you think
The harsh noise of an opening door in the distance and a gust of wind sweeping through the house voices and steps approaching Rose sprang up and for the first time during all the latter part of their conversation felt a sharp sense of embarrassment
How early you are Robert she exclaimed as the study door opened and Roberts windblown head and tall form wrapped in an Inverness cape appeared on the threshold Is Catherine tired
Rather said Robert the slightest gleam of surprise betraying itself on his face She has gone to bed and told me to ask you to come and say goodnight to her
You got my message about not coming from old Martha asked Rose I met her on the common
Yes she gave it us at the church door He went out again into the passage to hang up his greatcoat She followed longing to tell him that it was pure accident that took her to the study but she could not find words in which to do it and could only say goodnight a little abruptly
How tempting that fire looks said Robert reentering the study Were you very cold Langham before you lit it
Very said Langham smiling his arm behind his head his eyes fixed on the blaze but I have been delightfully warm and happy since
CHAPTER XIV
Catherine stopped beside the drawingroom window with a start caught by something she saw outside
It was nothing however but the figures of Rose and Langham strolling round the garden A bystander would have been puzzled by the sudden knitting of Catherines brows over it
Rose held a red parasol which gleamed against the trees Dandie leapt about her but she was too busy talking to take much notice of him Talking chattering to that cold cynic of a man for whom only yesterday she had scarcely had a civil word Catherine felt herself a prey to all sorts of vague unreasonable alarms
Robert had said to her the night before with an odd look Wifie when I came in I found Langham and Rose had been spending the evening together in the study And I dont know when I have seen Langham so brilliant or so alive as in our smoking talk just now
Pg 190
Catherine had laughed him to scorn but all the same she had been a little longer going to sleep than usual She felt herself almost as much as ever the guardian of her sisters and the old sensitive nerve was set quivering And now there could be no question about it—Rose had changed her ground towards Mr Langham altogether Her manner at breakfast was evidence enough of it
Catherines selftorturing mind leapt on for an instant to all sorts of horrors That man—and she and Robert responsible to her mother and her dead father Never Then she scolded herself back to common sense Rose and he had discovered a common subject in music and musicians That would be quite enough to account for the newborn friendship on Roses part And in five more days the limit of Langhams stay nothing very dreadful could happen argued the reserved Catherine
But she was uneasy and after a bit as that têteàtête in the garden still went on she could not for the life of her help interfering She strolled out to meet them with some woollen stuff hanging over her arm and made a plaintive and smiling appeal to Rose to come and help her with some preparations for a mothers meeting to be held that afternoon Rose who was supposed by the family to be taking care of her sister at a critical time had a moments prick of conscience and went off with a good grace Langham felt vaguely that he owed Mrs Elsmere another grudge but he resigned himself and took out a cigarette wherewith to console himself for the loss of his companion
Presently as he stood for a moment turning over some new books on the drawingroom table Rose came in She held an armful of blue serge and going up to a table in the window she took from it a little workcase and was about to vanish again when Langham went up to her
You look intolerably busy he said to her discontentedly
Six dresses ten cloaks eight petticoats to cut out by luncheon time she answered demurely with a countenance of most Dorcaslike seriousness and if I spoil them I shall have to pay for the stuff
He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her smiling still master of himself and of his words
And no music—none at all Perhaps you dont know that I too can accompany
You play she exclaimed incredulous
Try me
The light of his fine black eyes seemed to encompass her She moved backward a little shaking her head Not this morning she said Oh dear no not this morning I am afraid you dont know anything about tacking or fixing or the abominable time they take Well it could hardly be expected There is nothing in the world—and she shook her serge vindictively—that I hate so much
Pg 191
And not this afternoon for Robert and I go fishing But this evening he said detaining her
She nodded lightly dropped her lovely eyes with a sudden embarrassment and went away with lightning quickness
A minute or two later Elsmere laid a hand on his friends shoulder Come and see the Hall old fellow It will be our last chance for the squire and his sister come back this afternoon I must parochialise a bit afterwards but you shant be much victimised
Langham submitted and they sallied forth It was a soft rainy morning one of the first heralds of autumn Gray mists were drifting silently across the woods and the wide stubbles of the now shaven cornfield where white lines of reapers were at work as the morning cleared making and stacking the sheaves After a stormy night the garden was strewn with débris and here and there noiseless prophetic showers of leaves were dropping on the lawn
Elsmere took his guest along a bit of common where great black junipers stood up like magnates in council above the motley undergrowth of fern and heather and then they turned into the park A great stretch of dimpled land it was falling softly towards the south and west bounded by a shining twisted river and commanding from all its highest points a heathery world of distance now turned a stormy purple under the drooping fringes of the rain clouds They walked downwards from the moment of entering it till at last when they reached a wooded plateau about a hundred feet above the river the house itself came suddenly into view
That was a house of houses The large main building as distinguished from the lower stone portions to the north which represented a fragment of the older Elizabethan house had been in its day the crown and boast of Jacobean housearchitecture It was fretted and jewelled with Renaissance terracotta work from end to end each gable had its lace work each window its carved setting And yet the lines of the whole were so noble genius had hit the general proportions so finely that no effect of stateliness or grandeur had been missed through all the accumulation of ornament Majestic relic of a vanished England the house rose amid the August woods rich in every beauty that site and wealth and centuries could give to it The river ran about it as though it loved it The cedars which had kept it company for wellnigh two centuries gathered proudly round it the deer grouped themselves in the park beneath it as though they were conscious elements in a great whole of loveliness
The two friends were admitted by a housemaid who happened to be busy in the hall and whose red cheeks and general breathlessness bore witness to the energy of the storm of preparation now sweeping through the house
The famous hall to which Elsmere at once drew LanghamsPg 192 attention was however in no way remarkable for size or height It told comparatively little of seignorial dignity but it was as though generation after generation had employed upon its perfecting the craft of its most delicate fingers the love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits Overhead the stuccowork ceiling covered with stags and birds and strange heraldic creatures unknown to science had the deep creamy tint the consistency and surface of antique ivory From the white and gilt frieze beneath untouched so Robert explained since the Jacobean days when it was first executed hung Renaissance tapestries which would have made the hearts delight of any romantic child so rich they were in groves of marvellous trees hung with red and golden fruits in farreaching palaces and rockbuilt citadels in flying shepherdesses and pursuing shepherds Between the tapestries again there were breadths of carved panelling crowded with all things round and sweet with fruits and flowers and strange musical instruments with flying cherubs and fair faces in laurelwreathed medallions while in the middle of the wall a great oriel window broke the dim venerable surfaces of wood and tapestry with stretches of jewelled light Tables crowded with antiques with Tanagra figures or Greek vases with Florentine bronzes or specimens of the wilful vivacious woodcarving of seventeenthcentury Spain stood scattered on the Persian carpets And to complete the whole the gardeners had just been at work on the corners of the hall and of the great window so that the hardwon subtleties of mans bygone handiwork with which the splendid room was encrusted from top to bottom were masked and relieved here and there by the careless easy splendour of flowers which had but to bloom in order to eclipse them all
Robert was at home in the great pile where for many months he had gone freely in and out on his way to the library and the housekeeper only met him to make an apology for her working dress and to hand over to him the keys of the library bookcases with the fretful comment that seemed to have in it the ghostly voice of generations of housemaids Oh lor sir they are a trouble them books
From the drawingrooms full of a more modern and less poetical magnificence where Langham turned restless and refractory Elsmere with a smile took his guest silently back into the hall and opened a carved door behind a curtain Passing through they found themselves in a long passage lighted by small windows on the lefthand side
This passage please notice said Robert leads to nothing but the wing containing the library or rather libraries which is the oldest part of the house I always enter it with a kind of pleasing awe Consider these carpets which keep out every sound and look how everything gets older as we go on
For halfway down the passage the ceiling seemed to descend upon their heads the flooring became uneven and woodworkPg 193 and walls showed that they had passed from the Jacobean house into the much older Tudor building Presently Robert led the way up a few shallow steps pushed open a heavy door also covered by curtains and bade his companion enter
They found themselves in a low immense room running at right angles to the passage they had just quitted The long diamondpaned window filling almost half of the opposite wall faced the door by which they had come in the heavy carved mantelpiece was to their right an open doorway on their left closed at present by tapestry hangings seemed to lead into yet other rooms
The walls of this one were completely covered from floor to ceiling with latticed bookcases enclosed throughout in a frame of oak carved in light classical relief by what appeared to be a French hand of the sixteenth century The chequered bindings of the books in which the creamy tints of vellum predominated lined the whole surface of the wall with a delicate sobriety of colour over the mantelpiece the picture of the founder of the house—a Holbein portrait glorious in red robes and fur and golden necklace—seemed to gather up and give voice to all the dignity and impressiveness of the room beneath him while on the window side the booklined wall was as it were replaced by the wooded face of a hill clothed in dark lines of trimmed yews which rose abruptly about a hundred yards from the house and overshadowed the whole library wing Between the window and the hill however was a small old English garden closely hedged round with yew hedges and blazing now with every flower that an English August knows—with sunflowers tigerlilies and dahlias white and red The window was low so that the flowers seemed to be actually in the room challenging the pale tints of the books the tawny browns and blues of the Persian carpet and the scarlet splendours of the courtier over the mantelpiece The room was lit up besides by a few gleaming casts from the antique by the Diane Chasseresse of the Louvre by the Hermes of Praxiteles smiling with immortal kindness on the child enthroned upon his arm and by a Donatello figure of a woman in marble its subtle sweet austerity contrasting with the Greek frankness and blitheness of its companions
Langham was penetrated at once by the spell of this strange and beautiful place The fastidious instincts which had been half revolted by the costly accumulations the overblown splendours of the drawingroom were abundantly satisfied here
So it was here he said looking round him that that man wrote The Idols of the Marketplace
I imagine so said Robert if so he might well have felt a little more charity towards the human race in writing it The race cannot be said to have treated him badly on the whole But now look Langham look at these books—the most precious things are here
Pg 194And he turned the key of a particular section of the wall which was not only latticed but glazed
Here is A Mirror for Magistrates Look at the titlepage you will find Gabriel Harveys name on it Here is a first edition of Astrophel and Stella another of the Arcadia They may very well be presentation copies for the Wendover of that day is known to have been a wit and a writer Imagine finding them in situ like this in the same room perhaps on the same shelves as at the beginning The other rooms on this floor have been annexed since but this room was always a library
Langham took the volumes reverently from Roberts hands into his own the scholars passion hot within him That glazed case was indeed a storehouse of treasures Ben Jonsons Underwoods with his own corrections a presentation copy of Andrew Marvells Poems with autograph notes manuscript volumes of letters containing almost every famous name known to English literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the literary cream in fact of all the vast collection which filled the muniment room upstairs books which had belonged to Addison to Sir William Temple to Swift to Horace Walpole the first four folios of Shakespeare all perfect and most of the quartos—everything that the heart of the English collector could most desire was there And the charm of it was that only a small proportion of these precious things represented conscious and deliberate acquisition The great majority of them had as it were drifted thither one by one carried there by the tide of English letters as to a warm and natural restingplace
But Robert grew impatient and hurried on his guest to other things—to the shelves of French rarities ranging from Du Bellays Visions with his autograph down to the copy of Les Mémoires dOutreTombe presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Récamier or to a dainty manuscript volume in the fine writing of Lamartine
These Robert explained were collected I believe by the squires father He was not in the least literary so they say but it had always been a point of honour to carry on the library and as he had learnt French well in his youth he bought French things taking advice but without knowing much about them I imagine It was in the room overhead said Robert laying down the book he held and speaking in a lower key so the old doctor of the house told me a few weeks ago that the same poor soul put an end to himself twenty years ago
What in the name of fortune did he do that for
Mania said Robert quietly
Whew said the other lifting his eyebrows Is that the skeleton in this very magnificent cupboard
It has been the Wendover scourge from the beginning so I hear Every one about here of course explains this mans eccentricities by the family history But I dont know saidPg 195 Robert his lip hardening it may be extremely convenient sometimes to have a tradition of the kind A man who knew how to work it might very well enjoy all the advantages of sanity and the privileges of insanity at the same time The poor old doctor I was telling you of—old Meyrick—who has known the squire since his boyhood and has a doglike attachment to him is always hinting at mysterious excuses Whenever I let out to him as I do sometimes as to the state of the property he talks of inherited melancholy rash judgments and so forth I like the good old soul but I dont believe much of it A man who is sane enough to make a great name for himself in letters is sane enough to provide his estate with a decent agent
It doesnt follow said Langham who was however so deep in a collection of Spanish romances and chronicles that the squires mental history did not seem to make much impression upon him Most men of letters are mad and I should be inclined he added with a sudden and fretful emphasis to argue much worse things for the sanity of your squire Elsmere from the fact that this room is undoubtedly allowed to get damp sometimes than from any of those absurd parochial tests of yours
And he held up a couple of priceless books of which the Spanish sheepskin bindings showed traces here and there of moisture
It is no use I know expecting you to preserve a moral sense when you get among books said Robert with a shrug I will reserve my remarks on that subject But you must really tear yourself away from this room Langham if you want to see the rest of the squires quarters Here you have what we may call the ornamental sensational part of the library that part of it which would make a stir at Sothebys the working parts are all to come
Langham reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged away Robert held back the hangings over the doorway leading into the rest of the wing and passing through they found themselves in a continuation of the library totally different in character from the magnificent room they had just left The walls were no longer latticed and carved they were closely packed in the most businesslike way with books which represented the squires own collection and were in fact a chart of his own intellectual history
This is how I interpret this room said Robert looking round it Here are the books he collected at Oxford in the Tractarian Movement and afterwards Look here and he pulled out a volume of St Basil
Langham looked and saw on the titlepage a note in faded characters Given to me by Newman at Oxford in 1845
Ah of course he was one of them in 45 he must have left them very soon after said Langham reflectively
Pg 196
Robert nodded But look at them There are the Tracts all the Fathers all the Councils and masses as you see of Anglican theology Now look at the next case nothing but eighteenth century
I see—from the Fathers to the Philosophers from Hooker to Hume How history repeats itself in the individual
And there again said Robert pointing to the other side of the room are the results of his life as a German student
Germany—ah I remember How long was he there
Ten years at Berlin and Heidelberg According to old Meyrick he buried his last chance of living like other men at Berlin His years of extravagant labour there have left marks upon him physically that can never be effaced But that bookcase fascinates me Half the great names of modern thought are in those books
And so they were The first Langham opened had a Latin dedication in a quavering old mans hand Amico et discipulo meo signed Fredericus Gulielmus Schelling The next bore the autograph of Alexander von Humboldt the next that of Boeckh the famous classic and so on Close by was Niebuhrs History in the titlepage of which a few lines in the historians handwriting bore witness to much pleasant discourse between the writer and Roger Wendover at Bonn in the summer of 1847 Judging from other shelves farther down he must also have spent some time perhaps an academic year at Tübingen for here were most of the early editions of the Leben Jesu with some corrections from Strausss hand and similar records of Baur Ewald and other members or opponents of the Tübingen school And so on through the whole bookcase Something of everything was there—Philosophy Theology History Philology The collection was a medley and made almost a spot of disorder in the exquisite neatness and system of the vast gathering of which it formed part Its bond of union was simply that it represented the forces of an epoch the thoughts the men the occupations which had absorbed the energies of ten golden years Every book seemed to be full of paper marks almost every titlepage was covered with minute writing which when examined proved to contain a record of lectures or conversations with the author of the volume sometimes a string of anecdotes or a short biography rapidly sketched out of the fulness of personal knowledge and often seasoned with a subtle causticity and wit A history of modern thinking Germany of that unextinguished hearth whence the mind of Europe has been kindled for three generations might almost have been evolved from that bookcase and its contents alone
Langham as he stood peering among the ugly vilelyprinted German volumes felt suddenly a kind of magnetic influence creeping over him The room seemed instinct with a harsh commanding presence The history of a mind and soul was written upon the face of it every shelf as it were was an autoPg 197biographical fragment an Apologia pro Vita Mea He drew away from the books at last with the uneasy feeling of one who surprises a confidence and looked for Robert Robert was at the end of the room a couple of volumes under his arm another which he was reading in his hand
This is my corner he said smiling and flushing a little as his friend moved up to him Perhaps you dont know that I too am engaged upon a great work
A great work—you
Langham looked at his companion as though to find out whether his remark was meant seriously or whether he might venture to be cynical Elsmere writing Why should everybody write books It was absurd The scholar who knows what toll scholarship takes of life is always apt to resent the intrusion of the man of action into his domains It looks to him like a kind of ridiculous assumption that any one dun cœur lêger can do what has cost him his hearts blood
Robert understood something of the meaning of his tone and replied almost apologetically he was always singularly modest about himself on the intellectual side
Well Grey is responsible He gave me such a homily before I left Oxford on the absolute necessity of keeping up with books that I could do nothing less than set up a subject at once Half the day he used to say to me you will be king of your world the other half be the slave of something which will take you out of your world into the general world and then he would quote to me that saying he was always bringing into lectures—I forget whose it is—The decisive events of the world take place in the intellect It is the mission of books that they help one to remember it Altogether it was striking coming from one who has always had such a tremendous respect for practical life and work and I was much impressed by it So blame him
Langham was silent Elsmere had noticed that any allusion to Grey found Langham less and less responsive
Well what is the great work he said at last abruptly
Historical Oh I should have written something without Grey I have always had a turn for it since I was a child But he was clear that history was especially valuable—especially necessary to a clergyman I felt he was right entirely right So I took my Final Schools history for a basis and started on the Empire especially the decay of the Empire Some day I mean to take up one of the episodes in the great birth of Europe—the makings of France I think most likely It seems to lead farthest and tell most I have been at work now nine months
And are just getting into it
Just about I have got down below the surface and am beginning to feel the joys of digging and Robert threw back his head with one of his most brilliant enthusiastic smiles IPg 198 have been shy about boring you with the thing but the fact is I am very keen indeed and this library has been a godsend
So I should think Langham sat down on one of the carved wooden stools placed at intervals along the bookcases and looked at his friend his psychological curiosity rising a little
Tell me he said presently—tell me what interests you specially—what seizes you—in a subject like the making of France for instance
Do you really want to know said Robert incredulously
The other nodded Robert left his place and began to walk up and down trying to answer Langhams question and at the same time to fix in speech a number of sentiments and impressions bred in him by the work of the past few months After a while Langham began to see his way Evidently the forces at the bottom of this new historical interest were precisely the same forces at work in Elsmeres parish plans in his sermons in his dealings with the poor and the young—forces of imagination and sympathy What was enchaining him to this new study was not to begin with that patient love of ingenious accumulation which is the learned temper proper the temper in short of science It was simply a passionate sense of the human problems which underlie all the dry and dusty detail of history and give it tone and colour a passionate desire to rescue something more of human life from the drowning submerging past to realise for himself and others the solidarity and continuity of mankinds long struggle from the beginning until now
Langham had had much experience of Elsmeres versatility and pliancy but he had never realised it so much as now while he sat listening to the vivid manycoloured speech getting quicker and quicker and more and more telling and original as Robert got more absorbed and excited by what he had to say He was endeavouring to describe to Langham the sort of book he thought might be written on the rise of modern society in Gaul dwelling first of all on the outward spectacle of the bloodstained Frankish world as it was say in the days of Gregory the Great on its savage kings its fiendish women its bishops and its saints and then on the conflict of ideas going on behind all the fierce incoherence of the Empires decay the struggle of Roman order and of German freedom of Roman luxury and of German hardness above all the war of orthodoxy and heresy with its strange political complications And then discontented still as though the heart of the matter were still untouched he went on restlessly wandering the while with his long arms linked behind him throwing out words at an object in his mind trying to grasp and analyse that strange sense which haunts the student of Romes decline as it once overshadowed the infancy of Europe that sense of a slowly departing majesty of a great presence just withdrawn and still incalculably potent traceable throughout in that humbling consciousness of Goth orPg 199 Frank that they were but beggars hutting in a palace—the place had harboured greater men than they
There is one thing Langham said presently in his slow nonchalant voice when the tide of Roberts ardour ebbed for a moment that doesnt seem to have touched you yet But you will come to it To my mind it makes almost the chief interest of history It is just this History depends on testimony What is the nature and the value of testimony at given times In other words, did the man of the third century understand or report or interpret facts in the same way as the man of the sixteenth or the nineteenth And if not what are the differences and what are the deductions to be made from them if any He fixed his keen look on Robert who was now lounging against the books as though his harangue had taken it out of him a little
Ah well said the rector smiling I am only just coming to that As I told you I am only now beginning to dig for myself Till now it has all been work at second hand I have been getting a general survey of the ground as quickly as I could with the help of other mens labours Now I must go to work inch by inch and find out what the ground is made of I wont forget your point It is enormously important I grant—enormously he repeated reflectively
I should think it is said Langham to himself as he rose the whole of orthodox Christianity is in it for instance
There was not much more to be seen A little wooden staircase led from the second library to the upper rooms curious old rooms which had been annexed one by one as the squire wanted them and in which there was nothing at all—neither chair nor table nor carpet—but books only All the doors leading from room to room had been taken off the old wormeaten boards had been roughly stained a few old French engravings had been hung here and there where the encroaching books left an opening but otherwise all was bare There was a curious charm in the space and air of these empty rooms with their latticed windows opening on to the hill and letting in day by day the summer sunrisings or the winter dawns which had shone upon them for more than three centuries
This is my last day of privilege said Robert Everybody is shut out when once he appears from this wing and this part of the grounds This was his fathers room and the rector led the way into the last of the series; and through there pointing to a door on the right lies the way to his own sleeping room which is of course connected with the more modern side of the house
So this is where that old man ventured what Cato did and Addison approved murmured Langham standing in the middle of the room and looking round him This particular room was now used as a sort of lumber place a receptacle for the superfluous or useless books gradually thrown off by thePg 200 great collection all around There were innumerable volumes in frayed or broken bindings lying on the ground A musty smell hung over it all the gray light from outside which seemed to give only an added subtlety and charm to the other portions of the ancient building through which they had been moving seemed here triste and dreary Or Langham fancied it
He passed the threshold again with a little sigh and saw suddenly before him at the end of the suite of rooms and framed in the doorways facing him an engraving of a Greuze picture—a girls face turned over her shoulder the hair waving about her temples the lips parted the teeth gleaming mirth and provocation and tender yielding in every line Langham started and the blood rushed to his heart It was as though Rose herself stood there and beckoned to him
CHAPTER XV
Now having seen our sight said Robert as they left the great mass of Murewell behind them come and see our scandal Both run by the same proprietor if you please There is a hamlet down there in the hollow—and he pointed to a gray speck in the distance—which deserves a Royal Commission all to itself which is a disgrace—and his tone warmed—to any country any owner any agent It is owned by Mr Wendover and I see the pleasing prospect straight before me of beginning my acquaintance with him by a fight over it You will admit that it is a little hard on a man who wants to live on good terms with the possessor of the Murewell library to have to open relations with him by a fierce attack on his drains and his pigsties
He turned to his companion with a halfrueful spark of laughter in his gray eyes Langham hardly caught what he said He was far away in meditations of his own
An attack he repeated vaguely why an attack
Robert plunged again into the great topic of which his quick mind was evidently full Langham tried to listen but was conscious that his friends social enthusiasms bored him a great deal And side by side with the consciousness there slid in a little stinging reflection that four years ago no talk of Elsmeres could have bored him
Whats the matter with this particular place he asked languidly at last raising his eyes towards the group of houses now beginning to emerge from the distance
An angry red mounted in Roberts cheek
What isnt the matter with it The houses which were built on a swamp originally are falling into ruin the roofs the drains the accommodation per head are all about equally scandalous The place is harried with illness since I camePg 201 there has been both fever and diphtheria there They are all crippled with rheumatism but that they think nothing of the English labourer takes rheumatism as quite in the days bargain And as to vice—the vice that comes of mere endless persecuting opportunity—I can tell you ones ideas of personal responsibility get a good deal shaken up by a place like this And I can do nothing I brought over Henslowe to see the place and he behaved like a brute He scoffed at all my complaints said that no landlord would be such a fool as to build fresh cottages on such a site that the old ones must just be allowed to go to ruin that the people might live in them if they chose or turn out of them if they chose Nobody forced them to do either it was their own lookout
That was true said Langham wasnt it
Robert turned upon him fiercely
Ah you think it so easy for those poor creatures to leave their homes their working places Some of them have been there thirty years They are close to the two or three farms that employ them close to the osier beds which give them extra earnings in the spring If they were turned out there is nothing nearer than Murewell and not a single cottage to be found there I dont say it is a landlords duty to provide more cottages than are wanted but if the labour is wanted the labourer should be decently housed He is worthy of his hire and woe to the man who neglects or illtreats him
Langham could not help smiling partly at the vehemence of the speech partly at the lack of adjustment between his friends mood and his own He braced himself to take the matter more seriously but meanwhile Robert had caught the smile and his angry eyes melted at once into laughter
There I am ranting as usual he said penitently Took you for Henslowe I suppose Ah well never mind I hear the Provost has another book on the stocks
So they diverged into other things talking politics and new books public men and what not till at the end of a long and gradual descent through wooded ground some two miles to the northwest of the park they emerged from the trees beneath which they had been walking and found themselves on a bridge a gray sluggish stream flowing beneath them and the hamlet they sought rising among the river flats on the farther side
There said Robert stopping we are at our journeys end Now then what sort of a place of human habitation do you call that
The bridge whereon they stood crossed the main channel of the river which just at that point however parted into several branches and came meandering slowly down through a little bottom or valley filled with osier beds long since robbed of their years growth of shoots On the other side of the river on ground all but level with the osier beds which interposed bePg 202tween them and the stream rose a miserable group of houses huddled together as though their bulging walls and rotten roofs could only maintain themselves at all by the help and support which each wretched hovel gave to its neighbour The mud walls were stained with yellow patches of lichen the palings round the little gardens were broken and ruinous Close beside them all was a sort of open drain or watercourse stagnant and noisome which dribbled into the river a little above the bridge Behind them rose a high gravel bank edged by firs and a line of oak trees against the sky The houses stood in the shadow of the bank looking north and on this gray lowering day the dreariness the gloom the squalor of the place were indescribable
Well that is a Godforsaken hole said Langham studying it his interest roused at last rather perhaps by the Ruysdaellike melancholy and picturesqueness of the scene than by its human suggestiveness I could hardly have imagined such a place existed in southern England It is more like a bit of Ireland
If it were Ireland it might be to somebodys interest to ferret it out said Robert bitterly But these poor folks are out of the world They may be brutalised with impunity Oh such a case as I had here last autumn A young girl of sixteen or seventeen who would have been healthy and happy anywhere else stricken by the damp and the poison of the place dying in six weeks of complications due to nothing in the world but preventable cruelty and neglect It was a sight that burnt into my mind once for all what is meant by a landlords responsibility I tried of course to move her but neither she nor her parents—elderly folk—had energy enough for a change They only prayed to be let alone I came over the last evening of her life to give her the communion Ah sir said the mother to me—not bitterly—that is the strange thing they have so little bitterness—if Mister Enslowe would jest a mended that bit o roof of ours last winter Bessie neednt have laid in the wet so many nights as she did and she coughin fit to break your heart for all the things yer could put over er
Robert paused his strong young face so vehemently angry a few minutes before tremulous with feeling Ah well he said at last with a long breath moving away from the parapet of the bridge on which he had been leaning better be oppressed than oppressor any day Now then I must deliver my stores Theres a child here Catherine and I have been doing our best to pull through typhoid
They crossed the bridge and turned down the track leading to the hamlet Some planks carried them across the ditch the main sewer of the community as Robert pointed out and they made their way through the filth surrounding one of the nearest cottages
A feeble elderly man whose shaking limbs and sallow bloodPg 203less skin make him look much older than he actually was opened the door and invited them to come in Robert passed on into an inner room conducted thither by a woman who had been sitting working over the fire Langham stood irresolute but the old mans quavering kindly take a chair sir youve come a long way decided him and he stepped in
Inside the hovel was miserable indeed It belonged to that old and evil type which the efforts of the last twenty years have done so much all over England to sweep away four mud walls enclosing an oblong space about eight yards long divided into two unequal portions by a lath and plaster partition with no upper storey a thatched roof now entirely out of repair and letting in the rain in several places and a paved floor little better than the earth itself so large and cavernous were the gaps between the stones The dismal place had no small adornings—none of those little superfluities which however ugly and trivial are still so precious in the dwellings of the poor as showing the existence of some instinct or passion which is not the creation of the sheerest physical need and Langham as he sat down caught the sickening marsh smell which the Oxford man accustomed to the odours of damp meadows in times of ebbing flood and festering sun knows so well As old Milsom began to talk to him in his weak tremulous voice the visitors attention was irresistibly held by the details about him Fresh as he was from all the delicate sights the harmonious colours and delightful forms of the squires house they made an unusually sharp impression on his fastidious senses What does human life become lived on reeking floors and under stifling roofs like these What strange abnormal deteriorations physical and spiritual must it not inevitably undergo Langham felt a sudden inward movement of disgust and repulsion For heavens sake keep your superstitions he could have cried to the whole human race or any other narcotic that a grinding fate has left you What does anything matter to the mass of mankind but a little ease a little lightening of pressure on this side or on that
Meanwhile the old man went maundering on talking of the weather and of his sick child and Mr Elsmere with a kind of listless incoherence which hardly demanded an answer though Langham threw in a word or two here and there
Among other things he began to ask a question or two about Roberts predecessor a certain Mr Preston who had left behind him a memory of amiable evangelical indolence
Did you see much of him he asked
Oh law no sir replied the man surprised into something like energy Never seed im more n once a year and sometimes not that
Was he liked here
Well sir it was like this you see My wife shes northcountry she is comes from Yorkshire sometimes shed used toPg 204 say to me Passon ee aint much good and passon ee aint much harm Ees no more good nor more arm so fer as I can see nor a chip in a basin o parritch And that was just about it sir said the old man pleased for the hundredth time with his wifes bygone flight of metaphor and his own exact memory of it
As to the rectors tendance of his child his tone was very cool and guarded
It do seem strange sir as nor he nor Doctor Grimes ull let her have anything to put a bit of flesh on her nothin but them messy things as he brings—milk an that An the beef jelly—lor such a trouble Missis Elsmere he tells my wife strains all the stuff through a cloth she do never seed anythin like it nor my wife neither People is clever nowadays said the speaker dubiously Langham realised that in this quarter of his parish at any rate his friends pastoral vanity if he had any would not find much to feed on Nothing to judge from this specimen at least greatly affected an inhabitant of Mile End Gratitude responsiveness imply health and energy past or present The only constant defence which the poor have against such physical conditions as those which prevailed at Mile End is apathy
As they came down the dilapidated steps at the cottage door Robert drew in with avidity a long draught of the outer air
Ugh he said with a sort of groan that bedroom Nothing gives one such a sense of the toughness of human life as to see a child recovering actually recovering in such a pestilential den Father mother grownup son girl of thirteen and grandchild all huddled in a space just fourteen feet square Langham and he turned passionately on his companion what defence can be found for a man who lives in a place like Murewell Hall and can take money from human beings for the use of a sty like that
Gently my friend Probably the squire being the sort of recluse he is has never seen the place or at any rate not for years and knows nothing about it
More shame for him
True in a sense said Langham a little drily but as you may want hereafter to make excuses for your man and he may give you occasion I wouldnt begin by painting him to yourself any blacker than need be
Robert laughed sighed and acquiesced I am a hotheaded impatient kind of creature at the best of times he confessed They tell me that great things have been done for the poor round here in the last twenty years Something has been done certainly But why are the old ways the old evil neglect and apathy so long so terribly long in dying This social progress of ours we are so proud of is a clumsy limping jade at best
They prowled a little more about the hamlet every step almost revealing some new source of poison and disease OfPg 205 their various visits however Langham remembered nothing afterwards but a little scene in a miserable cottage where they found a whole family party gathered round the midday meal A band of puny black blackeyed children were standing or sitting at the table The wife confined of twins three weeks before sat by the fire deathly pale a bad leg stretched out before her on some improvised support one baby on her lap and another darkhaired bundle asleep in a cradle beside her There was a pathetic pinched beauty about the whole family Even the tiny twins were comparatively shapely all the other children had delicate transparent skins large eyes and small colourless mouths The father a picturesque handsome fellow looking as though he had gipsy blood in his veins had opened the door to their knock Robert seeing the meal would have retreated at once in spite of the childrens shy inviting looks but a glance past them at the mothers face checked the word of refusal and apology on his lips and he stepped in
In after years Langham was always apt to see him in imagination as he saw him then standing beside the bent figure of the mother his quick pitiful eyes taking in the pallor and exhaustion of face and frame his hand resting instinctively on the head of a small creature that had crept up beside him his look all attention and softness as the woman feebly told him some of the main facts of her state The young rector at the moment might have stood for the modern Man of Feeling as sensitive as impressionable and as free from the burden of self as his eighteenthcentury prototype
On the way home Robert suddenly remarked to his companion Have you heard my sisterinlaw play yet Langham What did you think of it
Extraordinary said Langham briefly The most considerable gift I ever came across in an amateur
His olive cheek flushed a little involuntarily Robert threw a quick observant look at him
The difficulty he exclaimed is to know what to do with it
Why do you make the difficulty I gather she wants to study abroad What is there to prevent it
Langham turned to his companion with a touch of asperity He could not stand it that Elsmere should be so much narrowed and warped by that wife of his and her prejudices Why should that gifted creature be cribbed cabined and confined in this way
I grant you said Robert with a look of perplexity there is not much to prevent it
And he was silent a moment thinking on his side very tenderly of all the antecedents and explanations of that oldworld distrust of art and the artistic life so deeply rooted in his wife even though in practice and under his influence she had made concession after concession
The great solution of all he said presently brighteningPg 206 would be to get her married I dont wonder her belongings dislike the notion of anything so pretty and so flighty going off to live by itself And to break up the home in Whindale would be to undo everything their father did for them to defy his most solemn last wishes
To talk of a fathers wishes in a case of this kind ten years after his death is surely excessive said Langham with dry interrogation then suddenly recollecting himself I beg your pardon Elsmere I am interfering
Nonsense said Robert brightly I dont wonder it seems like a difficulty of our own making Like so many difficulties it depends on character present character bygone character—— And again he fell musing on his Westmoreland experiences and on the intensity of that Puritan type it had revealed to him However as I said marriage would be the natural way out of it
An easy way I should think said Langham after a pause
It wont be so easy to find the right man She is a young person with a future is Miss Rose She wants somebody in the stream somebody with a strong hand who will keep her in order and yet give her a wide range a rich man I think—she hasnt the ways of a poor mans wife but at any rate some one who will be proud of her and yet have a full life of his own in which she may share
Your views are extremely clear said Langham and his smile had a touch of bitterness in it If hers agree I prophesy you wont have long to wait She has beauty talent charm—everything that rich and important men like
There was the slightest sarcastic note in the voice Robert winced It was borne in upon one of the least worldly of mortals that he had been talking like the veriest schemer What vague quick impulse had driven him on
By the time they emerged again upon the Murewell Green the rain had cleared altogether away and the autumnal morning had broken into sunshine which played mistily on the sleeping woods on the white fronts of the cottages and the wide green where the rainpools glistened On the hill leading to the rectory there was the flutter of a womans dress As they hurried on afraid of being late for luncheon they saw that it was Rose in front of them
Langham started as the slender figure suddenly defined itself against the road A tumult within half rage half feeling showed itself only in an added rigidity of the finelycut features
Rose turned directly she heard the steps and voices and over the dreaminess of her face there flashed a sudden brightness
You have been a long time she exclaimed saying the first thing that came into her head joyously rashly like the child she in reality was How many halt and maimed has Robert taken you to see Mr Langham
We went to Murewell first The library was well worthPg 207 seeing Since then we have been a parish round distributing stores
Roses look changed in an instant The words were spoken by the Langham of her earliest acquaintance The man who that morning had asked her to play to him had gone—vanished away
How exhilarating she said scornfully Dont you wonder how any one can ever tear themselves away from the country
Rose dont be abusive said Robert opening his eyes at her tone Then passing his arm through hers he looked banteringly down upon her For the first time since you left the metropolis you have walked yourself into a colour Its becoming—and its Murewell—so be civil
Oh nobody denies you a high place in milkmaids she said with her head in air—and they went off into a minutes sparring
Meanwhile Langham on the other side of the road walked up slowly his eyes on the ground Once when Roses eye caught him a shock ran through her There was already a look of slovenly age about his stooping bookworms gait Her companion of the night before—handsome animated human—where was he The girls heart felt a singular contraction Then she turned and rent herself and Robert found her more mocking and sprightly than ever
At the rectory gate Robert ran on to overtake a farmer on the road Rose stooped to open the latch Langham mechanically made a quick movement forward to anticipate her Their fingers touched she drew hers hastily away and passed in an erect and dignified figure in her curving garden hat
Langham went straight up to his room shut the door and stood before the open window deaf and blind to everything save an inward storm of sensation
Fool Idiot he said to himself at last with fierce stifled emphasis while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circumstance swept through him
That he the poor and solitary student whose only sources of selfrespect lay in the deliberate limitations the reasoned and reasonable renunciations he had imposed upon his life should have needed the reminder of his old pupil not to fall in love with his brilliant ambitious sister His irritable selfconsciousness enormously magnified Elsmeres motive and Elsmeres words That golden vagueness and softness of temper which had possessed him since his last sight of her gave place to one of bitter tension
With sardonic scorn he pointed out to himself that his imagination was still held by his nerves were still thrilling under the mental image of a girl looking up to him as no woman had ever looked—a girl whitearmed whitenecked—with softened eyes of appeal and confidence He bade himself mark that during the whole of his morning walk with Robert down to its last stage his mind had been really absorbed in some preposPg 208terous dream he was now too selfcontemptuous to analyse Pretty well for a philosopher in four days What a ridiculous business is life—what a contemptible creature is man how incapable of dignity of consistency
At luncheon he talked rather more than usual especially on literary matters with Robert Rose too was fully occupied in giving Catherine a sarcastic account of a singing lesson she had been administering in the school that morning Catherine winced sometimes at the tone of it
That afternoon Robert in high spirits his rod over his shoulder his basket at his back carried off his guest for a lounging afternoon along the river Elsmere enjoyed these fishing expeditions like a boy They were his holidays relished all the more because he kept a jealous account of them with his conscience He sauntered along now throwing a cunning and effectual fly now resting smoking and chattering as the fancy took him He found a great deal of the old stimulus and piquancy in Langhams society but there was an occasional irritability in his companion especially towards himself personally which puzzled him After a while indeed he began to feel himself the unreasonably cheerful person which he evidently appeared to his companion A mere ignorant enthusiast banished for ever from the realm of pure knowledge by certain original and incorrigible defects—after a few hours talk with Langham Roberts quick insight always showed him some image of himself resembling this in his friends mind
At last he turned restive He had been describing to Langham his acquaintance with the Dissenting minister of the place—a strong coarsegrained fellow of sensuous excitable temperament famous for his noisy conversion meetings and for a gymnastic dexterity in the quoting and combining of texts unrivalled in Roberts experience Some remark on the Dissenters logic made perhaps a little too much in the tone of the Churchman conscious of University advantages seemed to irritate Langham
You think your Anglican logic in dealing with the Bible so superior On the contrary I am all for your Ranter He is your logical Protestant Historically you Anglican parsons are where you are and what you are because Englishmen as a whole like attempting the contradictory—like above all to eat their cake and have it The nation has made you and maintains you for its own purposes But that is another matter
Robert smoked on a moment in silence Then he flushed and laid down his pipe
We are all fools in your eyes I know À la bonne heure I have been to the University and talk what he is pleased to call philosophy—therefore Mr Colson denies me faith You have always in your heart of hearts denied me knowledge But I cling to both in spite of you
Pg 209
There was a ray of defiance of emotion in his look Langham met it in silence
I deny you nothing he said at last slowly On the contrary I believe you to be the possessor of all that is best worth having in life and mind
His irritation had all died away His tone was one of indescribable depression and his great black eyes were fixed on Robert with a melancholy which startled his companion By a subtle transition Elsmere felt himself touched with a pang of profound pity for the man who an instant before had seemed to pose as his scornful superior He stretched out his hand and laid it on his friends shoulder
Rose spent the afternoon in helping Catherine with various parochial occupations In the course of them Catherine asked many questions about Long Whindale Her thoughts clung to the hills to the gray farmhouses the rough men and women inside them But Rose gave her small satisfaction
Poor old Jim Backhouse said Catherine sighing Agnes tells me he is quite bedridden now
Well and a good thing for John dont you think said Rose briskly covering a parish library book the while in a way which made Catherines fingers itch to take it from her and for us Its some use having a carrier now
Catherine made no reply She thought of the noodle fading out of life in the room where Mary Backhouse died she actually saw the white hair the blurred eyes the palsied hands the poor emaciated limbs stretched along the settle Her heart rose but she said nothing
And has Mrs Thornburgh been enjoying her summer
Oh I suppose so said Rose her tone indicating a quite measureless indifference She had another young Oxford man staying with her in June—a missionary—and it annoyed her very much that neither Agnes nor I would intervene to prevent his resuming his profession She seemed to think it was a question of saving him from being eaten and apparently he would have proposed to either of us
Catherine could not help laughing I suppose she still thinks she married Robert and me
Of course So she did
Catherine coloured a little but Roses hard lightness of tone was unconquerable
Or if she didnt Rose resumed nobody could have the heart to rob her of the illusion Oh by the way Sarah has been under warning since June Mrs Thornburgh told her desperately that she must either throw over her young man who was picked up drunk at the vicarage gate one night or vacate the vicarage kitchen Sarah cheerfully accepted her months notice and is still making the vicarage jams and walking out with the young man every Sunday Mrs Thornburgh sees that it willPg 210 require a convulsion of nature to get rid either of Sarah or the young man and has succumbed
And the Tysons And that poor Walker girl
Oh dear me Catherine said Rose a strange disproportionate flash of impatience breaking through Every one in Long Whindale is always just where and what they were last year I admit they are born and die but they do nothing else of a decisive kind
Catherines hands worked away for a while then she laid down her book and said lifting her clear large eyes on her sister—
Was there never a time when you loved the valley Rose
Never cried Rose
Then she pushed away her work and leaning her elbows on the table turned her brilliant face to Catherine There was frank mutiny in it
By the way Catherine are you going to prevent mamma from letting me go to Berlin for the winter
And after Berlin Rose said Catherine presently her gaze bent upon her work
After Berlin What next said Rose recklessly Well after Berlin I shall try to persuade mamma and Agnes I suppose to come and back me up in London We could still be some months of the year at Burwood
Now she had said it out But there was something else surely goading the girl than mere intolerance of the family tradition The hesitancy the moral doubt of her conversation with Langham seemed to have vanished wholly in a kind of acrid selfassertion
Catherine felt a shock sweep through her It was as though all the pieties of life all the sacred assumptions and selfsurrenders at the root of it were shaken outraged by the girls tone
Do you ever remember she said looking up while her voice trembled what papa wished when he was dying
It was her last argument To Rose she had very seldom used it in so many words Probably it seemed to her too strong too sacred to be often handled
But Rose sprang up and pacing the little workroom with her white wrists locked behind her she met that argument with all the concentrated passion which her youth had for years been storing up against it Catherine sat presently overwhelmed bewildered This language of a proud and tameless individuality this modern gospel of the divine right of selfdevelopment—her soul loathed it And yet since that night in Marrisdale there had been a new yearning in her to understand
Suddenly however Rose stopped lost her thread Two figures were crossing the lawn and their shadows were thrown far beyond them by the fast disappearing sun
She threw herself down on her chair again with an abrupt—
Pg 211
Do you see they have come back We must go and dress
And as she spoke she was conscious of a new sensation altogether—the sensation of the wild creature lassoed on the prairie of the bird exchanging in an instant its glorious freedom of flight for the pitiless meshes of the net It was stifling—her whole nature seemed to fight with it
Catherine rose and began to put away the books they had been covering She had said almost nothing in answer to Roses tirade When she was ready she came and stood beside her sister a moment her lips trembling At last she stooped and kissed the girl—the kiss of deep suppressed feeling—and went away Rose made no response
Unmusical as she was Catherine pined for her sisters music that evening Robert was busy in his study and the hours seemed interminable After a little difficult talk Langham subsided into a book and a corner But the only words of which he was conscious for long were the words of an inner dialogue I promised to play for her—Go and offer then—Madness let me keep away from her If she asks me of course I will go She is much too proud and already she thinks me guilty of a rudeness
Then with a shrug he would fall to his book again abominably conscious however all the while of the white figure between the lamp and the open window and of the delicate head and cheek lit up against the trees and the soft August dark
When the time came to go to bed he got their candles for the two ladies Rose just touched his hand with cool fingers
Goodnight Mr Langham You are going in to smoke with Robert I suppose
Her bright eyes seemed to look him through Their mocking hostility seemed to say to him as plainly as possible Your purgatory is over—go smoke and be happy
I will go and help him wind up his sermon he said with an attempt at a laugh and moved away
Rose went upstairs and it seemed to her that a Greek brow and a pair of wavering melancholy eyes went before her in the darkness chased along the passages by the light she held She gained her room and stood by the window seized again by that stifling sense of catastrophe so strange so undefined Then she shook it off with an angry laugh and went to work to see how far her stock of light dresses had suffered by her London dissipations
CHAPTER XVI
The next morning after breakfast the rectory party were in the garden—the gentlemen smoking Catherine and her sister strolling arminarm among the flowers Catherines vaguePg 212 terrors of the morning before had all taken to themselves wings It seemed to her that Rose and Mr Langham had hardly spoken to each other since she had seen them walking about together Robert had already made merry over his own alarms and hers and she admitted he was in the right As to her talk with Rose her deep meditative nature was slowly working upon and digesting it Meanwhile she was all tenderness to her sister and there was even a reaction of pity in her heart towards the lonely sceptic who had once been so good to Robert
Robert was just bethinking himself that it was time to go off to the school when they were all startled by an unexpected visitor—a short old lady in a rusty black dress and bonnet who entered the drive and stood staring at the rectory party a tiny hand in a black thread glove shading the sun from a pair of wrinkled eyes
Mrs Darcy exclaimed Robert to his wife after a moments perplexity and they walked quickly to meet her
Rose and Langham exchanged a few commonplaces till the others joined them and then for a while the attention of everybody in the group was held by the squires sister She was very small as thin and light as thistledown illdressed and as communicative as a babbling child The face and all the features were extraordinarily minute and moreover blanched and etherealised by age She had the elfish look of a little withered fairy godmother And yet through it all it was clear that she was a great lady There were certain poses and gestures about her which made her thread gloves and rusty skirts seem a mere whim and masquerade adopted perhaps deliberately from a highbred love of congruity to suit the country lanes
She had come to ask them all to dinner at the Hall on the following evening and she either brought or devised on the spot the politest messages from the squire to the new rector which pleased the sensitive Robert and silenced for the moment his various misgivings as to Mr Wendovers advent Then she stayed chattering studying Rose every now and then out of her strange little eyes restless and glancing as a birds which took stock also of the garden of the flowerbeds of Elsmeres lanky frame and of Elsmeres handsome friend in the background She was most odd when she was grateful and she was grateful for the most unexpected things She thanked Elsmere effusively for coming to live there sacrificing yourself so nobly to us country folk and she thanked him with an appreciative glance at Langham for having his clever friends to stay with him The squire will be so pleased My brother you know is very clever oh yes frightfully clever
And then there was a long sigh at which Elsmere could hardly keep his countenance
She thought it particularly considerate of them to have been to see the squires books It would make conversation so easy when they came to dinner
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Though I dont know anything about his books He doesnt like women to talk about books He says they only pretend—even the clever ones Except of course Madame de Staël He can only say she was ugly and I dont deny it But I have about used up Madame de Staël she added dropping into another sigh as soft and light as a childs
Robert was charmed with her and even Langham smiled And as Mrs Darcy adored clever men ranking them as the London of her youth had ranked them only second to persons of birth she stood among them beaming becoming more and more whimsical and inconsequent more and more deliciously incalculable as she expanded At last she fluttered off only however to come hurrying back with little short scudding steps to implore them all to come to tea with her as soon as possible in the garden that was her special hobby and in her last new summerhouse
I build two or three every summer she said Now there are twentyone Roger laughs at me and there was a momentary bitterness in the little eerie face but how can one live without hobbies Thats one—then Ive two more My album—oh you will all write in my album wont you When I was young—when I was Maid of Honour—and she drew herself up slightly—everybody had albums Even the dear Queen herself I remember how she made M Guizot write in it something quite stupid after all Those hobbies—the garden and the album—are quite harmless arent they They hurt nobody do they Her voice dropped a little with a pathetic expostulating intonation in it as of one accustomed to be rebuked
Let me remind you of a saying of Bacons said Langham studying her and softened perforce into benevolence
Yes yes said Mrs Darcy in a flutter of curiosity
God Almighty first planted a garden he quoted and indeed it is the purest of all human pleasures
Oh but how delightful cried Mrs Darcy clasping her diminutive hands in their thread gloves You must write that in my album Mr Langham that very sentence oh how clever of you to remember it What it is to be clever and have a brain But then—Ive another hobby——
Here however she stopped hung her head and looked depressed Robert with a little ripple of laughter begged her to explain
No she said plaintively giving a quick uneasy look at him as though it occurred to her that it might some day be his pastoral duty to admonish her No its wrong I know it is—only I cant help it Never mind Youll know soon
And again she turned away when suddenly Rose attracted her attention and she stretched out a thin white birdclaw of a hand and caught the girls arm
There wont be much to amuse you tomorrow my dear andPg 214 there ought to be—youre so pretty Rose blushed furiously and tried to draw her hand away No no dont mind dont mind I didnt at your age Well well do our best But your own party is so charming and she looked round the little circle her gaze stopping specially at Langham before it returned to Rose After all you will amuse each other
Was there any malice in the tiny withered creature Rose unsympathetic and indifferent as youth commonly is when its own affairs absorb it had stood coldly outside the group which was making much of the squires sister Was it so the strange little visitor revenged herself
At any rate Rose was left feeling as if some one had pricked her While Catherine and Elsmere escorted Mrs Darcy to the gate she turned to go in her head thrown back staglike her cheek still burning Why should it be always open to the old to annoy the young with impunity
Langham watched her mount the first step or two his eye travelled up the slim figure so instinct with pride and will—and something in him suddenly gave way It was like a man who feels his grip relaxing on some attacking thing he has been holding by the throat
He followed her hastily
Must you go in And none of us have paid our respects yet to those phloxes in the back garden
Oh woman—flighty woman An instant before the girl sore and bruised in every fibre she only half knew why was thirsting that this man might somehow offer her his neck that she might trample on it He offers it and the angry instinct wavers as a man wavers in a wrestling match when his opponent unexpectedly gives ground She paused she turned her white throat His eyes upturned met hers
The phloxes did you say she asked coolly redescending the steps Then round here please
She led the way he followed conscious of an utter relaxation of nerve and will which for the moment had something intoxicating in it
There are your phloxes she said stopping before a splendid line of plants in full blossom Her selfrespect was whole again her spirits rose at a bound I dont know why you admire them so much They have no scent and they are only pretty in the lump and she broke off a spike of blossom studied it a little disdainfully and threw it away
He stood beside her the southern glow and life of which it was intermittently capable once more lighting up the strange face
Give me leave to enjoy everything countrified more than usual he said After this morning it will be so long before I see the true country again
He looked smiling round on the blue and white brilliance of the sky clear again after a night of rain on the sloping gardenPg 215 on the village beyond on the hedge of sweet peas close beside them with its blooms
On tiptoe for a flight
With wings of gentle flush oer delicate white
Oh Oxford is countrified enough she said indifferently moving down the broad grasspath which divided the garden into two equal portions
But I am leaving Oxford at any rate for a year he said quietly I am going to London
Her delicate eyebrows went up To London Then in a tone of mock meekness and sympathy How you will dislike it
Dislike it—why
Oh because— she hesitated and then laughed her daring girlish laugh—because there are so many stupid people in London the clever people are not all picked out like prize apples as I suppose they are in Oxford
At Oxford repeated Langham with a kind of groan At Oxford You imagine that Oxford is inhabited only by clever people
I can only judge by what I see she said demurely Every Oxford man always behaves as if he were the cream of the universe Oh I dont mean to be rude she cried losing for a moment her defiant control over herself as though afraid of having gone too far I am not the least disrespectful really When you and Robert talk Catherine and I feel quite as humble as we ought
The words were hardly out before she could have bitten the tongue that spoke them He had made her feel her indiscretions of Sunday night as she deserved to feel them and now after three minutes conversation she was on the verge of fresh ones Would she never grow up never behave like other girls That word humble It seemed to burn her memory
Before he could possibly answer she barred the way by a question as short and dry as possible—
What are you going to London for
For many reasons he said shrugging his shoulders I have told no one yet—not even Elsmere And indeed I go back to my rooms for a while from here But as soon as Term begins I become a Londoner
They had reached the gate at the bottom of the garden and were leaning against it She was disturbed conscious lightly flushed It struck her as another gaucherie on her part that she should have questioned him as to his plans What did his life matter to her
He was looking away from her studying the halfruined degraded manor house spread out below them Then suddenly he turned—
If I could imagine for a moment it would interest you to hear my reasons for leaving Oxford I could not flatter myselfPg 216 you would see any sense in them I know that Robert will think them moonshine nay more that they will give him pain
He smiled sadly The tone of gentleness the sudden breach in the mans melancholy reserve affected the girl beside him for the second time precisely as they had affected her the first time The result of twentyfour hours resentful meditation turned out to be precisely nil Her breath came fast her proud look melted and his quick sense caught the change in an instant
Are you tired of Oxford the poor child asked him almost shyly
Mortally he said still smiling And what is more important still Oxford is tired of me I have been lecturing there for ten years They have had more than enough of me
Oh but Robert said—— began Rose impetuously then stopped crimson remembering many things Robert had said
That I helped him over a few stiles returned Langham calmly Yes there was a time when I was capable of that—there was a time when I could teach and teach with pleasure He paused Rose could have scourged herself for the tremor she felt creeping over her Why should it be to her so new and strange a thing that a man especially a man of these years and this calibre should confide in her should speak to her intimately of himself After all she said to herself angrily with a terrified sense of importance she was a child no longer though her mother and sisters would treat her as one When we were chatting the other night he went on turning to her again as he stood leaning on the gate do you know what it was struck me most
His tone had in it the most delicate the most friendly deference But Rose flushed furiously
That girls are very ready to talk about themselves I imagine she said scornfully
Not at all Not for a moment No but it seemed to me so pathetic so strange that anybody should wish for anything so much as you wished for the musicians life
And you never wish for anything she cried
When Elsmere was at college he said smiling I believe I wished he should get a first class This year I have certainly wished to say goodbye to St Anselms and to turn my back for good and all on my men I cant remember that I have wished for anything else for six years
She looked at him perplexed Was his manner merely languid or was it from him that the emotion she felt invading herself first started She tried to shake it off
And I am just a bundle of wants she said halfmockingly Generally speaking I am in the condition of being ready to barter all I have for some folly or other—one in the morning another in the afternoon What have you to say to such people Mr Langham
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Her eyes challenged him magnificently mostly out of sheer nervousness But the face they rested on seemed suddenly to turn to stone before her The life died out of it It grew still and rigid
Nothing he said quietly Between them and me there is a great gulf fixed I watch them pass and I say to myself There are the living—that is how they look how they speak Realise once for all that you have nothing to do with them Life is theirs—belongs to them You are already outside it Go your way and be a spectre among the active and the happy no longer
He leant his back against the gate Did he see her Was he conscious of her at all in this rare impulse of speech which had suddenly overtaken one of the most withdrawn and silent of human beings All her airs dropped off her a kind of fright seized her and involuntarily she laid her hand on his arm
Dont—dont—Mr Langham Oh dont say such things Why should you be so unhappy Why should you talk so Can no one do anything Why do you live so much alone Is there no one you care about
He turned What a vision His artistic sense absorbed it in an instant—the beautiful tremulous lip the drawn white brow For a moment he drank in the pity the emotion of those eyes Then a movement of such selfscorn as even he had never felt swept through him He gently moved away her hand dropped
Miss Leyburn he said gazing at her his olive face singularly pale dont waste your pity on me for Heavens sake Some madness made me behave as I did just now Years ago the same sort of idiocy betrayed me to your brother never before or since I ask your pardon humbly and his tone seemed to scorch her that this second fit of ranting should have seized me in your presence
But he could not keep it up The inner upheaval had gone too far He stopped and looked at her—piteously the features quivering It was as though the mans whole nature had for the moment broken up become disorganised She could not bear it Some ghastly infirmity seemed to have been laid bare to her She held out both her hands Swiftly he caught them stooped kissed them let them go It was an extraordinary scene—to both a kind of lifetime
Then he gathered himself together by a mighty effort
That was adorable of you he said with a long breath But I stole it—I despise myself Why should you pity me What is there to pity me for My troubles such as I have are my own making—every one
And he laid a sort of vindictive emphasis on the words The tears of excitement were in her eyes
Wont you let me be your friend she said trembling withPg 218 a kind of reproach I thought—the other night—we were to be friends Wont you tell me——
More of yourself her eyes said but her voice failed her And as for him as he gazed at her all the accidents of circumstance of individual character seemed to drop from her He forgot the difference of years he saw her no longer as she was—a girl hardly out of the schoolroom vain ambitious dangerously responsive on whose crude romantic sense he was wantonly playing she was to him pure beauty pure woman For one tumultuous moment the cold critical instinct which had been for years draining his life of all its natural energies was powerless It was sweet to yield to speak as it had never been sweet before
So leaning over the gate he told her the story of his life of his cramped childhood and youth of his brief moment of happiness and success at college of his first attempts to make himself a power among younger men of the gradual dismal failure of all his efforts the dying down of desire and ambition From the general narrative there stood out little pictures of individual persons or scenes clear cut and masterly—of his father the Gainsborough churchwarden of his Methodistical mother who had all her life lamented her own beauty as a special snare of Satan and who since her husbands death had refused to see her son on the ground that his opinions had vexed his father of his first ardent worship of knowledge and passion to communicate it and of the first intuitions in lecture face to face with an undergraduate alone in college rooms sometimes alone on Alpine heights of something cold impotent and baffling in himself which was to stand for ever between him and action between him and human affection the growth of the critical pessimist sense which laid the axe to the root of enthusiasm after enthusiasm friendship after friendship—which made other men feel him inhuman intangible a skeleton at the feast and the persistence through it all of a kind of hunger for life and its satisfactions which the will was more and more powerless to satisfy all these Langham put into words with an extraordinary magic and delicacy of phrase There was something in him which found a kind of pleasure in the long analysis which took pains that it should be infinitely well done
Rose followed him breathlessly If she had known more of literature she would have realised that she was witnessing a masterly dissection of one of those many morbid growths of which our nineteenth century psychology is full But she was anything but literary and she could not analyse her excitement The mans physical charm his melancholy the intensity of what he said affected unsteadied her as music was apt to affect her And through it all there was the strange girlish pride that this should have befallen her a first crude intoxicating sense of the power over human lives which was to be hers mingled with aPg 219 desperate anxiety to be equal to the occasion to play her part well
So you see said Langham at last with a great effort to do him justice to climb back on to some ordinary level of conversation all these transcendentalisms apart I am about the most unfit man in the world for a college tutor The undergraduates regard me as a shillyshallying pedant On my part he added drily I am not slow to retaliate Every term I live I find the young man a less interesting animal I regard the whole university system as a wretched sham Knowledge It has no more to do with knowledge than my boots
And for one curious instant he looked out over the village his fastidious scholars soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation of which Rose understood absolutely nothing She stood bewildered silent longing childishly to speak to influence him but not knowing what cue to take
And then— he went on presently but was the strange being speaking to her—so long as I stay there worrying those about me and eating my own heart out I am cut off from the only life that might be mine that I might find the strength to live
The words were low and deliberate After his moment of passionate speech and hers of passionate sympathy she began to feel strangely remote from him
Do you mean the life of the student she asked him after a pause timidly
Her voice recalled him He turned and smiled at her
Of the dreamer rather
And as her eyes still questioned as he was still moved by the spell of her responsiveness he let the new wave of feeling break in words Vaguely at first and then with a growing flame and force he fell to describing to her what the life of thought may be to the thinker and those marvellous moments which belong to that life when the mind which has divorced itself from desire and sense sees spread out before it the vast realms of knowledge and feels itself close to the secret springs and sources of being And as he spoke his language took an ampler turn the element of smallness which attaches to all mere personal complaint vanished his words flowed became eloquent inspired till the bewildered child beside him warm through and through as she was with youth and passion felt for an instant by sheer fascinated sympathy the cold spell the ineffable prestige of the thinkers voluntary death in life
But only for an instant Then the natural sense of chill smote her to the heart
You make me shiver she cried interrupting him Have those strange things—I dont understand them—made you happy Can they make any one happy Oh no no Happiness is to be got from living seeing experiencing making friends enjoying nature Look at the world Mr LanghamPg 220 she said with bright cheeks half smiling at her own magniloquence her hand waving over the view before them What has it done that you should hate it so If you cant put up with people you might love nature I—I cant be content with nature because I want some life first Up in Whindale there is too much nature not enough life But if I had got through life—if it had disappointed me—then I should love nature I keep saying to the mountains at home Not now not now I want something else but afterwards if I cant get it or if I get too much of it why then I will love you live with you You are my second string my reserve You—and art—and poetry
But everything depends on feeling he said softly but lightly as though to keep the conversation from slipping back into those vague depths it had emerged from and if one has forgotten how to feel—if when one sees or hears something beautiful that used to stir one one can only say I remember it moved me once—if feeling dies like life like physical force but prematurely long before the rest of the man
She gave a long quivering sigh of passionate antagonism
Oh I cannot imagine it she cried I shall feel to my last hour Then after a pause in another tone But Mr Langham you say music excites you Wagner excites you
Yes a sort of strange second life I can still get out of music he admitted smiling
Well then and she looked at him persuasively why not give yourself up to music It is so easy—so little trouble to ones self—it just takes you and carries you away
Then for the first time Langham became conscious—probably through these admonitions of hers—that the situation had absurdity in it
It is not my métier he said hastily The self that enjoys music is an outer self and can only bear with it for a short time No Miss Leyburn I shall leave Oxford the college will sing a Te Deum I shall settle down in London I shall keep a big book going and cheat the years after all I suppose as well as most people
And you will know you will remember she said faltering reddening her womanliness forcing the words out of her that you have friends Robert—my sister—all of us
He faced her with a little quick movement And as their eyes met each was struck once more with the personal beauty of the other His eyes shone—their black depths seemed all tenderness
I will never forget this visit this garden this hour he said slowly and they stood looking at each other Rose felt herself swept off her feet into a world of tragic mysterious emotion She all but put her hand into his again asking him childishly to hope to be consoled But the maidenly impulse restrained her and once more he leant on the gate burying his face in his hands
Pg 221
Suddenly he felt himself utterly tired relaxed Strong nervous reaction set in What had all this scene this tragedy been about And then in another instant was that sense of the ridiculous again clamouring to be heard He—the man of thirtyfive—confessing himself making a tragic scene playing Manfred or Cain to this adorable halffledged creature whom he had known five days Supposing Elsmere had been there to hear—Elsmere with his sane eye his laugh As he leant over the gate he found himself quivering with impatience to be away—by himself—out of reach—the critic in him making the most bitter remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in But for the life of him he could not find a word to say—a move to make He stood hesitating gauche as usual
Do you know Mr Langham said Rose lightly by his side that there is no time at all left for you to give me good advice in That is an obligation still hanging over you I dont mean to release you from it but if I dont go in now and finish the covering of those library books the youth of Murewell will be left without any literature till Heaven knows when
He could have blessed her for the tone for the escape into common mundanity
Hang literature—hang the parish library he said with a laugh as he moved after her Yet his real inner feeling towards that parish library was one of infinite friendliness
Hear these men of letters she said scornfully But she was happy there was a glow on her cheek
A bramble caught her dress she stopped and laid her white hand to it but in vain He knelt in an instant and between them they wrenched it away but not till those soft slim fingers had several times felt the neighbourhood of his brown ones and till there had flown through and through him once more as she stooped over him the consciousness that she was young that she was beautiful that she had pitied him so sweetly that they were alone
Rose
It was Catherine calling—Catherine who stood at the end of the grasspath with eyes all indignation and alarm
Langham rose quickly from the ground
He felt as though the gods had saved him—or damned him—which
CHAPTER XVII
Murewell Rectory during the next fortyeight hours was the scene of much that might have been of interest to a psychologist gifted with the power of divining his neighbours
In the first place Catherines terrors were all alive againPg 222 Robert had never seen her so moved since those days of storm and stress before their engagement
I cannot bear it she said to Robert at night in their room I cannot bear it I hear it always in my ears What hast thou done with thy sister Oh Robert dont mind dear though he is your friend My father would have shrunk from him with horror—An alien from the household of faith An enemy to the Cross of Christ
She flung out the words with low intense emphasis and frowning brow standing rigid by the window her hands locked behind her Robert stood by her much perplexed feeling himself a good deal of a culprit but inwardly conscious that he knew a great deal more about Langham than she did
My dear wifie he said to her I am certain Langham has no intention of marrying
Then more shame for him cried Catherine flushing They could not have looked more conscious Robert when I found them together if he had just proposed
What in five days said Robert more than half inclined to banter his wife Then he fell into meditation as Catherine made no answer I believe with men of that sort he said at last relations to women are never more than halfreal—always more or less literature—acting Langham is tasting an experience to be bottled up for future use
It need hardly be said however that Catherine got small consolation out of this point of view It seemed to her Robert did not take the matter quite rightly
After all darling he said at last kissing her you can act dragon splendidly you have already—so can I And you really cannot make me believe in anything very tragic in a week
But Catherine was conscious that she had already played the dragon hard to very little purpose In the forty hours that intervened between the scene in the garden and the squires dinnerparty Robert was always wanting to carry off Langham Catherine was always asking Roses help in some household business or other In vain Langham said to himself calmly this time that Elsmere and his wife were making a foolish mistake in supposing that his friendship with Miss Leyburn was anything to be alarmed about that they would soon be amply convinced of it themselves and meanwhile he should take his own way And as for Rose they had no sooner turned back all three from the house to the garden than she had divined everything in Catherines mind and set herself against her sister with a wilful force in which many a past irritation found expression
How Catherine hated the music of that week It seemed to her she never opened the drawingroom door but she saw Langham at the piano his head with its crown of glossy curling black hair and his eyes lit with unwonted gleams of laughterPg 223 and sympathy turned towards Rose who was either chatting wildly to him mimicking the airs of some professional or taking off the ways of some famous teacher or else which was worse playing with all her soul flooding the house with sound—now as soft and delicate as first love now as full and grand as storm waves on an angry coast And the sister going with compressed lip to her worktable would recognise sorely that never had the girl looked so handsome and never had the lightnings of a wayward genius played so finely about her
As to Langham it may well be believed that after the scene in the garden he had rated satirised examined himself in the most approved introspective style One half of him declared that scene to have been the heights of melodramatic absurdity the other thought of it with a thrill of tender gratitude towards the young pitiful creature who had evoked it After all why because he was alone in the world and must remain so should he feel bound to refuse this one gift of the gods the delicate passing gift of a girls—a childs friendship As for her the mans very real though wholly morbid modesty scouted the notion of love on her side He was a likely person for a beauty on the threshold of life and success to fall in love with but she meant to be kind to him and he smiled a little inward indulgent smile over her very evident compassion her very evident intention of reforming him reconciling him to life And finally he was incapable of any further resistance He had gone too far with her Let her do what she would with him dear child with the sharp tongue and the soft heart and the touch of genius and brilliancy which made her future so interesting He called his age and his disillusions to the rescue he posed to himself as stooping to her in some sort of elderbrotherly fashion and if every now and then some disturbing memory of that strange scene between them would come to make his present rôle less plausible or some whim of hers made it difficult to play why then at bottom there was always the consciousness that sixty hours or thereabouts would see him safely settled in that morning train to London Throughout it is probable that that morning train occupied the saving background of his thoughts
The two days passed by and the squires dinnerparty arrived About seven on the Thursday evening a party of four might have been seen hurrying across the park—Langham and Catherine in front Elsmere and Rose behind Catherine had arranged it so and Langham who understood perfectly that his friendship with her young sister was not at all to Mrs Elsmeres taste and who had by now taken as much of a dislike to her as his nature was capable of was certainly doing nothing to make his walk with her otherwise than difficult And every now and then some languid epigram would bring Catherines eyes on him with a fiery gleam in their gray depths Oh fourteen more hours and she would have shut the rectory gate onPg 224 this most unwelcome of intruders She had never felt so vindictively anxious to see the last of any one in her life There was in her a vehemence of antagonism to the mans manner his pessimism his infidelity his very ways of speaking and looking which astonished even herself
Roberts eager soul meanwhile for once irresponsive to Catherines was full of nothing but the squire At last the moment was come and that dumb spiritual friendship he had formed through these long months with the philosopher and the savant was to be tested by sight and speech of the man He bade himself a hundred times pitch his expectations low But curiosity and hope were keen in spite of everything
Ah those parish worries Robert caught the smoke of Mile End in the distance curling above the twilight woods and laid about him vigorously with his stick on the squires shrubs as he thought of those poisonous hovels those ruined lives But after all it might be mere ignorance and that wretch Henslowe might have been merely trading on his masters morbid love of solitude
And then—all men have their natural conceits Robert Elsmere would not have been the very human creature he was if halfconsciously he had not counted a good deal on his own powers of influence Life had been to him so far one long social success of the best kind Very likely as he walked on to the great house over whose threshold lay the answer to the enigma of months his mind gradually filled with some naïve young dream of winning the squire playing him with all sorts of honest arts beguiling him back to life—to his kind
Those friendly messages of his through Mrs Darcy had been very pleasant
I wonder whether my Oxford friends have been doing me a good turn with the squire he said to Rose laughing He knows the provost of course If they talked me over it is to be hoped my scholarship didnt come up Precious little the provost used to think of my abilities for Greek prose
Rose yawned a little behind her gloved hand Robert had already talked a good deal about the squire and he was certainly the only person in the group who was thinking of him Even Catherine absorbed in other anxieties had forgotten to feel any thrill at their approaching introduction to the man who must of necessity mean so much to herself and Robert
Mr and Mrs Robert Elsmere said the butler throwing open the carved and gilded doors
Catherine—following her husband her fine grave head and beautiful neck held a little more erect than usual—was at first conscious of nothing but the dazzle of western light which flooded the room striking the stands of Japanese lilies and the white figure of a clown in the famous Watteau opposite the window
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Then she found herself greeted by Mrs Darcy whose odd habit of holding her lace handkerchief in her right hand on festive occasions only left her two fingers for her guests The mistress of the Hall—as diminutive and elflike as ever in spite of the added dignity of her sweeping silk and the draperies of black lace with which her tiny head was adorned—kept tight hold of Catherine and called a gentleman standing in a group just behind her
Roger here are Mr and Mrs Robert Elsmere Mr Elsmere the squire remembers you in petticoats and Im not sure that I dont too
Robert smiling looked beyond her to the advancing figure of the squire but if Mr Wendover heard his sisters remark he took no notice of it He held out his hand stiffly to Robert bowed to Catherine and Rose before extending to them the same formal greeting and just recognised Langham as having met him at Oxford
Having done so he turned back to the knot of people with whom he had been engaged on their entrance His manner had been reserve itself The hauteur of the grandee on his own ground was clearly marked in it and Robert could not help fancying that towards himself there had even been something more And not one of those phrases which under the circumstances would have been so easy and so gracious as to Roberts childish connection with the place or as to the squires remembrance of his father even though Mrs Darcy had given him a special opening of the kind
The young rector instinctively drew himself together like one who has received a blow as he moved across to the other side of the fireplace to shake hands with the worthy family doctor old Meyrick who was already well known to him Catherine in some discomfort for she too had felt their reception at the squires hands to be a chilling one sat down to talk to Mrs Darcy disagreeably conscious the while that Rose and Langham left to themselves were practically têteàtête and that moreover a large stand of flowers formed a partial screen between her and them She could see however the gleam of Roses upstretched neck as Langham who was leaning on the piano beside her bent down to talk to her and when she looked next she caught a smiling motion of Langhams head and eyes towards the Romney portrait of Mr Wendovers grandmother and was certain when he stooped afterwards to say something to his companion that he was commenting on a certain surface likeness there was between her and the young auburnhaired beauty of the picture Hateful And they would be sent down to dinner together to a certainty
The other guests were Lady Charlotte Wynnstay a cousin of the squire—a tall imperious loudvoiced woman famous in London society for her relationships her audacity and the salon which in one way or another she managed to collect round herPg 226 her dark thin irritablelooking husband two neighbouring clerics—the first by name Longstaffe a somewhat inferior specimen of the cloth whom Robert cordially disliked and the other Mr Bickerton a gentle Evangelical one of those men who help to ease the harshness of a crossgrained world and to reconcile the cleverer or more impatient folk in it to the worries of living
Lady Charlotte was already known by name to the Elsmeres as the aunt of one of their chief friends of the neighbourhood—the wife of a neighbouring squire whose property joined that of Murewell Hall one Lady Helen Varley of whom more presently Lady Charlotte was the sister of the Duke of Sedbergh one of the greatest of dukes and the sister also of Lady Helens mother Lady Wanless Lady Wanless had died prematurely and her two younger children Helen and Hugh Flaxman creatures both of them of unusually fine and fiery quality had owed a good deal to their aunt There were family alliances between the Sedberghs and the Wendovers and Lady Charlotte made a point of keeping up with the squire She adored cynics and people who said piquant things and it amused her to make her large tyrannous hand felt by the squires timid crackbrained ridiculous little sister
As to Dr Meyrick he was tall and gaunt as Don Quixote His gray hair made a ragged fringe round his straightbacked head he wore an oldfashioned neckcloth his long body had a perpetual stoop as though of deference and his spectacled look of mild attentiveness had nothing in common with that medical selfassurance with which we are all nowadays so familiar Robert noticed presently that when he addressed Mrs Darcy he said Maam making no bones at all about it and his manner generally was the manner of one to whom class distinctions were the profoundest reality and no burden at all on a naturally humble temper Dr Baker of Whindale accustomed to trouncing Mrs Seaton would have thought him a poor creature
When dinner was announced Robert found himself assigned to Mrs Darcy the squire took Lady Charlotte Catherine fell to Mr Bickerton Rose to Mr Wynnstay and the rest found their way in as best they could Catherine seeing the distribution was happy for a moment till she found that if Rose was covered on her right she was exposed to the full fire of the enemy on her left in other words that Langham was placed between her and Dr Meyrick
Are your spirits damped at all by this magnificence Langham said to his neighbour as they sat down The table was entirely covered with Japanese lilies save for the splendid silver candelabra from which the light flashed first on to the faces of the guests and then on to those of the family portraits hung thickly round the room A roof embossed with gilded Tudor roses on a ground of black oak hung above them a rosePg 227water dish in which the Merry Monarch had once dipped his hands and which bore a record of the fact in the inscription on its sides stood before them and the servants were distributing to each guest silver soupplates which had been the gift of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough in some moment of generosity or calculation to the Wendover of her day
Oh dear no said Rose carelessly I dont know how it is I think I must have been born for a palace
Langham looked at her at the daring harmony of colour made by the reddish gold of her hair the warm whiteness of her skin and the brownpink tints of her dress at the crystals playing the part of diamonds on her beautiful neck and remembered Roberts remarks to him The same irony mingled with the same bitterness returned to him and the elder brothers attitude became once more temporarily difficult Who is your neighbour he inquired of her presently
Lady Charlottes husband she answered mischievously under her breath One neednt know much more about him I imagine
And that man opposite
Roberts pet aversion she said calmly without a change of countenance so that Mr Longstaffe opposite who was studying her as he always studied pretty young women stared at her through her remark in sublime ignorance of its bearing
And your sisters neighbour
I cant hit him off in a sentence hes too good said Rose laughing all I can say is that Mrs Bickerton has too many children and the children have too many ailments for her ever to dine out
That will do I see the existence said Langham with a shrug But he has the look of an apostle though a rather hunted one Probably nobody here except Robert is fit to tie his shoes
The squire could hardly be called empressé said Rose after a second with a curl of her red lips Mr Wynnstay was still safely engaged with Mrs Darcy and there was a buzz of talk largely sustained by Lady Charlotte
No Langham admitted the manners I thought were not quite equal to the house
What possible reason could he have for treating Robert with those airs said Rose indignantly ready enough in girl fashion to defend her belongings against the outer world He ought to be only too glad to have the opportunity of knowing him and making friends with him
You are a sister worth having and Langham smiled at her as she leant back in her chair her white arms and wrists lying on her lap and her slightly flushed face turned towards him They had been on these pleasant terms of camaraderie all day and the intimacy between them had been still making strides
Do you imagine I dont appreciate Robert because I makePg 228 bad jokes about the choir and the clothing club she asked him with a little quick repentance passing like a shadow through her eyes I always feel I play an odious part here I cant like it—I cant—their life I should hate it And yet——
She sighed remorsefully and Langham who five minutes before could have wished her to be always smiling could now have almost asked to fix her as she was the eyes veiled the soft lips relaxed in this passing instant of gravity
Ah I forgot— and she looked up again with light bewitching appeal—there is still that question my poor little question of Sunday night when I was in that fine moral frame of mind and you were near giving me I believe the only good advice you ever gave in your life—how shamefully you have treated it
One brilliant look which Catherine for her torment caught from the other side of the table and then in an instant the quick face changed and stiffened Mr Wynnstay was speaking to her and Langham was left to the intermittent mercies of Dr Meyrick who though glad to talk was also quite content apparently to judge from the radiant placidity of his look to examine his wine study his menu and enjoy his entrées in silence undisturbed by the uncertain pleasures of conversation
Robert meanwhile during the first few minutes in which Mr Wynnstay had been engaged in some family talk with Mrs Darcy had been allowing himself a little deliberate study of Mr Wendover across what seemed the safe distance of a long table The squire was talking shortly and abruptly yet with occasional flashes of shrill ungainly laughter to Lady Charlotte who seemed to have no sort of fear of him and to find him good company and every now and then Robert saw him turn to Catherine on the other side of him and with an obvious change of manner address some formal and constrained remark to her
Mr Wendover was a man of middle height and loose bony frame of which as Robert had noticed in the drawingroom all the lower half had a thin and shrunken look But the shoulders which had the scholars stoop and the head were massive and squarely outlined The head was specially remarkable for its great breadth and comparative flatness above the eyes and for the way in which the head itself dwarfed the face which as contrasted with the large angularity of the skull had a pinched and drawn look The hair was reddishgray the eyes small but deepset under fine brows and the thinlipped wrinkled mouth and long chin had a look of hard sarcastic strength
Generally the countenance was that of an old man the furrows were deep the skin brown and shrivelled But the alertness and force of the mans whole expression showed thatPg 229 if the body was beginning to fail the mind was as fresh and masterful as ever His hair worn rather longer than usual his looselyfitting dress and slouching carriage gave him an unEnglish look In general he impressed Robert as a sort of curious combination of the foreign savant with the English grandee for while his manner showed a considerable consciousness of birth and social importance the gulf between him and the ordinary English country gentleman could hardly have been greater whether in points of appearance or as Robert very well knew in points of social conduct And as Robert watched him his thoughts flew back again to the library to this mans past to all that those eyes had seen and those hands had touched He felt already a mysterious almost a yearning sense of acquaintance with the being who had just received him with such chilling such unexpected indifference
The squires manners no doubt were notorious but even so his reception of the new rector of the parish the son of a man intimately connected for years with the place and with his father and to whom he had himself shown what was for him considerable civility by letter and message was sufficiently startling
Robert however had no time to speculate on the causes of it for Mrs Darcy released from Mr Wynnstay threw herself with glee on to her longedfor prey the young and interestinglooking rector First of all she crossexamined him as to his literary employments and when by dint of much questioning she had forced particulars from him Roberts mouth twitched as he watched her scuttling away from the subject seized evidently with internal terrors lest she should have precipitated herself beyond hope of rescue into the jaws of the sixth century Then with a view to regaining the lead and opening another and more promising vein she asked him his opinion of Lady Seldens last novel Love in a Marsh and when he confessed ignorance she paused a moment fork in hand her small wrinkled face looking almost as bewildered as when three minutes before her rashness had wellnigh brought her face to face with Gregory of Tours as a topic of conversation
But she was not daunted long With little airs and bridlings infinitely diverting she exchanged inquiry for the most beguiling confidence She could appreciate clever men she said for she—she too—was literary Did Mr Elsmere know—this in a hurried whisper with sidelong glances to see that Mr Wynnstay was safely occupied with Rose and the squire with Lady Charlotte—that she had once written a novel
Robert who had been posted up in many things concerning the neighbourhood by Lady Helen Varley could answer most truly that he had Whereupon Mrs Darcy beamed all over
Ah but you havent read it she said regretfully It was when I was Maid of Honour you know No Maid of Honour had ever written a novel before It was quite an event DearPg 230 Prince Albert borrowed a copy of me one night to read in bed—I have it still with the page turned down where he left off She hesitated It was only in the second chapter she said at last with a fine truthfulness but you know he was so busy all the Queens work to do of course besides his own—poor man
Robert implored her to lend him the work and Mrs Darcy with blushes which made her more weird than ever consented
Then there was a pause filled by an acid altercation between Lady Charlotte and her husband who had not found Rose as grateful for his attentions as in his opinion a pink and white nobody at a country dinnerparty ought to be and was glad of the diversion afforded him by some aggressive remark of his wife He and she differed on three main points—politics the decoration of their London house Mr Wynnstay being a lover of Louis Quinze and Lady Charlotte a preacher of Morris and the composition of their dinnerparties Lady Charlotte in the pursuit of amusement and notoriety was fond of flooding the domestic hearth with all the people possessed of any sort of a name for any sort of a reason in London Mr Wynnstay loathed such promiscuity and the company in which his wife compelled him to drink his wine had seriously soured a small irritable Conservative with more family pride than either nerves or digestion
During the whole passage of arms Mrs Darcy watched Elsmere catandmouse fashion with a further confidence burning within her and as soon as there was once more a general burst of talk she pounced upon him afresh Would he like to know that after thirty years she had just finished her second novel unbeknown to her brother—as she mentioned him the little face darkened took a strange bitterness—and it was just about to be entrusted to the post and a publisher
Robert was all interest of course and inquired the subject Mrs Darcy expanded still more—could in fact have hugged him But just as she was launching into the plot a thought apparently a scruple of conscience struck her
Do you remember she began looking at him a little darkly askance what I said about my hobbies the other day Now Mr Elsmere will you tell me—dont mind me—dont be polite—have you ever heard people tell stories of me Have you ever for instance heard them call me a—a—tufthunter
Never said Robert heartily
They might she said sighing I am a tufthunter I cant help it And yet we are a good family you know I suppose it was that year at Court and that horrid Warham afterwards Twenty years in a cathedral town—and a very little cathedral town after Windsor and Buckingham Palace and dear Lord Melbourne Every year I came up to town to stay with my father for a month in the season and if it hadnt been for thatPg 231 I should have died—my husband knew I should It was the world the flesh and the devil of course but it couldnt be helped But now and she looked plaintively at her companion as though challenging him to a candid reply You would be more interesting wouldnt you to tell the truth if you had a handle to your name
Immeasurably cried Robert stifling his laughter with immense difficulty as he saw she had no inclination to laugh
Well yes you know But it isnt right and again she sighed And so I have been writing this novel just for that It is called—what do you think—Mr Jones Mr Jones is my hero—its so good for me you know to think about a Mr Jones
She looked beamingly at him It must be indeed Have you endowed him with every virtue
Oh yes and in the end you know— and she bent forward eagerly—it all comes right His father didnt die in Brazil without children after all and the title——
What cried Robert so he wasnt Mr Jones
Mrs Darcy looked a little conscious
Well no she said guiltily not just at the end But it really doesnt matter—not to the story
Robert shook his head with a look of protest as admonitory as he could make it which evoked in her an answering expression of anxiety But just at that moment a loud wave of conversation and of laughter seemed to sweep down upon them from the other end of the table and their little private eddy was effaced The squire had been telling an anecdote and his clerical neighbours had been laughing at it
Ah cried Mr Longstaffe throwing himself back in his chair with a chuckle that was an Archbishop worth having
A curious story said Mr Bickerton benevolently the point of it however to tell the truth not being altogether clear to him It seemed to Robert that the squires keen eye as he sat looking down the table with his large nervous hands clasped before him was specially fixed upon himself
May we hear the story he said bending forward Catherine faintly smiling in her corner beside the host was looking a little flushed and moved out of her ordinary quiet
It is a story of Archbishop Manners Sutton said Mr Wendover in his dry nasal voice You probably know it Mr Elsmere After Bishop Hebers consecration to the See of Calcutta it fell to the Archbishop to make a valedictory speech in the course of the luncheon at Lambeth which followed the ceremony I have very little advice to give you as to your future career he said to the young bishop but all that experience has given me I hand on to you Place before your eyes two precepts and two only One is Preach the Gospel and the other is—Put down enthusiasm
There was a sudden gleam of steely animation in the squiresPg 232 look as he told his story his eye all the while fixed on Robert Robert divined in a moment that the story had been retold for his special benefit and that in some unexplained way the relations between him and the squire were already biassed He smiled a little with faint politeness and falling back into his place made no comment on the squires anecdote Lady Charlottes eyeglass having adjusted itself for a moment to the distant figure of the rector with regard to whom she had been asking Dr Meyrick for particulars quite unmindful of Catherines neighbourhood turned back again towards the squire
An unblushing old worldling I should call your Archbishop she said briskly And a very good thing for him that he lived when he did Our modern good people would have dusted his apron for him
Lady Charlotte prided herself on these vigorous forms of speech and the squires neighbourhood generally called out an unusual crop of them The squire was still sitting with his hands on the table his great brows bent surveying his guests
Oh of course all the sensible men are dead he said indifferently But that is a pet saying of mine—the Church of England in a nutshell
Robert flushed and after a moments hesitation bent forward
What do you suppose he asked quietly your Archbishop meant Mr Wendover by enthusiasm Nonconformity I imagine
Oh very possibly and again Robert found the hawklike glance concentrated on himself But I like to give his remark a much wider extension One may make it a maxim of general experience and take it as fitting all the fools with a mission who have teased our generation—all your Kingsleys and Maurices and Ruskins—every one bent upon making any sort of aimless commotion which may serve him both as an investment for the next world and an advertisement for this
Upon my word squire said Lady Charlotte I hope you dont expect Mr Elsmere to agree with you
Mr Wendover made her a little bow
I have very little sanguineness of any sort in my composition he said drily
I should like to know said Robert taking no notice of this byplay I should like to know Mr Wendover leaving the Archbishop out of count what you understand by this word enthusiasm in this maxim of yours
An excellent manner thought Lady Charlotte who for all her noisiness was an extremely shrewd woman an excellent manner and an unprovoked attack
Catherines trained eye however had detected signs in Roberts look and bearing which were lost on Lady Charlotte and which made her look nervously on As to the rest of the table they had all fallen to watching the break between the new rector and their host with a good deal of curiosity
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The squire paused a moment before replying—
It is not easy to put it tersely he said at last but I may define it perhaps as the mania for mending the roof of your righthand neighbour with straw torn off the roof of your lefthand neighbour the custom in short of robbing Peter to propitiate Paul
Precisely said Mr Wynnstay warmly all the ridiculous Radical nostrums of the last fifty years—you have hit them off exactly Sometimes you rob more and propitiate less sometimes you rob less and propitiate more But the principle is always the same And mindful of all those intolerable evenings when these same Radical nostrums had been forced down his throat at his own table he threw a pugnacious look at his wife who smiled back serenely in reply There is small redress indeed for these things when out of the common household stock the wife possesses most of the money and a vast proportion of the brains
And the cynic takes pleasure in observing interrupted the squire that the man who effects the change of balance does it in the loftiest manner and profits in the vulgarest way Other trades may fail The agitator is always sure of his market
He spoke with a harsh contemptuous insistence which was gradually setting every nerve in Roberts body tingling He bent forward again his long thin frame and boyish brightcomplexioned face making an effective contrast to the squires bronzed and wrinkled squareness
Oh if you and Mr Wynnstay are prepared to draw an indictment against your generation and all its works I have no more to say he said smiling still though his voice had risen a little in spite of himself I should be content to withdraw with my Burke into the majority I imagined your attack on enthusiasm had a narrower scope but if it is to be made synonymous with social progress I give up The subject is too big Only——
He hesitated Mr Wynnstay was studying him with somewhat insolent coolness Lady Charlottes eyeglass never wavered from his face and he felt through every fibre the tender timid admonitions of his wifes eyes
However he went on after an instant I imagine that we should find it difficult anyhow to discover common ground I regard your Archbishops maxim Mr Wendover and his tone quickened and grew louder as first of all a contradiction in terms and in the next place to me almost all enthusiasms are respectable
You are one of those people I see returned Mr Wendover after a pause with the same nasal emphasis and the same hauteur who imagine we owe civilisation to the heart that mankind has felt its way—literally The school of the majority of course—I admit it amply I on the other hand am with the benighted minority who believe that the world so far as it hasPg 234 lived to any purpose has lived by the head and he flung the noun at Robert scornfully But I am quite aware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all the kicks and the philanthropists to give them their own label all the halfpence
The impassive tone had gradually warmed to a heat which was unmistakable Lady Charlotte looked on with increasing relish To her all society was a comedy played for her entertainment and she detected something more dramatic than usual in the juxtaposition of these two men That young rector might be worth looking after The dinners in Martin Street were alarmingly in want of fresh blood As for poor Mr Bickerton he had begun to talk hastily to Catherine with a sense of something tumbling about his ears while Mr Longstaffe eyeglass in hand surveyed the table with a distinct sense of pleasurable entertainment He had not seen much of Elsmere yet but it was as clear as daylight that the man was a firebrand and should be kept in order
Meanwhile there was a pause between the two main disputants the stormclouds were deepening outside and rain had begun to patter on the windows Mrs Darcy was just calling attention to the weather when the squire unexpectedly returned to the charge
The one necessary thing in life he said turning to Lady Charlotte a slight irritating smile playing round his strong mouth is—not to be duped Put too much faith in these fine things the altruists talk of and you arrive one day at the condition of Louis XIV after the battle of Ramillies Dieu a donc oublié tout ce que jai fait pour lui Read your Renan remind yourself at every turn that it is quite possible after all the egotist may turn out to be in the right of it and you will find at any rate that the world gets on excellently well without your blundering efforts to set it straight And so we get back to the Archbishops maxim—adapted no doubt to English requirements and he shrugged his great shoulders expressively Pace Mr Elsmere of course and the rest of our clerical friends
Again he looked down the table and the strident voice sounded harsher than ever as it rose above the sudden noise of the storm outside Roberts bright eyes were fixed on the squire and before Mr Wendover stopped Catherine could see the words of reply trembling on his lips
I am well content he said with a curious dry intensity of tone I give you your Renan Only leave us poor dupes our illusions We will not quarrel with the division With you all the cynics of history with us all the scorners of the ground from the worlds beginning until now
The squire make a quick impatient movement Mr Wynnstay looked significantly at his wife who dropped her eyeglass with a little irrepressible smile
As for Robert leaning forward with hastened breath itPg 235 seemed to him that his eyes and the squires crossed like swords In Roberts mind there had arisen a sudden passion of antagonism Before his eyes there was a vision of a child in a stifling room struggling with mortal disease imposed upon her as he hotly reminded himself by this mans culpable neglect The dinnerparty the splendour of the room the conversation excited a kind of disgust in him If it were not for Catherines pale face opposite he could hardly have maintained his selfcontrol
Mrs Darcy a little bewildered and feeling that things were not going particularly well thought it best to interfere
Roger she said plaintively you must not be so philosophical Its too hot He used to talk like that she went on bending over to Mr Wynnstay to the French priests who came to see us last winter in Paris They never minded a bit—they used to laugh Monsieur votre frère madame cest un homme qui a trop lu they would say to me when I gave them their coffee Oh they were such dears those old priests Roger said they had great hopes of me
The chatter was welcome the conversation broke up The squire turned to Lady Charlotte and Rose to Langham
Why didnt you support Robert she said to him impulsively with a dissatisfied face He was alone against the table
What good should I have done him he asked with a shrug And pray my lady confessor what enthusiasms do you suspect me of
He looked at her intently It seemed to her they were by the gate again—the touch of his lips on her hand She turned from him hastily to stoop for her fan which had slipped away It was only Catherine who for her annoyance saw the scarlet flush leap into the fair face An instant later Mrs Darcy had given the signal
CHAPTER XVIII
After dinner Lady Charlotte fixed herself at first on Catherine whose quiet dignity during the somewhat trying ordeal of the dinner had impressed her but a few minutes talk produced in her the conviction that without a good deal of pains—and why should a Londoner accustomed to the cream of things take pains with a country clergymans wife—she was not likely to get much out of her Her appearance promised more Lady Charlotte thought than her conversation justified and she looked about for easier game
Are you Mr Elsmeres sister said a loud voice over Roses head and Rose who had been turning over an illustrated book with a mind wholly detached from it looked up to see Lady Charlottes massive form standing over her
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No his sisterinlaw said Rose flushing in spite of herself for Lady Charlotte was distinctly formidable
Hum said her questioner depositing herself beside her I never saw two sisters more unlike You have got a very argumentative brotherinlaw
Rose said nothing partly from awkwardness partly from rising antagonism
Did you agree with him asked Lady Charlotte putting up her glass and remorselessly studying every detail of the pink dress its ornaments and the slippered feet peeping out beneath it
Entirely said Rose fearlessly looking her full in the face
And what can you know about it I wonder However you are on the right side It is the fashion nowadays to have enthusiasms I suppose you muddle about among the poor like other people
I know nothing about the poor said Rose
Oh then I suppose you feel yourself effective enough in some other line said the other coolly What is it—lawn tennis or private theatricals or—hem—prettiness And again the eyeglass went up
Whichever you like said Rose calmly the scarlet on her cheek deepening while she resolutely reopened her book The manner of the other had quite effaced in her all that sense of obligation as from the young to the old which she had been very carefully brought up in Never had she beheld such an extraordinary woman
Dont read said Lady Charlotte complacently Look at me Its your duty to talk to me you know and I wont make myself any more disagreeable than I can help I generally make myself disagreeable and yet after all there are a great many people who like me
Rose turned a countenance rippling with suppressed laughter on her companion Lady Charlotte had a large fair face with a great deal of nose and chin and an erection of lace and feathers on her head that seemed in excellent keeping with the masterful emphasis of those features Her eyes stared frankly and unblushingly at the world only softened at intervals by the glasses which were so used as to make them a most effective adjunct of her conversation Socially she was absolutely devoid of weakness or of shame She found society extremely interesting and she always struck straight for the desirable things in it making short work of all those delicate tentative processes of acquaintanceship by which men and women ordinarily sort themselves Roses brilliant vivacious beauty had caught her eye at dinner she adored beauty as she adored anything effective and she always took a queer pleasure in bullying her way into a girls liking It is a great thing to be persuaded that at bottom you have a good heart Lady Charlotte was so persuaded and allowed herself many things in consequence
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What shall we talk about said Rose demurely What a magnificent old house this is
Stuff and nonsense I dont want to talk about the house I am sick to death of it And if your people live in the parish you are too I return to my question Come tell me what is your particular line in life I am sure you have one by your face You had better tell me it will do you no harm
Lady Charlotte settled herself comfortably on the sofa and Rose seeing that there was no chance of escaping her tormentor felt her spirits rise to an encounter
Really—Lady Charlotte— and she looked down and then up with a feigned bashfulness—I—I—play a little
Humph said her questioner again rather disconcerted by the obvious missishness of the answer You do do you Mores the pity No woman who respects herself ought to play the piano nowadays A professional told me the other day that until nineteentwentieths of the profession were strung up there would be no chance for the rest and as for amateurs there is simply no room for them whatever I cant conceive anything more passé than amateur pianoforte playing
I dont play the piano said Rose meekly
What—the fashionable instrument the banjo laughed Lady Charlotte That would be really striking
Rose was silent again the corners of her mouth twitching
Mrs Darcy said her neighbour raising her voice this young lady tells me she plays something what is it
Mrs Darcy looked in a rather helpless way at Catherine She was dreadfully afraid of Lady Charlotte
Catherine with a curious reluctance gave the required information and then Lady Charlotte insisted that the violin should be sent for as it had not been brought
Who accompanies you she inquired of Rose
Mr Langham plays very well said Rose indifferently
Lady Charlotte raised her eyebrows That dark Byroniclooking creature who came with you I should not have imagined him capable of anything sociable Letitia shall I send my maid to the rectory or can you spare a man
Mrs Darcy hurriedly gave orders and Rose inwardly furious was obliged to submit Then Lady Charlotte having gained her point and secured a certain amount of diversion for the evening lay back on the sofa used her fan and yawned till the gentlemen appeared
When they came in the precious violin which Rose never trusted to any other hands but her own without trepidation had just arrived and its owner more erect than usual because more nervous was trying to prop up a dilapidated musicstand which Mrs Darcy had unearthed for her As Langham came in she looked up and beckoned to him
Do you see she said to him impatiently they have madePg 238 me play Will you accompany me I am very sorry but there is no one else
If there was one thing Langham loathed on his own account it was any sort of performance in public But the halfplaintive look which accompanied her last words showed that she knew it and he did his best to be amiable
I am altogether at your service he said sitting down with resignation
It is all that tiresome woman Lady Charlotte Wynnstay she whispered to him behind the musicstand I never saw such a person in my life
Macaulays Lady Holland without the brains suggested Langham with languid vindictiveness as he gave her the note
Meanwhile Mr Wynnstay and the squire sauntered in together
A village NormanNéruda whispered the guest to the host The squire shrugged his shoulders
Hush said Lady Charlotte looking severely at her husband Mr Wynnstays smile instantly disappeared he leant against the doorway and stared sulkily at the ceiling Then the musicians began on some Hungarian melodies put together by a younger rival of Brahms They had not played twenty bars before the attention of every one in the room was more or less seized—unless we except Mr Bickerton whose children good soul were all down with some infantile ailment or other and who was employed in furtively watching the clock all the time to see when it would be decent to order round the ponycarriage which would take him back to his pale overweighted spouse
First came wild snatches of march music primitive savage nonEuropean then a waltz of the lightest maddest rhythm broken here and there by strange barbaric clashes then a song plaintive and clinging rich in the subtlest shades and melancholies of modern feeling
Ah but excellent said Lady Charlotte once under her breath at a pause and what entrain—what beauty
For Roses figure was standing thrown out against the dusky blue of the tapestried walls and from that delicate relief every curve every grace each tint—hair and cheek and gleaming arm gained an enchanting picturelike distinctness There was jessamine at her waist and among the gold of her hair the crystals on her neck and on the little shoe thrown forward beyond her dress caught the lamplight
How can that man play with her and not fall in love with her thought Lady Charlotte to herself with a sigh perhaps for her own youth He looks cool enough however the typical don with his nose in the air
Then the slow passionate sweetness of the music swept her away with it she being in her way a connoisseur and she ceased to speculate When the sounds ceased there was silence for a moment Mrs Darcy who had a piano in her sittingroomPg 239 whereon she strummed every morning with her tiny rheumatic fingers and who had as we know strange little veins of sentiment running all about her stared at Rose with open mouth So did Catherine Perhaps it was then for the first time that touched by this publicity this contagion of other peoples feeling Catherine realised fully against what a depth of stream she had been building her useless barriers
More more cried Lady Charlotte
The whole room seconded the demand save the squire and Mr Bickerton They withdrew together into a distant oriel Robert who was delighted with his little sisterinlaws success went smiling to talk of it to Mrs Darcy while Catherine with a gentle coldness answered Mr Longstaffes questions on the same theme
Shall we said Rose panting a little but radiant looking down on her companion
Command me he said his grave lips slightly smiling his eyes taking in the same vision that had charmed Lady Charlottes What a child of grace and genius
But do you like it she persisted
Like it—like accompanying your playing
Oh no—impatiently showing off I mean I am quite ready to stop
Go on go on he said laying his finger on the A You have driven all my mauvaise honte away I have not heard you play so splendidly yet
She flushed all over Then we will go on she said briefly
So they plunged again into an Andante and Scherzo of Beethoven How the girl threw herself into it bringing out the wailing lovesong of the Andante the dainty tripping mirth of the Scherzo in a way which set every nerve in Langham vibrating Yet the art of it was wholly unconscious The music was the mere natural voice of her inmost self A comparison full of excitement was going on in that self between her first impressions of the man beside her and her consciousness of him as he seemed tonight human sympathetic kind A blissful sense of a mission filled the young silly soul Like David she was pitting herself and her gift against those dark powers which may invade and paralyse a life
After the shouts of applause at the end had yielded to a burst of talk in the midst of which Lady Charlotte with exquisite infelicity might have been heard laying down the law to Catherine as to how her sisters remarkable musical powers might be best perfected Langham turned to his companion—
Do you know that for years I have enjoyed nothing so much as the music of the last two days
His black eyes shone upon her transfused with something infinitely soft and friendly She smiled How little I imagined that first evening that you cared for music
Or about anything else worth caring for he asked herPg 240 laughing but with always that little melancholy note in the laugh
Oh if you like she said with a shrug of her white shoulders I believe you talked to Catherine the whole of the first evening when you werent reading Hamlet in the corner about the arrangements for womens education at Oxford
Could I have found a more respectable subject he inquired of her
The adjective is excellent she said with a little face as she put her violin into its case If I remember right Catherine and I felt it personal None of us were ever educated except in arithmetic sewing English history the Catechism and Paradise Lost I taught myself French at seventeen because one Molière wrote plays in it and German because of Wagner But they are my French and my German I wouldnt advise anybody else to steal them
Langham was silent watching the movements of the girls agile fingers
I wonder he said at last slowly when I shall play that Beethoven again
Tomorrow morning if you have a conscience she said drily we murdered one or two passages in fine style
He looked at her startled But I go by the morning train There was an instants silence Then the violin case shut with a snap
I thought it was to be Saturday she said abruptly
No he answered with a sigh it was always Friday There is a meeting in London I must get to tomorrow afternoon
Then we shant finish these Hungarian duets she said slowly turning away from him to collect some music on the piano
Suddenly a sense of the difference between the week behind him with all its ups and downs its quarrels its ennuis its moments of delightful intimity of artistic freedom and pleasure and those threadbare monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow awoke in him a mad inconsequent sting of disgust of selfpity
No we shall finish nothing he said in a voice which only she could hear his hands lying on the keys there are some whose destiny it is never to finish—never to have enough—to leave the feast on the table and all the edges of life ragged
Her lips trembled They were far away in the vast room from the group Lady Charlotte was lecturing Her nerves were all unsteady with music and feeling and the face looking down on him had grown pale
We make our own destiny she said impatiently We choose It is all our own doing Perhaps destiny begins things—friendship for instance but afterwards it is absurd to talk of anything but ourselves We keep our friends our chances our—our joys she went on hurriedly trying desperately to generalise or we throw them away wilfully because we choose
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Their eyes were riveted on each other
Not wilfully he said under his breath But—no matter May I take you at your word Miss Leyburn Wretched shirker that I am whom even Roberts charity despairs of have I made a friend Can I keep her
Extraordinary spell of the dark effeminate face—of its rare smile The girl forgot all pride all discretion Try she whispered and as his hand stretching along the keyboard instinctively felt for hers for one instant—and another and another—she gave it to him
Albert come here exclaimed Lady Charlotte beckoning to her husband and Albert though with a bad grace obeyed Just go and ask that girl to come and talk to me will you Why on earth didnt you make friends with her at dinner
The husband made some irritable answer and the wife laughed
Just like you she said with a good humour which seemed to him solely caused by the fact of his nonsuccess with the beauty at table You always expect to kill at the first stroke I mean to take her in tow Go and bring her here
Mr Wynnstay sauntered off with as much dignity as his stature was capable of He found Rose tying up her music at one end of the piano while Langham was preparing to shut up the keyboard
There was something appeasing in the girls handsomeness Mr Wynnstay laid down his airs paid her various compliments and led her off to Lady Charlotte
Langham stood by the piano lost in a kind of miserable dream Mrs Darcy fluttered up to him
Oh Mr Langham you play so beautifully Do play a solo
He subsided on to the musicbench obediently On any ordinary occasion tortures could not have induced him to perform in a room full of strangers He had far too lively and fastidious a sense of the futility of the amateur
But he played—what he knew not Nobody listened but Mrs Darcy who sat lost in an armchair a little way off her tiny foot beating time Rose stopped talking started tried to listen But Lady Charlotte had had enough music and so had Mr Longstaffe who was endeavouring to joke himself into the good graces of the Duke of Sedberghs sister The din of conversation rose at the challenge of the piano and Langham was soon overcrowded
Musically it was perhaps as well for the players inward tumult was so great that what his hands did he hardly knew or cared He felt himself the greatest criminal unhung Suddenly through all that wilful mist of epicurean feeling which had been enwrapping him there had pierced a sharp illumining beam from a girls eyes aglow with joy with hope with tenderPg 242ness In the name of Heaven what had this growing degeneracy of every moral muscle led him to now What smile and talk and smile—and be a villain all the time What encroach on a young life like some creeping parasitic growth taking all able to give nothing in return—not even one genuine spark of genuine passion Go philandering on till a child of nineteen shows you her warm impulsive heart play on her imagination on her pity safe all the while in the reflection that by the next day you will be far away and her task and yours will be alike to forget He shrinks from himself as one shrinks from a man capable of injuring anything weak and helpless To despise the worlds social code and then to fall conspicuously below its simplest articles to aim at being pure intelligence pure openeyed rationality and not even to succeed in being a gentleman as the poor commonplace world understands it Oh to fall at her feet and ask her pardon before parting for ever But no—no more posing no more dramatising How can he get away most quietly—make least sign The thought of that walk home in the darkness fills him with a passion of irritable impatience
Look at that Romney Mr Elsmere just look at it cried Dr Meyrick excitedly did you ever see anything finer There was one of those London dealer fellows down here last summer offered the squire four thousand pounds down on the nail for it
In this way Meyrick had been taking Robert round the drawingroom doing the honours of every stick and stone in it his eyeglass in his eye his thin old face shining with pride over the Wendover possessions And so the two gradually neared the oriel where the squire and Mr Bickerton were standing
Robert was in twenty minds as to any further conversation with the squire After the ladies had gone while every nerve in him was still tingling with anger he had done his best to keep up indifferent talk on local matters with Mr Bickerton Inwardly he was asking himself whether he should ever sit at the squires table and eat his bread again It seemed to him that they had had a brush which would be difficult to forget And as he sat there before the squires wine hot with righteous heat all his grievances against the man and the landlord crowded upon him A fig for intellectual eminence if it make a man oppress his inferiors and bully his equals
But as the minutes passed on the rector had cooled down The sweet placable scrupulous nature began to blame itself What play your cards so badly give up the game so rashly the very first round Nonsense Patience and try again There must be some cause in the background No need to be whitelivered but every need in the case of such a man as the squire to take no hasty needless offence
So he had cooled and cooled and now here were Meyrick and he close to the squire and his companion The two men asPg 243 the rector approached were discussing some cases of common enclosure that had just taken place in the neighbourhood Robert listened a moment then struck in Presently when the chat dropped he began to express to the squire his pleasure in the use of the library His manner was excellent courtesy itself but without any trace of effusion
I believe he said at last smiling my father used to be allowed the same privileges If so it quite accounts for the way in which he clung to Murewell
I had never the honour of Mr Edward Elsmeres acquaintance said the squire frigidly During the time of his occupation of the rectory I was not in England
I know Do you still go much to Germany Do you keep up your relations with Berlin
I have not seen Berlin for fifteen years said the squire briefly his eyes in their wrinkled sockets fixed sharply on the man who ventured to question him about himself uninvited There was an awkward pause Then the squire turned again to Mr Bickerton
Bickerton have you noticed how many trees that storm of last February has brought down at the northeast corner of the park
Robert was inexpressibly galled by the movement by the words themselves The squire had not yet addressed a single remark of any kind about Murewell to him There was a deliberate intention to exclude implied in this appeal to the man who was not the man of the place on such a local point which struck Robert very forcibly
He walked away to where his wife was sitting
What time is it whispered Catherine looking up at him
Time to go he returned smiling but she caught the discomposure in his tone and look at once and her wifely heart rose against the squire She got up drawing herself together with a gesture that became her
Then let us go at once she said Where is Rose
A minute later there was a general leavetaking Oddly enough it found the squire in the midst of a conversation with Langham As though to show more clearly that it was the rector personally who was in his black books Mr Wendover had already devoted some cold attention to Catherine both at and after dinner and he had no sooner routed Robert than he moved in his slouching away across from Mr Bickerton to Langham And now another man altogether he was talking and laughing—describing apparently a reception at the French Academy—the epigrams flying the harsh face all lit up the thin bony fingers gesticulating freely
The husband and wife exchanged glances as they stood waiting while Lady Charlotte in her loudest voice was commanding Rose to come and see her in London any Thursday after the first of November Robert was very sore Catherine passionPg 244ately felt it and forgetting everything but him longed to be out with him in the park comforting him
What an absurd fuss you have been making about that girl Wynnstay exclaimed to his wife as the Elsmere party left the room the squire conducting Catherine with a chill politeness And now I suppose you will be having her up in town and making some young fellow who ought to know better fall in love with her I am told the father was a grammarschool headmaster Why cant you leave people where they belong
I have already pointed out to you Lady Charlotte observed calmly that the world has moved on since you were launched into it I cant keep up classdistinctions to please you otherwise no doubt being the devoted wife I am I might try However my dear we both have our fancies You collect Sèvres china with or without a pedigree and she coughed drily I collect promising young women On the whole I think my hobby is more beneficial to you than yours is profitable to me
Mr Wynnstay was furious Only a week before he had been childishly shamefully taken in by a Jew curiositydealer from Vienna to his wifes huge amusement If looks could have crushed her Lady Charlotte would have been crushed But she was far too substantial as she lay back in her chair one large foot crossed over the other and as her husband very well knew the better man of the two He walked away murmuring under his moustache words that would hardly have borne publicity while Lady Charlotte through her glasses made a minute study of a little French portrait hanging some two yards from her
Meanwhile the Elsmere party were stepping out into the warm damp of the night The storm had died away but a soft Scotch mist of rain filled the air Everything was dark save for a few ghostly glimmerings through the trees of the avenue and there was a strong sweet smell of wet earth and grass Rose had drawn the hood of her waterproof over her head and her face gleamed an indistinct whiteness from its shelter Oh this leaping pulse—this bright glow of expectation How had she made this stupid blunder about his going Oh it was Catherines mistake of course at the beginning But what matter Here they were in the dark side by side friends now friends always Catherine should not spoil their last walk together She felt a passionate trust that he would not allow it
Wifie exclaimed Robert drawing her a little apart do you know it has just occurred to me that as I was going through the park this afternoon by the lower footpath I crossed Henslowe coming away from the house Of course this is what has happened He has told his story first No doubt just before I met him he had been giving the squire a full and particular account—à la Henslowe—of my proceedings since I came Henslowe lays it on thick—paints with a will The squirePg 245 receives me afterwards as the meddlesome pragmatical priest he understands me to be puts his foot down to begin with and hinc illæ lacrymæ Its as clear as daylight I thought that man had an odd twist of the lip as he passed me
Then a disagreeable evening will be the worst of it said Catherine proudly I imagine Robert you can defend yourself against that bad man
He has got the start he has no scruples and it remains to be seen whether the squire has a heart to appeal to replied the young rector with sore reflectiveness Oh Catherine have you ever thought wifie what a business it will be for us if I cant make friends with that man Here we are at his gates—all our people in his power the comfort at any rate of our social life depending on him And what a strange unmanageable inexplicable being
Elsmere sighed aloud Like all quick imaginative natures he was easily depressed and the squires sombre figure had for the moment darkened his whole horizon Catherine laid her cheek against his arm in the darkness consoling remonstrating every other thought lost in her sympathy with Roberts worries Langham and Rose slipped out of her head Elsmeres step had quickened as it always did when he was excited and she kept up without thinking
When Langham found the others had shot ahead in the darkness and he and his neighbour were têteàtête despair seized him But for once he showed a sort of dreary presence of mind Suddenly while the girl beside him was floating in a golden dream of feeling he plunged with a stiff deliberation born of his inner conflict into a discussion of the German system of musical training Rose startled made some vague and flippant reply Langham pursued the matter He had some information about it it appeared garnered up in his mind which might perhaps some day prove useful to her A St Anselms undergraduate one Dashwood an old pupil of his had been lately at Berlin for six months studying at the Conservatorium Not long ago being anxious to become a schoolmaster he had written to Langham for a testimonial His letter had contained a full account of his musical life Langham proceeded to recapitulate it
His careful and precise report of hours fees masters and methods lasted till they reached the park gate He had the smallest powers of social acting and his rôle was dismally overdone The girl beside him could not know that he was really defending her from himself His cold altered manner merely seemed to her a sudden and marked withdrawal of his petition for her friendship No doubt she had received that petition too effusively—and he wished there should be no mistake
What a young smarting soul went through in that halfmile of listening is better guessed than analysed There are certainPg 246 moments of shame which only women know and which seem to sting and burn out of youth all its natural sweet selflove A woman may outlive them but never forget them If she pass through one at nineteen her cheek will grow hot over it at seventy Her companions measured tone the flow of deliberate speech which came from him the nervous aloofness of his attitude—every detail in that walk seemed to Roses excited sense an insult
As the park gate swung behind them she felt a sick longing for Catherines shelter Then all the pride in her rushed to the rescue and held that swooning dismay at the heart of her in check And forthwith she capped Langhams minute account of the scalemethod of a famous Berlin pianist by some witty stories of the latest London prodigy a childviolinist incredibly gifted dirty and greedy whom she had made friends with in town The girls voice rang out sharp and hard under the trees Where in fortunes name were the lights of the rectory Would this nightmare never come to an end
At the rectory gate was Catherine waiting for them her whole soul one repentant alarm
Mr Langham Robert has gone to the study will you go and smoke with him
By all means Goodnight then Mrs Elsmere
Catherine gave him her hand Rose was trying hard to fit the lock of the gate into the hasp and had no hand free Besides he did not approach her
Goodnight she said to him over her shoulder
Oh and Mr Langham Catherine called after him as he strode away will you settle with Robert about the carriage
He turned made a sound of assent and went on
When asked Rose lightly
For the nine oclock train
There should be a law against interfering with peoples breakfast hour said Rose though to be sure a guest may as well get himself gone early and be done with it How you and Robert raced Cathie We did our best to catch you up but the pace was too good
Was there a wild taunt a spice of malice in the girls reckless voice Catherine could not see her in the darkness but the sister felt a sudden trouble invade her
Rose darling you are not tired
Oh dear no Goodnight sleep well What a goose Mrs Darcy is
And barely submitting to be kissed Rose ran up the steps and upstairs
Langham and Robert smoked till midnight Langham for the first time gave Elsmere an outline of his plans for the future and Robert filled with dismay at this final breach with Oxford and human society and the only form of practical life possible to such a man threw himself into protests more andPg 247 more vigorous and affectionate Langham listened to them at first with sombre silence then with an impatience which gradually reduced Robert to a sore puffing at his pipe There was a long space during which they sat together the ashes of the little fire Robert had made dropping on the hearth and not a word on either side
At last Elsmere could not bear it and when midnight struck he sprang up with an impatient shake of his long body and Langham took the hint gave him a cold goodnight and went
As the door shut upon him Robert dropped back into his chair and sat on his face in his hands staring dolefully at the fire It seemed to him the world was going crookedly A day on which a man of singularly open and responsive temper makes a new enemy and comes nearer than ever before to losing an old friend shows very blackly to him in the calendar and by way of aggravation Robert Elsmere says to himself at once that somehow or other there must be fault of his own in the matter
Rose—pshaw Catherine little knows what stuff that cold intangible soul is made of
Meanwhile Langham was standing heavily looking out into the night The different elements in the mountain of discomfort that weighed upon him were so many that the weary mind made no attempt to analyse them He had a sense of disgrace of having stabbed something gentle that had leant upon him mingled with a strong intermittent feeling of unutterable relief Perhaps his keenest regret was that after all it had not been love He had offered himself up to a girls just contempt but he had no recompense in the shape of a great addition to knowledge to experience Save for a few doubtful moments at the beginning when he had all but surprised himself in something more poignant what he had been conscious of had been nothing more than a suave and delicate charm of sentiment a subtle surrender to one exquisite æsthetic impression after another And these things in other relations the world had yielded him before
Am I sane he muttered to himself Have I ever been sane Probably not The disproportion between my motives and other mens is too great to be normal Well at least I am sane enough to shut myself up Long after that beautiful child has forgotten she ever saw me I shall still be doing penance in the desert
He threw himself down beside the open window with a groan An hour later he lifted a face blanched and lined and stretched out his hand with avidity towards a book on the table It was an obscure and difficult Greek text and he spent the greater part of the night over it rekindling in himself with feverish haste the embers of his one lasting passion
Meanwhile in a room overhead another last scene in this most futile of dramas was passing Rose when she came inPg 248 had locked the door torn off her dress and her ornaments and flung herself on the edge of the bed her hands on her knees her shoulders drooping a fierce red spot on either cheek There for an indefinite time she went through a torture of selfscorn The incidents of the week passed before her one by one—her sallies her defiances her impulsive friendliness the élan the happiness of the last two days the selfabandonment of this evening Oh intolerable—intolerable
And all to end with the intimation that she had been behaving like a forward child—had gone too far and must be admonished—made to feel accordingly The poisoned arrow pierced deeper and deeper into the girls shrinking pride The very foundations of selfrespect seemed overthrown
Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her own figure as she sat with locked hands on the edge of the bed in a long glass near the only one of the kind which the rectory household possessed Rose sprang up snatched at the candle which was flickering in the air of the open window and stood erect before the glass holding the candle above her head
What the light showed her was a slim form in a white dressinggown that fell loosely about it a rounded arm upstretched a head still crowned with its jessamine wreath from which the bright hair fell heavily over shoulders and bosom eyes under frowning brows flashing a proud challenge at what they saw two lips indifferent red just open to let the quick breath come through—all thrown into the wildest chiaroscuro by the wavering candle flame
Her challenge was answered The fault was not there Her arm dropped She put down the light
I am handsome she said to herself her mouth quivering childishly I am I may say it to myself
Then standing by the window she stared into the night Her room on the opposite side of the house from Langhams looked over the cornfields and the distance The stubbles gleamed faintly the dark woods the clouds teased by the rising wind sent a moaning voice to greet her
I hate him I hate him she cried to the darkness clenching her cold little hand
Then presently she slipped on to her knees and buried her head in the bedclothes She was crying—angry stifled tears which had the hot impatience of youth in them It all seemed to her so untoward This was not the man she had dreamed of—the unknown of her inmost heart He had been young ardent impetuous like herself Hand in hand eye flashing into eye pulse answering to pulse they would have flung aside the veil hanging over life and plundered the golden mysteries behind it
She rebels she tries to see the cold alien nature which has laid this paralysing spell upon her as it is to reason herself back to peace—to indifference The poor child flies from herPg 249 own halfunderstood trouble will none of it murmurs again wildly—
I hate him I hate him Coldblooded—ungrateful—unkind
In vain A pair of melancholy eyes haunt enthral her inmost soul The charm of the denied the inaccessible is on her womanlike
That old sense of capture of helplessness as of some lassoed struggling creature descended upon her She lay sobbing there trying to recall what she had been a week before the whirl of her London visit the ambitions with which it had filled her the bewildering manycoloured lights it had thrown upon life the intoxicating sense of artistic power In vain
The stream will not flow and the hills will not rise
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes
She felt herself bereft despoiled And yet through it all as she lay weeping there came flooding a strange contradictory sense of growth of enrichment In such moments of pain does a woman first begin to live Ah why should it hurt so—this longawaited birth of the soul
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BOOK III
THE SQUIRE
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CHAPTER XIX
The evening of the Murewell Hall dinnerparty proved to be a date of some importance in the lives of two or three persons Rose was not likely to forget it Langham carried about with him the picture of the great drawingroom its stately light and shade and its scattered figures through many a dismal subsequent hour and to Robert it was the beginning of a period of practical difficulties such as his fortunate youth had never yet encountered
His conjecture had hit the mark The squires sentiments towards him which had been on the whole friendly enough with the exception of a slight nuance of contempt provoked in Mr Wendovers mind by all forms of the clerical calling had been completely transformed in the course of the afternoon before the dinnerparty and transformed by the report of his agent Henslowe who knew certain sides of the squires character by heart had taken Time by the forelock For fourteen years before Robert entered the parish he had been king of it Mr Preston Roberts predecessor had never given him a moments trouble The agent had developed a habit of drinking had favoured his friends and spited his enemies and had allowed certain distant portions of the estate to go finely to ruin quite undisturbed by any sentimental meddling of the priestly sort Then the old rector had been gathered to the majority and this longlegged busybody had taken his place a man according to the agent as full of communistical notions as an egg is full of meat and always ready to poke his nose into other peoples business And as all men like mastery but especially Scotchmen and as during even the first few months of the new rectors tenure of office it became tolerably evident to Henslowe that young Elsmere would soon become the ruling force of the neighbourhood unless measures were taken to prevent it the agent over his nocturnal drams had taken sharp and cunning counsel with himself concerning the young man
The state of Mile End had been originally the result of indolence and caprice on his part rather than of any set purpose of neglect As soon however as it was brought to his notice by Elsmere who did it to begin with in the friendliest way itPg 254 became a point of honour with the agent to let the place go to the devil nay to hurry it there For some time notwithstanding he avoided an open breach with the rector He met Elsmeres remonstrances by a more or less civil show of argument belied every now and then by the sarcasm of his coarse blue eye and so far the two men had kept outwardly on terms Elsmere had reason to know that on one or two occasions of difficulty in the parish Henslowe had tried to do him a mischief The attempts however had not greatly succeeded and their illsuccess had probably excited in Elsmere a confidence of ultimate victory which had tended to keep him cool in the presence of Henslowes hostility But Henslowe had been all along merely waiting for the squire He had served the owner of the Murewell estate for fourteen years and if he did not know that owners peculiarities by this time might he obtain certain warm corners in the next life to which he was fond of consigning other people It was not easy to cheat the squire out of money but it was quite easy to play upon his ignorance of the details of English land management—ignorance guaranteed by the learned habits of a lifetime—on his complete lack of popular sympathy and on the contempt felt by the disciple of Bismarck and Mommsen for all forms of altruistic sentiment The squire despised priests He hated philanthropic cants Above all things he respected his own leisure and was abnormally irritably sensitive as to any possible inroads upon it
All these things Henslowe knew and all these things he utilised He saw the squire within fortyeight hours of his arrival at Murewell His fancy picture of Robert and his doings was introduced with adroitness and coloured with great skill and he left the squire walking up and down his library chafing alternately at the monstrous fate which had planted this sentimental agitator at his gates and at the memory of his own misplaced civilities towards the intruder In the evening those civilities were abundantly avenged as we have seen
Robert was much perplexed as to his next step His heart was very sore The condition of Mile End—those gaunteyed women and wasted children all the sordid details of their unjust avoidable suffering weighed upon his nerves perpetually But he was conscious that this state of feeling was one of tension perhaps of exaggeration and though it was impossible he should let the matter alone he was anxious to do nothing rashly
However two days after the dinnerparty he met Henslowe on the hill leading up to the rectory Robert would have passed the man with a stiffening of his tall figure and the slightest possible salutation But the agent just returned from a round wherein the bars of various local inns had played a conspicuous part was in a truculent mood and stopped to speak He took up the line of insolent condolence with the rector on the impossibility of carrying his wishes with regard to Mile End intoPg 255 effect They had been laid before the squire of course but the squire had his own ideas and wasnt just easy to manage
Seen him yet sir Henslowe wound up jauntily every line of his flushed countenance the full lips under the fair beard and the light prominent eyes expressing a triumph he hardly cared to conceal
I have seen him but I have not talked to him on this particular matter said the rector quietly though the red mounted in his cheek You may however be very sure Mr Henslowe that everything I know about Mile End the squire shall know before long
Oh lor bless me sir cried Henslowe with a guffaw its all one to me And if the squire aint satisfied with the way his works done now why he can take you on as a second string you know Youd show us all Ill be bound how to make the money fly
Then Roberts temper gave way and he turned upon the halfdrunken brute before him with a few hometruths delivered with a rapierlike force which for the moment staggered Henslowe who turned from red to purple The rector with some of those pitiful memories of the hamlet of which we had glimpses in his talk with Langham burning at his heart felt the man no better than a murderer and as good as told him so Then without giving him time to reply Robert strode on leaving Henslowe planted in the pathway But he was hardly up the hill before the agent having recovered himself by dint of copious expletives was looking after him with a grim chuckle He knew his master and he knew himself and he thought between them they would about manage to keep that young spark in order
Robert meanwhile went straight home into his study and there fell upon ink and paper What was the good of protracting the matter any longer Something must and should be done for these people if not one way then another
So he wrote to the squire showing the letter to Catherine when it was done lest there should be anything overfierce in it It was the simple record of twelve months experience told with dignity and strong feeling Henslowe was barely mentioned in it and the chief burden of the letter was to implore the squire to come and inspect certain portions of his property with his own eyes The rector would be at his service any day or hour
Husband and wife went anxiously through the document softening here improving there and then it was sent to the Hall Robert waited nervously through the day for an answer In the evening while he and Catherine were in the footpath after dinner watching a chilly autumnal moonrise over the stubbles of the cornfield the answer came
Hm said Robert dubiously as he opened it holding it up to the moonlight cant be said to be lengthy
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He and Catherine hurried into the house Robert read the letter and handed it to her without a word
After some curt references to one or two miscellaneous points raised in the latter part of the rectors letter the squire wound up as follows—
As for the bulk of your communication I am at a loss to understand the vehemence of your remarks on the subject of my Mile End property My agent informed me shortly after my return home that you had been concerning yourself greatly and as he conceived unnecessarily about the matter Allow me to assure you that I have full confidence in Mr Henslowe who has been in the district for as many years as you have spent months in it and whose authority on points connected with the business management of my estate naturally carries more weight with me if you will permit me to say so than your own—I am sir your obedient servant
Roger Wendover
Catherine returned the letter to her husband with a look of dismay He was standing with his back to the chimneypiece his hands thrust far into his pockets his upper lip quivering In his happy expansive life this was the sharpest personal rebuff that had ever happened to him He could not but smart under it
Not a word he said tossing his hair back impetuously as Catherine stood opposite watching him—not one single word about the miserable people themselves What kind of stuff can the man be made off
Does he believe you asked Catherine bewildered
If not one must try and make him he said energetically after a moments pause Tomorrow Catherine I go down to the Hall and see him
She quietly acquiesced and the following afternoon first thing after luncheon she watched him go her tender inspiring look dwelling with him as he crossed the park which was lying delicately wrapped in one of the whitest of autumnal mists the sun just playing through it with pale invading shafts
The butler looked at him with some doubtfulness It was never safe to admit visitors for the squire without orders But he and Robert had special relations As the possessor of a bass voice worthy of his girth Vincent under Roberts rule had become the pillar of the choir and it was not easy for him to refuse the rector
So Robert was led in through the hall and down the long passage to the curtained door which he knew so well
Mr Elsmere sir
There was a sudden hasty movement Robert passed a magnificent lacquered screen newly placed round the door and found himself in the squires presence
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The squire had half risen from his seat in a capacious chair with a litter of books round it and confronted his visitor with a look of surprised annoyance The figure of the rector tall thin and youthful stood out against the delicate browns and whites of the booklined walls The great room so impressively bare when Robert and Langham had last seen it was now full of the signs of a busy mans constant habitation An odour of smoke pervaded it the table in the window was piled with books just unpacked and the halfemptied case from which they had been taken lay on the ground beside the squires chair
I persuaded Vincent to admit me Mr Wendover said Robert advancing hat in hand while the squire hastily put down the German professors pipe he had just been enjoying and coldly accepted his proffered greeting I should have preferred not to disturb you without an appointment but after your letter it seemed to me some prompt personal explanation was necessary
The squire stiffly motioned towards a chair which Robert took and then slipped back into his own his wrinkled eyes fixed on the intruder
Robert conscious of almost intolerable embarrassment but maintaining in spite of it an excellent degree of selfcontrol plunged at once into business He took the letter he had just received from the squire as a text made a goodhumoured defence of his own proceedings described his attempt to move Henslowe and the reluctance of his appeal from the man to the master The few things he allowed himself to say about Henslowe were in perfect temper though by no means without an edge
Then having disposed of the more personal aspects of the matter he paused and looked hesitatingly at the face opposite him more like a bronzed mask at this moment than a human countenance The squire however gave him no help He had received his remarks so far in perfect silence and seeing that there were more to come he waited for them with the same rigidity of look and attitude
So after a moment or two Robert went on to describe in detail some of those individual cases of hardship and disease at Mile End during the preceding year which could be most clearly laid to the sanitary condition of the place Filth damp leaking roofs foul floors poisoned water—he traced to each some ghastly human ill telling his stories with a nervous brevity a suppressed fire which would have burnt them into the sense of almost any other listener Not one of these woes but he and Catherine had tended with sickening pity and labour of body and mind That side of it he kept rigidly out of sight But all that he could hurl against the squires feeling as it were he gathered up strangely conscious through it all of his own young persistent yearning to right himself with this manPg 258 whose mental history as it lay chronicled in these rooms had been to him at a time of intellectual hunger so stimulating so enriching
But passion and reticence and hidden sympathy were alike lost upon the squire Before he paused Mr Wendover had already risen restlessly from his chair and from the rug was glowering down on his unwelcome visitor
Good heavens had he come home to be lectured in his own library by this fanatical slip of a parson As for his stories the squire barely took the trouble to listen to them
Every popularityhunting fool with a passion for putting his hand into other peoples pockets can tell pathetic stories but it was intolerable that his scholars privacy should be at the mercy of one of the tribe
Mr Elsmere he broke out at last with contemptuous emphasis I imagine it would have been better—infinitely better—to have spared both yourself and me the disagreeables of this interview However I am not sorry we should understand each other I have lived a life which is at least double the length of yours in very tolerable peace and comfort The world has been good enough for me and I for it so far I have been master in my own estate and intend to remain so As for the newfangled ideas of a landowners duty with which your mind seems to be full—the scornful irritation of the tone was unmistakable—I have never dabbled in them nor do I intend to begin now I am like the rest of my kind I have no money to chuck away in building schemes in order that the rector of the parish may pose as the apostle of the agricultural labourer That however is neither here nor there What is to the purpose is that my business affairs are in the hands of a business man deliberately chosen and approved by me and that I have nothing to do with them Nothing at all he repeated with emphasis It may seem to you very shocking You may regard it as the object in life of the English landowner to inspect the pigstyes and amend the habits of the English labourer I dont quarrel with the conception I only ask you not to expect me to live up to it I am a student first and foremost and desire to be left to my books Mr Henslowe is there on purpose to protect my literary freedom What he thinks desirable is good enough for me as I have already informed you I am sorry for it if his methods do not commend themselves to you But I have yet to learn that the rector of the parish has an exofficio right to interfere between a landlord and his tenants
Robert kept his temper with some difficulty After a pause he said feeling desperately however that the suggestion was not likely to improve matters—
If I were to take all the trouble and all the expense off your hands Mr Wendover would it be impossible for you to authorise me to make one or two alterations most urgently necessary for the improvement of the Mile End cottages
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The squire burst into an angry laugh
I have never yet been in the habit Mr Elsmere of doing my repairs by public subscription You ask a little too much from an old mans powers of adaptation
Robert rose from his seat his hand trembling as it rested on his walkingstick
Mr Wendover he said speaking at last with a flash of answering scorn in his young vibrating voice what I think you cannot understand is that at any moment a human creature may sicken and die poisoned by the state of your property for which you—and nobody else—are ultimately responsible
The squire shrugged his shoulders
So you say Mr Elsmere If true every person in such a condition has a remedy in his own hands I force no one to remain on my property
The people who live there exclaimed Robert have neither home nor subsistence if they are driven out Murewell is full—times bad—most of the people old
And eviction a sentence of death I suppose interrupted the squire studying him with sarcastic eyes Well I have no belief in a Gladstonian Ireland still less in a Radical England Supply and demand cause and effect, are enough for me The Mile End cottages are out of repair Mr Elsmere so Mr Henslowe tells me because the site is unsuitable the type of cottage out of date People live in them at their peril I dont pull them down or rather—correcting himself with exasperating consistency—Mr Henslowe doesnt pull them down because like other men I suppose he dislikes an outcry But if the population stays it stays at its own risk Now have I made myself plain
The two men eyed one another
Perfectly plain said Robert quietly Allow me to remind you Mr Wendover that there are other matters than eviction capable of provoking an outcry
As you please said the other indifferently I have no doubt I shall find myself in the newspapers before long If so I daresay I shall manage to put up with it Society is made up of fanatics and the creatures they hunt If I am to be hunted I shall be in good company
Robert stood hat in hand tormented with a dozen crosscurrents of feeling He was forcibly struck with the blind and comparatively motiveless pugnacity of the squires conduct There was an extravagance in it which for the first time recalled to him old Meyricks lucubrations
I have done no good I see Mr Wendover he said at last slowly I wish I could have induced you to do an act of justice and mercy I wish I could have made you think more kindly of myself I have failed in both It is useless to keep you any longer Goodmorning
He bowed The squire also bent forward At that momentPg 260 Robert caught sight beside his shoulder of an antique standing on the mantelpiece which was a new addition to the room It was a head of Medusa and the frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmeres ruffled nerves with extraordinary force It flashed across him that here was an apt symbol of that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights the heart and chills the senses And to that spiritual Medusa the man before him was not the first victim he had known
Possessed with the fancy the young man made his way into the hall Arrived there he looked round with a kind of passionate regret Shall I ever see this again he asked himself During the past twelve months his pleasure in the great house had been much more than sensuous Within those walls his mind had grown had reached to a fuller stature than before and a man loves or should love all that is associated with the maturing of his best self
He closed the ponderous doors behind him sadly The magnificent pile grander than ever in the sunny autumnal mist which enwrapped it seemed to look after him as he walked away mutely wondering that he should have allowed anything so trivial as a peasants grievance to come between him and its perfections
In the wooded lane outside the rectory gate he overtook Catherine He gave her his report and they walked on together arminarm a very depressed pair
What shall you do next she asked him
Make out the law of the matter he said briefly
If you get over the inspector said Catherine anxiously I am tolerably certain Henslowe will turn out the people
He would not dare Robert thought At any rate the law existed for such cases and it was his bounden duty to call the inspectors attention
Catherine did not see what good could be done thereby and feared harm But her wifely chivalry felt that he must get through his first serious practical trouble his own way She saw that he felt himself distressingly young and inexperienced and would not for the world have harassed him by over advice
So she let him alone and presently Robert threw the matter from him with a sigh
Let it be a while he said with a shake of his long frame I shall get morbid over it if I dont mind I am a selfish wretch too I know you have worries of your own wifie
And he took her hand under the trees and kissed it with a boyish tenderness
Yes said Catherine sighing and then paused Robert she burst out again I am certain that man made love of a kind to Rose He will never think of it again but since the night before last she to my mind is simply a changed creature
I dont see it said Robert doubtfully
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Catherine looked at him with a little angel scorn in her gray eyes That men should make their seeing in such matters the measure of the visible
You have been studying the squire sir—I have been studying Rose
Then she poured out her heart to him describing the little signs of change and suffering her anxious sense had noted in spite of Roses proud effort to keep all the world but especially Catherine at arms length And at the end her feeling swept her into a denunciation of Langham which was to Robert like a breath from the past from those stern hills wherein he met her first The happiness of their married life had so softened or masked all her ruggedness of character that there was a certain joy in seeing those strong forces in her which had struck him first reappear
Of course I feel myself to blame he said when she stopped But how could one foresee with such an inveterate hermit and recluse And I owed him—I owe him—so much
I know said Catherine but frowning still It probably seemed to her that that old debt had been more than effaced
You will have to send her to Berlin said Elsmere after a pause You must play off her music against this unlucky feeling If it exists it is your only chance
Yes she must go to Berlin said Catherine slowly
Then presently she looked up a flash of exquisite feeling breaking up the delicate resolution of the face
I am not sad about that Robert Oh how you have widened my world for me
Suddenly that hour in Marrisdale came back to her They were in the woodpath She crept inside her husbands arm and put up her face to him swept away by an overmastering impulse of selfhumiliating love
The next day Robert walked over to the little market town of Churton saw the discreet and longestablished solicitor of the place and got from him a complete account of the present state of the rural sanitary law The first step clearly was to move the sanitary inspector if that failed for any reason then any bonâ fide inhabitant had an appeal to the local sanitary authority viz the board of guardians Robert walked home pondering his information and totally ignorant that Henslowe who was always at Churton on marketdays had been in the marketplace at the moment when the rectors tall figure had disappeared within Mr Dunstans officedoor That door was unpleasantly known to the agent in connection with some energetic measures for raising money he had been lately under the necessity of employing and it had a way of attracting his eyes by means of the fascination that often attaches to disagreeable objects
In the evening Rose was sitting listlessly in the drawingroom Catherine was not there so her novel was on her lapPg 262 and her eyes were staring intently into a world whereof they only had the key Suddenly there was a ring at the bell The servant came and there were several voices and a sound of much shoescraping Then the swingdoor leading to the study opened and Elsmere and Catherine came out Elsmere stopped with an exclamation
His visitors were two men from Mile End One was old Milsom more sallow and palsied than ever As he stood bent almost double his old knotted hand resting for support on the table beside him everything in the little hall seemed to shake with him The other was Sharland the handsome father of the twins whose wife had been fed by Catherine with every imaginable delicacy since Roberts last visit to the hamlet Even his strong youth had begun to show signs of premature decay The rolling gipsy eyes were growing sunken the limbs dragged a little
They had come to implore the rector to let Mile End alone Henslowe had been over there in the afternoon and had given them all very plainly to understand that if Mr Elsmere meddled any more they would be all turned out at a weeks notice to shift as they could And if you dont find Thurston Common nice lying this weather with the winter coming on youll know who to thank for it the agent had flung behind him as he rode off
Robert turned white Rose watching the little scene with listless eyes saw him towering over the group like an embodiment of wrath and pity
If they turn us out sir said old Milsom wistfully looking up at Elsmere with blear eyes therell be nothing left but the House for us old uns Why lor bless you sir its not so bad but we can make shift
You Milsom cried Robert and youve just all but lost your grandchild And you know your wifell never be the same woman since that bout of fever in the spring And——
His quick eyes ran over the old mans broken frame with a world of indignant meaning in them
Ay ay sir said Milsom unmoved But if it isnt fevers its summat else I can make a shilling or two where I be speshally in the first part of the year in the basket work and my wife she goes charring up at Mr Carters farm and Mr Dodson him at the farther farm he do give us a bit sometimes Ef you git us turned away it will be a bad days work for all on us sir you may take my word on it
And my wife so ill Mr Elsmere said Sharland and all those childer I cant walk three miles farther to my work Mr Elsmere I cant nohow I havent got the legs for it Let un be sir Well rub along
Robert tried to argue the matter
If they would but stand by him he would fight the matter through and they should not suffer if he had to get up a public subscription or support them out of his own pocket all thePg 263 winter A bold front and Mr Henslowe must give way The law was on their side and every labourer in Surrey would be the better off for their refusal to be housed like pigs and poisoned like vermin
In vain There is an inexhaustible store of cautious endurance in the poor against which the keenest reformer constantly throws himself in vain Elsmere was beaten The two men got his word and shuffled off back to their pestilential hovels a pathetic content beaming on each face
Catherine and Robert went back into the study Rose heard her brotherinlaws passionate sigh as the door swung behind them
Defeated she said to herself with a curious accent Well everybody must have his turn Robert has been too successful in his life I think—You wretch she added after a minute laying her bright head down on the book before her
Next morning his wife found Elsmere after breakfast busily packing a case of books in the study They were books from the Hall library which so far had been for months the inseparable companions of his historical work
Catherine stood and watched him sadly
Must you Robert
I wont be beholden to that man for anything an hour longer than I can help he answered her
When the packing was nearly finished he came up to where she stood in the open window
Things wont be as easy for us in the future darling he said to her A rector with both squire and agent against him is rather heavily handicapped We must make up our minds to that
I have no great fear she said looking at him proudly
Oh well—nor I—perhaps he admitted after a moment We can hold our own But I wish—oh I wish—and he laid his hand on his wifes shoulder—I could have made friends with the squire
Catherine looked less responsive
As squire Robert or as Mr Wendover
As both of course but specially as Mr Wendover
We can do without his friendship she said with energy
Robert gave a great stretch as though to work off his regrets
Ah but he said half to himself as his arms dropped if you are just filled with the hunger to know the people who know as much as the squire become very interesting to you
Catherine did not answer But probably her heart went out once more in protest against a knowledge that was to her but a form of revolt against the awful powers of mans destiny
However here go his books said Robert
Two days later Mrs Leyburn and Agnes made their appearance Mrs Leyburn all in a flutter concerning the event overPg 264 which in her own opinion she had come to preside In her gentle fluid mind all impressions were shortlived She had forgotten how she had brought up her own babies but Mrs Thornburgh who had never had any had filled her full of nursery lore She sat retailing a host of secondhand hints and instructions to Catherine who would every now and then lay her hand smiling on her mothers knee well pleased to see the flush of pleasure on the pretty old face and ready in her patient filial way to let herself be experimented on to the utmost if it did but make the poor foolish thing happy
Then came a night when every soul in the quiet rectory even hot smarting Rose was possessed by one thought through many terrible hours and one only—the thought of Catherines safety It was strange and unexpected but Catherine the most normal and healthy of women had a hard struggle for her own life and her childs and it was not till the gray autumn morning after a day and night which left a permanent mark on Robert that he was summoned at last and with the sense of one emerging from black gulfs of terror received from his wifes languid hand the tiny fingers of his firstborn
The days that followed were full of emotion for these two people who were perhaps always overserious oversensitive They had no idea of minimising the great common experiences of life Both of them were really simple brought up in oldfashioned simple ways easily touched responsive to all that high spiritual education which flows from the familiar incidents of the human story approached poetically and passionately As the young husband sat in the quiet of his wifes room the occasional restless movements of the small brown head against her breast causing the only sound perceptible in the country silence he felt all the deep familiar currents of human feeling sweeping through him—love reverence thanksgiving—and all the walls of the soul as it were expanding and enlarging as they passed
Responsive creature that he was the experience of these days was hardly happiness It went too deep it brought him too poignantly near to all that is most real and therefore most tragic in life
Catherines recovery also was slower than might have been expected considering her constitutional soundness and for the first week after that faint moment of joy when her child was laid upon her arm and she saw her husbands quivering face above her there was a kind of depression hovering over her Robert felt it and felt too that all his devotion could not soothe it away At last she said to him one evening in the encroaching September twilight speaking with a sudden hurrying vehemence wholly unlike herself as though a barrier of reserve had given way—
Robert I cannot put it out of my head I cannot forget it the pain of the world
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He shut the book he was reading her hand in his and bent over her with questioning eyes
It seems she went on with that difficulty which a strong nature always feels in selfrevelation to take the joy even out of our love—and the child I feel ashamed almost that mere physical pain should have laid such hold on me—and yet I cant get away from it Its not for myself and she smiled faintly at him Comparatively I had so little to bear But I know now for the first time what physical pain may mean—and I never knew before I lie thinking Robert about all creatures in pain—workmen crushed by machinery or soldiers—or poor things in hospitals—above all of women Oh when I get well how I will take care of the women here What women must suffer even here in outoftheway cottages—no doctor no kind nursing all blind agony and struggle And women in London in dens like those Mr Newcome got into degraded forsaken illtreated the thought of the child only an extra horror and burden And the pain all the time so merciless so cruel—no escape Oh to give all one is or ever can be to comforting And yet the great sea of it one can never touch It is a nightmare—I am weak still I suppose I dont know myself but I can see nothing but jarred tortured creatures everywhere All my own joys and comforts seem to lift me selfishly above the common lot
She stopped her large grayblue eyes dim with tears trying once more for that habitual selfrestraint which physical weakness had shaken
You are weak he said caressing her and that destroys for a time the normal balance of things It is true darling but we are not meant to see it always so clearly God knows we could not bear it if we did
And to think she said shuddering a little that there are men and women who in the face of it can still refuse Christ and the Cross can still say this life is all How can they live—how dare they live
Then he saw that not only mans pain but mans defiance had been haunting her and he guessed what persons and memories had been flitting through her mind But he dared not talk lest she should exhaust herself Presently seeing a volume of Augustines Confessions her favourite book lying beside her he took it up turning over the pages and weaving passages together as they caught his eye
Speak to me for Thy compassions sake O Lord my God and tell me what art Thou to me Say unto my soul I am thy salvation Speak it that I may hear Behold the ears of my heart O Lord open them and say unto my soul I am thy salvation I will follow after this voice of Thine I will lay hold on Thee The temple of my soul wherein Thou shouldest enter is narrow do Thou enlarge it It falleth into ruins—do Thou rebuild it Woe to that bold soul which hopeth if it do butPg 266 let Thee go to find something better than Thee It turneth hither and thither on this side and on that and all things are hard and bitter unto it For Thou only art rest Whithersoever the soul of man turneth it findeth sorrow except only in Thee Fix there then thy restingplace my soul Lay up in Him whatever thou hast received from Him Commend to the keeping of the Truth whatever the Truth hath given thee and thou shalt lost nothing And thy dead things shall revive and thy weak things shall be made whole
She listened appropriating and clinging to every word till the nervous clasp of the long delicate fingers relaxed her head dropped a little gently against the head of the child and tired with much feeling she slept
Robert slipped away and strolled out into the garden in the fastgathering darkness His mind was full of that intense spiritual life of Catherines which in its wonderful selfcontainedness and strength was always a marvel sometimes a reproach to him Beside her he seemed to himself a light creature drawn hither and thither by this interest and by that tangled in the fleeting shows of things—the toy and plaything of circumstance He thought ruefully and humbly as he wandered on through the dusk of his own lack of inwardness Everything divides me from Thee he could have cried in St Augustines manner Books and friends and work—all seem to hide Thee from me Why am I so passionate for this and that for all these sections and fragments of Thee Oh for the One the All Fix there thy restingplace my soul
And presently after this cry of selfreproach he turned to muse on that intuition of the worlds pain which had been troubling Catherine shrinking from it even more than she had shrunk from it in proportion as his nature was more imaginative than hers And Christ the only clue the only remedy—no other anywhere in this vast universe where all men are under sentence of death where the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now
And yet what countless generations of men had borne their pain knowing nothing of the one Healer He thought of Buddhist patience and Buddhist charity of the long centuries during which Chaldean or Persian or Egyptian lived suffered and died trusting the gods they knew And how many other generations nominally children of the Great Hope had used it as the mere instrument of passion or of hate cursing in the name of love destroying in the name of pity For how much of the worlds pain was not Christianity itself responsible His thoughts recurred with a kind of anguished perplexity to some of the problems stirred in him of late by his historical reading The strifes and feuds and violences of the early Church returned to weigh upon him—the hairsplitting superstition the selfish passion for power He recalled Gibbons lamentationPg 267 over the age of the Antonines and Mommsens grave doubt whether taken as a whole the area once covered by the Roman Empire can be said to be substantially happier now than in the days of Severus
O corruptio optimi That men should have been so little affected by that shining ideal of the New Jerusalem descended out of Heaven from God into their very midst—that the print of the blessed feet along the worlds highway should have been so often buried in the sands of cruelty and fraud
The September wind blew about him as he strolled through the darkening column set thick with great bushes of sombre juniper among the yellowing fern which stretched away on the lefthand side of the road leading to the Hall He stood and watched the masses of restless discordant cloud which the sunset had left behind it thinking the while of Mr Grey of his assertions and his denials Certain phrases of his which Robert had heard drop from him on one or two rare occasions during the later stages of his Oxford life ran through his head
The fairytale of Christianity—The origins of Christian Mythology He could recall as the words rose in his memory the simplicity of the rugged face and the melancholy mingled with fire which had always marked the great tutors sayings about religion
Fairy Tale Could any reasonable man watch a life like Catherines and believe that nothing but a delusion lay at the heart of it And as he asked the question he seemed to hear Mr Greys answer All religions are true and all are false In them all more or less visibly man grasps at the one thing needful—self forsaken God laid hold of The spirit in them all is the same answers eternally to reality it is but the letter the fashion the imagery that are relative and changing
He turned and walked homeward struggling with a host of tempestuous ideas as swift and varying as the autumn clouds hurrying overhead And then through a break in a line of trees he caught sight of the tower and chancel window of the little church In an instant he had a vision of early summer mornings—dewy perfumed silent save for the birds and all the soft stir of rural birth and growth of a chancel fragrant with many flowers of a distant church with scattered figures of the kneeling form of his wife close beside him himself bending over her the sacrament of the Lords death in his hand The emotion the intensity the absolute selfsurrender of innumerable such moments in the past—moments of a common faith a common selfabasement—came flooding back upon him With a movement of joy and penitence he threw himself at the feet of Catherines Master and his own Fix there thy restingplace my soul
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CHAPTER XX
Catherines later convalescence dwelt in her mind in after years as a time of peculiar softness and peace Her babygirl throve Robert had driven the squire and Henslowe out of his mind and was all eagerness as to certain negotiations with a famous naturalist for a lecture at the village club At Mile End as though to put the rector in the wrong serious illness had for the time disappeared and Mrs Leyburns mild chatter as she gently poked about the house and garden went out in Catherines ponycarriage inspected Catherines stores and hovered over Catherines babe had a constantly cheering effect on the still languid mother Like all theorists especially those at secondhand Mrs Leyburns maxims had been very much routed by the event The babe had ailments she did not understand or it developed likes and dislikes she had forgotten existed in babies and Mrs Leyburn was nonplussed She would sit with it on her lap anxiously studying its peculiarities She was sure it squinted that its back was weaker than other babies that it cried more than hers had ever done She loved to be plaintive it would have seemed to her unladylike to be too cheerful even over a first grandchild
Agnes meanwhile made herself practically useful as was her way and she did almost more than anybody to beguile Catherines recovery by her hours of Long Whindale chat She had no passionate feeling about the place and the people as Catherine had but she was easily content and she had a good wholesome feminine curiosity as to the courtings and weddings and buryings of the human beings about her So she would sit and chat working the while with the quickest neatest of fingers till Catherine knew as much about Jenny Tysons Whinborough lover and Farmer Tredalls troubles with his son and the way in which that odious woman Molly Redgold bullied her little consumptive husband as Agnes knew which was saying a good deal
About themselves Agnes was frankness itself
Since you went she would say with a shrug I keep the coach steady perhaps but Rose drives and we shall have to go where she takes us By the way Cathie what have you been doing to her here She is not a bit like herself I dont generally mind being snubbed It amuses her and doesnt hurt me and of course I know I am meant to be her foil But really sometimes she is too bad even for me
Catherine sighed but held her peace Like all strong persons she kept things very much to herself It only made vexations more real to talk about them But she and Agnes discussed the winter and Berlin
You had better let her go said Agnes significantly she will go anyhow
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A few days afterwards Catherine opening the drawingroom door unexpectedly came upon Rose sitting idly at the piano her hands resting on the keys and her great gray eyes straining out of her white face with an expression which sent the sisters heart into her shoes
How you steal about Catherine cried the player getting up and shutting the piano I declare you are just like Millaiss Gray Lady in that ghostly gown
Catherine came swiftly across the floor She had just left her child and the sweet dignity of motherhood was in her step her look She came and threw her arms round the girl
Rose dear I have settled it all with mamma The money can be managed and you shall go to Berlin for the winter when you like
She drew herself back a little still with her arms round Roses waist and looked at her smiling to see how she took it
Rose had a strange movement of irritation She drew herself out of Catherines grasp
I dont know that I had settled on Berlin she said coldly Very possibly Leipsic would be better
Catherines face fell
Whichever you like dear I have been thinking about it ever since that day you spoke of it—you remember—and now I have talked it over with mamma If she cant manage all the expense we will help Oh Rose and she came nearer again timidly her eyes melting I know we havent understood each other I have been ignorant I think and narrow But I meant it for the best dear—I did——
Her voice failed her but in her look there seemed to be written the history of all the prayers and yearnings of her youth over the pretty wayward child who had been her joy and torment Rose could not but meet that look—its nobleness its humble surrender
Suddenly two large tears rolled down her cheeks She dashed them away impatiently
I am not a bit well she said as though in irritable excuse both to herself and Catherine I believe I have had a headache for a fortnight
And then she put her arms down on a table near and hid her face upon them She was one bundle of jarring nerves—sore poor passionate child that she was betraying herself sorer still that as she told herself Catherine was sending her to Berlin as a consolation When girls have lovetroubles the first thing their elders do is to look for a diversion She felt sick and humiliated Catherine had been talking her over with the family she supposed
Meanwhile Catherine stood by her tenderly stroking her hair and saying soothing things
I am sure you will be happy at Berlin Rose And you mustnt leave me out of your life dear though I am so stupidPg 270 and unmusical You must write to me about all you do We must begin a new time Oh I feel so guilty sometimes she went on falling into a low intensity of voice that startled Rose and made her look hurriedly up I fought against your music I suppose because I thought it was devouring you—leaving no room for—for religion—for God I was jealous of it for Christs sake And all the time I was blundering Oh Rose and she sank on her knees beside the chair resting her head against the girls shoulder papa charged me to make you love God and I torture myself with thinking that instead it has been my doing my foolish clumsy doing that you have come to think religion dull and hard Oh my darling if I could make amends—if I could get you not to love your art less but to love it in God Christ is the first reality all things else are real and lovely in Him Oh I have been frightening you away from Him I ought to have drawn you near I have been so—so silent so shut up I have never tried to make you feel what it was kept me at His feet Oh Rose darling you think the world real and pleasure and enjoyment real But if I could have made you see and know the things I have seen up in the mountains—among the poor the dying—you would have felt Him saving redeeming interceding as I did Oh then you must you would have known that Christ only is real that our joys can only truly exist in Him I should have been more open—more faithful—more humble
She paused with a long quivering sigh Rose suddenly lifted herself and they fell into each others arms
Rose shaken and excited thought of course of that night at Burwood when she had won leave to go to Manchester This scene was the sequel to that—the next stage in one and the same process Her feeling was much the same as that of the naturalist who comes close to any of the hidden operations of life She had come near to Catherines spirit in the growing Beside that sweet expansion how poor and feverish and earthstained the poor child felt herself
But there were many currents in Rose—many things striving for the mastery She kissed Catherine once or twice then she drew herself back suddenly looking into the others face A great wave of feeling rushed up and broke
Catherine could you ever have married a man that did not believe in Christ
She flung the question out—a kind of morbid curiosity a wild wish to find an outlet of some sort for things pent up in her driving her on
Catherine started But she met Roses halffrowning eyes steadily
Never Rose To me it would not be marriage
The childs face lost its softness She drew one hand away
What have we to do with it she cried Each one for himself
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But marriage makes two one said Catherine pale but with a firm clearness And if husband and wife are only one in body and estate not one in soul why who that believes in the soul would accept such a bond endure such a miserable second best
She rose But though her voice had recovered all its energy her attitude her look was still tenderness still yearning itself
Religion does not fill up the soul said Rose slowly Then she added carelessly a passionate red flying into her cheek against her will However I cannot imagine any question that interests me personally less I was curious what you would say
And she too got up drawing her hand lightly along the keyboard of the piano Her pose had a kind of defiance in it her knit brows forbade Catherine to ask questions Catherine stood irresolute Should she throw herself on her sister imploring her to speak opening her own heart on the subject of this wild unhappy fancy for a man who would never think again of the child he had played with
But the Northcountry dread of words of speech that only defines and magnifies prevailed Let there be no words but let her love and watch
So after a moments pause she began in a different tone upon the inquiries she had been making the arrangements that would be wanted for this musical winter Rose was almost listless at first A stranger would have thought she was being persuaded into something against her will But she could not keep it up The natural instinct reasserted itself and she was soon planning and deciding as sharply and with as much young omniscience as usual
By the evening it was settled Mrs Leyburn much bewildered asked Catherine doubtfully the last thing at night whether she wanted Rose to be a professional Catherine exclaimed
But my dear said the widow staring pensively into her bedroom fire whats she to do with all this music Then after a second she added half severely I dont believe her father would have liked it I dont indeed Catherine
Poor Catherine smiled and sighed in the background but made no reply
However she never looks so pretty as when shes playing the violin—never said Mrs Leyburn presently in the distance with a long breath of satisfaction Shes got such a lovely hand and arm Catherine Theyre prettier than mine and even your father used to notice mine
Even The word had a little sound of bitterness In spite of all his love had the gentle puzzleheaded woman found her unearthly husband often very hard to live with
Rose meanwhile was sitting up in bed with her hands round her knees dreaming So she had got her hearts desire TherePg 272 did not seem to be much joy in the getting but that was the way of things one was told She knew she should hate the Germans—great bouncing overfed sentimental creatures
Then her thoughts ran into the future After six months—yes by April—she would be home and Agnes and her mother could meet her in London
London Ah it was London she was thinking of all the time not Berlin She could not stay in the present or rather the Rose of the present went straining to the Rose of the future asking to be righted to be avenged
I will learn—I will learn fast—many things besides music she said to herself feverishly By April I shall be much cleverer Oh then I wont be a fool so easily We shall be sure to meet of course But he shall find out that it was only a child only a silly softhearted baby he played with down here I shant care for him in the least of course not not after six months I dont mean to And I will make him know it—oh I will though he is so wise and so much older and mounts on such stilts when he pleases
So once more Rose flung her defiance at fate But when Catherine came along the passage an hour later she heard low sounds from Roses room which ceased abruptly as her step drew near The elder sister paused her eyes filled with tears her hand closed indignantly Then she came closer all but went in thought better of it and moved away If there is any truth in brainwaves Langham should have slept restlessly that night
Ten days later an escort had been found all preparations had been made and Rose was gone
Mrs Leyburn and Agnes lingered a while and then they too departed under an engagement to come back after Christmas for a long stay that Mrs Leyburn might cheat the northern spring a little
So husband and wife were alone again How they relished their solitude Catherine took up many threads of work which her months of comparative weakness had forced her to let drop She taught vigorously in the school in the afternoons so far as her child would let her she carried her tender presence and her practical knowledge of nursing to the sick and feeble and on two evenings in the week she and Robert threw open a little room there was on the groundfloor between the study and the diningroom to the women and girls of the village as a sort of drawingroom Hardworked mothers would come who had put their fretful babes to sleep and given their lords to eat and had just energy left while the eldest daughter watched and the men were at the club or the Blue Boar to put on a clean apron and climb the short hill to the rectory Once there there was nothing to think of for an hour but the bright room Catherines kind face the rectors jokes and the illustrated papers or thePg 273 photographs that were spread out for them to look at if they would The girls learned to come because Catherine could teach them a simple dressmaking and was clever in catching stray persons to set them singing and because Mr Elsmere read exciting stories and because nothing any one of them ever told Mrs Elsmere was forgotten by her or failed to interest her Any of her social equals of the neighbourhood would have hardly recognised the reserved and stately Catherine on these occasions Here she felt herself at home at ease She would never indeed have Roberts pliancy his quick divination and for some time after her transplanting the Northcountry woman had found it very difficult to suit herself to a new shade of local character But she was learning from Robert every day she watched him among the poor recognising all his gifts with a humble intensity of admiring love which said little but treasured everything and for herself her inward happiness and peace shone through her quiet ways making her the mother and the friend of all about her
As for Robert he of course was living at high pressure all round Outside his sermons and his school his Natural History Club had perhaps most of his heart and the passion for science little continuous work as he was able to give it grew on him more and more He kept up as best he could working with one hand so to speak when he could not spare two and in his long rambles over moor and hill gathering in with his quick eye a harvest of local fact wherewith to feed their knowledge and his own
The mornings he always spent at work among his books the afternoons in endless tramps over the parish sometimes alone sometimes with Catherine and in the evenings if Catherine was at home twice a week to womankind he had his nights when his study became the haunt and prey of half the boys in the place who were free of everything as soon as he had taught them to respect his books and not to taste his medicines other nights when he was lecturing or storytelling in the club or in some outlying hamlet or others again when with Catherine beside him he would sit trying to think some of that religious passion which burned in both their hearts into clear words or striking illustrations for his sermons
Then his choir was much upon his mind He knew nothing about music nor did Catherine their efforts made Rose laugh irreverently when she got their letters at Berlin But Robert believed in a choir chiefly as an excellent social and centralising instrument There had been none in Mr Prestons day He was determined to have one and a good one and by sheer energy he succeeded delighting in his boyish way over the opposition some of his novelties excited among the older and more stiffbacked inhabitants
Let them talk he would say brightly to Catherine They will come round and talk is good Anything to make them think to stir the pool
Pg 274
Of course that old problem of the agricultural labourer weighed upon him—his grievances his wants He went about pondering the English land system more than half inclined one day to sink part of his capital in a peasantproprietor experiment and ingulfed the next in all the moral and economical objection to the French system Land for allotments at any rate he had set his heart on But in this direction as in many others the way was barred All the land in the parish was the squires and not one inch of the squires land would Henslowe let young Elsmere have anything to do with if he knew it He would neither repair nor enlarge the Workmens Institute and he had a way of forgetting the squires customary subscriptions to parochial objects always paid through him which gave him much food for chuckling whenever he passed Elsmere in the country lanes The mans coarse insolence and mean hatred made themselves felt at every turn besmirching and embittering
Still it was very true that neither Henslowe nor the squire could do Robert much harm His hold on the parish was visibly strengthening his sermons were not only filling the church with his own parishioners but attracting hearers from the districts round Murewell so that even on these winter Sundays there was almost always a sprinkling of strange faces among the congregation and his position in the county and diocese was becoming every month more honourable and important The gentry about showed them much kindness and would have shown them much hospitality if they had been allowed But though Robert had nothing of the ascetic about him and liked the society of his equals as much as most goodtempered and vivacious people do he and Catherine decided that for the present they had no time to spare for visits and county society Still of course there were many occasions on which the routine of their life brought them across their neighbours and it began to be pretty widely recognised that Elsmere was a young fellow of unusual promise and intelligence that his wife too was remarkable and that between them they were likely to raise the standard of clerical effort considerably in their part of Surrey
All the factors of this life—his work his influence his recovered health the lavish beauty of the country Elsmere enjoyed with all his heart But at the root of all there lay what gave value and savour to everything else—that exquisite homelife of theirs that tender triple bond of husband wife and child
Catherine coming home tired from teaching or visiting would find her step quickening as she reached the gate of the rectory and the sense of delicious possession waking up in her which is one of the first fruits of motherhood There at the window between the lamplight behind and the winter dusk outside would be the child in its nurses arms little wondering motiveless smiles passing over the tiny puckered face that was so oddly like Robert already And afterwards in the firelitPg 275 nursery with the bath in front of the high fender and all the necessaries of baby life beside it she would go through those functions which mothers love and linger over let the kicking dimpled creature principally concerned protest as it may against the overrefinements of civilisation Then when the little restless voice was stilled and the cradle left silent in the darkened room there would come the short watching for Robert his voice his kiss their simple meal together a moment of rest of laughter and chat before some fresh effort claimed them Every now and then—whiteletter days—there would drop on them a long evening together Then out would come one or the few books—Dante or Virgil or Milton—which had entered into the fibre of Catherines strong nature The two heads would draw close over them or Robert would take some thought of hers as a text and spout away from the hearthrug watching all the while for her smile her look of assent Sometimes late at night when there was a sermon on his mind he would dive into his pocket for his Greek Testament and make her read partly for the sake of teaching her—for she knew some Greek and longed to know more—but mostly that he might get from her some of that garnered wealth of spiritual experience which he adored in her They would go from verse to verse from thought to thought till suddenly perhaps the tide of feeling would rise and while the wind swept round the house and the owls hooted in the elms they would sit hand in hand lost in love and faith—Christ near them—Eternity warm with God enwrapping them
So much for the man of action the husband the philanthropist In reality great as was the moral energy of this period of Elsmeres life the dominant distinguishing note of it was not moral but intellectual
In matters of conduct he was but developing habits and tendencies already strongly present in him in matters of thinking with every month of this winter he was becoming conscious of fresh forces fresh hunger fresh horizons
One half of your day be the king of your world Mr Grey had said to him the other half be the slave of something which will take you out of your world into the general life the life of thought of man as a whole of the universe
The counsel as we have seen had struck root and flowered into action So many men of Elsmeres type give themselves up once and for all as they become mature to the life of doing and feeling practically excluding the life of thought It was Henry Greys influence in all probability perhaps too the training of an earlier Langham that saved for Elsmere the life of thought
The form taken by this training of his own mind he had been thus encouraged not to abandon was as we know the study of history He had well mapped out before him that book on thePg 276 origins of France which he had described to Langham It was to take him years of course and meanwhile in his first enthusiasm he was like a child revelling in the treasure of work that lay before him As he had told Langham he had just got below the surface of a great subject and was beginning to dig into the roots of it Hitherto he had been under the guidance of men of his own day of the nineteenth century historian who refashions the past on the lines of his own mind who gives it rationality coherence and as it were modernness so that the main impression he produces on us so long as we look at that past through him only is on the whole an impression of continuity of resemblance
Whereas on the contrary the first impression left on a man by the attempt to plunge into the materials of history for himself is almost always an extraordinarily sharp impression of difference of contrast Ultimately of course he sees that these men and women whose letters and biographies whose creeds and general conceptions he is investigating are in truth his ancestors bone of his bone flesh of his flesh But at first the student who goes back say in the history of Europe behind the Renaissance or behind the Crusades into the actual deposits of the past is often struck with a kind of vertige The men and women whom he has dragged forth into the light of his own mind are to him like some strange puppetshow They are called by names he knows—kings bishops judges poets priests men of letters—but what a gulf between him and them What motives what beliefs what embryonic processes of thought and morals what bizarre combinations of ignorance and knowledge of the highest sanctity with the lowest credulity or falsehood what extraordinary prepossessions born with a man and tainting his whole ways of seeing and thinking from childhood to the grave Amid all the intellectual dislocation of the spectacle indeed he perceives certain Greeks and certain Latins who represent a forward strain who belong as it seems to a world of their own a world ahead of them To them he stretches out his hand You he says to them though your priests spoke to you not of Christ but of Zeus and Artemis you are really my kindred But intellectually they stand alone Around them after them for long ages the world spake as a child felt as a child understood as a child
Then he sees what it is makes the difference digs the gulf Science the mind cries ordered knowledge And so for the first time the modern recognises what the accumulations of his forefathers have done for him He takes the torch which man has been so long and patiently fashioning to his hand and turns it on the past and at every step the sight grows stranger and yet more moving more pathetic The darkness into which he penetrates does but make him grasp his own guiding light the more closely And yet bit by bit it has been prepared for him by these groping half conscious generations and the scrutinyPg 277 which began in repulsion and laughter ends in a marvelling gratitude
But the repulsion and the laughter come first and during this winter of work Elsmere felt them both very strongly He would sit in the morning buried among the records of decaying Rome and emerging France surrounded by Chronicles by Church Councils by lives of the Saints by primitive systems of law pushing his imaginative impetuous way through them Sometimes Catherine would be there and he would pour out on her something of what was in his own mind
One day he was deep in the life of a certain saint The saint had been bishop of a diocese in Southern France His biographer was his successor in the see a man of high political importance in the Burgundian state renowned besides for sanctity and learning Only some twenty years separated the biography at the latest from the death of its subject It contained some curious material for social history and Robert was reading it with avidity But it was of course a tissue of marvels The young bishop had practised every virtue known to the time and wrought every conceivable miracle and the miracles were better told than usual with more ingenuity more imagination Perhaps on that account they struck the readers sense more sharply
And the saint said to the sorcerers and to the practisers of unholy arts that they should do those evil things no more for he had bound the spirits of whom they were wont to inquire and they would get no further answers to their incantations Then those stiffnecked sons of the devil fell upon the man of God scourged him sore and threatened him with death if he would not instantly loose those spirits he had bound And seeing he could prevail nothing and being moreover admonished by God so to do he permitted them to work their own damnation For he called for a parchment and wrote upon it Ambrose unto Satan—Enter Then was the spell loosed the spirits returned the sorcerers inquired as they were accustomed and received answers But in a short space of time every one of them perished miserably and was delivered unto his natural lord Satanas whereunto he belonged
Robert made a hasty exclamation and turning to Catherine who was working beside him read the passage to her with a few words as to the book and its author
Catherines work dropped a moment on to her knee
What extraordinary superstition she said startled A bishop Robert and an educated man
Robert nodded
But it is the whole habit of mind he said half to himself staring into the fire that is so astounding No one escapes it The whole age really is nonsane
I suppose the devout Catholic would believe that
I am not sure said Robert dreamily and remained sunk inPg 278 thought for long after while Catherine worked and pondered a Christmas entertainment for her girls
Perhaps it was his scientific work fragmentary as it was that was really quickening and sharpening these historical impressions of his Evolution—once a mere germ in the mind—was beginning to press to encroach to intermeddle with the minds other furniture
And the comparative instinct—that tool par excellence of modern science—was at last fully awake was growing fast taking hold now here now there
It is tolerably clear to me he said to himself suddenly one winter afternoon as he was trudging home alone from Mile End that some day or other I must set to work to bring a little order into ones notions of the Old Testament At present they are just a chaos
He walked on a while struggling with the rainstorm which had overtaken him till again the minds quick life took voice
But what matter God in the beginning—God in the prophets—in Israels best life—God in Christ How are any theories about the Pentateuch to touch that
And into the clear eyes the young face aglow with wind and rain there leapt a light a softness indescribable
But the vivider and the keener grew this new mental life of Elsmeres the more constant became his sense of soreness as to that foolish and motiveless quarrel which divided him from the squire Naturally he was for ever being harassed and pulled up in his work by the mere loss of the Murewell library To have such a collection so close and to be cut off from it was a state of things no student could help feeling severely But it was much more than that it was the man he hankered after the man who was a master where he was a beginner the man who had given his life to learning and was carrying all his vast accumulations sombrely to the grave unused untransmitted
He might have given me his knowledge thought Elsmere sadly and I—I—would have been a son to him Why is life so perverse
Meanwhile he was as much cut off from the great house and its master as though both had been surrounded by the thorn hedge of fairy tale The Hall had its visitors during these winter months but the Elsmeres saw nothing of them Robert gulped down a natural sigh when one Saturday evening as he passed the Hall gates he saw driving through them the chief of English science side by side with the most accomplished of English critics
There are good times in the world and I aint in em he said to himself with a laugh and a shrug as he turned up the lane to the rectory and then boylike was ashamed of himself and greeted Catherine with all the tenderer greeting
Only on two occasions during three months could he be surePg 279 of having seen the squire Both were in the twilight when as the neighbourhood declared Mr Wendover always walked and both made a sharp impression on the rectors nerves In the heart of one of the loneliest commons of the parish Robert swinging along one November evening through the scattered furze bushes growing ghostly in the darkness was suddenly conscious of a cloaked figure with slouching shoulders and head bent forward coming towards him It passed without recognition of any kind and for an instant Robert caught the long sharpened features and haughty eyes of the squire
At another time Robert was walking far from home along a bit of level road The pools in the ruts were just filmed with frost and gleamed under the sunset the winter dusk was clear and chill A horseman turned into the road from a side lane It was the squire again alone The sharp sound of the approaching hoofs stirred Roberts pulse and as they passed each other the rector raised his hat He thought his greeting was acknowledged but could not be quite sure From the shelter of a group of trees he stood a moment and looked after the retreating figure It and the horse showed dark against a wide sky barred by stormy reds and purples The wind whistled through the withered oaks the long road with its lines of glimmering pools seemed to stretch endlessly into the sunset and with every minute the night strode on Age and loneliness could have found no fitter setting A shiver ran through Elsmere as he stepped forward
Undoubtedly the quarrel helped by his work and the perpetual presence of that beautiful house commanding the whole country round it from its plateau above the river kept Elsmere specially in mind of the squire As before their first meeting and in spite of it he became more and more imaginatively preoccupied with him One of the signs of it was a strong desire to read the squires two famous books one The Idols of the Marketplace an attack on English beliefs the other Essays on English Culture an attack on English ideals of education He had never come across them as it happened and perhaps Newcomes denunciation had some effect in inducing him for a time to refrain from reading them But in December he ordered them and waited their coming with impatience He said nothing of the order to Catherine somehow there were by now two or three portions of his work two or three branches of his thought which had fallen out of their common discussion After all she was not literary and with all their oneness of soul there could not be an identity of interests or pursuits
The books arrived in the morning Oh how dismally well with what a tightening of the heart did Robert always remember that day in after years He was much too busy to look at them and went off to a meeting In the evening coming home late from his nightschool he found CatherinePg 280 tired sent her to bed and went himself into his study to put together some notes for a cottage lecture he was to give the following day The packet of books unopened lay on his writingtable He took off the wrapper and in his eager way fell to reading the first he touched
It was the first volume of The Idols of the Marketplace
Ten or twelve years before Mr Wendover had launched this book into a startled and protesting England It had been the fruit of his first renewal of contact with English life and English ideas after his return from Berlin Fresh from the speculative ferment of Germany and the far profaner scepticism of France he had returned to a society where the first chapter of Genesis and the theory of verbal inspiration were still regarded as valid and important counters on the board of thought The result had been this book In it each stronghold of English popular religion had been assailed in turn at a time when English orthodoxy was a far more formidable thing than it is now
The Pentateuch the Prophets the Gospels St Paul Tradition the Fathers Protestantism and Justification by Faith the Eighteenth Century the Broad Church Movement Anglican Theology—the squire had his say about them all And while the coolness and frankness of the method sent a shock of indignation and horror through the religious public the subtle and caustic style and the epigrams with which the book was strewn forced both the religious and irreligious public to read whether they would or no A storm of controversy rose round the volumes and some of the keenest observers of English life had said at the time and maintained since that the publication of the book had made or marked an epoch
Robert had lit on those pages in the Essay on the Gospels where the squire fell to analysing the evidence for the Resurrection following up his analysis by an attempt at reconstructing the conditions out of which the belief in the legend arose Robert began to read vaguely at first then to hurry on through page after page still standing seized at once by the bizarre power of the style the audacity and range of the treatment
Not a sound in the house Outside the tossing moaning December night inside the faintly crackling fire the standing figure Suddenly it was to Robert as though a cruel torturing hand were laid upon his inmost being His breath failed him the book slipped out of his grasp he sank down upon his chair his head in his hands Oh what a desolate intolerable moment Over the young idealist soul there swept a dry destroying whirlwind of thought Elements gathered from all sources—from his own historical work from the squires book from the secret halfconscious recesses of the mind—entered into it and as it passed it seemed to scorch the heart
He stayed bowed there a while then he roused himself with a halfgroan and hastily extinguishing his lamp he groped hisPg 281 way upstairs to his wifes room Catherine lay asleep The child lost among its white coverings slept too there was a dim light over the bed the books the pictures Beside his wifes pillow was a table on which there lay open her little Testament and the Imitation her father had given her Elsmere sank down beside her appalled by the contrast between this soft religious peace and that black agony of doubt which still overshadowed him He knelt there restraining his breath lest it should wake her wrestling piteously with himself crying for pardon for faith feeling himself utterly unworthy to touch even the dear hand that lay so near him But gradually the traditional forces of his life reasserted themselves The horror lifted Prayer brought comfort and a passionate healing selfabasement Master forgive—defend—purify cried the aching heart There is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou O God
He did not open the book again Next morning he put it back into his shelves If there were any Christian who could affront such an antagonist with a light heart he felt with a shudder of memory it was not he
I have neither learning nor experience enough—yet he said to himself slowly as he moved away of course it can be met but I must grow must think—first
And of that nights wrestle he said not a word to any living soul He did penance for it in the tenderest most secret ways but he shrank in misery from the thought of revealing it even to Catherine
CHAPTER XXI
Meanwhile the poor poisoned folk at Mile End lived and apparently throve in defiance of all the laws of the universe Robert as soon as he found that radical measures were for the time hopeless had applied himself with redoubled energy to making the people use such palliatives as were within their reach and had preached boiled water and the removal of filth till as he declared to Catherine his dreams were one long sanitary nightmare But he was not confiding enough to believe that the people paid much heed and he hoped more from a dry hard winter than from any exertion either of his or theirs
But alas with the end of November a season of furious rain set in
Then Robert began to watch Mile End with anxiety for so far every outbreak of illness there had followed upon unusual damp But the rains passed leaving behind them no worse results than the usual winter crop of lung ailments and rheumatism and he breathed again
Christmas came and went and with the end of December thePg 282 wet weather returned Day after day rolling masses of southwest cloud came up from the Atlantic and wrapped the whole country in rain which reminded Catherine of her Westmoreland rain more than any she had yet seen in the South Robert accused her of liking it for that reason but she shook her head with a sigh declaring that it was nothing without the becks
One afternoon she was shutting the door of the school behind her and stepping out on the road skirting the green—the bedabbled wintry green—when she saw Robert emerging from the Mile End lane She crossed over to him wondering as she neared him that he seemed to take no notice of her He was striding along his wideawake over his eyes and so absorbed that she had almost touched him before he saw her
Darling is that you Dont stop me I am going to take the ponycarriage in for Meyrick I have just come back from that accursed place three cases of diphtheria in one house Sharlands wife—and two others down with fever
She made a horrified exclamation
It will spread he said gloomily I know it will I never saw the children look such a ghastly crew before Well I must go for Meyrick and a nurse and we must isolate and make a fight for it
In a few days the diphtheria epidemic in the hamlet had reached terrible proportions There had been one death others were expected and soon Robert in his brief hours at home could find no relief in anything so heavy was the oppression of the days memories At first Catherine for the childs sake kept away but the little Mary was weaned had a good Scotch nurse was in every way thriving and after a day or two Catherines craving to help to be with Robert in his trouble was too strong to be withstood But she dared not go backwards and forwards between her baby and the diphtheritic children So she bethought herself of Mrs Elsmeres servant old Martha who was still inhabiting Mrs Elsmeres cottage till a tenant could be found for it and doing good service meanwhile as an occasional parish nurse The baby and its nurse went over to the cottage Catherine carried the child there wrapped close in maternal arms and leaving her on old Marthas lap went back to Robert
Then she and he devoted themselves to a handtohand fight with the epidemic At the climax of it there were about twenty children down with it in different stages and seven cases of fever They had two hospital nurses one of the better cottages turned into a sanatorium accommodated the worst cases under the nurses and Robert and Catherine directed by them and the doctors took the responsibility of the rest he helping to nurse the boys and she the girls Of the fever cases Sharlands wife was the worst A feeble creature at all times it seemed almost impossible she could weather through But day after day passed and by dint of incessant nursing she stillPg 283 lived A youth of twenty the main support of a mother and five or six younger children was also desperately ill Robert hardly ever had him out of his thoughts and the boys doglike affection for the rector struggling with his deathly weakness was like a perpetual exemplification of Ahriman and Ormuzd—the power of life struggling with the power of death
It was a fierce fight Presently it seemed to the husband and wife as though the few daily hours spent at the rectory were mere halts between successive acts of battle with the plaguefiend—a more real and grim Grendel of the Marshes—for the lives of children Catherine could always sleep in these intervals quietly and dreamlessly Robert very soon could only sleep by the help of some prescription of old Meyricks On all occasions of strain since his boyhood there had been signs in him of a certain lack of constitutional hardness which his mother knew very well but which his wife was only just beginning to recognise However he laughed to scorn any attempt to restrain his constant goings and comings or those hours of nightnursing in which as the hospital nurses were the first to admit no one was so successful as the rector And when he stood up on Sundays to preach in Murewell Church the worn and spiritual look of the man and the knowledge warm at each heart of those before him of how the rector not only talked but lived carried every word home
This strain upon all the moral and physical forces however strangely enough came to Robert as a kind of relief It broke through a tension of brain which of late had become an oppression And for both him and Catherine these dark times had moments of intensest joy points of white light illuminating heaven and earth There were cloudy nights—wet stormy January nights—when sometimes it happened to them to come back both together from the hamlet Robert carrying a lantern Catherine clothed in waterproof from head to foot walking beside him the rays flashing now on her face now on the wooded sides of the lane while the wind howled through the dark vault of branches overhead And then as they talked or were silent suddenly a sense of the intense blessedness of this comradeship of theirs would rise like a flood in the mans heart and he would fling his free arm round her forcing her to stand a moment in the January night and storm while he said to her words of passionate gratitude of faith in an immortal union reaching beyond change or death lost in a kiss which was a sacrament Then there were the moments when they saw their child held high in Marthas arms at the window and leaping towards her mother the moments when one pallid sickly being after another was pronounced out of danger and by the help of them the weeks passed away
Nor were they left without help from outside Lady Helen Varley no sooner heard the news than she hurried over Robert on his way one morning from one cottage to another saw herPg 284 ponycarriage in the lane He hastened up to her before she could dismount
No Lady Helen you mustnt come here he said to her peremptorily as she held out her hand
Oh Mr Elsmere let me My boy is in town with his grandmother Let me just go through at any rate and see what I can send you
Robert shook his head smiling A common friend of theirs and hers had once described this little lady to Elsmere by a French sentence which originally applied to the Duchesse de Choiseul Une charmante petite fée sortie dun œuf enchanté—so it ran Certainly as Elsmere looked down upon her now fresh from those squalid deathstricken hovels behind him he was brought more abruptly than ever upon the contrasts of life Lady Helen wore a green velvet and fur mantle in the production of which even Worth had felt some pride a little green velvet bonnet perched on her fair hair one tiny hand ungloved seemed ablaze with diamonds there were opals and diamonds somewhere at her throat gleaming among her sables But she wore her jewels as carelessly as she wore her high birth her quaint irregular prettiness or the one or two brilliant gifts which made her sought after wherever she went She loved her opals as she loved all bright things if it pleased her to wear them in the morning she wore them and in five minutes she was capable of making the sourest puritan forget to frown on her and them To Robert she always seemed the quintessence of breeding of aristocracy at their best All her freaks her sallies her absurdities even were graceful At her freest and gayest there were things in her—restraints reticences perceptions—which implied behind her generations of rich happy important people with ample leisure to cultivate all the more delicate niceties of social feeling and relation Robert was often struck by the curious differences between her and Rose Rose was far the handsomer she was at least as clever and she had a strong imperious will where Lady Helen had only impulses and sympathies and engouements But Rose belonged to the class which struggles where each individual depends on himself and knows it Lady Helen had never struggled for anything—all the best things of the world were hers so easily that she hardly gave them a thought or rather what she had gathered without pain she held so lightly she dispensed so lavishly that mens eyes followed her fluttering through life with much the same feeling as was struck from Cloughs radical hero by the peerless Lady Maria—
Live be lovely forget us be beautiful even to proudness
Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you
Live be uncaring be joyous be sumptuous only be lovely
Uncaring however little Lady Helen never was If shePg 285 was a fairy she was a fairy all heart all frank foolish smiles and tears
No Lady Helen—no Robert said again This is no place for you and we are getting on capitally
She pouted a little
I believe you and Mrs Elsmere are just killing yourselves all in a corner with no one to see she said indignantly If you wont let me see I shall send Sir Harry But who—and her brown fawns eyes ran startled over the cottages before her—who Mr Elsmere does this dreadful place belong to
Mr Wendover said Robert shortly
Impossible she cried incredulously Why I wouldnt ask one of my dogs to sleep there and she pointed to the nearest hovel whereof the walls were tottering outwards the thatch was falling to pieces and the windows were mended with anything that came handy—rags paper or the crown of an old hat
No you would be ill advised said Robert looking with a bitter little smile at the sleek dachshund that sat blinking beside its mistress
But what is the agent about
Then Robert told her the story not mincing his words Since the epidemic had begun all that sense of imaginative attraction which had been reviving in him towards the squire had been simply blotted out by a fierce heat of indignation When he thought of Mr Wendover now he thought of him as the man to whom in strict truth it was owing that helpless children died in choking torture All that agony of wrath and pity he had gone through in the last ten days sprang to his lips now as he talked to Lady Helen and poured itself into his words
Old Meyrick and I have taken things into our own hands now he said at last briefly We have already made two cottages fairly habitable Tomorrow the inspector comes I told the people yesterday I wouldnt be bound by my promise a day longer He must put the screw on Henslowe and if Henslowe dawdles why we shall just drain and repair and sink for a well ourselves I can find the money somehow At present we get all our water from one of the farms on the brow
Money said Lady Helen impulsively her looks warm with sympathy for the pale harassed young rector Sir Harry shall send you as much as you want And anything else—blankets—coals
Out came her notebook and Robert was drawn into a list Then full of joyfulness at being allowed to help she gathered up her reins she nodded her pretty little head at him and was just starting off her ponies at full speed equally eager to tell Harry and to ransack Churton for the stores required when it occurred to her to pull up again
Oh Mr Elsmere my aunt Lady Charlotte does nothingPg 286 but talk about your sisterinlaw Why did you keep her all to yourself Is it kind is it neighbourly to have such a wonder to stay with you and let nobody share
A wonder said Robert amused Rose plays the violin very well but——
As if relations ever saw one in proper perspective exclaimed Lady Helen My aunt wants to be allowed to have her in town next season if you will all let her I think she would find it fun Aunt Charlotte knows all the world and his wife And if Im there and Miss Leyburn will let me make friends with her why you know I can just protect her a little from Aunt Charlotte
The little laughing face bent forward again Robert smiling raised his hat and the ponies whirled her off In anybody else Elsmere would have thought all this effusion insincere or patronising But Lady Helen was the most spontaneous of mortals and the only highborn woman he had ever met who was really and not only apparently free from the nonsense of rank Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlottes social tolerance to be a mere varnish But this little person and her favourite brother Hugh to judge from the accounts of him must always have found life too romantic too wildly and delightfully interesting from top to bottom to be measured by any but romantic standards
Next day Sir Harry Varley a great burly country squire who adored his wife kept the hounds owned a model estate and thanked God every morning that he was an Englishman rode over to Mile End Robert who had just been round the place with the inspector and was dead tired had only energy to show him a few of the worst enormities Sir Harry leaving a cheque behind him rode off with a discharge of strong language at which Robert clergyman as he was only grimly smiled
A few days later Mr Wendovers crimes as a landowner his agents brutality young Elsmeres devotion and the horrors of the Mile End outbreak were in everybodys mouths The county was roused The Radical newspaper came out on the Saturday with a flaming article Robert much to his annoyance found himself the local hero and money began to come in to him freely
On the Monday morning Henslowe appeared on the scene with an army of workmen A racy communication from the inspector had reached him two days before so had a copy of the Churton Advertiser He had spent Sunday in a drinking bout turning over all possible plans of vengeance and evasion Towards the evening however his wife a gaunt clever Scotchwoman who saw ruin before them and had on occasion an even sharper tongue than her husband managed to capture the supplies of brandy in the house and effectually conceal them Then she waited for the moment of collapse which came on towards morning and with her hands on her hips she pouredPg 287 into him a volley of hometruths which not even Sir Harry Varley could have bettered Henslowes nerve gave way He went out at daybreak white and sullen to look for workmen
Robert standing on the step of a cottage watched him give his orders and took vigilant note of their substance They embodied the inspectors directions and the rector was satisfied Henslowe was obliged to pass him on his way to another group of houses At first he affected not to see the rector then suddenly Elsmere was conscious that the mans bloodshot eyes were on him Such a look If hate could have killed Elsmere would have fallen where he stood Yet the mans hand mechanically moved to his hat as though the spell of his wifes harangue were still potent over his shaking muscles
Robert took no notice whatever of the salutation He stood calmly watching till Henslowe disappeared into the last house Then he called one of the agents train heard what was to be done gave a sharp nod of assent and turned on his heel So far so good the servant had been made to feel but he wished it had been the master Oh those three little emaciated creatures whose eyes he had closed whose clammy hands he had held to the last—what reckoning should be asked for their undeserved torments when the Great Account came to be made up
Meanwhile not a sound apparently of all this reached the squire in the sublime solitude of Murewell A fortnight had passed Henslowe had been conquered the county had rushed to Elsmeres help and neither he nor Mrs Darcy had made a sign Their life was so abnormal that it was perfectly possible they had heard nothing Elsmere wondered when they would hear
The rectors chief help and support all through had been old Meyrick The parish doctor had been in bed with rheumatism when the epidemic broke out and Robert feeling it a comfort to be rid of him had thrown the whole business into the hands of Meyrick and his son This son was nominally his fathers junior partner but as he was besides a young and brilliant MD fresh from a great hospital and his father was just a poor old general practitioner with the barest qualification and only forty years experience to recommend him it will easily be imagined that the subordination was purely nominal Indeed young Meyrick was fast ousting his father in all directions and the neighbourhood which had so far found itself unable either to enter or to quit this mortal scene without old Meyricks assistance was beginning to send notes to the house in Churton High Street whereon the superscription Dr Edward Meyrick was underlined with ungrateful emphasis The father took his deposition very quietly Only on Murewell Hall would he allow no trespassing and so long as his son left him undisturbed there he took his effacement in other quarters with perfect meekness
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Young Elsmeres behaviour to him however at a time when all the rest of the Churton world was beginning to hold him cheap and let him see it had touched the old mans heart and he was the rectors slave in this Mile End business Edward Meyrick would come whirling in and out of the hamlet once a day Robert was seldom sorry to see the back of him His attainments of course were useful but his cocksureness was irritating and his manner to his father abominable The father on the other hand came over in the shabby ponycart he had driven for the last forty years and having himself no press of business would spend hours with the rector over the cases giving them an infinity of patient watching and amusing Robert by the cautious hostility he would allow himself every now and then towards his sons newfangled devices
At first Meyrick showed himself fidgety as to the squire Had he been seen been heard from He received Roberts sharp negatives with long sighs but Robert clearly saw that like the rest of the world he was too much afraid of Mr Wendover to go and beard him Some months before as it happened Elsmere had told him the story of his encounter with the squire and had been a good deal moved and surprised by the old mans concern
One day about three weeks from the beginning of the outbreak when the state of things in the hamlet was beginning decidedly to mend Meyrick arrived for his morning round much preoccupied He hurried his work a little and after it was done asked Robert to walk up the road with him
I have seen the squire sir he said turning on his companion with a certain excitement
Robert flushed
Have you he replied with his hands behind him and a world of expression in his sarcastic voice
You misjudge him You misjudge him Mr Elsmere the old man said tremulously I told you he could know nothing of this business—and he didnt He has been in town part of the time and down here—how is he to know anything He sees nobody That man Henslowe sir must be a real bad fellow
Dont abuse the man said Robert looking up Its not worth while when you can say your mind of the master
Old Meyrick sighed
Well said Robert after a moment his lip drawn and quivering you told him the story I suppose Seven deaths is it by now Well what sort of impression did these unfortunate accidents—and he smiled—produce
He talked of sending money said Meyrick doubtfully he said he would have Henslowe up and inquire He seemed put about and annoyed Oh Mr Elsmere you think too hardly of the squire that you do
They strolled on together in silence Robert was not inclinedPg 289 to discuss the matter But old Meyrick seemed to be labouring under some suppressed emotion and presently he began upon his own experiences as a doctor of the Wendover family He had already broached the subject more or less vaguely with Robert Now however he threw his medical reserve generally his strongest characteristic to the winds He insisted on telling his companion who listened reluctantly the whole miserable and ghastly story of the old squires suicide He described the heirs summons his arrival just in time for the last scene with all its horrors and that mysterious condition of the squire for some months afterwards when no one not even Mrs Darcy had been admitted to the Hall and old Meyrick directed at intervals by a great London doctor had been the only spectator of Roger Wendovers physical and mental breakdown the only witness of that dark consciousness of inherited fatality which at that period of his life not even the squires iron will had been able wholly to conceal
Robert whose attention was inevitably roused after a while found himself with some curiosity realising the squire from another mans totally different point of view Evidently Meyrick had seen him at such moments as wring from the harshest nature whatever grains of tenderness of pity or of natural human weakness may be in it And it was clear too that the squire conscious perhaps of a shared secret and feeling a certain soothing influence in the naïveté and simplicity of the old mans sympathy had allowed himself at times in the years succeeding that illness of his an amount of unbending in Meyricks presence such as probably no other mortal had ever witnessed in him since his earliest youth
And yet how childish the old mans whole mental image of the squire was after all What small account it made of the subtleties the gnarled intricacies and contradictions of such a character Horror at his fathers end and dread of a like fate for himself Robert did not know very much of the squire but he knew enough to feel sure that this confiding indulgent theory of Meyricks was ludicrously far from the mark as an adequate explanation of Mr Wendovers later life
Presently Meyrick became aware of the sort of tacit resistance which his companions mind was opposing to his own He dropped the wandering narrative he was busy upon with a sigh
Ah well I daresay its hard its hard he said with patient acquiescence in his voice to believe a man cant help himself I daresay we doctors get to muddle up right and wrong But if ever there was a man sick in mind—for all his booklearning they talk about—and sick in soul that man is the squire
Robert looked at him with a softer expression There was a new dignity about the simple old man The oldfashioned deference which had never let him forget in speaking to Robert that he was speaking to a man of family and which showedPg 290 itself in all sorts of antiquated locutions which were a torment to his son had given way to something still more deeply ingrained His gaunt figure with the stoop and the spectacles and the long straight hair—like the figure of a superannuated schoolmaster—assumed as he turned again to his younger companion something of authority something almost of stateliness
Ah Mr Elsmere he said laying his shrunk hand on the younger mans sleeve and speaking with emotion youre very good to the poor Were all proud of you—you and your good lady But when you were coming and I heard tell all about you I thought of my poor squire and I said to myself That young manll be good to him The squire will make friends with him and Mr Elsmere will have a good wife—and therell be children born to him—and the squire will take an interest—and—and—maybe——
The old man paused Robert grasped his hand silently
And there was something in the way between you the speaker went on sighing I daresay you were quite right—quite right I cant judge Only there are ways of doing a thing And it was a last chance and now its missed—its missed Ah its no good talking he has a heart—he has Manys the kind thing hes done in old days for me and mine—Ill never forget them But all these last few years—oh I know I know You cant go and shut your heart up and fly in the face of all the duties the Lord laid on you without losing yourself and setting the Lord against you But it is pitiful Mr Elsmere its pitiful
It seemed to Robert suddenly as though there was a Divine breath passing through the wintry lane and through the shaking voice of the old man Beside the spirit looking out of those wrinkled eyes his own hot youth its justest resentments its most righteous angers seemed crude harsh inexcusable
Thank you Meyrick thank you and God bless you Dont imagine I will forget a word you have said to me
The rector shook the hand he held warmly twice over a gentle smile passed over Meyricks ageing face and they parted
That night it fell to Robert to sit up after midnight with John Allwood the youth of twenty whose case had been a severer tax on the powers of the little nursing staff than perhaps any other Mother and neighbours were worn out and it was difficult to spare a hospital nurse for long together from the diphtheria cases Robert therefore had insisted during the preceding week on taking alternate nights with one of the nurses During the first hours before midnight he slept soundly on a bed made up in the groundfloor room of the little sanatorium Then at twelve the nurse called him and he went out his eyes still heavy with sleep into a still frosty winters night
After so much rain so much restlessness of wind and cloud the silence and the starry calm of it were infinitely welcome The sharp cold air cleared his brain and braced his nerves andPg 291 by the time he reached the cottage whither he was bound he was broad awake He opened the door softly passed through the lower room crowded with sleeping children climbed the narrow stairs as noiselessly as possible and found himself in a garret faintly lit a bed in one corner and a woman sitting beside it The woman glided away the rector looked carefully at the table of instructions hanging over the bed assured himself that wine and milk and beef essence and medicines were ready to his hand put out his watch on the wooden table near the bed and sat him down to his task The boy was sleeping the sleep of weakness Food was to be given every halfhour and in this perpetual impulse to the system lay his only chance
The rector had his Greek Testament with him and could just read it by the help of the dim light But after a while as the still hours passed on it dropped on to his knee and he sat thinking—endlessly thinking The young labourer lay motionless beside him the lines of the long emaciated frame showing through the bedclothes The nightlight flickered on the broken discoloured ceiling every now and then a mouse scratched in the plaster the mothers heavy breathing came from the next room sometimes a dog barked or an owl cried outside Otherwise deep silence such silence as drives the soul back upon itself
Elsmere was conscious of a strange sense of moral expansion The stern judgments the passionate condemnations which his nature housed so painfully seemed lifted from it The soul breathed an ampler æther a diviner air Oh the mysteries of life and character the subtle inexhaustible claims of pity The problems which hang upon our being here its mixture of elements the pressure of its inexorable physical environment the relations of mind to body of mans poor will to this tangled tyrannous life—it was along these old old lines his thought went painfully groping and always at intervals it came back to the squire pondering seeking to understand a new soberness a new humility and patience entering in
And yet it was not Meyricks facts exactly that had brought this about Robert thought them imperfect only half true Rather was it the spirit of love of infinite forbearance in which the simpler duller nature had declared itself that had appealed to him nay reproached him
Then these thoughts led him on farther and farther from man to God from human defect to the Eternal Perfectness Never once during those hours did Elsmeres hand fail to perform its needed service to the faint sleeper beside him and yet that night was one long dream and strangeness to him nothing real anywhere but consciousness and God its source the soul attacked every now and then by phantom stabs of doubt of bitter brief misgiving as the barriers of sense between it and the eternal enigma grew more and more transparent wrestling awhile and then prevailing And each golden moment of cerPg 292tainty of conquering faith seemed to Robert in some sort a gift from Catherines hand It was she who led him through the shades it was her voice murmuring in his ear
When the first gray dawn began to creep in slowly perceptible waves into the room Elsmere felt as though not hours but years of experience lay between him and the beginnings of his watch
It is by these moments we should date our lives he murmured to himself as he rose they are the only real landmarks
It was eight oclock and the nurse who was to relieve him had come The results of the night for his charge were good the strength had been maintained the pulse was firmer the temperature lower The boy throwing off his drowsiness lay watching the rectors face as he talked in an undertone to the nurse his haggard eyes full of a dumb friendly wistfulness When Robert bent over him to say goodbye this expression brightened into something more positive and Robert left him feeling at last that there was a promise of life in his look and touch
In another moment he had stepped out into the January morning It was clear and still as the night had been In the east there was a pale promise of sun the reddishbrown trunks of the fir woods had just caught it and rose faintly glowing in endless vistas and colonnades one behind the other The flooded river itself rushed through the bridge as full and turbid as before but all the other water surfaces had gleaming films of ice The whole ruinous place had a clean almost a festal air under the touch of the frost while on the side of the hill leading to Murewell tree rose above tree the delicate network of their wintry twigs and branches set against stretches of frostwhitened grass till finally they climbed into the pale allcompleting blue In a copse close at hand there were woodcutters at work and piles of gleaming laths shining through the underwood Robins hopped along the frosty road and as he walked on through the houses towards the bridge Roberts quick ear distinguished that most wintry of all sounds—the cry of a flock of fieldfares passing overhead
As he neared the bridge he suddenly caught sight of a figure upon it the figure of a man wrapped in a large Inverness cloak leaning against the stone parapet With a start he recognised the squire
He went up to him without an instants slackening of his steady step The squire heard the sound of some one coming turned and saw the rector
I am glad to see you here Mr Wendover said Robert stopping and holding out his hand I meant to have come to talk to you about this place this morning I ought to have come before
He spoke gently and quite simply almost as if they had parted the day before The squire touched his hand for an instant
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You may not perhaps be aware Mr Elsmere he said endeavouring to speak with all his old hauteur while his heavy lips twitched nervously that for one reason and another I knew nothing of the epidemic here till yesterday when Meyrick told me
I heard from Mr Meyrick that it was so As you are here now Mr Wendover and I am in no great hurry to get home may I take you through and show you the people
The squire at last looked at him straight—at the face worn and pale yet still so extraordinarily youthful in which something of the solemnity and high emotion of the night seemed to be still lingering
Are you just come he said abruptly or are you going back
I have been here through the night sitting up with one of the fever cases Its hard work for the nurses and the relations sometimes without help
The squire moved on mechanically towards the village and Robert moved beside him
And Mrs Elsmere
Mrs Elsmere was here most of yesterday She used to stay the night when the diphtheria was at its worst but there are only four anxious cases left—the rest all convalescent
The squire said no more and they turned into the lane where the ice lay thick in the deep ruts and on either hand curls of smoke rose into the clear cold sky The squire looked about him with eyes which no detail escaped Robert without a word of comment pointed out this feature and that showed where Henslowe had begun repairs where the new well was to be what the water supply had been till now drew the squires attention to the roofs the pigstyes the drainage or rather complete absence of drainage and all in the dry voice of some one going through a catalogue Word had already fled like wildfire through the hamlet that the squire was there Children and adults a pale emaciated crew poured out into the wintry air to look The squire knit his brows with annoyance as the little crowd in the lane grew Robert took no notice
Presently he pushed open the door of the house where he had spent the night In the kitchen a girl of sixteen was clearing away the various nondescript heaps on which the family had slept and was preparing breakfast The squire looked at the floor
I thought I understood from Henslowe he muttered as though to himself that there were no mud floors left on the estate——
There are only three houses in Mile End without them said Robert catching what he said
They went upstairs and the mother stood openeyed while the squires restless look gathered in the details of the room the youths face as he lay back on his pillows whiter than theyPg 294 exhausted and yet refreshed by the sponging with vinegar and water which the mother had just been administering to him the bed the gaps in the wormeaten boards the spots in the roof where the plaster bulged inward as though a snake would bring it down the coarse china shepherdesses on the mantelshelf and the flowers which Catherine had put there the day before He asked a few questions said an abrupt word or two to the mother and they tramped downstairs again and into the street Then Robert took him across to the little improvised hospital saying to him on the threshold with a moments hesitation—
As you know for adults there is not much risk but there is always some risk——
A peremptory movement of the squires hand stopped him and they went in In the downstairs room were halfadozen convalescents pale shadowy creatures four of them under ten sitting up in their little cots each of them with a red flannel jacket drawn from Lady Helens stores and enjoying the breakfast which a nurse in white cap and apron had just brought them Upstairs in a room from which a lathandplaster partition had been removed and which had been adapted warmed and ventilated by various contrivances to which Robert and Meyrick had devoted their practical minds were the four anxious cases One of them a little creature of six one of Sharlands blackeyed children was sitting up supported by the nurse and coughing its little life away As soon as he saw it Roberts step quickened He forgot the squire altogether He came and stood by the bedside rigidly still for he could do nothing but his whole soul absorbed in that horrible struggle for air How often he had seen it now and never without the same wild sense of revolt and protest At last the hideous membrane was loosened the child got relief and lay back white and corpselike but with a pitiful momentary relaxation of the drawn lines on its little brow Robert stooped and kissed the damp tiny hand The childs eyes remained shut but the fingers made a feeble effort to close on his
Mr Elsmere said the nurse a motherly body looking at him with friendly admonition if you dont go home and rest youll be ill too and Id like to know wholl be the better for that
How many deaths asked the squire abruptly touching Elsmeres arm and so reminding Robert of his existence Meyrick spoke of deaths
He stood near the door but his eyes were fixed on the little bed on the halfswooning child
Seven said Robert turning upon him Five of diphtheria two of fever That little one will go too
Horrible said the squire under his breath and then moved to the door
The two men went downstairs in perfect silence Below inPg 295 the convalescent room the children were capable of smiles and of quick coquettish beckonings to the rector to come and make game with them as usual But he could only kiss his hand to them and escape for there was more to do
He took the squire through all the remaining fever cases and into several of the worst cottages—Milsoms among them—and when it was all over they emerged into the lane again near the bridge There was still a crowd of children and women hanging about watching eagerly for the squire whom many of them had never seen at all and about whom various myths had gradually formed themselves in the countryside The squire walked away from them hurriedly followed by Robert and again they halted on the centre of the bridge A horse led by a groom was being walked up and down on a flat piece of road just beyond
It was an awkward moment Robert never forgot the thrill of it or the association of wintry sunshine streaming down upon a sparkling world of ice and delicate woodland and foamflecked river
The squire turned towards him irresolutely his sharplycut wrinkled lips opening and closing again Then he held out his hand Mr Elsmere I did you a wrong—I did this place and its people a wrong In my view regret for the past is useless Much of what has occurred here is plainly irreparable I will think what can be done for the future As for my relation to you it rests with you to say whether it can be amended I recognise that you have just cause of complaint
What invincible pride there was in the mans very surrender But Elsmere was not repelled by it He knew that in their hour together the squire had felt His soul had lost its bitterness The dead and their wrong were with God
He took the squires outstretched hand grasping it cordially a pure unworldly dignity in his whole look and bearing
Let us be friends Mr Wendover It will be a great comfort to us—my wife and me Will you remember us both very kindly to Mrs Darcy
Commonplace words but words that made an epoch in the life of both In another minute the squire on horseback was trotting along the side road leading to the Hall and Robert was speeding home to Catherine as fast as his long legs could carry him
She was waiting for him on the steps shading her eyes against the unwonted sun He kissed her with the spirits of a boy and told her all his news
Catherine listened bewildered not knowing what to say or how all at once to forgive to join Robert in forgetting But that strange spiritual glow about him was not to be withstood She threw her arms about him at last with a half sob—
Oh Robert—yes Dear Robert—thank God
Never think any more he said at last leading her in fromPg 296 the little hall of what has been only of what shall be Oh Catherine give me some tea and never did I see anything so tempting as that armchair
He sank down into it and when she put his breakfast beside him she saw with a start that he was fast asleep The wife stood and watched him the signs of fatigue round eyes and mouth the placid expression and her face was soft with tenderness and joy Of course—of course even that hard man must love him Who could help it My Robert
And so now in this disguise now in that the supreme hour of Catherines life stole on and on towards her
CHAPTER XXII
As may be imagined the Churton Advertiser did not find its way to Murewell It was certainly no pressure of social disapproval that made the squire go down to Mile End in that winters dawn The county might talk or the local press might harangue till Doomsday and Mr Wendover would either know nothing or care less
Still his interview with Meyrick in the park after his return from a week in town whither he had gone to see some old Berlin friends had been a shock to him A man may play the intelligent recluse may refuse to fit his life to his neighbours notions as much as you please and still find death especially death for which he has some responsibility as disturbing a fact as the rest of us
He went home in much irritable discomfort It seemed to him probably that fortune need not have been so eager to put him in the wrong To relieve his mind he sent for Henslowe and in an interview the memory of which sent a shiver through the agent to the end of his days he let it be seen that though it did not for the moment suit him to dismiss the man who had brought this upon him that mans reign in any true sense was over
But afterwards the squire was still restless What was astir in him was not so much pity or remorse as certain instincts of race which still survived under the strange superstructure of manners he had built upon them It may be the part of a gentleman and a scholar to let the agent whom you have interposed between yourself and a boorish peasantry have a free hand but after all the estate is yours and to expose the rector of the parish to all sorts of avoidable risks in the pursuit of his official duty by reason of the gratuitous filth of your property is an act of doubtful breeding The squire in his most roughandtumble days at Berlin had always felt himself the grandee as well as the student He abhorred sentimentalism but neither did he choose to cut an unseemly figure in his own eyes
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After a night therefore less tranquil or less meditative than usual he rose early and sallied forth at one of those unusual hours he generally chose for walking The thing must be put right somehow and at once with as little waste of time and energy as possible and Henslowe had shown himself not to be trusted so telling a servant to follow him the squire had made his way with difficulty to a place he had not seen for years
Then had followed the unexpected and unwelcome apparition of the rector The squire did not want to be impressed by the young man did not want to make friends with him No doubt his devotion had served his own purposes Still Mr Wendover was one of the subtlest living judges of character when he pleased and his enforced progress through these hovels with Elsmere had not exactly softened him but had filled him with a curious contempt for his own hastiness of judgment
History would be inexplicable after all without the honest fanatic he said to himself on the way home I suppose I had forgotten it There is nothing like a dread of being bored for blunting your psychological instinct
In the course of the day he sent off a letter to the rector intimating in the very briefest driest way that the cottages should be rebuilt on a different site as soon as possible and enclosing a liberal contribution towards the expenses incurred in fighting the epidemic When the letter was gone he drew his books towards him with a sound which was partly disgust partly relief This annoying business had wretchedly interrupted him and his concessions left him mainly conscious of a strong nervous distaste for the idea of any fresh interview with young Elsmere He had got his money and his apology let him be content
However next morning after breakfast Mr Wendover once more saw his study door open to admit the tall figure of the rector The note and cheque had reached Robert late the night before and true to his newborn determination to make the best of the squire he had caught up his wideawake at the first opportunity and walked off to the Hall to acknowledge the gift in person The interview opened as awkwardly as it was possible and with their former conversation on the same spot fresh in their minds both men spent a sufficiently difficult ten minutes The squire was asking himself indeed impatiently all the time whether he could possibly be forced in the future to put up with such an experience again and Robert found his host if less sarcastic than before certainly as impenetrable as ever
At last however the Mile End matter was exhausted and then Robert as good luck would have it turned his longing eyes on the squires books especially on the latest volumes of a magnificent German Weltgeschichte lying near his elbow which he had coveted for months without being able to conquer his conscience sufficiently to become the possessor of it He took itPg 298 up with an exclamation of delight and a quiet critical remark that exactly hit the value and scope of the book The squires eyebrows went up and the corners of his mouth slackened visibly Half an hour later the two men to the amazement of Mrs Darcy who was watching them from the drawingroom window walked back to the park gates together and what Roberts nobility and beauty of character would never have won him though he had worn himself to death in the service of the poor and the tormented under the squires eyes a chance coincidence of intellectual interest had won him almost in a moment
The squire walked back to the house under a threatening sky his mackintosh cloak wrapped about him his arms folded his mind full of an unwonted excitement
The sentiment of longpast days—days in Berlin in Paris where conversations such as that he had just passed through were the daily relief and reward of labour was stirring in him Occasionally he had endeavoured to import the materials for them from the Continent from London But as a matter of fact it was years since he had had any such talk as this with an Englishman on English ground and he suddenly realised that he had been unwholesomely solitary and that for the scholar there is no nerve stimulus like that of an occasional interchange of ideas with some one acquainted with his Fach
Who would ever have thought of discovering instincts and aptitudes of such a kind in this longlegged optimist The squire shrugged his shoulders as he thought of the attempt involved in such a personality to combine both worlds the world of action and the world of thought Absurd Of course ultimately one or other must go to the wall
Meanwhile what a ludicrous waste of time and opportunity that he and this man should have been at crosspurposes like this Why the deuce couldnt he have given some rational account of himself to begin with thought the squire irritably forgetting of course who it was that had wholly denied him the opportunity And then the sending back of those books what a piece of idiocy
Granted an historical taste in this young parson it was a curious chance Mr Wendover reflected that in his choice of a subject he should just have fallen on the period of the later empire—of the passage from the old world to the new where the squire was a master The squire fell to thinking of the kind of knowledge implied in his remarks of the stage he seemed to have reached and then to cogitating as to the books he must be now in want of He went back to his library ran over the shelves picking out volumes here and there with an unwonted glow and interest all the while He sent for a case and made a youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them And still as he went back to his own work new names would occur to him and full of the scholars avaricious sense of the shortness ofPg 299 time he would shake his head and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had already passed grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism the spread of Monasticism in Gaul and Heaven knows what besides half a mile from the man and the library which could have supplied him with the best help to be got in England unbenefited by either Mile End was obliterated and the annoyance of the morning forgotten
The next day was Sunday a wet January Sunday raw and sleety the frost breaking up on all sides and flooding the roads with mire
Robert rising in his place to begin morning service and wondering to see the congregation so good on such a day was suddenly startled as his eye travelled mechanically over to the Hall pew usually tenanted by Mrs Darcy in solitary state to see the characteristic figure of the squire His amazement was so great that he almost stumbled in the exhortation and his feeling was evidently shared by the congregation which throughout the service showed a restlessness an excited tendency to peer round corners and pillars that was not favourable to devotion
Has he come to spy out the land the rector thought to himself and could not help a momentary tremor at the idea of preaching before so formidable an auditor Then he pulled himself together by a great effort and fixing his eyes on a shockheaded urchin half way down the church read the service to him Catherine meanwhile in her seat on the northern side of the nave her soul lulled in Sunday peace knew nothing of Mr Wendovers appearance
Robert preached on the first sermon of Jesus on the first appearance of the young Master in the synagogue at Nazareth—
This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears
The sermon dwelt on the Messianic aspect of Christs mission on the mystery and poetry of that long national expectation on the pathos of Jewish disillusion on the sureness and beauty of Christian insight as faith gradually transferred trait after trait of the Messiah of prophecy to the Christ of Nazareth At first there was a certain amount of hesitation a slight wavering hither and thither—a difficult choice of words—and then the soul freed itself from man and the preacher forgot all but his Master and his people
At the door as he came out stood Mr Wendover and Catherine slightly flushed and much puzzled for conversation beside him The Hall carriage was drawn close up to the door and Mrs Darcy evidently much excited had her small head out of the window and was showering a number of flighty inquiries and suggestions on her brother to which he paid no more heed than to the patter of the rain
When Robert appeared the squire addressed him ceremoniously—
With your leave Mr Elsmere I will walk with you to thePg 300 rectory Then in another voice Go home Lætitia and dont send anything or anybody
He made a signal to the coachman and the carriage started Mrs Darcys protesting head remaining out of window as long as anything could be seen of the group at the church door The odd little creature had paid one or two hurried and recent visits to Catherine during the quarrel visits so filled however with vague railing against her brother and by a queer incoherent melancholy that Catherine felt them extremely uncomfortable and took care not to invite them Clearly she was mortally afraid of Roger and yet ashamed of being afraid Catherine could see that all the poor things foolish whims and affectations were trampled on that she suffered rebelled found herself no more able to affect Mr Wendover than if she had been a fly buzzing round him and became all the more foolish and whimsical in consequence
The squire and the Elsmeres crossed the common to the rectory followed at a discreet interval by groups of villagers curious to get a look at the squire Robert was conscious of a good deal of embarrassment but did his best to hide it Catherine felt all through as if the skies had fallen The squire alone was at his ease or as much at his ease as he ever was He commented on the congregation even condescended to say something of the singing and passed over the staring of the choristers with a magnanimity of silence which did him credit
They reached the rectory door and it was evidently the squires purpose to come in so Robert invited him in Catherine threw open her little drawingroom door and then was seized with shyness as the squire passed in and she saw over his shoulder her baby lying kicking and crowing on the hearthrug in anticipation of her arrival the nurse watching it The squire in his great cloak stopped and looked down at the baby as if it had been some curious kind of reptile The nurse blushed curtsied and caught up the gurgling creature in a twinkling
Robert made a laughing remark on the tyranny and ubiquity of babies The squire smiled grimly He supposed it was necessary that the human race should be carried on Catherine meanwhile slipped out and ordered another place to be laid at the dinnertable devoutly hoping that it might not be used
It was used The squire stayed till it was necessary to invite him then accepted the invitation and Catherine found herself dispensing boiled mutton to him while Robert supplied him with some very modest claret the sort of wine which a man who drinks none thinks it necessary to have in the house and watched the nervousness of their little parlourmaid with a fellowfeeling which made it difficult for him during the early part of the meal to keep a perfectly straight countenance After a while however both he and Catherine were ready to admit that the squire was making himself agreeable He talkedPg 301 of Paris of a conversation he had had with M Renan whose name luckily was quite unknown to Catherine as to the state of things in the French Chamber
A set of chemists and quilldrivers he said contemptuously but as Renan remarked to me there is one thing to be said for a government of that sort Ils ne font pas la guerre And so long as they dont run France into adventures and a man can keep a roof over his head and a sou in his pocket the men of letters at any rate can rub along The really interesting thing in France just now is not French politics—Heaven save the mark—but French scholarship There never was so little original genius going in Paris and there never was so much good work being done
Robert thought the point of view eminently characteristic
Catholicism I suppose he said as a force to be reckoned with is dwindling more and more
Absolutely dead said the squire emphatically as an intellectual force They havent got a writer scarcely a preacher Not one decent book has been produced on that side for years
And the Protestants too said Robert have lost all their best men of late and he mentioned one or two wellknown French Protestant names
Oh as to French Protestantism—and the squires shrug was superb—Teutonic Protestantism is in the order of things so to speak but Latin Protestantism There is no more sterile hybrid in the world
Then becoming suddenly aware that he might have said something inconsistent with his company the squire stopped abruptly Robert catching Catherines quick compression of the lips was grateful to him and the conversation moved on in another direction
Yes certainly all things considered Mr Wendover made himself agreeable He ate his boiled mutton and drank his ordinaire like a man and when the meal was over and he and Robert had withdrawn into the study he gave an emphatic word of praise to the coffee which Catherines housewifely care sent after them and accepting a cigar he sank into the armchair by the fire and spread a bony hand to the blaze as if he had been at home in that particular corner for months Robert sitting opposite to him and watching his guests eyes travel round the room with its medicine shelves its rods and nets and preparations of uncanny beasts its parish litter and its teeming bookcases felt that the Mile End matter was turning out oddly indeed
I have packed you a case of books Mr Elsmere said the squire after a puff or two at his cigar How have you got on without that collection of Councils
He smiled a little awkwardly It was one of the books Robert had sent back Robert flushed He did not want the squire to regard him as wholly dependent on Murewell
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I bought it he said rather shortly I have ruined myself in books lately and the London Library too supplies me really wonderfully well
Are these your books The squire got up to look at them Hum not at all bad for a beginning I have sent you so and so and he named one or two costly folios that Robert had long pined for in vain
The rectors eyes glistened
That was very good of you he said simply They will be most welcome
And now how much time said the other settling himself again to his cigar his thin legs crossed over each other and his great head sunk into his shoulders how much time do you give to this work
Generally the mornings—not always A man with twelve hundred souls to look after you know Mr Wendover said Elsmere with a bright halfdefiant accent cant make grubbing among the Franks his main business
The squire said nothing and smoked on Robert gathered that his companion thought his chances of doing anything worth mentioning very small
Oh no he said following out his own thought with a shake of his curly hair of course I shall never do very much But if I dont it wont be for want of knowing what the scholars ideal is And he lifted his hand with a smile towards the squires book on English Culture which stood in the bookcase just above him The squire following the gesture smiled too It was a faint slight illumining but it changed the face agreeably
Robert began to ask questions about the book about the pictures contained in it of foreign life and foreign universities The squire consented to be drawn out and presently was talking at his very best
Racy stories of Mommsen or Von Ranke were followed by a description of an evening of mad carouse with Heine—a talk at Nohant with George Sand—scenes in the Duchesse de Broglies salon—a contemptuous sketch of Guizot—a caustic sketch of Renan Robert presently even laid aside his pipe and stood in his favourite attitude lounging against the mantelpiece looking down absorbed on his visitor All that intellectual passion which his struggle at Mile End had for the moment checked in him revived Nay after his weeks of exclusive contact with the most hideous forms of bodily ill this interruption these great names this talk of great movements and great causes had a special savour and relish All the horizons of the mind expanded the currents of the blood ran quicker
Suddenly however he sprang up
I beg your pardon Mr Wendover it is too bad to interrupt you—I have enjoyed it immensely—but the fact is I have only two minutes to get to Sunday School in
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Mr Wendover rose also and resumed his ordinary manner
It is I who should apologise he said with stiff politeness for having encroached in this way on your busy day Mr Elsmere
Robert helped him on with his coat and then suddenly the squire turned to him
You were preaching this morning on one of the Isaiah quotations in St Matthew It would interest you I imagine to see a recent Jewish book on the subject of the prophecies quoted in the Gospels which reached me yesterday There is nothing particularly new in it but it looked to me well done
Thank you said Robert not however with any great heartiness and the squire moved away They parted at the gate Robert running down the hill to the village as fast as his long legs could carry him
Sunday School—pshaw cried the squire as he tramped homeward in the opposite direction
Next morning a huge packingcase arrived from the Hall and Robert could not forbear a little gloating over the treasures in it before he tore himself away to pay his morning visit to Mile End There everything was improving the poor Sharland child indeed had slipped away on the night after the squires visit but the other bad cases in the diphtheria ward were mending fast John Allwood was gaining strength daily and poor Mary Sharland was feebly struggling back to a life which seemed hardly worth so much effort to keep Robert felt with a welcome sense of slackening strain that the daily and hourly superintendence which he and Catherine had been giving to the place might lawfully be relaxed that the nurses on the spot were now more than equal to their task and after having made his round he raced home again in order to secure an hour with his books before luncheon
The following day a note arrived while they were at luncheon in the squires angular precise handwriting It contained a request that unless otherwise engaged the rector would walk with Mr Wendover that afternoon
Robert flung it across to Catherine
Let me see he said deliberating have I any engagement I must keep
There was a sort of jealousy for his work within him contending with this new fascination of the squires company But honestly there was nothing in the way and he went
That walk was the first of many The squire had no sooner convinced himself that young Elsmeres society did in reality provide him with a stimulus and recreation he had been too long without than in his imperious wilful way he began to possess himself of it as much as possible He never alluded to the trivial matters which had first separated and then united them He worked the better he thought the more clearly for these talks and walks with Elsmere and therefore these talksPg 304 and walks became an object with him They supplied a longstifled want the scholars want of disciples of some form of investment for all that heapedup capital of thought he had been accumulating during a lifetime
As for Robert he soon felt himself so much under the spell of the squires strange and powerful personality that he was forced to make a fight for it lest this new claim should encroach upon the old ones He would walk when the squire liked but three times out of four these walks must be parish rounds interrupted by descents into cottages and chats in farmhouse parlours The squire submitted The neighbourhood began to wonder over the strange spectacle of Mr Wendover waiting grimly in the winter dusk outside one of his own farmhouses while Elsmere was inside or patrolling a bit of lane till Elsmere should have inquired after an invalid or beaten up a recruit for his confirmation class dogged the while by stealthy children with fingers in their mouths who ran away in terror directly he turned
Rumours of this new friendship spread One day on the bit of road between the Hall and the rectory Lady Helen behind her ponies whirled past the two men and her arch look at Elsmere said as plain as words Oh you young wonder what hook has served you with this leviathan
On another occasion close to Churton a man in a cassock and cloak came towards them The squire put up his eyeglass
Humph he remarked do you know this merryandrew Elsmere
It was Newcome As they passed Robert with slightly heightened colour gave him an affectionate nod and smile Newcomes quick eye ran over the companions he responded stiffly and his step grew more rapid A week or two later Robert noticed with a little prick of remorse that he had seen nothing of Newcome for an age If Newcome would not come to him he must go to Mottringham He planned an expedition but something happened to prevent it
And Catherine Naturally this new and most unexpected relation of Roberts to the man who had begun by insulting him was of considerable importance to the wife In the first place it broke up to some extent the exquisite têteàtête of their home life it encroached often upon time that had always been hers it filled Roberts mind more and more with matters in which she had no concern All these things many wives might have resented Catherine Elsmere resented none of them It is probable of course that she had her natural moments of regret and comparison when love said to itself a little sorely and hungrily It is hard to be even a fraction less to him than I once was But if so these moments never betrayed themselves in word or act Her tender common sense her sweet humility made her recognise at once Roberts need of intellectual comradeship isolated as he was in this remote rural district She knewPg 305 perfectly that a clergymans life of perpetual giving forth becomes morbid and unhealthy if there is not some corresponding taking in
If only it had not been Mr Wendover She marvelled over the fascination Robert found in his dry cynical talk She wondered that a Christian pastor could ever forget Mr Wendovers antecedents that the man who had nursed those sick children could forgive Mile End All in all as they were to each other she felt for the first time that she often understood her husband imperfectly His mobility his eagerness were sometimes now a perplexity even a pain to her
It must not be imagined however that Robert let himself drift into this intellectual intimacy with one of the most distinguished of antiChristian thinkers without reflecting on its possible consequences The memory of that night of misery which The Idols of the Marketplace had inflicted on him was enough He was no match in controversy for Mr Wendover and he did not mean to attempt it
One morning the squire unexpectedly plunged into an account of a German monograph he had just received on the subject of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel It was almost the first occasion on which he had touched what may strictly be called the matériel of orthodoxy in their discussions—at any rate directly But the book was a striking one and in the interest of it he had clearly forgotten his ground a little Suddenly the man who was walking beside him interrupted him
I think we ought to understand one another perhaps Mr Wendover Robert said speaking under a quick sense of oppression but with his usual dignity and bright courtesy I know your opinions of course from your books you know what mine as an honest man must be from the position I hold My conscience does not forbid me to discuss anything only—I am no match for you on points of scholarship and I should just like to say once for all that to me whatever else is true the religion of Christ is true I am a Christian and a Christian minister Therefore whenever we come to discuss what may be called Christian evidence I do it with reserves which you would not have I believe in an Incarnation a Resurrection a Revelation If there are literary difficulties I must want to smooth them away—you may want to make much of them We come to the matter from different points of view You will not quarrel with me for wanting to make it clear It isnt as if we differed slightly We differ fundamentally—is it not so
The squire was walking beside him with bent shoulders the lower lip pushed forward as was usual with him when he was considering a matter with close attention but did not mean to communicate his thoughts
After a pause he said with a faint inscrutable smile—
Your reminder is perfectly just Naturally we all have our reserves Neither of us can be expected to stultify his own
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And the talk went forward again Robert joining in more buoyantly than ever perhaps because he had achieved a necessary but disagreeable thing and got done with it
In reality he had but been doing as the child does when it sets up its sandbarrier against the tide
CHAPTER XXIII
It was the beginning of April The gorse was fast extending its golden empire over the commons On the sunny slopes of the copses primroses were breaking through the hazel roots and beginning to gleam along the edges of the river On the grass commons between Murewell and Mile End the birches rose like green clouds against the browns and purples of the still leafless oaks and beeches The birds were twittering and building Every day Robert was on the lookout for the swallows or listening for the first notes of the nightingale amid the bare spring coverts
But the spring was less perfectly delightful to him than it might have been for Catherine was away Mrs Leyburn who was to have come south to them in February was attacked by bronchitis instead at Burwood and forbidden to move even to a warmer climate In March Catherine feeling restless and anxious about her mother and thinking it hard that Agnes should have all the nursing and responsibility tore herself from her man and her baby and went north to Whindale for a fortnight leaving Robert forlorn
Now however she was in London whither she had gone for a few days on her way home to meet Rose and to shop Roberts opinion was that all women even St Elizabeths have somewhere rooted in them an inordinate partiality for shopping otherwise why should that operation take four or five mortal days Surely with a little energy one might buy up the whole of London in twelve hours However Catherine lingered and as her purchases were made Robert crossly supposed it must be all Roses fault He believed that Rose spent a great deal too much on dress
Catherines letters of course were full of her sister Rose she said had come back from Berlin handsomer than ever and playing she supposed magnificently At any rate the letters which followed her in shoals from Berlin flattered her to the skies and during the three months preceding her return Joachim himself had taken her as a pupil and given her unusual attention
And now of course wrote Catherine she is desperately disappointed that mamma and Agnes cannot join her in town as she had hoped She does her best I know poor child to conceal it and to feel as she ought about mamma but I can seePg 307 that the idea of an indefinite time at Burwood is intolerable to her As to Berlin I think she has enjoyed it but she talks very scornfully of German Schwärmerei and German women and she tells the oddest stories of her professors With one or two of them she seems to have been in a state of war from the beginning but some of them my dear Robert I am persuaded were just simply in love with her
I dont—no I never shall believe that independent exciting students life is good for a girl But I never say so to Rose When she forgets to be irritable and to feel that the world is going against her she is often very sweet to me and I cant bear there should be any conflict
His next days letter contained the following—
Are you properly amused sir at your wifes performances in town Our three concerts you have heard all about I still cant get over them I go about haunted by the seriousness the lifeanddeath interest people throw into music It is astonishing And outside as we got into our hansom such sights and sounds—such starved fiercelooking men such ghastly women
But since then Rose has been taking me into society Yesterday afternoon after I wrote to you we went to see Roses artistic friends—the Piersons—with whom she was staying last summer and today we have even called on Lady Charlotte Wynnstay
As to Mrs Pierson I never saw such an odd bundle of ribbons and rags and queer embroideries as she looked when we called However Rose says that for an æsthete—she despises them now herself—Mrs Pierson has wonderful taste and that her wallpapers and her gowns if I only understood them are not the least like those of other æsthetic persons but very recherché—which may be She talked to Rose of nothing but acting especially of Madame Desforêts No one according to her has anything to do with an actresss private life or ought to take it into account But Robert dear—an actress is a woman and has a soul
Then Lady Charlotte—you would have laughed at our entrée
We found she was in town and went on her day as she had asked Rose to do The room was rather dark—none of these London rooms seem to me to have any light and air in them The butler got our names wrong and I marched in first more shy than I ever have been before in my life Lady Charlotte had two gentlemen with her She evidently did not know me in the least she stood staring at me with her eyeglass on and her cap so crooked I could think of nothing but a wish to put it straight Then Rose followed and in a few minutes it seemed to me as though it were Rose who were hostess talking to the two gentlemen and being kind to Lady Charlotte I am sure everybody in the room was amused by her selfpossessionPg 308 Lady Charlotte included The gentlemen stared at her a great deal and Lady Charlotte paid her one or two compliments on her looks which I thought she would not have ventured to pay to any one in her own circle
We stayed about half an hour One of the gentlemen was I believe a member of the Government an undersecretary for something but he and Rose and Lady Charlotte talked again of nothing but musicians and actors It is strange that politicians should have time to know so much of these things The other gentleman reminded me of Hotspurs popinjay I think now I made out that he wrote for the newspapers but at the moment I should have felt it insulting to accuse him of anything so humdrum as an occupation in life He discovered somehow that I had an interest in the Church and he asked me leaning back in his chair and lisping whether I really thought the Church could still totter on a while in the rural dithtricts He was informed her condition was so vewy dethperate
Then I laughed outright and found my tongue Perhaps his next article on the Church will have a few facts in it I did my best to put some into him Rose at last looked round at me astonished But he did not dislike me I think I was not impertinent to him husband mine If I might have described just one of your days to his highandmightiness There is no need to tell you I think whether I did or not
Then when we got up to go Lady Charlotte asked Rose to stay with her Rose explained why she couldnt and Lady Charlotte pitied her dreadfully for having a family and the undersecretary said that it was ones first duty in life to trample on ones relations and that he hoped nothing would prevent his hearing her play some time later in the year Rose said very decidedly she should be in town for the winter Lady Charlotte said she would have an evening specially for her and as I said nothing we got away at last
The letter of the following day recorded a little adventure—
I was much startled this morning I had got Rose to come with me to the National Gallery on our way to her dressmaker We were standing before Raphaels Vigil of the Knight when suddenly I saw Rose who was looking away towards the door into the long gallery turn perfectly white I followed her eyes and there in the doorway disappearing—I am almost certain—was Mr Langham One cannot mistake his walk or his profile Before I could say a word Rose had walked away to another wall of pictures and when we joined again we did not speak of it Did he see us I wonder and purposely avoid us Something made me think so
Oh I wish I could believe she had forgotten him I am certain she would laugh me to angry scorn if I mentioned him but there she sits by the fire now while I am writing quite drooping and pale because she thinks I am not noticing If she did but love me a little more It must be my fault I know
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Yes as you say Burwood may as well be shut up or let My dear dear father
Robert could imagine the sigh with which Catherine had laid down her pen Dear tender soul with all its oldworld fidelities and pieties pure and unimpaired He raised the signature to his lips
Next day Catherine came back to him Robert had no words too opprobrious for the widowed condition from which her return had rescued him It seemed to Catherine however that life had been very full and keen with him since her departure He lingered with her after supper vowing that his club boys might make what hay in the study they pleased he was going to tell her the news whatever happened
I told you of my two dinners at the Hall The first was just têteàtête with the squire—oh and Mrs Darcy of course I am always forgetting her poor little thing which is most ungrateful of me A pathetic life that Catherine She seems to me in her odd way perpetually hungering for affection for praise No doubt if she got them she wouldnt know what to do with them She would just touch and leave them as she does everything Her talk and she are both as light and wandering as thistledown But still meanwhile she hungers and is never satisfied There seems to be something peculiarly antipathetic in her to the squire I cant make it out He is sometimes quite brutal to her when she is more inconsequent than usual I often wonder she goes on living with him
Catherine made some indignant comment
Yes said Robert musing Yes it is bad
But Catherine thought his tone might have been more unqualified and marvelled again at the curious lenity of judgment he had always shown of late towards Mr Wendover And all his judgments of himself and others were generally so quick so uncompromising
On the second occasion we had Freake and Dashwood naming two wellknown English antiquarians Very learned very jealous and very snuffy altogether too genuine as poor mother used to say of those old chairs we got for the diningroom But afterwards when we were all smoking in the library the squire came out of his shell and talked I never heard him more brilliant
He paused a moment his bright eyes looking far away from her as though fixed on the scene he was describing
Such a mind he said at last with a long breath such a memory Catherine my book has been making great strides since you left With Mr Wendover to go to all the problems are simplified One is saved all false starts all beating about the bush What a piece of luck it was that put one down beside such a guide such a living storehouse of knowledge
He spoke in a glow of energy and enthusiasm Catherine satPg 310 looking at him wistfully her gray eyes crossed by many varying shades of memory and feeling
At last his look met hers and the animation of it softened at once grew gentle
Do you think I am making knowledge too much of a god just now Madonna mine he said throwing himself down beside her I have been full of qualms myself The squire excites one so makes one feel as though intellect—accumulation—were the whole of life But I struggle against it—I do I go on for instance trying to make the squire do his social duties—behave like a human
Catherine could not help smiling at his tone
Well she inquired
He shook his head ruefully
The squire is a tough customer—most men of sixtyseven with strong wills are I suppose At any rate he is like one of the Thurston trout—sees through all my manœuvres But one piece of news will astonish you Catherine And he sprang up to deliver it with effect Henslowe is dismissed
Henslowe dismissed Catherine sat properly amazed while Robert told the story
The dismissal of Henslowe indeed represented the price which Mr Wendover had been so far willing to pay for Elsmeres society Some quid pro quo there must be—that he was prepared to admit—considering their relative positions as squire and parson But as Robert shrewdly suspected not one of his wiles so far had imposed on the master of Murewell He had his own sarcastic smiles over them and over Elsmeres pastoral naïveté in general The evidences of the young rectors power and popularity were however on the whole pleasant to Mr Wendover If Elsmere had his will with all the rest of the world Mr Wendover knew perfectly well who it was that at the present moment had his will with Elsmere He had found a great piquancy in this shaping of a mind more intellectually eager and pliant than any he had yet come across among younger men perpetual food too for his sense of irony in the intellectual contradictions wherein Elsmeres developing ideas and information were now according to the squire involving him at every turn
His religious foundations are gone already if he did but know it Mr Wendover grimly remarked to himself one day about this time but he will take so long finding it out that the results are not worth speculating on
Cynically assured therefore at bottom of his own power with this ebullient nature the squire was quite prepared to make external concessions or as we have said to pay his price It annoyed him that when Elsmere would press for allotment land or a new institute or a better supply of water for the village it was not open to him merely to give carte blanche and refer his petitioner to Henslowe Roberts opinion of HenslowePg 311 and Henslowes now more cautious but still incessant hostility to the rector were patent at last even to the squire The situation was worrying and wasted time It must be changed
So one morning he met Elsmere with a bundle of letters in his hand calmly informed him that Henslowe had been sent about his business and that it would be a kindness if Mr Elsmere would do him the favour of looking through some applications for the vacant post just received
Elsmere much taken by surprise felt at first as it was natural for an oversensitive overscrupulous man to feel His enemy had been given into his hand and instead of victory he could only realise that he had brought a man to ruin
He has a wife and children he said quickly looking at the squire
Of course I have pensioned him replied the squire impatiently otherwise I imagine he would be hanging round our necks to the end of the chapter
There was something in the careless indifference of the tone which sent a shiver through Elsmere After all this man had served the squire for fifteen years and it was not Mr Wendover who had much to complain of
No one with a conscience could have held out a finger to keep Henslowe in his post But though Elsmere took the letters and promised to give them his best attention as soon as he got home he made himself irrationally miserable over the matter It was not his fault that from the moment of his arrival in the parish Henslowe had made him the target of a vulgar and embittered hostility and so far as he had struck out in return it had been for the protection of persecuted and defenceless creatures But all the same he could not get the thought of the mans collapse and humiliation out of his mind How at his age was he to find other work and how was he to endure life at Murewell without his comfortable house his smart gig his easy command of spirits and the cringing of the farmers
Tormented by the sordid misery of the situation almost as though it had been his own Elsmere ran down impulsively in the evening to the agents house Could nothing be done to assure the man that he was not really his enemy and that anything the parsons influence and the parsons money could do to help him to a more decent life and work which offered fewer temptations and less power over human beings should be done
It need hardly be said that the visit was a complete failure Henslowe who was drinking hard no sooner heard Elsmeres voice in the little hall than he dashed open the door which separated them and in a paroxysm of drunken rage hurled at Elsmere all the venomous stuff he had been garnering up for months against some such occasion The vilest abuse the foulest charges—there was nothing that the maddened sot now fairly unmasked denied himself Elsmere pale and erect tried toPg 312 make himself heard In vain Henslowe was physically incapable of taking in a word
At last the agent beside himself made a rush his three untidy children who had been hanging openmouthed in the background set up a howl of terror and his Scotch wife more pinched and sour than ever who had been so far a gloomy spectator of the scene interposed
Have doon wi ye she said sullenly putting out a long bony arm in front of her husband or Ill just lock oop that brandy where yell naw find it if ye pull the house doon Now sir turning to Elsmere would ye jest be going Ye mean it weel I daur say but yeve doon yer wark and ye maun leave it
And she motioned him out not without a sombre dignity Elsmere went home crestfallen The enthusiast is a good deal too apt to underestimate the stubbornness of moral fact and these rebuffs have their stern uses for character
They intend to go on living here I am told Elsmere said as he wound up the story and as Henslowe is still churchwarden he may do us a world of mischief yet However I think that wife will keep him in order No doubt vengeance would be sweet to her as to him but she has a shrewd eye poor soul to the squires remittances It is a wretched business and I dont take a mans hate easily Catherine—though it may be a folly to say so
Catherine was irresponsive The Old Testament element in her found a lawful satisfaction in Henslowes fall and a wicked mans hatred according to her mattered only to himself The squires conduct on the other hand made her uneasily proud To her naturally it simply meant that he was falling under Roberts spell So much the better for him but——
CHAPTER XXIV
That same afternoon Robert started on a walk to a distant farm where one of his Sundayschool boys lay recovering from rheumatic fever The rector had his pocket full of articles—a storybook in one a puzzle map in the other—destined for Master Carters amusement On the way he was to pick up Mr Wendover at the park gates
It was a delicious April morning A soft west wind blew through leaf and grass—
Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air
The spring was stirring everywhere and Robert raced along feeling in every vein a life an ebullience akin to that of nature As he neared the place of meeting it occurred to him that the squire had been unusually busy lately unusually silent and absent too on their walks What was he always at work onPg 313 Robert had often inquired of him as to the nature of those piles of proof and manuscript with which his table was littered The squire had never given any but the most general answer and had always changed the subject There was an invincible personal reserve about him which through all his walks and talks with Elsmere had never as yet broken down He would talk of other men and other mens labours by the hour but not of his own Elsmere reflected on the fact mingling with the reflection a certain humorous scorn of his own constant openness and readiness to take counsel with the world
However his book isnt a mere excuse as Langhams is Elsmere inwardly remarked Langham in a certain sense plays even with learning Mr Wendover plays at nothing
By the way he had a letter from Langham in his pocket much more cheerful and human than usual Let him look through it again
Not a word of course of that National Gallery experience—a circumstance however which threw no light on it either way
I find myself a good deal reconciled to life by this migration of mine wrote Langham Now that my enforced duties to them are all done with my fellowcreatures seem to me much more decent fellows than before The great stir of London in which unless I please I have no part whatever attracts me more than I could have thought possible No one in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me I have cut away at one stroke lectures and Boards of Studies and tutors meetings and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford makebelieve and the creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has felt for years I go to concerts and theatres I look at the people in the streets I even begin to take an outsiders interest in social questions in the puny dykes which wellmeaning people are trying to raise all round us against the encroaching devastating labourtroubles of the future By dint of running away from life I may end by cutting a much more passable figure in it than before Be consoled my dear Elsmere reconsider your remonstrances
There under the great cedar by the gate stood Mr Wendover Illumined as he was by the spring sunshine he struck Elsmere as looking unusually shrunken and old And yet under the look of physical exhaustion there was a new serenity almost a peacefulness of expression which gave the whole man a different aspect
Dont take me far he said abruptly as they started I have not got the energy for it I have been overworking and must go away
I have been sure of it for some time said Elsmere warmly You ought to have a long rest But maynt I know Mr Wendover before you take it what this great task is you have been toiling at Remember you have never told me a word of it
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And Elsmeres smile had in it a touch of most friendly reproach Fatigue had left the scholar relaxed comparatively defenceless His sunk and wrinkled eyes lit up with a smile faint indeed but of unwonted softness
A task indeed he said with a sigh the task of a lifetime Today I finished the second third of it Probably before the last section is begun some interloping German will have stepped down before me it is the way of the race But for the moment there is the satisfaction of having come to an end of some sort—a natural halt at any rate
Elsmeres eyes were still interrogative Oh well said the squire hastily it is a book I planned just after I took my doctors degree at Berlin It struck me then as the great want of modern scholarship It is a History of Evidence or rather more strictly A History of Testimony
Robert started The library flashed into his mind and Langhams figure in the long gray coat sitting on the stool
A great subject he said slowly a magnificent subject How have you conceived it I wonder
Simply from the standpoint of evolution of development The philosophical value of the subject is enormous You must have considered it of course every historian must But few people have any idea in detail of the amount of light which the history of human witness in the world systematically carried through throws on the history of the human mind that is to say on the history of ideas
The squire paused his keen scrutinising look dwelling on the face beside him as though to judge whether he were understood
Oh true cried Elsmere most true Now I know what vague want it is that has been haunting me for months——
He stopped short his look aglow with all the young thinkers ardour fixed on the squire
The squire received the outburst in silence—a somewhat ambiguous silence
But go on said Elsmere please go on
Well you remember said the squire slowly that when Tractarianism began I was for a time one of Newmans victims Then when Newman departed I went over body and bones to the Liberal reaction which followed his going In the first ardour of what seemed to me a release from slavery I migrated to Berlin in search of knowledge which there was no getting in England and there with the taste of a dozen aimless theological controversies still in my mouth this idea first took hold of me It was simply this—Could one through an exhaustive examination of human records helped by modern physiological and mental science get at the conditions physical and mental which govern the greater or lesser correspondence between human witness and the fact it reports
A giants task cried Robert hardly conceivable
The squire smiled slightly—the smile of a man who looksPg 315 back with indulgent halfmelancholy satire on the rash ambitions of his youth
Naturally he resumed I soon saw I must restrict myself to European testimony and that only up to the Renaissance To do that of course I had to dig into the East to learn several Oriental languages—Sanskrit among them Hebrew I already knew Then when I had got my languages I began to work steadily through the whole mass of existing records sifting and comparing It is thirty years since I started Fifteen years ago I finished the section dealing with classical antiquity—with India Persia Egypt and Judæa Today I have put the last strokes to a History of Testimony from the Christian era down to the sixth century—from Livy to Gregory of Tours from Augustus to Justinian
Elsmere turned to him with wonder with a movement of irrepressible homage Thirty years of unbroken solitary labour for one end one cause In our hurried fragmentary life a purpose of this tenacity this power of realising itself strikes the imagination
And your two books
Were a mere interlude replied the squire briefly After the completion of the first part of my work there were certain deposits left in me which it was a relief to get rid of especially in connection with my renewed impressions of England he added drily
Elsmere was silent thinking this then was the explanation of the squires minute and exhaustive knowledge of the early Christian centuries a knowledge into which—apart from certain forbidden topics—he had himself dipped so freely Suddenly as he mused there awoke in the young man a new hunger a new unmanageable impulse towards frankness of speech All his nascent intellectual powers were alive and clamorous For the moment his past reticences and timidities looked to him absurd The mind rebelled against the barriers it had been rearing against itself It rushed on to sweep them away crying out that all this shrinking from free discussion had been at bottom a mere treason to faith
Naturally Mr Wendover he said at last and his tone had a halfdefiant halfnervous energy you have given your best attention all these years to the Christian problems
Naturally said the squire drily Then as his companion still seemed to wait keenly expectant he resumed with something cynical in the smile which accompanied the words—
But I have no wish to infringe our convention
A convention was it replied Elsmere flushing I think I only wanted to make my own position clear and prevent misunderstanding But it is impossible that I should be indifferent to the results of thirty years such work as you can give to so great a subject
The squire drew himself up a little under his cloak andPg 316 seemed to consider His tired eyes fixed on the spring lane before them saw in reality only the long retrospects of the past Then a light broke in them transformed them—a light of battle He turned to the man beside him and his sharp look swept over him from head to foot Well if he would have it let him have it He had been contemptuously content so far to let the subject be But Mr Wendover in spite of his philosophy had never been proof all his life against an anticlerical instinct worthy almost of a Paris municipal councillor In spite of his fatigue there woke in him a kind of cruel whimsical pleasure at the notion of speaking once for all what he conceived to be the whole bare truth to this clever attractive dreamer to the young fellow who thought he could condescend to science from the standpoint of the Christian miracles
Results he said interrogatively Well as you will understand it is tolerably difficult to summarise such a mass at a moments notice But I can give you the lines of my last volumes if it would interest you to hear them
That walk prolonged itself far beyond Mr Wendovers original intention There was something in the situation in Elsmeres comments or arguments or silences which after a while banished the scholars sense of exhaustion and made him oblivious of the country distances No man feels anothers soul quivering and struggling in his grasp without excitement let his nerve and his selfrestraint be what they may
As for Elsmere that hour and a half little as he realised it at the time represented the turningpoint of life He listened he suggested he put in an acute remark here an argument there such as the squire had often difficulty in meeting Every now and then the inner protest of an attacked faith would break through in words so full of poignancy in imagery so dramatic that the squires closelyknit sentences would be for the moment wholly disarranged On the whole he proved himself no mean guardian of all that was most sacred to himself and to Catherine and the squires intellectual respect for him rose considerably
All the same by the end of their conversation that first period of happy unclouded youth we have been considering was over for poor Elsmere In obedience to certain inevitable laws and instincts of the mind, he had been for months tempting his fate inviting catastrophe None the less did the first sure approaches of that catastrophe fill him with a restless resistance which was in itself anguish
As to the squires talk it was simply the outpouring of one of the richest most sceptical and most highlytrained of minds on the subject of Christian origins At no previous period of his life would it have greatly affected Elsmere But now at every step the ideas impressions arguments bred in him by his months of historical work and ordinary converse with the squire rushed in as they had done once before toPg 317 cripple resistance to check an emerging answer to justify Mr Wendover
We may quote a few fragmentary utterances taken almost at random from the long wrestle of the two men for the sake of indicating the main lines of a bitter afterstruggle
Testimony like every other human product has developed Mans power of apprehending and recording what he sees and hears has grown from less to more from weaker to stronger like any other of his faculties just as the reasoning powers of the cavedweller have developed into the reasoning powers of a Kant What one wants is the ordered proof of this and it can be got from history and experience
To plunge into the Christian period without having first cleared the mind as to what is meant in history and literature by the critical method which in history may be defined as the science of what is credible and in literature as the science of what is rational is to invite fiasco The theologian in such a state sees no obstacle to accepting an arbitrary list of documents with all the strange stuff they may contain and declaring them to be sound historical material while he applies to all the strange stuff of a similar kind surrounding them the most rigorous principles of modern science Or he has to make believe that the reasoning processes exhibited in the speeches of the Acts in certain passages of St Pauls Epistles or in the Old Testament quotations in the Gospels have a validity for the mind of the nineteenth century when in truth they are the imperfect halfchildish products of the mind of the first century of quite insignificant or indirect value to the historian of fact of enormous value to the historian of testimony and its varieties
Suppose for instance before I begin to deal with the Christian story and the earliest Christian development I try to make out beforehand what are the moulds the channels into which the testimony of the time must run I look for these moulds of course in the dominant ideas the intellectual preconceptions and preoccupations existing when the period begins
In the first place I shall find present in the age which saw the birth of Christianity as in so many other ages a universal preconception in favour of miracle—that is to say of deviations from the common norm of experience governing the work of all men of all schools Very well allow for it then Read the testimony of the period in the light of it Be prepared for the inevitable differences between it and the testimony of your own day The witness of the time is not true nor in the strict sense false It is merely incompetent halftrained prescientific but all through perfectly natural The wonder wouldPg 318 have been to have had a life of Christ without miracles The air teems with them The East is full of Messiahs Even a Tacitus is superstitious Even a Vespasian works miracles Even a Nero cannot die but fifty years after his death is still looked for as the inaugurator of a millennium of horror The Resurrection is partly invented partly imagined partly ideally true—in any case wholly intelligible and natural as a product of the age when once you have the key of that age
In the next place look for the preconceptions that have a definite historical origin those for instance flowing from the preChristian apocalyptic literature of the Jews taking the Maccabean legend of Daniel as the centre of inquiry—those flowing from Alexandrian Judaism and the school of Philo—those flowing from the Palestinian schools of exegesis Examine your synoptic gospels your Gospel of St John your Apocalypse in the light of these You have no other chance of understanding them But so examined they fall into place become explicable and rational such material as science can make full use of The doctrine of the Divinity of Christ Christian eschatology and Christian views of prophecy will also have found their place in a sound historical scheme
It is discreditable now for the man of intelligence to refuse to read his Livy in the light of his Mommsen My object has been to help in making it discreditable to him to refuse to read his Christian documents in the light of a trained scientific criticism We shall have made some positive advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly capable of dealing sanely with legend in one connection and in another will insist on confounding it with history proper cannot do so any longer without losing caste without falling ipso facto out of court with men of education It is enough for a man of letters if he has helped ever so little in the final staking out of the boundaries between reason and unreason
And so on These are mere ragged gleanings from an ample store The discussion in reality ranged over the whole field of history plunged into philosophy and into the subtlest problems of mind At the end of it after he had been conscious for many bitter moments of that same constriction of heart which had overtaken him once before at Mr Wendovers hands the religious passion in Elsmere once more rose with sudden stubborn energy against the iron negations pressed upon it
I will not fight you any more Mr Wendover he said with his moved flashing look I am perfectly conscious that my own mental experience of the last two years has made it necessary to reexamine some of these intellectual foundations of faith But as to the faith itself that is its own witness It does not depend after all upon anything external but upon the living voice of the Eternal in the soul of man
Pg 319
Involuntarily his pace quickened The whole man was gathered into one great useless pitiful defiance and the outer world was forgotten The squire kept up with difficulty a while a faint glimmer of sarcasm playing now and then round the straight thinlipped mouth Then suddenly he stopped
No let it be Forget me and my book Elsmere Everything can be got out of in this world By the way we seem to have reached the ends of the earth Those are the new Mile End cottages I believe With your leave Ill sit down in one of them and send to the Hall for the carriage
Elsmeres repentant attention was drawn at once to his companion
I am a selfish idiot he said hotly to have led you into overwalking and overtalking like this
The squire made some short reply and instantly turned the matter off The momentary softness which had marked his meeting with Elsmere had entirely vanished leaving only the Mr Wendover of every day who was merely made awkward and unapproachable by the slightest touch of personal sympathy No living being certainly not his foolish little sister had any right to take care of the squire And as the signs of age became more apparent this one fact had often worked powerfully on the sympathies of Elsmeres chivalrous youth though as yet he had been no more capable than any one else of breaking through the squires haughty reserve
As they turned down the newlyworn track to the cottages whereof the weekly progress had been for some time the delight of Elsmeres heart they met old Meyrick in his ponycarriage He stopped his shambling steed at sight of the pair The bleared spectacled eyes lit up the prim mouth broke into a smile which matched the April sun
Well Squire well Mr Elsmere are you going to have a look at those places Never saw such palaces I only hope I may end my days in anything so good Will you give me a lease Squire
Mr Wendovers deep eyes took a momentary survey half indulgent half contemptuous of the naïve awkwardlooking old creature in the ponycarriage Then without troubling to find an answer he went his way
Robert stayed chatting a moment or two knowing perfectly well what Meyricks gay garrulity meant A sharp and bitter sense of the ironies of life swept across him The squire humanised influenced by him—he knew that was the image in Meyricks mind he remembered with a quiet scorn its presence in his own And never never had he felt his own weakness and the strength of that grim personality so much as at that instant
That evening Catherine noticed an unusual silence and depression in Robert She did her best to cheer it away to get at the cause of it In vain At last with her usual wisePg 320 tenderness she left him alone conscious herself as she closed the study door behind her of a momentary dreariness of soul coming she knew not whence and only dispersed by the instinctive upward leap of prayer
Robert was no sooner alone than he put down his pipe and sat brooding over the fire All the long debate of the afternoon began to fight itself out again in the shrinking mind Suddenly in his restless pain a thought occurred to him He had been much struck in the squires conversation by certain allusions to arguments drawn from the Book of Daniel It was not a subject with which Robert had any great familiarity He remembered his Pusey dimly certain Divinity lectures an article of Westcotts
He raised his hand quickly and took down the monograph on The Use of the Old Testament in the New which the squire had sent him in the earliest days of their acquaintance A secret dread and repugnance had held him from it till now Curiously enough it was not he but Catherine as we shall see who had opened it first Now however he got it down and turned to the section on Daniel
It was a change of conviction on the subject of the date and authorship of this strange product of Jewish patriotism in the second century before Christ that drove M Renan out of the Church of Rome For the Catholic Church to confess he says in his Souvenirs that Daniel is an apocryphal book of the time of the Maccabees would be to confess that she had made a mistake if she had made this mistake she may have made others she is no longer divinely inspired
The Protestant who is in truth more bound to the Book of Daniel than M Renan has various ways of getting over the difficulties raised against the supposed authorship of the book by modern criticism Robert found all these ways enumerated in the brilliant and vigorous pages of the book before him
In the first place like the orthodox SaintSulpicien the Protestant meets the critic with a flat non possumus Your arguments are useless and irrelevant he says in effect However plausible may be your objections the Book of Daniel is what it professes to be because our Lord quoted it in such a manner as to distinctly recognise its authority The AllTrue and AllKnowing cannot have made a mistake nor can He have expressly led His disciples to regard as genuine and Divine prophecies which were in truth the inventions of an ingenious romancer
But the liberal Anglican—the man that is to say whose logical sense is inferior to his sense of literary probabilities—proceeds quite differently
Your arguments are perfectly just he says to the critic the book is a patriotic fraud of no value except to the historian of literature But how do you know that our Lord quoted it as true in the strict sense In fact He quoted it as literature asPg 321 a Greek might have quoted Homer as an Englishman might quote Shakespeare
And many a harassed Churchman takes refuge forthwith in the new explanation It is very difficult no doubt to make the passages in the Gospels agree with it but at the bottom of his mind there is a saving silent scorn for the old theories of inspiration He admits to himself that probably Christ was not correctly reported in the matter
Then appears the critic having no interests to serve no parti pris to defend and states the matter calmly dispassionately as it appears to him No reasonable man says the ablest German exponent of the Book of Daniel can doubt—that this most interesting piece of writing belongs to the year 169 or 170 BC It was written to stir up the courage and patriotism of the Jews weighed down by the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes It had enormous vogue It inaugurated a new Apocalyptic literature And clearly the youth of Jesus of Nazareth was vitally influenced by it It entered into his thought it helped to shape his career
But Elsmere did not trouble himself much with the critic as at any rate he was reported by the author of the book before him Long before the critical case was reached he had flung the book heavily from him The mind accomplished its further task without help from outside In the stillness of the night there rose up weirdly before him a whole new mental picture—effacing pushing out innumerable older images of thought It was the image of a purely human Christ—a purely human explicable yet always wonderful Christianity It broke his heart but the spell of it was like some dreamcountry wherein we see all the familiar objects of life in new relations and perspectives He gazed upon it fascinated the wailing underneath checked a while by the strange beauty and order of the emerging spectacle Only a little while Then with a groan Elsmere looked up his eyes worn his lips white and set
I must face it—I must face it through God help me
A slight sound overhead in Catherines room sent a sudden spasm of feeling through the young face He threw himself down hiding from his own foresight of what was to be
My darling my darling But she shall know nothing of it—yet
CHAPTER XXV
And he did face it through
The next three months were the bitterest months of Elsmeres life They were marked by anguished mental struggle by a consciousness of painful separation from the soul nearest to his own and by a constantly increasing sense of oppression ofPg 322 closing avenues and narrowing alternatives which for weeks together seemed to hold the mind in a grip whence there was no escape
That struggle was not hurried and embittered by the bodily presence of the squire Mr Wendover went off to Italy a few days after the conversation we have described But though he was not present in the flesh the great book of his life was in Elsmeres hands he had formally invited Elsmeres remarks upon it and the air of Murewell seemed still echoing with his sentences still astir with his thoughts That curious instinct of pursuit that avid imperious wish to crush an irritating resistance which his last walk with Elsmere had first awakened in him with any strength persisted He wrote to Robert from abroad and the proud fastidious scholar had never taken more pains with anything than with those letters
Robert might have stopped them might have cast the whole matter from him with one resolute effort In other relations he had will enough and to spare
Was it an unexpected weakness of fibre that made it impossible—that had placed him in this way at the squires disposal Half the world would answer yes Might not the other half plead that in every generation there is a minority of these mobile impressionable defenceless natures who are ultimately at the mercy of experience at the mercy of thought at the mercy shall we say of truth and that in fact it is from this minority that all human advance comes
During these three miserable months it cannot be said—poor Elsmere—that he attempted any systematic study of Christian evidence His mind was too much torn his heart too sore He pounced feverishly on one test point after another on the Pentateuch the Prophets the relation of the New Testament to the thoughts and beliefs of its time the Gospel of St John the evidence as to the Resurrection the intellectual and moral conditions surrounding the formation of the Canon His mind swayed hither and thither driven from each restingplace in turn by the pressure of some new difficulty And—let it be said again—all through the only constant element in the whole dismal process was his trained historical sense If he had gone through this conflict at Oxford for instance he would have come out of it unscathed for he would simply have remained throughout it ignorant of the true problems at issue As it was the keen instrument he had sharpened so laboriously on indifferent material now ploughed its agonising way bit by bit into the most intimate recesses of thought and faith
Much of the actual struggle he was able to keep from Catherines view as he had vowed to himself to keep it For after the squires departure Mrs Darcy too went joyously up to London to flutter a while through the golden alleys of Mayfair and Elsmere was left once more in undisturbed possession of the Murewell library There for a while on every day—Pg 323oh pitiful relief—he could hide himself from the eyes he loved
But after all married love allows of nothing but the shallowest concealments Catherine had already had one or two alarms Once in Roberts study among a tumbled mass of books he had pulled out in search of something missing and which she was putting in order she had come across that very book on the Prophecies which at a critical moment had so deeply affected Elsmere It lay open and Catherine was caught by the heading of a section The Messianic Idea
She began to read mechanically at first and read about a page That page so shocked a mind accustomed to a purely traditional and mystical interpretation of the Bible that the book dropped abruptly from her hand and she stood a moment by her husbands table her fine face pale and frowning
She noticed with bitterness Mr Wendovers name on the titlepage Was it right for Robert to have such books Was it wise was it prudent for the Christian to measure himself against such antagonism as this She wrestled painfully with the question Oh but I cant understand she said to herself with an almost agonised energy It is I who am timid faithless He must—he must—know what they say he must have gone through the dark places if he is to carry others through them
So she stilled and trampled on the inward protest She yearned to speak of it to Robert but something withheld her In her passionate wifely trust she could not bear to seem to question the use he made of his time and thought and a delicate moral scruple warned her she might easily allow her dislike of the Wendover friendship to lead her into exaggeration and injustice
But the stab of that moment recurred—dealt now by one slight incident now by another And after the squires departure Catherine suddenly realised that the whole atmosphere of their homelife was changed
Robert was giving himself to his people with a more scrupulous energy than ever Never had she seen him so pitiful so full of heart for every human creature His sermons with their constant imaginative dwelling on the earthly life of Jesus affected her now with a poignancy a pathos which were almost unbearable And his tenderness to her was beyond words But with that tenderness there was constantly mixed a note of remorse a painful selfdepreciation which she could hardly notice in speech but which every now and then wrung her heart And in his parish work he often showed a depression an irritability entirely new to her He who had always the happiest power of forgetting tomorrow all the rubs of today seemed now quite incapable of saving himself and his cheerfulness in the old ways nay had developed a capacity for sheer worry she had never seen in him before And meanwhile all the oldPg 324 gossips of the place spoke their mind freely to Catherine on the subject of the rectors looks coupling their remarks with a variety of prescriptions out of which Robert did sometimes manage to get one of his old laughs His sleeplessness too which had always been a constitutional tendency had become now so constant and wearing that Catherine began to feel a nervous hatred of his bookwork and of those long mornings at the Hall a passionate wish to put an end to it and carry him away for a holiday
But he would not hear of the holiday and he could hardly bear any talk of himself And Catherine had been brought up in a school of feeling which bade love be very scrupulous very delicate and which recognised in the strongest way the right of every human soul to its own privacy its own reserves That something definite troubled him she was certain What it was he clearly avoided telling her and she could not hurt him by impatience
He would tell her soon—when it was right—she cried pitifully to herself Meantime both suffered she not knowing why clinging to each other the while more passionately than ever
One night however coming down in her dressinggown into the study in search of a Christian Year she had left behind her she found Robert with papers strewn before him his arms on the table and his head laid down upon them He looked up as she came in and the expression of his eyes drew her to him irresistibly
Were you asleep Robert Do come to bed
He sat up and with a pathetic gesture held out his arms to her She came on to his knee putting her white arms round his neck while he leant his head against her breast
Are you tired with all your walking today she said presently a pang at her heart
I am tired he said but not with walking
Does your book worry you You shouldnt work so hard Robert—you shouldnt
He started
Dont talk of it Dont let us talk or think at all only feel
And he tightened his arms round her happy once more for a moment in this environment of a perfect love There was silence for a few moments Catherine feeling more and more disturbed and anxious
Think of your mountains he said presently his eyes still pressed against her of High Fell and the moonlight and the house where Mary Backhouse died Oh Catherine I see you still and shall always see you as I saw you then my angel of healing and of grace
I too have been thinking of her tonight said Catherine softly and of the walk to Shanmoor This evening in thePg 325 garden it seemed to me as though there were Westmoreland scents in the air I was haunted by a vision of bracken and rocks and sheep browsing up the fell slopes
Oh for a breath of the wind on High Fell cried Robert—it was so new to her the dear voice with this accent in it of yearning depression I want more of the spirit of the mountains their serenity their strength Say me that Duddon sonnet you used to say to me there as you said it to me that last Sunday before our wedding when we walked up the Shanmoor road to say goodbye to that blessed spot Oh how I sit and think of it sometimes when life seems to be going crookedly that rock on the fellside where I found you and caught you and snared you my dove for ever
And Catherine whose mere voice was as balm to this man of many impulses repeated to him softly in the midnight silence those noble lines in which Wordsworth has expressed with the reserve and yet the strength of the great poet the loftiest yearning of the purest hearts—
Enough if something from our hand have power
To live and move and serve the future hour
And if as towards the silent tomb we go
Through love through hope and faiths transcendent dower
We feel that we are greater than we know
He has divined it all said Robert drawing a long breath when she stopped which seemed to relax the fibres of the inner man the fever and the fret of human thought the sense of littleness of impotence of evanescence—and he has soothed it all
Oh not all not all cried Catherine her look kindling and her rare passion breaking through how little in comparison
For her thoughts were with him of whom it was said He needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man for he knew what was in man But Roberts only response was silence and a kind of quivering sigh
Robert she cried pressing her cheek against his temple tell me my dear dear husband what it is troubles you Something does—I am certain—certain
Catherine—wife—beloved he said to her after another pause in a tone of strange tension she never forgot generations of men and women have known what it is to be led spiritually into the desert into that outer wilderness where even the Lord was tempted What am I that I should claim to escape it And you cannot come through it with me my darling—no not even you It is loneliness—it is solitariness itself—— and he shuddered But pray for me—pray that He may be with me and that at the end there may be light
He pressed her to him convulsively then gently released her His solemn eyes fixed upon her as she stood there beside himPg 326 seemed to forbid her to say a word more She stooped she laid her lips to his it was a meeting of soul with soul then she went softly out breaking the quiet of the house by a stifled sob as she passed upstairs
Oh but at last she thought she understood him She had not passed her girlhood side by side with a man of delicate fibre of melancholy and scrupulous temperament and within hearing of all the natural interests of a deeply religious mind religious biography religious psychology and—within certain sharply defined limits—religious speculation without being brought face to face with the black possibilities of doubts and difficulties as barriers in the Christian path Has not almost every Christian of illustrious excellence been tried and humbled by them Catherine looking back upon her own youth could remember certain crises of religious melancholy during which she had often dropped off to sleep at night on a pillow wet with tears They had passed away quickly and for ever But she went back to them now straining her eyes through the darkness of her own past recalling her fathers days of spiritual depression and the few difficult words she had sometimes heard from him as to those bitter times of religious dryness and hopelessness by which God chastens from time to time His most faithful and heroic souls A halfcontempt awoke in her for the unclouded serenity and confidence of her own inner life If her own spiritual experience had gone deeper she told herself with the strangest selfblame she would have been able now to understand Robert better—to help him more
She thought as she lay awake after those painful moments in the study the tears welling up slowly in the darkness of many things that had puzzled her in the past She remembered the book she had seen on his table her thoughts travelled over his months of intercourse with the squire and the memory of Mr Newcomes attitude towards the man whom he conceived to be his Lords adversary as contrasted with Roberts filled her with a shrinking pain she dared not analyse
Still all through her feeling towards her husband was in the main akin to that of the English civilian at home towards English soldiers abroad suffering and dying that England may be great She had sheltered herself all her life from those deadly forces of unbelief which exist in English society by a steady refusal to know what however any educated university man must perforce know But such a course of action was impossible for Robert He had been forced into the open into the full tide of the Lords battle The chances of that battle are many and the more courage the more risk of wounds and pain But the great Captain knows—the great Captain does not forget His own
For never never had she the smallest doubt as to the issue of this sudden crisis in her husbands consciousness even when she came nearest to apprehending its nature As well mightPg 327 she doubt the return of daylight as dream of any permanent eclipse descending upon the faith which had shone through every detail of Roberts ardent impulsive life with all its struggles all its failings all its beauty since she had known him first The dread did not even occur to her In her agony of pity and reverence she thought of him as passing through a trial which is specially the believers trial—the chastening by which God proves the soul He loves Let her only love and trust in patience
So that day by day as Roberts depression still continued Catherine surrounded him with the tenderest and wisest affection Her quiet common sense made itself heard forbidding her to make too much of the change in him which might after all she thought be partly explained by the mere physical results of his long strain of body and mind during the Mile End epidemic And for the rest she would not argue she would not inquire She only prayed that she might so lead the Christian life beside him that the Lords tenderness the Lords consolation might shine upon him through her It had never been her wont to speak to him much about his own influence his own effect in the parish To the austerer Christian considerations of this kind are forbidden It is not I but Christ that worketh in me But now whenever she came across any striking trace of his power over the weak or the impure the sick or the sad she would in some way make it known to him offering it to him in her delicate tenderness as though it were a gift that the Father had laid in her hand for him—a token that the Master was still indeed with His servant and that all was fundamentally well
And so much perhaps the contact with his wifes faith the power of her love wrought in Robert that during these weeks and months he also never lost his own certainty of emergence from the shadow which had overtaken him And indeed driven on from day to day as he was by an imperious intellectual thirst which would be satisfied the religion of the heart the imaginative emotional habit of years that incessant drama which the soul enacts with the Divine Powers to which it feels itself committed lived and persisted through it all Feeling was untouched The heart was still passionately on the side of all its old loves and adorations still blindly trustful that in the end by some compromise as yet unseen they would be restored to it intact
Some time towards the end of July Robert was coming home from the Hall before lunch tired and worn as the morning always left him and meditating some fresh sheets of the squires proofs which had been in his hands that morning On the road crossing that to the rectory he suddenly saw Reginald Newcome thinner and whiter than ever striding along as fast as cassock and cloak would let him his eyes on the ground and his wideawake drawn over them He and Elsmere had scarcely met forPg 328 months and Robert had lately made up his mind that Newcome was distinctly less friendly and wished to show it
Elsmere had touched his arm before Newcome had perceived any one near him Then he drew back with a start
Elsmere you here I had an idea you were away for a holiday
Oh dear no said Robert smiling I may get away in September perhaps—not till then
Mr Wendover at home said the other his eyes turning to the Hall of which the chimneys were just visible from where they stood
No he is abroad
You and he have made friends I understand said the other abruptly his eagle look returning to Elsmere I hear of you as always together
We have made friends and we walk a great deal when the squire is here said Robert meeting Newcomes harshness of tone with a bright dignity Mr Wendover has even been doing something for us in the village You should come and see the new Institute The roof is on and we shall open it in August or September The best building of the kind in the country by far and Mr Wendovers gift
I suppose you use the library a great deal said Newcome paying no attention to these remarks and still eyeing his companion closely
A great deal
Robert had at that moment under his arm a German treatise on the history of the Logos doctrine which afterwards looking back on the little scene he thought it probable Newcome recognised They turned towards the rectory together Newcome still asking abrupt questions as to the squire the length of time he was to be away Elsmeres work parochial and literary during the past six months the numbers of his Sunday congregation of his communicants etc Elsmere bore his catechism with perfect temper though Newcomes manner had in it a strange and almost judicial imperativeness
Elsmere said his questioner presently after a pause I am going to have a retreat for priests at the Clergy House next month Father H—— mentioning a famous High Churchman will conduct it You would do me a special favour—and suddenly the face softened and shone with all its old magnetism on Elsmere—if you would come I believe you would find nothing to dislike in it or in our rule which is a most simple one
Robert smiled and laid his hand on the others arm
No Newcome no I am in no mood for H——
The High Churchman looked at him with a quick and painful anxiety visible in the stern eyes
Will you tell me what that means
It means said Robert clasping his hands tightly behind him his pace slackening a little to meet that of Newcome—itPg 329 means that if you will give me your prayers Newcome your companionship sometimes your pity always I will thank you from the bottom of my heart But I am in a state just now when I must fight my battles for myself and in Gods sight only
It was the first burst of confidence which had passed his lips to any one but Catherine
Newcome stood still a tremor of strong emotion running through the emaciated face
You are in trouble Elsmere I felt it I knew it when I first saw you
Yes I am in trouble said Robert quietly
Opinions
Opinions I suppose—or facts said Robert his arms dropping wearily beside him Have you ever known what it is to be troubled in mind I wonder Newcome
And he looked at his companion with a sudden pitiful curiosity
A kind of flash passed over Mr Newcomes face
Have I ever known he repeated vaguely and then he drew his thin hand the hand of the ascetic and the mystic hastily across his eyes and was silent—his lips moving his gaze on the ground his whole aspect that of a man wrought out of himself by a sudden passion of memory
Robert watched him with surprise and was just speaking when Mr Newcome looked up every drawn attenuated feature working painfully
Did you never ask yourself Elsmere he said slowly what it was drove me from the bar and journalism to the East End Do you think I dont know and his voice rose his eyes flamed what black devil it is that is gnawing at your heart now Why man I have been through darker gulfs of hell than you have ever sounded Many a night I have felt myself mad—mad of doubt—a castaway on a shoreless sea doubting not only God or Christ but myself the soul the very existence of good I found only one way out of it and you will find only one way
The lithe hand caught Roberts arm impetuously—the voice with its accent of fierce conviction was at his ear
Trample on yourself Pray down the demon fast scourge kill the body that the soul may live What are we miserable worms that we should defy the Most High that we should set our wretched faculties against His Omnipotence Submit—submit—humble yourself my brother Fling away the freedom which is your ruin There is no freedom for man Either a slave to Christ or a slave to his own lusts—there is no other choice Go away exchange your work here for a time for work in London You have too much leisure here Satan has too much opportunity I foresaw it—I foresaw it when you and I first met I felt I had a message for you and here I deliver it In the Lords name I bid you fly I bid you yield in time Better to be the Lords captive than the Lords betrayer
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The wasted form was drawn up to its full height the arm was outstretched the long cloak fell back from it in long folds—voice and eye were majesty itself Robert had a tremor of responsive passion How easy it sounded how tempting to cut the knot to mutilate and starve the rebellious intellect which would assert itself against the souls purest instincts Newcome had done it—why not he
And then suddenly as he stood gazing at his companion the spring sun and murmur all about them another face another life another message flashed on his inmost sense—the face and life of Henry Grey Words torn from their context but full for him of intensest meaning passed rapidly through his mind God is not wisely trusted when declared unintelligible Such honour rooted in dishonour stands such faith unfaithful makes us falsely true God is for ever reason and His communication His revelation is reason
He turned away with a slight sad shake of the head The spell was broken Mr Newcomes arm dropped and he moved sombrely on beside Robert—the hand which held a little book of Hours against his cloak trembling slightly
At the rectory gate he stopped
Goodbye—I must go home
You wont come in—No no Newcome believe me I am no rash careless egotist risking wantonly the most precious things in life But the call is on me and I must follow it All life is Gods and all thought—not only a fraction of it He cannot let me wander very far
But the cold fingers he held so warmly dropped from his and Newcome turned away
A week afterwards or thereabouts Robert had in some sense followed Newcomes counsel Admonished perhaps by sheer physical weakness as much as by anything else he had for the moment laid down his arms he had yielded to an invading feebleness of the will which refused as it were to carry on the struggle any longer at such a lifedestroying pitch of intensity The intellectual oppression of itself brought about wild reaction and recoil and a passionate appeal to that inward witness of the soul which holds its own long after the reason has practically ceased to struggle
It came about in this way One morning he stood reading in the window of the library the last of the squires letters It contained a short but masterly analysis of the mental habits and idiosyncrasies of St Paul à propos of St Pauls witness to the Resurrection Every now and then as Elsmere turned the pages the orthodox protest would assert itself the orthodox arguments make themselves felt as though in mechanical involuntary protest But their force and vitality was gone Between the Paul of Anglican theology and the fiery fallible man of genius—so weak logically so strong in poetry in rhetoric in moral passion whose portrait has been drawn for us by a freePg 331 and temperate criticism—the rector knew in a sort of dull way that his choice was made The one picture carried reason and imagination with it the other contented neither
But as he put down the letter something seemed to snap within him Some chord of physical endurance gave way For five months he had been living intellectually at a speed no man maintains with impunity and this letter of the squires with its imperious demands upon the tired irritable brain was the last straw
He sank down on the oriel seat the letter dropping from his hands Outside the little garden now a mass of red and pink roses the hill and the distant stretches of park were wrapped in a thick sultry mist through which a dim faroff sunlight struggled on to the library floor and lay in ghostly patches on the polished boards and lower ranges of books
The simplest religious thoughts began to flow over him—the simplest childish words of prayer were on his lips He felt himself delivered he knew not how or why
He rose deliberately laid the squires letter among his other papers and tied them up carefully then he took up the books which lay piled on the squires writingtable all those volumes of German French and English criticism liberal or apologetic which he had been accumulating round him day by day with a feverish toilsome impartiality and began rapidly and methodically to put them back in their places on the shelves
I have done too much thinking too much reading he was saying to himself as he went through his task Now let it be the turn of something else
And still as he handled the books it was as though Catherines figure glided backwards and forwards beside him across the smooth floor as though her hand were on his arm her eyes shining into his Ah—he knew well what it was had made the sharpest sting of this wrestle through which he had been passing It was not merely religious dread religious shame that terror of disloyalty to the Divine Images which have filled the souls inmost shrine since its first entry into consciousness such as every good man feels in a like strait This had been strong indeed but men are men and love is love Ay it was to the dark certainty of Catherines misery that every advance in knowledge and intellectual power had brought him nearer It was from that certainty that he now and for the last time recoiled It was too much It could not be borne
He walked home counting up the engagements of the next few weeks—the schooltreat two club fielddays a sermon in the county town the probable opening of the new Workmens Institute and so on Oh to be through them all and away away amid Alpine scents and silences He stood a moment beside the gray slowlymoving river half hidden beneath the rank flowergrowth the tansy and willowherb the luxuriant elder and trailing brambles of its August banks and thoughtPg 332 with hungry passion of the cleanswept Alpine pasture the firwoods and the tameless mountain streams In three weeks or less he and Catherine should be climbing the Jaman or the Dent du Midi And till then he would want all his time for men and women Books should hold him no more
Catherine only put her arms round his neck in silence when he told her The relief was too great for words He too held her close saying nothing But that night for the first time for weeks Elsmeres wife slept in peace and woke without dread of the day before her
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BOOK IV
CRISIS
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CHAPTER XXVI
The next fortnight was a time of truce Elsmere neither read nor reasoned He spent his days in the school in the village pottering about the Mile End cottages or the new Institute—sometimes fishing sometimes passing long summer hours on the commons with his club boys hunting the ponds for caddises newts and waterbeetles peering into the furzebushes for second broods or watching the sandmartins in the gravelpits and trudging home at night in the midst of an escort of enthusiasts all of them with pockets as full and miry as his own to deposit the treasures of the day in the clubroom Once more the rector though physically perhaps less ardent than of yore was the life of the party and a certain awe and strangeness which had developed in his boys minds towards him during the last few weeks passed away
It was curious that in these days he would neither sit nor walk alone if he could help it Catherine or a stray parishioner was almost always with him All the while vaguely in the depths of consciousness there was the knowledge that behind this piece of quiet water on which his life was now sailing there lay storm and darkness and that in front loomed fresh possibilities of tempest He knew in a way that it was a treacherous peace which had overtaken him And yet it was peace The pressure exerted by the will had temporarily given way and the deepest forces of the mans being had reasserted themselves He could feel and love and pray again and Catherine seeing the old glow in the eyes the old spring in the step made the whole of life one thankoffering
On the evening following that moment of reaction in the Murewell library Robert had written to the squire His letter had been practically a withdrawal from the correspondence
I find he wrote that I have been spending too much time and energy lately on these critical matters It seems to me that my work as a clergyman has suffered Nor can I deny that your book and your letters have been to me a source of great trouble of mind
My heart is where it was but my head is often confused Let controversy rest a while My wife says I want a holidayPg 336 I think so myself and we are off in three weeks not however I hope before we have welcomed you home again and got you to open the new Institute which is already dazzling the eyes of the village by its size and splendour and the white paint that Harris the builder has been lavishing upon it
Ten days later rather earlier than was expected the squire and Mrs Darcy were at home again Robert reentered the great house the morning after their arrival with a strange reluctance Its glow and magnificence the warm perfumed air of the hall brought back a sense of old oppressions and he walked down the passage to the library with a sinking heart There he found the squire busy as usual with one of those fresh cargoes of books which always accompanied him on any homeward journey He was more brown more wrinkled more shrunken more full of force of harsh epigram of grim anecdote than ever Robert sat on the edge of the table laughing over his stories of French Orientalists or Roman cardinals or modern Greek professors enjoying the impartial sarcasm which one of the greatest of savants was always ready to pour out upon his brethren of the craft
The squire however was never genial for a moment during the interview He did not mention his book nor Elsmeres letter But Elsmere suspected in him a good deal of suppressed irritability and as after a while he abruptly ceased to talk the visit grew difficult
The rector walked home feeling restless and depressed The mind had begun to work again It was only by a great effort that he could turn his thoughts from the squire and all that the squire had meant to him during the past year and so woo back to himself the shy bird Peace
Mr Wendover watched the door close behind him and then went back to his work with a gesture of impatience
Once a priest always a priest What a fool I was to forget it You think you make an impression on the mystic and at the bottom there is always something which defies you and common sense Two and two do not and shall not make four he said to himself in a mincing voice of angry sarcasm It would give me too much pain that they should Well and so I suppose what might have been a rational friendship will go by the board like everything else What can make the man shillyshally in this way He is convinced already as he knows—those later letters were conclusive His living perhaps and his work Not for the moneys sake—there never was a more incredibly disinterested person born But his work Well who is to hinder his work Will he be the first parson in the Church of England who looks after the poor and holds his tongue If you cant speak your mind it is something at any rate to possess one—ninetenths of the clergy being without the appendage But Elsmere—pshaw he will go muddling on to the end of the chapter
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The squire indeed was like a hunter whose prey escapes him at the very moment of capture and there grew on him a mocking aggressive mood which Elsmere often found hard to bear
One natural symptom of it was his renewed churlishness as to all local matters Elsmere one afternoon spent an hour in trying to persuade him to open the new Institute
What on earth do you want me for inquired Mr Wendover standing before the fire in the library the Medusa head peering over his shoulder You know perfectly well that all the gentry about here—I suppose you will have some of them—regard me as an old reprobate and the poor people I imagine as a kind of ogre To me it doesnt matter a twopenny damn—I apologise it was the Duke of Wellingtons favourite standard of value—but I cant see what good it can do either you or the village under the circumstances that I should stand on my head for the popular edification
Elsmere however merely stood his ground arguing and bantering till the squire grudgingly gave way This time after he departed Mr Wendover instead of going to his work still stood gloomily ruminating in front of the fire His frowning eyes wandered round the great room before him For the first time he was conscious that now as soon as the charm of Elsmeres presence was withdrawn his working hours were doubly solitary that his loneliness weighed upon him more and that it mattered to him appreciably whether that young man went or stayed The stirring of a new sensation however—unparalleled since the brief days when even Roger Wendover had his friends and his attractions like other men—was soon lost in renewed chafing at Elsmeres absurdities The squire had been at first perfectly content—so he told himself—to limit the field of their intercourse and would have been content to go on doing so But Elsmere himself had invited freedom of speech between them
I would have given him my best Mr Wendover reflected impatiently I could have handed on to him all I shall never use and he might use admirably And now we might as well be on the terms we were to begin with for all the good I get out of him or he out of me Clearly nothing but cowardice He cannot face the intellectual change and he must I suppose dread lest it should affect his work Good God what nonsense As if any one inquired what an English parson believed nowadays so long as he performs all the usual antics decently
And meanwhile it never occurred to the squire that Elsmere had a wife and a pious one Catherine had been dropped out of his calculation as to Elsmeres future at a very early stage
The following afternoon Robert coming home from a round found Catherine out and a note awaiting him from the Hall
Can you and Mrs Elsmere come in to tea wrote the squire Madame de Netteville is here and one or two others
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Robert grumbled a good deal looked for Catherine to devise an excuse for him could not find her and at last reluctantly set out again alone
He was tired and his mood was heavy As he trudged through the park he never once noticed the soft sunflooded distance the shining loops of the river the feeding deer or any of those natural witcheries to which eye and sense were generally so responsive The labourers going home the children—with aprons full of crabapples and lips dyed by the first blackberries—who passed him got but an absent smile or salute from the rector The interval of exaltation and recoil was over The ship of the mind was once more labouring in alien and dreary seas
He roused himself to remember that he had been curious to see Madame de Netteville She was an old friend of the squires the holder of a London salon much more exquisite and select than anything Lady Charlotte could show
She had the same thing in Paris before the war the squire explained Renan gave me a card to her An extraordinary woman No particular originality but one of the best persons to consult about ideas like Jouberts Madame de Beaumont I ever saw Receptiveness itself A beauty too or was one and a bit of a sphinx which adds to the attraction Mystery becomes a woman vastly One suspects her of adventures just enough to find her society doubly piquant
Vincent directed him to the upper terrace whither tea had been taken This terrace which was one of the features of Murewell occupied the top of the yewclothed hill on which the library looked out Evelyn himself had planned it Along its upper side ran one of the most beautiful of old walls broken by niches and statues tapestried with roses and honeysuckle and opening in the centre to reveal Evelyns darling conceit of all—a semicircular space holding a fountain and leading to a grotto The grotto had been scooped out of the hill it was peopled with dim figures of fauns and nymphs who showed white amid its moist greenery and in front a marble Silence drooped over the fountain which held gold and silver fish in a singularly clear water Outside ran the long stretch of level turf edged with a jewelled rim of flowers and as the hill fell steeply underneath the terrace was like a high green platform raised into air in order that a Wendover might see his domain which from thence lay for miles spread out before him
Here beside the fountain were gathered the squire Mrs Darcy Madame de Netteville and two unknown men One of them was introduced to Elsmere as Mr Spooner and recognised by him as a Fellow of the Royal Society a famous mathematician sceptic bon vivant and sayer of good things The other was a young Liberal Catholic the author of a remarkable collection of essays on mediæval subjects in which the squire treating the mans opinions of course as of no account hadPg 339 instantly recognised the note of the true scholar A pale small hectic creature possessed of that restless energy of mind which often goes with the heightened temperature of consumption
Robert took a seat by Madame de Netteville whose appearance was picturesqueness itself Her dress a skilful mixture of black and creamy yellow lay about her in folds as soft as carelessly effective as her manner Her plumed hat shadowed a face which was no longer young in such a way as to hide all the lines possible while the halflight brought admirably out the rich dark smoothness of the tints the black lustre of the eyes A delicate blueveined hand lay upon her knee and Robert was conscious after ten minutes or so that all her movements which seemed at first merely slow and languid were in reality singularly full of decision and purpose
She was not easy to talk to on a first acquaintance Robert felt that she was studying him and was not so much at his ease as usual partly owing to fatigue and mental worry
She asked him little abrupt questions about the neighbourhood his parish his work in a soft tone which had however a distinct aloofness even hauteur His answers on the other hand were often a trifle reckless and offhand He was in a mood to be impatient with a mondaines languid inquiries into clerical work and it seemed to him the squires description had been overdone
So you try to civilise your peasants she said at last Does it succeed—is it worth while
That depends upon your general ideas of what is worth while he answered smiling
Oh everything is worth while that passes the time she said hurriedly The clergy of the old régime went through life half asleep That was their way of passing it Your way being a modern is to bustle and try experiments
Her eyes half closed but none the less provocative ran over Elsmeres keen face and pliant frame An atmosphere of intellectual and social assumption enwrapped her which annoyed Robert in much the same way as Langhams philosophical airs were wont to do He was drawn without knowing it into a match of wits wherein his strokes if they lacked the finish and subtlety of hers showed certainly no lack of sharpness or mental resource Madame de Nettevilles tone insensibly changed her manner quickened her great eyes gradually unclosed
Suddenly as they were in the middle of a skirmish as to the reality of influence Madame de Netteville paradoxically maintaining that no human being had ever really converted transformed or convinced another the voice of young Wishart shrill and tremulous rose above the general level of talk
I am quite ready I am not the least afraid of a definition Theology is organised knowledge in the field of religion a science like any other science
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Certainly my dear sir certainly said Mr Spooner leaning forward with his hands round his knees and speaking with the most elegant and goodhumoured sangfroid imaginable the science of the worlds ghosts I cannot imagine any more fascinating
Well said Madame de Netteville to Robert with a deep breath that was a remark to have hurled at you all at once out of doors on a summers afternoon Oh Mr Spooner she said raising her voice dont play the heretic here There is no fun in it there are too many with you
I did not begin it my dear madam and your reproach is unjust On one side of me Archbishop Mannings fidus Achates and the speaker took off his large straw hat and gracefully waved it—first to the right then to the left On the other the rector of the parish Cannon to right of me cannon to left of me I submit my courage is unimpeachable
He spoke with a smiling courtesy as excessive as his silky moustache his long strawcoloured beard and his Panama hat Madame de Netteville surveyed him with cool critical eyes Robert smiled slightly acknowledged the bow but did not speak
Mr Wishart evidently took no heed of anything but his own thoughts He sat bolt upright with shining excited eyes
Ah I remember that article of yours in the Fortnightly How you sceptics miss the point
And out came a stream of argument and denunciation which had probably lain lavahot at the heart of the young convert for years waiting for such a moment as this when he had before him at close quarters two of the most famous antagonists of his faith The outburst was striking but certainly unpardonably illtimed Madame de Netteville retreated into herself with a shrug Robert in whom a sore nerve had been set jarring did his utmost to begin his talk with her again
In vain—for the squire struck in He had been sitting huddled together—his cynical eyes wandering from Wishart to Elsmere—when suddenly some extravagant remark of the young Catholic and Roberts effort to edge away from the conversation caught his attention at the same moment His face hardened and in his nasal voice he dealt a swift epigram at Mr Wishart which for the moment left the young disputant floundering
But only for the moment In another minute or two the argument begun so casually had developed into a serious trial of strength in which the squire and young Wishart took the chief parts while Mr Spooner threw in a laugh and a sarcasm here and there
And as long as Mr Wendover talked Madame de Netteville listened Roberts restless repulsion to the whole incident his passionate wish to escape from these phrases and illustrations and turns of argument which were all so wearisomely stale andPg 341 familiar to him found no support in her Mrs Darcy dared not second his attempts at chat for Mr Wendover on the rare occasions when he held forth was accustomed to be listened to and Elsmere was of too sensitive a social fibre to break up the party by an abrupt exit which could only have been interpreted in one way
So he stayed and perforce listened but in complete silence None of Mr Wendovers sidehits touched him Only as the talk went on the rector in the background got paler and paler his eyes as they passed from the mobile face of the Catholic convert already for those who knew marked with the signs of death to the bronzed visage of the squire grew duller—more instinct with a slowlydawning despair
Half an hour later he was once more on the road leading to the park gate He had a vague memory that at parting the squire had shown him the cordiality of one suddenly anxious to apologise by manner if not by word Otherwise everything was forgotten He was only anxious half dazed as he was to make out wherein lay the vital difference between his present self and the Elsmere who had passed along that road an hour before
He had heard a conversation on religious topics wherein nothing was new to him nothing affected him intellectually at all What was there in that to break the spring of life like this He stood still heavily trying to understand himself
Then gradually it became clear to him A month ago every word of that hectic young pleader for Christ and the Christian certainties would have roused in him a leaping passionate sympathy—the hearts yearning assent even when the intellect was most perplexed Now that inmost strand had given way Suddenly the disintegrating force he had been so pitifully so blindly holding at bay had penetrated once for all into the sanctuary What had happened to him had been the first real failure of feeling the first treachery of the heart Wisharts hopes and hatreds and sublime defiances of mans petty faculties had aroused in him no echo no response His soul had been dead within him
As he gained the shelter of the wooded lane beyond the gate it seemed to Robert that he was going through once more that old fierce temptation of Bunyans—
For after the Lord had in this manner thus graciously delivered me and had set me down so sweetly in the faith of His Holy Gospel and had given me such strong consolation and blessed evidence from heaven touching my interest in His love through Christ the tempter came upon me again and that with a more grievous and dreadful temptation than before And that was To sell and part with this most blessed Christ to exchange Him for the things of life for anything The temptation lay upon me for the space of a year and did follow me so continually that I was not rid of it one day in a monthPg 342 no not sometimes one hour in many days together for it did always in almost whatever I thought intermix itself therewith in such sort that I could neither eat my food stoop for a pin chop a stick or cast mine eyes to look on this or that but still the temptation would come Sell Christ for this or sell Christ for that sell Him sell Him
Was this what lay before the minister of God now in this selva oscura of life The selling of the Master of the love so sweet the unction spiritual for an intellectual satisfaction the ravaging of all the fair places of the heart by an intellectual need
And still through all the despair all the revolt all the pain which made the summer air a darkness and closed every sense in him to the evening beauty he felt the irresistible march and pressure of the new instincts the new forces which life and thought had been calling into being The words of St Augustine which he had read to Catherine taken in a strange new sense came back to him—Commend to the keeping of the Truth whatever the Truth hath given thee and thou shalt lose nothing
Was it the summons of Truth which was rending the whole nature in this way
Robert stood still and with his hands locked behind him and his face turned like the face of a blind man towards a world of which it saw nothing went through a desperate catechism of himself
Do I believe in God Surely surely Though He slay me yet will I trust in Him Do I believe in Christ Yes—in the teacher the martyr the symbol to us Westerns of all things heavenly and abiding the image and pledge of the invisible life of the spirit—with all my soul and all my mind
But in the ManGod the Word from Eternity—in a wonderworking Christ in a risen and ascended Jesus in the living Intercessor and Mediator for the lives of His doomed brethren
He waited conscious that it was the crisis of his history and there rose in him as though articulated one by one by an audible voice words of irrevocable meaning
Every human soul in which the voice of God makes itself felt enjoys equally with Jesus of Nazareth the divine sonship and miracles do not happen
It was done He felt for the moment as Bunyan did after his lesser defeat
Now was the battle won and down fell I as a bird that is shot from the top of a tree into great guilt and fearful despair Thus getting out of my bed I went moping in the field but God knows with as heavy an heart as mortal man I think could bear where for the space of two hours I was like a man bereft of life
All these years of happy spiritual certainty of rejoicing oneness with Christ to end in this wreck and loss Was notPg 343 this indeed il gran rifiuto—the greatest of which human daring is capable The lane darkened round him Not a soul was in sight The only sounds were the sounds of a gentlybreathing nature sounds of birds and swaying branches and intermittent gusts of air rustling through the gorse and the drifts of last years leaves in the wood beside him He moved mechanically onward and presently after the first flutter of desolate terror had passed away with a new inrushing sense which seemed to him a sense of liberty—of infinite expansion
Suddenly the trees before him thinned the ground sloped away and there to the left on the westernmost edge of the hill lay the square stone rectory its windows open to the evening coolness a white flutter of pigeons round the dovecote on the side lawn the gold of the August wheat in the great cornfield showing against the heavy girdle of oakwood
Robert stood gazing at it—the home consecrated by love by effort by faith The high alternations of intellectual and spiritual debate the strange emerging sense of deliverance gave way to a most bitter human pang of misery
O God My wife—my work
There was a sound of a voice calling—Catherines voice calling for him He leant against the gate of the woodpath struggling sternly with himself This was no simple matter of his own intellectual consistency or happiness Anothers whole life was concerned Any precipitate speech or hasty action would be a crime A man is bound above all things to protect those who depend on him from his own immature or revocable impulses Not a word yet till this sense of convulsion and upheaval had passed away and the mind was once more its own master
He opened the gate and went towards her She was strolling along the path looking out for him one delicate hand gathering up her long evening dress—that very same black brocade she had worn in the old days at Burwood—the other playing with their Dandie Dinmont puppy who was leaping beside her As she caught sight of him there was the flashing smile the hurrying step And he felt he could but just drag himself to meet her
Robert how long you have been I thought you must have stayed to dinner after all And how tired you seem
I had a long walk he said catching her hand as it slipped itself under his arm and clinging to it as though to a support And I am tired There is no use whatever in denying it
His voice was light but if it had not been so dark she must have been startled by his face As they went on towards the house however she scolding him for overwalking he won his battle with himself He went through the evening so that even Catherines jealous eyes saw nothing but extra fatigue In the most desperate straits of life love is still the fountain of all endurance and if ever a man loved it was Robert Elsmere
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But that night as he lay sleepless in their quiet room with the window open to the stars and to the rising gusts of wind which blew the petals of the clusterrose outside in drifts of fair weather snow on to the windowsill he went through an agony which no words can adequately describe
He must of course give up his living and his orders His standards and judgments had always been simple and plain in these respects In other men it might be right and possible that they should live on in the ministry of the Church doing the humane and charitable work of the Church while refusing assent to the intellectual and dogmatic framework on which the Church system rests but for himself it would be neither right nor wrong but simply impossible He did not argue or reason about it There was a favourite axiom of Mr Greys which had become part of his pupils spiritual endowment and which was perpetually present to him at this crisis of his life in the spirit if not in the letter—Conviction is the Conscience of the Mind.' And with this intellectual conscience he was no more capable of trifling than with the moral conscience
The night passed away How the rare intermittent sounds impressed themselves upon him—the stir of the childs waking soon after midnight in the room overhead the cry of the owls on the oakwood the purring of the nightjars on the common the morning chatter of the swallows round the eaves
With the first invasion of the dawn Robert raised himself and looked at Catherine She was sleeping with that light sound sleep which belongs to health of body and mind one hand under her face the other stretched out in soft relaxation beside her Her husband hung over her in a bewilderment of feeling Before him passed all sorts of incoherent pictures of the future the mind was caught by all manner of incongruous details in that saddest uprooting which lay before him How her sleep her ignorance reproached him He thought of the wreck of all her pure ambitions—for him for their common work for the people she had come to love the ruin of her life of charity and tender usefulness the darkening of all her hopes the shaking of all her trust Two years of devotion of exquisite selfsurrender had brought her to this It was for this he had lured her from the shelter of her hills for this she had opened to him all her sweet stores of faith all the deepest springs of her womanhood Oh how she must suffer The thought of it and his own helplessness wrung his heart
Oh could he keep her love through it all There was an unspeakable dread mingled with his grief—his remorse It had been there for months In her eyes would not only pain but sin divide them Could he possibly prevent her whole relation to him from altering and dwindling
It was to be the problem of his remaining life With a great cry of the soul to that God it yearned and felt for through allPg 345 the darkness and ruin which encompassed it he laid his hand on hers with the timidest passing touch
Catherine I will make amends My wife I will make amends
CHAPTER XXVII
The next morning Catherine finding that Robert still slept on after their usual waking time and remembering his exhaustion of the night before left him softly and kept the house quiet that he might not be disturbed She was in charge of the now toddling Mary in the diningroom when the door opened and Robert appeared
At sight of him she sprang up with a halfcry the face seemed to have lost all its fresh colour its look of sun and air the eyes were sunk the lips and chin lined and drawn It was like a face from which the youth had suddenly been struck out
Robert— but her question died on her lips
A bad night darling and a bad headache he said groping his way as it seemed to her to the table his hand leaning on her arm Give me some breakfast
She restrained herself at once put him into an armchair by the window and cared for him in her tender noiseless way But she had grown almost as pale as he and her heart was like lead
Will you send me off for the day to Thurston ponds he said presently trying to smile with lips so stiff and nerveless that the will had small control over them
Can you walk so far You did overdo it yesterday you know You have never got over Mile End Robert
But her voice had a note in it which in his weakness he could hardly bear He thirsted to be alone again to be able to think over quietly what was best for her—for them both There must be a next step and in her neighbourhood he was too feeble too tortured to decide upon it
No more dear—no more he said impatiently as she tried to feed him then he added as he rose Dont make arrangements for our going next week Catherine it cant be so soon
Catherine looked at him with eyes of utter dismay The sustaining hope of all these difficult weeks which had slipped with such terrible unexpectedness into their happy life was swept away from her
Robert you ought to go
I have too many things to arrange he said sharply almost irritably Then his tone changed Dont urge it Catherine
His eyes in their weariness seemed to entreat her not to argue She stooped and kissed him her lips trembling
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When do you want to go to Thurston
As soon as possible Can you find me my fishingbasket and get me some sandwiches I shall only lounge there and take it easy
She did everything for him that wifely hands could do Then when his fishingbasket was strapped on and his lunch was slipped into the capacious pocket of the wellworn shooting coat she threw her arms round him
Robert you will come away soon
He roused himself and kissed her
I will he said simply withdrawing however from her grasp as though he could not bear those close pleading eyes Goodbye I shall be back some time in the afternoon
From her post beside the study window she watched him take the short cut across the cornfield She was miserable and all at sea A week ago he had been so like himself again and now—— Never had she seen him in anything like this state of physical and mental collapse
Oh Robert she cried under her breath with an abandonment like a childs strong soul that she was why wont you tell me dear Why wont you let me share I might help you through—I might
She supposed he must be again in trouble of mind A weaker woman would have implored tormented till she knew all Catherines very strength and delicacy of nature and that respect which was inbred in her for the sacra of the inner life stood in her way She could not catechise him and force his confidence on this subject of all others It must be given freely And oh it was so long in coming
Surely surely it must be mainly physical the result of overstrain—expressing itself in characteristic mental worry just as daily life reproduces itself in dreams The worldly man suffers at such times through worldly things the religious man through his religion Comforting herself a little with thoughts of this kind and with certain more or less vague preparations for departure Catherine got through the morning as best she might
Meanwhile Robert was trudging along to Thurston under a sky which after a few threatening showers promised once more to be a sky of intense heat He had with him all the tackle necessary for spooning pike a sport the novelty and success of which had hugely commended it the year before to those Esaulike instincts Murewell had so much developed in him
And now—oh the weariness of the August warmth and the long stretches of sandy road By the time he reached the ponds he was tired out but instead of stopping at the largest of the three where a picturesque group of old brick cottages brought a reminder of man and his works into the prairie solitude of the common he pushed on to a smaller pool just beyond now hidden in a green cloud of birchwood Here after pushing hisPg 347 way through the closelyset trees he made some futile attempts at fishing only to put up his rod long before the morning was over and lay it beside him on the bank And there he sat for hours vaguely watching the reflection of the clouds the gambols and quarrels of the waterfowl the ways of the birds the alternations of sun and shadow on the softlymoving trees—the real self of him passing all the while through an interminable inward drama starting from the past stretching to the future steeped in passion in pity in regret
He thought of the feelings with which he had taken orders of Oxford scenes and Oxford persons of the efforts the pains the successes of his first year at Murewell What a ghastly mistake it had all been He felt a kind of sore contempt for himself for his own lack of prescience of selfknowledge His life looked to him so shallow and worthless How does a man ever retrieve such a false step He groaned aloud as he thought of Catherine linked to one born to defeat her hopes and all that natural pride that a woman feels in the strength and consistency of the man she loves As he sat there by the water he touched the depths of selfhumiliation
As to religious belief everything was a chaos What might be to him the ultimate forms and condition of thought the tired mind was quite incapable of divining To every stage in the process of destruction it was feverishly alive But its formative energy was for the moment gone The foundations were swept away and everything must be built up afresh Only the habit of faith held the close instinctive clinging to a Power beyond sense—a Goodness a Will not mans The soul had been stripped of its old defences but at his worst there was never a moment when Elsmere felt himself utterly forsaken
But his people—his work Every now and then into the fragmentary debate still going on within him there would flash little pictures of Murewell The green with the sun on the housefronts the awning over the village shop the vane on the old Manorhouse the familiar figures at the doors his church with every figure in the Sunday congregation as clear to him as though he were that moment in the pulpit the children he had taught the sick he had nursed this or that weatherbeaten or brutalised peasant whose history he knew whose tragic secrets he had learnt—all these memories and images clung about him as though with ghostly hands asking Why will you desert us You are ours—stay with us
Then his thoughts would run over the future dwelling with a tense realistic sharpness on every detail which lay before him—the arrangements with his locum tenens the interview with the bishop the parting with the rectory It even occurred to him to wonder what must be done with Martha and his mothers cottage
His mother As he thought of her a wave of unutterable longing rose and broke The difficult tears stood in his eyesPg 348 He had a strange conviction that at this crisis of his life she of all human beings would have understood him best
When would the squire know He pictured the interview with him divining with the same abnormal clearness of inward vision Mr Wendovers start of mingled triumph and impatience—triumph in the new recruit impatience with the Quixotic folly which could lead a man to look upon orthodox dogma as a thing real enough to be publicly renounced or clerical pledges as more than a form of words So henceforth he was on the same side with the squire held by an indiscriminating world as bound to the same negations the same hostilities The thought roused in him a sudden fierceness of moral repugnance The squire and Edward Langham—they were the only sceptics of whom he had ever had close and personal experience And with all his old affection for Langham all his frank sense of pliancy in the squires hands yet in this strait of life how he shrinks from them both—souls at war with life and man without holiness without perfume
Is it the law of things Once loosen a mans religio once fling away the old binding elements the old traditional restraints which have made him what he is and moral deterioration is certain How often he has heard it said How often he has endorsed it Is it true His heart grows cold within him What good man can ever contemplate with patience the loss not of friends or happiness but of his best self What shall it profit a man indeed if he gain the whole world—the whole world of knowledge and speculation—and lose his own soul
And then for his endless comfort there rose on the inward eye the vision of an Oxford lecture room of a short sturdy figure of a great brow over honest eyes of words alive with moral passion of thought instinct with the beauty of holiness Thank God for the saint in Henry Grey Thinking of it Robert felt his own selfrespect reborn
Oh to see Grey in the flesh to get his advice his approval Even though it was the depth of vacation Grey was so closely connected with the town as distinguished from the university life of Oxford it might be quite possible to find him at home Elsmere suddenly determined to find out at once if he could be seen
And if so he would go over to Oxford at once This should be the next step and he would say nothing to Catherine till afterwards He felt himself so dull so weary so resourceless Grey should help and counsel him should send him back with a clearer brain—a quicker ingenuity of love better furnished against her pain and his own
Then everything else was forgotten and he thought of nothing but that grisly moment of waking in the empty room when still believing it night he had put out his hand for his wife and with a superstitious pang had felt himself alone His heart torn with a hundred inarticulate cries of memory andPg 349 grief he sat on beside the water unconscious of the passing of time his gray eyes staring sightlessly at the woodpigeons as they flew past him at the occasional flash of a kingfisher at the moving panorama of summer clouds above the trees opposite
At last he was startled back to consciousness by the fall of a few heavy drops of warm rain He looked at his watch It was nearly four oclock He rose stiff and cramped with sitting and at the same instant he saw beyond the birchwood on the open stretch of common a boys figure which after a step or two he recognised as Ned Irwin
You here Ned he said stopping the pastoral temper in him reasserting itself at once Why arent you harvesting
Please sir I finished with the Hall medders yesterday and Mr Carters job dont begin till tomorrow Hes got a machine coming from Witley he hev and they wont let him have it till Thursday so Ive been out after things for the club
And opening the tin box strapped on his back he showed the days capture of butterflies and some belated birds eggs the plunder of a bit of common where the turf for the winters burning was just being cut
Goatsucker linnet stonechat said the rector fingering them Well done for August Ned If you havent got anything better to do with them give them to that small boy of Mr Carters thats been ill so long Hed thank you for them I know
The lad nodded with a guttural sound of assent Then his newborn scientific ardour seemed to struggle with his rustic costiveness of speech
Ive been just watching a queer creetur he said at last hurriedly I bleeve hes that un
And he pulled out a wellthumbed handbook and pointed to a cut of the grasshopper warbler
Whereabouts asked Robert wondering the while at his own start of interest
In that bit of common tother side the big pond said Ned pointing his brickred countenance kindling into suppressed excitement
Come and show me said the rector and the two went off together And sure enough after a little beating about they heard the note which had roused the lads curiosity the loud whirr of a creature that should have been a grasshopper and was not
They stalked the bird a few yards stooping and crouching Roberts eager hand on the boys arm whenever the clumsy rustic movements made too much noise among the underwood They watched it uttering its jarring imitative note on bush after bush just dropping to the ground as they came near and flitting a yard or two farther but otherwise showing no sign of alarm at their presence Then suddenly the impulse whichPg 350 had been leading him on died in the rector He stood upright with a long sigh
I must go home Ned he said abruptly Where are you off to
Please sir theres my sister at the cottage her as married Jim the underkeeper I be going there for my tea
Come along then we can go together
They trudged along in silence presently Robert turned on his companion
Ned this natural history has been a fine thing for you my lad mind you stick to it That and good work will make a man of you When I go away——
The boy started and stopped dead his dumb animal eyes fixed on his companion
You know I shall soon be going off on my holiday said Robert smiling faintly adding hurriedly as the boys face resumed its ordinary expression But some day Ned I shall go for good I dont know whether youve been depending on me—you and some of the others I think perhaps you have If so dont depend on me Ned any more It must all come to an end—everything must—everything—except the struggle to be a man in the world and not a beast—to make ones heart clean and soft and not hard and vile That is the one thing that matters and lasts Ah never forget that Ned Never forget it
He stood still towering over the slouching thickset form beside him his pale intensity of look giving a rare dignity and beauty to the face which owed so little of its attractiveness to comeliness of feature He had the makings of a true shepherd of men and his mind as he spoke was crossed by a hundred different currents of feeling—bitterness pain and yearning unspeakable No man could feel the wrench that lay before him more than he
Ned Irwin said not a word His heavy lids were dropped over his deepset eye he stood motionless nervously fiddling with his butterfly net—awkwardness and as it seemed irresponsiveness in his whole attitude
Robert gathered himself together
Well goodnight my lad he said with a change of tone Good luck to you be off to your tea
And he turned away striding swiftly over the short burnt August grass in the direction of the Murewell woods which rose in a blue haze of heat against the slumberous afternoon sky He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard a clattering after him He stopped and Ned came up with him
Theyre heavy them things said the boy desperately blurting it out and pointing with heaving chest and panting breath to the rod and basket I am going that way I can leave un at the rectory
Roberts eyes gleamed
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They are no weight Ned—cause why Ive been lazy and caught no fish But there—after a moments hesitation he slipped off the basket and rod and put them into the begrimed hands held out for them Bring them when you like I dont know when I shall want them again Thank you and God bless you
The boy was off with his booty in a second
Perhaps hell like to think he did it for me by and by said Robert sadly to himself moving on a little moisture in the clear gray eye
About three oclock next day Robert was in Oxford The night before he had telegraphed to ask if Grey was at home The reply had been—Here for a week on way north come by all means Oh that look of Catherines when he had told her of his plan trying in vain to make it look merely casual and ordinary
It is more than a year since I have set eyes on Grey Catherine And the days change would be a boon I could stay the night at Merton and get home early next day
But as he turned a pleading look to her he had been startled by the sudden rigidity of face and form Her silence had in it an intense almost a haughty reproach which she was too keenly hurt to put into words
He caught her by the arm and drew her forcibly to him There he made her look into the eyes which were full of nothing but the most passionate imploring affection
Have patience a little more Catherine he just murmured Oh how I have blessed you for silence Only till I come back
Till you come back she repeated slowly I cannot bear it any longer Robert that you should give others your confidence and not me
He groaned and let her go No—there should be but one day more of silence and that day was interposed for her sake If Grey from his calmer standpoint bade him wait and test himself before taking any irrevocable step he would obey him And if so the worst pang of all need not yet be inflicted on Catherine though as to his state of mind he would be perfectly open with her
A few hours later his cab deposited him at the wellknown door It seemed to him that he and the scorched planetrees lining the sides of the road were the only living things in the wide sunbeaten street
Every house was shut up Only the Greys open windows amid their shuttered neighbours had a friendly human air
Yes Mr Grey was in and expecting Mr Elsmere Robert climbed the dim familiar staircase his heart beating fast
Elsmere this is a piece of good fortune
And the two men after a grasp of the hand stood frontPg 352ing each other Mr Grey a light of pleasure on the rugged darkcomplexioned face looking up at his taller and paler visitor
But Robert could find nothing to say in return and in an instant Mr Greys quick eye detected the strained nervous emotion of the man before him
Come and sit down Elsmere—there in the window where we can talk One has to live on this east side of the house this weather
In the first place said Mr Grey scrutinising him as he returned to his own booklittered corner of the windowseat In the first place my dear fellow I cant congratulate you on your appearance I never saw a man look in worse condition—to be up and about
Thats nothing said Robert almost impatiently I want a holiday I believe Grey and he looked nervously out over garden and appletrees I have come—very selfishly—to ask your advice to throw a trouble upon you to claim all your friendship can give me
He stopped Mr Grey was silent—his expression changing instantly the bright eyes profoundly anxiously attentive
I have just come to the conclusion said Robert after a moment with quick abruptness that I ought now—at this moment—to leave the Church and give up my living for reasons which I will describe to you But before I act on the conclusion I wanted the light of your mind upon it seeing that—that—other persons than myself are concerned
Give up your living echoed Mr Grey in a low voice of astonishment He sat looking at the face and figure of the man before him with a halffrowning expression How often Robert had seen some rash exuberant youth quelled by that momentary frown Essentially conservative as was the inmost nature of the man for all his radicalism there were few things for which Henry Grey felt more instinctive distaste than for unsteadiness of will and purpose however glorified by fine names Robert knew it and strangely enough felt for a moment in the presence of the heretical tutor as a culprit before a judge
It is of course a matter of opinions he said with an effort Do you remember before I took orders asking whether I had ever had difficulties and I told you that I had probably never gone deep enough It was profoundly true though I didnt really mean it But this year—— No no I have not been merely vain and hasty I may be a shallow creature but it has been natural growth not wantonness
And at last his eyes met Mr Greys firmly almost with solemnity It was as if in the last few moments he had been instinctively testing the quality of his own conduct and motives by the touchstone of the rare personality beside him and they had stood the trial There was such pain such sincerity above all such freedom from littleness of soul implied in words andPg 353 look that Mr Grey quickly held out his hand Robert grasped it and felt that the way was clear before him
Will you give me an account of it said Mr Grey and his tone was grave sympathy itself Or would you rather confine yourself to generalities and accomplished facts
I will try and give you an account of it said Robert and sitting there with his elbows on his knees his gaze fixed on the yellowing afternoon sky and the intricacies of the gardenwalls between them and the new Museum he went through the history of the last two years He described the beginnings of his historical work the gradual enlargement of the mind's horizons and the intrusion within them of question after question and subject after subject Then he mentioned the squires name
Ah exclaimed Mr Grey I had forgotten you were that mans neighbour I wonder he didnt set you against the whole business inhuman old cynic
He spoke with the strong dislike of the idealist devoted in practice to an everyday ministry to human need for the intellectual egotist Robert caught and relished the old pugnacious flash in the eye the Midland strength of accent
Cynic he is not altogether inhuman I think I fought him about his drains and his cottages however—and he smiled sadly—before I began to read his books But the mans genius is incontestable his learning enormous He found me in a susceptible state and I recognise that his influence immensely accelerated a process already begun
Mr Grey was struck with the simplicity and fulness of the avowal A lesser man would hardly have made it in the same way Rising to pace up and down the room—the familiar action recalling vividly to Robert the Sunday afternoons of bygone years—he began to put questions with a clearness and decision that made them so many guides to the man answering through the tangle of his own recollections
I see said the tutor at last his hands in the pockets of his short gray coat his brow bent and thoughtful Well the process in you has been the typical process of the present day Abstract thought has had little or nothing to say to it It has been all a question of literary and historical evidence I am oldfashioned enough—and he smiled—to stick to the à priori impossibility of miracles but then I am a philosopher You have come to see how miracle is manufactured to recognise in it merely a natural inevitable outgrowth of human testimony in its prescientific stages It has been all experimental inductive I imagine—he looked up—you didnt get much help out of the orthodox apologists
Robert shrugged his shoulders
It often seemed to me he said drearily I might have got through but for the men whose books I used to read and respect most in old days The point of view is generally soPg 354 extraordinarily limited Westcott for instance who means so much nowadays to the English religious world first isolates Christianity from all the other religious phenomena of the world and then argues upon its details You might as well isolate English jurisprudence and discuss its details without any reference to Teutonic custom or Roman law You may be as logical or as learned as you like within the limits chosen but the whole result is false You treat Christian witness and Biblical literature as you would treat no other witness and no other literature in the world And you cannot show cause enough For your reasons depend on the very witness under dispute And so you go on arguing in a circle ad infinitum
But his voice dropped The momentary eagerness died away as quickly as it had risen leaving nothing but depression behind it
Mr Grey meditated At last he said with a delicate change of tone—
And now—if I may ask it Elsmere—how far has this destructive process gone
I cant tell you said Robert turning away almost with a groan I only know that the things I loved once I love still and that—that—if I had the heart to think at all I should see more of God in the world than I ever saw before
The tutors eye flashed Robert had gone back to the window and was miserably looking out After all he had told only half his story
And so you feel you must give up your living
What else is there for me to do cried Robert turning upon him startled by the slow deliberate tone
Well of course you know that there are many men men with whom both you and I are acquainted who hold very much what I imagine your opinions now are or will settle into who are still in the Church of England doing admirable work there
I know said Elsmere quickly—I know I cannot conceive it nor could you Imagine standing up Sunday after Sunday to say the things you do not believe—using words as a convention which those who hear you receive as literal truth—and trusting the maintenance of your position either to your neighbours forbearance or to your own powers of evasion With the ideas at present in my head nothing would induce me to preach another Easter Day sermon to a congregation that have both a moral and a legal right to demand from me an implicit belief in the material miracle
Yes said the other gravely—yes I believe you are right It cant be said the Broad Church movement has helped us much How greatly it promised—how little it has performed For the private person the worshipper it is different—or I think so No man pries into our prayers and to cut ourselves off from common worship is to lose that fellowship which is in itself a witness and vehicle of God
Pg 355
But his tone had grown hesitating and touched with melancholy
There was a moments silence Then Robert walked up to him again
At the same time he said falteringly standing before the elder man as he might have stood as an undergraduate let me not be rash If you think this change has been too rapid to last—if you knowing me better than at this moment I can know myself—if you bid me wait a while before I take any overt step I will wait—oh God knows I will wait—my wife—— and his husky voice failed him utterly
Your wife cried Mr Grey startled Mrs Elsmere does not know
My wife knows nothing or almost nothing—and it will break her heart
He moved hastily away again and stood with his back to his friend his tall narrow form outlined against the window Mr Grey was left in dismay rapidly turning over the impressions of Catherine left on him by his last years sight of her That pale distinguished woman with her look of strength and character—he remembered Langhams analysis of her and of the silent religious intensity she had brought with her from her training among the northern hills
Was there a bitterly human tragedy preparing under all this thoughtdrama he had been listening to
Deeply moved he went up to Robert and laid his rugged hand almost timidly upon him
Elsmere it wont break her heart You are a good man She is a good woman What an infinity of meaning there was in the simple words Take courage Tell her at once—tell her everything—and let her decide whether there shall be any waiting I cannot help you there she can she will probably understand you better than you understand yourself
He tightened his grasp and gently pushed his guest into a chair beside him Robert was deadly pale his face quivering painfully The long physical strain of the past months had weakened for the moment all the controlling forces of the will Mr Grey stood over him—the whole man dilating expanding under a tyrannous stress of feeling
It is hard it is bitter he said slowly with a wonderful manly tenderness I know it I have gone through it So has many and many a poor soul that you and I have known But there need be no sting in the wound unless we ourselves envenom it I know—oh I know very well—the man of the world scoffs but to him who has once been a Christian of the old sort the parting with the Christian mythology is the rending asunder of bones and marrow It means parting with half the confidence half the joy of life But take heart and the tone grew still more solemn still more penetrating It is the education of God Do not imagine it will put you fartherPg 356 from Him He is in criticism in science in doubt so long as the doubt is a pure and honest doubt as yours is He is in all life in all thought The thought of man as it has shaped itself in institutions in philosophies in science in patient critical work or in the life of charity is the one continuous revelation of God Look for Him in it all see how little by little the Divine indwelling force using as its tools—but merely as its tools—mans physical appetites and conditions has built up conscience and the moral life think how every faculty of the mind has been trained in turn to take its part in the great work of faith upon the visible world Love and imagination built up religion—shall reason destroy it No—reason is Gods like the rest Trust it—trust him The leading strings of the past are dropping from you they are dropping from the world not wantonly or by chance but in the providence of God Learn the lesson of your own pain—learn to seek God not in any single event of past history but in your own soul—in the constant verifications of experience in the life of Christian love Spiritually you have gone through the last wrench I promise it you You being what you are nothing can cut this ground from under your feet Whatever may have been the forms of human belief faith the faith which saves has always been rooted here All things change—creeds and philosophies and outward systems—but God remains
Life that in me has rest
As I undying Life have power in Thee
The lines dropped with low vibrating force from lips unaccustomed indeed to such an outburst The speaker stood a moment longer in silence beside the figure in the chair and it seemed to Robert gazing at him with fixed eyes that the mans whole presence at once so homely and so majestic was charged with benediction It was as though invisible hands of healing and consecration had been laid upon him The fiery soul beside him had kindled anew the drooping life of his own So the torch of God passes on its way hand reaching out to hand
He bent forward stammering incoherent words of assent and gratitude he knew not what Mr Grey who had sunk into his chair gave him time to recover himself The intensity of the tutors own mood relaxed and presently he began to talk to his guest in a wholly different tone of the practical detail of the step before him supposing it to be taken immediately discussing the probable attitude of Roberts bishop the least conspicuous mode of withdrawing from the living and so on—all with gentleness and sympathy indeed but with an indefinable change of manner which showed that he felt it well both for himself and Elsmere to repress any further expression of emotion There was something a vein of stoicism perhaps in Mr GreysPg 357 temper of mind which while it gave a special force and sacredness to his rare moments of fervent speech was wont in general to make men more selfcontrolled than usual in his presence Robert felt now the bracing force of it
Will you stay with us to dinner Mr Grey asked when at last Elsmere got up to go There are one or two lone Fellows coming—asked before your telegram came of course Do exactly as you like
I think not said Robert after a pause I longed to see you but I am not fit for general society
Mr Grey did not press him He rose and went with his visitor to the door
Goodbye goodbye Let me always know what I can do for you And your wife—poor thing poor thing Go and tell her Elsmere dont lose a moment you can help God help her and you
They grasped each others hands Mr Grey followed him down the stairs and along the narrow hall He opened the hall door and smiled a last smile of encouragement and sympathy into the eyes that expressed such a young moved gratitude The door closed Little did Elsmere realise that never in this life would he see that smile or hear that voice again
CHAPTER XXVIII
In half an hour from the time Mr Greys door closed upon him Elsmere had caught a convenient crosscountry train and had left the Oxford towers and spires the shrunken summer Isis and the flat hot river meadows far behind him He had meant to stay at Merton as we know for the night Now his one thought was to get back to Catherine The urgency of Mr Greys words was upon him and love had a miserable pang that it should have needed to be urged
By eight oclock he was again at Churton There were no carriages waiting at the little station but the thought of the walk across the darkening common through the August moonrise had been a refreshment to him in the heat and crowd of the train He hurried through the small town where the streets were full of summer idlers and the lamps were twinkling in the still balmy air along a dusty stretch of road leaving man and his dwellings farther and farther to the rear of him till at last he emerged on a boundless tract of common and struck to the right into a carttrack leading to Murewell
He was on the top of a high sandy ridge looking west and north over a wide evening world of heather and wood and hill To the right far ahead across the misty lower grounds into which he was soon to plunge rose the woods of MurewellPg 358 black and massive in the twilight distance To the left but on a nearer plane the undulating common stretching downwards from where he stood rose suddenly towards a height crowned with a group of gaunt and jagged firs—landmarks for all the plain—of which every ghostly bough and crest was now sharply outlined against a luminous sky For the wide heaven in front of him was still delicately glowing in all its under parts with soft harmonies of dusky red or blue while in its higher zone the same tract of sky was closely covered with the finest network of pearlwhite cloud suffused at the moment with a silver radiance so intense that a spectator might almost have dreamed the moon had forgotten its familiar place of rising and was about to mount into a startled expectant west Not a light in all the wide expanse and for a while not a sound of human life save the beat of Roberts step or the occasional tap of his stick against the pebbles of the road
Presently he reached the edge of the ridge whence the rough track he was following sank sharply to the lower levels Here was a marvellous point of view and the rector stood a moment beside a bare weatherblasted fir a ghostly shadow thrown behind him All around the gorse and heather seemed still radiating light as though the air had been so drenched in sunshine that even long after the sun had vanished the invading darkness found itself still unable to win firm possession of earth and sky Every little stone in the sandy road was still weirdly visible the colour of the heather now in lavish bloom could be felt though hardly seen
Before him melted line after line of woodland broken by hollow after hollow filled with vaporous wreaths of mist About him were the sounds of a wild nature The air was resonant with the purring of the nightjars and every now and then he caught the loud clap of their wings as they swayed unsteadily through the furze and bracken Overhead a trio of wild ducks flew across from pond to pond their hoarse cry descending through the darkness The partridges on the hill called to each other and certain sharp sounds betrayed to the solitary listener the presence of a flock of swans on a neighbouring pool
The rector felt himself alone on a wide earth It was almost with a start of pleasure that he caught at last the barking of dogs on a few distant farms or the dim thunderous rush of a train through the wide wooded landscape beyond the heath Behind that frowning mass of wood lay the rectory The lights must be lit in the little drawingroom Catherine must be sitting by the lamp her fine head bent over book or work grieving for him perhaps her anxious expectant heart going out to him through the dark He thinks of the village lying wrapped in the peace of the August night the lamp rays from shopfront or casement streaming out on to the green he thinks of his child of his dead mother feeling heavy andPg 359 bitter within him all the time the message of separation and exile
But his mood was no longer one of mere dread of helpless pain of miserable selfscorn Contact with Henry Grey had brought him that rekindling of the flame of conscience that medicinal stirring of the souls waters which is the most precious boon that man can give to man In that sense which attaches to every successive resurrection of our best life from the shades of despair or selfishness he had that day almost that hour been born again He was no longer filled mainly with the sense of personal failure with scorn for his own blundering impetuous temper so lacking in prescience and in balance or in respect to his wife with such an anguished impotent remorse He was nerved and braced whatever oscillations the mind might go through in its search for another equilibrium tonight there was a moment of calm The earth to him was once more full of God existence full of value
The things I have always loved I love still he had said to Mr Grey And in this healing darkness it was as if the old loves the old familiar images of thought returned to him newclad reentering the desolate heart in a whitewinged procession of consolation On the heath beside him the Christ stood once more and as the disciple felt the sacred presence he could bear for the first time to let the chafing pentup current of love flow into the new channels so painfully prepared for it by the toil of thought Either God or an impostor What scorn the heart the intellect threw on the alternative Not in the dress of speculations which represent the product of long past long superseded looms of human thought but in the guise of common manhood laden like his fellows with the pathetic weight of human weakness and human ignorance the Master moves towards him—
Like you my son I struggled and I prayed Like you I had my days of doubt and nights of wrestling I had my dreams my delusions with my fellows I was weak I suffered I died But God was in me and the courage the patience the love He gave to me the scenes of the poor human life He inspired have become by His will the worlds eternal lesson—mans primer of Divine things hung high in the eyes of all simple and wise that all may see and all may learn Take it to your heart again—that life that pain of mine Use it to new ends apprehend it in new ways but knowledge shall not take it from you and love instead of weakening or forgetting if it be but faithful shall find ever fresh power of realising and renewing itself
So said the vision and carrying the passion of it deep in his heart the rector went his way down the long stony hill past the solitary farm amid the trees at the foot of it across the grassy common beyond with its sentinel clumps of beeches past an ethereal string of tiny lakes just touched by the moonrise beside some of the first cottages of Murewell up the hillPg 360 with pulse beating and step quickening and round into the stretch of road leading to his own gate
As soon as he had passed the screen made by the shrubs on the lawn he saw it all as he had seen it in his waking dream on the common—the lamplight the open windows the white muslin curtains swaying a little in the soft evening air and Catherines figure seen dimly through them
The noise of the gate however—of the steps on the drive—had startled her He saw her rise quickly from her low chair put some work down beside her and move in haste to the window
Robert she cried in amazement
Yes he answered still some yards from her his voice coming strangely to her out of the moonlit darkness I did my errand early I found I could get back and here I am
She flew to the door opened it and felt herself caught in his arms
Robert you are quite damp she said fluttering and shrinking for all her sweet habitual gravity of manner—was it the passion of that yearning embrace Have you walked
Yes It is the dew on the common I suppose The grass was drenched
Will you have some food They can bring back the supper directly
I dont want any food now he said hanging up his hat I got some lunch in town and a cup of soup at Reading coming back Perhaps you will give me some tea soon—not yet
He came up to her pushing back the thick disordered locks of hair from his eyes with one hand the other held out to her As he came under the light of the hall lamp she was so startled by the gray pallor of the face that she caught hold of his outstretched hand with both hers What she said he never knew—her look was enough He put his arm round her and as he opened the drawingroom door holding her pressed against him she felt the desperate agitation in him penetrating beating against an almost iron selfcontrol of manner He shut the door behind them
Robert dear Robert she said clinging to him there is bad news—tell me—there is something to tell me Oh what is it—what is it
It was almost like a childs wail His brow contracted still more painfully
My darling he said my darling—my dear dear wife and he bent his head down to her as she lay against his breast kissing her hair with a passion of pity of remorse of tenderness which seemed to rend his whole nature
Tell me—tell me—Robert
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He guided her gently across the room past the sofa over which her work lay scattered past the flowertable now a manycoloured mass of roses which was her especial pride past the remains of a brick castle which had delighted Marys wondering eyes and mischievous fingers an hour or two before to a low chair by the open window looking on the wide moonlit expanse of cornfield He put her into it walked to the window on the other side of the room shut it and drew down the blind Then he went back to her and sank down beside her kneeling her hands in his
My dear wife—you have loved me—you do love me
She could not answer she could only press his hands with her cold fingers with a look and gesture that implored him to speak
Catherine he said still kneeling before her you remember that night you came down to me in the study the night I told you I was in trouble and you could not help me Did you guess from what I said what the trouble was
Yes she answered trembling yes I did Robert I thought you were depressed—troubled—about religion
And I know he said with an outburst of feeling kissing her hands as they lay in his—I know very well that you went upstairs and prayed for me my whitesouled angel But Catherine the trouble grew—it got blacker and blacker You were there beside me and you could not help me I dared not tell you about it I could only struggle on alone so terribly alone sometimes and now I am beaten beaten And I come to you to ask you to help me in the only thing that remains to me Help me Catherine to be an honest man—to follow conscience—to say and do the truth
Robert she said piteously deadly pale I dont understand
Oh my poor darling he cried with a kind of moan of pity and misery Then still holding her he said with strong deliberate emphasis looking into the grayblue eyes—the quivering face so full of austerity and delicacy—
For six or seven months Catherine—really for much longer though I never knew it—I have been fighting with doubt—doubt of orthodox Christianity—doubt of what the Church teaches—of what I have to say and preach every Sunday First it crept on me I knew not how Then the weight grew heavier and I began to struggle with it I felt I must struggle with it Many men I suppose in my position would have trampled on their doubts—would have regarded them as sin in themselves would have felt it their duty to ignore them as much as possible trusting to time and Gods help I could not ignore them The thought of questioning the most sacred beliefs that you and I—and his voice faltered a moment—held in common was misery to me On the other hand I knew myself I knew that I could no more go on living to any purpose with a wholePg 362 region of the mind shut up as it were barred away from the rest of me than I could go on living with a secret between myself and you I could not hold my faith by a mere tenure of tyranny and fear Faith that is not free—that is not the faith of the whole creature body soul and intellect—seemed to me a faith worthless both to God and man
Catherine looked at him stupefied The world seemed to be turning round her Infinitely more terrible than his actual words was the accent running through words and tone and gesture—the accent of irreparableness as of something dismally done and finished What did it all mean For what had he brought her there She sat stunned realising with awful force the feebleness the inadequacy of her own fears
He meanwhile had paused a moment meeting her gaze with those yearning sunken eyes Then he went on his voice changing a little—
But if I had wished it ever so much I could not have helped myself The process so to speak had gone too far by the time I knew where I was I think the change must have begun before the Mile End time Looking back I see the foundations were laid in—in—the work of last winter
She shivered He stooped and kissed her hands again passionately Am I poisoning even the memory of our past for you he cried Then restraining himself at once he hurried on again After Mile End you remember I began to see much of the squire Oh my wife dont look at me so It was not his doing in any true sense I am not such a weak shuttlecock as that But being where I was before our intimacy began his influence hastened everything I dont wish to minimise it I was not made to stand alone
And again that bitter perplexed halfscornful sense of his own pliancy at the hands of circumstance as compared with the rigidity of other men descended upon him Catherine made a faint movement as though to draw her hands away
Was it well she said in a voice which sounded like a harsh echo of her own was it right for a clergyman to discuss sacred things—with such a man
He let her hands go guided for the moment by a delicate imperious instinct which bade him appeal to something else than love Rising he sat down opposite to her on the low window seat while she sank back into her chair her fingers clinging to the arm of it the lamplight far behind deepening all the shadows of the face the hollows in the cheeks the line of experience and will about the mouth The stupor in which she had just listened to him was beginning to break up Wild forces of condemnation and resistance were rising in her and he knew it He knew too that as yet she only half realised the situation and that blow after blow still remained to him to deal
Was it right that I should discuss religious matters withPg 363 the squire he repeated his face resting on his hands What are religious matters Catherine and what are not
Then still controlling himself rigidly his eyes fixed on the shadowy face of his wife his ear catching her quick uneven breath he went once more through the dismal history of the last few months dwelling on his state of thought before the intimacy with Mr Wendover began on his first attempts to escape the squires influence on his gradual pitiful surrender Then he told the story of the last memorable walk before the squires journey of the moment in the study afterwards and of the months of feverish reading and wrestling which had followed Halfway through it a new despair seized him What was the good of all he was saying He was speaking a language she did not really understand What were all these critical and literary considerations to her
The rigidity of her silence showed him that her sympathy was not with him that in comparison with the vibrating protest of her own passionate faith which must be now ringing through her whatever he could urge must seem to her the merest culpable trifling with the souls awful destinies In an instant of tumultuous speech he could not convey to her the temper and results of his own complex training and on that training as he very well knew depended the piercing convincing force of all that he was saying There were gulfs between them—gulfs which as it seemed to him in a miserable insight could never be bridged again Oh the frightful separateness of experience
Still he struggled on He brought the story down to the conversation at the Hall described—in broken words of fire and pain—the moment of spiritual wreck which had come upon him in the August lane his night of struggle his resolve to go to Mr Grey And all through he was not so much narrating as pleading a cause and that not his own but Loves Love was at the bar and it was for love that the eloquent voice the pale varying face were really pleading through all the long story of intellectual change
At the mention of Mr Grey Catherine grew restless she sat up suddenly with a cry of bitterness
Robert why did you go away from me It was cruel I should have known first He had no right—no right
She clasped her hands round her knees her beautiful mouth set and stern The moon had been sailing westward all this time and as Catherine bent forward the yellow light caught her face and brought out the haggard change in it He held out his hands to her with a low groan helpless against her reproach her jealousy He dared not speak of what Mr Grey had done for him of the tenderness of his counsel towards her specially He felt that everything he could say would but torture the wounded heart still more
But she did not notice the outstretched hands She coveredPg 364 her face in silence a moment as though trying to see her way more clearly through the mazes of disaster and he waited At last she looked up
I cannot follow all you have been saying she said almost harshly I know so little of books I cannot give them the place you do You say you have convinced yourself the Gospels are like other books full of mistakes and credulous like the people of the time and therefore you cant take what they say as you used to take it But what does it all quite mean Oh I am not clever—I cannot see my way clear from thing to thing as you do If there are mistakes does it matter so—so—terribly to you and she faltered Do you think nothing is true because something may be false Did not—did not—Jesus still live and die and rise again—can you doubt—do you doubt—that He rose—that He is God—that He is in heaven—that we shall see Him
She threw an intensity into every word which made the short breathless questions thrill through him through the nature saturated and steeped as hers was in Christian association with a bitter accusing force But he did not flinch from them
I can believe no longer in an Incarnation and Resurrection he said slowly but with a resolute plainness Christ is risen in our hearts in the Christian life of charity Miracle is a natural product of human feeling and imagination and God was in Jesus—preeminently as He is in all great souls but not otherwise—not otherwise in kind than He is in me or you
His voice dropped to a whisper She grew paler and paler
So to you she said presently in the same strange altered voice My father—when I saw that light on his face before he died when I heard him cry Master I come was dying—deceived—deluded Perhaps even and she trembled you think it ends here—our life—our love
It was agony to him to see her driving herself through this piteous catechism The lantern of memory flashed a moment on to the immortal picture of Faust and Margaret Was it not only that winter they had read the scene together
Forcibly he possessed himself once more of those closely locked hands pressing their coldness on his own burning eyes and forehead in hopeless silence
Do you Robert she repeated insistently
I know nothing he said his eyes still hidden I know nothing But I trust God with all that is dearest to me with our love with the soul that is His breath His work in us
The pressure of her despair seemed to be wringing his own faith out of him forcing into definiteness things and thoughts that had been lying in an accepted even a welcomed obscurity
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She tried again to draw her hands away but he would not let them go And the end of it all Robert she said—the end of it
Never did he forget the note of that question the desolation of it the indefinable change of accent It drove him into a harsh abruptness of reply
The end of it—so far—must be if I remain an honest man that I must give up my living that I must cease to be a minister of the Church of England What the course of our life after that shall be is in your hands—absolutely
She caught her breath painfully His heart was breaking for her and yet there was something in her manner now which kept down caresses and repressed all words
Suddenly however as he sat there mutely watching her he found her at his knees her dear arms around him her face against his breast
Robert my husband my darling it cannot be It is a madness—a delusion God is trying you and me You cannot be planning so to desert Him so to deny Christ—you cannot my husband Come away with me away from books and work into some quiet place where He can make Himself heard You are overdone overdriven Do nothing now—say nothing—except to me Be patient a little and He will give you back Himself What can books and arguments matter to you or me Have we not known and felt Him as He is—have we not Robert Come
She pushed herself backwards smiling at him with an exquisite tenderness The tears were streaming down her cheeks They were wet on his own Another moment and Robert would have lost the only clue which remained to him through the mists of this bewildering world He would have yielded again as he had many times yielded before for infinitely less reason to the urgent pressure of anothers individuality and having jeopardised love for truth he would now have murdered—or tried to murder—in himself the sense of truth for love
But he did neither
Holding her close pressed against him he said in breaks of intense speech If you wish Catherine I will wait—I will wait till you bid me speak—but I warn you—there is something dead in me—something gone and broken It can never live again—except in forms which now it would only pain you more to think of It is not that I think differently of this point or that point—but of life and religion altogether I see Gods purposes in quite other proportions as it were Christianity seems to me something small and local Behind it around it—including it—I see the great drama of the world sweeping on—led by God—from change to change from act to act It is not that Christianity is false but that it is only an imperfect human reflection of a part of truth Truth has never been can never be contained in any one creed or system
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She heard but through her exhaustion through the bitter sinking of hope she only half understood Only she realised that she and he were alike helpless—both struggling in the grip of some force outside themselves inexorable ineluctable
Robert felt her arms relaxing felt the dead weight of her form against him He raised her to her feet he half carried her to the door and on to the stairs She was nearly fainting but her will held it at bay He threw open the door of their room led her in lifted her—unresisting—on to the bed Then her head fell to one side and her lips grew ashen In an instant or two he had done for her all that his medical knowledge could suggest with rapid decided hands She was not quite unconscious she drew up round her as though with a strong vague sense of chill the shawl he laid over her and gradually the slightest shade of colour came back to her lips But as soon as she opened her eyes and met those of Robert fixed upon her the heavy lids dropped again
Would you rather be alone he said to her kneeling beside her
She made a faint affirmative movement of the head and the cold hand he had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself He rose at once and stood a moment beside her looking down at her Then he went
CHAPTER XXIX
He shut the door softly and went downstairs again It was between ten and eleven The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished every one else in the house had gone to bed Mechanically he stooped and put away the childs bricks he pushed the chairs back into their places and then he paused a while before the open window But there was not a tremor on the set face He felt himself capable of no more emotion The fount of feeling of pain was for the moment dried up What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gusts of nightwind on the moonlit cornfield the silver ripples they sent through it the shadows thrown by some great trees in the western corners of the field the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensity of the sky
Presently he turned away leaving one lamp still burning in the room softly unlocked the hall door took his hat and went out He walked up and down the woodpath or sat on the bench there for some time thinking indeed but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness Whenever he felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again he would make a sharp effort at repression Physically he could not bear much more and he knew it A part remained for him to play which must be played with tact with prudence and with firmness Strength and nervesPg 367 had been sufficiently weakened already For his wifes sake his peoples sake his honourable reputations sake he must guard himself from a collapse which might mean far more than physical failure
So in the most patient methodical way he began to plan out the immediate future As to waiting the matter was still in Catherines hands but he knew that finely tempered soul he knew that when she had mastered her poor womans self as she had always mastered it from her childhood she would not bid him wait He hardly took the possibility into consideration The proposal had had some reality in his eyes when he went to see Mr Grey now it had none though he could hardly have explained why
He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to take his duty during his absence on the Continent It had been originally suggested that this Mr Armitstead should come to Murewell on the Monday following the Sunday they were now approaching spend a few days with them before their departure and be left to his own devices in the house and parish about the Thursday or Friday An intense desire now seized Robert to get hold of the man at once before the next Sunday It was strange how the interview with his wife seemed to have crystallised precipitated everything How infinitely more real the whole matter looked to him since the afternoon It had passed—at any rate for the time—out of the region of thought into the hurrying evolution of action and as soon as action began it was characteristic of Roberts rapid energetic nature to feel this thirst to make it as prompt as complete as possible The fiery soul yearned for a fresh consistency though it were a consistency of loss and renunciation
Tomorrow he must write to the bishop The bishops residence was only eight or ten miles from Murewell he supposed his interview with him would take place about Monday or Tuesday He could see the tall stooping figure of the kindly old man rising to meet him he knew exactly the sort of arguments that would be brought to bear upon him Oh that it were done with—this wearisome dialectical necessity His life for months had been one long argument If he were but left free to feel and live again
The practical matter which weighed most heavily upon him was the function connected with the opening of the new Institute which had been fixed for the Saturday—the next day but one How was he—but much more how was Catherine—to get through it His lips would be sealed as to any possible withdrawal from the living for he could not by then have seen the bishop He looked forward to the gathering the crowds the local enthusiasm the signs of his own popularity with a sickening distaste The one thing real to him through it all would be Catherines white face and their bitter joint consciousness
And then he said to himself sharply that his own feelingsPg 368 counted for nothing Catherine should be tenderly shielded from all avoidable pain but for himself there must be no flinching no selfindulgent weakness Did he not owe every last hour he had to give to the people amongst whom he had planned to spend the best energies of life and for whom his own act was about to part him in this lame impotent fashion
Midnight The sounds rolled silverly out effacing the soft murmurs of the night So the long interminable day was over and a new morning had begun He rose listening to the echoes of the bell and—as the tide of feeling surged back upon him—passionately commending the newborn day to God
Then he turned towards the house put the light out in the drawingroom and went upstairs stepping cautiously He opened the door of Catherines room The moonlight was streaming in through the white blinds Catherine who had undressed was lying now with her face hidden in the pillow and one whitesleeved arm flung across little Marys cot The night was hot and the child would evidently have thrown off all its coverings had it not been for the mothers hand which lay lightly on the tiny shoulder keeping one thin blanket in its place
Catherine he whispered standing beside her
She turned and by the light of the candle he held shaded from her he saw the austere remoteness of her look as of one who had been going through deep waters of misery alone with God His heart sank For the first time that look seemed to exclude him from her inmost life
He sank down beside her took the hand lying on the child and laid down his head upon it mutely kissing it But he said nothing Of what further avail could words be just then to either of them Only he felt through every fibre the coldness the irresponsiveness of those fingers lying in his
Would it prevent your sleeping he asked her presently if I came to read here as I used to when you were ill I could shade the light from you of course
She raised her head suddenly
But you—you ought to sleep
Her tone was anxious but strangely quiet and aloof
Impossible he said pressing his hand over his eyes as he rose At any rate I will read first
His sleeplessness at any time of excitement or strain was so inveterate and so familiar to them both by now that she could say nothing She turned away with a long sobbing breath which seemed to go through her from head to foot He stood a moment beside her fighting strong impulses of remorse and passion and ultimately maintaining silence and selfcontrol
In another minute or two he was sitting beside her feet in a low chair drawn to the edge of the bed the light arranged so as to reach his book without touching either mother or child He had run over the bookshelf in his own room shrinking painPg 369fully from any of his common religious favourites as one shrinks from touching a still sore and throbbing nerve and had at last carried off a volume of Spenser
And so the night began to wear away For the first hour or two every now and then a stifled sob would make itself just faintly heard It was a sound to wring the heart for what it meant was that not even Catherine Elsmeres extraordinary powers of selfsuppression could avail to check the outward expression of an inward torture Each time it came and went it seemed to Elsmere that a fraction of his youth went with it
At last exhaustion brought her a restless sleep As soon as Elsmere caught the light breathing which told him she was not conscious of her grief or of him his book slipped on to his knee
Open the temple gates unto my love
Open them wide that she may enter in
And all the posts adorn as doth behove
And all the pillars deck with garlands trim
For to receive this saint with honour due
That cometh in to you
With trembling steps and humble reverence
She cometh in before the Almightys view
The leaves fell over as the book dropped and these lines which had been to him as to other lovers the utterance of his own bridal joy emerged They brought about him a host of images—a little gray church penetrated everywhere by the roar of a swollen river outside a road filled with empty farmers carts and shouting children carrying branches of mountainash—winding on and up into the heart of wild hills dyed with reddening fern the sungleams stealing from crag to crag and shoulder to shoulder inside row after row of intent faces all turned towards the central passage and moving towards him a figure clad all in white that seems a virgin best whose every step brings nearer to him the heaven of his hearts desire Everything is plain to him—Mrs Thornburghs round cheeks and marvellous curls and jubilant airs Mrs Leyburns mild and tearful pleasure the vicars solid satisfaction With what confiding joy had those who loved her given her to him And he knows well that out of all griefs the grief he has brought upon her in two short years is the one which will seem to her hardest to bear Very few women of the present day could feel this particular calamity as Catherine Elsmere must feel it
Was it a crime to love and win you my darling he cried to her in his heart Ought I to have had more selfknowledge could I have guessed where I was taking you Oh how could I know—how could I know
But it was impossible to him to sink himself wholly in the past Inevitably such a nature as Elsmeres turns very quickly from despair to hope from the sense of failure to the passionate planning of new effort In time will he not be able to comfort her and after a miserable moment of transition to repair herPg 370 trust in him and make their common life once more rich towards God and man There must be painful readjustment and friction no doubt He tries to see the facts as they truly are fighting against his own optimist tendencies and realising as best he can all the changes which his great change must introduce into their most intimate relations But after all can love and honesty and a clear conscience do nothing to bridge over nay to efface such differences as theirs will be
Oh to bring her to understand him At this moment he shrinks painfully from the thought of touching her faith—his own sense of loss is too heavy too terrible But if she will only be still open with him—still give him her deepest heart any lasting difference between them will surely be impossible Each will complete the other and love knit up the ravelled strands again into a stronger unity
Gradually he lost himself in halfarticulate prayer in the solemn girding of the will to this future task of a recreating love And by the time the morning light had well established itself sleep had fallen on him When he became sensible of the longedfor drowsiness he merely stretched out a tired hand and drew over him a shawl hanging at the foot of the bed He was too utterly worn out to think of moving
When he woke the sun was streaming into the room and behind him sat the tiny Mary on the edge of the bed the rounded apple cheeks and wildbird eyes aglow with mischief and delight She had climbed out of her cot and finding no check to her progress had crept on till now she sat triumphantly with one diminutive leg and rosy foot doubled under her and her fathers thick hair at the mercy of her invading fingers which however were as yet touching him half timidly as though something in his sleep had awed the baby sense
But Catherine was gone
He sprang up with a start Mary was frightened by the abrupt movement perhaps disappointed by the escape of her prey and raised a sudden wail
He carried her to her nurse even forgetting to kiss the little wet cheek ascertained that Catherine was not in the house and then came back miserable with the bewilderment of sleep still upon him A sense of wrong rose high within him How could she have left him thus without a word
It had been her way sometimes during the summer to go out early to one or other of the sick folk who were under her especial charge Possibly she had gone to a woman just confined on the farther side of the village who yesterday had been in danger
But whatever explanation he could make for himself he was none the less irrationally wretched He bathed dressed and sat down to his solitary meal in a state of tension and agitation indescribable All the exaltation the courage of the night was gone
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Nine oclock ten oclock and no sign of Catherine
Your mistress must have been detained somewhere he said as quietly and carelessly as he could to Susan the parlourmaid who had been with them since their marriage Leave breakfast things for one
Mistress took a cup of milk when she went out cook says observed the little maid with a consoling intention wondering the while at the rectors haggard mien and restless movements
Nursing other people indeed she observed severely downstairs glad as we all are at times to pick holes in excellence which is inconveniently high Missis had a deal better stay at home and nurse him
The day was excessively hot Not a leaf moved in the garden over the cornfield the air danced in long vibrations of heat the woods and hills beyond were indistinct and colourless Their dog Dandy lay sleeping in the sun waking up every now and then to avenge himself on the flies On the far edge of the cornfield reaping was beginning Robert stood on the edge of the sunk fence his blind eyes resting on the line of men his ear catching the shouts of the farmer directing operations from his gray horse He could do nothing The night before in the woodpath he had clearly mapped out the days work A mass of business was waiting clamouring to be done He tried to begin on this or that and gave up everything with a groan wandering out again to the gate on to the woodpath to sweep the distances of road or field with hungry straining eyes
The wildest fears had taken possession of him Running in his head was a passage from The confessions describing Monicas horror of her sons heretical opinions Shrinking from and detesting the blasphemies of his error she began to doubt whether it was right in her to allow her son to live in her house and to eat at the same table with her and the mothers heart he remembered could only be convinced of the lawfulness of its own yearning by a prophetic vision of the youths conversion He recalled with a shiver how in the life of Madame Guyon after describing the painful and agonising death of a kind but comparatively irreligious husband she quietly adds As soon as I heard that my husband had just expired I said to Thee O my God Thou hast broken my bonds and I will offer to Thee a sacrifice of praise He thought of John Henry Newman disowning all the ties of kinship with his younger brother because of divergent views on the question of baptismal regeneration of the long tragedy of Blanco Whites life caused by the slow droppingoff of friend after friend on the ground of heretical belief What right had he or any one in such a strait as his to assume that the faith of the present is no longer capable of the same stern selfdestructive consistency as the faith of the past He knew that to such Christian purity such Christian inwardness as Catherines the ultimate sanction and legitimacyPg 372 of marriage rest both in theory and practice on a common acceptance of the definite commands and promises of a miraculous revelation He had had a proof of it in Catherines passionate repugnance to the idea of Roses marriage with Edward Langham
Eleven oclock striking from the distant tower He walked desperately along the woodpath meaning to go through the copse at the end of it towards the park and look there He had just passed into the copse a thick interwoven mass of young trees when he heard the sound of the gate which on the farther side of it led on to the road He hurried on the trees closed behind him the grassy path broadened and there under an arch of young oak and hazel stood Catherine arrested by the sound of his step He too stopped at the sight of her he could not go on Husband and wife looked at each other one long quivering moment Then Catherine sprang forward with a sob and threw herself on his breast
They clung to each other she in a passion of tears—tears of such selfabandonment as neither Robert nor any other living soul had ever seen Catherine Elsmere shed before As for him he was trembling from head to foot his arms scarcely strong enough to hold her his young worn face bent down over her
Oh Robert she sobbed at last putting up her hand and touching his hair you look so pale so sad
I have you again he said simply
A thrill of remorse ran through her
I went away she murmured her face still hidden—I went away because when I woke up it all seemed to me suddenly too ghastly to be believed I could not stay still and bear it But Robert Robert I kissed you as I passed I was so thankful you could sleep a little and forget I hardly know where I have been most of the time—I think I have been sitting in a corner of the park where no one ever comes I began to think of all you said to me last night—to put it together—to try and understand it and it seemed to me more and more horrible I thought of what it would be like to have to hide my prayers from you—my faith in Christ—my hope of heaven I thought of bringing up the child—how all that was vital to me would be a superstition to you which you would bear with for my sake I thought of death and she shuddered—your death or my death and how this change in you would cleave a gulf of misery between us And then I thought of losing my own faith of denying Christ It was a nightmare—I saw myself on a long road escaping with Mary in my arms escaping from you Oh Robert it wasnt only for myself—and she clung to him as though she were a child confessing explaining away some grievous fault hardly to be forgiven I was agonised by the thought that I was not my own—I and my child were Christs Could I risk what was His Other men and women had died had given up all for His sake Is there no one now strongPg 373 enough to suffer torment to kill even love itself rather than deny Him—rather than crucify Him afresh
She paused struggling for breath The terrible excitement of that bygone moment had seized upon her again and communicated itself to him
And then—and then she said sobbing I dont know how it was One moment I was sitting up looking straight before me without a tear thinking of what was the least I must do even—even—if you and I stayed together—of all the hard compacts and conditions I must make—judging you all the while from a long long distance and feeling as though I had buried the old self—sacrificed the old heart—for ever And the next I was lying on the ground crying for you Robert crying for you Your face had come back to me as you lay there in the early morning light I thought how I had kissed you—how pale and gray and thin you looked Oh how I loathed myself That I should think it could be Gods will that I should leave you or torture you my poor husband I had not only been wicked towards you—I had offended Christ I could think of nothing as I lay there—again and again—but Little children love one another little children love one another Oh my beloved—and she looked up with the solemnest tenderest smile breaking on the marred tearstained face—I will never give up hope I will pray for you night and day God will bring you back You cannot lose yourself so No no His grace is stronger than our wills But I will not preach to you—I will not persecute you—I will only live beside you—in your heart—and love you always Oh how could I—how could I have such thoughts
And again she broke off weeping as if to the tender torn heart the only crime that could not be forgiven was its own offence against love As for him he was beyond speech If he had ever lost his vision of God his wifes love would that moment have given it back to him
Robert she said presently urged on by the sacred yearning to heal to atone I will not complain—I will not ask you to wait I take your word for it that it is best not that it would do no good The only hope is in time—and prayer I must suffer dear I must be weak sometimes but oh I am so sorry for you Kiss me forgive me Robert I will be your faithful wife unto our lives end
He kissed her and in that kiss so sad so pitiful so clinging their new life was born
CHAPTER XXX
But the problem of these two lives was not solved by a burst of feeling Without that determining impulse of love and pityPg 374 in Catherines heart the salvation of an exquisite bond might indeed have been impossible But in spite of it the laws of character had still to work themselves inexorably out on either side
The whole gist of the matter for Elsmere lay really in this question Hidden in Catherines nature was there or was there not the true stuff of fanaticism Madame Guyon left her infant children to the mercies of chance while she followed the voice of God to the holy war with heresy Under similar conditions Catherine Elsmere might have planned the same Could she ever have carried it out
And yet the question is still ill stated For the influences of our modern time on religious action are so blunting and dulling because in truth the religious motive itself is being constantly modified whether the religious person knows it or not Is it possible now for a good woman with a heart in Catherine Elsmeres position to maintain herself against love and all those subtle forces to which such a change as Elsmeres opens the house doors without either hardening or greatly yielding Let Catherines further story give some sort of an answer
Poor soul As they sat together in the study after he had brought her home Robert with averted eyes went through the plans he had already thought into shape Catherine listened saying almost nothing But never never had she loved this life of theirs so well as now that she was called on at barely a weeks notice to give it up for ever For Roberts scheme in which her reason fully acquiesced was to keep to their plan of going to Switzerland he having first of course settled all things with the bishop and having placed his living in the hands of Mowbray Elsmere When they left the rectory in a week or ten days time he proposed in fact his voice almost inaudible as he did so that Catherine should leave it for good
Everybody had better suppose he said choking that we are coming back Of course we need say nothing Armitstead will be here for next week certainly Then afterwards I can come down and manage everything I shall get it over in a day if I can and see nobody I cannot say goodbye nor can you
And next Sunday Robert she asked him after a pause
I shall write to Armitstead this afternoon and ask him if he possibly can to come tomorrow afternoon instead of Monday and take the service
Catherines hands clasped each other still more closely So then she had heard her husbands voice for the last time in the public ministry of the Church in prayer in exhortation in benediction One of the most sacred traditions of her life was struck from her at a blow
It was long before either of them spoke again Then she ventured another question
And have you any idea of what we shall do next Robert—of—of our future
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Shall we try London for a little he answered in a queer strained voice leaning against the window and looking out that he might not see her I should find work among the poor—so would you—and I could go on with my book And your mother and sister will probably be there part of the winter
She acquiesced silently How mean and shrunken a future it seemed to them both beside the wide and honourable range of his clergymans life as he and she had developed it But she did not dwell long on that Her thoughts were suddenly invaded by the memory of a cottage tragedy in which she had recently taken a prominent part A girl a child of fifteen from one of the crowded Mile End hovels had gone at Christmas to a distant farm as servant and come back a month ago ruined the victim of an outrage over which Elsmere had ground his teeth in fierce and helpless anger Catherine had found her a shelter and was to see her through her trouble the girl a frail halfwitted creature who could find no words even to bewail herself clinging to her the while with the dumbest pitifulest tenacity
How could she leave that girl It was as if all the fibres of life were being violently wrenched from all their natural connections
Robert she cried at last with a start Had you forgotten the Institute tomorrow
No—no he said with the saddest smile No I had not forgotten it Dont go Catherine—dont go I must But why should you go through it
But there are all those flags and wreaths she said getting up in pained bewilderment I must go and look after them
He caught her in his arms
Oh my wife my wife forgive me It was a groan of misery She put up her hands and pressed his hair back from his temples
I love you Robert she said simply her face colourless but perfectly calm
Half an hour later after he had worked through some letters he went into the workroom and found her surrounded with flags and a vast litter of paper roses and evergreens which she and the new agents daughters who had come up to help her were putting together for the decorations of the morrow Mary was tottering from chair to chair in high glee a big pink rose stuck in the belt of her pinafore His pale wife trying to smile and talk as usual her lap full of evergreens and her politeness exercised by the chatter of the two Miss Batesons seemed to Robert one of the most pitiful spectacles he had ever seen He fled from it out into the village driven by a restless longing for change and movement
Here he found a large gathering round the new Institute There were carpenters at work on a triumphal arch in frontPg 376 and close by an admiring circle of children and old men huddling in the shade of a great chestnut
Elsmere spent an hour in the building helping and superintending stabbed every now and then by the unsuspecting friendliness of those about him or worried by their blunt comments on his looks He could not bear more than a glance into the new rooms apportioned to the Naturalists Club There against the wall stood the new glass cases he had wrung out of the squire with various new collections lying near ready to be arranged and unpacked when time allowed The old collections stood out bravely in the added space and light the walls were hung here and there with a wonderful set of geographical pictures he had carried off from a London exhibition and fed his boys on for weeks the floors were freshly matted the new pine fittings gave out their pleasant cleanly scent the white paint of doors and windows shone in the August sun The building had been given by the squire The fittings and furniture had been mainly of his providing What uses he had planned for it all—only to see the fruits of two years effort out of doors and personal frugality at home handed over to some possibly unsympathetic stranger The heart beat painfully against the iron bars of fate rebelling against the power of a mental process so to affect a mans whole practical and social life
He went out at last by the back of the Institute where a little bit of garden spoilt with building materials led down to a lane
At the end of the garden beside the untidy gap in the hedge made by the builders carts he saw a man standing who turned away down the lane however as soon as the rectors figure emerged into view
Robert had recognised the slouching gait and unwieldy form of Henslowe There were at this moment all kinds of gruesome stories afloat in the village about the exagent It was said that he was breaking up fast it was known that he was extensively in debt and the village shopkeepers had already held an agitated meeting or two to decide upon the best mode of getting their money out of him and upon a joint plan of cautious action towards his custom in future The man indeed was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of sordid misery maintaining all the while a snarling exasperating front to the world which was rapidly converting the careless halfmalicious pity wherewith the village had till now surveyed his fall into that more active species of baiting which the human animal is never very loth to try upon the limping specimens of his race
Henslowe stopped and turned as he heard the steps behind him Six months selfmurdering had left ghastly traces He was many degrees nearer the brute than he had been even when Robert made his ineffectual visit But at this actual momentPg 377 Roberts practised eye—for every English parish clergyman becomes dismally expert in the pathology of drunkenness—saw that there was no fight in him He was in one of the drunkards periods of collapse—shivering flabby starting at every sound a misery to himself and a spectacle to others
Mr Henslowe cried Robert still pursuing him may I speak to you a moment
The exagent turned his prominent bloodshot eyes glowering at the speaker But he had to catch at his stick for support or at the nervous shock of Roberts summons his legs would have given way under him
Robert came up with him and stood a second fronting the evil silence of the other his boyish face deeply flushed Perhaps the grotesqueness of that former scene was in his mind Moreover the vestry meetings had furnished Henslowe with periodical opportunities for venting his gall on the rector and they had never been neglected But he plunged on boldly
I am going away next week Mr Henslowe I shall be away some considerable time Before I go I should like to ask you whether you do not think the feud between us had better cease Why will you persist in making an enemy of me If I did you an injury it was neither wittingly nor willingly I know you have been ill and I gather that—that—you are in trouble If I could stand between you and further mischief I would—most gladly If help—or—or money—— He paused He shrewdly suspected indeed from the reports that reached him that Henslowe was on the brink of bankruptcy
The rector had spoken with the utmost diffidence and delicacy but Henslowe found energy in return for an outburst of quavering animosity from which however physical weakness had extracted all its sting
Ill thank you to make your canting offers to some one else Mr Elsmere When I want your advice Ill ask it Good day to you And he turned away with as much of an attempt at dignity as his shaking limbs would allow of
Listen Mr Henslowe said Robert firmly walking beside him you know—I know—that if this goes on in a years time you will be in your grave and your poor wife and children struggling to keep themselves from the workhouse You may think that I have no right to preach to you—that you are the older man—that it is an intrusion But what is the good of blinking facts that you must know all the world knows Come now Mr Henslowe let us behave for a moment as though this were our last meeting Who knows the chances of life are many Lay down your grudge against me and let me speak to you as one struggling human being to another The fact that you have as you say become less prosperous in some sort through me seems to give me a right—to make it a duty for me if you will—to help you if I can Let me send a good doctor to see you Let me implore you as a last chance to put yourselfPg 378 into his hands and to obey him and your wife and let me—the rector hesitated—let me make things pecuniarily easier for Mrs Henslowe till you have pulled yourself out of the hole in which by common report at least you are now
Henslowe stared at him divided between anger caused by the sore stirring of his old selfimportance and a tumultuous flood of selfpity roused irresistibly in him by Roberts piercing frankness and aided by his own more or less maudlin condition The latter sensation quickly undermined the former he turned his back on the rector and leant over the railings of the lane shaken by something it is hardly worth while to dignify by the name of emotion Robert stood by a pale embodiment of mingled judgment and compassion He gave the man a few moments to recover himself and then as Henslowe turned round again he silently and appealingly held out his hand—the hand of the good man which it was an honour for such as Henslowe to touch Constrained by the moral force radiating from his look the other took it with a kind of helpless sullenness
Then seizing at once on the slight concession with that complete lack of inconvenient selfconsciousness or hindering indecision which was one of the chief causes of his effect on men and women Robert began to sound the broken repulsive creature as to his affairs Bit by bit compelled by a will and nervous strength far superior to his own Henslowe was led into abrupt and blurted confidences which surprised no one so much as himself Roberts quick sense possessed itself of point after point seeing presently ways of escape and relief which the besotted brain beside him had been quite incapable of devising for itself They walked on into the open country and what with the discipline of the rectors presence the sobering effect wrought by the shock to pride and habit and the unwonted brain exercise of the conversation the demon in Henslowe had been for the moment most strangely tamed after half an hours talk Actually some reminiscences of his old ways of speech and thought the ways of the once prosperous and selfreliant man of business had reappeared in him before the end of it called out by the subtle influence of a manner which always attracted to the surface whatever decent element there might be left in a man and then instantly gave it a recognition which was more redeeming than either counsel or denunciation
By the time they parted Robert had arranged with his old enemy that he should become his surety with a rich cousin in Churton who always supposing there were no risk in the matter and that benevolence ran on allfours with security of investment was prepared to shield the credit of the family by the advance of a sufficient sum of money to rescue the exagent from his most pressing difficulties He had also wrung from him the promise to see a specialist in London—Robert writing that evening to make the appointment
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How had it been done Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever quite knew Henslowe walked home in a bewilderment which for once had nothing to do with brandy but was simply the result of a moral shock acting on what was still human in the mans debased consciousness just as electricity acts on the bodily frame
Robert on the other hand saw him depart with a singular lightening of mood What he seemed to have achieved might turn out to be the merest moonshine At any rate the incident had appeased in him a kind of spiritual hunger—the hunger to escape a while from that incessant process of destructive analysis with which the mind was still beset into some use of energy more positive human and beneficent
The following day was one long trial of endurance for Elsmere and for Catherine She pleaded to go promising quietly to keep out of his sight and they started together—a miserable pair
Crowds heat decorations the grandees on the platform and conspicuous among them the squires slouching frame and striking head side by side with a white and radiant Lady Helen—the outer success the inner revolt and pain—and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that hid itself as much as possible in dark corners but was in truth the one thing sharply present to him—these were the sort of impressions that remained with Elsmere afterwards of this last meeting with his people
He had made a speech of which he never could remember a word As he sat down there had been a slight flutter of surprise in the sympathetic looks of those about him as though the tone of it had been somewhat unexpected and disproportionate to the occasion Had he betrayed himself in any way He looked for Catherine but she was nowhere to be seen Only in his search he caught the squires ironical glance and wondered with quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been talking
Then a neighbouring clergyman who had been his warm supporter and admirer from the beginning sprang up and made a rambling panegyric on him and on his work which Elsmere writhed under His work absurdity What could be done in two years He saw it all as the merest nothing a ragged beginning which might do more harm than good
But the cheering was incessant the popular feeling intense There was old Milsom waving a feeble arm John Allwood gaunt but radiant Mary Sharland white still as the ribbons on her bonnet egging on her flushed and cheering husband and the club boys grinning and shouting partly for love of Elsmere mostly because to the young human animal mere noise is heaven In front was an old hedger and ditcher who came round the parish periodically and never failed to take Elsmeres opinion as to a bit of prapperty he and two otherPg 380 brothers as ancient as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years and were likely to go on quarrelling over till all three litigants had closed their eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast entertainment though little pelf Next him was a bowed and twisted old tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth had then gone through the Crimea and the Mutiny and was now living about the commons welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his queer innocuous wit Robert had had many a gay argumentative walk with him and he and his companion had tramped miles to see the function to rattle their sticks on the floor in Elsmeres honour and satiate their curious gaze on the squire
When all was over Elsmere with his wife on his arm mounted the hill to the rectory leaving the green behind them still crowded with folk Once inside the shelter of their own trees husband and wife turned instinctively and caught each others hands A low groan broke from Elsmeres lips Catherine looked at him one moment then fell weeping on his breast The first chapter of their common life was closed
One thing more however of a private nature remained for Elsmere to do Late in the afternoon he walked over to the Hall
He found the squire in the inner library among his German books his pipe in his mouth his old smoking coat and slippers bearing witness to the rapidity and joy with which he had shut the world out again after the futilities of the morning His mood was more accessible than Elsmere had yet found it since his return
Well have you done with all those tomfooleries Elsmere Precious eloquent speech you made When I see you and people like you throwing yourselves at the heads of the people I always think of Scaligers remark about the Basques They say they understand one another—I dont believe a word of it All that the lower class wants to understand at any rate is the shortest way to the pockets of you and me all that you and I need understand according to me is how to keep em off There you have the sum and substance of my political philosophy
You remind me said Robert drily sitting down on one of the library stools of some of those sentiments you expressed so forcibly on the first evening of our acquaintance
The squire received the shaft with equanimity
I was not amiable I remember on that occasion he said coolly his thin old mans fingers moving the while among the shelves of books nor on several subsequent ones I had been made a fool of and you were not particularly adroit But of course you wont acknowledge it Who ever yet got a parson to confess himself
Strangely enough Mr Wendover said Robert fixing himPg 381 with a pair of deliberate feverish eyes I am here at this moment for that very purpose
Go on said the squire turning however to meet the rectors look his gold spectacles falling forward over his long hooked nose his attitude one of sudden attention Go on
All his grievances against Elsmere returned to him He stood aggressively waiting
Robert paused a moment and then said abruptly—
Perhaps even you will agree Mr Wendover that I had some reason for sentiment this morning Unless I read the lessons tomorrow which is possible today has been my last public appearance as rector of this parish
The squire looked at him dumfoundered
And your reasons he said with quick imperativeness
Robert gave them He admitted as plainly and bluntly as he had done to Grey the squires own part in the matter but here a note of antagonism almost of defiance crept even into his confession of wide and illimitable defeat He was there so to speak to hand over his sword But to the squire his surrender had all the pride of victory
Why should you give up your living asked the squire after several minutes complete silence
He too had sat down and was now bending forward his sharp small eyes peering at his companion
Simply because I prefer to feel myself an honest man However I have not acted without advice Grey of St Anselms—you know him of course—was a very close personal friend of mine at Oxford I have been to see him and we agreed it was the only thing to do
Oh Grey exclaimed the squire with a movement of impatience Grey of course wanted you to set up a church of your own or to join his He is like all idealists he has the usual foolish contempt for the compromise of institutions
Not at all said Robert calmly you are mistaken he has the most sacred respect for institutions He only thinks it well and I agree with him that with regard to a mans public profession and practice he should recognise that two and two make four
It was clear to him from the squires tone and manner that Mr Wendovers instincts on the point were very much what he had expected the instincts of the philosophical man of the world who scorns the notion of taking popular beliefs seriously whether for protest or for sympathy But he was too weary to argue The squire however rose hastily and began to walk up and down in a gathering storm of irritation The triumph gained for his own side the tribute to his lifes work were at the moment absolutely indifferent to him They were effaced by something else much harder to analyse Whatever it was it drove him to throw himself upon Roberts position with a perverse bewildering bitterness
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Why should you break up your life in this wanton way Who in Gods name is injured if you keep your living It is the business of the thinker and the scholar to clear his mind of cobwebs Granted You have done it But it is also the business of the practical man to live If I had your altruist emotional temperament I should not hesitate for a moment I should regard the historical expressions of an eternal tendency in men as wholly indifferent to me If I understand you aright you have flung away the sanctions of orthodoxy There is no other in the way Treat words as they deserve You—and the speaker laid an emphasis on the pronoun which for the life of him he could not help making sarcastic—you will always have Gospel enough to preach
I cannot Robert repeated quietly unmoved by the taunt if it was one I am in a different stage I imagine from you Words—that is to say the specific Christian formulæ—may be indifferent to you though a month or two ago I should hardly have guessed it they are just now anything but indifferent to me
The squires brow grew darker He took up the argument again more pugnaciously than ever It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold Roberts resentment was roused at last The squires temper seemed to him totally inexplicable his arguments contradictory the conversation useless and irritating He got up to take his leave
What you are about to do Elsmere the squire wound up with saturnine emphasis is a piece of cowardice You will live bitterly to regret the haste and the unreason of it
There has been no haste exclaimed Robert in the low tone of passionate emotion I have not rooted up the most sacred growths of life as a careless child devastates its garden There are some things which a man only does because he must
There was a pause Robert held out his hand The squire would hardly touch it Outwardly his mood was one of the strangest eccentricity and anger and as to what was beneath it Elsmeres quick divination was dulled by worry and fatigue It only served him so far that at the door he turned back hat in hand and said looking lingeringly the while at the solitary sombre figure at the great library with all its suggestive and exquisite detail If Monday is fine Squire will you walk
The squire made no reply except by another question
Do you still keep to your Swiss plans for next week he asked sharply
Certainly The plan as it happens is a Godsend But there said Robert with a sigh let me explain the details of this dismal business to you on Monday I have hardly the courage for it now
The curtain dropped behind him Mr Wendover stood a minute looking after him then with some vehement expletivePg 383 or other walked up to his writingtable drew some folios that were lying on it towards him with hasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the floor and plunged doggedly into work
He and Mrs Darcy dined alone After dinner the squire leant against the mantelpiece sipping his coffee more gloomily silent than even his sister had seen him for weeks And as always happened when he became more difficult and morose she became more childish She was now wholly absorbed with a little electric toy she had just bought for Mary Elsmere a number of infinitesimal little figures dancing fantastically under the stimulus of an electric current generated by the simplest means She hung over it absorbed calling to her brother every now and then as though by sheer perversity to come and look whenever the pink or the blue danseuse executed a more surprising somersault than usual
He took not the smallest spoken notice of her though his eyes followed her contemptuously as she moved from window to window with her toy in pursuit of the fading light
Oh Roger she called presently still throwing herself to this side and that to catch new views of her pith puppets I have got something to show you You must admire them—you shall I have been drawing them all day and they are nearly done You remember what I told you once about my imps I have seen them all my life since I was a child in France with papa and I have never been able to draw them till the last few weeks They are such dears—such darlings every one will know them when he sees them There is the Chinese imp the low smirking creature you know that sits on the edge of your cup of tea there is the flippertyflopperty creature that flies out at you when you open a drawer there is the twistytwirly person that sits jeering on the edge of your hat when it blows away from you and—her voice dropped—that ugly ugly thing I always see waiting for me on the top of a gate They have teased me all my life and now at last I have drawn them If they were to take offence tomorrow I should have them—the beauties—all safe
She came towards him her bizarre little figure swaying from side to side her eyes glittering her restless hands pulling at the lace round her blanched head and face The squire his hands behind him looked at her frowning an involuntary horror dawning on his dark countenance turned abruptly and left the room
Mr Wendover worked till midnight then tired out he turned to the bit of fire to which in spite of the oppressiveness of the weather the chilliness of age and nervous strain had led him to set a light He sat there for long sunk in the blackest reverie He was the only living creature in the great libraryPg 384 wing which spread around and above him—the only waking creature in the whole vast pile of Murewell The silver lamps shone with a steady melancholy light on the chequered walls of books The silence was a silence that could be felt and the gleaming Artemis the tortured frowning Medusa were hardly stiller in their frozen calm than the crouching figure of the squire
So Elsmere was going In a few weeks the rectory would be once more tenanted by one of those nonentities the squire had either patronised or scorned all his life The park the lanes the room in which he sits will know that spare young figure that animated voice no more The outlet which had brought so much relief and stimulus to his own mental powers is closed the friendship on which he had unconsciously come to depend so much is broken before it had well begun
All sorts of strange thwarted instincts make themselves felt in the squire The wife he had once thought to marry the children he might have had come to sit like ghosts with him beside the fire He had never like Augustine loved to love he had only loved to know But none of us escapes to the last the yearnings which make us men The squire becomes conscious that certain fibres he had thought long since dead in him had been all the while twining themselves silently round the disciple who had shown him in many respects such a filial consideration and confidence That young man might have become to him the son of his old age the one human being from whom as weakness of mind and body break him down even his indomitable spirit might have accepted the sweetness of human pity the comfort of human help
And it is his own hand which has done most to break the nascent slowlyforming tie He has bereft himself
With what incredible recklessness had he been acting all these months
It was the levity of his own proceeding which stared him in the face His rough hand had closed on the delicate wings of a soul as a boy crushes the butterfly he pursues As Elsmere had stood looking back at him from the library door the suffering which spoke in every line of that changed face had stirred a sudden troubled remorse in Roger Wendover It was mere justice that one result of that suffering should be to leave himself forlorn
He had been thinking and writing of religion of the history of ideas all his life Had he ever yet grasped the meaning of religion to the religious man God and faith—what have these venerable ideas ever mattered to him personally except as the subjects of the most ingenious analysis the most delicate historical inductions Not only sceptical to the core but constitutionally indifferent the squire had always found enough to make life amply worth living in the mere dissection of other mens beliefs
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But tonight The unexpected shock of feeling mingled with the terrible sense periodically alive in him of physical doom seems to have stripped from the thorny soul its outer defences of mental habit He sees once more the hideous spectacle of his fathers death his own black halfremembered moments of warning the teasing horror of his sisters increasing weakness of brain Life has been on the whole a burden though there has been a certain joy no doubt in the fierce intellectual struggle of it And tonight it seems so nearly over A cold prescience of death creeps over the squire as he sits in the lamplit silence His eye seems to be actually penetrating the eternal vastness which lies about our life He feels himself old feeble alone The awe the terror which are at the root of all religions have fallen even upon him at last
The fire burns lower the night wears on outside an airless misty moonlight lies over park and field Hark was that a sound upstairs in one of those silent empty rooms
The squire half rises one hand on his chair his blanched face strained listening Again Is it a footstep or simply a delusion of the ear He rises pushes aside the curtains into the inner library where the lamps have almost burnt away creeps up the wooden stair and into the deserted upper story
Why was that door into the end room—his fathers room—open He had seen it closed that afternoon No one had been there since He stepped nearer Was that simply a gleam of moonlight on the polished floor—confused lines of shadow thrown by the vine outside And was that sound nothing but the stirring of the rising wind of dawn against the open casement window Or——
My God
The squire fled downstairs He gained his chair again He sat upright an instant impressing on himself with sardonic vindictive force some of those truisms as to the action of mind on body of brainprocess on sensation which it had been part of his lifes work to illustrate The philosopher had time to realise a shuddering fellowship of weakness with his kind to see himself as a helpless instance of an inexorable law before he fell back in his chair a swoon born of pitiful human terror—terror of things unseen—creeping over heart and brain
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BOOK V
ROSE
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CHAPTER XXXI
It was a November afternoon London lay wrapped in rainy fog The atmosphere was such as only a Londoner can breathe with equanimity and the gloom was indescribable
Meanwhile in defiance of the Inferno outside festal preparations were being made in a little house on Campden Hill Lamps were lit in the drawingroom chairs were pushed back the piano was open and a violin stand towered beside it chrysanthemums were everywhere an invalid lady in a best cap occupied the sofa and two girls were flitting about clearly making the last arrangements necessary for a musical afternoon
The invalid was Mrs Leyburn the girls of course Rose and Agnes Rose at last was safely settled in her longedfor London and an artistic company of the sort her soul loved was coming to tea with her
Of Roses summer at Burwood very little need be said She was conscious that she had not borne it very well She had been offhand with Mrs Thornburgh and had enjoyed one or two open skirmishes with Mrs Seaton Her whole temper had been irritating and irritable—she was perfectly aware of it Towards her sick mother indeed she had controlled herself nor for such a restless creature had she made a bad nurse But Agnes had endured much and found it all the harder because she was so totally in the dark as to the whys and wherefores of her sisters moods
Rose herself would have scornfully denied that any whys and wherefores—beyond her rooted dislike of Whindale—existed Since her return from Berlin and especially since that moment when as she was certain Mr Langham had avoided her and Catherine at the National Gallery she had been calmly certain of her own heartwholeness Berlin had developed her precisely as she had desired that it might The necessities of the Bohemian students life had trained her to a new independence and shrewdness and in her own opinion she was now a woman of the world judging all things by pure reasons
Oh of course she understood him perfectly In the first place at the time of their first meeting she had been a merePg 390 breadandbutter miss the easiest of preys for any one who might wish to get a few hours amusement and distraction out of her temper and caprices In the next place even supposing he had been ever inclined to fall in love with her which her new sardonic fairness of mind obliged her to regard as entirely doubtful he was a man to whom marriage was impossible How could any one expect such a superfine dreamer to turn breadwinner for a wife and household Imagine Mr Langham interviewed by a ratecollector or troubled about coals As to her—simply—she had misunderstood the laws of the game It was a little bitter to have to confess it a little bitter that he should have seen it and have felt reluctantly compelled to recall the facts to her But after all most girls have some young follies to blush over
So far the little cynic would get becoming rather more scarlet however over the process of reflection than was quite compatible with the ostentatious worldly wisdom of it Then a sudden inward restlessness would break through and she would spend a passionate hour pacing up and down and hungering for the moment when she might avenge upon herself and him the week of silly friendship he had found it necessary as her elder and monitor to cut short
In September came the news of Roberts resignation of his living Mother and daughters sat looking at each other over the letter stupefied That this calamity of all others should have fallen on Catherine of all women Rose said very little and presently jumped up with shining excited eyes and ran out for a walk with Bob leaving Agnes to console their tearful and agitated mother When she came in she went singing about the house as usual Agnes who was moved by the news out of all her ordinary sangfroid was outraged by what seemed to her Roses callousness She wrote a letter to Catherine which Catherine put among her treasures so strangely unlike it was to the quiet indifferent Agnes of every day Rose spent a morning over an attempt at a letter which when it reached its destination only wounded Catherine by its constraint and convention
And yet that same night when the child was alone suddenly some phrase of Catherines letter recurred to her She saw as only imaginative people see with every detail visualised her sisters suffering her sisters struggle that was to be She jumped into bed and stifling all sounds under the clothes cried herself to sleep which did not prevent her next morning from harbouring somewhere at the bottom of her a wicked and furtive satisfaction that Catherine might now learn there were more opinions in the world than one
As for the rest of the valley Mrs Leyburn soon passed from bewailing to a plaintive indignation with Robert which was a relief to her daughters It seemed to her a reflection on Richard that Robert should have behaved so ChurchPg 391 opinions had been good enough for Richard The young men seem to think my dears their fathers were all fools
The vicar good man was sincerely distressed but sincerely confident also that in time Elsmere would find his way back into the fold In Mrs Thornburghs dismay there was a secret superstitious pang Perhaps she had better not have meddled Perhaps it was never well to meddle One event bears many readings and the tragedy of Catherine Elsmeres life took shape in the uneasy consciousness of the vicars spouse as a more or less sharp admonition against wilfulness in matchmaking
Of course Rose had her way as to wintering in London They came up in the middle of October while the Elsmeres were still abroad and settled into a small house in Lerwick Gardens Campden Hill which Catherine had secured for them on her way through town to the Continent
As soon as Mrs Leyburn had been made comfortable Rose set to work to look up her friends She owed her acquaintance in London hitherto mainly to Mr and Mrs Pierson the young barrister and his æsthetic wife whom she had originally met and made friends with in a railwaycarriage Mr Pierson was bustling and shrewd not made of the finest clay yet not at all a bad fellow His wife the daughter of a famous Mrs Leo Hunter of a bygone generation was small untidy and in all matters of religious or political opinion emancipated to an extreme She had also a strong vein of inherited social ambition and she and her husband welcomed Rose with greater effusion than ever in proportion as she was more beautiful and more indisputably gifted than ever They placed themselves and their house at the girls service partly out of genuine admiration and goodnature partly also because they divined in her a profitable social appendage
For the Piersons socially were still climbing and had by no means attained Their world so far consisted too much of the odds and ends of most other worlds They were not satisfied with it and the friendship of the girlviolinist whose vivacious beauty and artistic gift made a stir wherever she went was a very welcome addition to their resources They fêted her in their own house they took her to the houses of other people society smiled on Miss Leyburns protectors more than it had ever smiled on Mr and Mrs Pierson taken alone and meanwhile Rose flushed excited and totally unsuspicious thought the world a fairy tale and lived from morning till night in a perpetual din of music compliments and bravos which seemed to her life indeed—life at last
With the beginning of November the Elsmeres returned and about the same time Rose began to project teaparties of her own to which Mrs Leyburn gave a flurried assent When the invitations were written Rose sat staring at them a little pen in hand
I wonder what Catherine will say to some of these peoplePg 392 she remarked in a dubious voice to Agnes Some of them are queer I admit but after all those two superior persons will have to get used to my friends some time and they may as well begin
You cannot expect poor Cathie to come said Agnes with sudden energy
Roses eyebrows went up Agnes resented her ironical expression and with a word or two of quite unusual sharpness got up and went
Rose left alone sprang up suddenly and clasped her white fingers above her head with a long breath
Where my heart used to be there is now just—a black—cold—cinder she remarked with sarcastic emphasis I am sure I used to be a nice girl once but it is so long ago I cant remember it
She stayed so a minute or more then two tears suddenly broke and fell She dashed them angrily away and sat down again to her notewriting
Amongst the cards she had still to fill up was one of which the envelope was addressed to the Hon Hugh Flaxman 90 St Jamess Place Lady Charlotte though she had afterwards again left town had been in Martin Street at the end of October The Leyburns had lunched there and had been introduced by her to her nephew and Lady Helens brother Mr Flaxman The girls had found him agreeable he had called the week afterwards when they were not at home and Rose now carelessly sent him a card with the inward reflection that he was much too great a man to come and was probably enjoying himself at country houses as every aristocrat should in November
The following day the two girls made their way over to Bedford Square where the Elsmeres had taken a house in order to be near the British Museum They pushed their way upstairs through a medley of packingcases and a sickening smell of paint There was a sound of an opening door and a gentleman stepped out of the back room which was to be Elsmeres study on to the landing
It was Edward Langham He and Rose stood and stared at each other a moment Then Rose in the coolest lightest voice introduced him to Agnes Agnes with one curious glance took in her sisters defiant smiling ease and the strangers embarrassment then she went on to find Catherine The two left behind exchanged a few banal questions and answers Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa Afterwards he stood making a study of the ground and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion What was it had gone out of her voice—simply the soft callow sounds of first youth And what a personage she had grown in these twelve months—how formidably consciously brilliant in look and dress and manner
Yes he was still in town—settled there indeed for somePg 393 time And she—was there any special day on which Mrs Leyburn received visitors He asked the question of course with various hesitations and circumlocutions
Oh dear yes Will you come next Wednesday for instance and inspect a musical menagerie The animals will go through their performances from four till seven And I can answer for it that some of the specimens will be entirely new to you
The prospect offered could hardly have been more repellent to him but he got out an acceptance somehow She nodded lightly to him and passed on and he went downstairs his head in a whirl Where had the crude pretty child of yesteryear departed to—impulsive conceited readily offended easily touched sensitive as to what all the world might think of her and her performances The girl he had just left had counted all her resources tried the edge of all her weapons and knew her own place too well to ask for anybody elses appraisement What beauty—good heavens—what aplomb The rich husband Elsmere talked of would hardly take much waiting for
So cogitating Langham took his way westward to his Beaumont Street rooms They were on the second floor small dingy choked with books Ordinarily he shut the door behind him with a sigh of content This evening they seemed to him intolerably confined and stuffy He thought of going out to his club and a concert but did nothing after all but sit brooding over the fire till midnight alternately hugging and hating his solitude
And so we return to the Wednesday following this unexpected meeting
The drawingroom at No 27 was beginning to fill Rose stood at the door receiving the guests as they flowed in while Agnes in the background dispensed tea She was discussing with herself the probability of Langhams appearance Whom shall I introduce him to first she pondered while she shook hands The poet I see mamma is now struggling with him The cellist with the hair—or the lady in Greek dress—or the esoteric Buddhist What a fascinating selection I had really no notion we should be quite so curious
Mees Rose they vait for you said a charming goldenbearded young German viola in hand bowing before her He and his kind were most of them in love with her already and all the more so because she knew so well how to keep them at a distance
She went off beckoning to Agnes to take her place and the quartette began The young German aforesaid played the viola while the cello was divinely played by a Hungarian of whose outer man it need only be said that in wild profusion of muchtortured hair in Hebraism of feature and swarthy smoothness of cheek he belonged to that type which Nature would seem to have already used to excess in the production of the continentalPg 394 musician Rose herself was violinist and the instruments dashed into the opening allegro with a precision and an entrain that took the room by storm
In the middle of it Langham pushed his way into the crowd round the drawingroom door Through the heads about him he could see her standing a little in advance of the others her head turned to one side really in the natural attitude of violinplaying but as it seemed to him in a kind of ravishment of listening—cheeks flushed eyes shining and the right arm and highcurved wrist managing the bow with a grace born of knowledge and fine training
Very much improved eh said an English professional to a German neighbour lifting his eyebrows interrogatively
The other nodded with the businesslike air of one who knows Joachim they say war darüber entzückt and did his best vid her and now D—— has got her—naming a famous violinist—she vill make fast brogress He vill schtamp upon her treecks
But will she ever be more than a very clever amateur Too pretty eh And the questioner nudged his companion dropping his voice
Langham would have given worlds to get on into the room over the prostrate body of the speaker by preference but the laws of mass and weight had him at their mercy and he was rooted to the spot
The other shrugged his shoulders Vell vid a bretty woman—überhaupt—it dosnt mean business Its zoziety—the dukes and the duchesses—that ruins all the yong talents
This whispered conversation went on during the andante With the scherzo the two hirsute faces broke into broad smiles The artist behind each woke up and Langham heard no more except guttural sounds of delight and quick notes of technical criticism
How that Scherzo danced and coquetted and how the Presto flew as though all the winds were behind it chasing its mad eddies of notes through listening space At the end amid a wild storm of applause she laid down her violin and proudly smiling her breast still heaving with excitement and exertion received the praises of those crowding round her The group round the door was precipitated forward and Langham with it She saw him in a moment Her white brow contracted and she gave him a quick but hardly smiling glance of recognition through the crowd He thought there was no chance of getting at her and moved aside amid the general hubbub to look at a picture
Mr Langham how do you do
He turned sharply and found her beside him She had come to him with malice in her heart—malice born of smart and long smouldering pain but as she caught his look the look of the nervous shortsighted scholar and recluse as her glance sweptPg 395 over the delicate refinement of the face a sudden softness quivered in her own The game was so defenceless
You will find nobody here you know she said abruptly a little under her breath I am morally certain you never saw a single person in the room before Shall I introduce you
Delighted of course But dont disturb yourself about me Miss Leyburn I come out of my hole so seldom everything amuses me—but especially looking and listening
Which means she said with frank audacity that you dislike new people
His eye kindled at once Say rather that it means a preference for the people that are not new There is such a thing as concentrating ones attention I came to hear you play Miss Leyburn
Well
She glanced at him from under her long lashes one hand playing with the rings on the other He thought suddenly with a sting of regret of the confiding child who had flushed under his praise that Sunday evening at Murewell
Superb he said but halfmechanically I had no notion a winters work would have done so much for you Was Berlin as stimulating as you expected When I heard you had gone I said to myself—Well at least now there is one completely happy person in Europe
Did you How easily we all dogmatise about each other she said scornfully Her manner was by no means simple He did not feel himself at all at ease with her His very embarrassment however drove him into rashness as often happens
I thought I had enough to go upon he said in another tone and his black eyes sparkling as though a film had dropped from them supplied the reference his words forbore
She turned away from him with a perceptible drawing up of the whole figure
Will you come and be introduced she asked him coldly He bowed as coldly and followed her Wholesome resentment of her manner was denied him He had asked for her friendship and had then gone away and forgotten her Clearly what she meant him to see now was that they were strangers again Well she was amply in her right He suspected that his allusion to their first talk over the fire had not been unwelcome to her as an opportunity
And he had actually debated whether he should come lest in spite of himself she might beguile him once more into those old lapses of will and common sense Coxcomb
He made a few spasmodic efforts at conversation with the lady to whom she had introduced him then awkwardly disengaged himself and went to stand in a corner and study his neighbours
Close to him he found was the poet of the party got up in the most correct professional costume—long hair velvet coatPg 396 eyeglass and all His extravagance however was of the most conventional type Only his vanity had a touch of the sublime Langham who possessed a sort of fineear gift for catching conversation heard him saying to an openeyed ingénue beside him—
Oh my literary baggage is small as yet I have only done perhaps three things that will live
Oh Mr Wood said the maiden mildly protesting against so much modesty
He smiled thrusting his hand into the breast of the velvet coat But then he said in a tone of the purest candour at my age I dont think Shelley had done more
Langham who like all shy men was liable to occasional explosions was seized with a convulsive fit of coughing and had to retire from the neighbourhood of the bard who looked round him disturbed and slightly frowning
At last he discovered a point of view in the back room whence he could watch the humours of the crowd without coming too closely in contact with them What a miscellaneous collection it was He began to be irritably jealous for Roses place in the world She ought to be more adequately surrounded than this What was Mrs Leyburn—what were the Elsmeres about He rebelled against the thought of her living perpetually among her inferiors the centre of a vulgar publicity queen of the secondrate
It provoked him that she should be amusing herself so well Her laughter every now and then came ringing into the back room And presently there was a general hubbub Langham craned his neck forward and saw a struggle going on over a roll of music between Rose and the longhaired longnosed violoncellist Evidently she did not want to play some particular piece and wished to put it out of sight Whereupon the Hungarian who had been clamouring for it rushed to its rescue and there was a mock fight over it At last amid the applause of the room Rose was beaten and her conqueror flourishing the music on high executed a kind of pas seul of triumph
Victoria he cried Now denn for de conditions of peace Mees Rose vill you kindly tune up You are as moch beaten as the French at Sedan
Not a stone of my fortresses not an inch of my territory said Rose with fine emphasis crossing her white wrists before her
The Hungarian looked at her the wild poetic strain in him which was the strain of race asserting itself
But if de victor bows he said dropping on one knee before her If force lay down his spoils at de feet of beauty
The circle round them applauded hotly the touch of theatricality finding immediate response Langham was remorselessly conscious of the mans absurd chevelure and illPg 397fitting clothes But Rose herself had evidently nothing but relish for the scene Proudly smiling she held out her hand for her property and as soon as she had it safe she whisked it into the open drawer of a cabinet standing near and drawing out the key held it up a moment in her taper fingers and then depositing it in a little velvet bag hanging at her girdle she closed the snap upon it with a little vindictive wave of triumph Every movement was graceful rapid effective
Half a dozen German throats broke into guttural protest Amid the storm of laughter and remonstrance the door suddenly opened The fluttered parlourmaid mumbled a long name and with a port of soldierly uprightness there advanced behind her a large fairhaired woman followed by a gentleman and in the distance by another figure
Rose drew back a moment astounded one hand on the piano her dress sweeping round her An awkward silence fell on the chattering circle of musicians
Good heavens said Langham to himself Lady Charlotte Wynnstay
How do you do Miss Leyburn said one of the most piercing of voices Are you surprised to see me You didnt ask me—perhaps you dont want me But I have come you see partly because my nephew was coming and she pointed to the gentleman behind her partly because I meant to punish you for not having come to see me last Thursday Why didnt you
Because we thought you were still away said Rose who had by this time recovered her selfpossession But if you meant to punish me Lady Charlotte you have done it badly I am delighted to see you May I introduce my sister Agnes will you find Lady Charlotte Wynnstay a chair by mamma
Oh you wish I see to dispose of me at once said the other imperturbably What is happening Is it music
Aunt Charlotte that is most disingenuous on your part I gave you ample warning
Rose turned a smiling face towards the speaker It was Mr Flaxman Lady Charlottes companion
You need not have drawn the picture too black Mr Flaxman There is an escape If Lady Charlotte will only let my sister take her into the next room she will find herself well out of the clutches of the music Oh Robert Here you are at last Lady Charlotte you remember my brotherinlaw Robert will you get Lady Charlotte some tea
I am not going to be banished said Mr Flaxman looking down upon her his wellbred slightly worn face aglow with animation and pleasure
Then you will be deafened said Rose laughing as she escaped from him a moment to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden built after the fashion of Mr Gilberts contralto heroines with a voice which bore out the ample promise of her frame
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Your sister is a terribly selfpossessed young person Mr Elsmere said Lady Charlotte as Robert piloted her across the room
Does that imply praise or blame on your part Lady Charlotte asked Robert smiling
Neither at present I dont know Miss Leyburn well enough I merely state a fact No tea Mr Elsmere I have had three teas already and I am not like the American woman who could always worry down another cup
She was introduced to Mrs Leyburn but the plaintive invalid was immediately seized with terror of her voice and appearance and was infinitely grateful to Robert for removing her as promptly as possible to a chair on the border of the two rooms where she could talk or listen as she pleased For a few moments she listened to Fraülein Adelmanns veiled unmanageable contralto then she turned magisterially to Robert standing behind her
The art of singing has gone out she declared since the Germans have been allowed to meddle in it By the way Mr Elsmere how do you manage to be here Are you taking a holiday
Robert looked at her with a start
I have left Murewell Lady Charlotte
Left Murewell she said in astonishment turning round to look at him her eyeglass in her eye Why has Helen told me nothing about it Have you got another living
No My wife and I are settling in London We only told Lady Helen of our intentions a few weeks ago
To which it may be added that Lady Helen touched and dismayed by Elsmeres letter to her had not been very eager to hand over the woes of her friends to her aunts cool and irresponsible comments
Lady Charlotte deliberately looked at him a minute longer through her glass Then she let it fall
You dont mean to tell me any more I can see Mr Elsmere But you will allow me to be astonished
Certainly he said smiling sadly and immediately afterwards relapsing into silence
Have you heard of the squire lately he asked her after a pause
Not from him We are excellent friends when we meet but he doesnt consider me worth writing to His sister—little idiot—writes to me every now and then But she has not vouchsafed me a letter since the summer I should say from the last accounts that he was breaking
He had a mysterious attack of illness just before I left said Robert gravely It made one anxious
Oh it is the old story All the Wendovers have died of weak hearts or queer brains—generally of both together I imagine you had some experience of the squires queerness at one timePg 399 Mr Elsmere I cant say you and he seemed to be on particularly good terms on the only occasion I ever had the pleasure of meeting you at Murewell
She looked up at him smiling grimly She had a curiously exact memory for the unpleasant scenes of life
Oh you remember that unlucky evening said Robert reddening a little We soon got over that We became great friends
Again however Lady Charlotte was struck by the quiet melancholy of his tone How strangely the look of youth—which had been so attractive in him the year before—had ebbed from the mans face—from complexion eyes expression She stared at him full of a brusque tormenting curiosity as to the how and why
I hope there is some one among you strong enough to manage Miss Rose she said presently with an abrupt change of subject That little sisterinlaw of yours is going to be the rage
Heaven forbid cried Robert fervently
Heaven will do nothing of the kind She is twice as pretty as she was last year I am told she plays twice as well She had always the sort of manner that provoked people one moment and charmed them the next And to judge by my few words with her just now I should say she had developed it finely Well now Mr Elsmere who is going to take care of her
I suppose we shall all have a try at it Lady Charlotte
Her mother doesnt look to me a person of nerve enough said Lady Charlotte coolly She is a girl certain—absolutely certain—to have adventures and you may as well be prepared for them
I can only trust she will disappoint your expectations Lady Charlotte said Robert with a slightly sarcastic emphasis
Elsmere who is that man talking to Miss Leyburn asked Langham as the two friends stood side by side a little later watching the spectacle
A certain Mr Flaxman brother to a pretty little neighbour of ours in Surrey—Lady Helen Varley—and nephew to Lady Charlotte I have not seen him here before but I think the girls like him
Is he the Flaxman who got the mathematical prize at Berlin last year
Yes I believe so A striking person altogether He is enormously rich Lady Helen tells me in spite of an elder brother All the money in his mothers family has come to him and he is the heir to Lord Daniels great Derbyshire property Twelve years ago I used to hear him talked about incessantly by the Cambridge men one met Citizen Flaxman they called him for his opinions sake He would ask his scout to dinner and insist on dining with his own servants and shaking hands with his friends butlers The scouts and the butlers putPg 400 an end to that and altogether I imagine the world disappointed him He has a story poor fellow too—a young wife who died with her first baby ten years ago The world supposes him never to have got over it which makes him all the more interesting A distinguished face dont you think—the good type of English aristocrat
Langham assented But his attention was fixed on the group in which Roses bright hair was conspicuous and when Robert left him and went to amuse Mrs Leyburn he still stood rooted to the same spot watching Rose was leaning against the piano one hand behind her her whole attitude full of a young easy selfconfident grace Mr Flaxman was standing beside her and they were deep in talk—serious talk apparently to judge by her quiet manner and the charmed attentive interest of his look Occasionally however there was a sally on her part and an answering flash of laughter on his but the stream of conversation closed immediately over the interruption and flowed on as evenly as before
Unconsciously Langham retreated farther and farther into the comparative darkness of the inner room He felt himself singularly insignificant and out of place and he made no more efforts to talk Rose played a violin solo and played it with astonishing delicacy and fire When it was over Langham saw her turn from the applauding circle crowding in upon her and throw a smiling interrogative look over her shoulder at Mr Flaxman Mr Flaxman bent over her and as he spoke Langham caught her flush and the excited sparkle of her eyes Was this the some one in the stream No doubt—no doubt
When the party broke up Langham found himself borne towards the outer room and before he knew where he was going he was standing beside her
Are you here still she said to him startled as he held out his hand He replied by some comments on the music a little lumbering and infelicitous as all his smalltalk was She hardly listened but presently she looked up nervously compelled as it were by the great melancholy eyes above her
We are not always in this turmoil Mr Langham Perhaps some other day you will come and make friends with my mother
CHAPTER XXXII
Naturally it was during their two months of autumn travel that Elsmere and Catherine first realised in detail what Elsmeres act was to mean to them as husband and wife in the future Each left England with the most tender and heroic resolves And no one who knows anything of life will need to be told that even for these two finelynatured people such resolves were infinitely easier to make than to carry out
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I will not preach to you—I will not persecute you Catherine had said to her husband at the moment of her first shock and anguish And she did her utmost poor thing to keep her word All through the innumerable bitternesses which accompanied Elsmeres withdrawal from Murewell—the letters which followed them the remonstrances of public and private friends the paragraphs which found their way do what they would into the newspapers—the pain of deserting as it seemed to her certain poor and helpless folk who had been taught to look to her and Robert and whose bewildered lamentations came to them through young Armitstead—through all this she held her peace she did her best to soften Roberts grief she never once reproached him with her own
But at the same time the inevitable separation of their inmost hopes and beliefs had thrown her back on herself had immensely strengthened that puritan independent fibre in her which her youth had developed and which her happy marriage had only temporarily masked not weakened Never had Catherine believed so strongly and intensely as now when the husband who had been the guide and inspirer of her religious life had given up the old faith and practices By virtue of a kind of nervous instinctive dread his relaxations bred increased rigidity in her Often when she was alone—or at night—she was seized with a lonely an awful sense of responsibility Oh let her guard her faith not only for her own sake her childs her Lords but for his—that it might be given to her patience at last to lead him back
And the only way in which it seemed to her possible to guard it was to set up certain barriers of silence She feared that fiery persuasive quality in Robert she had so often seen at work on other people With him conviction was life—it was the man himself to an extraordinary degree How was she to resist the pressure of those new ardours with which his mind was filling—she who loved him—except by building at any rate for the time an enclosure of silence round her Christian beliefs It was in some ways a pathetic repetition of the situation between Robert and the squire in the early days of their friendship but in Catherines mind there was no troubling presence of new knowledge conspiring from within with the forces without At this moment of her life she was more passionately convinced than ever that the only knowledge truly worth having in this world was the knowledge of Gods mercies in Christ
So gradually with a gentle persistency she withdrew certain parts of herself from Roberts ken she avoided certain subjects or anything that might lead to them she ignored the religious and philosophical books he was constantly reading she prayed and thought alone—always for him of him—but still resolutely alone It was impossible however that so great a change in their life could be effected without a perpetual sense of breaking links a perpetual series of dumb wounds and griefs on bothPg 402 sides There came a moment when as he sat alone one evening in a pine wood above the Lake of Geneva Elsmere suddenly awoke to the conviction that in spite of all his efforts and illusions their relation to each other was altering dwindling impoverishing the terror of that summer night at Murewell was being dismally justified
His own mind during this time was in a state of perpetual discovery sailing the seas where there was never sand—the vast shadowy seas of speculative thought All his life reserve to those nearest to him had been pain and grief to him He was one of those people as we know who throw off readily to whom sympathy expansion are indispensable who suffer physically and mentally from anything cold and rigid beside them And now at every turn in their talk their reading in many of the smallest details of their common existence Elsmere began to feel the presence of this cold and rigid something He was ever conscious of selfdefence on her side of pained drawing back on his And with every succeeding effort of his at selfrepression it seemed to him as though fresh nails were driven into the coffin of that old free habit of perfect confidence which had made the heaven of their life since they had been man and wife
He sat on for long through the September evening pondering wrestling Was it simply inevitable the natural result of his own act and of her antecedents to which he must submit himself as to any mutilation or loss of power in the body The young lover and husband rebelled—the believer rebelled—against the admission Probably if his change had left him anchorless and forsaken as it leaves many men he would have been ready enough to submit in terror lest his own forlornness should bring about hers But in spite of the intellectual confusion which inevitably attends any wholesale reconstruction of a mans platform of action he had never been more sure of God or the Divine aims of the world than now never more open than now amid this exquisite Alpine world to those passionate moments of religious trust which are mans eternal defiance to the iron silences about him Originally as we know he had shrunk from the thought of change in her corresponding to his own now that his own foothold was strengthening his longing for a new union was overpowering that old dread The proselytising instinct may be never quite morally defensible even as between husband and wife Nevertheless in all strong convinced and ardent souls it exists and must be reckoned with
At last one evening he was overcome by a sudden impulse which neutralised for the moment his nervous dread of hurting her Some little incident of their day together was rankling and it was borne in upon him that almost any violent protest on her part would have been preferable to this constant soft evasion of hers which was gradually imperceptibly dividing heart from heart
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They were in a bare attic room at the very top of one of the huge newlybuilt hotels which during the last twenty years have invaded all the high places of Switzerland The August which had been so hot in England had been rainy and broken in Switzerland But it had been followed by a warm and mellow September and the favourite hotels below a certain height were still full When the Elsmeres arrived at Les Avants this scantily furnished garret out of which some servants had been hurried to make room for them was all that could be found They however liked it for its space and its view They looked sideways from their windows on to the upper end of the lake three thousand feet below them Opposite across the blue water rose a grandiose rampart of mountains the stage on which from morn till night the sun went through a long transformation scene of beauty The water was marked every now and then by passing boats and steamers—tiny specks which served to measure the vastness of all around them To right and left spurs of green mountains shut out alike the lower lake and the icy splendours of the Valais depths profound What made the charm of the narrow prospect was first the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzily above the lake with infinite air below him and then the magical effects of dawn and evening when wreaths of mist would blot out the valley and the lake and leave the eye of the watcher face to face across the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass and its attendant retinue of clouds as though they and he were alone in the universe
It was a peaceful September night From the open window beside him Robert could see a world of high moonlight limited and invaded on all sides by sharp black masses of shade A few rare lights glimmered on the spreading alp below and every now and then a breath of music came to them wafted from a military band playing a mile or two away They had been climbing most of the afternoon and Catherine was lying down her brown hair loose about her the thin oval of her face and clear line of brow just visible in the dim candlelight
Suddenly he stretched out his hand for his Greek Testament which was always near him though there had been no common reading since that bitter day of his confession to her The mark still lay in the wellworn volume at the point reached in their last reading at Murewell He opened upon it and began the eleventh chapter of St John
Catherine trembled when she saw him take up the book He began without preface treating the passage before him in his usual way—that is to say taking verse after verse in the Greek translating and commenting She never spoke all through and at last he closed the little Testament and bent towards her his look full of feeling
Catherine cant you let me—will you never let me tell you now how that story—how the old things—affect me from thePg 404 new point of view You always stop me when I try I believe you think of me as having thrown it all away Would it not comfort you sometimes if you knew that although much of the Gospels this very raising of Lazarus for instance seem to me no longer true in the historical sense still they are always full to me of an ideal a poetical truth Lazarus may not have died and come to life may never have existed but still to me now as always love for Jesus of Nazareth is resurrection and life
He spoke with the most painful diffidence the most wistful tenderness
There was a pause Then Catherine said in a rigid constrained voice—
If the Gospels are not true in fact as history as reality I cannot see how they are true at all or of any value
The next minute she rose and going to the little wooden dressingtable she began to brush out and plait for the night her straight silky veil of hair As she passed him Robert saw her face pale and set
He sat quiet another moment or two and then he went towards her and took her in his arms
Catherine he said to her his lips trembling am I never to speak my mind to you any more Do you mean always to hold me at arms length—to refuse always to hear what I have to say in defence of the change which has cost us both so much
She hesitated trying hard to restrain herself But it was of no use She broke into tears—quiet but most bitter tears
Robert I cannot Oh you must see I cannot It is not because I am hard but because I am weak How can I stand up against you I dare not—I dare not If you were not yourself—not my husband——
Her voice dropped Robert guessed that at the bottom of her resistance there was an intolerable fear of what love might do with her if she once gave it an opening He felt himself cruel brutal and yet an urgent sense of all that was at stake drove him on
I would not press or worry you God knows he said almost piteously kissing her forehead as she lay against him But remember Catherine I cannot put these things aside I once thought I could—that I could fall back on my historical work and leave religious matters alone as far as criticism was concerned But I cannot They fill my mind more and more I feel more and more impelled to search them out and to put my conclusions about them into shape And all the time this is going on are you and I to remain strangers to one another in all that concerns our truest life—are we Catherine
He spoke in a low voice of intense feeling She turned her face and pressed her lips to his hand Both had the scene in the woodpath after her flight and return in their minds and both were filled with a despairing sense of the difficulty ofPg 405 living not through great crises but through the detail of every day
Could you not work at other things she whispered
He was silent looking straight before him into the moonlit shimmer and white spectral hazes of the valley his arms still round her
No he burst out at last not till I have satisfied myself I feel it burning within me like a command from God to work out the problem to make it clearer to myself—and to others he added deliberately
Her heart sank within her The last words called up before her a dismal future of controversy and publicity in which at every step she would be condemning her husband
And all this time all these years perhaps he went on—before in her perplexity she could find words—is my wife never going to let me speak freely to her Am I to act think judge without her knowledge Is she to know less of me than a friend less even than the public for whom I write or speak
It seemed intolerable to him all the more that every moment they stood there together it was being impressed upon him that in fact this was what she meant what she had contemplated from the beginning
Robert I cannot defend myself against you she cried again clinging to him Oh think for me You know what I feel that I dare not risk what is not mine
He kissed her again and then moved away from her to the window It began to be plain to him that his effort was merely futile and had better not have been made But his heart was very sore
Do you ever ask yourself he said presently looking steadily into the night—no I dont think you can Catherine—what part the reasoning faculty that faculty which marks us out from the animal was meant to play in life Did God give it to us simply that you might trample upon it and ignore it both in yourself and me
She had dropped into a chair and sat with clasped hands her hair falling about her white dressinggown and framing the noblyfeatured face blanched by the moonlight She did not attempt a reply but the melancholy of an invincible resolution which was so to speak not her own doing but rather was like a necessity imposed upon her from outside breathed through her silence
He turned and looked at her She raised her arms and the gesture reminded him for a moment of the Donatello figure in the Murewell library—the same delicate austere beauty the same tenderness the same underlying reserve He took her outstretched hands and held them against his breast His hotlybeating heart told him that he was perfectly right and that to accept the barriers she was setting up would impoverish all their future life together But he could not struggle withPg 406 the woman on whom he had already inflicted so severe a practical trial Moreover he felt strangely as he stood there the danger of rousing in her those illimitable possibilities of the religious temper the dread of which had once before risen spectrelike in his heart
So once more he yielded She rewarded him with all the charm all the delightfulness of which under the circumstances she was mistress They wandered up the Rhone valley through the St Gothard and spent a fortnight between Como and Lugano During these days her one thought was to revive and refresh him and he let her tend him and lent himself to the various heroic futilities by which she would try—as part of her nursing mission—to make the future look less empty and their distress less real Of course under all this delicate give and take both suffered both felt that the promise of their marriage had failed them and that they had come dismally down to a second best But after all they were young and the autumn was beautiful—and though they hurt each other they were alone together and constantly passionately interested in each other Italy too softened all things—even Catherines English tone and temper As long as the delicious luxury of the Italian autumn with all its primitive pagan suggestiveness was still round them as long as they were still among the cities of the Lombard plain—that battleground and highway of nations which roused all Roberts historical enthusiasm and set him reading discussing thinking in his old impetuous way about something else than minute problems of Christian evidence—the newborn friction between them was necessarily reduced to a minimum
But with their return home with their plunge into London life the difficulties of the situation began to define themselves more sharply In after years one of Catherines dreariest memories was the memory of their first instalment in the Bedford Square house Roberts anxiety to make it pleasant and homelike was pitiful to watch He had none of the modern passion for upholstery and probably the vaguest notions of what was æsthetically correct But during their furnishing days he was never tired of wandering about in search of pretty things—a rug a screen an engraving—which might brighten the rooms in which Catherine was to live He would put everything in its place with a restless eagerness and then Catherine would be called in and would play her part bravely She would smile and ask questions and admire and then when Robert had gone she would move slowly to the window and look out at the great mass of the British Museum frowning beyond the little dingy strip of garden with a sick longing in her heart for the Murewell cornfield the woodpath the village the free airbathed spaces of heath and common Oh this huge London with its unfathomable poverty and its heartlessPg 407 wealth—how it oppressed and bewildered her Its mere grime and squalor its murky poisoned atmosphere were a perpetual trial to the countrywoman brought up amid the dash of mountain streams and the scents of mountain pastures She drooped physically for a time as did the child
But morally With Catherine everything really depended on the moral state She could have followed Robert to a London living with a joy and hope which would have completely deadened all these repulsions of the senses now so active in her But without this inner glow in the presence of the profound spiritual difference circumstance had developed between her and the man she loved everything was a burden Even her religion though she clung to it with an everincreasing tenacity failed at this period to bring her much comfort Every night it seemed to her that the day had been one long and dreary struggle to make something out of nothing and in the morning the night too seemed to have been alive with conflict—All Thy waves and Thy storms have gone over me
Robert guessed it all and whatever remorseful love could do to soften such a strain and burden he tried to do He encouraged her to find work among the poor he tried in the tenderest ways to interest her in the great spectacle of London life which was already in spite of yearning and regret beginning to fascinate and absorb himself But their standards were now so different that she was constantly shrinking from what attracted him or painfully judging what was to him merely curious and interesting He was really more and more oppressed by her intellectual limitations though never consciously would he have allowed himself to admit them and she was more and more bewildered by what constantly seemed to her a breaking up of principle a relaxation of moral fibre
And the work among the poor was difficult Robert instinctively felt that for him to offer his services in charitable work to the narrow Evangelical whose church Catherine had joined would have been merely to invite rebuff So that even in the love and care of the unfortunate they were separated For he had not yet found a sphere of work and if he had Catherines invincible impulse in these matters was always to attach herself to the authorities and powers that be He could only acquiesce when she suggested applying to Mr Clarendon for some charitable occupation for herself
After her letter to him Catherine had an interview with the vicar at his home She was puzzled by the start and sudden pause for recollection with which he received her name the tone of compassion which crept into his talk with her the pitying look and grasp of the hand with which he dismissed her Then as she walked home it flashed upon her that she had seen a copy some weeks old of the Record lying on the good mans table the very copy which contained Roberts name among the list of men who during the last ten years had thrown up the AnglicanPg 408 ministry The delicate face flushed miserably from brow to chin Pitied for being Roberts wife Oh monstrous—incredible
Meanwhile Robert manlike in spite of all the griefs and sorenesses of the position had immeasurably the best of it In the first place such incessant activity of mind as his is in itself both tonic and narcotic It was constantly generating in him fresh purposes and hopes constantly deadening regret and pushing the old things out of sight He was full of many projects literary and social but they were all in truth the fruits of one long experimental process the passionate attempt of the reason to justify to itself the God in whom the heart believed Abstract thought as Mr Grey saw had had comparatively little to do with Elsmeres relinquishment of the Church of England But as soon as the Christian bases of faith were overthrown that faith had naturally to find for itself other supports and attachments For faith itself—in God and a spiritual order—had been so wrought into the nature by years of reverent and adoring living that nothing could destroy it With Elsmere as with all men of religious temperament belief in Christianity and faith in God had not at the outset been a matter of reasoning at all but of sympathy feeling association daily experience Then the intellect had broken in and destroyed or transformed the belief in Christianity But after the crash faith emerged as strong as ever only craving and eager to make a fresh peace a fresh compact with the reason
Elsmere had heard Grey say long ago in one of the few moments of real intimacy he had enjoyed with him at Oxford My interest in philosophy springs solely from the chance it offers me of knowing something more of God Driven by the same thirst he too threw himself into the same quest pushing his way laboriously through the philosophical borderlands of science through the ethical speculation of the day through the history of mans moral and religious past And while on the one hand the intellect was able to contribute an ever stronger support to the faith which was the man on the other the sphere in him of a patient ignorance which abstains from all attempts at knowing what man cannot know and substitutes trust for either knowledge or despair was perpetually widening I take my stand on conscience and the moral life was the upshot of it all In them I find my God As for all these various problems ethical and scientific which you press upon me my pessimist friend I too am bewildered I too have no explanation to offer But I trust and wait In spite of them—beyond them—I have abundantly enough for faith—for hope—for action
We may quote a passage or two from some letters of his written at this time to that young Armitstead who had taken his place at Murewell and was still there till Mowbray Elsmere should appoint a new man Armitstead had been a collegePg 409 friend of Elsmeres He was a High Churchman of a singularly gentle and delicate type and the manner in which he had received Elsmeres story on the day of his arrival at Murewell had permanently endeared him to the teller of it At the same time the defection from Christianity of a man who at Oxford had been to him the object of much heroworship and since Oxford an example of pastoral efficiency had painfully affected young Armitstead and he began a correspondence with Robert which was in many ways a relief to both In Switzerland and Italy when his wifes gentle inexorable silence became too oppressive to him Robert would pour himself out in letters to Armitstead and the correspondence did not altogether cease with his return to London To the squire during the same period Elsmere also wrote frequently but rarely or never on religious matters
On one occasion Armitstead had been pressing the favourite Christian dilemma—Christianity or nothing Inside Christianity light and certainty outside it chaos If it were not for the Gospels and the Church I should be a Positivist tomorrow Your Theism is a mere arbitrary hypothesis at the mercy of any rival philosophical theory How regarding our position as precarious you should come to regard your own as stable is to me incomprehensible
What I conceive to be the vital difference between Theism and Christianity wrote Elsmere in reply is that as an explanation of things Theism can never be disproved At the worst it must always remain in the position of an alternative hypothesis which the hostile man of science cannot destroy though he is under no obligation to adopt it Broadly speaking it is not the facts which are in dispute but the inference to be drawn from them
Now considering the enormous complication of the facts the Theistic inference will to put it at the lowest always have its place always command respect The man of science may not adopt it but by no advance of science that I at any rate can foresee can it be driven out of the field
Christianity is in a totally different position Its grounds are not philosophical but literary and historical It rests not upon all fact but upon a special group of facts It is and will always remain a great literary and historical problem a question of documents and testimony Hence the Christian explanation is vulnerable in a way in which the Theistic explanation can never be vulnerable The contention at any rate of persons in my position is That to the man who has had the special training required and in whom this training has not been neutralised by any overwhelming bias of temperament it can be as clearly demonstrated that the miraculous Christian story rests on a tissue of mistake as it can be demonstrated that the Isidorian Decretals were a forgery or the correspondence of Paul and Seneca a pious fraud or that the mediæval belief inPg 410 witchcraft was the product of physical ignorance and superstition
You say he wrote again in another connection to Armitstead from Milan you say you think my later letters have been far too aggressive and positive I too am astonished at myself I do not know my own mood it is so clear so sharp so combative Is it the spectacle of Italy I wonder—of a country practically without religion—the spectacle in fact of Latin Europe as a whole and the practical Atheism in which it is ingulfed My dear friend the problem of the world at this moment is—how to find a religion—some great conception which shall be once more capable as the old were capable of welding societies and keeping mans brutish elements in check Surely Christianity of the traditional sort is failing everywhere—less obviously with us and in Teutonic Europe generally but egregiously notoriously in all the Catholic countries We talk complacently of the decline of Buddhism But what have we to say of the decline of Christianity And yet this last is infinitely more striking and more tragic inasmuch as it affects a more important section of mankind I at any rate am not one of those who would seek to minimise the results of this decline for human life nor can I bring myself to believe that Positivism or evolutional morality will ever satisfy the race
In the period of social struggle which undeniably lies before us both in the old and the new world are we then to witness a war of classes unsoftened by the ideal hopes the ideal law of faith It looks like it What does the artisan class what does the town democracy throughout Europe care any longer for Christian checks or Christian sanctions as they have been taught to understand them Superstition in certain parts of rural Europe there is in plenty but wherever you get intelligence and therefore movement you get at once either indifference to or a passionate break with Christianity And consider what it means what it will mean this Atheism of the great democracies which are to be our masters The world has never seen anything like it such spiritual anarchy and poverty combined with such material power and resource Every society—Christian and nonChristian—has always till now had its ideal of greater or less ethical value its appeal to something beyond man Has Christianity brought us to this that the Christian nations are to be the first in the worlds history to try the experiment of a life without faith—that life which you and I at any rate are agreed in thinking a life worthy only of the brute
Oh forgive me These things must hurt you—they would have hurt me in old days—but they burn within me and you bid me speak out What if it be God Himself who is driving His painful lesson home to me to you to the world What does it mean this gradual growth of what we call infidelity of criticism and science on the one hand this gradual death of the old traditions on the other Sin you answer the enmity of the Pg 411human mind against God the momentary triumph of Satan And so you acquiesce heavyhearted in Gods present defeat looking for vengeance and requital hereafter Well I am not so ready to believe in mans capacity to rebel against his Maker Where you see ruin and sin I see the urgent process of Divine education Gods steady ineluctable command to put away childish things the pressure of His spirit on ours towards new ways of worship and new forms of love
And after a while it was with these new ways of worship and new forms of love that the mind began to be perpetually occupied The break with the old things was no sooner complete than the eager soul incapable then as always of resting in negation or opposition pressed passionately forward to a new synthesis not only speculative but practical Before it rose perpetually the haunting vision of another palace of faith—another church or company of the faithful which was to become the shelter of human aspiration amid the desolation and anarchy caused by the crashing of the old How many men and women must have gone through the same strait as itself—how many must be watching with it through the darkness for the rising of a new City of God
One afternoon close upon Christmas he found himself in Parliament Square on his way towards Westminster Bridge and the Embankment The beauty of a sunset sky behind the Abbey arrested him and he stood leaning over the railings beside the Peel statue to look
The day before he had passed the same spot with a German friend His companion—a man of influence and mark in his own country who had been brought up however in England and knew it well—had stopped before the Abbey and had said to him with emphasis I never find myself in this particular spot of London without a sense of emotion and reverence Other people feel that in treading the Forum of Rome they are at the centre of human things I am more thrilled by Westminster than Rome your venerable Abbey is to me the symbol of a nationality to which the modern world owes obligations it can never repay You are rooted deep in the past you have also a future of infinite expansiveness stretching before you Among European nations at this moment you alone have freedom in the true sense you alone have religion I would give a year of life to know what you will have made of your freedom and your religion two hundred years hence
As Robert recalled the words the Abbey lay before him wrapped in the bluish haze of the winter afternoon Only the towers rose out of the mist gray and black against the red bands of cloud A pair of pigeons circled round them as careless and free in flight as though they were alone with the towers and the sunset Below the streets were full of people the omnibuses rolled to and fro the lamps were just lit lines ofPg 412 straggling figures dark in the half light were crossing the street here and there And to all the human rush and swirl below the quiet of the Abbey and the infinite red distances of sky gave a peculiar pathos and significance
Robert filled his eye and sense and then walked quickly away towards the Embankment Carrying the poetry and grandeur of Englands past with him he turned his face eastward to the great newmade London on the other side of St Pauls the London of the democracy of the nineteenth century and of the future He was wrestling with himself a prey to one of those critical moments of life when circumstance seems once more to restore to us the power of choice of distributing a Yes or a No among the great solicitations which meet the human spirit on its path from silence to silence The thought of his friends reverence and of his own personal debt towards the country to whose long travail of centuries he owed all his own joys and faculties was hot within him
Here and here did England help me—how can I help England—say
Ah that vast chaotic London south and east of the great church He already knew something of it A Liberal clergyman there settled in the very blackest busiest heart of it had already made him welcome on Mr Greys introduction He had gone with this good man on several occasions through some little fraction of that teeming world now so hidden and peaceful between the murky river mists and the cleaner lightfilled grays of the sky He had heard much and pondered a good deal the quick mind caught at once by the differences some tragic some merely curious and stimulating between the monotonous life of his own rural folk and the mad rush the voracious hurry the bewildering appearances and disappearances the sudden ingulfments of working London
Moreover he had spent a Sunday or two wandering among the East End churches There rather than among the streets and courts outside as it had seemed to him lay the tragedy of the city Such emptiness such desertion such a hopeless breach between the great craving need outside and the boon offered it within Here and there indeed a patch of bright coloured success as it claimed to be where the primitive tendency of man towards the organised excitement of religious ritual visible in all nations and civilisations had been appealed to with more energy and more results than usual But in general blank failure or rather obvious want of success—as the devoted men now beating the void there were themselves the first to admit with pain and patient submission to the inscrutable Will of God
But is it not time we assured ourselves he was always asking whether God is still in truth behind the offer man is perpetually making to his brother man on His behalf He was behind it once and it had efficacy had power But now—what if allPg 413 these processes of socalled destruction and decay were but the mere workings of that divine plastic force which is for ever moulding human society What if these beautiful venerable things which had fallen from him as from thousands of his fellows represented in the present stage of the worlds history not the props but the hindrances of man
And if all these large things were true as he believed what should be the individuals part in this transition England Surely at the least a part of plain sincerity of act and speech—a correspondence as perfect as could be reached between the inner faith and the outer word and deed So much at the least was clearly required of him
Do not imagine he said to himself as though with a fierce dread of possible selfdelusion that it is in you to play any great any commanding part Shun the thought of it if it were possible But let me do what is given me to do Here in this human wilderness may I spend whatever of time or energy or faculty may be mine in the faithful attempt to help forward the new House of Faith that is to be though my utmost efforts should but succeed in laying some obscure stone in still unseen foundations Let me try and hand on to some other human soul or souls before I die the truth which has freed and which is now sustaining my own heart Can any man do more Is not every man who feels any certainty in him whatever bound to do as much What matter if the wise folk scoff if even at times and in a certain sense one seems to ones self ridiculous—absurdly lonely and powerless All great changes are preceded by numbers of sporadic and as the bystander thinks impotent efforts But while the individual effort sinks drowned perhaps in mockery the general movement quickens gathers force we know not how and—
While the tired wave vainly breaking
Seems here no painful inch to gain
Far back through creeks and inlets making
Comes silent flooding in the main
Darkness sank over the river all the gray and purple distance with its dim edge of spires and domes against the sky all the vague intervening blacknesses of street or bridge or railway station were starred and patterned with lights The vastness the beauty of the city filled him with a sense of mysterious attraction and as he walked on with his face uplifted to it it was as though he took his life in his hand and flung it afresh into the human gulf
What does it matter if ones work be raw and uncomely All that lies outside the great organised traditions of an age must always look so Let me bear my witness bravely not spending life in speech but not undervaluing speech—above all not being ashamed or afraid of it because other wise people may prefer a policy of silence A man has but the one punyPg 414 life the one tiny spark of faith Better be venturesome with both for Gods sake than overcautious overthrifty And—to his own Master he standeth or falleth
Plans of work of all kinds literary and practical thoughts of preaching in some bare hidden room to men and women orphaned and stranded like himself began to crowd upon him The old clerical instinct in him winced at some of them Robert had nothing of the sectary about him by nature he was always too deeply and easily affected by the great historic existences about him But when the Oxford man or the exofficial of one of the most venerable and decorous of societies protested the believer or if you will the enthusiast put the protest by
And so the dream gathered substance and stayed with him till at last he found himself at his own door As he closed it behind him Catherine came out into the pretty old hall from the diningroom
Robert have you walked all the way
Yes I came along the Embankment Such a beautiful evening
He slipped his arm inside hers and they mounted the stairs together She glanced at him wistfully She was perfectly aware that these months were to him months of incessant travail of spirit and she caught at this moment the old strenuous look of eye and brow she knew so well A year ago and every thought of his mind had been open to her—and now—she herself had shut them out—but her heart sank within her
She turned and kissed him He bent his head fondly over her But inwardly all the ardour of his mood collapsed at the touch of her For the protests of a world in arms can be withstood with joy but the protest that steals into your heart that takes loves garb and uses loves ways—there is the difficulty
CHAPTER XXXIII
But Robert was some time in finding his opening in realising any fraction of his dream At first he tried work under the Broad Church vicar to whom Grey had introduced him He undertook some rentcollecting and some evening lectures on elementary science to boys and men But after a while he began to feel his position false and unsatisfactory In truth his opinions were in the main identical with those of the vicar under whom he was acting But Mr Vernon was a Broad Churchman belonged to the Church Reform movement and thought it absolutely necessary to keep things going and by a policy of prudent silence and gradual expansion from within to save the great plant of the Establishment from falling wholesale into the hands of the High Churchmen In consequence he was involved as Robert held in endless contradictionsPg 415 and practical falsities of speech and action His large church was attended by a handful of some fifty to a hundred persons Vernon could not preach what he did believe and would not preach more than was absolutely necessary what he did not believe He was hardworking and kindhearted but the perpetual divorce between thought and action which his position made inevitable was constantly blunting and weakening all he did His whole life indeed was one long waste of power simply for lack of an elementary frankness
But if these became Roberts views as to Vernon Vernons feeling towards Elsmere after six weeks acquaintance was not less decided He was constitutionally timid and he probably divined in his new helper a man of no ordinary calibre whose influence might very well turn out some day to be of the incalculably diffusive kind He grew uncomfortable begged Elsmere to beware of any direct religious teaching talked in warm praise of a policy of omissions and in equally warm denunciation of anything like a policy of attack In short it became plain that two men so much alike and yet so different could not long cooperate
However just as the fact was being brought home to Elsmere a friendly chance intervened
Hugh Flaxman the Leyburns new acquaintance and Lady Helens brother had been drawn to Elsmere at first sight and a meeting or two now at Lady Charlottes now at the Leyburns had led both men far on the way to a friendship Of Hugh Flaxman himself more hereafter At present all that need be recorded is that it was at Mr Flaxmans house overlooking St Jamess Park Robert first met a man who was to give him the opening for which he was looking
Mr Flaxman was fond of breakfast parties à la Rogers and on the first occasion when Robert could be induced to attend one of these functions he saw opposite to him what he supposed to be a lad of twenty a young slip of a fellow whose sallies of fun and invincible good humour attracted him greatly
Sparkling brown eyes full lips rich in humour and pugnacity lockës crull as they were layde in presse the same look of wonderly activity too in spite of his short stature and dainty make as Chaucer lends his squire—the type was so fresh and pleasing that Robert was more and more held by it especially when he discovered to his bewilderment that the supposed stripling must be from his talk a man quite as old as himself an official besides filling what was clearly some important place in the world He took his full share in the politics and literature started at the table and presently when conversation fell on the proposed municipality for London said things to which the whole party listened Roberts curiosity was aroused and after breakfast he questioned his host and was promptly introduced to Mr Murray Edwardes
Pg 416
Whereupon it turned out that this babyfaced sage was filling a post in the work of which perhaps few people in London could have taken so much interest as Robert Elsmere
Fifty years before a wealthy merchant who had been one of the chief pillars of London Unitarianism had made his will and died His great warehouses lay in one of the Eastern riverside districts of the city and in his will he endeavoured to do something according to his lights for the place in which he had amassed his money He left a fairly large bequest wherewith to build and endow a Unitarian chapel and found certain Unitarian charities in the heart of what was even then one of the densest and most povertystricken of London parishes For a long time however chapel and charities seemed likely to rank as one of the idle freaks of religious wealth and nothing more Unitarianism of the old sort is perhaps the most illogical creed that exists and certainly it has never been the creed of the poor In old days it required the presence of a certain arid stratum of the middle classes to live and thrive at all This stratum was not to be found in R—— which rejoiced instead in the most squalid types of poverty and crime types wherewith the mild shrivelled Unitarian minister had about as much power of grappling as a Poet Laureate with a Trafalgar Square Socialist
Soon after the erection of the chapel there arose that shaking of the dry bones of religious England which we call the Tractarian movement For many years the new force left R—— quite undisturbed The parish church droned away the Unitarian minister preached decorously to empty benches knowing nothing of the agitations outside At last however towards the end of the old ministers life a powerful church of the new type staffed by friends and pupils of Pusey rose in the centre of R—— and the little Unitarian chapel was for a time more snuffed out than ever a fate which this time it shared dismally with the parish church As generally happened however in those days the proceedings at this new and splendid St Wilfrids were not long in stirring up the Protestantism of the British rough—the said Protestantism being always one of the finest excuses for brickbats of which the modern cockney is master The parish lapsed into a state of private war—hectic clergy heading exasperated processions or intoning defiant Litanies on the one side—mobs rotten eggs dead cats and blatant Protestant orators on the other
The war went on practically for years and while it was still raging the minister of the Unitarian chapel died and the authorities concerned chose in his place a young fellow the son of a Bristol minister a Cambridge man besides as chance would have it of brilliant attainments and unusually commended from many quarters even including some Church ones of the Liberal kind This curlyhaired youth as he was then in reality and as to his own quaint vexation he went on seeming to bePg 417 up to quite middle age had the wit to perceive at the moment of his entry on the troubled scene that behind all the mere brutal opposition to the new church and in contrast with the sheer indifference of threefourths of the district there was a small party consisting of an aristocracy of the artisans whose protest against the Puseyite doings was of a much quieter sterner sort and amongst whom the uproar had mainly roused a certain crude power of thinking He threw himself upon this element which he rather divined than discovered and it responded He preached a simple creed drove it home by pure and generous living he lectured taught brought down workers from the West End and before he had been five years in harness had not only made himself a power in R—— but was beginning to be heard of and watched with no small interest by many outsiders
This was the man on whom Robert had now stumbled Before they had talked twenty minutes each was fascinated by the other They said goodbye to their host and wandered out together into St Jamess Park where the trees were white with frost and an orange sun was struggling through the fog Here Murray Edwardes poured out the whole story of his ministry to attentive ears Robert listened eagerly Unitarianism was not a familiar subject of thought to him He had never dreamt of joining the Unitarians and was indeed long ago convinced that in the beliefs of a Channing no one once fairly started on the critical road could rationally stop That common thinness and aridity too of the Unitarian temper had weighed with him But here in the person of Murray Edwardes it was as though he saw something old and threadbare revivified The young mans creed as he presented it had grace persuasiveness even unction and there was something in his tone of mind which was like a fresh wind blowing over the fevered places of the others heart
They talked long and earnestly Edwardes describing his own work and the changes creeping over the modern Unitarian body Elsmere saying little asking much
At last the young man looked at Elsmere with eyes of bright decision
You cannot work with the Church he said—it is impossible You will only wear yourself out in efforts to restrain what you could do infinitely more good as things stand now by pouring out Come to us—I will put you in the way You shall be hampered by no pledges of any sort Come and take the direction of some of my workers We have all got our hands more than full Your knowledge your experience would be invaluable There is no other opening like it in England just now for men of your way of thinking and mine Come Who knows what we may be putting our hands to—what fruit may grow from the smallest seed
The two men stopped beside the lightly frozen water RobertPg 418 gathered that in this soul too there had risen the same large intoxicating dream of a reorganised Christendom a new widespreading shelter of faith for discouraged browbeaten man as in his own I will he said briefly after a pause his own look kindling—it is the opening I have been pining for I will give you all I can and bless you for the chance
That evening Robert got home late after a busy day full of various engagements Mary after some waiting up for Fader had just been carried protesting red lips pouting and fat legs kicking off to bed Catherine was straightening the room which had been thrown into confusion by the childs romps
It was with an effort—for he knew it would be a shock to her—that he began to talk to her about the breakfastparty at Mr Flaxmans and his talk with Murray Edwardes But he had made it a rule with himself to tell her everything that he was doing or meant to do She would not let him tell her what he was thinking But as much openness as there could be between them there should be
Catherine listened—still moving about the while—the thin beautiful lips becoming more and more compressed Yes it was hard to her very hard the people among whom she had been brought up her father especially would have held out the hand of fellowship to any body of Christian people but not to the Unitarian No real barrier of feeling divided them from any orthodox Dissenter but the gulf between them and the Unitarian had been dug very deep by various forces—forces of thought originally of strong habit and prejudice in the course of time
He is going to work with them now she thought bitterly soon he will be one of them—perhaps a Unitarian minister himself
And for the life of her as he told his tale she could find nothing but embarrassed monosyllables and still more embarrassed silences wherewith to answer him Till at last he too fell silent feeling once more the sting of a now habitual discomfort
Presently however Catherine came to sit down beside him She laid her head against his knee saying nothing but gathering his hand closely in both her own
Poor womans heart One moment in rebellion the next a suppliant He bent down quickly and kissed her
Would you like he said presently after both had sat silent a while in the firelight would you care to go to Madame de Nettevilles tonight
By all means said Catherine with a sort of eagerness It was Friday she asked us for wasnt it We will be quick over dinner and I will go and dress
In that last ten minutes which Robert had spent with the squire in his bedroom on the Monday afternoon when they were to have walked Mr Wendover had drily recommendedPg 419 Elsmere to cultivate Madame de Netteville He sat propped up in his chair white gaunt and cynical and this remark of his was almost the only reference he would allow to the Elsmere move
You had better go there he said huskily it will do you good She gets the firstrate people and she makes them talk which Lady Charlotte cant Too many fools at Lady Charlottes she waters the wine too much
And he had persisted with the subject—using it as Elsmere thought as a means of warding off other conversation He would not ask Elsmeres plans and he would not allow a word about himself
There had been a heart attack old Meyrick thought coupled with signs of nervous strain and excitement It was the last ailment which evidently troubled the doctor most But behind the physical breakdown there was to Roberts sense something else a spiritual something infinitely forlorn and piteous which revealed itself wholly against the elder mans will and filled the younger with a dumb helpless rush of sympathy Since his departure Robert had made the keeping up of his correspondence with the squire a binding obligation and he was tonight chiefly anxious to go to Madame de Nettevilles that he might write an account of it to Murewell
Still the squires talk and his own glimpse of her at Murewell had made him curious to see more of the woman herself The squires ways of describing her were always half approving half sarcastic Robert sometimes imagined that he himself had been at one time more under her spell than he cared to confess If so it must have been when she was still in Paris the young English widow of a man of old French family rich fascinating distinguished and the centre of a small salon admission to which was one of the social blue ribbons of Paris
Since the war of 1870 Madame de Netteville had fixed her headquarters in London and it was to her house in Hans Place that the squire wrote to her about the Elsmeres She owed Roger Wendover debts of various kinds and she had an encouraging memory of the young clergyman on the terrace at Murewell So she promptly left her cards together with the intimation that she was at home always on Friday evenings
I have never seen the wife she meditated as her delicate jewelled hand drew up the window of the brougham in front of the Elsmeres lodgings But if she is the ordinary country clergymans spouse the squire of course will have given the young man a hint
But whether from oblivion or from some instinct of grim humour towards Catherine whom he had always vaguely disliked the squire said not one word about his wife to Robert in the course of their talk of Madame de Netteville
Catherine took pains with her dress sorely wishing to do Robert credit She put on one of the gowns she had taken toPg 420 Murewell when she married It was black simply made and had been a favourite with both of them in the old surroundings
So they drove off to Madame de Nettevilles Catherines heart was beating faster than usual as she mounted the twisting stairs of the luxurious little house All these new social experiences were a trial to her But she had the vaguest most unsuspicious ideas of what she was to see in this particular house
A long low room was thrown open to them Unlike most English rooms it was barely though richly furnished A Persian carpet of a selfcoloured grayish blue threw the gilt French chairs and the various figures sitting upon them into delicate relief The walls were painted white and had a few French mirrors and girandoles upon them half a dozen fine French portraits too here and there let into the wall in oval frames The subdued light came from the white sides of the room and seemed to be there solely for social purposes You could hardly have read or written in the room but you could see a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress there and you could talk there either têteàtête or to the assembled company to perfection so cunningly was it all devised
When the Elsmeres entered there were about a dozen people present—ten gentlemen and two ladies One of the ladies Madame de Netteville was lying back in the corner of a velvet divan placed against the wall a screen between her and a splendid fire that threw its blaze out into the room The other a slim woman with closely curled fair hair and a neck abnormally long and white sat near her and the circle of men was talking indiscriminately to both
As the footman announced Mr and Mrs Elsmere there was a general stir of surprise The men looked round Madame de Netteville half rose with a puzzled look It was more than a month since she had dropped her invitation Then a flash not altogether of pleasure passed over her face and she said a few hasty words to the woman near her advancing the moment afterwards to give her hand to Catherine
This is very kind of you Mrs Elsmere to remember me so soon I had imagined you were hardly settled enough yet to give me the pleasure of seeing you
But the eyes fixed on Catherine eyes which took in everything were not cordial for all their smile
Catherine looking up at her was overpowered by her excessive manner and by the womans look of conscious sarcastic strength struggling through all the outer softness of beauty and exquisite dress
Mr Elsmere you will find this room almost as hot I am afraid as that afternoon on which we met last Let me introduce you to Count Wielandt—Mr Elsmere Mrs Elsmere will you come over here beside Lady Aubrey Willert
Robert found himself bowing to a young diplomatist whoPg 421 seemed to him to look at him very much as he himself might have scrutinised an inhabitant of New Guinea Lady Aubrey made an imperceptible movement of the head as Catherine was presented to her and Madame de Netteville smiling and biting her lip a little fell back into her seat
There was a faint odour of smoke in the room As Catherine sat down a young exquisite a few yards from her threw the end of a cigarette into the fire with a little sharp decided gesture Lady Aubrey also pushed away a cigarette case which lay beside her hand
Everybody there had the air more or less of an habitué of the house and when the conversation began again the Elsmeres found it very hard in spite of certain perfunctory efforts on the part of Madame de Netteville to take any share in it
Well I believe the story about Desforêts is true said the fairhaired young Apollo who had thrown away his cigarette lolling back in his chair
Catherine started the little scene with Rose and Langham in the English rectory garden flashing incongruously back upon her
If you get it from the Ferret my dear Evershed said the exTory minister Lord Rupert you may put it down as a safe lie As for me I believe she has a much shrewder eye to the main chance
What do you mean said the other raising astonished eyebrows
Well it doesnt pay you know to write yourself down a fiend—not quite
What—you think it will affect her audiences Well that is a good joke and the young man laughed immoderately joined by several of the other guests
I dont imagine it will make any difference to you my good friend returned Lord Rupert imperturbably but the British public havent got your nerve They may take it awkwardly—I dont say they will—when a woman who has turned her own young sister out of doors at night in St Petersburg so that ultimately as a consequence the girl dies comes to ask them to clap her touching impersonations of injured virtue
What has one to do with an actresss private life my dear Lord Rupert asked Madame de Netteville her voice slipping with a smooth clearness into the conversation her eyes darting light from under straight black brows
What indeed said the young man who had begun the conversation with a disagreeable enigmatical smile stretching out his hand for another cigarette and drawing it back with a look under his drooped eyelids—a look of cold impertinent scrutiny—at Catherine Elsmere
Ah well—I dont want to be obtrusively moral—Heaven forbid But there is such a thing as destroying the illusion to such an extent that you injure your pocket Desforêts is doing it—doing it actually in Paris too
Pg 422
There was a ripple of laughter
Paris and illusions—O mon Dieu groaned young Evershed when he had done laughing laying meditative hands on his knees and gazing into the fire
I tell you I have seen it said Lord Rupert waxing combative and slapping the leg he was nursing with emphasis The last time I went to see Desforêts in Paris the theatre was crammed and the house—theatrically speaking—ice They received her in dead silence—they gave her not one single recall—and they only gave her a clap that I can remember at those two or three points in the play where clap they positively must or burst They go to see her—but they loathe her—and they let her know it
Bah said his opponent it is only because they are tired of her Her vagaries dont amuse them any longer—they know them by heart And—by George she has some pretty rivals too now he added reflectively—not to speak of the Bernhardt
Well the Parisians can be shocked said Count Wielandt in excellent English bending forward so as to get a good view of his hostess They are just now especially shocked by the condition of English morals
The twinkle in his eye was irresistible The men understanding his reference to the avidity with which certain English aristocratic scandals had been lately seized upon by the French papers laughed out—so did Lady Aubrey Madame de Netteville contented herself with a smile
They profess to be shocked too by Renans last book said the editor from the other side of the room
Dear me said Lady Aubrey with meditative scorn fanning herself lightly the while her thin but extraordinarily graceful head and neck thrown out against the golden brocade of the cushion behind her
Oh what so many of them feel in Renans case of course said Madame de Netteville is that every book he writes now gives a fresh opening to the enemy to blaspheme Your eminent freethinker cant afford just yet in the present state of the world to make himself socially ridiculous The cause suffers
Just my feeling said young Evershed calmly Though I maynt care a rap about him personally I prefer that a man on my own front bench shouldnt make a public ass of himself if he can help it—not for his sake of course but for mine
Robert looked at Catherine She sat upright by the side of Lady Aubrey her face of which the beauty tonight seemed lost in rigidity pale and stiff With a contraction of heart he plunged himself into the conversation On his road home that evening he had found an important foreign telegram posted up at the small literary club to which he had belonged since Oxford days He made a remark about it now to Count Wielandt and the diplomatist turning rather unwillingly to face his questioner recognised that the remark was a shrewd one
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Presently the young mans frank intelligence had told On his way to and from the Holy Land three years before Robert had seen something of the East and it so happened that he remembered the name of Count Wielandt as one of the foreign secretaries of legation present at an official party given by the English Ambassador at Constantinople which he and his mother had attended on their return journey in virtue of a family connection with the Ambassador All that he could glean from memory he made quick use of now urged at first by the remorseful wish to make this new world into which he had brought Catherine less difficult than he knew it must have been during the last quarter of an hour
But after a while he found himself leading the talk of a section of the room and getting excitement and pleasure out of the talk itself Ever since that Eastern journey he had kept an eye on the subjects which had interested him then reading in his rapid voracious way all that came across him at Murewell especially in the squires foreign newspapers and reviews and storing it when read in a remarkable memory
Catherine after the failure of some conversational attempts between her and Madame de Netteville fell to watching her husband with a start of strangeness and surprise She had scarcely seen him at Oxford among his equals and she had very rarely been present at his talks with the squire In some ways and owing to the instinctive reserves set up between them for so long her intellectual knowledge of him was very imperfect His ease his resource among these men of the world for whom—independent of all else—she felt a countrywomans dislike filled her with a kind of bewilderment
Are you new to London Lady Aubrey asked her presently in that tone of absolute detachment from the person addressed which certain women manage to perfection She too had been watching the husband and the sight had impressed her with a momentary curiosity to know what the stiff handsome dowdilydressed wife was made of
We have been two months here said Catherine her large gray eyes taking in her companions very bare shoulders the costly fantastic dress and the diamonds flashing against the white skin
In what part
In Bedford Square
Lady Aubrey was silent She had no ideas on the subject of Bedford Square at command
We are very central said Catherine feeling desperately that she was doing Robert no credit at all and anxious to talk if only something could be found to talk about
Oh yes you are near the theatres said the other indifferently
This was hardly an aspect of the matter which had yet occurred to Catherine A flash of bitterness ran through herPg 424 Had they left their Murewell life to be near the theatres and kept at arms length by supercilious great ladies
We are very far from the Park she answered with an effort I wish we werent for my little girls sake
Oh you have a little girl How old
Sixteen months
Too young to be a nuisance yet Mine are just old enough to be in everybodys way Children are out of place in London I always want to leave mine in the country but my husband objects said Lady Aubrey coolly There was a certain piquancy in saying frank things to this stiff Madonnafaced woman
Madame de Netteville meanwhile was keeping up a conversation in an undertone with young Evershed who had come to sit on a stool beside her and was gazing up at her with eyes of which the expression was perfectly understood by several persons present The handsome dissipated illconditioned youth had been her slave and shadow for the last two years His devotion now no longer amused her and she was endeavouring to get rid of it and of him But the process was a difficult one and took both time and finesse
She kept her eye notwithstanding on the newcomers whom the squires introduction had brought to her that night When the Elsmeres rose to go she said goodbye to Catherine with an excessive politeness under which her poor guest conscious of her own gaucherie during the evening felt the touch of satire she was perhaps meant to feel But when Catherine was well ahead Madame de Netteville gave Robert one of her most brilliant smiles
Friday evening Mr Elsmere always Fridays You will remember
The naïveté of Roberts social view and the mobility of his temper made him easily responsive He had just enjoyed half an hours brilliant talk with two or three of the keenest and most accomplished men in Europe Catherine had slipped out of his sight meanwhile and the impression of their entrée had been effaced He made Madame de Netteville therefore a cordial smiling reply before his tall slender form disappeared after that of his wife
Agreeable—rather an acquisition said Madame de Netteville to Lady Aubrey with a light motion of the head towards Roberts retreating figure But the wife Good heavens I owe Roger Wendover a grudge I think he might have made it plain to those good people that I dont want strange women at my Friday evenings
Lady Aubrey laughed No doubt she is a genius or a saint in mufti She might be handsome too if some one would dress her
Madame de Netteville shrugged her shoulders Oh life is not long enough to penetrate that kind of person she said
Meanwhile the person was driving homeward very sad andPg 425 ill at ease She was vexed that she had not done better and yet she was wounded by Roberts enjoyment The Puritan in her blood was all aflame As she sat looking into the motley lamplit night she could have testified like any prophetess of old
Robert meanwhile his hand slipped into hers was thinking of Wielandts talk and of some racy stories of Berlin celebrities told by a young attaché who had joined their group His lips were lightly smiling his brow serene
But as he helped her down from the cab and they stood in the hall together he noticed the pale discomposure of her looks Instantly the familiar dread and pain returned upon him
Did you like it Catherine he asked her with something like timidity as they stood together by their bedroom fire
She sank into a low chair and sat a moment staring at the blaze He was startled by her look of suffering and kneeling he put his arms tenderly round her
Oh Robert Robert she cried falling on his neck
What is it he asked kissing her hair
I seem all at sea she said in a choked voice her face hidden—the old landmarks swallowed up I am always judging and condemning—always protesting What am I that I should judge But how—how—can I help it
She drew herself away from him once more looking into the fire with drawn brows
Darling the world is full of difference Men and women take life in different ways Dont be so sure yours is the only right one
He spoke with a moved gentleness taking her hand the while
This is the way walk ye in it she said presently with strong almost stern emphasis Oh those women and that talk Hateful
He rose and looked down on her from the mantelpiece Within him was a movement of impatience repressed almost at once by the thought of that long night at Murewell when he had vowed to himself to make amends
And if that memory had not intervened she would still have disarmed him wholly
Listen she said to him suddenly her eyes kindling with a strange childish pleasure Do you hear the wind the west wind Do you remember how it used to shake the house how it used to come sweeping through the trees in the woodpath It must be trying the study window now blowing the vine against it
A yearning passion breathed through every feature It seemed to him she saw nothing before her Her longing soul was back in the old haunts surrounded by the old loved forms and sounds It went to his heart He tried to soothe her withPg 426 the tenderest words remorseful love could find But the conflict of feeling—grief rebellion doubt selfjudgment—would not be soothed and long after she had made him leave her and he had fallen asleep she knelt on a white and rigid figure in the dying firelight the wind shaking the old house the eternal murmur of London booming outside
CHAPTER XXXIV
Meanwhile as if to complete the circle of pain with which poor Catherines life was compassed it began to be plain to her that in spite of the hard and mocking tone Rose generally adopted with regard to him Edward Langham was constantly at the house in Lerwick Gardens and that it was impossible he should be there so much unless in some way or other Rose encouraged it
The idea of such a marriage—nay of such a friendship—was naturally as repugnant as ever to her It had been one of the bitterest moments of a bitter time when at their first meeting after the crisis in her life Langham conscious of a sudden movement of pity for a woman he disliked had pressed the hand she held out to him in a way which clearly showed her what was in his mind and had then passed on to chat and smoke with Robert in the study leaving her behind to realise the gulf that lay between the present and that visit of his to Murewell when Robert and she had felt in unison towards him his opinions and his conduct to Rose as towards everything else of importance in their life
Now it seemed to her Robert must necessarily look at the matter differently and she could not make up her mind to talk to him about it In reality his objections had never had the same basis as hers and he would have given her as strong a support as ever if she had asked for it But she held her peace and he absorbed in other things took no notice Besides he knew Langham too well He had never been able to take Catherines alarms seriously
An attentive onlooker however would have admitted that this time at any rate they had their justification Why Langham was so much in the Leyburns drawingroom during these winter months was a question that several people asked—himself not least He had not only pretended to forget Rose Leyburn during the eighteen months which had passed since their first acquaintance at Murewell—he had for all practical purposes forgotten her It is only a small proportion of men and women who are capable of passion on the great scale at all and certainly as we have tried to show Langham was not among them He had had a passing moment of excitement at Murewell soon put down and followed by a week of extremelyPg 427 pleasant sensations which like most of his pleasures had ended in reaction and selfabhorrence He had left Murewell remorseful melancholy and ill at ease but conscious certainly of a great relief that he and Rose Leyburn were not likely to meet again for long
Then his settlement in London had absorbed him as all such matters absorb men who have become the slaves of their own solitary habits and in the joy of his new freedom and the fresh zest for learning it had aroused in him the beautiful unmanageable child who had disturbed his peace at Murewell was not likely to be more but less remembered When he stumbled across her unexpectedly in the National Gallery his determining impulse had been merely one of flight
However as he had written to Robert towards the beginning of his London residence there was no doubt that his migration had made him for the time much more human observant and accessible Oxford had become to him an oppression and a nightmare and as soon as he had turned his back on it his mental lungs seemed once more to fill with air He took his modest part in the life of the capital happy in the obscurity afforded him by the crowd rejoicing in the thought that his life and his affairs were once more his own and the academical yoke had been slipped for ever
It was in this mood of greater cheerfulness and energy that his fresh sight of Rose found him For the moment he was perhaps more susceptible than he ever could have been before to her young perfections her beauty her brilliancy her provoking stimulating ways Certainly from that first afternoon onwards he became more and more restless to watch her to be near her to see what she made of herself and her gifts In general though it was certainly owing to her that he came so much she took small notice of him He regarded or chose to regard himself as a mere item—something systematically overlooked and forgotten in the bustle of her days and nights He saw that she thought badly of him that the friendship he might have had was now proudly refused him that their first week together had left a deep impression of resentment and hostility in her mind And all the same he came and she asked him And sometimes after an hour when she had been more difficult or more satirical than usual ending notwithstanding with a little change of tone a careless You will find us next Wednesday as usual Soandso is coming to play Langham would walk home in a state of feeling he did not care to analyse but which certainly quickened the pace of life a good deal She would not let him try his luck at friendship again but in the strangest slightest ways did she not make him suspect every now and then that he was in some sort important to her that he sometimes preoccupied her against her will that her will indeed sometimes escaped her and failed to control her manner to him
Pg 428
It was not only his relations to the beauty however his interest in her career or his perpetual consciousness of Mrs Elsmeres cold dislike and disapproval of his presence in her mothers drawingroom that accounted for Langhams heightened mental temperature this winter The existence and the proceedings of Mr Hugh Flaxman had a very considerable share in it
Tell me about Mr Langham said Mr Flaxman once to Agnes Leyburn in the early days of his acquaintance with the family is he an old friend
Of Roberts replied Agnes her cheerful impenetrable look fixed upon the speaker My sister met him once for a week in the country at the Elsmeres My mother and I have been only just introduced to him
Hugh Flaxman pondered the information a little
Does he strike you as—well—what shall we say—unusual
His smile struck one out of her
Even Robert might admit that she said demurely
Is Elsmere so attached to him I own I was provoked just now by his tone about Elsmere I was remarking on the evident physical and mental strain your brotherinlaw had gone through and he said with a nonchalance I cannot convey Yes it is astonishing Elsmere should have ventured it I confess I often wonder whether it was worth while Why said I perhaps a little hotly Well he didnt know—wouldnt say But I gathered that according to him Elsmere is still swathed in such an unconscionable amount of religion that the few rags and patches he has got rid of are hardly worth the discomfort of the change It seemed to me the tone of the very cool spectator rather than the friend However—does your sister like him
I dont know said Agnes looking her questioner full in the face
Hugh Flaxmans fair complexion flushed a little He got up to go
He is one of the most extraordinarily handsome persons I ever saw he remarked as he buttoned up his coat Dont you think so
Yes said Agnes dubiously if he didnt stoop and if he didnt in general look halfasleep
Hugh Flaxman departed more puzzled than ever as to the reason for the constant attendance of this uncomfortable antisocial person at the Leyburns house Being himself a man of very subtle and fastidious tastes he could imagine that so original a suitor with such eyes such an intellectual reputation so well sustained by scantiness of speech and the most picturesque capacity for silence might have attractions for a romantic and wilful girl But where were the signs of it Rose rarely talked to him and was always ready to make him thePg 429 target of a subacid raillery Agnes was clearly indifferent to him and Mrs Leyburn equally clearly afraid of him Mrs Elsmere too seemed to dislike him and yet there he was week after week Flaxman could not make it out
Then he tried to explore the man himself He started various topics with him—University reform politics music In vain In his most characteristic Oxford days Langham had never assumed a more wholesale ignorance of all subjects in heaven and earth and never stuck more pertinaciously to the flattest forms of commonplace Flaxman walked away at last boiling over The man of parts masquerading as the fool is perhaps at least as exasperating as the fool playing at wisdom
However he was not the only person irritated After one of these fragments of conversation Langham also walked rapidly home in a state of most irrational petulance his hands thrust with energy into the pockets of his overcoat
No my successful aristocrat you shall not have everything your own way so easily with me or with her You may break me but you shall not play upon me And as for her I will see it out—I will see it out
And he stiffened himself as he walked feeling life electric all about him and a strange new force tingling in every vein
Meanwhile however Mr Flaxman was certainly having a good deal of his own way Since the moment when his aunt Lady Charlotte had introduced him to Miss Leyburn—watching him the while with a halfsmile which soon broadened into one of sly triumph—Hugh Flaxman had persuaded himself that country houses are intolerable even in the shooting season and that London is the only place of residence during the winter for the man who aspires to govern his life on principles of reason Through his influence and that of his aunt Rose and Agnes—Mrs Leyburn never went out—were being carried into all the high life that London can supply in November and January Wealthy highborn and popular he was gradually devoting his advantages in the freest way to Roses service He was an excellent musical amateur and he was always proud to play with her he had a fine country house and the little rooms on Campden Hill were almost always filled with flowers from his gardens he had a famous musical library and its treasures were lavished on the girl violinist he had a singularly wide circle of friends and with his whimsical energy he was soon inclined to make kindness to the two sisters the one test of a friends goodwill
He was clearly touched by Rose and what was to prevent his making an impression on her To her sex he had always been singularly attractive Like his sister he had all sorts of bright impulses and audacities flashing and darting about him He had a certain hauteur with men and could play the aristocrat when he pleased for all his philosophical radicalism But with women he was the most delightful mixture of deferencePg 430 and high spirits He loved the grace of them the daintiness of their dress the softness of their voices He would have done anything to please them anything to save them pain At twentyfive when he was still Citizen Flaxman to his college friends and in the first fervours of a poetic defiance of prejudice and convention he had married a gamekeepers pretty daughter She had died with her child—died almost poor thing of happiness and excitement—of the overgreatness of Heavens boon to her Flaxman had adored her and death had tenderly embalmed a sentiment to which life might possibly have been less kind Since then he had lived in music letters and society refusing out of a certain fastidiousness to enter politics but welcomed and considered wherever he went tall goodlooking distinguished one of the most agreeable and courted of men and perhaps the richest parti in London
Still in spite of it all Langham held his ground—Langham would see it out And indeed Flaxmans footing with the beauty was by no means clear—least of all to himself She evidently liked him but she bantered him a good deal she would not be the least subdued or dazzled by his birth and wealth or by those of his friends and if she allowed him to provide her with pleasures she would hardly ever take his advice or knowingly consult his tastes
Meanwhile she tormented them both a good deal by the artistic acquaintance she gathered about her Mrs Piersons world as we have said contained a good many dubious odds and ends and she had handed them all over to Rose The Leyburns growing intimacy with Mr Flaxman and his circle and through them with the finer types of the artistic life would naturally and by degrees have carried them away somewhat from this earlier circle if Rose would have allowed it But she clung persistently to its most unpromising specimens partly out of a natural generosity of feeling but partly also for the sake of that opposition her soul loved her poor prickly soul full under all her gaiety and indifference of the most desperate doubt and soreness—opposition to Catherine opposition to Mr Flaxman but above all opposition to Langham
Flaxman could often avenge himself on her—or rather on the more obnoxious members of her following—by dint of a faculty for light and stinging repartee which would send her flushed and biting her lip to have her laugh out in private But Langham for a long time was defenceless Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities—their vanity was so frenzied their sensibilities so morbidly developed He felt a doctors interest in them coupled with more than a doctors scepticism as to all they had to say about themselves But Rose would invite them would assume a quasiintimacy with them and Langham as well as everybody else had to put up with it
Pg 431Even the trodden worm however—— And there came a time when the concentration of a good many different lines of feeling in Langhams mind betrayed itself at last in a sharp and sudden openness It began to seem to him that she was specially bent often on tormenting him by these caprices of hers and he vowed to himself finally with an outburst of irritation due in reality to a hundred causes that he would assert himself that he would make an effort at any rate to save her from her own follies
One afternoon at a crowded musical party to which he had come much against his will and only in obedience to a compulsion he dared not analyse she asked him in passing if he would kindly find Mr MacFadden a bass singer whose name stood next on the programme and who was not to be seen in the drawingroom
Langham searched the diningroom and the hall and at last found Mr MacFadden—a fair flabby unwholesome youth—in the little study or cloakroom in a state of collapse flanked by whisky and water and attended by two frightened maids who handed over their charge to Langham and fled
Then it appeared that the great man had been offended by a change in the programme which hurt his vanity had withdrawn from the drawingroom on the brink of hysterics had called for spirits which had been provided for him with great difficulty by Mrs Leyburns maids and was there drinking himself into a state of rage and rampant dignity which would soon have shown itself in a melodramatic return to the drawingroom and a public refusal to sing at all in a house where art had been outraged in his person
Some of the old disciplinary instincts of the Oxford tutor awoke in Langham at the sight of the creature and with a prompt sternness which amazed himself and nearly set MacFadden whimpering he got rid of the man shut the hall door on him and went back to the drawingroom
Well said Rose in anxiety coming up to him
I have sent him away he said briefly an eye of unusual quickness and brightness looking down upon her he was in no condition to sing He chose to be offended apparently because he was put out of his turn and has been giving the servants trouble
Rose flushed deeply and drew herself up with a look half trouble half defiance at Langham
I trust you will not ask him again he said with the same decision And if I might say so there are one or two people still here whom I should like to see you exclude at the same time
They had withdrawn into the bow window out of earshot of the rest of the room Langhams look turned significantly towards a group near the piano It contained one or two men whom he regarded as belonging to a low type men who if it suited their purpose would be quite ready to tell or invent malicious stories of the girl they were now flattering and whosePg 432 standards and instincts represented a coarser world than Rose in reality knew anything about
Her eyes followed his
I know she said petulantly that you dislike artists They are not your world They are mine
I dislike artists What nonsense too To me personally these mens ways dont matter in the least They go their road and I mine But I deeply resent any danger of discomfort and annoyance to you
He still stood frowning a glow of indignant energy showing itself in his attitude his glance She could not know that he was at that moment vividly realising the drunken scene that might have taken place in her presence if he had not succeeded in getting that man safely out of the house But she felt that he was angry and mostly angry with her and there was something so piquant and unexpected in his anger
I am afraid she said with a queer sudden submissiveness you have been going through something very disagreeable I am very sorry Is it my fault she added with a whimsical flash of eye half fun half serious
He could hardly believe his ears
Yes it is your fault I think he answered her amazed at his own boldness Not that I was annoyed—Heavens what does that matter—but that you and your mother and sister were very near an unpleasant scene You will not take advice Miss Leyburn—you will take your own way in spite of what any one else can say or hint to you and some day you will expose yourself to annoyance when there is no one near to protect you
Well if so it wont be for want of a mentor she said dropping him a mock curtsey But her lip trembled under its smile and her tone had not lost its gentleness
At this moment Mr Flaxman who had gradually established himself as the joint leader of these musical afternoons came forward to summon Rose to a quartette He looked from one to the other a little surprise penetrating through his suavity of manner
Am I interrupting you
Not at all said Rose then turning back to Langham she said in a hurried whisper Dont say anything about the wretched man it would make mamma nervous He shant come here again
Mr Flaxman waited till the whisper was over and then led her off with a change of manner which she immediately perceived and which lasted for the rest of the evening
Langham went home and sat brooding over the fire Her voice had not been so kind her look so womanly for months Had she been reading Shirley and would she have liked him to play Louis Moore He went into a fit of silent convulsive laughter as the idea occurred to him
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Some secret instinct made him keep away from her for a time At last one Friday afternoon as he emerged from the Museum where he had been collating the MSS of some obscure Alexandrian the old craving returned with added strength and he turned involuntarily westward
An acquaintance of his recently made in the course of work at the Museum a young Russian professor ran after him and walked with him Presently they passed a poster on the wall which contained in enormous letters the announcement of Madame Desforêtss approaching visit to London a list of plays and the dates of performances
The young Russian suddenly stopped and stood pointing at the advertisement with shaking derisive finger his eyes aflame the whole man quivering with what looked like antagonism and hate
Then he broke into a fierce flood of French Langham listened till they had passed Piccadilly passed the Park and till the young savant turned southwards towards his Brompton lodgings
Then Langham slowly climbed Campden Hill meditating His thoughts were an odd mixture of the things he had just heard and of a scene at Murewell long ago when a girl had denounced him for calumny
At the door of Lerwick Gardens he was informed that Mrs Leyburn was upstairs with an attack of bronchitis But the servant thought the young ladies were at home Would he come in He stood irresolute a moment then went in on a pretext of inquiry
The maid threw open the drawingroom door and there was Rose sitting well into the fire—for it was a raw February afternoon—with a book
She received him with all her old hard brightness He was indeed instantly sorry that he had made his way in Tyrant was she displeased because he had slipped his chain for rather longer than usual
However he sat down delivered his book and they talked first about her mothers illness They had been anxious she said but the doctor who had just taken his departure had now completely reassured them
Then you will be able probably after all to put in an appearance at Lady Charlottes this evening he asked her
The omnivorous Lady Charlotte of course had made acquaintance with him in the Leyburns drawingroom as she did with everybody who crossed her path and three days before he had received a card from her for this evening
Oh yes But I have had to miss a rehearsal this afternoon That concert at Searle House is becoming a great nuisance
It will be a brilliant affair I suppose Princes on one side of you—and Albani on the other I see they have given you the most conspicuous part as violinist
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Yes she said with a little satirical tightening of the lip Yes—I suppose I ought to be much flattered
Of course he said smiling but embarrassed To many people you must be at this moment one of the most enviable persons in the world A delightful art—and every opportunity to make it tell
There was a pause She looked into the fire
I dont know whether it is a delightful art she said presently stifling a little yawn I believe I am getting very tired of London Sometimes I think I shouldnt be very sorry to find myself suddenly spirited back to Burwood
Langham gave vent to some incredulous interjection He had apparently surprised her in a fit of ennui which was rare with her
Oh no not yet she said suddenly with a return of animation Madame Desforêts comes next week and I am to see her She drew herself up and turned a beaming face upon him Was there a shaft of mischief in her eye He could not tell The firelight was perplexing
You are to see her he said slowly Is she coming here
I hope so Mrs Pierson is to bring her I want mamma to have the amusement of seeing her My artistic friends are a kind of tonic to her—they excite her so much She regards them as a sort of show—much as you do in fact only in a more charitable fashion
But he took no notice of what she was saying
Madame Desforêts is coming here he sharply repeated bending forward a curious accent in his tone
Yes she replied with apparent surprise Then with a careless smile Oh I remember when we were at Murewell you were exercised that we should know her Well Mr Langham I told you then that you were only echoing unworthy gossip I am in the same mind still I have seen her and you havent To me she is the greatest actress in the world and an illused woman to boot
Her tone had warmed with every sentence It struck him that she had wilfully brought up the topic—that it gave her pleasure to quarrel with him
He put down his hat deliberately got up and stood with his back to the fire She looked up at him curiously But the dark regular face was almost hidden from her
It is strange he said slowly very strange—that you should have told me this at this moment Miss Leyburn a great deal of the truth about Madame Desforêts I could neither tell nor could you hear There are charges against her proved in open court again and again which I could not even mention in your presence But one thing I can speak of Do you know the story of the sister at St Petersburg
I know no stories against Madame Desforêts said RosePg 435 loftily her quickened breath responding to the energy of his tone I have always chosen not to know them
The newspapers were full of this particular story just before Christmas I should have thought it must have reached you
I did not see it she replied stiffly and I cannot see what good purpose is to be served by your repeating it to me Mr Langham
Langham could have smiled at her petulance if he had not for once been determined and in earnest
You will let me tell it I hope he said quietly I will tell it so that it shall not offend your ears As it happens I myself thought it incredible at the time But by an odd coincidence it has just this afternoon been repeated to me by a man who was an eyewitness of part of it
Rose was silent Her attitude was hauteur itself but she made no further active opposition
Three months ago he began speaking with some difficulty but still with a suppressed force of feeling which amazed his hearer Madame Desforêts was acting in St Petersburg She had with her a large company and amongst them her own young sister Elise Romey a girl of eighteen This girl had been always kept away from Madame Desforêts by her parents who had never been sufficiently consoled by their eldest daughters artistic success for the infamy of her life
Rose started indignantly Langham gave her no time to speak
Elise Romey however had developed a passion for the stage Her parents were respectable—and you know young girls in France are brought up strictly She knew next to nothing of her sisters escapades But she knew that she was held to be the greatest actress in Europe—the photographs in the shops told her that she was beautiful She conceived a romantic passion for the woman whom she had last seen when she was a child of five and actuated partly by this hungry affection partly by her own longing wish to become an actress she escaped from home and joined Madame Desforêts in the South of France Madame Desforêts seems at first to have been pleased to have her The girls adoration pleased her vanity Her presence with her gave her new opportunities of posing I believe and Langham gave a little dry laugh they were photographed together at Marseilles with their arms round each others necks and the photograph had an immense success However on the way to St Petersburg difficulties arose Elise was pretty in a blonde childish way and she caught the attention of the jeune premier of the company a man—the speaker became somewhat embarrassed—whom Madame Desforêts seems to have regarded as her particular property There were scenes at different towns on the journey Elise became frightened—wanted to go home But the elder sister having begun tormenting her seems to have determined to keep her hold onPg 436 her as a cat keeps and tortures a mouse—mainly for the sake of annoying the man of whom she was jealous They arrived at St Petersburg in the depth of winter The girl was worn out with travelling unhappy and ill One night in Madame Desforêtss apartment there was a supper party and after it a horrible quarrel No one exactly knows what happened But towards twelve oclock that night Madame Desforêts turned her young sister in evening dress a light shawl round her out into the snowy streets of St Petersburg barred the door behind her and revolver in hand dared the wretched man who had caused the fracas to follow her
Rose sat immovable She had grown pale but the firelight was not revealing
Langham turned away from her towards the blaze holding out his hands to it mechanically
The poor child he said after a pause in a lower voice wandered about for some hours It was a frightful night—the great capital was quite strange to her She was insulted—fled this way and that—grew benumbed with cold and terror and was found unconscious in the early morning under the archway of a house some two miles from her sisters lodgings
There was a dead silence Then Rose drew a long quivering breath
I do not believe it she said passionately I cannot believe it
It was amply proved at the time said Langham drily though of course Madame Desforêts tried to put her own colour on it But I told you I had private information On one of the floors of the house where Elise Romey was picked up lived a young university professor He is editing an important Greek text and has lately had business at the Museum I made friends with him there He walked home with me this afternoon saw the announcement of Madame Desforêtss coming and poured out the story He and his wife nursed the unfortunate girl with devotion She lived just a week and died of inflammation of the lungs I never in my life heard anything so pitiful as his description of her delirium her terror her appeals her shivering misery of cold
There was a pause
She is not a woman he said presently between his teeth She is a wild beast
Still there was silence and still he held out his hand to the flame which Rose too was staring at At last he turned round
I have told you a shocking story he said hurriedly Perhaps I ought not to have done it But as you sat there talking so lightly so gaily it suddenly became to me utterly intolerable that that woman should ever sit here in this room—talk to you—call you by your name—laugh with you—touch your hand Not even your wilfulness shall carry you so far—you shall not do it
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He hardly knew what he said He was driven on by a passionate sense of physical repulsion to the notion of any contact between her pure fair youth and something malodorous and corrupt And there was besides a wild unique excitement in claiming for once to stay—to control her
Rose lifted her head slowly The fire was bright He saw the tears in her eyes tears of intolerable pity for another girls awful story But through the tears something gleamed—a kind of exultation—the exultation which the magician feels when he has called spirits from the vasty deep and after long doubt and difficult invocation they rise at last before his eyes
I will never see her again she said in a low wavering voice but she too was hardly conscious of her own words Their looks were on each other the ruddy capricious light touched her glowing cheeks her straightlined grace her white hand Suddenly from the gulf of anothers misery into which they had both been looking there had sprung up by the strange contrariety of human things a heat and intoxication of feeling wrapping them round blotting out the rest of the world from them like a golden mist Be always thus her parted lips her liquid eyes were saying to him His breath seemed to fail him he was lost in bewilderment
There were sounds outside—Catherines voice He roused himself with a supreme effort
Tonight—at Lady Charlottes
Tonight she said and held out her hand
A sudden madness seized him—he stooped—his lips touched it—it was hastily drawn away and the door opened
CHAPTER XXXV
In the first place my dear aunt said Mr Flaxman throwing himself back in his chair in front of Lady Charlottes drawingroom fire you may spare your admonitions because it is becoming more and more clear to me that whatever my sentiments may be Miss Leyburn never gives a serious thought to me
He turned to look at his companion over his shoulder His tone and manner were perfectly gay and Lady Charlotte was puzzled by him
Stuff and nonsense replied the lady with her usual emphasis I never flatter you Hugh and I dont mean to begin now but it would be mere folly not to recognise that you have advantages which must tell on the mind of any girl in Miss Leyburns position
Hugh Flaxman rose and standing before the fire with his hands in his pockets made what seemed to be a close inspection of his irreproachable trouserknees
I am sorry for your theory Aunt Charlotte he said stillPg 438 stooping but Miss Leyburn doesnt care twopence about my advantages
Very proper of you to say so returned Lady Charlotte sharply the remark however my good sir does more credit to your heart than your head
In the next place he went on undisturbed why you should have done your best this whole winter to throw Miss Leyburn and me together if you meant in the end to oppose my marrying her I dont quite see
He looked up smiling Lady Charlotte reddened ever so slightly
You know my weaknesses she said presently with an effrontery which delighted her nephew She is my latest novelty she excites me I cant do without her As to you I cant remember that you wanted much encouragement but I acknowledge after all these years of resistance—resistance to my most legitimate efforts to dispose of you—there was a certain piquancy in seeing you caught at last
Upon my word he said throwing back his head with a not very cordial laugh in which however his aunt joined She was sitting opposite to him her powerful looselygloved hands crossed over the rich velvet of her dress her fair large face and grayish hair surmounted by a mighty cap as vigorous shrewd and individual a type of English middle age as could be found The room behind her and the second and third drawingrooms were brilliantly lighted Mr Wynnstay was enjoying a cigar in peace in the smokingroom while his wife and nephew were awaiting the arrival of the evenings guests upstairs
Lady Charlottes mind had been evidently much perturbed by the conversation with her nephew of which we are merely describing the latter half She was labouring under an uncomfortable sense of being hoist with her own petard—an uncomfortable memory of a certain warning of her husbands delivered at Murewell
And now said Mr Flaxman having confessed in so many words that you have done your best to bring me up to the fence will you kindly recapitulate the arguments why in your opinion I should not jump it
Society amusement flirtation are one thing she replied with judicial imperativeness marriage is another In these democratic days we must know everybody we should only marry our equals
The instant however the words were out of her mouth she regretted them Mr Flaxmans expression changed
I do not agree with you he said calmly and you know I do not You could not I imagine have relied much upon that argument
Good gracious Hugh cried Lady Charlotte crossly you talk as if I were really the old campaigner some people suppose me to be I have been amusing myself—I have liked to seePg 439 you amused And it is only the last few weeks since you have begun to devote yourself so tremendously that I have come to take the thing seriously at all I confess if you like that I have got you into the scrape—now I want to get you out of it I am not thinskinned but I hate family unpleasantnesses—and you know what the duke will say
The duke be—translated said Flaxman coolly Nothing of what you have said or could say on this point my dear aunt has the smallest weight with me But Providence has been kinder to you and the duke than you deserve Miss Leyburn does not care for me and she does care—or I am very much mistaken—for somebody else
He pronounced the words deliberately watching their effect upon her
What that Oxford nonentity Mr Langham the Elsmeres friend Ridiculous What attraction could a man of that type have for a girl of hers
I am not bound to supply an answer to that question replied her nephew However he is not a nonentity Far from it Ten years ago when I was leaving Cambridge he was certainly one of the most distinguished of the young Oxford tutors
Another instance of what university reputation is worth said Lady Charlotte scornfully It was clear that even in the case of a beauty whom she thought it beneath him to marry she was not pleased to see her nephew ousted by the force majeure of a rival—and that a rival whom she regarded as an utter nobody having neither marketable eccentricity nor family nor social brilliance to recommend him
Flaxman understood her perplexity and watched her with critical amused eyes
I should like to know he said presently with a curious slowness and suavity I should greatly like to know why you asked him here tonight
You know perfectly well that I should ask anybody—a convict a crossingsweeper—if I happened to be half an hour in the same room with him
Flaxman laughed
Well it may be convenient tonight he said reflectively What are we to do—some thoughtreading
Yes It isnt a crush I have only asked about thirty or forty people Mr Denman is to manage it
She mentioned an amateur thoughtreader greatly in request at the moment
Flaxman cogitated for a while and then propounded a little plan to his aunt to which she after some demur agreed
I want to make a few notes he said drily when it was arranged I should be glad to satisfy myself
When the Misses Leyburn were announced Rose though the younger came in first She always took the lead by a sort ofPg 440 natural right and Agnes never dreamt of protesting Tonight the sisters were in white Some soft creamy stuff was folded and draped about Roses slim shapely figure in such a way as to bring out all its charming roundness and grace Her neck and arms bore the challenge of the dress victoriously Her redgold hair gleamed in the light of Lady Charlottes innumerable candles A knot of dusky blue feathers on her shoulder and a Japanese fan of the same colour gave just that touch of purpose and art which the spectator seems to claim as the tribute answering to his praise in the dress of a young girl She moved with perfect selfpossession distributing a few smiling looks to the people she knew as she advanced towards Lady Charlotte Any one with a discerning eye could have seen that she was in that stage of youth when a beautiful woman is like a statue to which the master is giving the finishing touches Life the sculptor had been at work upon her refining here softening there planing away awkwardness emphasising grace disengaging as it were week by week and month by month all the beauty of which the original conception was capable And the process is one attended always by a glow and sparkle a kind of effluence of youth and pleasure which makes beauty more beautiful and grace more graceful
The little murmur and rustle of persons turning to look which had already begun to mark her entrance into a room surrounded Rose as she walked up to Lady Charlotte Mr Flaxman who had been standing absently silent woke up directly she appeared and went to greet her before his aunt
You failed us at rehearsal he said with smiling reproach we were all at sixes and sevens
I had a sick mother unfortunately who kept me at home Lady Charlotte Catherine couldnt come Agnes and I are alone in the world Will you chaperon us
I dont know whether I will accept the responsibility tonight—in that new gown replied Lady Charlotte grimly putting up her eyeglass to look at it and the wearer Rose bore the scrutiny with a light smiling silence even though she knew Mr Flaxman was looking too
On the contrary she said one always feels so particularly good and prim in a new frock
Really I should have thought it one of Satans likeliest moments said Flaxman laughing—his eyes however the while saying quite other things to her as they finished their inspection of her dress
Lady Charlotte threw a sharp glance first at him and then at Roses smiling ease before she hurried off to other guests
I have made a muddle as usual she said to herself in disgust perhaps even a worse one than I thought
Whatever might be Hugh Flaxmans state of mind however he never showed greater selfpossession than on this particular evening
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A few minutes after Roses entry he introduced her for the first time to his sister Lady Helen The Varleys had only just come up to town for the opening of Parliament and Lady Helen had come tonight to Martin Street all ardour to see Hughs new adoration and the girl whom all the world was beginning to talk about—both as a beauty and as an artist She rushed at Rose if any word so violent can be applied to anything so light and airy as Lady Helens movements caught the girls hands in both hers and gazing up at her with undisguised admiration said to her the prettiest daintiest most effusive things possible Rose—who with all her lithe shapeliness looked overtall and even a trifle stiff beside the tiny birdlike Lady Helen—took the advances of Hugh Flaxmans sister with a pretty flush of flattered pride She looked down at the small radiant creature with soft and friendly eyes and Hugh Flaxman stood by so far well pleased
Then he went off to fetch Mr Denman the hero of the evening to be introduced to her While he was away Agnes who was behind her sister saw Roses eyes wandering from Lady Helen to the door restlessly searching and then returning
Presently through the growing crowd round the entrance Agnes spied a wellknown form emerging
Mr Langham But Rose never told me he was to be here tonight and how dreadful he looks
Agnes was so startled that her eyes followed Langham closely across the room Rose had seen him at once and they had greeted each other across the crowd Agnes was absorbed trying to analyse what had struck her so The face was always melancholy always pale but tonight it was ghastly and from the whiteness of cheek and brow the eyes the jetblack hair stood out in intense and disagreeable relief She would have remarked on it to Rose but that Roses attention was claimed by the young thoughtreader Mr Denman whom Mr Flaxman had brought up Mr Denman was a fairhaired young Hercules whose tremulous agitated manner contrasted oddly with his athletes looks Among other magnetisms he was clearly open to the magnetism of women and he stayed talking to Rose staring furtively at her the while from under his heavy lids—much longer than the girl thought fair
Have you seen any experiments in the working of this new force before he asked her with a solemnity which sat oddly on his commonplace bearded face
Oh yes she said flippantly We have tried it sometimes It is very good fun
He drew himself up Not fun he said impressively not fun Thoughtreading wants seriousness the most tremendous things depend upon it If established it will revolutionise our whole views of life Even a Huxley could not deny that
She studied him with mocking eyes Do you imagine this party tonight looks very serious
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His face fell
One can seldom get people to take it scientifically he admitted sighing Rose impatiently thought him a most preposterous young man Why was he not cricketing or shooting or exploring or using the muscles Nature had given him so amply to some decent practical purpose instead of making a business out of ruining his own nerves and other peoples night after night in hot drawingrooms And when would he go away
Come Mr Denman said Flaxman laying hands upon him the audience is about collected I think Ah there you are and he gave Langham a cool greeting Have you seen anything yet of these fashionable dealings with the devil
Nothing Are you a believer
Flaxman shrugged his shoulders I never refuse an experiment of any kind he added with an odd change of voice Come Denman
And the two went off Langham came to a stand beside Rose while old Lord Rupert as jovial as ever and bubbling over with gossip about the Queens Speech appropriated Lady Helen who was the darling of all elderly men
They did not speak Rose sent him a ray from eyes full of a new divine shyness He smiled gently in answer to it and full of her own young emotion and of the effort to conceal it from all the world she noticed none of that change which had struck Agnes
And all the while if she could have penetrated the mans silence An hour before this moment Langham had vowed that nothing should take him to Lady Charlottes that night And yet here he was riveted to her side alive like any normal human being to every detail of her loveliness shaken to his inmost being by the intoxicating message of her look of the transformation which had passed in an instant over the teasing difficult creature of the last few months
At Murewell his chagrin had been not to feel not to struggle to have been cheated out of experience Well here is the experience in good earnest And Langham is wrestling with it for dear life And how little the exquisite child beside him knows of it or of the man on whom she is spending her first wilful passion She stands strangely exulting in her own strange victory over a life a heart which had defied and eluded her The world throbs and thrills about her the crowd beside her is all unreal the air is full of whisper of romance
The thoughtreading followed its usual course A murder and its detection were given in dumb show Then it was the turn of cardguessing banknotefinding and the various other forms of telepathic hide and seek Mr Flaxman superintended them all his restless eye wandering every other minute to the farther drawingroom in which the lights had been lowered catching there always the same patch of black and white—Roses dress and the dark form beside her
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Are you convinced Do you believe said Rose merrily looking up at her companion
In telepathy Well—so far—I have not got beyond the delicacy and perfection of Mr Denmans—muscular sensation So much I am sure of
Oh but your scepticism is ridiculous she said gaily We know that some people have an extraordinary power over others
Yes that certainly we know he answered his voice dropping an odd strained note in it I grant you that
She trembled deliciously Her eyelids fell They stood together conscious only of each other
Now said Mr Denman advancing to the doorway between the two drawingrooms I have done all I can—I am exhausted But let me beg of you all to go on with some experiments amongst yourselves Every fresh discovery of this power in a new individual is a gain to science I believe about one in ten has some share of it Mr Flaxman and I will arrange everything if any one will volunteer
The audience broke up into groups laughing chatting suggesting this and that Presently Lady Charlottes loud dictatorial voice made itself heard as she stood eyeglass in hand looking round the circle of her guests
Somebody must venture—we are losing time
Then the eyeglass stopped at Rose who was now sitting tall and radiant on the sofa her blue fan across her white knees Miss Leyburn—you are always publicspirited—will you be victimised for the good of science
The girl got up with a smile
And Mr Langham—will you see what you can do with Miss Leyburn Hugh—we all choose her task dont we—then Mr Langham wills
Flaxman came up to explain Langham had turned to Rose—a wild fury with Lady Charlotte and the whole affair sweeping through him But there was no time to demur that judicial eye was on them the large figure and towering cap bent towards him Refusal was impossible
Command me he said with a sudden straightening of the form and a flush on the pale cheek I am afraid Miss Leyburn will find me a very bad partner
Well now then said Flaxman Miss Leyburn will you please go down into the library while we settle what you are to do
She went and he held the door open for her But she passed out unconscious of him—rosy confused her eyes bent on the ground
Now then what shall Miss Leyburn do asked Lady Charlotte in the same loud emphatic tone
If I might suggest something quite different from anything that has been yet tried said Mr Flaxman suppose we rePg 444quire Miss Leyburn to kiss the hand of the little marble statue of Hope in the far drawingroom What do you say Langham
What you please said Langham moving up to him A glance passed between the two men In Langhams there was a hardly sane antagonism and resentment in Flaxmans an excited intelligence
Now then said Flaxman coolly fix your mind steadily on what Miss Leyburn is to do—you must take her hand—but except in thought you must carefully follow and not lead her Shall I call her
Langham abruptly assented He had a passionate sense of being watched—tricked Why were he and she to be made a spectacle for this man and his friends A mad irrational indignation surged through him
Then she was led in blindfolded one hand stretched out feeling the air in front of her The circle of people drew back Mr Flaxman and Mr Denman prepared notebook in hand to watch the experiment Langham moved desperately forward
But the instant her soft trembling hand touched his as though by enchantment the surrounding scene the faces the lights were blotted out from him He forgot his anger he forgot everything but her and this thing she was to do He had her in his grasp—he was the man the master—and what enchanting readiness to yield in the swaying pliant form In the distance far away gleamed the statue of Hope a child on tiptoe one outstretched arm just visible from where he stood
There was a moments silent expectation Every eye was riveted on the two figures—on the dark handsome man—on the blindfolded girl
At last Rose began to move gently forward It was a strange wavering motion The breath came quickly through her slightly parted lips her bright colour was ebbing She was conscious of nothing but the grasp in which her hand was held—otherwise her mind seemed a blank Her state during the next few seconds was not unlike the state of some one under the partial influence of an anæsthetic a benumbing grip was laid on all her faculties and she knew nothing of how she moved or where she was going
Suddenly the trance cleared away It might have lasted half an hour or five seconds for all she knew But she was standing beside a small marble statue in the farthest drawingroom and her lips had on them a slight sense of chill as though they had just been laid to something cold
She pulled off the handkerchief from her eyes Above her was Langhams face a marvellous glow and animation in every line of it
Have I done it she asked in a tremulous whisper
For the moment her selfcontrol was gone She was still bewildered
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He nodded smiling
I am so glad she said still in the same quick whisper gazing at him There was the most adorable abandon in her whole look and attitude He could but just restrain himself from taking her in his arms and for one bright flashing instant each saw nothing but the other
The heavy curtain which had partially hidden the door of the little oldfashioned powdercloset as they approached it and through which they had swept without heeding was drawn back with a rattle
She has done it Hurrah cried Mr Flaxman What a rush that last was Miss Leyburn You left us all behind
Rose turned to him still dazed drawing her hand across her eyes A rush She had known nothing about it
Mr Flaxman turned and walked back apparently to report to his aunt who with Lady Helen had been watching the experiment from the main drawingroom His face was a curious mixture of gravity and the keenest excitement The gravity was mostly sharp compunction He had satisfied a passionate curiosity but in the doing of it he had outraged certain instincts of breeding and refinement which were now revenging themselves
Did she do it exactly said Lady Helen eagerly
Exactly he said standing still
Lady Charlotte looked at him significantly But he would not see her look
Lady Charlotte where is my sister said Rose coming up from the back room looking now nearly as white as her dress
It appeared that Agnes had just been carried off by a lady who lived on Campden Hill close to the Leyburns and who had been obliged to go at the beginning of the last experiment Agnes torn between her interest in what was going on and her desire to get back to her mother had at last hurriedly accepted this Mrs Sherwoods offer of a seat in her carriage imagining that her sister would want to stay a good deal later and relying on Lady Charlottes promise that she should be safely put into a hansom
I must go said Rose putting her hand to her head How tiring this is How long did it take Mr Flaxman
Exactly three minutes he said his gaze fixed upon her with an expression that only Lady Helen noticed
So little Goodnight Lady Charlotte and giving her hand first to her hostess then to Mr Flaxmans bewildered sister she moved away into the crowd
Hugh of course you are going down with her exclaimed Lady Charlotte under her breath You must I promised to see her safely off the premises
He stood immovable Lady Helen with a reproachful look made a step forward but he caught her arm
Dont spoil sport he said in a tone which amid the hum ofPg 446 discussion caused by the experiment was heard only by his aunt and sister
They looked at him—the one amazed the other grimly observant—and caught a slight significant motion of the head towards Langhams distant figure
Langham came up and made his farewells As he turned his back Lady Helens large astonished eyes followed him to the door
Oh Hugh was all she could say as they came back to her brother
Never mind Nellie he whispered touched by the bewildered sympathy of her look I will tell you all about it tomorrow I have not been behaving well and am not particularly pleased with myself But for her it is all right Poor pretty little thing
And he walked away into the thick of the conversation
Downstairs the hall was already full of people waiting for their carriages Langham hurrying down saw Rose coming out of the cloakroom muffled up in brown furs a pale childlike fatigue in her looks which set his heart beating faster than ever
Miss Leyburn how are you going home
Will you ask for a hansom please
Take my arm he said and she clung to him through the crush till they reached the door
Nothing but private carriages were in sight The street seemed blocked a noisy tumult of horses and footmen and shouting men with lanterns Which of them suggested Shall we walk a few steps At any rate here they were out in the wind and the darkness every step carrying them farther away from that moving patch of noise and light behind
We shall find a cab at once in Park Lane he said Are you warm
Perfectly
A fur hood fitted round her face to which the colour was coming back She held her cloak tightly round her and her little feet fairly well shod slipped in and out on the dry frosty pavement
Suddenly they passed a huge unfinished house the building of which was being pushed on by electric light The great walls ivory white in the glare rose into the purplyblue of the starry February sky and as they passed within the power of the lamps each saw with noonday distinctness every line and feature in the others face They swept on—the night with its alternations of flame and shadow an unreal and enchanted world about them A space of darkness succeeded the space of daylight Behind them in the distance was the sound of hammers and workmens voices before them the dim trees of the park Not a human being was in sight London seemed to exist to be the mere dark friendly shelter of this wandering of theirs
Pg 447
A blast of wind blew her cloak out of her grasp But before she could close it again an arm was flung around her She could not speak or move she stood passive conscious only of the strangeness of the wintry wind and of this warm breast against which her cheek was laid
Oh stay there a voice said close to her ear Rest there—pale tired child—pale tired little child
That moment seemed to last an eternity He held her close cherishing and protecting her from the cold—not kissing her—till at length she looked up with bright eyes shining through happy tears
Are you sure at last she said strangely enough speaking out of the far depths of her own thought to his
Sure he said his expression changing What can I be sure of I am sure that I am not worth your loving sure that I am poor insignificant obscure that if you give yourself to me you will be miserably throwing yourself away
She looked at him still smiling a white sorceress weaving spells about him in the darkness He drew her lightly gloved hand through his arm holding the fragile fingers close in his and they moved on
Do you know he repeated—a tone of intense melancholy replacing the tone of passion—how little I have to give you
I know she answered her face turned shyly away from him her words coming from under the fur hood which had fallen forward a little I know that—that—you are not rich that you distrust yourself that——
Oh hush he said and his voice was full of pain You know so little let me paint myself I have lived alone for myself in myself till sometimes there seems to be hardly anything left in me to love or be loved nothing but a brain a machine that exists only for certain selfish ends My habits are the tyrants of years and at Murewell though I loved you there they were strong enough to carry me away from you There is something paralysing in me which is always forbidding me to feel to will Sometimes I think it is an actual physical disability—the horror that is in me of change of movement of effort Can you bear with me Can you be poor Can you live a life of monotony Oh impossible he broke out almost putting her hand away from him You who ought to be a queen of this world for whom everything bright and brilliant is waiting if you will but stretch out your hand to it It is a crime—an infamy—that I should be speaking to you like this
Rose raised her head A passing light shone upon her She was trembling and pale again but her eyes were unchanged
No no she said wistfully not if you love me
He hung above her an agony of feeling in the fine rigid face of which the beautiful features and surfaces were already worn and blanched by the life of thought What possessed him was not so much distrust of circumstance as doubt hideous doubtPg 448 of himself of this very passion beating within him She saw nothing meanwhile but the selfdepreciation which she knew so well in him and against which her love in its rash ignorance and generosity cried out
You will not say you love me she cried with hurrying breath But I know—I know—you do
Then her courage sinking ashamed blushing once more turning away from him—At least if you dont I am very—very—unhappy
The soft words flew through his blood For an instant he felt himself saved like Faust—saved by the surpassing moral beauty of one moments impression That she should need him that his life should matter to hers They were passing the garden wall of a great house In the deepest shadow of it he stooped suddenly and kissed her
CHAPTER XXXVI
Langham parted with Rose at the corner of Martin Street She would not let him take her any farther
I will say nothing she whispered to him as he put her into a passing hansom wrapping her cloak warmly round her till I see you again Tomorrow
Tomorrow morning he said waving his hand to her and in another instant he was facing the north wind alone
He walked on fast towards Beaumont Street but by the time he reached his destination midnight had struck He made his way into his room where the fire was still smouldering and striking a light sank into his large reading chair beside which the volumes used in the afternoon lay littered on the floor
He was suddenly penetrated with the cold of the night and hung shivering over the few embers which still glowed What had happened to him In this room in this chair the selfforgetting excitement of that walk scarcely half an hour old seems to him already long passed—incredible almost
And yet the brain was still full of images the mind still full of a hundred new impressions That fair head against his breast those soft confiding words those yielding lips Ah it is the poor silent insignificant student that has conquered It is he not the successful man of the world that has held that young and beautiful girl in his arms and heard from her the sweetest and humblest confession of love Fate can have neither wit nor conscience to have ordained it so but fate has so ordained it Langham takes note of his victory takes dismal note also that the satisfaction of it has already half departed
So the great moment has come and gone The one supreme experience which life and his own will had so far rigidly denied him is his He has felt the torturing thrill of passion—he hasPg 449 evoked such an answer as all men might envy him—and fresh from Roses kiss from Roses beauty the strange maimed soul falls to a pitiless analysis of his passion her response One moment he is at her feet in a voiceless trance of gratitude and tenderness the next—is nothing what it promises to be—and has the boon already now that he has it in his grasp lost some of its beauty just as the seashell drawn out of the water where its lovely iridescence tempted eye and hand loses half its fairy charm
The night wore on Outside an occasional cab or cart would rattle over the stones of the street an occasional voice or step would penetrate the thin walls of the house bringing a shock of sound into that silent upper room Nothing caught Langhams ear He was absorbed in the dialogue which was to decide his life
Opposite to him as it seemed there sat a spectral reproduction of himself his true self with whom he held a long and ghastly argument
But I love her—I love her A little courage—a little effort—and I too can achieve what other men achieve I have gifts great gifts Mere contact with her the mere necessities of the situation will drive me back to life teach me how to live normally like other men I have not forced her love—it has been a free gift Who can blame me if I take it if I cling to it as the man freezing in a crevasse clutches the rope thrown to him
To which the pale spectre self said scornfully—
Courage and effort may as well be dropped out of your vocabulary They are words that you have no use for Replace them by two others—habit and character Slave as you are of habit of the character you have woven for yourself out of years of deliberate living—what wild unreason to imagine that love can unmake can recreate What you are you are to all eternity Bear your own burden but for Gods sake beguile no other human creature into trusting you with theirs
But she loves me Impossible that I should crush and tear so kind so warm a heart Poor child—poor child I have played on her pity I have won all she had to give And now to throw her gift back in her face—oh monstrous—oh inhuman and the cold drops stood on his forehead
But the other self was inexorable You have acted as you were bound to act—as any man may be expected to act in whom will and manhood and true human kindness are dying out poisoned by despair and the tyranny of the critical habit But at least do not add another crime to the first What in Gods name have you to offer a creature of such claims such ambitions You are poor—you must go back to Oxford—you must take up the work your soul loathes—grow more soured more embittered—maintain a useless degrading struggle till her youth is done her beauty wasted and till you yourself have lost every shred of decency and dignity even that decorousPg 450 outward life in which you can still wrap yourself from the world Think of the little house—the children—the money difficulties—she spiritually starved every illusion gone—you incapable soon of love incapable even of pity conscious only of a dull rage with her yourself the world Bow the neck—submit—refuse that long agony for yourself and her while there is still time Kismet—Kismet
And spread out before Langhams shrinking soul there lay a whole dismal Hogarthian series image leading to image calamity to calamity till in the last scene of all the maddened inward sight perceived two figures two gray and withered figures far apart gazing at each other with cold and sunken eyes across dark rivers of sordid irremediable regret
The hours passed away and in the end the spectre self a cold and bloodless conqueror slipped back into the soul which remorse and terror love and pity a last impulse of hope a last stirring of manhood had been alike powerless to save
The February dawn was just beginning when he dragged himself to a table and wrote
Then for hours afterwards he sat sunk in his chair the stupor of fatigue broken every now and then by a flash of curious introspection It was a base thing which he had done—it was also a strange thing psychologically and at intervals he tried to understand it to track it to its causes
At nine oclock he crept out into the frosty daylight found a commissionaire who was accustomed to do errands for him and sent him with a letter to Lerwick Gardens
On his way back he passed a gunsmiths and stood looking fascinated at the shining barrels Then he moved away shaking his head his eyes gleaming as though the spectacle of himself had long ago passed the bounds of tragedy—become farcical even
I should only stand a month—arguing—with my finger on the trigger
In the little hall his landlady met him gave a start at the sight of him and asked him if he ailed and if she could do anything for him He gave her a sharp answer and went upstairs where she heard him dragging books and boxes about as though he were packing
A little later Rose was standing at the diningroom window of No 27 looking on to a few trees bedecked with rime which stood outside The ground and roofs were white a promise of sun was struggling through the fog So far everything in these unfrequented Campden Hill roads was clean crisp enlivening and the sparkle in Roses mood answered to that of Nature
Breakfast had just been cleared away Agnes was upstairs with Mrs Leyburn Catherine who was staying in the house for a day or two was in a chair by the fire reading some letters forwarded to her from Bedford Square
He would appear some time in the morning she supposedPg 451 With an expression half rueful half amused she fell to imagining his interview with Catherine with her mother Poor Catherine Rose feels herself happy enough to allow herself a good honest pang of remorse for much of her behaviour to Catherine this winter how thorny she has been how unkind often to this sad changed sister And now this will be a fresh blow But afterwards when she has got over it—when she knows that it makes me happy—that nothing else would make me happy—then she will be reconciled and she and I perhaps will make friends all over again from the beginning I wont be angry or hard over it—poor Cathie
And with regard to Mr Flaxman As she stands there waiting idly for what destiny may send her she puts herself through a little light catechism about this other friend of hers He had behaved somewhat oddly towards her of late she begins now to remember that her exit from Lady Charlottes house the night before had been a very different matter from the royally attended leavetakings presided over by Mr Flaxman which generally befell her there Had he understood With a little toss of her head she said to herself that she did not care if it was so I have never encouraged Mr Flaxman to think I was going to marry him
But of course Mr Flaxman will consider she has done badly for herself So will Lady Charlotte and all her outer world They will say she is dismally throwing herself away and her mother no doubt influenced by the clamour will take up very much the same line
What matter The girls spirit seemed to rise against all the world There was a sort of romantic exaltation in her sacrifice of herself a jubilant looking forward to remonstrance a wilful determination to overcome it That she was about to do the last thing she could have been expected to do gave her pleasure Almost all artistic faculty goes with a love of surprise and caprice in life Rose had her full share of the artistic love for the impossible and the difficult
Besides—success To make a man hope and love and live again—that shall be her success She leaned against the window her eyes filling her heart very soft
Suddenly she saw a commissionaire coming up the little flagged passage to the door He gave in a note and immediately afterwards the diningroom door opened
A letter for you Miss said the maid
Rose took it—glanced at the handwriting A bright flush—a surreptitious glance at Catherine who sat absorbed in a wandering letter from Mrs Darcy Then the girl carried her prize to the window and opened it
Catherine read on gathering up the Murewell names and details as some famished gleaner might gather up the scattered ears on a plundered field At last something in the silence of the room and of the other inmate in it struck her
Pg 452
Rose she said looking up was that some one brought you a note
The girl turned with a start—a letter fell to the ground She made a faint ineffectual effort to pick it up and sank into a chair
Rose—darling cried Catherine springing up are you ill
Rose looked at her with a perfectly colourless fixed face made a feeble negative sign and then laying her arms on the breakfasttable in front of her let her head fall upon them
Catherine stood over her aghast My darling—what is it Come and lie down—take this water
She put some close to her sisters hand but Rose pushed it away Dont talk to me she said with difficulty
Catherine knelt beside her in helpless pain and perplexity her cheek resting against her sisters shoulder as a mute sign of sympathy What could be the matter Presently her gaze travelled from Rose to the letter on the floor It lay with the address uppermost and she at once recognised Langhams handwriting But before she could combine any rational ideas with this quick perception Rose had partially mastered herself She raised her head slowly and grasped her sisters arm
I was startled she said a forced smile on her white lips Last night Mr Langham asked me to marry him—I expected him here this morning to consult with mamma and you That letter is to inform me that—he made a mistake—and he is very sorry So am I It is so—so—bewildering
She got up restlessly and went to the fire as though shivering with cold Catherine thought she hardly knew what she was saying The elder sister followed her and throwing an arm round her pressed the slim irresponsive figure close Her eyes were bright with anger her lips quivering
That he should dare she cried Rose—my poor little Rose
Dont blame him said Rose crouching down before the fire while Catherine fell into the armchair again It doesnt seem to count from you—you have always been so ready to blame him
Her brow contracted she looked frowning into the fire her still colourless mouth working painfully
Catherine was cut to the heart Oh Rose she said holding out her hands I will blame no one dear I seem hard—but I love you so Oh tell me—you would have told me everything once
There was the most painful yearning in her tone Rose lifted a listless right hand and put it into her sisters outstretched palms But she made no answer till suddenly with a smothered cry she fell towards Catherine
Catherine I cannot bear it I said I loved him—he kissed me—I could kill myself and him
Pg 453
Catherine never forgot the mingled tragedy and domesticity of the hour that followed—the little familiar morning sounds in and about the house maids running up and down stairs tradesmen calling bells ringing—and here at her feet a spectacle of moral and mental struggle which she only half understood but which wrung her inmost heart Two strains of feeling seemed to be present in Rose—a sense of shock of wounded pride of intolerable humiliation and a strange intervening passion of pity not for herself but for Langham which seemed to have been stirred in her by his letter But though the elder questioned and the younger seemed to answer Catherine could hardly piece the story together nor could she find the answer to the question filling her own indignant heart Does she love him
At last Rose got up from her crouching position by the fire and stood a white ghost of herself pushing back the bright encroaching hair from eyes that were dry and feverish
If I could only be angry—downright angry she said more to herself than Catherine it would do one good
Give others leave to be angry for you cried Catherine
Dont said Rose almost fiercely drawing herself away You dont know It is a fate Why did we ever meet You may read his letter you must—you misjudge him—you always have No no—and she nervously crushed the letter in her hand—not yet But you shall read it some time—you and Robert too Married people always tell one another It is due to him perhaps due to me too and a hot flush transfigured her paleness for an instant Oh my head Why does ones mind affect ones body like this It shall not—it is humiliating Miss Leyburn has been jilted and cannot see visitors—that is the kind of thing Catherine when you have finished that document will you kindly come and hear me practise my last Raff—I am going Goodbye
She moved to the door but Catherine had only just time to catch her or she would have fallen over a chair from sudden giddiness
Miserable she said dashing a tear from her eyes I must go and lie down then in the proper missish fashion Mind on your peril Catherine not a word to any one but Robert I shall tell Agnes And Robert is not to speak to me No dont come—I will go alone
And warning her sister back she groped her way upstairs Inside her room when she had locked the door she stood a moment upright with the letter in her hand—the blotted incoherent scrawl where Langham had for once forgotten to be literary where every pitiable halffinished sentence pleaded with her—even in the first smart of her wrong—for pardon for compassion as towards something maimed and paralysed from birth unworthy even of her contempt Then the tears began to rain over her cheeks
Pg 454
I was not good enough—I was not good enough—God would not let me
And she fell on her knees beside the bed the little bit of paper crushed in her hands against her lips Not good enough for what To save
How lightly she had dreamed of healing redeeming changing And the task is refused her It is not so much the cry of personal desire that shakes her as she kneels and weeps nor is it mere wounded womans pride It is a strange stern sense of law Had she been other than she is—more loving less selfabsorbed loftier in motive—he could not have loved her so have left her so Deep undeveloped forces of character stir within her She feels herself judged—and with a righteous judgment—issuing inexorably from the facts of life and circumstance
Meanwhile Catherine was shut up downstairs with Robert who had come over early to see how the household fared
Robert listened to the whole luckless story with astonishment and dismay This particular possibility of mischief had gone out of his mind for some time He had been busy in his East End work Catherine had been silent Over how many matters they would once have discussed with open heart was she silent now
I ought to have been warned he said with quick decision if you knew this was going on I am the only man among you and I understand Langham better than the rest of you I might have looked after the poor child a little
Catherine accepted the reproach mutely as one little smart the more However what had she known She had seen nothing unusual of late nothing to make her think a crisis was approaching Nay she had flattered herself that Mr Flaxman whom she liked was gaining ground
Meanwhile Robert stood pondering anxiously what could be done Could anything be done
I must go and see him he said presently Yes dearest I must Impossible the thing should be left so I am his old friend—almost her guardian You say she is in great trouble—why it may shadow her whole life No—he must explain things to us—he is bound to—he shall It may be something comparatively trivial in the way after all—money or prospects or something of the sort You have not seen the letter you say It is the last marriage in the world one could have desired for her—but if she loves him Catherine if she loves him——
He turned to her—appealing remonstrating Catherine stood pale and rigid Incredible that he should think it right to intermeddle—to take the smallest step towards reversing so plain a declaration of Gods will She could not sympathise—she would not consent Robert watched her in painful indecision He knew that she thought him indifferent to her true reasonPg 455 for finding some comfort even in her sisters trouble—that he seemed to her mindful only of the passing human misery indifferent to the eternal risk
They stood sadly looking at one another Then he snatched up his hat
I must go he said in a low voice it is right
And he went—stepping however with the best intentions in the world into a blunder
Catherine sat painfully struggling with herself after he had left her Then some one came into the room—some one with pale looks and flashing eyes It was Agnes
She just let me in to tell me and put me out again said the girl—her whole even cheerful self one flame of scorn and wrath What are such creatures made for Catherine—why do they exist
Meanwhile Robert had trudged off through the frosty morning streets to Langhams lodgings His mood was very hot by the time he reached his destination and he climbed the staircase to Langhams room in some excitement When he tried to open the door after the answer to his knock bidding him enter he found something barring the way Wait a little said the voice inside I will move the case
With difficulty the obstacle was removed and the door opened Seeing his visitor Langham stood for a moment in sombre astonishment The room was littered with books and packingcases with which he had been busy
Come in he said not offering to shake hands
Robert shut the door and picking his way among the books stood leaning on the back of the chair Langham pointed out to him Langham paused opposite to him his waving jetblack hair falling forward over the marble pale face which had been Roberts young ideal of manly beauty
The two men were only six years distant in age but so strong is old association that Roberts feeling towards his friend had always remained in many respects the feeling of the undergraduate towards the don His sense of it now filled him with a curious awkwardness
I know why you are come said Langham slowly after a scrutiny of his visitor
I am here by a mere accident said the other thinking perfect frankness best My wife was present when her sister received your letter Rose gave her leave to tell me I had gone up to ask after them all and came on to you—of course on my own responsibility entirely Rose knows nothing of my coming—nothing of what I have to say
He paused struck against his will by the looks of the man before him Whatever he had done during the past twentyfour hours he had clearly had the grace to suffer in the doing of it
You can have nothing to say said Langham leaningPg 456 against the chimney piece and facing him with black darklyburning eyes You know me
Never had Robert seen him under this aspect All the despair all the bitterness hidden under the languid students exterior of every day had as it were risen to the surface He stood at bay against his friend against himself
No exclaimed Robert stoutly I do not know you in the sense you mean I do not know you as the man who could beguile a girl on to a confession of love and then tell her that for you marriage was too great a burden to be faced
Langham started and then closed his lips in an iron silence Robert repented him a little Langhams strange individuality always impressed him against his will
I did not come simply to reproach you Langham he went on though I confess to being very hot I came to try and find out—for myself only mind—whether what prevents you from following up what I understand happened last night is really a matter of feeling or a matter of outward circumstance If upon reflection you find that your feeling for Rose is not what you imagined it to be I shall have my own opinion about your conduct—but I shall be the first to acquiesce in what you have done this morning If on the other hand you are simply afraid of yourself in harness and afraid of the responsibilities of practical married life I cannot help begging you to talk the matter over with me and let us face it together Whether Rose would ever under any circumstances get over the shock of this morning I have not the remotest idea But—and he hesitated—it seems the feeling you appealed to yesterday has been of long growth You know perfectly well what havoc a thing of this kind may make in a girls life I dont say it will But at any rate it is all so desperately serious I could not hold my hand I am doing what is no doubt wholly unconventional but I am your friend and her brother I brought you together and I ask you to take me into counsel If you had but done it before
There was a moments dead silence
You cannot pretend to believe said Langham at last with the same sombre selfcontainedness that a marriage with me would be for your sisterinlaws happiness
I dont know what to believe cried Robert No he added frankly no when I saw you first attracted by Rose at Murewell I disliked the idea heartily I was glad to see you separated à priori I never thought you suited to each other But reasoning that holds good when a thing is wholly in the air looks very different when a man has committed himself and another as you have done
Langham surveyed him for a moment then shook his hair impatiently from his eyes and rose from his bending position by the fire
Elsmere there is nothing to be said I have behaved asPg 457 vilely as you please I have forfeited your friendship But I should be an even greater fiend and weakling than you think me if in cold blood I could let your sister run the risk of marrying me I could not trust myself—you may think of the statement as you like—I should make her miserable Last night I had not parted from her an hour before I was utterly and irrevocably sure of it My habits are my masters I believe he added slowly his eyes fixed weirdly on something beyond Robert I could even grow to hate what came between me and them
Was it the last word of the mans life It struck Robert with a kind of shiver
Pray heaven he said with a groan getting up to go you may not have made her miserable already
Did it hurt her so much asked Langham almost inaudibly turning away Roberts tone meanwhile calling up a new and scorching image in the subtle brain tissue
I have not seen her said Robert abruptly but when I came in I found my wife—who has no light tears—weeping for her sister
His voice dropped as though what he were saying were in truth too pitiful and too intimate for speech
Langham said no more His face had become a marble mask again
Goodbye said Robert taking up his hat with a dismal sense of having got foolishly through a fools errand As I said to you before what Roses feeling is at this moment I cannot even guess Very likely she would be the first to repudiate half of what I have been saying And I see that you will not talk to me—you will not take me into your confidence and speak to me not only as her brother but as your friend And—and—are you going What does this mean
He looked interrogatively at the open packingcases
I am going back to Oxford said the other briefly I cannot stay in these rooms in these streets
Robert was sore perplexed What real—nay what terrible suffering—in the face and manner and yet how futile how needless He felt himself wrestling with something intangible and phantomlike wholly unsubstantial and yet endowed with a ghastly indefinite power over human life
It is very hard he said hurriedly moving nearer that our old friendship should be crossed like this Do trust me a little You are always undervaluing yourself Why not take a friend into council sometimes when you sit in judgment on yourself and your possibilities Your own perceptions are all warped
Langham looking at him thought his smile one of the most beautiful and one of the most irrelevant things he had ever seen
I will write to you Elsmere he said holding out his handPg 458 speech is impossible to me I never had any words except through my pen
Robert gave it up In another minute Langham was left alone
But he did no more packing for hours He spent the middle of the day sitting dumb and immovable in his chair Imagination was at work again more feverishly than ever He was tortured by a fixed image of Rose suffering and paling
And after a certain number of hours he could no more bear the incubus of this thought than he could put up with the flat prospects of married life the night before He was all at sea barely sane in fact His life had been so long purely intellectual that this sudden strain of passion and fierce practical interests seemed to unhinge him to destroy his mental balance
He bethought him This afternoon he knew she had a last rehearsal at Searle House Afterwards her custom was to come back from St Jamess Park to High Street Kensington and walk up the hill to her own home He knew it for on two occasions after these rehearsals he had been at Lerwick Gardens waiting for her with Agnes and Mrs Leyburn Would she go this afternoon A subtle instinct told him that she would
It was nearly six oclock that evening when Rose stepping out from the High Street station crossed the main road and passed into the darkness of one of the streets leading up the hill She had forced herself to go and she would go alone But as she toiled along she felt weary and bruised all over She carried with her a heart of lead—a sense of utter soreness—a longing to hide herself from eyes and tongues The only thing that dwelt softly in the shaken mind was a sort of inconsequent memory of Mr Flaxmans manner at the rehearsal Had she looked so ill She flushed hotly at the thought and then realised again with a sense of childish comfort the kind look and voice the delicate care shown in shielding her from any unnecessary exertion the brotherly grasp of the hand with which he had put her into the cab that took her to the Underground
Suddenly where the road made a dark turn to the right she saw a man standing As she came nearer she saw that it was Langham
You she cried stopping
He came up to her There was a light over the doorway of a large detached house not far off which threw a certain illumination over him though it left her in shadow He said nothing but he held out both his hands mutely She fancied rather than saw the pale emotion of his look
What she said after a pause You think tonight is last night You and I have nothing to say to each other Mr Langham
I have everything to say he answered under his breath I have committed a crime—a villainy
Pg 459
And it is not pleasant to you she said quivering I am sorry—I cannot help you But you are wrong—it was no crime—it was necessary and profitable like the doses of ones childhood Oh I might have guessed you would do this No Mr Langham I am in no danger of an interesting decline I have just played my concerto very fairly I shall not disgrace myself at the concert tomorrow night You may be at peace—I have learnt several things today that have been salutary—very salutary
She paused He walked beside her while she pelted him—unresisting helplessly silent
Dont come any farther she said resolutely after a minute turning to face him Let us be quits I was a temptingly easy prey I bear no malice And do not let me break your friendship with Robert that began before this foolish business—it should outlast it Very likely we shall be friends again like ordinary people some day I do not imagine your wound is very deep and——
But no Her lips closed not even for prides sake and retorts sake will she desecrate the past belittle her own first love
She held out her hand It was very dark He could see nothing among her furs but the gleaming whiteness of her face The whole personality seemed centred in the voice—the halfmocking vibrating voice He took her hand and dropped it instantly
You do not understand he said hopelessly—feeling as though every phrase he uttered or could utter were equally fatuous equally shameful Thank heaven you never will understand
I think I do she said with a change of tone and paused He raised his eyes involuntarily met hers and stood bewildered What was the expression in them It was yearning—but not the yearning of passion If things had been different—if one could change the self—if the past were nobler—was that the cry of them A painful humility—a boundless pity—the rise of some moral wave within her he could neither measure nor explain—these were some of the impressions which passed from her to him A fresh gulf opened between them and he saw her transformed on the farther side with as it were a loftier gesture a nobler stature than had ever yet been hers
He bent forward quickly caught her hands held them for an instant to his lips in a convulsive grasp dropped them and was gone
He gained his own room again There lay the medley of his books his only friends his real passion Why had he ever tampered with any other
It was not love—not love he said to himself with an accent of infinite relief as he sank into his chair Her smart will heal
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BOOK VI
NEW OPENINGS
Pg 463
CHAPTER XXXVII
Ten days after Langhams return to Oxford Elsmere received a characteristic letter from him asking whether their friendship was to be considered as still existing or at an end The calm and even proud melancholy of the letter showed a considerable subsidence of that state of halffrenzied irritation and discomfort in which Elsmere had last seen him The writer indeed was clearly settling down into another period of pessimistic quietism such as that which had followed upon his first young efforts at selfassertion years before But this second period bore the marks of an even profounder depression of all the vital forces than the first and as Elsmere with a deep sigh halfangry halfrelenting put down the letter he felt the conviction that no fresh influence from outside would ever again be allowed to penetrate the solitude of Langhams life In comparison with the man who had just addressed him the tutor of his undergraduate recollections was a vigorous and sociable human being
The relenting grew upon him and he wrote a sensible affectionate letter in return Whatever had been his natural feelings of resentment he said he could not realise now that the crisis was past that he cared less about his old friend As far as we two are concerned let us forget it all I could hardly say this you will easily imagine if I thought that you had done serious or irreparable harm But both my wife and I agree now in thinking that by a pure accident as it were and to her own surprise Rose has escaped either It will be some time no doubt before she will admit it A girl is not so easily disloyal to her past But to us it is tolerably clear At any rate I send you our opinion for what it is worth believing that it will and must be welcome to you
Rose however was not so long in admitting it One marked result of that new vulnerableness of soul produced in her by the shock of that February morning was a great softening towards Catherine Whatever might have been Catherines intense relief when Robert returned from his abortive mission she never afterwards let a disparaging word towards Langham escape her lips to Rose She was tenderness and sympathyPg 464 itself and Rose in her curious reaction against her old self and against the noisy world of flattery and excitement in which she had been living turned to Catherine as she had never done since she was a tiny child She would spend hours in a corner of the Bedford Square drawingroom pretending to read or play with little Mary in reality recovering like some bruised and trodden plant under the healing influence of thought and silence
One day when they were alone in the firelight she startled Catherine by saying with one of her old odd smiles—
Do you know Cathie how I always see myself nowadays It is a sort of hallucination I see a girl at the foot of a precipice She has had a fall and she is sitting up feeling all her limbs And to her great astonishment there is no bone broken
And she held herself back from Catherines knee lest her sister should attempt to caress her her eyes bright and calm Nor would she allow an answer drowning all that Catherine might have said in a sudden rush after the child who was wandering round them in search of a playfellow
In truth Rose Leyburns girlish passion for Edward Langham had been a kind of accident unrelated to the main forces of character He had crossed her path in a moment of discontent of aimless revolt and longing when she was but fresh emerged from the cramping conditions of her childhood and trembling on the brink of new and unknown activities His intellectual prestige his melancholy his personal beauty his very strangenesses and weaknesses had made a deep impression on the girls immature romantic sense His resistance had increased the charm and the interval of angry resentful separation had done nothing to weaken it As to the months in London they had been one long duel between herself and him—a duel which had all the fascination of difficulty and uncertainty but in which pride and caprice had dealt and sustained a large proportion of the blows Then after a moment of intoxicating victory Langhams endangered habits and threatened individuality had asserted themselves once for all And from the whole long struggle—passion exultation and crushing defeat—it often seemed to her that she had gained neither joy nor irreparable grief but a new birth of character a soul
It may be easily imagined that Hugh Flaxman felt a peculiarly keen interest in Langhams disappearance On the afternoon of the Searle House rehearsal he had awaited Roses coming in a state of extraordinary irritation He expected a blushing fiancée in a fools paradise asking by manner if not by word for his congratulations and taking a decent feminine pleasure perhaps in the pang she might suspect in him And he had already taken his pleasure in the planning of some doubleedged congratulations
Then up the steps of the concert platform there came a palePg 465 tired girl who seemed specially to avoid his look who found a quiet corner and said hardly a word to anybody till her turn came to play
His revulsion of feeling was complete After her piece he made his way up to her and was her watchful unobtrusive guardian for the rest of the afternoon
He walked home after he had put her into her cab in a whirl of impatient conjecture
As compared to last night she looks this afternoon as if she had had an illness What on earth has that philandering ass been about If he did not propose to her last night he ought to be shot—and if he did à fortiori for clearly she is miserable But what a brave child How she played her part I wonder whether she thinks that I saw nothing like all the rest Poor little cold hand
Next day in the street he met Elsmere turned and walked with him and by dint of leading the conversation a little discovered that Langham had left London
Gone But not without a crisis—that was evident During the din of preparations for the Searle House concert and during the meetings which it entailed now at the Varleys now at the house of some other connection of his—for the concert was the work of his friends and given in the town house of his decrepit greatuncle Lord Daniel—he had many opportunities of observing Rose And he felt a soft indefinable change in her which kept him in a perpetual answering vibration of sympathy and curiosity She seemed to him for the moment to have lost her passionate relish for living that relish which had always been so marked with her Her bubble of social pleasure was pricked She did everything she had to do and did it admirably But all through she was to his fancy absent and distraite pursuing through the tumult of which she was often the central figure some inner meditations of which neither he nor any one else knew anything Some eclipse had passed over the girls light selfsatisfied temper some searching thrill of experience had gone through the whole nature She had suffered and she was quietly fighting down her suffering without a word to anybody
Flaxmans guesses as to what had happened came often very near the truth and the mixture of indignation and relief with which he received his own conjectures amused himself
To think he said to himself once with a long breath that that creature was never at a public school and will go to his death without any one of the kickings due to him
Then his very next impulse perhaps would be an impulse of gratitude towards this same creature towards the man who had released a prize he had had the tardy sense to see was not meant for him Free again—to be loved to be won There was the fact of facts after all
His own future policy however gave him much anxious thought Clearly at present the one thing to be done was toPg 466 keep his own ambitions carefully out of sight He had the skill to see that she was in a state of reaction of moral and mental fatigue What she mutely seemed to ask of her friends was not to be made to feel
He took his cue accordingly He talked to his sister He kept Lady Charlotte in order After all her eager expectation on Hughs behalf Lady Helen had been dumfoundered by the sudden emergence of Langham at Lady Charlottes party for their common discomfiture Who was the man—why what did it all mean Hugh had the most provoking way of giving you half his confidence To tell you he was seriously in love and to omit to add the trifling item that the girl in question was probably on the point of engaging herself to somebody else Lady Helen made believe to be angry and it was not till she had reduced Hugh to a whimsical penitence and a full confession of all he knew or suspected that she consented with as much loftiness as the physique of an elf allowed her to be his good friend again and to play those cards for him which at the moment he could not play for himself
So in the cheeriest daintiest way Rose was made much of by both brother and sister Lady Helen chatted of gowns and music and people whisked Rose and Agnes off to this party and that brought fruit and flowers to Mrs Leyburn made pretty deferential love to Catherine and generally to Mrs Piersons disgust became the girls chief chaperon in a fastfilling London Meanwhile Mr Flaxman was always there to befriend or amuse his sisters protégés—always there but never in the way He was bantering sympathetic critical laudatory what you will but all the time he preserved a delicate distance between himself and Rose a bright nonchalance and impersonality of tone towards her which made his companionship a perpetual tonic And between them he and Helen coerced Lady Charlotte A few inconvenient inquiries after Roses health a few unexplained stares and humphs and grunts a few irrelevant disquisitions on her nephews merits of head and heart were all she was able to allow herself And yet she was inwardly seething with a mass of sentiments to which it would have been pleasant to give expression—anger with Rose for having been so blind and so presumptuous as to prefer some one else to Hugh anger with Hugh for his persistent disregard of her advice and the dukes feelings and a burning desire to know the precise why and wherefore of Langhams disappearance She was too lofty to become Roses aunt without a struggle but she was not too lofty to feel the hungriest interest in her love affairs
But as we have said the person who for the time profited most by Roses shaken mood was Catherine The girl coming over restless under her own smart would fall to watching the trial of the woman and the wife and would often perforce forget herself and her smaller woes in the pity of it She stayed inPg 467 Bedford Square once for a week and then for the first time she realised the profound change which had passed over the Elsmeres life As much tenderness between husband and wife as ever—perhaps more expression of it even than before as though from an instinctive craving to hide the separateness below from each other and from the world But Robert went his way Catherine hers Their spheres of work lay far apart their interests were diverging fast and though Robert at any rate was perpetually resisting all sorts of fresh invading silences were always coming in to limit talk and increase the number of sore points which each avoided Robert was hard at work in the East End under Murray Edwardess auspices He was already known to certain circles as a seceder from the Church who was likely to become both powerful and popular Two articles of his in the Nineteenth Century on disputed points of Biblical criticism had distinctly made their mark and several of the veterans of philosophical debate had already taken friendly and flattering notice of the new writer Meanwhile Catherine was teaching in Mr Clarendons Sunday school and attending his prayermeetings The more expansive Roberts energies became the more she suffered and the more the small daily opportunities for friction multiplied Soon she could hardly bear to hear him talk about his work and she never opened the number of the Nineteenth Century which contained his papers Nor had he the heart to ask her to read them
Murray Edwardes had received Elsmere on his first appearance in R—— with a cordiality and a helpfulness of the most selfeffacing kind Robert had begun with assuring his new friend that he saw no chance at any rate for the present of his formally joining the Unitarians
I have not the heart to pledge myself again just yet And I own I look rather for a combination from many sides than for the development of any now existing sect But supposing he added smiling supposing I do in time set up a congregation and a service of my own is there really room for you and me Should I not be infringing on a work I respect a great deal too much for anything of the sort
Edwardes laughed the notion to scorn
The parish as a whole contained 20000 persons The existing churches which with the exception of St Wilfrids were miserably attended provided accommodation at the outside for 3000 His own chapel held 400 and was about half full
You and I may drop our lives here he said his pleasant friendliness darkened for a moment by the look of melancholy which London work seems to develop even in the most buoyant of men and only a few hundred persons at the most be ever the wiser Begin with us—then make your own circle
And he forthwith carried off his visitor to the point from which as it seemed to him Elsmeres work might start viz aPg 468 lectureroom half a mile from his own chapel where two helpers of his had just established an independent venture
Murray Edwardes had at the time an interesting and miscellaneous staff of laycurates He asked no questions as to religious opinions but in general the men who volunteered under him—civil servants a young doctor a briefless barrister or two—were men who had drifted from received beliefs and found a pleasure and freedom in working for and with him they could hardly have found elsewhere The two who had planted their outpost in what seemed to them a particularly promising corner of the district were men of whom Edwardes knew personally little I have really not much concern with what they do he explained to Elsmere except that they get a small share of our funds But I know they want help and if they will take you in I think you will make something of it
After a tramp through the muddy winter streets they came upon a new block of warehouses in the lower windows of which some bills announced a nightschool for boys and men Here to judge from the commotion round the doors a lively scene was going on Outside a gang of young roughs were hammering at the doors and shrieking witticisms through the keyhole Inside as soon as Murray Edwardes and Elsmere by dint of good humour and strong shoulders had succeeded in shoving their way through and shutting the door behind them they found a still more animated performance in progress The schoolroom was in almost total darkness the pupils some twenty in number were racing about like so many shadowy demons pelting each other and their teachers with the dips which as the buildings were new and not yet fitted for gas had been provided to light them through their three Rs In the middle stood the two philanthropists they were in search of freely bedaubed with tallow one employed in boxing a boys ears the other in saving a huge inkbottle whereon some enterprising spirit had just laid hands by way of varying the rebel ammunition Murray Edwardes who was in his element went to the rescue at once helped by Robert The boyminister as he looked had been in fact bow of the Cambridge eight and possessed muscles which men twice his size might have envied In three minutes he had put a couple of ringleaders into the street by the scruff of the neck relit a lamp which had been turned out and got the rest of the rioters in hand Elsmere backed him ably and in a very short time they had cleared the premises
Then the four looked at each other and Edwardes went off into a shout of laughter
My dear Wardlaw my condolences to your coat But I dont believe if I were a rough myself I could resist dips Let me introduce a friend—Mr Elsmere—and if you will have him a recruit for your work It seems to me another pair of arms will hardly come amiss to you
The short redhaired man addressed shook hands with ElsmerePg 469 scrutinising him from under bushy eyebrows He was panting and beplastered with tallow but the inner man was evidently quite unruffled and Elsmere liked the shrewd Scotch face and gray eyes
It isnt only a pair of arms we want he remarked drily but a bit of science behind them Mr Elsmere I observed can use his
Then he turned to a tall affectedlooking youth with a large nose and long fair hair who stood gasping with his hands upon his sides his eyes full of a moody wrath fixed on the wreck and disarray of the schoolroom
Well Mackay have they knocked the wind out of you My friend and helper—Mr Elsmere Come and sit down wont you a minute Theyve left us the chairs I perceive and theres a spark or two of fire Do you smoke Will you light up
The four men sat on chatting some time and then Wardlaw and Elsmere walked home together It had been all arranged Mackay a curious morbid fellow who had thrown himself into Unitarianism and charity mainly out of opposition to an orthodox and bourgeois family and who had a great idea of his own social powers was somewhat grudging and ungracious through it all But Elsmeres proposals were much too good to be refused He offered to bring to the undertaking his time his clergymans experience and as much money as might be wanted Wardlaw listened to him cautiously for an hour took stock of the whole man physically and morally and finally said as he very quietly and deliberately knocked the ashes out of his pipe—
All right Im your man Mr Elsmere If Mackay agrees I vote we make you captain of this venture
Nothing of the sort said Elsmere In London I am a novice I come to learn not to lead
Wardlaw shook his head with a little shrewd smile Mackay faintly endorsed his companions offer and the party broke up
That was in January In two months from that time by the natural force of things Elsmere in spite of diffidence and his own most sincere wish to avoid a premature leadership had become the head and heart of the Elgood Street undertaking which had already assumed much larger proportions Wardlaw was giving him silent approval and invaluable help while young Mackay was in the first uncomfortable stages of a heroworship which promised to be exceedingly good for him
CHAPTER XXXVIII
There were one or two curious points connected with the beginnings of Elsmeres venture in North R—— one of which may just be noticed here Wardlaw his predecessor and colleague had speculatively little or nothing in common withPg 470 Elsmere or Murray Edwardes He was a devoted and orthodox Comtist for whom Edwardes had provided an outlet for the philanthropic passion as he had for many others belonging to far stranger and remoter faiths
By profession he was a barrister with a small and struggling practice On this practice however he had married and his wife who had been a doctors daughter and a national schoolmistress had the same ardours as himself They lived in one of the dismal little squares near the Goswell Road and had two children The wife as a Positivist mother is bound to do tended and taught her children entirely herself She might have been seen any day wheeling their perambulator through the dreary streets of a dreary region she was their Providence their deity the representative to them of all tenderness and all authority But when her work with them was done she would throw herself into charity organisation cases into efforts for the protection of workhouse servants into the homeliest acts of ministry towards the sick till her dowdy little figure and her face which but for the stress of London of labour and of poverty would have had a blunt freshcoloured dairymaids charm became symbols of a divine and sacred helpfulness in the eyes of hundreds of straining men and women
The husband also after a day spent in chambers would give his evenings to teaching or committee work They never allowed themselves to breathe even to each other that life might have brighter things to show them than the neighbourhood of the Goswell Road There was a certain narrowness in their devotion they had their bitternesses and ignorances like other people but the more Robert knew of them the more profound became his admiration for that potent spirit of social help which in our generation Comtism has done so much to develop even among those of us who are but moderately influenced by Comtes philosophy and can make nothing of the religion of Humanity
Wardlaw has no large part in the story of Elsmeres work in North R—— In spite of Roberts efforts and against his will the man of meaner gifts and commoner clay was eclipsed by that brilliant and persuasive something in Elsmere which a kind genius had infused into him at birth And we shall see that in time Roberts energies took a direction which Wardlaw could not follow with any heartiness But at the beginning Elsmere owed him much and it was a debt he was never tired of honouring
In the first place Wardlaws choice of the Elgood Street room as a fresh centre for civilising effort had been extremely shrewd The district lying about it as Robert soon came to know contained a number of promising elements
Close by the dingy street which sheltered their schoolroom rose the great pile of a new factory of artistic pottery a rival on the north side of the river to Doultons immense works onPg 471 the south The old winding streets near it and the blocks of workmens dwellings recently erected under its shadow were largely occupied by the workers in its innumerable floors and among these workers was a large proportion of skilled artisans men often of a considerable amount of cultivation earning high wages and maintaining a high standard of comfort A great many of them trained in the art school which Murray Edwardes had been largely instrumental in establishing within easy distance of their houses were men of genuine artistic gifts and accomplishment and as the development of one faculty tends on the whole to set others working when Robert after a few weeks work in the place set up a popular historical lecture once a fortnight announcing the fact by a blue and white poster in the schoolroom windows it was the potters who provided him with his first hearers
The rest of the parish was divided between a population of dock labourers settled there to supply the needs of the great dock which ran up into the southeastern corner of it two or three huge breweries and a colony of watchmakers an offshoot of Clerkenwell who lived together in two or three streets and showed the same peculiarities of race and specialised training to be noticed in the more northerly settlement from which they had been thrown off like a swarm from a hive Outside these welldefined trades there was of course a warehouse population and a mass of heterogeneous cadging and catering which went on chiefly in the riverside streets at the other side of the parish from Elgood Street in the neighbourhood of St Wilfrids
St Wilfrids at this moment seemed to Robert to be doing a very successful work among the lowest strata of the parish From them at one end of the scale and from the innumerable clerks and superintendents who during the daytime crowded the vast warehouses of which the district was full its Lenten congregations now in full activity were chiefly drawn
The Protestant opposition which had shown itself so brutally and persistently in old days was now so far as outward manifestations went all but extinct The cassocked monklike clergy might preach and process in the open air as much as they pleased The populace where it was not indifferent was friendly and devoted living had borne its natural fruits
A small incident which need not be recorded recalled to Elsmeres mind—after he had been working some six weeks in the district—the forgotten unwelcome fact that St Wilfrids was the very church where Newcome first as senior curate and then as vicar had spent those ten wonderful years into which Elsmere at Murewell had been never tired of inquiring The thought of Newcome was a very sore thought Elsmere had written to him announcing his resignation of his living immediately after his interview with the bishop The letter had remained unanswered and it was by now tolerably clear that the silence of its recipient meant a withdrawal from all friendlyPg 472 relations with the writer Elsmeres affectionate sensitive nature took such things hardly especially as he knew that Newcomes life was becoming increasingly difficult and embittered And it gave him now a fresh pang to imagine how Newcome would receive the news of his quondam friends infidel propaganda established on the very ground where he himself had all but died for those beliefs Elsmere had thrown over
But Robert was learning a certain hardness in this London life which was not without its uses to character Hitherto he had always swum with the stream cheered by the support of all the great and prevailing English traditions Here he and his few friends were fighting a solitary fight apart from the organised system of English religion and English philanthropy All the elements of culture and religion already existing in the place were against them The clergy of St Wilfrids passed them with cold averted eyes the old and fainéant rector of the parish church very soon let it be known what he thought as to the taste of Elsmeres intrusion on his parish or as to the eternal chances of those who might take either him or Edwardes as guides in matters religious His enmity did Elgood Street no harm and the pretensions of the Church in this Babel of 20000 souls to cover the whole field bore clearly no relation at all to the facts But every little incident in this new struggle of his life cost Elsmere more perhaps than it would have cost other men No part of it came easily to him Only a high Utopian vision drove him on from day to day bracing him to act and judge if need be alone and for himself approved only by conscience and the inward voice
Tasks in hours of insight willed
Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled
and it was that moment by the river which worked in him through all the prosaic and perplexing details of this new attempt to carry enthusiasm into life
It was soon plain to him that in this teeming section of London the chance of the religious reformer lay entirely among the upper working class In London at any rate all that is most prosperous and intelligent among the working class holds itself aloof—broadly speaking—from all existing spiritual agencies whether of Church or Dissent
Upon the genuine London artisan the Church has practically no hold whatever and Dissent has nothing like the hold which it has on similar material in the great towns of the North Towards religion in general the prevailing attitude is one of indifference tinged with hostility Eight hundred thousand people in South London of whom the enormous proportion belong to the working class and among them Church and Dissent nowhere—Christianity not in possession Such is the estimate of an Evangelical of our day and similar laments come from all parts of the capital The Londoner is on thePg 473 whole more conceited more prejudiced more given over to crude theorising than his Northcountry brother the millhand whose mere position as one of a homogeneous and tolerably constant body subjects him to a continuous discipline of intercourse and discussion Our popular religion broadly speaking means nothing to him He is sharp enough to see through its contradictions and absurdities he has no dread of losing what he never valued his sense of antiquity of history is nil and his life supplies him with excitement enough without the stimulants of otherworldliness Religion has been on the whole irrationally presented to him and the result on his part has been an irrational breach with the whole moral and religious order of ideas
But the race is quickwitted and imaginative The Greek cities which welcomed and spread Christianity carried within them much the same elements as are supplied by certain sections of the London working class—elements of restlessness of sensibility of passion The mere intermingling of races which a modern capital shares with those old towns of Asia Minor predisposes the mind to a greater openness and receptiveness whether for good or evil
As the weeks passed on and after the first inevitable despondency produced by strange surroundings and an unwonted isolation had begun to wear off Robert often found himself filled with a strange flame and ardour of hope But his first steps had nothing to do with religion He made himself quickly felt in the nightschool and as soon as he possibly could he hired a large room at the back of their existing room on the same floor where on the recreation evenings he might begin the storytelling which had been so great a success at Murewell The storytelling struck the neighbourhood as a great novelty At first only a few youths straggled in from the front room where dominoes and draughts and the illustrated papers held seductive sway The next night the number was increased and by the fourth or fifth evening the room was so well filled both by boys and a large contingent of artisans that it seemed well to appoint a special evening in the week for storytelling or the recreation room would have been deserted
In these performances Elsmeres aim had always been twofold—the rousing of moral sympathy and the awakening of the imaginative power pure and simple He ranged the whole world for stories Sometimes it would be merely some feature of London life itself—the history of a great fire for instance and its hairbreadth escapes a collision in the river a string of instances as true and homely and realistic as they could be made of the way in which the poor help one another Sometimes it would be stories illustrating the dangers and difficulties of particular trades—a colliery explosion and the daring of the rescuers incidents from the life of the great Northern ironworks or from that of the Lancashire factories or stories ofPg 474 English country life and its humours given sometimes in dialect—Devonshire or Yorkshire or Cumberland—for which he had a special gift Or again he would take the sea and its terrors—the immortal story of the Birkenhead the deadly plunge of the Captain the records of the lifeboats or the fascinating story of the ships of science exploring step by step through miles of water the past the inhabitants the hills and valleys of that underworld that vast Atlantic bed in which Mont Blanc might be buried without showing even his topmost snowfield above the plain of waves Then at other times it would be the simple frolic and fancy of fiction—fairy tale and legend Greek myth or Icelandic saga episodes from Walter Scott from Cooper from Dumas to be followed perhaps on the next evening by the terse and vigorous biography of some man of the people—of Stephenson or Cobden of Thomas Cooper or John Bright or even of Thomas Carlyle
One evening some weeks after it had begun Hugh Flaxman hearing from Rose of the success of the experiment went down to hear his new acquaintance tell the story of Monte Cristos escape from the Château dIf He started an hour earlier than was necessary and with an admirable impartiality he spent that hour at St Wilfrids hearing vespers Flaxman had a passion for intellectual or social novelty and this passion was beguiling him into a close observation of Elsmere At the same time he was crossed and complicated by all sorts of fastidious conservative fibres and when his friends talked rationalism it often gave him a vehement pleasure to maintain that a good Catholic or Ritualist service was worth all their arguments and would outlast them His taste drew him to the Church so did a love of opposition to current isms Bishops counted on him for subscriptions and High Church divines sent him their pamphlets He never refused the subscriptions but it should be added that with equal regularity he dropped the pamphlets into his wastepaper basket Altogether a not very decipherable person in religious matters—as Rose had already discovered
The change from the dim and perfumed spaces of St Wilfrids to the bare warehouse room with its packed rows of listeners was striking enough Here were no bowed figures no recueillement In the blaze of crude light every eager eye was fixed upon the slight elastic figure on the platform each change in the expressive face each gesture of the long arms and thin flexible hands finding its response in the laughter the attentive silence the frowning suspense of the audience At one point a band of young roughs at the back made a disturbance but their neighbours had the offenders quelled and out in a twinkling and the room cried out for a repetition of the sentences which had been lost in the noise When Dantes opening his knife with his teeth managed to cut the strings of the sack a gasp of relief ran through the crowd when at last he reached terra firma there was a ringing cheer
Pg 475
What is he dye know Flaxman heard a mechanic ask his neighbour as Robert paused for a moment to get breath the man jerking a grimy thumb in the storytellers direction meanwhile Seems like a parson somehow But he aint a parson
Not he said the other laconically Knows better Most of em as comes down ere stuffs all they have to say as full of goodygoody as an eggs full of meat If he wur that sort you wouldnt catch me here Never heard him say anything in the dear brethren sort of style and Ive been ere most o these evenings and to his lectures besides
Perhaps hes one of your d—d sly ones said the first speaker dubiously Means to shovel it in by and by
Well I dont know as I couldnt stand it if he did returned his companion Hed let other fellers have their say anyhow
Flaxman looked curiously at the speaker He was a young man a gasfitter—to judge by the contents of the basket he seemed to have brought in with him on his way from work—with eyes like live birds and small emaciated features During the story Flaxman had noticed the mans thin begrimed hand as it rested on the bench in front of him trembling with excitement
Another project of Roberts started as soon as he had felt his way a little in the district was the scientific Sunday school This was the direct result of a paragraph in Huxleys Lay Sermons where the hint of such a school was first thrown out However since the introduction of science teaching into the Board schools the novelty and necessity of such a supplement to a childs ordinary education is not what it was Robert set it up mainly for the sake of drawing the boys out of the streets in the afternoons and providing them with some other food for fancy and delight than larking and smoking and penny dreadfuls A little simple chemical and electrical experiment went down greatly so did a botany class to which Elsmere would come armed with two stores of flowers one to be picked to pieces the other to be distributed according to memory and attention A year before he had had a number of large coloured plates of tropical fruit and flowers prepared for him by a Kew assistant These he would often set up on a large screen or put up on the walls till the dingy schoolroom became a bower of superb blossom and luxuriant leaf a glow of red and purple and orange And then—still by the help of pictures—he would take his class on a tour through strange lands talking to them of China or Egypt or South America till they followed him up the Amazon or into the pyramids or through the Pampas or into the mysterious buried cities of Mexico as the children of Hamelin followed the magic of the Pied Piper
Hardly any of those who came to him adults or children while almost all of the artisan class were of the poorest class He knew it and had laid his plans for such a result Such work asPg 476 he had at heart has no chance with the lowest in the social scale in its beginnings It must have something to work upon and must penetrate downwards He only can receive who already hath—there is no profounder axiom
And meanwhile the months passed on and he was still brooding still waiting At last the spark fell
There in the next street but one to Elgood Street rose the famous Workmens Club of North R—— It had been started by a former Liberal clergyman of the parish whose main object however had been to train the workmen to manage it for themselves His training had been in fact too successful Not only was it now wholly managed by artisans but it had come to be a centre of active nay brutal opposition to the Church and faith which had originally fostered it In organic connection with it was a large debating hall in which the most notorious secularist lecturers held forth every Sunday evening and next door to it under its shadow and patronage was a little dingy shop filled to overflowing with the coarsest freethinking publications Colonel Ingersolls books occupying the place of honour in the window and the Freethinker placard flaunting at the door Inside there was still more highly seasoned literature even than the Freethinker to be had There was in particular a small halfpenny paper which was understood to be in some sense the special organ of the North R—— Club which was at any rate published close by and edited by one of the workmen founders of the club This unsavoury sheet began to be more and more defiantly advertised through the parish as Lent drew on towards Passion week and the exertions of St Wilfrids and of the other churches which were being spurred on by the Ritualists success became more apparent Soon it seemed to Robert that every bit of hoarding and every waste wall was filled with the announcement—
Read Faith and Fools Enormous success Our Comic Life of Christ now nearly completed Quite the best thing of its kind going Woodcut this week—Transfiguration
His heart grew fierce within him One night in Passion week he left the nightschool about ten oclock His way led him past the club which was brilliantly lit up and evidently in full activity Round the door there was a knot of workmen lounging It was a mild moonlit April night and the air was pleasant Several of them had copies of Faith and Fools and were showing the weeks woodcut to those about them with chuckles and spirts of laughter
Robert caught a few words as he hurried past them and stirred by a sudden impulse turned into the shop beyond and asked for the paper The woman handed it to him and gave him his change with a businesslike sangfroid which struck on his tired nerves almost more painfully than the laughing brutality of the men he had just passed
Directly he found himself in another street he opened thePg 477 paper under a lamppost It contained a caricature of the Crucifixion the scroll emanating from Mary Magdalenes mouth in particular containing obscenities which cannot be quoted here
Robert thrust it into his pocket and strode on every nerve quivering
This is Wednesday in Passion week he said to himself The day after tomorrow is Good Friday
He walked fast in a northwesterly direction and soon found himself within the City where the streets were long since empty and silent But he noticed nothing around him His thoughts were in the distant East among the flat roofs and white walls of Nazareth the olives of Bethany the steep streets and rocky ramparts of Jerusalem He had seen them with the bodily eye and the fact had enormously quickened his historical perception The child of Nazareth the moralist and teacher of Capernaum and Gennesaret the strenuous seer and martyr of the later Jerusalem preaching—all these various images sprang into throbbing poetic life within him That anything in human shape should be found capable of dragging this life and this death through the mire of a hideous and befouling laughter Who was responsible To what cause could one trace such a temper of mind towards such an object—present and militant as that temper is in all the crowded centres of working life throughout modern Europe The toiler of the world as he matures may be made to love Socrates or Buddha or Marcus Aurelius It would seem often as though he could not be made to love Jesus Is it the Nemesis that ultimately discovers and avenges the sublimest the least conscious departure from simplicity and verity—is it the last and most terrible illustration of a great axiom Faith has a judge—in truth
He went home and lay awake half the night pondering If he could but pour out his heart But though Catherine the wife of his heart of his youth is there close beside him doubt and struggle and perplexity are alike frozen on his lips He cannot speak without sympathy and she will not hear except under a moral compulsion which he shrinks more and more painfully from exercising
The next night was a storytelling night He spent it in telling the legend of St Francis When it was over he asked the audience to wait a moment and there and then—with the tender imaginative Franciscan atmosphere as it were still about them—he delivered a short and vigorous protest in the name of decency good feeling and common sense against the idiotic profanities with which the whole immediate neighbourhood seemed to be reeking It was the first time he had approached any religious matter directly A knot of workmen sitting together at the back of the room looked at each other with a significant grimace or two
When Robert ceased speaking one of them an elderly watchPg 478maker got up and made a dry and cynical little speech nothing moving but the thin lips in the shrivelled mahogany face Robert knew the man well He was a Genevese by birth Calvinist by blood revolutionist by development He complained that Mr Elsmere had taken his audience by surprise that a good many of those present understood the remarks he had just made as an attack upon an institution in which many of them were deeply interested and that he invited Mr Elsmere to a more thorough discussion of the matter in a place where he could be both heard and answered
The room applauded with some signs of suppressed excitement Most of the men there were accustomed to disputation of the sort which any Sunday visitor to Victoria Park may hear going on there week after week Elsmere had made a vivid impression and the prospect of a fight with him had an unusual piquancy
Robert sprang up When you will he said I am ready to stand by what I have just said in the face of you all if you care to hear it
Place and particulars were hastily arranged subject to the approval of the club committee and Elsmeres audience separated in a glow of curiosity and expectation
Didnt I tell ye the gasfitters snarling friend said to him Scratch him and you find the parson These upperclass folk when they come among us poor ones always seem to me just hunting for souls as those Injuns he was talking about last week hunt for scalps They cant get to heaven without a certain number of em slung about em
Wait a bit said the gasfitter his quick dark eyes betraying a certain raised inner temperature
Next morning the North R—— Club was placarded with announcements that on Easter Eve next Robert Elsmere Esq would deliver a lecture in the Debating Hall on The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life to be followed as usual by general discussion
CHAPTER XXXIX
It was the afternoon of Good Friday Catherine had been to church at St Pauls and Robert though not without some inward struggle had accompanied her Their midday meal was over and Robert had been devoting himself to Mary who had been tottering round the room in his wake clutching one finger tight with her chubby hand In particular he had been coaxing her into friendship with a wooden Japanese dragon which wound itself in awful yet most seductive coils round the cabinet at the end of the room It was Marys weekly task to embrace this horror and the performance went by the name of kissingPg 479 the Jabberwock It had been triumphantly achieved and as the reward of bravery Mary was being carried round the room on her fathers shoulder holding on mercilessly to his curls her shining blue eyes darting scorn at the defeated monster
At last Robert deposited her on the rug beside a fascinating farmyard which lay there spread out for her and stood looking not at the child but at his wife
Catherine I feel so much as Mary did three minutes ago
She looked up startled The tone was light but the sadness the emotion of the eyes contradicted it
I want courage he went on—courage to tell you something that may hurt you And yet I ought to tell it
Her face took the shrinking expression which was so painful to him But she waited quietly for what he had to say
You know I think he said looking away from her to the gray Museum outside that my work in R—— hasnt been religious as yet at all Oh of course I have said things here and there but I havent delivered myself in any way Now there has come an opening
And he described to her—while she shivered a little and drew herself together—the provocations which were leading him into a tussle with the North R—— Club
They have given me a very civil invitation They are the sort of men after all whom it pays to get hold of if one can Among their fellows they are the men who think One longs to help them to think to a little more purpose
What have you to give them Robert asked Catherine after a pause her eyes bent on the childs stocking she was knitting Her heart was full enough already poor soul Oh the bitterness of this Passion week He had been at her side often in church but through all his tender silence and consideration she had divined the constant struggle in him between love and intellectual honesty and it had filled her with a dumb irritation and misery indescribable Do what she would wrestle with herself as she would there was constantly emerging in her now a note of anger not with Robert but as it were with those malign forces of which he was the prey
What have I to give them he repeated sadly Very little Catherine as it seems to me tonight But come and see
His tone had a melancholy which went to her heart In reality he was in that state of depression which often precedes a great effort But she was startled by his suggestion
Come with you Robert To the meeting of a secularist club
Why not I shall be there to protest against outrage to what both you and I hold dear And the men are decent fellows There will be no disturbance
What are you going to do she asked in a low voice
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I have been trying to think it out he said with difficulty I want simply if I can to transfer to their minds that image of Jesus of Nazareth which thought and love and reading have left upon my own I want to make them realise for themselves the historical character so far as it can be realised—to make them see for themselves the real figure as it went in and out amongst men—so far as our eyes can now discern it
The words came quicker towards the end while the voice sank—took the vibrating characteristic note the wife knew so well
How can that help them she said abruptly Your historical Christ Robert will never win souls If he was God every word you speak will insult him If he was man he was not a good man
Come and see was all he said holding out his hand to her It was in some sort a renewal of the scene at Les Avants the inevitable renewal of an offer he felt bound to make and she felt bound to resist
She let her knitting fall and placed her hand in his The baby on the rug was alternately caressing and scourging a woolly baalamb which was the fetish of her childish worship Her broken incessant babytalk and the ringing kisses with which she atoned to the baalamb for each successive outrage made a running accompaniment to the moved undertones of the parents
Dont ask me Robert dont ask me Do you want me to come and sit thinking of last years Easter Eve
Heaven knows I was miserable enough last Easter Eve he said slowly
And now she exclaimed looking at him with a sudden agitation of every feature now you are not miserable You are quite confident and sure You are going to devote your life to attacking the few remnants of faith that still remain in the world
Never in her married life had she spoken to him with this accent of bitterness and hostility He started and withdrew his hand and there was a silence
I held once a wife in my arms he said presently with a voice hardly audible who said to me that she would never persecute her husband But what is persecution if it is not the determination not to understand
She buried her face in her hands I could not understand she said sombrely
And rather than try he insisted you will go on believing that I am a man without faith seeking only to destroy
I know you think you have faith she answered but how can it seem faith to me He that will not confess Me before men him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven Your unbelief seems to me more dangerous than these horrible things which shock you For you can make it attractivePg 481 you can make it loved as you once made the faith of Christ loved
He was silent She raised her face presently whereon were the traces of some of those quiet difficult tears which were characteristic of her and went softly out of the room
He stood a while leaning against the mantelpiece deaf to little Marys clamour and to her occasional clutches at his knees as she tried to raise herself on her tiny tottering feet A sense as though of some fresh disaster was upon him His heart was sinking sinking within him And yet none knew better than he that there was nothing fresh It was merely that the scene had recalled to him anew some of those unpalatable truths which the optimist is always much too ready to forget
Heredity the moulding force of circumstance the iron hold of the past upon the present—a man like Elsmere realises the working of these things in other mens lives with a singular subtlety and clearness and is for ever overlooking them running his head against them in his own
He turned and laid his arms on the chimneypiece burying his head on them Suddenly he felt a touch on his knee and looking down saw Mary peering up her masses of dark hair streaming back from the straining little face the grave open mouth and alarmed eyes
Fader tiss fader tiss she said imperatively
He lifted her up and covered the little brown cheeks with kisses But the touch of the child only woke in him a fresh dread—the like of something he had often divined of late in Catherine Was she actually afraid now that he might feel himself bound in future to take her child spiritually from her The suspicion of such a fear in her woke in him a fresh anguish it seemed a measure of the distance they had travelled from that old perfect unity
She thinks I could even become in time her tyrant and torturer he said to himself with measureless pain and who knows—who can answer for himself Oh the puzzle of living
When she came back into the room pale and quiet Catherine said nothing and Robert went to his letters But after a while she opened his study door
Robert will you tell me what your stories are to be next week and let me put out the pictures
It was the first time she had made any such offer He sprang up with a flash in his gray eyes and brought her a slip of paper with a list She took it without looking at him But he caught her in his arms and for a moment in that embrace the soreness of both hearts passed away
But if Catherine would not go Elsmere was not left on this critical occasion without auditors from his own immediate circle On the evening of Good Friday Flaxman had found his way toPg 482 Bedford Square and as Catherine was out was shown into Elsmeres study
I have come he announced to try and persuade you and Mrs Elsmere to go down with me to Greenlaws tomorrow My Easter party has come to grief and it would be a real charity on your part to come and resuscitate it Do You look abominably fagged and as if some country would do you good
But I thought—— began Robert taken aback
You thought repeated Flaxman coolly that your two sistersinlaw were going down there with Lady Helen to meet some musical folk Well they are not coming Miss Leyburn thinks your motherinlaw not very well today and doesnt like to come And your younger sister prefers also to stay in town Helen is much disappointed so am I But—— And he shrugged his shoulders
Robert found it difficult to make a suitable remark His sistersinlaw were certainly inscrutable young women This Easter party at Greenlaws Mr Flaxmans country house had been planned he knew for weeks And certainly nothing could be very wrong with Mrs Leyburn or Catherine would have been warned
I am afraid your plans must be greatly put out he said with some embarrassment
Of course they are replied Flaxman with a dry smile He stood opposite Elsmere his hands in his pockets
Will you have a confidence the bright eyes seemed to say I am quite ready Claim it if you like
But Elsmere had no intention of claiming it The position of all Roses kindred indeed at the present moment was not easy None of them had the least knowledge of Roses mind Had she forgotten Langham Had she lost her heart afresh to Flaxman No one knew Flaxmans absorption in her was clear enough But his lovemaking if it was such was not of an ordinary kind and did not always explain itself And moreover his wealth and social position were elements in the situation calculated to make people like the Elsmeres particularly diffident and discreet Impossible for them much as they liked him to make any of the advances
No Robert wanted no confidences He was not prepared to take the responsibility of them So letting Rose alone he took up his visitors invitation to themselves and explained the engagement for Easter Eve which tied them to London
Whew said Hugh Flaxman but that will be a shindy worth seeing I must come
Nonsense said Robert smiling Go down to Greenlaws and go to church That will be much more in your line
As for church said Flaxman meditatively if I put off my party altogether and stay in town there will be this further advantage that after hearing you on Saturday night I can with a blameless impartiality spend the following day in StPg 483 Andrews Well Street Yes I telegraph to Helen—she knows my ways—and I come down to protect you against an atheistical mob tomorrow night
Robert tried to dissuade him He did not want Flaxman Flaxmans Epicureanism the easy tolerance with which now that the effervescence of his youth had subsided the man harboured and dallied with a dozen contradictory beliefs were at times peculiarly antipathetic to Elsmere They were so now just as heart and soul were nerved to an effort which could not be made at all without the nobler sort of selfconfidence
But Flaxman was determined
No he said this one day well give—to heresy Dont look so forbidding In the first place you wont see me in the next if you did you would feel me as wax in your hands I am like the man in Sophocles—always the possession of the last speaker One day I am all for the church A certain number of chances in the hundred there still are you will admit that she is in the right of it And if so why should I cut myself off from a whole host of beautiful things not to be got outside her But the next day—vive Elsmere and the Revolution If only Elsmere could persuade me intellectually But I never yet came across a religious novelty that seemed to me to have a leg of logic to stand on
He laid his hand on Roberts shoulder his eyes twinkling with a sudden energy Robert made no answer He stood erect frowning a little his hands thrust far into the pockets of his light gray coat He was in no mood to disclose himself to Flaxman The inner vision was fixed with extraordinary intensity on quite another sort of antagonist with whom the mind was continuously grappling
Ah well—till tomorrow said Flaxman with a smile shook hands and went
Outside he hailed a cab and drove off to Lady Charlottes
He found his aunt and Mr Wynnstay in the drawingroom alone one on either side of the fire Lady Charlotte was reading the latest political biography with an apparent profundity of attention Mr Wynnstay was lounging and caressing the cat But both his aunts absorption and Mr Wynnstays nonchalance seemed to Flaxman overdone He suspected a domestic breeze
Lady Charlotte made him effusively welcome He had come to propose that she should accompany him the following evening to hear Elsmere lecture
I advise you to come he said Elsmere will deliver his soul and the amount of soul he has to deliver in these dull days is astounding A dowdy dress and a veil of course I will go down beforehand and see some one on the spot in case there should be difficulties about getting in Perhaps Miss Leyburn too might like to hear her brotherinlaw
Really Hugh cried Lady Charlotte impatiently I thinkPg 484 you might take your snubbing with dignity Her refusal this morning to go to Greenlaws was brusqueness itself To my mind that young person gives herself airs And the Duke of Sedberghs sister drew herself up with a rustle of all her ample frame
Yes I was snubbed said Flaxman unperturbed that however is no reason why she shouldnt find it attractive to go tomorrow night
And you will let her see that just because you couldnt get hold of her you have given up your Easter party and left your sister in the lurch
I never had excessive notions of dignity he replied composedly You may make up any story you please The real fact is that I want to hear Elsmere
You had better go my dear said her husband sardonically I cannot imagine anything more piquant than an atheistic slum on Easter Eve
Nor can I she replied her combativeness rousing at once Much obliged to you Hugh I will borrow my housekeepers dress and be ready to leave here at halfpast seven
Nothing more was said of Rose but Flaxman knew that she would be asked and let it alone
Will his wife be there asked Lady Charlotte
Who Elsmeres My dear aunt when you happen to be the orthodox wife of a rising heretic your husbands opinions are not exactly the spectacular performance they are to you and me I should think it most unlikely
Oh she persecutes him does she
She wouldnt be a woman if she didnt observed Mr Wynnstay sotto voce The small dark man was lost in a great armchair his delicate painters hands playing with the fur of a huge Persian cat Lady Charlotte threw him an eagle glance and he subsided—for the moment
Flaxman however was perfectly right There had been a breeze It had been just announced to the master of the house by his spouse that certain Socialist celebrities—who might any day be expected to make acquaintance with the police—were coming to dine at his table to finger his spoons and mix their diatribes with his champagne on the following Tuesday Overt rebellion had never served him yet and he knew perfectly well that when it came to the point he should smile more or less affably upon these gentry as he had smiled upon others of the same sort before But it had not yet come to the point and his intermediate state was explosive in the extreme
Mr Flaxman dexterously continued the subject of the Elsmeres Dropping his bantering tone he delivered himself of a very delicate critical analysis of Catherine Elsmeres temperament and position as in the course of several months his intimacy with her husband had revealed them to him He did it well with acuteness and philosophical relish The situation presentedPg 485 itself to him as an extremely refined and yet tragic phase of the religious difficulty and it gave him intellectual pleasure to draw it out in words
Lady Charlotte sat listening enjoying her nephews crisp phrases but also gradually gaining a perception of the human reality behind this wordplay of Hughs That good heart of hers was touched the large imperious face began to frown
Dear me she said with a little sigh Dont go on Hugh I suppose its because we all of us believe so little that the poor things point of view seems to one so unreal All the same however she added regaining her usual rôle of magisterial commonsense a woman in my opinion ought to go with her husband in religious matters
Provided of course she sets him at nought in all others put in Mr Wynnstay rising and daintily depositing the cat Many men however my dear might be willing to compromise it differently Granted a certain modicum of worldly conformity they would not be at all indisposed to a conscience clause
He lounged out of the room while Lady Charlotte shrugged her shoulders with a look at her nephew in which there was an irrepressible twinkle Mr Flaxman neither heard nor saw Life would have ceased to be worth having long ago had he ever taken sides in the smallest degree in this ménage
Flaxman walked home again not particularly satisfied with himself and his manœuvres Very likely it was quite unwise of him to have devised another meeting between himself and Rose Leyburn so soon Certainly she had snubbed him—there could be no doubt of that Nor was he in much perplexity as to the reason He had been forgetting himself forgetting his rôle and the whole lie of the situation and if a man will be an idiot he must suffer for it He had distinctly been put back a move
The facts were very simple It was now nearly three months since Langhams disappearance During that time Rose Leyburn had been to Flaxmans mind enchantingly dependent on him He had played his part so well and the beautiful highspirited child had suited herself so naïvely to his acting Evidently she had said to herself that his age his former marriage his relation to Lady Helen his constant kindness to her and her sister made it natural that she should trust him make him her friend and allow him an intimacy she allowed to no other male friend And when once the situation had been so defined in her mind how the girls true self had come out—what delightful moments that intimacy had contained for him
He remembered how on one occasion he had been reading some Browning to her and Helen in Helens crowded belittered drawingroom which seemed all piano and photographs and lilies of the valley He never could exactly trace the connection between the passage he had been reading and what happened Probably it was merely Brownings poignant passionate note that had affected her In spite of all her proud bright reservePg 486 both he and Helen often felt through these weeks that just below this surface there was a heart which quivered at the least touch
He finished the lines and laid down the book Lady Helen heard her threeyearold boy crying upstairs and ran up to see what was the matter He and Rose were left alone in the scented firelit room And a jet of flame suddenly showed him the girls face turned away convulsed with a momentary struggle for selfcontrol She raised a hand an instant to her eyes not dreaming evidently that she could be seen in the dimness and her gloves dropped from her lap
He moved forward stooped on one knee and as she held out her hand for the gloves he kissed the hand very gently detaining it afterwards as a brother might There was not a thought of himself in his mind Simply he could not bear that so bright a creature should ever be sorry It seemed to him intolerable against the nature of things If he could have procured for her at that moment a coerced and transformed Langham a Langham fitted to make her happy he could almost have done it and short of such radical consolation the very least he could do was to go on his knee to her and comfort her in tender brotherly fashion
She did not say anything she let her hand stay a moment and then she got up put on her veil left a quiet message for Lady Helen and departed But as he put her into a hansom her whole manner to him was full of a shy shrinking sweetness And when Rose was shy and shrinking she was adorable
Well and now he had never again gone nearly so far as to kiss her hand and yet because of an indiscreet moment everything was changed between them she had turned resentful standoff nay as nearly rude as a girl under the restraints of modern manners can manage to be He almost laughed as he recalled Helens report of her interview with Rose that morning in which she had tried to persuade a young person outrageously on her dignity to keep an engagement she had herself spontaneously made
I am very sorry Lady Helen Rose had said her slim figure drawn up so stiffly that the small Lady Helen felt herself totally effaced beside her But I had rather not leave London this week I think I will stay with mamma and Agnes
And nothing Lady Helen could say moved her or modified her formula of refusal
What have you been doing Hugh his sister asked him half dismayed half provoked
Flaxman shrugged his shoulders and vowed he had been doing nothing But in truth he knew very well that the day before he had overstepped the line There had been a little scene between them a quick passage of speech a rash look and gesture on his part which had been quite unpremeditated but which had nevertheless transformed their relation Rose had flushedPg 487 up had said a few incoherent words which he had understood to be words of reproach had left Lady Helens as quickly as possible and next morning his Greenlaws party had fallen through
Check certainly said Flaxman to himself ruefully as he pondered these circumstances—not mate I hope if one can but find out how not to be a fool in future
And over his solitary fire he meditated far into the night
Next day at halfpast seven in the evening he entered Lady Charlottes drawingroom gayer brisker more alert than ever
Rose started visibly at the sight of him and shot a quick glance at the unblushing Lady Charlotte
I thought you were at Greenlaws she could not help saying to him as she coldly offered him her hand Why had Lady Charlotte never told her he was to escort them Her irritation rose anew
What can one do he said lightly if Elsmere will fix such a performance for Easter Eve My party was at its last gasp too it only wanted a telegram to Helen to give it its coup de grâce
Rose flushed up but he turned on his heel at once and began to banter his aunt on the housekeepers bonnet and veil in which she had a little too obviously disguised herself
And certainly in the drive to the East End Rose had no reason to complain of importunity on his part Most of the way he was deep in talk with Lady Charlotte as to a certain loan exhibition in the East End to which he and a good many of his friends were sending pictures apparently his time and thoughts were entirely occupied with it Rose leaning back silent in her corner was presently seized with a little shock of surprise that there should be so many interests and relations in his life of which she knew nothing He was talking now as the man of possessions and influence She saw a glimpse of him as he was in his public aspect and the kindness the disinterestedness the quiet sense and the humour of his talk insensibly affected her as she sat listening The mental image of him which had been dominant in her mind altered a little Nay she grew a little hot over it She asked herself scornfully whether she were not as ready as any breadandbutter miss of her acquaintance to imagine every man she knew in love with her
Very likely he had meant what he said quite differently and she—oh humiliation—had flown into a passion with him for no reasonable cause Supposing he had meant two days ago that if they were to go on being friends she must let him be her lover too it would of course have been unpardonable How could she let any one talk to her of love yet—especially Mr Flaxman who guessed as she was quite sure what had happened to her He must despise her to have imagined it His outburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulantPg 488 resentment Were all men selfseeking Did all men think women shallow and fickle Could a man and a woman never be honestly and simply friends If he had made love to her he could not possibly—and there was the sting of it—feel towards her maiden dignity that romantic respect which she herself cherished towards it For it was incredible that any delicateminded girl should go through such a crisis as she had gone through and then fall calmly into another lovers arms a few weeks later as though nothing had happened
How we all attitudinise to ourselves The whole of life often seems one long dramatic performance in which one half of us is for ever posing to the other half
But had he really made love to her—had he meant what she had assumed him to mean The girl lost herself in a torment of memory and conjecture and meanwhile Mr Flaxman sat opposite talking away and looking certainly as little lovesick as any man can well look As the lamps flashed into the carriage her attention was often caught by his profile and finelybalanced head by the hand lying on his knee or the little gestures full of life and freedom with which he met some raid of Lady Charlottes on his opinions or opened a corresponding one on hers There was certainly power in the man a bright human sort of power which inevitably attracted her And that he was good too she had special grounds for knowing
But what an aristocrat he was after all What an overprosperous exclusive set he belonged to She lashed herself into anger as the other two chatted and sparred with all these names of wealthy cousins and relations with their parks and their pedigrees and their pictures The aunt and nephew were debating how they could best bleed the family in its various branches of the art treasures belonging to it for the benefit of the EastEnders therefore the names were inevitable But Rose curled her delicate lip over them And was it the best breeding she wondered to leave a third person so ostentatiously outside the conversation
Miss Leyburn why are you coughing said Lady Charlotte suddenly
There is a great draught said Rose shivering a little
So there is cried Lady Charlotte Why we have got both the windows open Hugh draw up Miss Leyburns
He moved over to her and drew it up
I thought you liked a tornado he said to her smiling Will you have a shawl—there is one behind me
No thank you she replied rather stiffly and he was silent—retaining his place opposite to her however
Have we reached Mr Elsmeres part of the world yet asked Lady Charlotte looking out
Yes we are not far off—the river is to our right We shall pass St Wilfrids soon
The coachman turned into a street where an openair marketPg 489 was going on The roadway and pavements were swarming the carriage could barely pick its way through the masses of human beings Flaming gasjets threw it all into strong satanic light and shade At the corner of a dingy alley Rose could see a fight going on the begrimed ragged children regardless of the April rain swooped backwards and forwards under the very hoofs of the horses or flattened their noses against the windows whenever the horses were forced into a walk
The young girlfigure in gray with the gray feathered hat seemed specially to excite their notice The glare of the street brought out the lines of the face the gold of the hair The Arabs outside made loutishly flattering remarks once or twice and Rose colouring drew back as far as she could into the carriage Mr Flaxman seemed not to hear his aunt with that obtrusive thirst for information which is so fashionable now among all women of position was crossquestioning him as to the trades and population of the district and he was drily responding In reality his mind was full of a whirl of feeling of a wild longing to break down a futile barrier and trample on a baffling resistance to take that beautiful tameless creature in strong coercing arms scold her crush her love her Why does she make happiness so difficult What right has she to hold devotion so cheap He too grows angry She was not in love with that spectral creature the inner self declares with energy—I will vow she never was But she is like all the rest—a slave to the merest forms and trappings of sentiment Because he ought to have loved her and didnt because she fancied she loved him and didnt my love is to be an offence to her Monstrous—unjust
Suddenly they sped past St Wilfrids resplendent with lights the jewelled windows of the choir rising above the squalid walls and roofs into the rainy darkness as the mystical chapel of the Graal with its torches glimmering fair flashed out of the mountain storm and solitude on to Galahads seeking eyes
Rose bent forward involuntarily What angel singing she said dropping the window again to listen to the retreating sounds her artists eye kindling Did you hear it It was the last chorus in the St Matthew Passion music
I did not distinguish it he said—but their music is famous
His tone was distant there was no friendliness in it It would have been pleasant to her if he would have taken up her little remark and let bygones be bygones But he showed no readiness to do so The subject dropped and presently he moved back to his former seat and Lady Charlotte and he resumed their talk Rose could not but see that his manner towards her was much changed She herself had compelled it but all the same she saw him leave her with a capricious little pang of regret and afterwards the drive seemed to her more tedious and the dismal streets more dismal than before
Pg 490
She tried to forget her companions altogether Oh what would Robert have to say She was unhappy restless In her trouble lately it had often pleased her to go quite alone to strange churches where for a moment the burden of the self had seemed lightened But the old things were not always congenial to her and there were modern ferments at work in her No one of her family unless it were Agnes suspected what was going on But in truth the rich crude nature had been touched at last as Roberts had been long ago in Mr Greys lectureroom by the piercing undervoices of things—the moral message of the world What will he have to say she asked herself again feverishly and as she looked across to Mr Flaxman she felt a childish wish to be friends again with him with everybody Life was too difficult as it was without quarrels and misunderstandings to make it worse
CHAPTER XL
A long street of warehouses—and at the end of it the horses slackened
I saw the president of the club yesterday said Flaxman looking out He is an old friend of mine—a most intelligent fanatic—met him on a Mansion House Fund committee last winter He promised we should be looked after But we shall only get back seats and youll have to put up with the smoking They dont want ladies and we shall only be there on sufferance
The carriage stopped Mr Flaxman guided his charges with some difficulty through the crowd about the steps who inspected them and their vehicle with a frank and not overfriendly curiosity At the door they found a man who had been sent to look for them and were immediately taken possession of He ushered them into the back of a large bare hall glaringly lit lined with white brick and hung at intervals with political portraits and a few cheap engravings of famous men Jesus of Nazareth taking his turn with Buddha Socrates Moses Shakespeare and Paul of Tarsus
Cant put you any forrarder Im afraid said their guide with a shrug of the shoulders The committee dont like strangers coming and Mr Collett he got hauled over the coals for letting you in this evening
It was a new position for Lady Charlotte to be anywhere on sufferance However in the presence of three hundred smoking men who might all of them be political assassins in disguise for anything she knew she accepted her fate with meekness and she and Rose settled themselves into their back seat under a rough sort of gallery glad of their veils and nearly blinded with the smoke
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The hall was nearly full and Mr Flaxman looked curiously round upon its occupants The majority of them were clearly artisans—a spare stooping sharpfeatured race Here and there were a knot of stalwart docklabourers strongly marked out in physique from the watchmakers and the potters or an occasional seaman out of work shipsteward boatswain or what not generally bronzed quickeyed and comely save where the film of excess had already deadened colour and expression Almost every one had a pot of beer before him standing on long wooden flaps attached to the benches The room was full of noise coming apparently from the farther end where some political bravo seemed to be provoking his neighbours In their own vicinity the men scattered about were for the most part tugging silently at their pipes alternately eyeing the clock and the newcomers
There was a stir of feet round the door
There he is said Mr Flaxman craning round to see and Robert entered
He started as he saw them flashed a smile to Rose shook his head at Mr Flaxman and passed up the room
He looks pale and nervous said Lady Charlotte grimly pouncing at once on the unpromising side of things If he breaks down are you prepared Hugh to play Elisha
Flaxman was far too much interested in the beginnings of the performance to answer
Robert was standing forward on the platform the chairman of the meeting at his side members of the committee sitting behind on either hand A good many men put down their pipes and the hubbub of talk ceased Others smoked on stolidly
The chairman introduced the lecturer The subject of the address would be as they already knew The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life It was not very likely he imagined that Mr Elsmeres opinions would square with those dominant in the club but whether or no he claimed for him as for everybody a patient hearing and the Englishmans privilege of fair play
The speaker a cabinetmaker dressed in a decent brown suit spoke with fluency and at the same time with that accent of moderation and savoir faire which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inherited from centuries of government by discussion Lady Charlotte whose Liberalism was the mere varnish of an essentially aristocratic temper was conscious of a certain dismay at the culture of the democracy as the man sat down Mr Flaxman glancing to the right saw a group of men standing and amongst them a slight sharpfeatured threadpaper of a man with a taller companion whom he identified as the pair he had noticed on the night of the storytelling The little gasfitter was clearly all nervous fidget and expectation the other large and gaunt in figure with a square impassive face and closeshut lips that had a perpetual mocking twist inPg 492 the corners stood beside him like some clumsy modern version in a commoner clay of Goethes spirit that denies
Robert came forward with a roll of papers in his hand
His first words were hardly audible Rose felt her colour rising Lady Charlotte glanced at her nephew the standing group of men cried Speak up The voice in the distance rose at once braced by the touch of difficulty and what it said came firmly down to them
In after days Flaxman could not often be got to talk of the experience of this evening When he did he would generally say briefly that as an intellectual effort he had never been inclined to rank this first public utterance very high among Elsmeres performances The speakers own emotion had stood somewhat in his way A man argues better perhaps when he feels less
I have often heard him put his case as I thought more cogently in conversation Flaxman would say—though only to his most intimate friends—but what I never saw before or since was such an effect of personality as he produced that night From that moment at any rate I loved him and I understood his secret
Elsmere began with a few words of courteous thanks to the club for the hearing they had promised him
Then he passed on to the occasion of his address—the vogue in the district of certain newspapers which I understand are specially relished and patronised by your association
And he laid down on a table beside him the copies of the Freethinker and of Faith and Fools which he had brought with him and faced his audience again his hands on his sides
Well I am not here tonight to attack those newspapers I want to reach your sympathies if I can in another way If there is anybody here who takes pleasure in them who thinks that such writing and such witticisms as he gets purveyed to him in these sheets do really help the cause of truth and intellectual freedom I shall not attack his position from the front I shall try to undermine it I shall aim at rousing in him such a state of feeling as may suddenly convince him that what is injured by writing of this sort is not the orthodox Christian or the Church or Jesus of Nazareth but always and inevitably the man who writes it and the man who loves it His mind is possessed of an inflaming and hateful image which drives him to mockery and violence I want to replace it if I can by one of calm of beauty and tenderness which may drive him to humility and sympathy And this indeed is the only way in which opinion is ever really altered—by the substitution of one mental picture for another
But in the first place resumed the speaker after a moments pause changing his note a little a word about myself I am not here tonight quite in the position of the casual stranger coming down to your district for the first time As some of youPg 493 know I am endeavouring to make what is practically a settlement among you asking you workingmen to teach me if you will what you have to teach as to the wants and prospects of your order and offering you in return whatever there is in me which may be worth your taking Well I imagine I should look at a man who preferred a claim of that sort with some closeness You may well ask me for antecedents and I should like if I may to give them to you very shortly
Well then though I came down to this place under the wing of Mr Edwardes some cheering who is so greatly liked and respected here I am not a Unitarian nor am I an English Churchman A year ago I was the vicar of an English country parish where I should have been proud so far as personal happiness went to spend my life Last autumn I left it and resigned my orders because I could no longer accept the creed of the English Church Unconsciously the thin dignified figure drew itself up the voice took a certain dryness All this was distasteful but the orators instinct was imperious
As he spoke about a score of pipes which had till now been active in Flaxmans neighbourhood went down The silence in the room became suddenly of a perceptibly different quality
Since then I have joined no other religious association But it is not—God forbid—because there is nothing left me to believe but because in this transition England it is well for a man who has broken with the old things to be very patient No good can come of forcing opinion or agreement prematurely A generation nay more may have to spend itself in mere waiting and preparing for those new leaders and those new forms of corporate action which any great revolution of opinion such as that we are now living through has always produced in the past and will we are justified in believing produce again But the hour and the men will come and they also serve who only stand and wait
Voice and look had kindled into fire The consciousness of his audience was passing from him—the world of ideas was growing clearer
So much then for personalities of one sort There are some of another however which I must touch upon for a moment I am to speak to you tonight of the Jesus of history but not only as an historian History is good but religion is better—and if Jesus of Nazareth concerned me and in my belief concerned you only as an historical figure I should not be here tonight
But if I am to talk religion to you and I have begun by telling you I am not this and not that it seems to me that for mere clearness sake for the sake of that round and whole image of thought which I want to present to you you must let me run through a preliminary confession of faith—as short and simple as I can make it You must let me describe certain views of the universe and of mans place in it which make the framePg 494work as it were into which I shall ask you to fit the picture of Jesus which will come after
Robert stood a moment considering An instants nervousness a momentary sign of selfconsciousness would have broken the spell and set the room against him He showed neither
My friends he said at last speaking to the crowded benches of London workmen with the same simplicity he would have used towards his boys at Murewell the man who is addressing you tonight believes in God and in Conscience which is Gods witness in the soul and in Experience which is at once the record and the instrument of mans education at Gods hands He places his whole trust for life and death in God the Father Almighty—in that force at the root of things which is revealed to us whenever a man helps his neighbour or a mother denies herself for her child whenever a soldier dies without a murmur for his country or a sailor puts out in the darkness to rescue the perishing whenever a workman throws mind and conscience into his work or a statesman labours not for his own gain but for that of the State He believes in an Eternal Goodness—and an Eternal Mind—of which Nature and Man are the continuous and the only revelation
The room grew absolutely still And into the silence there fell one by one the short terse sentences in which the seer the believer struggled to express what God has been is and will ever be to the soul which trusts Him In them the whole effort of the speaker was really to restrain to moderate to depersonalise the voice of faith But the intensity of each word burnt it into the hearer as it was spoken Even Lady Charlotte turned a little pale—the tears stood in her eyes
Then from the witness of God in the soul and in the history of mans moral life Elsmere turned to the glorification of Experience of that unvarying and rational order of the world which has been the appointed instrument of mans training since life and thought began
There he said slowly in the unbroken sequences of nature in the physical history of the world in the long history of man physical intellectual moral—there lies the revelation of God There is no other my friends
Then while the room hung on his words he entered on a brief exposition of the text Miracles do not happen restating Humes old argument and adding to it some of the most cogent of those modern arguments drawn from literature from history from the comparative study of religions and religious evidence which were not practically at Humes disposal but which are now affecting the popular mind as Humes reasoning could never have affected it
We are now able to show how miracle or the belief in it which is the same thing comes into being The study of miracle in all nations and under all conditions yields everyPg 495where the same results Miracle may be the child of imagination of love nay of a passionate sincerity but invariably it lives with ignorance and is withered by knowledge
And then with lightning unexpectedness he turned upon his audience as though the ardent soul reacted at once against a strain of mere negation
But do not let yourselves imagine for an instant that because in a rational view of history there is no place for a Resurrection and Ascension therefore you may profitably allow yourself a mean and miserable mirth of this sort over the past—and his outstretched hand struck the newspapers beside him with passion Do not imagine for an instant that what is binding adorable beautiful in that past is done away with when miracle is given up No thank God We still live by admiration hope and love God only draws closer great men become greater human life more wonderful as miracle disappears Woe to you if you cannot see it—it is the testing truth of our day
And besides—do you suppose that mere violence mere invective and savage mockery ever accomplished anything—nay what is more to the point ever destroyed anything in human history No—an idea cannot be killed from without—it can only be supplanted transformed by another idea and that one of equal virtue and magic Strange paradox In the moral world you cannot pull down except by gentleness—you cannot revolutionise except by sympathy Jesus only superseded Judaism by absorbing and recreating all that was best in it There are no inexplicable gaps and breaks in the story of humanity The religion of today with all its faults and mistakes will go on unshaken so long as there is nothing else of equal loveliness and potency to put in its place The Jesus of the churches will remain paramount so long as the man of today imagines himself dispensed by any increase of knowledge from loving the Jesus of history
But why you will ask me What does the Jesus of history matter to me
And so he was brought to the place of great men in the development of mankind—to the part played in the human story by those lives in which men have seen all their noblest thoughts of God of duty and of law embodied realised before them with a shining and incomparable beauty
You think—because it is becoming plain to the modern eye that the ignorant love of his first followers wreathed his life in legend that therefore you can escape from Jesus of Nazareth you can put him aside as though he had never been Folly Do what you will you cannot escape him His life and death underlie our institutions as the alphabet underlies our literature Just as the lives of Buddha and of Mohammed are wrought ineffaceably into the civilisation of Africa and Asia so the life of Jesus is wrought ineffaceably into the higher civilisation thePg 496 nobler social conceptions of Europe It is wrought into your being and into mine We are what we are tonight as Englishmen and as citizens largely because a Galilean peasant was born and grew to manhood and preached and loved and died And you think that a fact so tremendous can be just scoffed away—that we can get rid of it and of our share in it by a ribald paragraph and a caricature
No Your hatred and your ridicule are powerless And thank God they are powerless There is no wanton waste in the moral world any more than in the material There is only fruitful change and beneficent transformation Granted that the true story of Jesus of Nazareth was from the beginning obscured by error and mistake granted that those errors and mistakes which were once the strength of Christianity are now its weakness and by the slow march and sentence of time are now threatening unless we can clear them away to lessen the hold of Jesus on the love and remembrance of man What then The fact is merely a call to you and me who recognise it to go back to the roots of things to reconceive the Christ to bring him afresh into our lives to make the life so freely given for man minister again in new ways to mans new needs Every great religion is in truth a concentration of great ideas capable as all ideas are of infinite expansion and adaptation And woe to our human weakness if it loose its hold one instant before it must on any of those rare and precious possessions which have helped it in the past and may again inspire it in the future
To reconceive the Christ It is the special task of our age though in some sort and degree it has been the everrecurring task of Europe since the beginning
He paused and then very simply and so as to be understood by those who heard him he gave a rapid sketch of that great operation worked by the best intellect of Europe during the last halfcentury—broadly speaking—on the facts and documents of primitive Christianity From all sides and by the help of every conceivable instrument those facts have been investigated and now at last the great result—the revivified reconceived truth—seems ready to emerge Much may still be known—much can never be known but if we will we may now discern the true features of Jesus of Nazareth as no generation but our own has been able to discern them since those who had seen and handled passed away
Let me try however feebly and draw it afresh for you that life of lives that story of stories as the labour of our own age in particular has patiently revealed it to us Come back with me through the centuries let us try and see the Christ of Galilee and the Christ of Jerusalem as he was before a credulous love and Jewish tradition and Greek subtlety had at once dimmed and glorified the truth Ah do what we will it is so scanty and poor this knowledge of ours compared with all that wePg 497 yearn to know—but such as it is let me very humbly and very tentatively endeavour to put it before you
At this point Flaxmans attention was suddenly distracted by a stir round the door of entrance on his left hand Looking round he saw a Ritualist priest in cassock and cloak disputing in hurried undertones with the men about the door At last he gained his point apparently for the men with halfangry halfquizzing looks at each other allowed him to come in and he found a seat Flaxman was greatly struck by the face—by its ascetic beauty the stern and yet delicate whiteness and emaciation of it He sat with both hands resting on the stick he held in front of him intently listening the perspiration of physical weakness on his brow and round his finely curved mouth Clearly he could hardly see the lecturer for the room had become inconveniently crowded and the men about him were mostly standing
One of the St Wilfrids priests I suppose Flaxman said to himself What on earth is he doing dans cette galère Are we to have a disputation That would be dramatic
He had no attention however to spare and the intruder was promptly forgotten When he turned back to the platform he found that Robert with Mackays help had hung on a screen to his right four or five large drawings of Nazareth of the Lake of Gennesaret of Jerusalem and the Temple of Herod of the ruins of that synagogue on the probable site of Capernaum in which conceivably Jesus may have stood They were bold and striking and filled the bare hall at once with suggestions of the East He had used them often at Murewell Then adopting a somewhat different tone he plunged into the life of Jesus He brought to it all his trained historical power all his storytelling faculty all his sympathy with the needs of feeling And bit by bit as the quick nervous sentences issued and struck each like the touch of a chisel the majestic figure emerged set against its natural background instinct with some fraction at least of the magic of reality most human most persuasive most tragic He brought out the great words of the new faith to which whatever may be their literal origin Jesus and Jesus only gave currency and immortal force He dwelt on the magic the permanence the expansiveness of the young Nazarenes central conception—the spiritualised universalised Kingdom of God Elsmeres thought indeed knew nothing of a perfect man as it knew nothing of an incarnate God he shrank from nothing that he believed true but every limitation every reserve he allowed himself did but make the whole more poignantly real and the claim of Jesus more penetrating
The world has grown since Jesus preached in Galilee and Judæa We cannot learn the whole of Gods lesson from him now—nay we could not then But all that is most essential to man—all that saves the soul all that purifies the heart—thatPg 498 he has still for you and me as he had it for the men and women of his own time
Then he came to the last scenes His voice sank a little his notes dropped from his hand and the silence grew oppressive The dramatic force the tender passionate insight the fearless modernness with which the story was told made it almost unbearable Those listening saw the trial the streets of Jerusalem that desolate place outside the northern gate they were spectators of the torture they heard the last cry No one present had ever so seen so heard before Rose had hidden her face Flaxman for the first time forgot to watch the audience the men had forgotten each other and for the first time that night in many a cold embittered heart there was born that love of the Son of Man which Nathaniel felt and John and Mary of Bethany and which has in it now as then the promise of the future
He laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb The ashes of Jesus of Nazareth mingled with the earth of Palestine—
Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town
And on his grave with shining eyes
The Syrian stars look down
He stopped The melancholy cadence of the verse died away Then a gleam broke over the pale exhausted face—a gleam of extraordinary sweetness
And in the days and weeks that followed the devout and passionate fancy of a few mourning Galileans begat the exquisite fable of the Resurrection How natural—and amid all its falseness—how true is that naïve and contradictory story The rapidity with which it spread is a measure of many things It is above all a measure of the greatness of Jesus of the force with which he had drawn to himself the hearts and imaginations of men
And now my friends what of all this If these things I have been saying to you are true what is the upshot of them for you and me Simply this as I conceive it—that instead of wasting your time and degrading your souls by indulgence in such grime as this—and he pointed to the newspapers—it is your urgent business and mine—at this moment—to do our very utmost to bring this life of Jesus our precious invaluable possession as a people back into some real and cogent relation with our modern lives and beliefs and hopes Do not answer me that such an effort is a mere dream and futility conceived in the vague apart from reality—that men must have something to worship and that if they cannot worship Jesus they will not trouble to love him Is the world desolate with God still in it and does it rest merely with us to love or not to love Love and revere something we must if we are to be men andPg 499 not beasts At all times and in all nations as I have tried to show you man has helped himself by the constant and passionate memory of those great ones of his race who have spoken to him most audibly of God and of eternal hope And for us Europeans and Englishmen as I have also tried to show you history and inheritance have decided If we turn away from the true Jesus of Nazareth because he has been disfigured and misrepresented by the Churches we turn away from that in which our weak wills and desponding souls are meant to find their most obvious and natural help and inspiration—from that symbol of the Divine which of necessity means most to us No give him back your hearts—be ashamed that you have ever forgotten your debt to him Let combination and brotherhood do for the newer and simpler faith what they did once for the old—let them give it a practical shape a practical grip on human life Then we too shall have our Easter—we too shall have the right to say He is not here he is risen Not here—in legend in miracle in the beautiful outworn forms and crystallisations of older thought He is risen—in a wiser reverence and a more reasonable love risen in new forms of social help inspired by his memory called afresh by his name Risen—if you and your children will it—in a church or company of the faithful over the gates of which two sayings of mans past into which mans present has breathed new meanings shall be written—
In Thee O Eternal have I put my trust
and—
This do in remembrance of Me
The rest was soon over The audience woke from the trance in which it had been held with a sudden burst of talk and movement In the midst of it and as the majority of the audience were filing out into the adjoining rooms the gasfitters tall companion Andrews mounted the platform while the gasfitter himself with an impatient shrug pushed his way into the outgoing crowd Andrews went slowly and deliberately to work dealing out his long cantankerous sentences with a nasal sang froid which seemed to change in a moment the whole aspect and temperature of things He remarked that Mr Elsmere had talked of what great scholars had done to clear up this matter of Christ and Christianity Well he was free to maintain that old Tom Paine was as good a scholar as any of em and most of them in that hall knew what he thought about it Tom Paine hadnt anything to say against Jesus Christ and he hadnt He was a workman and a fine sort of man and if hed been alive now hed have been a Socialist as most of us are and hed have made it hot for the rich loafers and the sweaters and the middlemen as wed like to make it hot for em But as for those people who got up the Church—Mythologists Tom Paine called em—and the miracles and made anPg 500 uncommonly good thing out of it pecuniarily speaking he didnt see what theyd got to do with keeping up or mending or preserving their precious bit of work The world had found em out and serve em right
And he wound up with a fierce denunciation of priests not without a harsh savour and eloquence which was much clapped by the small knot of workmen amongst whom he had been standing
Then there followed a Socialist—an eager ugly blackbearded little fellow who preached the absolute necessity of doing without any cultus whatsoever threw scorn on both the Christians and the Positivists for refusing so to deny themselves and appealed earnestly to his group of hearers to help in bringing religion back from heaven to earth where it belongs Mr Elsmeres new church if he ever got it would only be a fresh instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie And when the people had got their rights and brought down the capitalists they were not going to be such fools as put their necks under the heel of what were called the educated classes The people who wrote the newspapers Mr Elsmere objected to knew quite enough for the workingman—and people should not be too smoothspoken what the working class wanted beyond everything just now was grit
A few other short speeches followed mostly of the common Secularist type in defence of the newspapers attacked But the defence on the whole was shuffling and curiously halfhearted Robert sitting by with his head on his hand felt that there at any rate his onslaught had told
He said a few words in reply in a low husky voice without a trace of his former passion and the meeting broke up The room had quickly filled when it was known that he was up again and as he descended the steps of the platform after shaking hands with the chairman the hundreds present broke into a sudden burst of cheering Lady Charlotte pressed forward to him through the crowd offering to take him home Come with us Mr Elsmere you look like a ghost But he shook his head smiling No thank you Lady Charlotte—I must have some air and he took her out on his arm while Flaxman followed with Rose
It once occurred to Flaxman to look round for the priest he had seen come in But there were no signs of him I had an idea he would have spoken he thought Just as well perhaps We should have had a row
Lady Charlotte threw herself back in the carriage as they drove off with a long breath and the inward reflection So his wife wouldnt come and hear him Must be a woman with a character that—a Strafford in petticoats
Robert turned up the street to the City the tall slight figurePg 501 seeming to shrink together as he walked After his passionate effort indescribable depression had overtaken him
Words—words he said to himself striking out his hands in a kind of feverish protest as he strode along against his own powerlessness against that weight of the present and the actual which seems to the enthusiast alternately light as air or heavy as the mass of Ætna on the breast of Enceladus
Suddenly at the corner of a street a mans figure in a long black robe stopped him and laid a hand on his arm
Newcome cried Robert standing still
I was there said the other bending forward and looking close into his eyes I heard almost all I went to confront to denounce you
By the light of a lamp not far off Robert caught the attenuated whiteness and sharpness of the wellknown face to which weeks of fasting and mystical excitement had given a kind of unearthly remoteness He gathered himself together with an inward groan He felt as though there were no force in him at that moment wherewith to meet reproaches to beat down fanaticism The pressure on nerve and strength seemed unbearable
Newcome watching him with eagle eye saw the sudden shrinking and hesitation He had often in old days felt the same sense of power over the man who yet in what seemed his weakness had always escaped him in the end
I went to denounce he continued in a strange tense voice and the Lord refused it to me He kept me watching for you here These words are not mine I speak I waited patiently in that room till the Lord should deliver His enemy into my hand My wrath was hot against the deserter that could not even desert in silence—hot against his dupes Then suddenly words came to me—they have come to me before they burn up the very heart and marrow in me—Who is he that saith and it cometh to pass and the Lord commandeth it not There they were in my ears written on the walls—the air——
The hand dropped from Roberts arm A dull look of defeat of regret darkened the gleaming eyes They were standing in a quiet deserted street but through a side opening the lights the noise the turbulence of the openair market came drifting to them through the rainy atmosphere which blurred and magnified everything
Ay after days and nights in His most blessed sanctuary Newcome resumed slowly I came by His commission as I thought to fight His battle with a traitor And at the last moment His strength which was in me went from me I sat there dumb His hand was heavy upon me His will be done
The voice sank the priest drew his thin shaking hand across his eyes as though the awe of a mysterious struggle were still upon him Then he turned again to Elsmere his face softening radiating
Pg 502
Elsmere take the sign the message I thought it was given to me to declare the Lords wrath Instead He sends you once more by me even now—even fresh from this new defiance of His mercy the tender offer of His grace He lies at rest tonight my brother—what sweetness in the low vibrating tones—after all the anguish Let me draw you down on your knees beside Him It is you you who have helped to drive in the nails to embitter the agony It is you who in His loneliness have been robbing Him of the souls that should be His It is you who have been doing your utmost to make His Cross and Passion of no effect Oh let it break your heart to think of it Watch by Him tonight my friend my brother and tomorrow let the risen Lord reclaim His own
Never had Robert seen any mortal face so persuasively beautiful never surely did saint or ascetic plead with a more penetrating gentleness After the storm of those opening words the change was magical The tears stood in Elsmeres eyes But his quick insight in spite of himself divined the subtle natural facts behind the outburst the strained physical state the irritable brain—all the consequences of a long defiance of physical and mental law The priest repelled him the man drew him like a magnet
What can I say to you Newcome he cried despairingly Let me say nothing dear old friend I am tired out so I expect are you I know what this week has been to you Walk with me a little Leave these great things alone We cannot agree Be content—God knows Tell me about the old place and the people I long for news of them
A sort of shudder passed through his companion Newcome stood wrestling with himself It was like the slow departure of a possessing force Then he sombrely assented and they turned towards the City But his answers as Robert questioned him were sharp and mechanical and presently it became evident that the demands of the ordinary talk to which Elsmere rigorously held him were more than he could bear
As they reached St Pauls towering into the watery moonlight of the clouded sky he stopped abruptly and said goodnight
You came to me in the spirit of war said Robert with some emotion as he held his hand give me instead the grasp of peace
The spell of his manner his presence prevailed at last A melancholy quivering smile dawned on the priests delicate lip
God bless you—God restore you he said sadly and was gone
CHAPTER XLI
A week later Elsmere was startled to find himself detained after his storytelling by a trio of workmen asking on behalfPg 503 of some thirty or forty members of the North R—— Club that he would give them a course of lectures on the New Testament One of them was the gasfitter Charles Richards another was the watchmaker Lestrange who had originally challenged Robert to deliver himself and the third was a tough old Scotchman of sixty with a philosophical turn under whose spoutings of Hume and Locke of Reid and Dugald Stewart delivered in the shrillest of cracked voices the Club had writhed many an impatient halfhour on debating nights He had an unexpected artistic gift a kind of sport as compared with the rest of his character which made him a valued designer in the pottery works but his real interests were speculative and argumentative concerned with common nawtions and the praimary elements of reason and the appearance of Robert in the district seemed to offer him at last a foeman worthy of his steel Elsmere shrewdly suspected that the last two looked forward to any teaching he might give mostly as a new and favourable exercising ground for their own wits but he took the risk gladly accepted the invitation and fixed Sunday afternoons for a weekly New Testament lecture
His first lecture which he prepared with great care was delivered to thirtyseven men a fortnight later It was on the political and social state of Palestine and the East at the time of Christs birth and Robert who was as fervent a believer in large maps as Lord Salisbury had prepared a goodly store of them for the occasion together with a number of drawings and photographs which formed part of the collection he had been gradually making since his own visit to the Holy Land There was nothing he laid more stress on than these helps to the eye and imagination in dealing with the Bible He was accustomed to maintain in his arguments with Hugh Flaxman that the orthodox traditional teaching of Christianity would become impossible as soon as it should be the habit to make a free and modern use of history and geography and social material in connection with the Gospels Nothing tends so much he would say to break down the irrational barrier which men have raised about this particular tract of historical space nothing helps so much to let in the light and air of scientific thought upon it and therefore nothing prepares the way so effectively for a series of new conceptions
By a kind of natural selection Richards became Elsmeres chief helper and adjutant in the Sunday lectures—with regard to all such matters as beating up recruits keeping guard over portfolios handing round maps and photographs etc—supplanting in this function the jealous and sensitive Mackay who after his original opposition had now arrived at regarding Robert as his own particular property and the lecturers quick smile of thanks for services rendered as his own especial right The bright quicksilvery irascible little workman however was irresistible and had his way He had taken a passion for Robert as for a being of another order and another world In the disPg 504cussions which generally followed the lecture he showed a receptiveness an intelligence which were in reality a matter not of the mind but of the heart He loved therefore he understood At the club he stood for Elsmere with a quivering spasmodic eloquence as against Andrews and the Secularists One thing only puzzled Robert Among all the little fellows sallies and indiscretions which were not infrequent no reference to his home life was ever included Here he kept even Robert absolutely at arms length Robert knew that he was married and had children nothing more
The old Scotchman Macdonald came out after the first lecture somewhat crestfallen
Not the sort of stooff Id expected he said with a shade of perplexity on the rugged face He doosnt talk eneuf in the aabstract for me
But he went again and the second lecture on the origin of the Gospels got hold of him especially as it supplied him with a whole armoury of new arguments in support of Humes doctrine of conscience and in defiance of that blatin creetur Reid The thesis with which Robert drawing on some of the stores supplied him by the squires book began his account—ie the gradual growth within the limits of history of mans capacity for telling the exact truth—fitted in to the Scotchmans thinking so providentially with his own favourite experimental doctrines as against the intueetion folks who will have it that a babbys got as moch mind as Mr Gladstone ef it only knew it that afterwards he never missed a lecture
Lestrange was more difficult He had the inherited temperament of the Genevese frondeur which made Geneva the headquarters of Calvinism in the sixteenth century and bids fair to make her the headquarters of continental radicalism in the nineteenth Robert never felt his wits so much stretched and sharpened as when after the lecture Lestrange was putting questions and objections with an acrid subtlety and persistence worthy of a descendant of that burgher class which first built up the Calvinistic system and then produced the destroyer of it in Rousseau Robert bore his heckling however with great patience and adroitness He had need of all he knew as Murray Edwardes had warned him But luckily he knew a great deal his thought was clearing and settling month by month and whatever he may have lost at any moment by the turn of an argument he recovered immediately afterwards by the force of personality and of a singlemindedness in which there was never a trace of personal grasping
Week by week the lecture became more absorbing to him the men more pliant his hold on them firmer His disinterestedness his brightness and resource perhaps too the signs about him of a light and frail physical organisation the novelty of his position the inventiveness of his method gave him little by little an immense power in the place After the first two lecturesPg 505 Murray Edwardes became his constant and enthusiastic hearer on Sunday afternoons and catching some of Roberts ways and spirit he gradually brought his own chapel and teaching more and more into line with the Elgood Street undertaking So that the venture of the two men began to take ever larger proportions and kindled by the growing interest and feeling about him dreams began to rise in Elsmeres mind which as yet he hardly dared to cherish which came and went however weaving a substance for themselves out of each successive incident and effort
Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the week besides the Sunday In West End drawingrooms his personal gift had begun to tell no less than in this crowded squalid East and as his aims became known other men finding the thoughts of their own hearts revealed in him or touched with that social compunction which is one of the notes of our time came down and became his helpers Of all the social projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre Elsmere was in some sense the life and inspiration But it was not these projects themselves which made this period of his life remarkable London at the present moment if it be honeycombed with vice and misery is also honeycombed with the labour of an everexpanding charity Week by week men and women of like gifts and energies with Elsmere spend themselves as he did in the constant effort to serve and to alleviate What was noticeable what was remarkable in this work of his was the spirit the religious passion which radiating from him began after a while to kindle the whole body of men about him It was from his Sunday lectures and his talks with the children boys and girls who came in after the lecture to spend a happy hour and a half with him on Sunday afternoons that in later years hundreds of men and women will date the beginnings of a new absorbing life There came a time indeed when instead of meeting criticism by argument Robert was able simply to point to accomplished facts You ask me he would say in effect to prove to you that men can love can make a new and fruitful use for daily life and conduct of a merely human Christ Go amongst our men talk to our children and satisfy yourself A little while ago scores of these men either hated the very name of Christianity or were entirely indifferent to it To scores of them now the name of the teacher of Nazareth the victim of Jerusalem is dear and sacred his life his death his words are becoming once more a constant source of moral effort and spiritual hope See for yourself
However we are anticipating Let us go back to May
One beautiful morning Robert was sitting working in his study his windows open to the breezy blue sky and the budding planetrees outside when the door was thrown open and Mr Wendover was announced
The squire entered but what a shrunken and aged squirePg 506 The gait was feeble the bearing had lost all its old erectness the bronzed strength of the face had given place to a waxen and ominous pallor Robert springing up with joy to meet the great gust of Murewell air which seemed to blow about him with the mention of the squires name was struck arrested He guided his guest to a chair with an almost filial carefulness
I dont believe Squire he exclaimed you ought to be doing this—wandering about London by yourself
But the squire as silent and angular as ever when anything personal to himself was concerned would take no notice of the implied anxiety and sympathy He grasped his umbrella between his knees with a pair of brown twisted hands and sitting very upright looked critically round the room Robert studying the dwindled figure remembered with a pang the saying of another Oxford scholar à propos of the death of a young man of extraordinary promise What learning has perished with him How vain seems all toil to acquire—and the words as they passed through his mind seemed to him to ring another deathknell
But after the first painful impression he could not help losing himself in the pleasure of the familiar face the Murewell associations
How is the village and the Institute And what sort of man is my successor—the man I mean who came after Armitstead
I had him once to dinner said the squire briefly he made a false quantity and asked me to subscribe to the Church Missionary Society I havent seen him since He and the village have been at loggerheads about the Institute I believe He wanted to turn out the dissenters Bateson came to me and we circumvented him of course But the mans an ass Dont talk of him
Robert sighed a long sigh Was all his work undone It wrung his heart to remember the opening of the Institute the ardour of his boys He asked a few questions about individuals but soon gave it up as hopeless The squire neither knew nor cared
And Mrs Darcy
My sister had tea in her thirtieth summerhouse last Sunday remarked the squire grimly She wished me to communicate the fact to you and Mrs Elsmere Also that the worst novel of the century will be out in a fortnight and she trusts to you to see it well reviewed in all the leading journals
Robert laughed but it was not very easy to laugh There was a sort of ghastly undercurrent in the squires sarcasms that effectually deprived them of anything mirthful
And your book
Is in abeyance I shall bequeath you the manuscript in my will to do what you like with
Squire
Pg 507
Quite true If you had stayed I should have finished it I suppose But after a certain age the toil of spinning cobwebs entirely out of his own brain becomes too much for a man
It was the first thing of the sort that iron mouth had ever said to him Elsmere was painfully touched
You must not—you shall not give it up he urged Publish the first part alone and ask me for any help you please
The squire shook his head
Let it be Your paper in the Nineteenth Century showed me that the best thing I can do is to hand on my materials to you Though I am not sure that when you have got them you will make the best use of them You and Grey between you call yourselves Liberals and imagine yourselves reformers and all the while you are doing nothing but playing into the hands of the Blacks All this theistic philosophy of yours only means so much grist to their mill in the end
They dont see it in that light themselves said Robert smiling
No returned the squire because most men are puzzleheads Why he added looking darkly at Robert while the great head fell forward on his breast in the familiar Murewell attitude why cant you do your work and let the preaching alone
Because said Robert the preaching seems to me my work There is the great difference between us Squire You look upon knowledge as an end in itself It may be so But to me knowledge has always been valuable first and foremost for its bearing on life
Fatal twist that returned the squire harshly Yes I know it was always in you Well are you happy does this new crusade of yours give you pleasure
Happiness replied Robert leaning against the chimneypiece and speaking in a low voice is always relative No one knows it better than you Life is full of oppositions But the work takes my whole heart and all my energies
The squire looked at him in disapproving silence for a while
You will bury your life in it miserably he said at last it will be a toil of Sisyphus leaving no trace behind it whereas such a book as you might write if you gave your life to it might live and work and harry the enemy when you are gone
Robert forbore the natural retort
The squire went round his library making remarks with all the caustic shrewdness natural to him on the new volumes that Robert had acquired since their walks and talks together
The Germans he said at last putting back a book into the shelves with a new accent of distaste and weariness are beginning to founder in the sea of their own learning Sometimes I think I will read no more German It is a nation of learned fools none of whom ever sees an inch beyond his own professorial nose
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Then he stayed to luncheon and Catherine moved by many feelings—perhaps in subtle striving against her own passionate sense of wrong at this mans hands—was kind to him and talked and smiled indeed so much that the squire for the first time in his life took individual notice of her and as he parted with Elsmere in the hall made the remark that Mrs Elsmere seemed to like London to which Robert busy in an opportune search for his guests coat made no reply
When are you coming to Murewell the squire said to him abruptly as he stood at the door muffled up as though it were December There are a good many points in that last article you want talking to about Come next month with Mrs Elsmere
Robert drew a long breath inspired by many feelings
I will come but not yet I must get broken in here more thoroughly first Murewell touches me too deeply and my wife You are going abroad in the summer you say Let me come to you in the autumn
The squire said nothing and went his way leaning heavily on his stick across the square Robert felt himself a brute to let him go and almost ran after him
That evening Robert was disquieted by the receipt of a note from a young fellow of St Anselms an intimate friend and occasional secretary of Grey Grey the writer said had received Roberts last letter was deeply interested in his account of his work and begged him to write again He would have written but that he was himself in the doctors hands suffering from various ills probably connected with an attack of malarial fever which had befallen him in Rome the year before
Catherine found him poring over the letter and as it seemed to her oppressed by an anxiety out of all proportion to the news itself
They are not really troubled I think she said kneeling down beside him and laying her cheek against his He will soon get over it Robert
But alas this mood the tender characteristic mood of the old Catherine was becoming rarer and rarer with her As the spring expanded as the sun and the leaves came back poor Catherines temper had only grown more wintry and more rigid Her life was full of moments of acute suffering Never for instance did she forget the evening of Roberts lecture to the club All the time he was away she had sat brooding by herself in the drawingroom divining with a bitter clairvoyance all that scene in which he was taking part her being shaken with a tempest of misery and repulsion And together with that torturing image of a glaring room in which her husband once Christs loyal minister was employing all his powers of mind and speech to make it easier for ignorant men to desert and fight against the Lord who bought them there mingled a hundred memories of her father which were now her constantPg 509 companions In proportion as Robert and she became more divided her dead father resumed a ghostly hold upon her There were days when she went about rigid and silent in reality living altogether in the past among the gray farms the crags and the stony ways of the mountains
At such times her mind would be full of pictures of her fathers ministrations—his talks with the shepherds on the hills with the women at their doors his pale dreamers face beside some wild deathbed shining with the Divine message the visions which to her awestruck childish sense would often seem to hold him in their silent walks among the misty hills
Robert taught by many small indications came to recognise these states of feeling in her with a dismal clearness and to shrink more and more sensitively while they lasted from any collision with her He kept his work his friends his engagements to himself talking resolutely of other things she trying to do the same but with less success as her nature was less pliant than his
Then there would come moments when the inward preoccupation would give way and that strong need of loving which was after all the basis of Catherines character would break hungrily through and the wife of their early married days would reappear though still only with limitations A certain nervous physical dread of any approach to a particular range of subjects with her husband was always present in her Nay through all these months it gradually increased in morbid strength Shock had produced it perhaps shock alone could loosen the stifling pressure of it But still every now and then her mood was brighter more caressing and the area of common mundane interests seemed suddenly to broaden for them
Robert did not always make a wise use of these happier times he was incessantly possessed with his old idea that if she only would allow herself some very ordinary intercourse with his world her mood would become less strained his occupations and his friends would cease to be such bugbears to her and for his comfort and hers she might ultimately be able to sympathise with certain sides at any rate of his work
So again and again when her manner no longer threw him back on himself he made efforts and experiments But he managed them far less cleverly than he would have managed anybody elses affairs as generally happens For instance at a period when he was feeling more enthusiasm than usual for his colleague Wardlaw and when Catherine was more accessible than usual it suddenly occurred to him to make an effort to bring them together Brought face to face each must recognise the nobleness of the other He felt boyishly confident of it So he made it a point tenderly but insistently that Catherine should ask Wardlaw and his wife to come and see them And Catherine driven obscurely by a longing to yield in something which recurred and often terrified herself yielded in this
Pg 510
The Wardlaws who in general never went into society were asked to a quiet dinner in Bedford Square and came Then of course it appeared that Robert with the idealists blindness had forgotten a hundred small differences of temperament and training which must make it impossible for Catherine in a state of tension to see the hero in James Wardlaw It was an unlucky dinner James Wardlaw with all his heroisms and virtues had long ago dropped most of those delicate intuitions and divinations which make the charm of life in society along the rough paths of a strenuous philanthropy He had no tact and like most saints he drew a certain amount of inspiration from a contented ignorance of his neighbours point of view Also he was not a man who made much of women and he held strong views as to the subordination of wives It never occurred to him that Robert might have a Dissenter in his own household and as in spite of their speculative differences he had always been accustomed to talk freely with Robert he now talked freely to Robert plus his wife assuming as every good Comtist does that the husband is the wifes pope
Moreover a solitary eccentric life far from the society of his equals had developed in him a good many crude Jacobinisms His experience of London clergymen for instance had not been particularly favourable and he had a store of anecdotes on the subject which Robert had heard before but which now repeated in Catherines presence seemed to have lost every shred of humour they once possessed Poor Elsmere tried with all his might to divert the stream but it showed a tormenting tendency to recur to the same channel And meanwhile the little spectacled wife dressed in a high homemade cashmere sat looking at her husband with a benevolent and smiling admiration She kept all her eloquence for the poor
After dinner things grew worse Mrs Wardlaw had recently presented her husband with a third infant and the ardent pair had taken advantage of the visit to London of an eminent French Comtist to have it baptized with full Comtist rites Wardlaw stood astride on the rug giving the assembled company a minute account of the ceremony observed while his wife threw in gentle explanatory interjections The manner of both showed a certain exasperating confidence if not in the active sympathy at least in the impartial curiosity of their audience and in the importance to modern religious history of the incident itself Catherines silence grew deeper and deeper the conversation fell entirely to Robert At last Robert by main force as it were got Wardlaw off into politics but the new Irish Coercion Bill was hardly introduced before the irrepressible being turned to Catherine and said to her with smiling obtuseness—
I dont believe Ive seen you at one of your husbands Sunday addresses yet Mrs Elsmere And it isnt so far from this part of the world either
Pg 511
Catherine slowly raised her beautiful large eyes upon him Robert looking at her with a qualm saw an expression he was learning to dread flash across the face
I have my Sunday school at that time Mr Wardlaw I am a Churchwoman
The tone had a touch of hauteur Robert had hardly ever heard from his wife before It effectually stopped all further conversation Wardlaw fell into silence reflecting that he had been a fool His wife with a timid flush drew out her knitting and stuck to it for the twenty minutes that remained Catherine immediately did her best to talk to be pleasant but the discomfort of the little party was too great It broke up at ten and the Wardlaws departed
Catherine stood on the rug while Elsmere went with his guests to the door waiting restlessly for her husbands return Robert however came back to her tired wounded and out of spirits feeling that the attempt had been wholly unsuccessful and shrinking from any further talk about it He at once sat down to some letters for the late post Catherine lingered a little watching him longing miserably like any girl of eighteen to throw herself on his neck and reproach him for their unhappiness his friends—she knew not what He all the time was intimately conscious of her presence of her pale beauty which now at twentynine in spite of its severity had a subtler finish and attraction than ever of the restless little movements so unlike herself which she made from time to time But neither spoke except upon indifferent things Once more the difficult conditions of their lives seemed too obvious too oppressive Both were ultimately conquered by the same sore impulse to let speech alone
CHAPTER XLII
And after this little scene through the busy exciting weeks of the season which followed Robert taxed to the utmost on all sides yielded to the impulse of silence more and more
Society was another difficulty between them Robert delighted in it so far as his East End life allowed him to have it No one was ever more ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other peoples goodness or cleverness or superhuman achievement On the other hand London is kind to such men as Robert Elsmere His talk his writing were becoming known and relished and even the most rigid of the old school found it difficult to be angry with him His knowledge of the poor and of social questions attracted the men of actions his growing historical reputation drew the attention of the men of thought Most people wished to know him and to talk to himPg 512 and Catherine smiled upon for his sake and assumed to be his chief disciple felt herself more and more bewildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on
For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus With her all the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune At any time Richard Leyburns daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or less bad taste But now when there was no refuge to fall back upon in Roberts arms no certainty of his sympathy—nay a certainty that however tender and pitiful he might be he would still think her wrong and mistaken She went here and there obediently because he wished but her youth seemed to be ebbing the old Murewell gaiety entirely left her and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have married a wife older than himself and apparently so unsuited to him in temperament
Especially was she tried at Madame de Nettevilles For Roberts sake she tried for a time to put aside her first impression and to bear Madame de Nettevilles evenings—little dreaming poor thing all the time that Madame de Netteville thought her presence at the famous Fridays an incubus only to be put up with because the husband was becoming socially an indispensable
But after two or three Fridays Catherines endurance failed her On the last occasion she found herself late in the evening hemmed in behind Madame de Netteville and a distinguished African explorer who was the lion of the evening Eugénie de Netteville had forgotten her silent neighbour and presently with some biting little phrase or other she asked the great man his opinion on a burning topic of the day the results of Church Missions in Africa The great man laughed shrugged his shoulders and ran lightly through a string of stories in which both missionaries and converts played parts which were either grotesque or worse Madame de Netteville thought the stories amusing and as one ceased she provoked another her black eyes full of a dry laughter her white hand lazily plying her great ostrich fan
Suddenly a figure rose behind them
Oh Mrs Elsmere said Madame de Netteville starting and then coolly recovering herself I had no idea you were there all alone I am afraid our conversation has been disagreeable to you I am afraid you are a friend of missions
And her glance turning from Catherine to her companion made a little malicious signal to him which only he detected as though bidding him take note of a curiosity
Yes I care for them I wish for their success said Catherine one hand which trembled slightly resting on the table beside her her great gray eyes fixed on Madame de Netteville No Christian has any right to do otherwise
Pg 513
Poor brave goaded soul She had a vague idea of bearing testimony as her father would have borne it in like circumstances But she turned very pale Even to her the word Christian sounded like a bombshell in that room The great traveller looked up astounded He saw a tall woman in white with a beautiful head a delicate face a something indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude She looked like a Quaker prophetess—like Dinah Morris in society—like—but his comparisons failed him How did such a being come there He was amazed but he was a man of taste and Madame de Netteville caught a certain æsthetic approbation in his look
She rose her expression hard and bright as usual
May one Christian pronounce for all she said with a scornful affectation of meekness Mrs Elsmere please find some chair more comfortable than that ottoman and Mr Ansdale will you come and be introduced to Lady Aubrey
After her guests had gone Madame de Netteville came back to the fire flushed and frowning It seemed to her that in that strange little encounter she had suffered and she never forgot or forgave the smallest social discomfiture
Can I put up with that again she asked herself with a contemptuous hardening of the lip I suppose I must if he cannot be got without her But I have an instinct that it is over—that she will not appear here again Daudet might make use of her I cant What a specimen A boy and girl match I suppose What else could have induced that poor wretch to cut his throat in such fashion He of all men
And Eugénie de Netteville stood thinking—not apparently of the puritanical wife the dangerous softness which overspread the face could have had no connection with Catherine
Madame de Nettevilles instinct was just Catherine Elsmere never appeared again in her drawingroom
But with a little sad confession of her own invincible distaste the wife pressed the husband to go without her She urged it at a bitter moment when it was clear to her that their lives must of necessity even in outward matters be more separate than before Elsmere resisted for a time then lured one evening towards the end of February by the prospect conveyed in a note from Madame de Netteville wherein Catherine was mentioned in the most scrupulously civil terms of meeting one of the most eminent of French critics he went and thenceforward went often He had so far no particular liking for the hostess he hated some of her habitués but there was no doubt that in some ways she made an admirable holder of a salon and that round about her there was a subtle mixture of elements a liberty of discussion and comment to be found nowhere else And how bracing and refreshing was that free play of equal mind to the man weary sometimes of his leaders rôle and weary of himself
Pg 514
As to the woman his social naïveté which was extraordinary but in a man of his type most natural made him accept her exactly as he found her If there were two or three people in Paris or London who knew or suspected incidents of Madame de Nettevilles young married days which made her reception at some of the strictest English houses a matter of cynical amusement to them not the remotest inkling of their knowledge was ever likely to reach Elsmere He was not a man who attracted scandals Nor was it anybodys interest to spread them Madame de Nettevilles position in London society was obviously excellent If she had peculiarities of manner and speech they were easily supposed to be French Meanwhile she was undeniably rich and distinguished and gifted with a most remarkable power of protecting herself and her neighbours from boredom At the same time though Elsmere was in truth more interested in her friends than in her he could not possibly be insensible to the consideration shown for him in her drawingroom Madame de Netteville allowed herself plenty of jests with her intimates as to the young reformers social simplicity his dreams his optimisms But those intimates were the first to notice that as soon as he entered the room those optimisms of his were adroitly respected She had various delicate contrivances for giving him the lead she exercised a kind of surveillance over the topics introduced or in conversation with him she would play that most seductive part of the cynic shamed out of cynicism by the neighbourhood of the enthusiast
Presently she began to claim a practical interest in his Elgood Street work Her offers were made with a curious mixture of sympathy and mockery Elsmere could not take her seriously But neither could he refuse to accept her money if she chose to spend it on a library for Elgood Street or to consult with her about the choice of books This whim of hers created a certain friendly bond between them which was not present before And on Elsmeres side it was strengthened when one evening in a corner of her inner drawingroom Madame de Netteville suddenly but very quietly told him the story of her life—her English youth her elderly French husband the death of her only child and her flight as a young widow to England during the war of 1870 She told the story of the child as it seemed to Elsmere with a deliberate avoidance of emotion nay even with a certain hardness But it touched him profoundly And everything else that she said though she professed no great regret for her husband or for the breakup of her French life and though everything was reticent and measured deepened the impression of a real forlornness behind all the outward brilliance and social importance He began to feel a deep and kindly pity for her coupled with an earnest wish that he could help her to make her life more adequate and satisfying And all this he showed in the look of his frank grayPg 515 eyes in the cordial grasp of the hand with which he said goodbye to her
Madame de Nettevilles gaze followed him out of the room—the tall boyish figure the nobly carried head The riddle of her flushed cheek and sparkling eye was hard to read But there were one or two persons living who could have read it and who could have warned you that the true story of Eugénie de Nettevilles life was written not in her literary studies or her social triumphs but in various recurrent outbreaks of unbridled impulse—the secret and in one or two cases the shameful landmarks of her past And as persons of experience they could also have warned you that the cold intriguer always mistress of herself only exists in fiction and that a certain poisoned and fevered interest in the religious leader the young and pious priest as such is common enough among the corrupter women of all societies
Towards the end of May she asked Elsmere to dine en petit comité a gentlemens dinner—except for my cousin Lady Aubrey Willert—to meet an eminent Liberal Catholic a friend of Montalemberts youth
It was a week or two after the failure of the Wardlaw experiment Do what each would the sore silence between the husband and wife was growing was swallowing up more of life
Shall I go Catherine he asked handing her the note
It would interest you she said gently giving it back to him scrupulously as though she had nothing to do with it
He knelt down before her and put his arms round her looking at her with eyes which had a dumb and yet fiery appeal written in them His heart was hungry for that old clinging dependence that willing weakness of love her youth had yielded him so gladly instead of this silent strength of antagonism The memory of her Murewell self flashed miserably through him as he knelt there of her delicate penitence towards him after her first sight of Newcome of their night walks during the Mile End epidemic Did he hold now in his arms only the ghost and shadow of that Murewell Catherine
She must have read the reproach the yearning of his look for she gave a little shiver as though bracing herself with a kind of agony to resist
Let me go Robert she said gently kissing him on the forehead and drawing back I hear Mary calling and nurse is out
The days went on and the date of Madame de Nettevilles dinnerparty had come round About seven oclock that evening Catherine sat with the child in the drawingroom expecting Robert He had gone off early in the afternoon to the East End with Hugh Flaxman to take part in a committee of workmen organised for the establishment of a choral union in R—— the scheme of which had been Flaxmans chief contribution so far to the Elgood Street undertaking
Pg 516
It seemed to her as she sat there working the windows open on to the bit of garden where the trees were already withered and begrimed that the air without and her heart within were alike stifling and heavy with storm Something must put an end to this oppression this misery She did not know herself Her whole inner being seemed to her lessened and degraded by this silent struggle this fever of the soul which made impossible all those serenities and sweetnesses of thought in which her nature had always lived of old The fight into which fate had forced her was destroying her She was drooping like a plant cut off from all that nourishes its life
And yet she never conceived it possible that she should relinquish that fight Nay at times there sprang up in her now a dangerous and despairing foresight of even worse things in store In the middle of her suffering she already began to feel at moments the ascetics terrible sense of compensation What after all is the Christian life but warfare I came not to send peace but a sword
Yes in these June days Elsmeres happiness was perhaps nearer wreck than it had ever been All strong natures grow restless under such a pressure as was now weighing on Catherine Shock and outburst become inevitable
So she sat alone this hot afternoon haunted by presentiments by vague terror for herself and him while the child tottered about her cooing shouting kissing and all impulsively with a ceaseless energy like her father
The outer door opened and she heard Roberts step and apparently Mr Flaxmans also There was a hurried subdued word or two in the hall and the two entered the room where she was sitting
Robert came pressing back the hair from his eyes with a gesture which with him was the invariable accompaniment of mental trouble Catherine sprang up
Robert you look so tired and how late you are Then as she came nearer to him And your coat—torn—blood
There is nothing wrong with me dear he said hastily taking her hands—nothing But it has been an awful afternoon Flaxman will tell you I must go to this place I suppose though I hate the thought of it Flaxman will you tell her all about it And loosing his hold he went heavily out of the room and upstairs
It has been an accident said Flaxman gently coming forward to one of the men of his class May we sit down Mrs Elsmere Your husband and I have gone through a good deal these last two hours
He sat down with a long breath evidently trying to regain his ordinary even manner His clothes too were covered with dust and his hand shook Catherine stood before him in consternation while a nurse came for the child
We had just begun our committee at four oclock he saidPg 517 at last though only about half of the men had arrived when there was a great shouting and commotion outside and a man rushed in calling for Elsmere We ran out found a great crowd a huge brewers dray standing in the street and a man run over Your husband pushed his way in I followed and to my horror I found him kneeling by—Charles Richards
Charles Richards Catherine repeated vacantly
Flaxman looked up at her as though puzzled then a flash of astonishment passed over his face
Elsmere has never told you of Charles Richards the little gasfitter who has been his right hand for the past three months
No—never she said slowly
Again he looked astonished then he went on sadly All this spring he has been your husbands shadow—I never saw such devotion We found him lying in the middle of the road He had only just left work a man said who had been with him and was running to the meeting He slipped and fell crossing the street which was muddy from last nights rain The dray swung round the corner—the driver was drunk or careless—and they went right over him One foot was a sickening sight Your husband and I luckily knew how to lift him for the best We sent off for doctors His home was in the next street as it happened—nearer than any hospital so we carried him there The neighbours were round the door
Then he stopped himself
Shall I tell you the whole story he said kindly it has been a tragedy I wont give you details if you had rather not
Oh no she said hurriedly no—tell me
And she forgot to feel any wonder that Flaxman in his chivalry should treat her as though she were a girl with nerves
Well it was the surroundings that were so ghastly When we got to the house an old woman rushed at me—His wifes in there but yell not find her in her senses shes been at it from eight oclock this morning Weve took the children away I didnt know what she meant exactly till we got into the little front room There such a spectacle A young woman on a chair by the fire sleeping heavily dead drunk the breakfast things on the table the sun blazing in on the dust and the dirt and on the womans face I wanted to carry him into the room on the other side—he was unconscious but a doctor had come up with us and made us put him down on a bed there was in the corner Then we got some brandy and poured it down The doctor examined him looked at his foot threw something over it Nothing to be done he said—internal injuries—he cant live half an hour The next minute the poor fellow opened his eyes They had pulled away the bed from the wall Your husband was on the farther side kneelPg 518ing When he opened his eyes clearly the first thing he saw was his wife He half sprang up—Elsmere caught him—and gave a horrible cry—indescribably horrible At it again at it again My God Then he fell back fainting They got the wife out of the room between them—a perfect log—you could hear her heavy breathing from the kitchen opposite We gave him more brandy and he came to again He looked up in your husbands face She hasnt broke out for two months he said so piteously two months—and now—Im done—Im done—and shell just go straight to the devil And it comes out so the neighbours told us that for two years or more he had been patiently trying to reclaim this woman without a word of complaint to anybody though his life must have been a dogs life And now on his deathbed what seemed to be breaking his heart was not that he was dying but that his task was snatched from him
Flaxman paused and looked away out of window He told his story with difficulty
Your husband tried to comfort him—promised that the wife and children should be his special care that everything that could be done to save and protect them should be done And the poor little fellow looked up at him with the tears running down his cheeks and—and—blessed him I cared about nothing he said when you came Youve been—God—to me—Ive seen Him—in you Then he asked us to say something Your husband said verse after verse of the Psalms of the Gospels of St Paul His eyes grew filmy but he seemed every now and then to struggle back to life and as soon as he caught Elsmeres face his look lightened Towards the last he said something we none of us caught but your husband thought it was a line from Emily Brontës Hymn which he said to them last Sunday in lecture
He looked up at her interrogatively but there was no response in her face
I asked him about it the speaker went on as we came home He said Grey of St Anselms once quoted it to him and he has had a love for it ever since
Did he die while you were there asked Catherine presently after a silence Her voice was dull and quiet He thought her a strange woman
No said Flaxman almost sharply but by now it must be over The last sign of consciousness was a murmur of his childrens names They brought them in but his hands had to be guided to them A few minutes after it seemed to me that he was really gone though he still breathed The doctor was certain there would be no more consciousness We stayed nearly another hour Then his brother came and some other relations and we left him Oh it is over now
Hugh Flaxman sat looking out into the dingy bit of London garden Penetrated with pity as he was he felt the presence ofPg 519 Elsmeres pale silent unsympathetic wife an oppression How could she receive such a story in such a way
The door opened and Robert came in hurriedly
Goodnight Catherine—he has told you
He stood by her his hand on her shoulder wistfully looking at her the face full of signs of what he had gone through
Yes it was terrible she said with an effort
His face fell He kissed her on the forehead and went away
When he was gone Flaxman suddenly got up and leant against the open French window looking keenly down on his companion A new idea had stirred in him
And presently after more talk of the incident of the afternoon and when he had recovered his usual manner he slipped gradually into the subject of his own experiences in North R—— during the last six months He assumed all through that she knew as much as there was to be known of Elsmeres work and that she was as much interested as the normal wife is in her husbands doings His tact his delicacy never failed him for a moment But he spoke of his own impressions of matters within his personal knowledge And since the Easter sermon he had been much on Elsmeres track he had been filled with curiosity about him
Catherine sat a little way from him her blue dress lying in long folds about her her head bent her long fingers crossed on her lap Sometimes she gave him a startled look sometimes she shaded her eyes while her other hand played silently with her watchchain Flaxman watching her closely however little he might seem to do so was struck by her austere and delicate beauty as he had never been before
She hardly spoke all through but he felt that she listened without resistance nay at last that she listened with a kind of hunger He went from story to story from scene to scene without any excitement in his most ordinary manner making his reserves now and then expressing his own opinion when it occurred to him and not always favourably But gradually the whole picture emerged began to live before them At last he hurriedly looked at his watch
What a time I have kept you It has been a relief to talk to you
You have not had dinner she said looking up at him with a sudden nervous bewilderment which touched him and subtly changed his impression of her
No matter I will get some at home Goodnight
When he was gone she carried the child up to bed her supper was brought to her solitary in the diningroom and afterwards in the drawingroom where a soft twilight was fading into a soft and starlit night she mechanically brought out some work for Mary and sat bending over it by the window After about an hour she looked up straight beforePg 520 her threw her work down and slipped on to the floor her head resting on the chair
The shock the storm had come There for hours lay Catherine Elsmere weeping her heart away wrestling with herself with memory with God It was the greatest moral upheaval she had ever known—greater even than that which had convulsed her life at Murewell
CHAPTER XLIII
Robert tired and sick at heart felt himself in no mood this evening for a dinnerparty in which conversation would be treated more or less as a fine art Liberal Catholicism had lost its charm his sympathetic interest in Montalembert Lacordaire Lamennais had to be quickened pumped up again as it were by great efforts which were constantly relaxed within him as he sped westwards by the recurrent memory of that miserable room the group of men the bleeding hand the white dying face
In Madame de Nettevilles drawingroom he found a small number of people assembled M de Quérouelle a middlesized roundheaded old gentleman of a familiar French type Lady Aubrey thinner more lathlike than ever clad in some sumptuous mingling of dark red and silver Lord Rupert beaming under the recent introduction of a Land Purchase Bill for Ireland by which he saw his way at last to wash his hands of a beastly set of tenants Mr Wharncliffe a young private secretary with a waxed moustache six feet of height and a general air of superlativeness which demanded and secured attention a famous journalist whose smiling selfrepressive look assured you that he carried with him the secrets of several empires and one Sir John Headlam a little blackhaired Jewishlooking man with a limp—an exColonial Governor who had made himself accepted in London as an amusing fellow but who was at least as much disliked by one half of society as he was popular with the other
Purely for talk you see not for show said Madame de Netteville to Robert with a little smiling nod round her circle as they stood waiting for the commencement of dinner
I shall hardly do my part he said with a little sigh I have just come from a very different scene
She looked at him with inquiring eyes
A terrible accident in the East End he said briefly We wont talk of it I only mention it to propitiate you beforehand Those things are not forgotten at once
She said no more but seeing that he was indeed out of heart physically and mentally she showed the most subtle consideraPg 521tion for him at dinner M de Quérouelle was made to talk His hostess wound him up and set him going tune after tune He played them all and by dint of long practice to perfection in the French way A visit of his youth to the island grave of Chateaubriand his early memories as a poetical aspirant of the magnificent flatteries by which Victor Hugo made himself the god of young romantic Paris his talks with Montalembert in the days of LAvenir his memories of Lamennaiss sombre figure of Maurice de Guérins feverish ethereal charm his account of the opposition salons under the Empire—they had all been elaborated in the course of years till every word fitted and each point led to the next with the inevitableness of true art Robert at first silent and distrait found it impossible after a while not to listen with interest He admired the skill too of Madame de Nettevilles second in the duet the finish the alternate sparkle and melancholy of it and at last he too was drawn in and found himself listened to with great benevolence by the Frenchman who had been informed about him and regarded him indulgently as one more curious specimen of English religious provincialisms The journalist Mr Addlestone who had won a European reputation for wisdom by a great scantiness of speech in society coupled with the look of Minervas owl attached himself to them while Lady Aubrey Sir John Headlam Lord Rupert and Mr Wharncliffe made a noisier and more dashing party at the other end
Are you still in your old quarters Lady Aubrey asked Sir John Headlam turning his old roguish face upon her That house of Nell Gwynnes wasnt it in Meade Street
Oh dear no We could only get it up to May this year and then they made us turn out for the season for the first time for ten years There is a tiresome young heir who has married a wife and wants to live in it I could have left a train of gunpowder and a slow match behind I was so cross
Ah—Reculer pour mieux faire sauter said Sir John mincing out his pun as though he loved it
Not bad Sir John she said looking at him calmly but you have way to make up You were so dull the last time you took me in to dinner that positively——
You began to wonder to what I owed my paragraph in the Société de Londres he rejoined smiling though a close observer might have seen an angry flash in his little eyes My dear Lady Aubrey it was simply because I had not seen you for six weeks My education had been neglected I get my art and my literature from you The last time but one we met you gave me the cream of three new French novels and all the dramatic scandal of the period I have lived on it for weeks By the way have you read the Princesse de——
He looked at her audaciously The book had affronted even Paris
I havent she said adjusting her bracelets while she flashedPg 522 a rapierglance at him but if I had I should say precisely the same Lord Rupert will you kindly keep Sir John in order
Lord Rupert plunged in with the gallant floundering motion characteristic of him while Mr Wharncliffe followed like a modern gunboat behind a threedecker That young man was a delusion The casual spectator to borrow a famous Cambridge mot invariably assumed that all the time he could spare from neglecting his duties he must spend in adorning his person Not at all The tenue of a dandy was never more cleverly used to mask the schemes of a Disraeli or the hard ambition of a Talleyrand than in Master Frederick Wharncliffe who was in reality going up the ladder hand over hand and meant very soon to be on the top rungs
It was a curious party typical of the house and of a certain stratum of London When every now and then in the pauses of their own conversation Elsmere caught something of the chatter going on at the other end of the table or when the party became fused into one for a while under the genial influence of a good story or the exhilaration of a personal skirmish the whole scene—the dainty oval room the lights the servants the exquisite fruit and flowers the gleaming silver the tapestried walls—would seem to him for an instant like a mirage a dream yet with something glittering and arid about it which a dream never has
The hard selfconfidence of these people—did it belong to the same world as that humbling that heavenly selfabandonment which had shone on him that afternoon from Charles Richardss begrimed and bloodstained face Blessed are the poor in spirit he said to himself once with an inward groan Why am I here Why am I not at home with Catherine
But Madame de Netteville was pleasant to him He had never seen her so womanly never felt more grateful for her delicate social skill As she talked to him or to the Frenchman of literature or politics or famous folk flashing her beautiful eyes from one to the other Sir John Headlam would every now and then turn his odd puckered face observantly towards the farther end of the table
By Jove he said afterwards to Wharncliffe as they walked away from the door together she was inimitable tonight she has more rôles than Desforêts Sir John and his hostess were very old friends
Upstairs smoking began Lady Aubrey and Madame de Netteville joining in M de Quérouelle having talked the best of his répertoire at dinner was now inclined for amusement and had discovered that Lady Aubrey could amuse him and was moreover une belle personne Madame de Netteville was obliged to give some time to Lord Rupert The other men stood chatting politics and the latest news till Robert conscious of a complete failure of social energy began to look at his watch Instantly Madame de Netteville glided up to him
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Mr Elsmere you have talked no business to me and I must know how my affairs in Elgood Street are getting on Come into my little writingroom And she led him into a tiny panelled room at the far end of the drawingroom and shut off from it by a heavy curtain which she now left halfdrawn
The latest said Fred Wharncliffe to Lady Aubrey raising his eyebrows with the slightest motion of the head towards the writingroom
I suppose so she said indifferently she is EastEnding for a change We all do it nowadays It is like Dizzys young man who liked bad wine he was so bored with good
Meanwhile Madame de Netteville was leaning against the open window of the fantastic little room with Robert beside her
You look as if you had had a strain she said to him abruptly after they had talked business for a few minutes What has been the matter
He told her Richardss story very shortly It would have been impossible to him to give more than the driest outline of it in that room His companion listened gravely She was an epicure in all things especially in moral sensation and she liked his moments of reserve and strong selfcontrol They made his general expansiveness more distinguished
Presently there was a pause which she broke by saying—
I was at your lecture last Sunday—you didnt see me
Were you Ah I remember a person in black and veiled who puzzled me I dont think we want you there Madame de Netteville
His look was pleasant but his tone had some decision in it
Why not Is it only the artisans who have souls A reformer should refuse no one
You have your own opportunities he said quietly I think the men prefer to have it to themselves for the present Some of them are dreadfully in earnest
Oh I dont pretend to be in earnest she said with a little wave of her hand or at any rate I know better than to talk of earnestness to you
Why to me he asked smiling
Oh because you and your like have your fixed ideas of the upper class and the lower One social type fills up your horizon You are not interested in any other and indeed you know nothing of any other
She looked at him defiantly Everything about her tonight was splendid and regal—her dress of black and white brocade the diamonds at her throat the carriage of her head nay the marks of experience and living on the dark subtle face
Perhaps not he replied it is enough for one life to try and make out where the English working class is tending to
You are quite wrong utterly wrong The man who keepsPg 524 his eye only on the lower class will achieve nothing What can the idealist do without the men of action—the men who can take his beliefs and make them enter by violence into existing institutions And the men of action are to be found with us
It hardly looks just now as if the upper class was to go on enjoying a monopoly of them he said smiling
Then appearances are deceptive The populace supplies mass and weight—nothing else What you want is to touch the leaders the men and women whose voices carry and then your populace would follow hard enough For instance—and she dropped her aggressive tone and spoke with a smiling kindness—come down next Saturday to my little Surrey cottage you shall see some of these men and women there and I will make you confess when you go away that you have profited your workmen more by deserting them than by staying with them Will you come
My Sundays are too precious to me just now Madame de Netteville Besides my firm conviction is that the upper class can produce a Brook Farm but nothing more The religious movement of the future will want a vast effusion of feeling and passion to carry it into action and feeling and passion are only to be generated in sufficient volume among the masses where the vested interests of all kinds are less tremendous You upperclass folk have your part of course Woe betide you if you shirk it—but——
Oh let us leave it alone she said with a little shrug I know you would give us all the work and refuse us all the profits We are to starve for your workman to give him our hearts and purses and everything we have not that we may hoodwink him—which might be worth doing—but that he may rule us It is too much
Very well he said drily his colour rising Very well let it be too much
And dropping his lounging attitude he stood erect and she saw that he meant to be going Her look swept over him from head to foot—over the worn face with its look of sensitive refinement and spiritual force the active frame the delicate but most characteristic hand Never had any man so attracted her for years never had she found it so difficult to gain a hold Eugénie de Netteville poseuse schemer woman of the world that she was was losing command of herself
What did you really mean by worldliness and the world in your lecture last Sunday she asked him suddenly with a little accent of scorn I thought your diatribes absurd What you religious people call the world is really only the average opinion of sensible people which neither you nor your kind could do without for a day
He smiled half amused by her provocative tone and defended himself not very seriously But she threw all her strength into the argument and he forgot that he had meant to go at oncePg 525 When she chose she could talk admirably and she chose now She had the most aggressive ways of attacking and then in the same breath the most subtle and softening ways of yielding and as it were of asking pardon Directly her antagonist turned upon her he found himself disarmed he knew not how The disputant disappeared and he felt the woman restless melancholy sympathetic hungry for friendship and esteem yet too proud to make any direct bid for either It was impossible not to be interested and touched
Such at least was the woman whom Robert Elsmere felt Whether in his hours of intimacy with her twelve months before young Alfred Evershed had received the same impression may be doubted In all things Eugénie de Netteville was an artist
Suddenly the curtain dividing them from the larger drawingroom was drawn back and Sir John Headlam stood in the doorway He had the glittering amused eyes of a malicious child as he looked at them
Very sorry madame he began in his high cracked voice but Wharncliffe and I are off to the New Club to see Desforêts They have got her there tonight
Go she said waving her hand to him I dont envy you She is not what she was
No there is only one person he said bowing with grotesque little airs of gallantry for whom time stands still
Madame de Netteville looked at him with smiling halfcontemptuous serenity He bowed again this time with ironical emphasis and disappeared
Perhaps I had better go back and send them off she said rising But you and I have not had our talk out yet
She led the way into the drawingroom Lady Aubrey was lying back on the velvet sofa a little green paroquet that was accustomed to wander tamely about the room perching on her hand She was holding the field against Lord Rupert and Mr Addlestone in a threecornered duel of wits while M de Quérouelle sat by his plump hands on his knees applauding
They all rose as their hostess came in
My dear said Lady Aubrey it is disgracefully early but my country before pleasure It is the Foreign Office tonight and since James took office I cant with decency absent myself I had rather be a scullerymaid than a ministers wife Lord Rupert I will take you on if you want a lift
She touched Madame de Nettevilles cheek with her lips nodding to the other men present and went out her fair staglike head well in the air chaffing Lord Rupert who obediently followed her performing marvellous feats of agility in his desire to keep out of the way of the superb train sweeping behind her It always seemed as if Lady Aubrey could have had no childhood as if she must always have had just that voice and those eyes Tears she could never have shed not even as a baby overPg 526 a broken toy Besides at no period of her life could she have looked upon a lost possession as anything else than the opportunity for a new one
The other men took their departure for one reason or another It was not late but London was in full swing and M de Quérouelle talked with gusto of four At homes still to be grappled with
As she dismissed Mr Wharncliffe Robert too held out his hand
No she said with a quick impetuousness no I want my talk out It is barely halfpast ten and neither of us wants to be racing about London tonight
Elsmere had always a certain lack of social decision and he lingered rather reluctantly—for another ten minutes as he supposed
She threw herself into a low chair The windows were open to the back of the house and the roar of Piccadilly and Sloane Street came borne in upon the warm night air Her superb dark head stood out against a stand of yellow lilies close behind her and the little paroquet bright with all the colours of the tropics perched now on her knee now on the back of her chair touched every now and then by quick unsteady fingers
Then an incident followed which Elsmere remembered to his dying day with shame and humiliation
In ten minutes from the time of their being left alone a woman who was five years his senior had made him what was practically a confession of love—had given him to understand that she knew what were the relations between himself and his wife—and had implored him with the quick breath of an indescribable excitement to see what a womans sympathy and a womans unique devotion could do for the causes he had at heart
The truth broke upon Elsmere very slowly awakening in him when at last it was unmistakable a swift agony of repulsion which his most friendly biographer can only regard with a kind of grim satisfaction For after all there is an amount of innocence and absentmindedness in matters of daily human life which is not only niaiserie but comes very near to moral wrong In this crowded world a man has no business to walk about with his eyes always on the stars His stumbles may have too many consequences A harsh but a salutary truth If Elsmere needed it it was bitterly taught him during a terrible halfhour When the halfcoherent enigmatical sentences to which he listened at first with a perplexed surprise began gradually to define themselves when he found a woman roused and tragically beautiful between him and escape when no determination on his part not to understand when nothing he could say availed to protect her from herself when they were at last face to face with a confession and an appeal which were a disgrace to both—then at last Elsmere paid in onePg 527 minute glad lifes arrears—the natural penalty of an optimism a boundless faith in human nature with which life as we know it is inconsistent
How he met the softness the grace the seduction of a woman who was an expert in all the arts of fascination he never knew In memory afterwards it was all a ghastly mirage to him The low voice the splendid dress the scented room came back to him and a confused memory of his own futile struggle to ward off what she was bent on saying—little else He had been maladroit he thought had lost his presence of mind Any man of the world of his acquaintance he believed trampling on himself would have done better
But when the softness and the grace were all lost in smart and humiliation when the Madame de Netteville of ordinary life disappeared and something took her place which was like a coarse and malignant underself suddenly brought into the light of day—from that point onwards in after days he remembered it all
I know cried Eugénie de Netteville at last standing at bay before him her hands locked before her her white lips quivering when her cup of shame was full and her one impulse left was to strike the man who had humiliated her—I know that you and your puritanical wife are miserable—miserable What is the use of denying facts that all the world can see that you have taken pains and she laid a fierce deliberate emphasis on each word all the world shall see There—let your wifes ignorance and bigotry and your own obvious relation to her be my excuse if I wanted any but and she shrugged her white shoulders passionately I want none I am not responsible to your petty codes Nature and feeling are enough for me I saw you wanting sympathy and affection——
My wife cried Robert hearing nothing but that one word And then his glance sweeping over the woman before him he made a stern step forward
Let me go Madame de Netteville let me go or I shall forget that you are a woman and I a man and that in some way I cannot understand my own blindness and folly——
Must have led to this most undesirable scene she said with mocking suddenness throwing herself however effectually in his way Then a change came over her and erect ghastly white with frowning brow and shaking limbs a baffled and smarting woman from whom every restraint had fallen away let loose upon him a torrent of gall and bitterness which he could not have cut short without actual violence
He stood proudly enduring it waiting for the moment when what seemed to him an outbreak of mania should have spent itself But suddenly he caught Catherines name coupled with some contemptuous epithet or other and his selfcontrol failed him With flashing eyes he went close up to her and took her wrists in a grip of iron
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You shall not he said beside himself you shall not What have I done—what has she done—that you should allow yourself such words My poor wife
A passionate flood of selfreproachful love was on his lips He choked it back It was desecration that her name should be mentioned in that room But he dropped the hand he held The fierceness died out of his eyes His companion stood beside him panting breathless afraid
Thank God he said slowly thank God for yourself and me that I love my wife I am not worthy of her—doubly unworthy since it has been possible for any human being to suspect for one instant that I was ungrateful for the blessing of her love that I could ever forget and dishonour her But worthy or not—— No—no matter Madame de Netteville let me go and forget that such a person exists
She looked at him steadily for a moment at the stern manliness of the face which seemed in this halfhour to have grown older at the attitude with its mingled dignity and appeal In that second she realised what she had done and what she had forfeited she measured the gulf between herself and the man before her But she did not flinch Still holding him as it were with menacing defiant eyes she moved aside she waved her hand with a contemptuous gesture of dismissal He bowed passed her and the door shut
For nearly an hour afterwards Elsmere wandered blindly and aimlessly through the darkness and silence of the park
The sensitive optimist nature was all unhinged felt itself wrestling in the grip of dark implacable things upheld by a single thread above that moral abyss which yawns beneath us all into which the individual life sinks so easily to ruin and nothingness At such moments a man realises within himself within the circle of consciousness the germs of all things hideous and vile Save for the grace of God he says to himself shuddering save only for the grace of God——
Contempt for himself loathing for life and its possibilities as he had just beheld them moral tumult pity remorse a stinging selfreproach—all these things wrestled within him What preach to others and stumble himself into such mire as this Talk loudly of love and faith and make it possible all the time that a fellow human creature should think you capable at a pinch of the worst treason against both
Elsmere dived to the very depths of his own soul that night Was it all the natural consequence of a loosened bond of a wretched relaxation of effort—a wretched acquiescence in something second best Had love been cooling Had it simply ceased to take the trouble love must take to maintain itself And had this horror been the subtle inevitable Nemesis
All at once under the trees of the park Elsmere stopped for a moment in the darkness and bared his head with the passionatePg 529 reverential action of a devotee before his saint The lurid image which had been pursuing him gave way and in its place came the image of a newmade mother her child close within her sheltering arm Ah it was all plain to him now The moral tempest had done its work
One task of all tasks had been set him from the beginning—to keep his wifes love If she had slipped away from him to the injury and moral lessening of both on his cowardice on his clumsiness be the blame Above all on his fatal power of absorbing himself in a hundred outside interests controversy literature society Even his work seemed to have lost half its sacredness If there be a canker at the root no matter how large the show of leaf and blossom overhead there is but the more to wither Of what worth is any success but that which is grounded deep on the rock of personal love and duty
Oh let him go back to her—wrestle with her open his heart again try new ways make new concessions How faint the sense of her trial has been growing within him of late hers which had once been more terrible to him than his own He feels the special temptations of his own nature he throws himself humbled convicted at her feet The woman the scene he has left is effaced blotted out by the natural intense reaction of remorseful love
So he sped homewards at last through the noise of Oxford Street seeing hearing nothing He opened his own door and let himself into the dim silent house How the moment recalled to him that other supreme moment of his life at Murewell No light in the drawingroom He went upstairs and softly turned the handle of her room
Inside the room seemed to him nearly dark But the window was wide open The free looselygrowing branches of the plane trees made a dark delicate network against the luminous blue of the night A cool air came to him laden with an almost rural scent of earth and leaves By the window sat a white motionless figure As he closed the door it rose and walked towards him without a word Instinctively Robert felt that something unknown to him had been passing here He paused breathless expectant
She came to him She linked her cold trembling fingers round his neck
Robert I have been waiting so long—it was so late I thought—and she choked down a sob—perhaps something has happened to him we are separated for ever and I shall never be able to tell him Robert Mr Flaxman talked to me he opened my eyes I have been so cruel to you so hard I have broken my vow I dont deserve it but—Robert——
She had spoken with extraordinary selfcommand till the last word which fell into a smothered cry for pardon Catherine Elsmere had very little of the soft clingingness which makes thePg 530 charm of a certain type of woman Each phrase she had spoken had seemed to take with it a piece of her life She trembled and tottered in her husbands arms
He bent over her with halfarticulate words of amazement of passion He led her to her chair and kneeling before her he tried so far as the emotion of both would let him to make her realise what was in his own heart the penitence and longing which had winged his return to her Without a mention of Madame de Nettevilles name indeed That horror she should never know But it was to it as he held his wife he owed his poignant sense of something halfjeopardised and wholly recovered it was that consciousness in the background of his mind ignorant of it as Catherine was then and always which gave the peculiar epochmaking force to this sacred and critical hour of their lives But she would hear nothing of his selfblame—nothing She put her hand across his lips
I have seen things as they are Robert she said very simply while I have been sitting here and downstairs after Mr Flaxman left me You were right—I would not understand And in a sense I shall never understand I cannot change and her voice broke into piteousness My Lord is my Lord always but He is yours too Oh I know it say what you will That is what has been hidden from me that is what my trouble has taught me the powerlessness the worthlessness of words It is the spirit that quickeneth I should never have felt it so but for this fiery furnace of pain But I have been wandering in strange places through strange thoughts God has not one language but many I have dared to think He had but one the one I knew I have dared—and she faltered—to condemn your faith as no faith Oh I lay there so long in the dark downstairs seeing you by that bed I heard your voice I crept to your side Jesus was there too Ah He was—He was Leave me that comfort What are you saying Wrong—you Unkind Your wife knows nothing of it Oh did you think when you came in just now before dinner that I didnt care that I had a heart of stone Did you think I had broken my solemn promise my vow to you that day at Murewell So I have a hundred times over I made it in ignorance I had not counted the cost—how could I It was all so new so strange I dare not make it again the will is so weak circumstances so strong But oh take me back into your life Hold me there Remind me always of this night convict me out of my own mouth But I will learn my lesson I will learn to hear the two voices the voice that speaks to you and the voice that speaks to me—I must It is all plain to me now It has been appointed me
Then she broke down into a kind of weariness and fell back in her chair her delicate fingers straying with soft childish touch over his hair
But I am past thinking Let us bury it all and begin again Words are nothing
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Strange ending to a day of torture As she towered above him in the dimness white and pure and drooping her force of nature all dissolved lost in this new heavenly weakness of love he thought of the man who passed through the place of sin and the place of expiation and saw at last the rosy light creeping along the East caught the white moving figures and that sweet distant melody rising through the luminous air which announced to him the approach of Beatrice and the nearness of those shining tablelands whereof our God Himself is moon and sun For eternal life the ideal state is not something future and distant Dante knew it when he talked of quella que imparadisa la mia mente Paradise is here visible and tangible by mortal eyes and hands whenever self is lost in loving whenever the narrow limits of personality are beaten down by the inrush of the Divine Spirit
CHAPTER XLIV
The saddest moment in the lives of these two persons whose history we have followed for so long was over and done with Henceforward to the end Elsmere and his wife were lovers as of old
But that day and night left even deeper marks on Robert than on Catherine Afterwards she gradually came to feel running all through his views of life a note sterner deeper maturer than any present there before The reasons for it were unknown to her though sometimes her own tender ignorant remorse supplied them But they were hidden deep in Elsmeres memory
A few days afterwards he was casually told that Madame de Netteville had left England for some time As a matter of fact he never set eyes on her again After a while the extravagance of his selfblame abated He saw things as they were—without morbidness But a certain boyish carelessness of mood he never afterwards quite recovered Men and women of all classes and not only among the poor became more real and more tragic—moral truths more awful—to him It was the penalty of a highlystrung nature set with exclusive intensity towards certain spiritual ends
On the first opportunity after that conversation with Hugh Flaxman which had so deeply affected her Catherine accompanied Elsmere to his Sunday lecture He tried a little tenderly to dissuade her But she went shrinking and yet determined
She had not heard him speak in public since that last sermon of his in Murewell Church every detail of which by long brooding had been burnt into her mind The bare Elgood Street room the dingy outlook on the high walls of a warehouse oppoPg 532site the lines of blanched quickeyed artisans the dissent from what she loved and he had once loved implied in everything the lecture itself on the narratives of the Passion it was all exquisitely painful to her and yet yet she was glad to be there
Afterwards Wardlaw with the brusque remark to Elsmere that any fool could see he was getting done up insisted on taking the childrens class Catherine too had been impressed as she saw Robert raised a little above her in the glare of many windows with the sudden perception that the worn exhausted look of the preceding summer had returned upon him She held out her hand to Wardlaw with a quick warm word of thanks He glanced at her curiously What had brought her there after all
Then Robert protesting that he was being ridiculously coddled and that Wardlaw was much more in want of a holiday than he was carried off to the Embankment and the two spent a happy hour wandering westward Somerset House the bridges the Westminster towers rising before them into the haze of the June afternoon A little fresh breeze came off the river that or his wifes hand on his arm seemed to put new life into Elsmere And she walked beside him talking frankly heart to heart with flashes of her old sweet gaiety as she had not talked for months
Deep in her mystical sense all the time lay the belief in a final restoration in an allatoning moment perhaps at the very end of life in which the blind would see the doubter be convinced And meanwhile the blessedness of this peace this surrender Surely the air this afternoon was pure and lifegiving for them the bells rang for them the trees were green for them
He had need in the week that followed of all that she had given back to him For Mr Greys illness had taken a dangerous and alarming turn It seemed to be the issue of long illhealth and the doctors feared that there were no resources of constitution left to carry him through it Every day some old St Anselms friend on the spot wrote to Elsmere and with each post the news grew more despairing Since Elsmere had left Oxford he could count on the fingers of one hand the occasions on which he and Grey had met face to face But for him as for many another man of our time Henry Greys influence was not primarily an influence of personal contact His mere life that he was there on English soil within a measurable distance had been to Elsmere in his darkest moments one of his thoughts of refuge At a time when a religion which can no longer be believed clashes with a scepticism full of danger to conduct every such witness as Grey to the power of a new and coming truth holds a special place in the hearts of men who can neither accept fairy tales nor reconcile themselves to a world without faith The saintly life grows to be a beacon a witnessPg 533 Men cling to it as they have always clung to each other to the visible and the tangible as the elders of Miletus though the Way lay before them clung to the man who had set their feet therein sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more
The accounts grew worse—all friends shut out no possibility of last words—the whole of Oxford moved and sorrowing Then at last on a Friday came the dreaded expected letter He is gone He died early this morning without pain conscious almost to the end He mentioned several friends by name you among them during the night The funeral is to be on Tuesday You will be here of course
Sad and memorable day By an untoward chance it fell in Commemoration week and Robert found the familiar streets teeming with life and noise under a showery uncertain sky which every now and then would send the bevies of lightlygowned maidens with their mothers and attendant squires skurrying for shelter and leave the roofs and pavements glistening He walked up to St Anselms—found as he expected that the first part of the service was to be in the chapel the rest in the cemetery and then mounted the wellknown staircase to Langhams rooms Langham was apparently in his bedroom Lunch was on the table—the familiar commons the familiar toastandwater There in a recess were the same splendid wall maps of Greece he had so often consulted after lecture There was the little case of coins with the gold Alexanders he had handled with so much covetous reverence at eighteen Outside the irregular quadrangle with its dripping trees stretched before him the steps of the new Hall now the shower was over were crowded with gowned figures It might have been yesterday that he had stood in that room blushing with awkward pleasure under Mr Greys first salutation
The bedroom door opened and Langham came in
Elsmere But of course I expected you
His voice seemed to Robert curiously changed There was a flatness in it an absence of positive cordiality which was new to him in any greeting of Langhams to himself and had a chilling effect upon him The face too was changed Tint and expression were both dulled its marblelike sharpness and finish had coarsened a little and the figure which had never possessed the erectness of youth had now the pinched look and the confirmed stoop of the valetudinarian
I did not write to you Elsmere he said immediately as though in anticipation of what the other would be sure to say I knew nothing but what the bulletins said and I was told that Cathcart wrote to you It is many years now since I have seen much of Grey Sit down and have some lunch We have time but not too much time
Robert took a few mouthfuls Langham was difficult talked disconnectedly of trifles and Robert was soon painfully conPg 534scious that the old sympathetic bond between them no longer existed Presently Langham as though with an effort to remember asked after Catherine then inquired what he was doing in the way of writing and neither of them mentioned the name of Leyburn They left the table and sat spasmodically talking in reality expectant And at last the sound present already in both minds made itself heard—the first long solitary stroke of the chapel bell
Robert covered his eyes
Do you remember in this room Langham you introduced us first
I remember replied the other abruptly Then with a halfcynical halfmelancholy scrutiny of his companion he said after a pause What a faculty of heroworship you have always had Elsmere
Do you know anything of the end Robert asked him presently as that tolling bell seemed to bring the strong feeling beneath more irresistibly to the surface
No I never asked cried Langham with sudden harsh animation What purpose could be served Death should be avoided by the living We have no business with it Do what we will we cannot rehearse our own parts And the sight of other mens performances helps us no more than the sight of a great actor gives the dramatic gift All they do for us is to imperil the little nerve break through the little calm we have left
Elsmeres hand dropped and he turned round to him with a flashing smile
Ah—I know it now—you loved him still
Langham who was standing looked down on him sombrely yet more indulgently
How much you always made of feeling he said after a little pause in a world where according to me our chief object should be not to feel
Then he began to hunt for his cap and gown In another minute the two made part of the crowd in the front quadrangle where the rain was sprinkling and the insistent griefladen voice of the bell rolled from pause to pause above the gowned figures spreading thence in wide waves of mourning sound over Oxford
The chapel service passed over Robert like a solemn pathetic dream The lines of undergraduate faces the provosts white head the voice of the chaplain reading the full male unison of the voices replying—how they carried him back to the day when as a lad from school he had sat on one of the chancel benches beside his mother listening for the first time to the subtle simplicity if one may be allowed the paradox of the provosts preaching Just opposite to where he sat now with Langham Grey had sat that first afternoon the freshmans curious eyes had been drawn again and again to the darkPg 535 massive head the face with its look of reposeful force of righteous strength During the lesson from Corinthians Elsmeres thoughts were irrelevantly busy with all sorts of mundane memories of the dead What was especially present to him was a series of Liberal election meetings in which Grey had taken a warm part and in which he himself had helped just before he took Orders A hundred odd incongruous details came back to Robert now with poignant force Grey had been to him at one time primarily the professor the philosopher the representative of all that was best in the life of the University now fresh from his own grapple with London and its life what moved him most was the memory of the citizen the friend and brother of common man the thinker who had never shirked action in the name of thought for whom conduct had been from beginning to end the first reality
The procession through the streets afterwards which conveyed the body of this great son of modern Oxford to its last restingplace in the citizens cemetery on the western side of the town will not soon be forgotten even in a place which forgets notoriously soon All the University was there all the town was there Side by side with men honourably dear to England who had carried with them into one or other of the great English careers the memory of the teacher were men who had known from day to day the cheery modest helper in a hundred local causes side by side with the youth of Alma Mater went the poor of Oxford tradesmen and artisans followed or accompanied the group of gowned and venerable figures representing the Heads of Houses and the Professors or mingled with the slowly pacing crowd of Masters while along the route groups of visitors and merrymakers young men in flannels or girls in light dresses stood with suddenly grave faces here and there caught by the general wave of mourning and wondering what such a spectacle might mean
Robert losing sight of Langham as they left the chapel found his arm grasped by young Cathcart his correspondent The man was a junior Fellow who had attached himself to Grey during the two preceding years with especial devotion Robert had only a slight knowledge of him but there was something in his voice and grip which made him feel at once infinitely more at home with him at this moment than he had felt with the old friend of his undergraduate years
They walked down Beaumont Street together The rain came on again and the long black crowd stretched before them was lashed by the driving gusts As they went along Cathcart told him all he wanted to know
The night before the end he was perfectly calm and conscious I told you he mentioned your name among the friends to whom he sent his goodbye He thought for everybody For all those of his house he left the most minute and tender directions He forgot nothing And all with such extraordinaryPg 536 simplicity and quietness like one arranging for a journey In the evening an old Quaker aunt of his a Northcountry woman whom he had been much with as a boy and to whom he was much attached was sitting with him I was there too She was a beautiful old figure in her white cap and kerchief and it seemed to please him to lie and look at her Itll not be for long Henry she said to him once Im seventyseven this spring I shall come to you soon He made no reply and his silence seemed to disturb her I dont fancy she had known much of his mind of late years Youll not be doubting the Lords goodness Henry she said to him with the tears in her eyes No he said no never Only it seems to be His Will we should be certain of nothing—but Himself I ask no more I shall never forget the accent of those words they were the breath of his inmost life If ever man was Gottbetrunken it was he—and yet not a word beyond what he felt to be true beyond what the intellect could grasp
Twenty minutes later Robert stood by the open grave The rain beat down on the black concourse of mourners But there were blue spaces in the drifting sky and a wavering rainy light played at intervals over the Wytham and Hinksey Hills and over the buttercupped river meadows where the lush haygrass bent in long lines under the showers To his left the provost his glistening white head bare to the rain was reading the rest of the service
As the coffin was lowered Elsmere bent over the grave My friend my master cried the yearning filial heart oh give me something of yourself to take back into life something to brace me through this darkness of our ignorance something to keep hope alive as you kept it to the end
And on the inward ear there rose with the solemnity of a last message words which years before he had found marked in a little book of Meditations borrowed from Greys table—words long treasured and often repeated—
Amid a world of forgetfulness and decay in the sight of his own shortcomings and limitations or on the edge of the tomb he alone who has found his soul in losing it who in singleness of mind has lived in order to love and understand will find that the God who is near to him as his own conscience has a face of light and love
Pressing the phrases into his memory he listened to the triumphant outbursts of the Christian service
Mans hope he thought has grown humbler than this It keeps now a more modest mien in the presence of the Eternal Mystery but is it in truth less real less sustaining Let Greys trust answer for me
He walked away absorbed till at last in the little squalid street outside the cemetery it occurred to him to look round for Langham Instead he found Cathcart who had just come up with him
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Is Langham behind he asked I want a word with him before I go
Is he here asked the other with a change of expression
But of course He was in the chapel How could you——
I thought he would probably go away said Cathcart with some bitterness Grey made many efforts to get him to come and see him before he became so desperately ill Langham came once Grey never asked for him again
It is his old horror of expression I suppose said Robert troubled his dread of being forced to take a line to face anything certain and irrevocable I understand He could not say goodbye to a friend to save his life There is no shirking that One must either do it or leave it
Cathcart shrugged his shoulders and drew a masterly little picture of Langhams life in college He had succeeded by the most adroit devices in completely isolating himself both from the older and the younger men
He attends collegemeeting sometimes and contributes a sarcasm or two on the cramming system of the college He takes a constitutional to Summertown every day on the least frequented side of the road that he may avoid being spoken to And as to his ways of living he and I happen to have the same scout—old Dobson you remember And if I would let him he would tell me tales by the hour He is the only man in the University who knows anything about it I gather from what he says that Langham is becoming a complete valetudinarian Everything must go exactly by rule—his food his work the management of his clothes—and any little contretemps makes him ill But the comedy is to watch him when there is anything going on in the place that he thinks may lead to a canvass and to any attempt to influence him for a vote On these occasions he goes off with automatic regularity to an hotel at West Malvern and only reappears when the Times tells him the thing is done with
Both laughed Then Robert sighed Weaknesses of Langhams sort may be amusing enough to the contemptuous and unconcerned outsider But the general result of them whether for the man himself or those whom he affects is tragic not comic and Elsmere had good reason for knowing it
Later after a long talk with the provost and meetings with various other old friends he walked down to the station under a sky clear from rain and through a town gay with festal preparations Not a sign now in these crowded bustling streets of that melancholy pageant of the afternoon The heroic memory had flashed for a moment like something vivid and gleaming in the sight of all understanding and ignorant Now it lay committed to a few faithful hearts there to become one seed among many of a new religious life in England
On the platform Robert found himself nervously accosted by a tall shabbilydressed man
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Elsmere have you forgotten me
He turned and recognised a man whom he had last seen as a St Anselms undergraduate—one MacNiell a handsome rowdy young Irishman supposed to be clever and decidedly popular in the college As he stood looking at him puzzled by the difference between the old impression and the new suddenly the mans story flashed across him he remembered some disgraceful escapade—an expulsion
You came for the funeral of course said the other his face flushing consciously
Yes—and you too
The man turned away and something in his silence led Robert to stroll on beside him to the open end of the platform
I have lost my only friend MacNiell said at last hoarsely He took me up when my own father would have nothing to say to me He found me work he wrote to me for years he stood between me and perdition I am just going out to a post in New Zealand he got for me and next week before I sail—I—I—am to be married—and he was to be there He was so pleased—he had seen her
It was one story out of a hundred like it as Robert knew very well They talked for a few minutes then the train loomed in the distance
He saved you said Robert holding out his hand and at a dark moment in my own life I owed him everything There is nothing we can do for him in return but—to remember him Write to me if you can or will from New Zealand for his sake
A few seconds later the train sped past the bare little cemetery which lay just beyond the line Robert bent forward In the pale yellow glow of the evening he could distinguish the grave the mound of gravel the planks and some figures moving beside it He strained his eyes till he could see no more his heart full of veneration of memory of prayer In himself life seemed so restless and combative Surely he more than others had need of the lofty lessons of death
CHAPTER XLV
In the weeks which followed—weeks often of mental and physical depression caused by his sense of personal loss and by the influence of an overworked state he could not be got to admit—Elsmere owed much to Hugh Flaxmans cheery sympathetic temper and became more attached to him than ever and more ready than ever should the fates deem it so to welcome him as a brotherinlaw However the fates for the moment seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langhams book and did not apparently know their own minds It says volumes for Hugh Flaxmans general capacities as a human being that atPg 539 this period he should have had any attention to give to a friend his position as a lover was so dubious and difficult
After the evening at the Workmens Club and as a result of further meditation he had greatly developed the tactics first adopted on that occasion He had beaten a masterly retreat and Rose Leyburn was troubled with him no more
The result was that a certain brilliant young person was soon sharply conscious of a sudden drop in the pleasures of living Mr Flaxman had been the Leyburns most constant and entertaining visitor During the whole of May he paid one formal call in Lerwick Gardens and was then entertained têteàtête by Mrs Leyburn to Roses intense subsequent annoyance who knew perfectly well that her mother was incapable of chattering about anything but her daughters
He still sent flowers but they came from his head gardener addressed to Mrs Leyburn Agnes put them in water and Rose never gave them a look Rose went to Lady Helens because Lady Helen made her and was much too engaging a creature to be rebuffed but however merry and protracted the teas in those scented rooms might be Mr Flaxmans step on the stairs and Mr Flaxmans hand on the curtain over the door till now the feature in the entertainment most to be counted on were generally speaking conspicuously absent
He and the Leyburns met of course for their list of common friends was now considerable but Agnes reporting matters to Catherine could only say that each of these occasions left Rose more irritable and more inclined to say biting things as to the foolish ways in which society takes its pleasures
Rose certainly was irritable and at times Agnes thought depressed But as usual she was unapproachable about her own affairs and the state of her mind could only be somewhat dolefully gathered from the fact that she was much less unwilling to go back to Burwood this summer than had ever been known before
Meanwhile Mr Flaxman left certain other people in no doubt as to his intentions
My dear aunt he said calmly to Lady Charlotte I mean to marry Miss Leyburn if I can at any time persuade her to have me So much you may take as fixed and it will be quite waste of breath on your part to quote dukes to me But the other factor in the problem is by no means fixed Miss Leyburn wont have me at present and as for the future I have most salutary qualms
Hugh interrupted Lady Charlotte angrily as if you hadnt had the mothers of London at your feet for years
Lady Charlotte was in a most variable frame of mind one day hoping devoutly that the Langham affair might prove lasting enough in its effects to tire Hugh out the next outraged that a silly girl should waste a thought on such a creature while Hugh was in her way at one time angry that anPg 540 insignificant chit of a schoolmasters daughter should apparently care so little to be the Duke of Sedberghs niece and should even dare to allow herself the luxury of snubbing a Flaxman at another utterly sceptical as to any lasting obduracy on the chits part The girl was clearly anxious not to fall too easily but as to final refusal—pshaw And it made her mad that Hugh would hold himself so cheap
Meanwhile Mr Flaxman felt himself in no way called upon to answer that remark of his aunts we have recorded
I have qualms he repeated but I mean to do all I know and you and Helen must help me
Lady Charlotte crossed her hands before her
I may be a Liberal and a lionhunter she said firmly but I have still conscience enough left not to aid and abet my nephew in throwing himself away
She had nearly slipped in again but just saved herself
Your conscience is all a matter of the Duke he told her Well if you wont help me then Helen and I will have to arrange it by ourselves
But this did not suit Lady Charlotte at all She had always played the part of earthly providence to this particular nephew and it was abominable to her that the wretch having refused for ten years to provide her with a love affair to manage should now manage one for himself in spite of her
You are such an arbitrary creature she said fretfully you prance about the world like Don Quixote and expect me to play Sancho without a murmur
How many drubbings have I brought you yet he asked her laughing He was really very fond of her It is true there is a point of likeness I wont take your advice But then why dont you give me better It is strange he added musing women talk to us about love as if we were too gross to understand it and when they come to business and theyre not in it themselves they show the temper of attorneys
Love cried Lady Charlotte nettled Do you mean to tell me Hugh that you are really seriously in love with that girl
Well I only know he said thrusting his hands far into his pockets that unless things mend I shall go out to California in the autumn and try ranching
Lady Charlotte burst into an angry laugh He stood opposite to her with his orchid in his buttonhole himself the fine flower of civilisation Ranching indeed However he had done so many odd things in his life that as she knew it was never quite safe to decline to take him seriously and he looked at her now so defiantly his clear greenish eyes so wide open and alert that her will began to waver under the pressure of his
What do you want me to do sir
His glance relaxed at once and he laughingly explained to her that what he asked of her was to keep the prey in sight
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I can do nothing for myself at present he said I get on her nerves She was in love with that blackhaired enfant du siècle—or rather she prefers to assume that she was—and I havent given her time to forget him A serious blunder and I deserve to suffer for it Very well then I retire and I ask you and Helen to keep watch Dont let her go Make yourselves nice to her and in fact spoil me a little now I am on the high road to forty as you used to spoil me at fourteen
Mr Flaxman sat down by his aunt and kissed her hand after which Lady Charlotte was as wax before him Thank heaven she reflected in ten days the Duke and all of them go out of town Retribution therefore for wrongdoing would be tardy if wrongdoing there must be She could but ruefully reflect that after all the girl was beautiful and gifted moreover if Hugh would force her to befriend him in this criminality there might be a certain joy in thereby vindicating those Liberal principles of hers in which a scornful family had always refused to believe So being driven into it she would fain have done it boldly and with a dash But she could not rid her mind of the Duke and her performance all through as a matter of fact was blundering
However she was for the time very gracious to Rose being in truth really fond of her and Rose however high she might hold her little head could find no excuse for quarrelling either with her or Lady Helen
Towards the middle of June there was a grand ball given by Lady Fauntleroy at Fauntleroy House to which the two Miss Leyburns by Lady Helens machinations were invited It was to be one of the events of the season and when the cards arrived to have the honour of meeting their Royal Highnesses etc etc Mrs Leyburn good soul gazed at them with eyes which grew a little moist under her spectacles She wished Richard could have seen the girls dressed just once But Rose treated the cards with no sort of tenderness If one could but put them up to auction she said flippantly holding them up how many German opera tickets I should get for nothing I dont know what Agnes feels As for me I have neither nerve enough for the people nor money enough for the toilette
However with eleven oclock Lady Helen ran in a fresh vision of blue and white to suggest certain dresses for the sisters which had occurred to her in the visions of the night original adorable—cost a mere nothing
My harpy she remarked alluding to her dressmakerwould ruin you over them of course Your maid—the Leyburns possessed a remarkably clever one—will make them divinely for twopencehalfpenny Listen
Rose listened her eye kindled the maid was summoned and the invitation accepted in Agness neatest hand EvenPg 542 Catherine was roused during the following ten days to a smiling indulgent interest in the concerns of the workroom
The evening came and Lady Helen fetched the sisters in her carriage The ball was a magnificent affair The house was one of historical interest and importance and all that the ingenuity of the present could do to give fresh life and gaiety to the pillared rooms the carved galleries and stately staircases of the past had been done The ballroom lined with Vandycks and Lelys glowed softly with electric light the picture gallery had been banked with flowers and carpeted with red and the beautiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it challenging the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls
Roses card was soon full to overflowing The young men present were of the smartest and would not willingly have bowed the knee to a nobody however pretty But Lady Helens devotion the girls reputation as a musician and her little nonchalant disdainful ways gave her a kind of prestige which made her for the time being at any rate the equal of anybody Petitioners came and went away empty Royalty was introduced and smiled both upon the beauty and the beautys delicate and becoming dress and still Rose though a good deal more flushed and erect than usual and though flesh and blood could not resist the contagious pleasure which glistened even in the eyes of that sage Agnes was more than halfinclined to say with the Preacher that all was vanity
Presently as she stood waiting with her hand on her partners arm before gliding into a waltz she saw Mr Flaxman opposite to her and with him a young débutante in white tulle—a thin pretty undeveloped creature whose sharp elbows and timid movements together with the blushing enjoyment glowing so frankly from her face pointed her out as the schoolgirl of sweet seventeen just emancipated and trying her wings
Ah there is Lady Florence said her partner a handsome young Hussar This ball is in her honour you know She comes out tonight What another cousin Really she keeps too much in the family
Is Mr Flaxman a cousin
The young man replied that he was and then in the intervals of waltzing went on to explain to her the relationships of many of the people present till the whole gorgeous affair began to seem to Rose a mere family party Mr Flaxman was of it She was not
Why am I here the little Jacobin said to herself fiercely as she waltzed it is foolish unprofitable I do not belong to them nor they to me
Miss Leyburn charmed to see you cried Lady Charlotte stopping her and then in a loud whisper in her ear Never saw you look better Your taste or Helens that dress The roses—exquisite
Rose dropped her a little mock curtsey and whirled on again
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Lady Florences are always well dressed thought the child angrily and who notices it
Another turn brought them against Mr Flaxman and his partner Mr Flaxman came at once to greet her with smiling courtesy
I have a Cambridge friend to introduce to you—a beautiful youth Shall I find you by Helen Now Lady Florence patience a moment That corner is too crowded How good that last turn was
And bending with a sort of kind chivalry over his partner who looked at him with the eyes of a joyous excited child he led her away Five minutes later Rose standing flushed by Lady Helen saw him coming again towards her ushering a tall blueeyed youth whom he introduced to her as Lord Waynflete The handsome boy looked at her with a boys open admiration and beguiled her of a supper dance while a group standing near a mother and three daughters stood watching with cold eyes and expressions which said plainly to the initiated that mere beauty was receiving a ridiculous amount of attention
I wouldnt have given it him but it is rude—it is bad manners not even to ask the supposed victress was saying to herself with quivering lips her eyes following not the Trinity freshman who was their latest captive but an older mans wellknit figure and a head on which the fair hair was already growing scantily receding a little from the fine intellectual brows
An hour later she was again standing by Lady Helen waiting for a partner when she saw two persons crossing the room which was just beginning to fill again for dancing towards them One was Mr Flaxman the other was a small wrinkled old man who leant upon his arm displaying the ribbon of the Garter as he walked
Dear me said Lady Helen a little fluttered here is my uncle Sedbergh I thought they had left town
The pair approached and the old Duke bowed over his nieces hand with the manners of a past generation
I made Hugh give me an arm he said quaveringly These floors are homicidal If I come down on them I shall bring an action
I thought you had all left town said Lady Helen
Who can make plans with a Government in power pledged to every sort of villainy and public plunder said the old man testily I suppose Varleys there tonight helping to vote away my property and Fauntleroys
Some of his own too if you please said Lady Helen smiling Yes I suppose he is waiting for the division or he would be here
I wonder why Providence blessed me with such a Radical crew of relations remarked the Duke Hugh is a regular Communist I never heard such arguments in my life And Pg 544as for any idea of standing by his order—— The old man shook his bald head and shrugged his small shoulders with almost French vivacity He had been handsome once and delicately featured but now the left eye drooped and the face had a strong look of peevishness and illhealth
Uncle interposed Lady Helen let me introduce you to my two great friends Miss Leyburn Miss Rose Leyburn
The Duke bowed looked at them through a pair of sharp eyes seemed to cogitate inwardly whether such a name had ever been known to him and turned to his nephew
Get me out of this Hugh and I shall be obliged to you Young people may risk it but if I broke I shouldnt mend
And still grumbling audibly about the floor he hobbled off towards the picture gallery Mr Flaxman had only time for a smiling backward glance at Rose
Have you given my pretty boy a dance
Yes she said but with as much stiffness as she might have shown to his uncle
Thats over said Lady Helen with relief My uncle hardly meets any of us now without a spar He has never forgiven my father for going over to the Liberals And then he thinks we none of us consult him enough No more we do—except Aunt Charlotte Shes afraid of him
Lady Charlotte afraid echoed Rose
Odd isnt it The Duke avenges a good many victims on her if they only knew
Lady Helen was called away and Rose was left standing wondering what had happened to her partner
Opposite Mr Flaxman was pushing through a doorway and Lady Florence was again on his arm At the same time she became conscious of a morsel of chaperons conversation such as by the kind contrivances of fate a girl is tolerably sure to hear under similar circumstances
The débutantes good looks Hugh Flaxmans apparent susceptibility to them the possibility of results and the satisfactory disposition of the family goods and chattels that would be brought about by such a match the opportunity it would offer the man too of rehabilitating himself socially after his first matrimonial escapade—Rose caught fragments of all these topics as they were discussed by two old ladies presumably also of the family ring who gossiped behind her with more gusto than discretion Highmindedness of course told her to move away something else held her fast till her partner came up for her
Then she floated away into the whirlwind of waltzers But as she moved round the room on her partners arm her delicate halfscornful grace attracting look after look the soul within was all aflame—aflame against the serried ranks and phalanxes of this unfamiliar hostile world She had just been reading Trevelyans Life of Fox aloud to her mother who liked occasionally to flavour her knitting with literature and she beganPg 545 now to revolve a passage from it describing the upper class of the last century which had struck that morning on her quick retentive memory A few thousand people who thought that the world was made for them—did it not run so—and that all outside their own fraternity were unworthy of notice or criticism bestowed upon each other an amount of attention quite inconceivable Within the charmed precincts there prevailed an easy and natural mode of intercourse in some respects singularly delightful Such for instance as the Duke of Sedbergh was master of Well it was worth while perhaps to have gained an experience even at the expense of certain illusions as to the manners of dukes and—and—as to the constancy of friends But never again—never again said the impetuous inner voice I have my world—they theirs
But why so strong a flood of bitterness against our poor upper class so well intentioned for all its occasional lack of lucidity should have arisen in so young a breast it is a little difficult for the most conscientious biographer to explain She had partners to her hearts desire young Lord Waynflete used his utmost arts upon her to persuade her that at least half a dozen numbers of the regular programme were extras and therefore at his disposal and when royalty supped it was graciously pleased to ordain that Lady Helen and her two companions should sup behind the same foldingdoors as itself while beyond these doors surged the inferior crowd of persons who had been specially invited to meet their Royal Highnesses and had so far been held worthy neither to dance nor to eat in the same room with them But in vain Rose still felt herself for all her laughing outward insouciance a poor bruised helpless chattel trodden under the heel of a world which was intolerably powerful rich and selfsatisfied the odious product of family arrangements
Mr Flaxman sat far away at the same royal table as herself Beside him was the thin tall débutante She is like one of the Gainsborough princesses thought Rose studying her with involuntary admiration Of course it is all plain He will get everything he wants and a Lady Florence into the bargain Radical indeed What nonsense
Then it startled her to find that the eyes of Lady Florences neighbour were as it seemed on herself or was he merely nodding to Lady Helen—and she began immediately to give a smiling attention to the man on her left
An hour later she and Agnes and Lady Helen were descending the great staircase on their way to their carriage The morning light was flooding through the chinks of the carefully veiled windows Lady Helen was yawning behind her tiny white hand her eyes nearly asleep But the two sisters who had not been up till three on four preceding nights like their chaperon were still almost as fresh as the flowers massed in the hall below
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Ah there is Hugh cried Lady Helen How I hope he has found the carriage
At that moment Rose slipped on a spray of gardenia which had dropped from the bouquet of some predecessor To prevent herself from falling downstairs she caught hold of the stem of a brazen chandelier fixed in the balustrade It saved her but she gave her arm a most painful wrench and leant limp and white against the railing of the stairs Lady Helen turned at Agness exclamation but before she could speak as it seemed Mr Flaxman who had been standing talking just below them was on the stairs
You have hurt your arm Dont speak—take mine Let me get you downstairs out of the crush
She was too far gone to resist and when she was mistress of herself again she found herself in the library with some water in her hand which Mr Flaxman had just put there
Is it the playing hand said Lady Helen anxiously
No said Rose trying to laugh the bowing elbow And she raised it but with a contortion of pain
Dont raise it he said peremptorily We will have a doctor here in a moment and have it bandaged
He disappeared Rose tried to sit up seized with a frantic longing to disobey him and get off before he returned Stinging the girls mind was the sense that it might all perfectly well seem to him a planned appeal to his pity
Agnes help me up she said with a little involuntary groan I shall be better at home
But both Lady Helen and Agnes laughed her to scorn and she lay back once more overwhelmed by fatigue and faintness A few more minutes and a doctor appeared caught by good luck in the next street He pronounced it a severe muscular strain but nothing more applied a lotion and improvised a sling Rose consulted him anxiously as to the interference with her playing
A week he said no more if you are careful
Her pale face brightened Her art had seemed specially dear to her of late
Hugh called Lady Helen going to the door Now we are ready for the carriage
Rose leaning on Agnes walked out into the hall They found him there waiting
The carriage is here he said bending towards her with a look and tone which so stirred the fluttered nerves that the sense of faintness stole back upon her Let me take you to it
Thank you she said coldly but by a superhuman effort my sisters help is quite enough
He followed them with Lady Helen At the carriage door the sisters hesitated a moment Rose was helpless without a right hand A little imperative movement from behind disPg 547placed Agnes and Rose felt herself hoisted in by a strong arm She sank into the farther corner The glow of the dawn caught her white delicate features the curls on her temples all the silken confusion of her dress Hugh Flaxman put in Agnes and his sister said something to Agnes about coming to inquire and raised his hat Rose caught the quick force and intensity of his eyes and then closed her own lost in a languid swoon of pain memory and resentful wonder
Flaxman walked away down Park Lane through the chill morning quietness the gathering light striking over the houses beside him on to the misty stretches of the Park His hat was over his eyes his hands thrust into his pockets a close observer would have noticed a certain trembling of the lips It was but a few seconds since her young warm beauty had been for an instant in his arms his whole being was shaken by it and by that last look of hers Have I gone too far he asked himself anxiously Is it divinely true—already—that she resents being left to herself Oh little rebel You tried your best not to let me see But you were angry you were Now then how to proceed She is all fire all character I rejoice in it She will give me trouble so much the better Poor little hurt thing the fight is only beginning but I will make her do penance some day for all that loftiness tonight
If these reflections betray to the reader a certain masterful note of confidence in Mr Flaxmans mind he will perhaps find small cause to regret that Rose did give him a great deal of trouble
Nothing could have been more salutary to use his own word than the dance she led him during the next three weeks She provoked him indeed at moments so much that he was a hundred times on the point of trying to seize his kingdom of heaven by violence of throwing himself upon her with a tempest shock of reproach and appeal But some secret instinct restrained him She was wilful she was capricious she had a real and powerful distraction in her art He must be patient and risk nothing
He suspected too what was the truth—that Lady Charlotte was doing harm Rose indeed had grown so touchily sensitive that she found offence in almost every word of Lady Charlottes about her nephew Why should the apparently casual remarks of the aunt bear so constantly on the subject of the nephews social importance Rose vowed to herself that she needed no reminder of that station whereunto it had pleased God to call her and that Lady Charlotte might spare herself all those anxieties and reluctances which the girls quick sense detected in spite of the invitations so freely showered on Lerwick Gardens
The end of it all was that Hugh Flaxman found himself again driven into a corner At the bottom of him was still a confidence that would not yield Was it possible that he hadPg 548 ever given her some tiny involuntary glimpse of it and that but for that glimpse she would have let him make his peace much more easily At any rate now he felt himself at the end of his resources
I must change the venue he said to himself decidedly I must change the venue
So by the end of June he had accepted an invitation to fish in Norway with a friend and was gone Rose received the news with a callousness which made even Lady Helen want to shake her
On the eve of his journey however Hugh Flaxman had at last confessed himself to Catherine and Robert His obvious plight made any further scruples on their part futile and what they had they gave him in the way of sympathy Also Robert gathering that he already knew much and without betraying any confidence of Roses gave him a hint or two on the subject of Langham But more not the friendliest mortal could do for him and Flaxman went off into exile announcing to a mocking Elsmere that he should sit pensive on the banks of Norwegian rivers till fortune had had time to change
Pg 549
BOOK VII
GAIN AND LOSS
Pg 551
CHAPTER XLVI
A hot July had well begun but still Elsmere was toiling on in Elgood Street and could not persuade himself to think of a holiday Catherine and the child he had driven away more than once but the claims upon himself were becoming so absorbing he did not know how to go even for a few weeks There were certain individuals in particular who depended on him from day to day One was Charles Richardss widow The poor desperate creature had put herself abjectly into Elsmeres hands He had sent her to an asylum where she had been kindly and skilfully treated and after six weeks abstinence she had just returned to her children and was being watched by himself and a competent woman neighbour whom he had succeeded in interesting in the case.
Another was a young secret springer to use the mysterious terms of the trade—Robson by name—whom Elsmere had originally known as a clever workman belonging to the watchmaking colony and a diligent attendant from the beginning on the Sunday lectures He was now too ill to leave his lodgings and his sickly pessimist personality had established a special hold on Robert He was dying of tumour in the throat and had become a torment to himself and a disgust to others There was a spark of wayward genius in him however which enabled him to bear his ills with a mixture of savage humour and cleareyed despair In general outlook he was much akin to the author of the City of Dreadful Night whose poems he read the loathsome spectacles of London had filled him with a kind of sombre energy of revolt against all that is And now that he could only work intermittently he would sit brooding for hours startling the fellowworkmen who came in to see him with ghastly Heinelike jokes on his own hideous disease living no one exactly knew how though it was supposed on supplies sent him by a shopkeeper uncle in the country and constantly on the verge as all his acquaintances felt of some ingenious expedient or other for putting an end to himself and his troubles He was unmarried and a misogynist to boot No woman willingly went near him and he tended himself How Robert had gained any hold upon him no one could guess ButPg 552 from the moment when Elsmere struck in the lectureroom by the pallid ugly face and swathed neck began regularly to go and see him the elder man felt instinctively that virtue had gone out of him and that in some subtle way yet another life had become pitifully silently dependent on his own stock of strength and comfort
His lecturing and teaching work also was becoming more and more the instrument of farreaching change and therefore more and more difficult to leave The thoughts of God the image of Jesus which were active and fruitful in his own mind had been gradually passing from the one into the many and Robert watched the sacred transforming emotion once nurtured at his own heart now working among the crowd of men and women his fiery speech had gathered round him with a trembling joy a humble prostration of the soul before the Eternal Truth no words can fitly describe With an everincreasing detachment of mind from the objects of self and sense he felt himself a tool in the Great Workmans hand Accomplish Thy purposes in me was the cry of his whole heart and life use me to the utmost spend every faculty I have O Thou who mouldest men
But in the end his work itself drove him away A certain memorable Saturday evening brought it about It had been his custom of late to spend an occasional evening hour after his nightschool work in the North R—— Club of which he was now by invitation a member Here in one of the inner rooms he would stand against the mantelpiece chatting smoking often with the men Everything came up in turn to be discussed and Robert was at least as ready to learn from the practical workers about him as to teach But in general these informal talks and debates became the supplement of the Sunday lectures Here he met Andrews and the Secularist crew face to face here he grappled in Socratic fashion with objections and difficulties throwing into the task all his charm and all his knowledge a man at once of no pretensions and of unfailing natural dignity Nothing so far had served his cause and his influence so well as these moments of free discursive intercourse The mere orator the mere talker indeed would never have gained any permanent hold but the life behind gave weight to every acute or eloquent word and importance even to those mere sallies of a boyish enthusiasm which were still common enough in him
He had already visited the club once during the week preceding this Saturday On both occasions there was much talk of the growing popularity and efficiency of the Elgood Street work of the numbers attending the lectures the storytelling the Sunday school and of the way in which the attractions of it had spread into other quarters of the parish exciting there especially among the clergy of St Wilfrids an anxious and critical attention The conversation on Saturday night howPg 553ever took a turn of its own. Robert felt in it a new and curious note of responsibility The men present were evidently beginning to regard the work as their work also and its success as their interest It was perfectly natural for not only had most of them been his supporters and hearers from the beginning but some of them were now actually teaching in the nightschool or helping in the various branches of the large and overflowing boys club He listened to them for a while in his favourite attitude leaning against the mantelpiece throwing in a word or two now and then as to how this or that part of the work might be amended or expanded Then suddenly a kind of inspiration seemed to pass from them to him Bending forward as the talk dropped a moment he asked them with an accent more emphatic than usual whether in view of this collaboration of theirs which was becoming more valuable to him and his original helpers every week it was not time for a new departure
Suppose I drop my dictatorship he said suppose we set up parliamentary government are you ready to take your share Are you ready to combine to commit yourselves Are you ready for an effort to turn this work into something lasting and organic
The men gathered round him smoked on in silence for a minute Old Macdonald who had been sitting contentedly puffing away in a corner peculiarly his own and dedicated to the glorification—in broad Berwickshire—of the experimental philosophers laid down his pipe and put on his spectacles that he might grasp the situation better Then Lestrange in a dry cautious way asked Elsmere to explain himself further
Robert began to pace up and down talking out his thought his eye kindling
But in a minute or two he stopped abruptly with one of those striking rapid gestures characteristic of him
But no mere social and educational body mind you and his bright commanding look swept round the circle A good thing surely yet is there better than it The real difficulty of every social effort—you know it and I know it—lies not in the planning of the work but in the kindling of will and passion enough to carry it through And that can only be done by religion—by faith
He went back to his old leaning attitude his hands behind him The men gazed at him—at the slim figure the transparent changing face—with a kind of fascination but were still silent till Macdonald said slowly taking off his glasses again and clearing his throat—
Youll be aboot starrtin a new church Im thinkin Misther Elsmere
If you like said Robert impetuously I have no fear of the great words You can do nothing by despising the past and its products you can also do nothing by being too muchPg 554 afraid of them by letting them choke and stifle your own life Let the new wine have its new bottles if it must and never mind words Be content to be a new sect conventicle or what not so long as you feel that you are something with a life and purpose of its own, in this tangle of a world
Again he paused with knit brows thinking Lestrange sat with his elbows on his knees studying him the spare gray hair brushed back tightly from the bony face on the lips the slightest Voltairean smile Perhaps it was the coolness of his look which insensibly influenced Roberts next words
However I dont imagine we should call ourselves a church Something much humbler will do if you choose ever to make anything of these suggestions of mine Association society brotherhood what you will But always if I can persuade you with something in the name and everything in the body itself to show that for the members of it life rests still as all life worth having has everywhere rested on trust and memory—trust in the God of experience and history memory of that Gods work in man by which alone we know Him and can approach Him Well of that work—I have tried to prove it to you a thousand times—Jesus of Nazareth has become to us by the evolution of circumstance the most moving the most efficacious of all types and epitomes We have made our protest—we are daily making it—in the face of society against the fictions and overgrowths which at the present time are excluding him more and more from human love But now suppose we turn our backs on negation and have done with mere denial Suppose we throw all our energies into the practical building of a new house of faith the gathering and organising of a new Company of Jesus
Other men had been stealing in while he was speaking The little room was nearly full It was strange the contrast between the squalid modernness of the scene with its incongruous sights and sounds the Clubroom painted in various hideous shades of cinnamon and green the smoke the lines and groups of workingmen in every sort of working dress the occasional rumbling of huge waggons past the window the click of glasses and cups in the refreshment bar outside and this stir of spiritual passion which any competent observer might have felt sweeping through the little crowd as Robert spoke connecting what was passing there with all that is sacred and beautiful in the history of the world
After another silence a young fellow in a shabby velvet coat stood up He was commonly known among his fellowpotters as the hartist because of his long hair his little affectations of dress and his æsthetic susceptibilities generally The wits of the Club made him their target but the teasing of him that went on was more or less tempered by the knowledge that in his own queer way he had brought up and educated two young sisters almost from infancy and that his sweetheartPg 555 had been killed before his eyes a year before in a railway accident
I dun know he said in a high treble voice I dun know whether I speak for anybody but myself—very likely not but what I do know and he raised his right hand and shook it with a gesture of curious felicity is this—what Mr Elsmere starts Ill join where he goes Ill go whats good enough for hims good enough for me Hes put a new heart and a new stomach into me and what Ive got he shall have whenever it pleases im to call for it So if he wants to run a new thing against or alongside the old uns and he wants me to help him with it—I dont know as Im very clear what hes driving at nor what good I can do im—but when Tom Wheelers asked for hell be there
A deep murmur rising almost into a shout of assent ran through the little assembly Robert bent forward his eye glistening a moved acknowledgment in his look and gesture But in reality a pang ran through the fiery soul It was the personal estimate after all that was shaping their future and his and the idealist was up in arms for his idea sublimely jealous lest any mere personal fancy should usurp its power and place
A certain amount of desultory debate followed as to the possible outlines of a possible organisation and as to the observances which might be devised to mark its religious character As it flowed on the atmosphere grew more and more electric A new passion though still timid and awestruck seemed to shine from the looks of the men standing or sitting round the central figure Even Lestrange lost his smile under the pressure of that strange subdued expectancy about him and when Robert walked homeward about midnight there weighed upon him an almost awful sense of crisis of an expanding future
He let himself in softly and went into his study There he sank into a chair and fainted He was probably not unconscious very long but after he had struggled back to his senses and was lying stretched on the sofa among the books with which it was littered the solitary candle in the big room throwing weird shadows about him a moment of black depression overtook him It was desolate and terrible like a prescience of death How was it he had come to feel so ill Suddenly as he looked back over the preceding weeks the physical weakness and disturbance which had marked them and which he had struggled through paying as little heed as possible took shape spectrelike in his mind
And at the same moment a passionate rebellion against weakness and disablement arose in him He sat up dizzily his head in his hands
Rest—strength he said to himself with strong inner resolve for the works sake
He dragged himself up to bed and said nothing to CatherinePg 556 till the morning Then with boyish brightness he asked her to take him and the babe off without delay to the Norman coast vowing that he would lounge and idle for six whole weeks if she would let him Shocked by his looks she gradually got from him the story of the night before As he told it his swoon was a mere untoward incident and hindrance in a spiritual drama the thrill of which while he described it passed even to her The contrast however between the strong hopes she felt pulsing through him and his air of fragility and exhaustion seemed to melt the heart within her and make her whole being she hardly knew why one sensitive dread She sat beside him her head laid against his shoulder oppressed by a strange and desolate sense of her comparatively small share in this ardent life In spite of his tenderness and devotion she felt often as though he were no longer hers—as though a craving hungry world whose needs were all dark and unintelligible to her were asking him from her claiming to use as roughly and prodigally as it pleased the quick mind and delicate frame
As to the schemes developing round him she could not take them in whether for protest or sympathy She could think only of where to go what doctor to consult how she could persuade him to stay away long enough
There was little surprise in Elgood Street when Elsmere announced that he must go off for a while He so announced it that everybody who heard him understood that his temporary withdrawal was to be the mere preparation for a great effort—the vigil before the tourney and the eager friendliness with which he was met sent him off in good heart
Three or four days later he Catherine and Mary were at Petites Dalles a little place on the Norman coast near Fécamp with which he had first made acquaintance years before when he was at Oxford
Here all that in London had been oppressive in the August heat suffered a sea change and became so much matter for physical delight It was fiercely hot indeed Every morning between five and six oclock Catherine would stand by the little whiteveiled window in the dewy silence to watch the eastern shadows spreading sharply already into a blazing world of sun and see the tall poplar just outside shooting into a quivering changeless depth of blue Then as early as possible they would sally forth before the glare became unbearable The first event of the day was always Marys bathe which gradually became a spectacle for the whole beach so ingenious were the blandishments of the father who wooed her into the warm sandy shallows and so beguiling the glee and pluck of the twoyearold English bébé By eleven the heat out of doors grew intolerable and they would stroll back—father and mother and trailing child—past the hotels on the plage along the irregular village lane to the little house where they hadPg 557 established themselves with Marys nurse and a French bonne to look after them would find the green wooden shutters drawn close the déjeuner waiting for them in the cool bare room and the scent of the coffee penetrating from the kitchen where the two maids kept up a dumb but perpetual warfare Then afterwards Mary emerging from her sunbonnet would be tumbled into her white bed upstairs and lie a flushed image of sleep till the patter of her little feet on the boards which alone separated one storey from the other warned mother and nurse that an imp of mischief was let loose again Meanwhile Robert in the carpetless salon would lie back in the rickety armchair which was its only luxury lazily dozing and dreaming Balzac perhaps in his hand but quite another comédie humaine unrolling itself vaguely meanwhile in the contriving optimist mind
Petites Dalles was not fashionable yet though it aspired to be but it could boast of a deputy and a senator and a professor of the Collège de France as good as any at Étretat a tired journalist or two and a sprinkling of Rouen men of business Robert soon made friends among them more suo by dint of a roughandready French spoken with the most unblushing accent imaginable and lounged along the sands through many an amusing and sociable hour with one or other of his new acquaintances
But by the evening husband and wife would leave the crowded beach and mount by some tortuous dusty way on to the high plateau through which was cleft far below the wooded fissure of the village Here they seemed to have climbed the beanstalk into a new world The rich Normandy country lay all round them—the cornfields the hedgeless tracts of whiteflowered lucerne or crimson clover dotted by the orchard trees which make one vast garden of the land as one sees it from a height On the fringe of the cliff where the soil became too thin and barren even for French cultivation there was a wild belt half heather half tangled grass and flowergrowth which the English pair loved for their own special reasons Bathed in light cooled by the evening wind the patches of heather glowing the tall grasses swaying in the breeze there were moments when its wide careless dusty beauty reminded them poignantly and yet most sweetly of the home of their first unclouded happiness of the Surrey commons and wildernesses
One evening they were sitting in the warm dusk by the edge of a little dip of heather sheltered by a tuft of broom when suddenly they heard the purring sound of the nightjar and immediately after the bird itself lurched past them and as it disappeared into the darkness they caught several times the characteristic click of the wing
Catherine raised her hand and laid it on Roberts The sudden tears dropped on to her cheeks
Did you hear it Robert
Pg 558
He drew her to him These involuntary signs of an abiding pain in her always smote him to the heart
I am not unhappy Robert she said at last raising her head No if you will only get well and strong I have submitted It is not for myself but——
For what then Merely the touchingness of mortal things as such—of youth of hope of memory
Choking down a sob she looked seaward over the curling flamecoloured waves while he held her hand close and tenderly No—she was not unhappy Something indeed had gone for ever out of that early joy Her life had been caught and nipped in the great inexorable wheel of things It would go in some sense maimed to the end But the bitter selftorturing of that first endless year was over Love and her husband and the thousand subtle forces of a changing world had conquered She would live and die steadfast to the old faiths But her present mind and its outlook was no more the mind of her early married life than the Christian philosophy of today is the Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages She was not conscious of change but change there was She had in fact undergone that dissociation of the moral judgment from a special series of religious formulæ which is the crucial the epochmaking fact of our day Unbelief says the orthodox preacher is sin and implies it and while he speaks the saint in the unbeliever gently smiles down his argument and suddenly in the rebel of yesterday men see the rightful heir of tomorrow
CHAPTER XLVII
Meanwhile the Leyburns were at Burwood again Roses summer indeed was much varied by visits to country houses—many of them belonging to friends and acquaintances of the Flaxman family—by concerts and the demands of several new and exciting artistic friendships But she was seldom loth to come back to the little bare valley and the graywalled house Even the rain which poured down in August quite unabashed by any consciousness of fine weather elsewhere was not as intolerable to her as in past days
The girl was not herself there was visible in her not only that general softening and deepening of character which had been the consequence of her trouble in the spring but a painful ennui she could hardly disguise a longing for she knew not what She was beginning to take the homage paid to her gift and her beauty with a quiet dignity which was in no sense false modesty but implied a certain clearness of vision curious and disquieting in so young and dazzling a creature And when she came home from her travels she would develop a taste for longPg 559 walks breasting the mountains in rain or sun penetrating to their austerest solitudes alone as though haunted by that profound saying of Obermann Man is not made for enjoyment only—la tristesse fait aussi partie de ses vastes besoins
What indeed was it that ailed her In her lonely moments especially in those moments among the high fells beside some little tarn or streamlet while the sheets of mist swept by her or the great clouds dappled the spreading sides of the hills she thought often of Langham—of that first thrill of passion which had passed through her delusive and abortive like one of those first thrills of spring which bring out the buds only to provide victims for the frost Now with her again a moral east wind was blowing The passion was gone The thought of Langham still roused in her a pity that seemed to strain at her heartstrings But was it really she really this very Rose who had rested for that one intoxicating instant on his breast She felt a sort of bitter shame over her own shallowness of feeling She must surely be a poor creature else how could such a thing have befallen her and have left so little trace behind
And then her hand dabbling in the water her face raised to the blind friendly mountains she would go dreaming far afield Little vignettes of London would come and go on the inner retina smiles and sighs would follow one another
How kind he was that time how amusing this
Or How provoking he was that afternoon how cold that evening
Nothing else—the pronoun remained ambiguous
I want a friend she said to herself once as she was sitting far up in the bosom of High Fell I want a friend badly Yet my lover deserts me and I send away my friend
One afternoon Mrs Thornburgh the vicar and Rose were wandering round the churchyard together enjoying a break of sunny weather after days of rain Mrs Thornburghs personal accent so to speak had grown perhaps a little more defined a little more emphatic even than when we first knew her The vicar on the other hand was a trifle grayer a trifle more submissive as though on the whole in the long conjugal contest of life he was getting clearly worsted as the years went on But the performance through which his wife was now taking him tried him exceptionally and she only kept him to it with difficulty She had had an attack of bronchitis in the spring and was still somewhat delicate—a fact which to his mind gave her an unfair advantage of him For she would make use of it to keep constantly before him ideas which he disliked and in which he considered she took a morbid and unbecoming pleasure The vicar was of opinion that when his latter end overtook him he should meet it on the whole as courageously as other men But he was altogether averse to dwelling upon it or the adjuncts of it beforehand Mrs Thornburgh however since her illness had awoke to that inquisitive affectionatePg 560 interest in these very adjuncts which many women feel And it was extremely disagreeable to the vicar
At the present moment she was engaged in choosing the precise spots in the little churchyard where it seemed to her it would be pleasant to rest There was one corner in particular which attracted her and she stood now looking at it with measuring eyes and dissatisfied mouth
William I wish you would come here and help me
The vicar took no notice but went on talking to Rose
William imperatively
The vicar turned unwillingly
You know William if you wouldnt mind lying with your feet that way there would be just room for me But of course if you will have them the other way—— The shoulders in the old black silk mantle went up and the gray curls shook dubiously
The vicars countenance showed plainly that he thought the remark worse than irrelevant
My dear he said crossly I am not thinking of those things nor do I wish to think of them Everything has its time and place It is close on tea and Miss Rose says she must be going home
Mrs Thornburgh again shook her head this time with a disapproving sigh
You talk William she said severely as if you were a young man instead of being turned sixtysix last birthday
And again she measured the spaces with her eye checking the results aloud But the vicar was obdurately deaf He strolled on with Rose who was chattering to him about a visit to Manchester and the little church gate clicked behind them Hearing it Mrs Thornburgh relaxed her measurements They were only really interesting to her after all when the vicar was by She hurried after them as fast as her short squat figure would allow and stopped midway to make an exclamation
A carriage she said shading her eyes with a very plump hand stopping at Greybarns
The one road of the valley was visible from the churchyard winding along the bottom of the shallow green trough for at least two miles Greybarns was a farmhouse just beyond Burwood about half a mile away
Mrs Thornburgh moved on her matronly face aglow with interest
Mary Jenkinson taken ill she said Of course thats Doctor Baker Well its to be hoped it wont be twins this time But as I told her last Sunday Its constitutional my dear I knew a woman who had three pairs Five oclock now Well about seven itll be worth while sending to inquire
When she overtook the vicar and his companion she began to whisper certain particulars into the ear that was not on Roses side The vicar who like Uncle Toby was possessed ofPg 561 a fine natural modesty would have preferred that his wife should refrain from whispering on these topics in Roses presence But he submitted lest opposition should provoke her into still more audible improprieties and Rose walked on a step or two in front of the pair her eyes twinkling a little At the vicarage gate she was let off without the customary final gossip Mrs Thornburgh was so much occupied in the fate hanging over Mary Jenkinson that she for once forgot to catechise Rose as to any marriageable young men she might have come across in a recent visit to a great countryhouse of the neighbourhood an operation which formed the invariable pendant to any of Roses absences
So with a smiling nod to them both the girl turned homewards As she did so she became aware of a mans figure walking along the space of road between Greybarns and Burwood the western light behind it
Dr Baker But even granting that Mrs Jenkinson had brought him five miles on a false alarm in the provoking manner of matrons the shortest professional visit could not be over in this time
She looked again shading her eyes She was nearing the gate of Burwood and involuntarily slackened step The man who was approaching catching sight of the slim girlish figure in the broad hat and pink and white cotton dress hurried up The colour rushed to Roses cheek In another minute she and Hugh Flaxman were face to face
She could not hide her astonishment
Why are you not in Scotland she said after she had given him her hand Lady Helen told me last week she expected you in Rossshire
Directly the words left her mouth she felt she had given him an opening And why had Nature plagued her with this trick of blushing
Because I am here he said smiling his keen dancing eyes looking down upon her He was bronzed as she had never seen him And never had he seemed to bring with him such an atmosphere of cool pleasant strength I have slain so much since the first of July that I can slay no more I am not like other men The Nimrod in me is easily gorged and goes to sleep after a while So this is Burwood
He had caught her just on the little sweep leading to the gate and now his eye swept quickly over the modest old house with its trim garden its overgrown porch and open casement windows She dared not ask him again why he was there In the properest manner she invited him to come in and see mamma
I hope Mrs Leyburn is better than she was in town I shall be delighted to see her But must you go in so soon I left my carriage half a mile below and have been revelling in the sun and air I am loth to go indoors yet awhile Are youPg 562 busy Would it trouble you to put me in the way to the head of the valley Then if you will allow me I will present myself later
Rose thought his request as little in the ordinary line of things as his appearance But she turned and walked beside him pointing out the crags at the head the great sweep of High Fell and the pass over to Ullswater with as much sangfroid as she was mistress of
He on his side informed her that on his way to Scotland he had bethought himself that he had never seen the Lakes that he had stopped at Whinborough was bent on walking over the High Fell pass to Ullswater and making his way thence to Ambleside Grasmere and Keswick
But you are much too late today to get to Ullswater cried Rose incautiously
Certainly You see my hotel and he pointed smiling to a white farmhouse standing just at the bend of the valley where the road turned towards Whinborough I persuaded the good woman there to give me a bed for the night took my carriage a little farther then knowing I had friends in these parts I came on to explore
Rose angrily felt her flush getting deeper and deeper
You are the first tourist she said coolly who has ever stayed in Whindale
Tourist I repudiate the name I am a worshipper at the shrine of Wordsworth and Nature Helen and I long ago defined a tourist as a being with straps I defy you to discover a strap about me and I left my Murray in the railway carriage
He looked at her laughing She laughed too The infection of his strong sunny presence was irresistible In London it had been so easy to stand on her dignity to remember whenever he was friendly that the night before he had been distant In these green solitudes it was not easy to be anything but natural—the child of the moment
You are neither more practical nor more economical than when I saw you last she said demurely When did you leave Norway
They wandered on past the vicarage talking fast Mr Flaxman who had been joined for a time on his fishing tour by Lord Waynflete was giving her an amusing account of the susceptibility to titles shown by the primitive democrats of Norway As they passed a gap in the vicarage hedge laughing and chatting Rose became aware of a window and a gray head hastily withdrawn Mr Flaxman was puzzled by the merry flash instantly suppressed that shot across her face
Presently they reached the hamlet of High Close and the house where Mary Backhouse died and where her father and the poor bedridden Jim still lived They mounted the path behind it and plunged into the hazel plantation which had sheltered Robert and Catherine on a memorable night ButPg 563 when they were through it Rose turned to the right along a scrambling path leading to the top of the first great shoulder of High Fell It was a steep climb though a short one and it seemed to Rose that when she had once let him help her over a rock her hand was never her own again He kept it an almost constant prisoner on one pretext or another till they were at the top
Then she sank down on a rock out of breath He stood beside her lifting his brown wideawake from his brow The air below had been warm and relaxing Here it played upon them both with a delicious lifegiving freshness He looked round on the great hollow bosom of the fell the crags buttressing it on either hand the winding greenness of the valley the white sparkle of the river
It reminds me a little of Norway The same austere and frugal beauty—the same bare valley floors But no pines no peaks no fiords
No said Rose scornfully we are not Norway and we are not Switzerland To prevent disappointment I may at once inform you that we have no glaciers and that there is perhaps only one place in the district where a man who was not an idiot could succeed in killing himself
He looked at her calmly smiling
You are angry he said because I make comparisons You are wholly on a wrong scent I never saw a scene in the world that pleased me half as much as this bare valley that gray roof—and he pointed to Burwood among its trees—and this knoll of rocky ground
His look travelled back to her and her eyes sank beneath it He threw himself down on the short grass beside her
It rained this morning she still had the spirit to murmur under her breath
He took not the smallest heed
Do you know he said—and his voice dropped—can you guess at all why I am here today
You had never seen the Lakes she repeated in a prim voice her eyes still cast down the corners of her mouth twitching You stopped at Whinborough intending to take the pass over to Ullswater thence to make your way to Ambleside and Keswick—or was it to Keswick and Ambleside
She looked up innocently But the flashing glance she met abashed her again
Taquine he said but you shall not laugh me out of countenance If I said all that to you just now may I be forgiven One purpose one only brought me from Norway forbade me to go to Scotland drew me to Whinborough guided me up your valley—the purpose of seeing your face
It could not be said at that precise moment that he had attained it Rather she seemed bent on hiding that face quite away from him It seemed to him an age before drawn by thePg 564 magnetism of his look her hands dropped and she faced him crimson her breath fluttering a little Then she would have spoken but he would not let her Very tenderly and quietly his hand possessed itself of hers as he knelt beside her
I have been in exile for two months—you sent me I saw that I troubled you in London You thought I was pursuing you—pressing you Your manner said Go and I went But do you think that for one day or hour or moment I have thought of anything else in those Norway woods but of you and of this blessed moment when I should be at your feet as I am now
She trembled Her hand seemed to leap in his His gaze melted enwrapped her He bent forward In another moment her silence would have so answered for her that his covetous arms would have stolen about her for good and all But suddenly a kind of shiver ran through her—a shiver which was half memory half shame She drew back violently covering her eyes with her hand
Oh no no she cried and her other hand struggled to get free dont dont talk to me so—I have a—a—confession
He watched her his lips trembling a little a smile of the most exquisite indulgence and understanding dawning in his eyes Was she going to confess to him what he knew so well already If he could only force her to say it on his breast
But she held him at arms length
You remember—you remember Mr Langham
Remember him echoed Mr Flaxman fervently
That thoughtreading night at Lady Charlottes on the way home he spoke to me I said I loved him I did love him I let him kiss me
Her flush had quite faded He could hardly tell whether she was yielding or defiant as the words burst from her
An expression half trouble half compunction came into his face
I knew he said very low or rather I guessed And for an instant it occurred to him to unburden himself to ask her pardon for that espionage of his But no no not till he had her safe I guessed I mean that there had been something grave between you I saw you were sad I would have given the world to comfort you
Her lip quivered childishly
I said I loved him that night The next morning he wrote to me that it could never be
He looked at her a moment embarrassed The conversation was not easy Then the smile broke once more
And you have forgotten him as he deserved If I were not sure of that I could wish him all the tortures of the Inferno As it is I cannot think of him I cannot let you think of him Sweet do you know that ever since I first saw you the one thought of my days the dream of my nights the purpose of myPg 565 whole life has been to win you There was another in the field I knew it I stood by and waited He failed you—I knew he must in some form or other Then I was hasty and you resented it Little tyrant you made yourself a Rose with many thorns But tell me tell me it is all over—your pain my waiting Make yourself sweet to me unfold to me at last
An instant she wavered His bliss was almost in his grasp Then she sprang up and Flaxman found himself standing by her rebuffed and surprised
No no she cried holding out her hands to him though all the time Oh it is too soon I should despise myself I do despise myself It tortures me that I can change and forget so easily it ought to torture you Oh dont ask me yet to—to——
To be my wife he said calmly his cheek a little flushed his eye meeting hers with a passion in it that strove so hard for selfcontrol it was almost sternness
Not yet she pleaded and then after a moments hesitation she broke into the most appealing smiles though the tears were in her eyes hurrying out the broken beseeching words I want a friend so much—a real friend Since Catherine left I have had no one I have been running riot Take me in hand Write to me scold me advise me I will be your pupil I will tell you everything You seem to me so fearfully wise so much older Oh dont be vexed And—and—in six months——
She turned away rosy as her name He held her still so rigidly that her hands were almost hurt The shadow of the hat fell over her eyes the delicate outlines of the neck and shoulders in the pretty pale dress were defined against the green hill background He studied her deliberately a hundred different expressions sweeping across his face A debate of the most feverish interest was going on within him Her seriousness at the moment the chances of the future her character his own—all these knotty points entered into it had to be weighed and decided with lightning rapidity But Hugh Flaxman was born under a lucky star and the natal charm held good
At last he gave a long breath he stooped and kissed her hands
So be it For six months I will be your guardian your friend your teasing implacable censor At the end of that time I will be—well never mind what I give you fair warning
He released her Rose clasped her hands before her and stood drooping Now that she had gained her point all her bright mocking independence seemed to have vanished She might have been in reality the tremulous timid child she seemed His spirits rose he began to like the rôle she had assigned to him The touch of unexpectedness in all she said and did acted with exhilarating force on his fastidious romantic sense
Now then he said picking up her gloves from the grass you have given me my rights I will begin to exercise them at once I must take you home the clouds are coming upPg 566 again and on the way will you kindly give me a full true and minute account of these two months during which you have been so dangerously left to your own devices
She hesitated and began to speak with difficulty her eyes on the ground But by the time they were in the main Shanmoor path again and she was not so weakly dependent on his physical aid her spirits too returned Pacing along with her hands behind her she began by degrees to throw into her accounts of her various visits and performances plenty of her natural malice
And after a bit as that strange storm of feeling which had assailed her on the mountaintop abated something of its bewildering force certain old grievances began to raise very lively heads in her The smart of Lady Fauntleroys ball was still there she had not yet forgiven him all those relations and the teasing image of Lady Florence woke up in her
It seems to me he said at last dryly as he opened a gate for her not far from Burwood that you have been making yourself agreeable to a vast number of people In my new capacity of censor I should like to warn you that there is nothing so bad for the character as universal popularity
I have not got a thousand and one important cousins she exclaimed her lip curling If I want to please I must take pains else nobody minds me
He looked at her attentively his handsome face aglow with animation
What can you mean by that he said slowly
But she was quite silent her head well in air
Cousins he repeated Cousins And clearly meant as a taunt at me Now when did you see my cousins I grant that I possess a monstrous and indefensible number I have it You think that at Lady Fauntleroys ball I devoted myself too much to my family and too little to——
Not at all cried Rose hastily adding with charming incoherence while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in her restless fingers Some cousins of course are pretty
He paused an instant then a light broke over his face and his burst of quiet laughter was infinitely pleasant to hear Rose got redder and redder She realised dimly that she was hardly maintaining the spirit of their contract and that he was studying her with eyes inconveniently bright and penetrating
Shall I quote to you he said a sentence of Sternes If it violate our contract I must plead extenuating circumstances Sterne is admonishing a young friend as to his manners in society You are in love he says Tant mieux But do not imagine that the fact bestows on you a licence to behave like a bear towards all the rest of the world Affection may surely conduct thee through an avenue of women to her who possesses thy heart without tearing the flounces of any of their petticoats—Pg 567not even those of little cousins of seventeen I say this you will observe in the capacity you have assigned me In another capacity I venture to think I could justify myself still better
My guardian and director cried Rose must not begin his functions by misleading and sophistical quotations from the classics
He did not answer for a moment They were at the gate of Burwood under a thick screen of wild cherry trees The gate was half open and his hand was on it
And my pupil he said bending to her must not begin by challenging the prisoner whose hands she has bound or he will not answer for the consequences
His words were threatening but his voice his fine expressive face were infinitely sweet By a kind of fascination she never afterwards understood Rose for answer startled him and herself She bent her head she laid her lips on the hand which held the gate and then she was through it in an instant He followed her in vain He never overtook her till at the drawingroom door she paused with amazing dignity
Mamma she said throwing it open here is Mr Flaxman He is come from Norway and is on his way to Ullswater I will go and speak to Margaret about tea
CHAPTER XLVIII
After the little incident recorded at the end of the preceding chapter Hugh Flaxman may be forgiven if as he walked home along the valley that night towards the farmhouse where he had established himself he entertained a very comfortable scepticism as to the permanence of that curious contract into which Rose had just forced him However he was quite mistaken Roses maiden dignity avenged itself abundantly on Hugh Flaxman for the injuries it had received at the hands of Langham The restraints the anomalies the hairsplittings of the situation delighted her ingenuous youth I am free—he is free We will be friends for six months Possibly we may not suit one another at all If we do—then——
In the thrill of that then lay of course the whole attraction of the position
So that next morning Hugh Flaxman saw the comedy was to be scrupulously kept up It required a tolerably strong masculine certainty at the bottom of him to enable him to resign himself once more to his part But he achieved it and being himself a modern of the moderns a lover of halfshades and refinements of all sorts he began very soon to enjoy it and to play it with an increasing cleverness and perfection
How Rose got through Agness crossquestioning on the matter history sayeth not Of one thing however a conscienPg 568tious historian may be sure namely that Agnes succeeded in knowing as much as she wanted to know Mrs Leyburn was a little puzzled by the erratic lines of Mr Flaxmans journeys It was as she said curious that a man should start on a tour through the Lakes from Long Whindale
But she took everything naïvely as it came and as she was told Nothing with her ever passed through any changing crucible of thought It required no planning to elude her Her mind was like a stretch of wet sand on which all impressions are equally easy to make and equally fugitive He liked them all she supposed in spite of the comparative scantiness of his later visits to Lerwick Gardens or he would not have come out of his way to see them But as nobody suggested anything else to her her mind worked no further and she was as easily beguiled after his appearance as before it by the intricacies of some new knitting
Things of course might have been different if Mrs Thornburgh had interfered again but as we know poor Catherines sorrows had raised a whole odd host of misgivings in the mind of the vicars wife She prowled nervously round Mrs Leyburn filled with contempt for her placidity but she did not attack her She spent herself indeed on Rose and Agnes but long practice had made them adepts in the art of baffling her and when Mr Flaxman went to tea at the vicarage in their company in spite of an absorbing desire to get at the truth which caused her to forget a new cap and let fall a plate of teacakes she was obliged to confess crossly to the vicar afterwards that no one could tell what a man like that was after She supposed his manners were very aristocratic but for her part she liked plain people
On the last morning of Mr Flaxmans stay in the valley he entered the Burwood drive about eleven oclock and Rose came down the steps to meet him For a moment he flattered himself that her disturbed looks were due to the nearness of their farewells
There is something wrong he said softly detaining her hand a moment—so much at least was in his right
Robert is ill There has been an accident at Petites Dalles He has been in bed for a week They hope to get home in a few days Catherine writes bravely but she is evidently very low
Hugh Flaxmans face fell Certain letters he had received from Elsmere in July had lain heavy on his mind ever since so pitiful was the halfconscious revelation in them of an incessant physical struggle An accident Elsmere was in no state for accidents What miserable illluck
Rose read him Catherines account It appeared that on a certain stormy day a swimmer had been observed in difficulties among the rocks skirting the northern side of the Petites Dalles bay The old baigneur of the place owner of the still primitivePg 569 établissement des bains without stopping to strip or even to take off his heavy boots went out to the man in danger with a plank The man took the plank and was safe Then to the people watching it became evident that the baigneur himself was in peril He became unaccountably feeble in the water and the cry rose that he was sinking Robert who happened to be bathing near ran off to the spot jumped in and swam out By this time the old man had drifted some way Robert succeeded however in bringing him in and then amid an excited crowd headed by the baigneurs wailing family they carried the unconscious form on to the higher beach Elsmere was certain life was not extinct and sent off for a doctor Meanwhile no one seemed to have any common sense or any knowledge of how to proceed but himself For two hours he stayed on the beach in his dripping bathingclothes a cold wind blowing trying every device known to him rubbing hot bottles artificial respiration In vain The man was too old and too bloodless Directly after the doctor arrived he breathed his last amid the wild and passionate grief of wife and children
Robert with a cloak flung about him still stayed to talk to the doctor to carry one of the baigneurs sobbing grandchildren to its mother in the village Then at last Catherine got hold of him and he submitted to be taken home shivering and deeply depressed by the failure of his efforts A violent gastric and lung chill declared itself almost immediately and for three days he had been anxiously ill Catherine miserable distrusting the local doctor and not knowing how to get hold of a better one had never left him night or day I had not the heart to write even to you she wrote to her mother I could think of nothing but trying one thing after another Now he has been in bed eight days and is much better He talks of getting up tomorrow and declares he must go home next week I have tried to persuade him to stay here another fortnight but the thought of his work distresses him so much that I hardly dare urge it I cannot say how I dread the journey He is not fit for it in any way
Rose folded up the letter her face softened to a most womanly gravity Hugh Flaxman paused a moment outside the door his hands on his sides considering
I shall not go on to Scotland he said Mrs Elsmere must not be left I will go off there at once
In Roses soberlysweet looks as he left her Hugh Flaxman saw for an instant with the stirring of a joy as profound as it was delicate not the fanciful enchantress of the day before but his wife that was to be And yet she held him to his bargain All that his lips touched as he said goodbye was the little bunch of yellow briar roses she gave him from her belt
Thirty hours later he was descending the long hill from Sassetôt to Petites Dalles It was the 1st of September A chilly west wind blew up the dust before him and stirred thePg 570 parched leafage of the valley He knocked at the door of which the woodwork was all peeled and blistered by the sun Catherine herself opened it
This is kind—this is like yourself she said after a first stare of amazement when he had explained himself He is in there much better
Robert looked up stupefied as Hugh Flaxman entered But he sprang up with his old brightness
Well this is friendship What on earth brings you here old fellow Why arent you in the stubbles celebrating St Partridge
Hugh Flaxman said what he had to say very shortly but so as to make Roberts eyes gleam and to bring his thin hand with a sort of caressing touch upon Flaxmans shoulder
I shant try to thank you—Catherine can if she likes How relieved she will be about that bothering journey of ours However I am really ever so much better It was very sharp while it lasted and the doctor no great shakes But there never was such a woman as my wife she pulled me through And now then sir just kindly confess yourself a little more plainly What brought you and my sistersinlaw together You need not try and persuade me that Long Whindale is the natural gate of the Lakes or the route intended by Heaven from London to Scotland though I have no doubt you tried that little fiction on them
Hugh Flaxman laughed and sat down very deliberately
I am glad to see that illness has not robbed you of that perspicacity for which you are so remarkable Elsmere Well the day before yesterday I asked your sister Rose to marry me She——
Go on man cried Robert exasperated by his pause
I dont know how to put it said Flaxman calmly For six months we are to be rather more than friends and a good deal less than fiancés I am to be allowed to write to her You may imagine how seductive it is to one of the worst and laziest letterwriters in the three kingdoms that his fortunes in love should be made to depend on his correspondence I may scold her if she gives me occasion And in six months as one says to a publisher the agreement will be open to revision
Robert stared
And you are not engaged
Not as I understand it replied Flaxman Decidedly not he added with energy remembering that very platonic farewell
Robert sat with his hands on his knees ruminating
A fantastic thing the modern young woman Still I think I can understand There may have been more than mere caprice in it
His eye met his friends significantly
I suppose so said Flaxman quietly Not even for RobertsPg 571 benefit was he going to reveal any details of that scene on High Fell Never mind old fellow I am content And indeed faute de mieux I should be content with anything that brought me nearer to her were it but by the thousandth of an inch
Robert grasped his hand affectionately
Catherine he called through the door never mind the supper let it burn Flaxman brings news
Catherine listened to the story with amazement Certainly her ways would never have been as her sisters
Are we supposed to know she asked very naturally
She never forbade me to tell said Flaxman smiling I think however if I were you I should say nothing about it—yet I told her it was part of our bargain that she should explain my letters to Mrs Leyburn I gave her free leave to invent any fairy tale she pleased but it was to be her invention not mine
Neither Robert nor Catherine were very well pleased But there was something reassuring as well as comic in the stoicism with which Flaxman took his position And clearly the matter must be left to manage itself
Next morning the weather had improved Robert his hand on Flaxmans arm got down to the beach Flaxman watched him critically did not like some of his symptoms but thought on the whole he must be recovering at the normal rate considering how severe the attack had been
What do you think of him Catherine asked him next day with all her soul in her eyes They had left Robert established in a sunny nook and were strolling on along the sands
I think you must get him home call in a firstrate doctor and keep him quiet said Flaxman He will be all right presently
How can we keep him quiet said Catherine with a momentary despair in her fine pale face All day long and all night long he is thinking of his work It is like something fiery burning the heart out of him
Flaxman felt the truth of the remark during the four days of calm autumn weather he spent with them before the return journey Robert would talk to him for hours now on the sands with the gray infinity of sea before them now pacing the bounds of their little room till fatigue made him drop heavily into his long chair and the burden of it all was the religious future of the workingclass He described the scene in the Club and brought out the dreams swarming in his mind presenting them for Flaxmans criticism and dealing with them himself with that startling mixture of acute commonsense and eloquent passion which had always made him so effective as an initiator Flaxman listened dubiously at first as he generally listened to Elsmere and then was carried away not by the beliefs but by the man He found his pleasure in dallying with the magnificent possibility of the Church doubt with himPg 572 applied to all propositions whether positive or negative and he had the dislike of the aristocrat and the cosmopolitan for the provincialisms of religious dissent Political dissent or social reform was another matter Since the Revolution every generous child of the century has been open to the fascination of political or social Utopias But religion What—what is truth Why not let the old things alone
However it was through the social passion once so real in him and still living in spite of disillusion and selfmockery that Robert caught him had in fact been slowly gaining possession of him all these months
Well said Flaxman one day suppose I grant you that Christianity of the old sort shows strong signs of exhaustion even in England and in spite of the Church expansion we hear so much about and suppose I believe with you that things will go badly without religion—what then Who can have a religion for the asking
But who can have it without Seek that you may find Experiment try new combinations If a thing is going that humanity cant do without and you and I believe it what duty is more urgent for us than the effort to replace it
Flaxman shrugged his shoulders
What will you gain A new sect
Possibly But what we stand to gain is a new social bond was the flashing answer—a new compelling force in man and in society Can you deny that the world wants it What are you economists and sociologists of the new type always pining for Why for that diminution of the self in man which is to enable the individual to see the worlds ends clearly and to care not only for his own but for his neighbours interest which is to make the rich devote themselves to the poor and the poor bear with the rich If man only would he could you say solve all the problems which oppress him It is mans will which is eternally defective eternally inadequate Well the great religions of the world are the stimulants by which the power at the root of things has worked upon this sluggish instrument of human destiny Without religion you cannot make the will equal to its tasks Our present religion fails us we must we will have another
He rose and began to pace along the sands now gently glowing in the warm September evening Flaxman beside him
A new religion Of all words the most tremendous Flaxman pitifully weighed against it the fraction of force fretting and surging in the thin elastic frame beside him He knew well however—few better—that the outburst was not a mere dream and emptiness There was experience behind it—a burning driving experience of actual fact
Presently Robert said with a change of tone I must have that whole block of warehouses Flaxman
Pg 573
Must you said Flaxman relieved by the drop from speculation to the practical Why
Look here And sitting down again on a sandhill overgrown with wild grasses and mats of seathistle the poor pale reformer began to draw out the details of his scheme on its material side Three floors of rooms brightly furnished well lit and warmed a large hall for the Sunday lectures concerts entertainments and storytelling rooms for the boys club two rooms for women and girls reached by a separate entrance a library and readingroom open to both sexes well stored with books and made beautiful by pictures three or four smaller rooms to serve as committee rooms and for the purposes of the Naturalist Club which had been started in May on the Murewell plan and if possible a gymnasium
Money he said drawing up with a laugh in midcareer Theres the rub of course But I shall manage it
To judge from the past Flaxman thought it extremely likely that he would He studied the cabalistic lines Elsmeres stick had made in the sand for a minute or two then he said dryly I will take the first expense and draw on me afterwards up to five hundred a year for the first four years
Robert turned upon him and grasped his hand
I do not thank you he said quietly after a moments pause the work itself will do that
Again they strolled on talking plunging into details till Flaxmans pulse beat as fast as Roberts so full of infectious hope and energy was the whole being of the man before him
I can take in the women and girls now Robert said once Catherine has promised to superintend it all
Then suddenly something struck the mobile mind and he stood an instant looking at his companion It was the first time he had mentioned Catherines name in connection with the North R—— work Flaxman could not mistake the emotion the unspoken thanks in those eyes He turned away nervously knocking off the ashes of his cigar But the two men understood each other
CHAPTER XLIX
Two days later they were in London again Robert was a great deal better and beginning to kick against invalid restraints All men have their pet irrationalities Elsmeres irrationality was an aversion to doctors from the point of view of his own ailments He had an unbounded admiration for them as a class and would have nothing to say to them as individuals that he could possibly help Flaxman was sarcastic Catherine looked imploring in vain He vowed that he was treating himself with a skill any professional might envy and went hisPg 574 way And for a time the stimulus of London and of his work seemed to act favourably upon him After his first welcome at the Club he came home with bright eye and vigorous step declaring that he was another man
Flaxman established himself in St Jamess Place Town was deserted the partridges at Greenlaws clamoured to be shot the headkeeper wrote letters which would have melted the heart of a stone Flaxman replied recklessly that any decent fellow in the neighbourhood was welcome to shoot his birds—a reply which almost brought upon him the resignation of the outraged keeper by return of post Lady Charlotte wrote and remonstrated with him for neglecting a landowners duties inquiring at the same time what he meant to do with regard to that young lady To which Flaxman replied calmly that he had just come back from the Lakes where he had done not indeed all that he meant to do but still something Miss Leyburn and he were not engaged but he was on probation for six months and found London the best place for getting through it
So far he said I am getting on well and developing an amount of energy especially in the matter of correspondence which alone ought to commend the arrangement to the relations of an idle man But we must be left to dream our dream unto ourselves alone One word from anybody belonging to me to anybody belonging to her on the subject and—— But threats are puerile For the present dear aunt I am your devoted nephew
Hugh Flaxman
On probation
Flaxman chuckled as he sent off the letter
He stayed because he was too restless to be anywhere else and because he loved the Elsmeres for Roses sake and his own He thought moreover that a coolheaded friend with an eye for something else in the world than religious reform might be useful just then to Elsmere and he was determined at the same time to see what the reformer meant to be at
In the first place Roberts attention was directed to getting possession of the whole block of buildings in which the existing school and lecturerooms took up only the lowest floor This was a matter of some difficulty for the floors above were employed in warehousing goods belonging to various minor import trades and were held on tenures of different lengths However by dint of some money and much skill the requisite clearances were effected during September and part of October By the end of that month all but the top floor the tenant of which refused to be dislodged fell into Elsmeres hands
Meanwhile at a meeting held every Sunday after lecture—a meeting composed mainly of artisans of the district but including also Roberts helpers from the West and a small sprinkling of persons interested in the man and his work from all parts—Pg 575the details of The New Brotherhood of Christ were being hammered out Catherine was generally present sitting a little apart with a look which Flaxman who now knew her well was always trying to decipher afresh—a sort of sweet aloofness as though the spirit behind it saw down the vistas of the future ends and solutions which gave it courage to endure the present Murray Edwardes too was always there It often struck Flaxman afterwards that in Roberts attitude towards Edwardes at this time in his constant desire to bring him forward to associate him with himself as much as possible in the government and formation of the infant society there was a halfconscious prescience of a truth that as yet none knew not even the tender wife the watchful friend
The meetings were of extraordinary interest The men the great majority of whom had been disciplined and moulded for months by contact with Elsmeres teaching and Elsmeres thought showed a responsiveness a receptivity even a power of initiation which often struck Flaxman with wonder Were these the men he had seen in the Clubhall on the night of Roberts address—sour stolid brutalised hostile to all things in heaven and earth
And we go on prating that the age of saints is over the rôle of the individual lessening day by day Fool go and be a saint go and give yourself to ideas go and live the life hid with Christ in God and see—so would run the quick comment of the observer
But incessant as was the reciprocity the interchange and play of feeling between Robert and the wide following growing up around him it was plain to Flaxman that although he never moved a step without carrying his world with him he was never at the mercy of his world Nothing was ever really left to chance Through all these strange debates which began rawly and clumsily enough and grew every week more and more absorbing to all concerned Flaxman was convinced that hardly any rule or formula of the new society was ultimately adopted which had not been for long in Roberts mind—thought out and brought into final shape perhaps on the Petites Dalles sands It was an unobtrusive art his art of government but a most effective one
At any moment as Flaxman often felt at any rate in the early meetings the discussions as to the religious practices which were to bind together the new association might have passed the line and become puerile or grotesque At any moment the jarring characters and ambitions of the men Elsmere had to deal with might have dispersed that delicate atmosphere of moral sympathy and passion in which the whole new birth seemed to have been conceived and upon the maintenance of which its fruition and development depended But as soon as Elsmere appeared difficulties vanished enthusiasm sprang up again The rules of the new society came simplyPg 576 and naturally into being steeped and haloed as it were from the beginning in the passion and genius of one great heart The fastidious critical instinct in Flaxman was silenced no less than the sour halfeducated analysis of such a man as Lestrange
In the same way all personal jars seemed to melt away beside him There were some painful things connected with the new departure Wardlaw for instance a conscientious Comtist refusing stoutly to admit anything more than an unknowable reality behind phenomena was distressed and affronted by the strongly religious bent Elsmere was giving to the work he had begun Lestrange who was a man of great though raw ability who almost always spoke at the meetings and whom Robert was bent on attaching to the society had times when the things he was half inclined to worship one day he was much more inclined to burn the next in the sight of all men and when the smallest failure of temper on Roberts part might have entailed a disagreeable scene and the possible formation of a harassing left wing
But Roberts manner to Wardlaw was that of a grateful younger brother It was clear that the Comtist could not formally join the Brotherhood But all the share and influence that could be secured him in the practical working of it was secured him And what was more Robert succeeded in infusing his own delicacy his own compunctions on the subject into the men and youths who had profited in the past by Wardlaws rough selfdevotion So that if through much that went on now he could only be a spectator at least he was not allowed to feel himself an alien or forgotten
As to Lestrange against a man who was as ready to laugh as to preach and into whose ardent soul nature had infused a saving sense of the whimsical in life and character cynicism and vanity seemed to have no case Roberts quick temper had been wonderfully disciplined by life since his Oxford days He had now very little of that stiffneckedness so fatal to the average reformer which makes a man insist on all or nothing from his followers He took what each man had to give Nay he made it almost seem as though the grudging support of Lestrange or the critical halfpatronising approval of the young barrister from the West who came down to listen to him and made a favour of teaching in his nightschool were as precious to him as was the wholehearted the selfabandoning veneration which the majority of those about him had begun to show towards the man in whom as Charles Richards said they had seen God
At last by the middle of November the whole great building with the exception of the top floor was cleared and ready for use Robert felt the same joy in it in its clean paint the halffilled shelves in the library the pictures standing against the walls ready to be hung the rolls of brightcoloured mattingPg 577 ready to be laid down as he had felt in the Murewell Institute He and Flaxman helped by a voluntary army of men worked at it from morning till night Only Catherine could ever persuade him to remember that he was not yet physically himself
Then came the day when the building was formally opened when the gilt letters over the door The New Brotherhood of Christ shone out into the dingy street and when the first enrolment of names in the book of the Brotherhood took place
For two hours a continuous stream of human beings surrounded the little table beside which Elsmere stood inscribing their names and receiving from him the silver badge bearing the head of Christ which was to be the outward and conspicuous sign of membership Men came of all sorts the intelligent wellpaid artisan the pallid clerk or small accountant stalwart warehousemen huge carters and draymen the boy attached to each by the laws of the profession often straggling lumpishly behind his master Women were there wives who came because their lords came or because Mr Elsmere had been that good to them that anything they could do to oblige him they would and welcome prim pupilteachers holding themselves with straight superior shoulders children who came trooping in grinned up into Roberts face and retreated again with red cheeks the silver badge tight clasped in hands which not even much scrubbing could make passable
Flaxman stood and watched it from the side It was an extraordinary scene the crowd the slight figure on the platform the two great inscriptions which represented the only articles of the new faith gleaming from the freshly coloured walls—
In Thee O Eternal have I put my trust
This do in remembrance of Me
—the recesses on either side of the hall lined with white marble and destined the one to hold the names of the living members of the Brotherhood the other to commemorate those who had passed away empty this last save for the one poor name of Charles Richards the copies of Giottos Paduan Virtues—faith fortitude charity and the like—which broke the long wall at intervals The cynic in the onlooker tried to assert itself against the feeling with which the air seemed overcharged In vain
Whatever comes of it Flaxman said to himself with strong involuntary conviction whether he fails or no the spirit that is moving here is the same spirit that spread the Church the spirit that sent out Benedictine and Franciscan into the world that fired the children of Luther or Calvin or George Fox the spirit of devotion through a man to an idea through one muchloved muchtrusted soul to some eternal verity newly caught newly conceived behind it There is no approaching the idea for the masses except through the human life therePg 578 is no lasting power for the man except as the slave of the idea
A week later he wrote to his aunt as follows He could not write to her of Rose he did not care to write of himself and he knew that Elsmeres club address had left a mark even on her restless and overcrowded mind Moreover he himself was absorbed
We are in the full stream of religionmaking I watch it with a fascination you at a distance cannot possibly understand even when my judgment demurs and my intelligence protests that the thing cannot live without Elsmere and that Elsmeres life is a frail one After the ceremony of enrolment which I described to you yesterday the Council of the New Brotherhood was chosen by popular election and Elsmere gave an address Twothirds of the council I should think are workingmen the rest of the upper class Elsmere of course president
Since then the first religious service under the new constitution has been held The service is extremely simple and the basis of the whole is new bottles for the new wine The opening prayer is recited by everybody present standing It is rather an act of adoration and faith than a prayer properly so called It represents in fact the placing of the soul in the presence of God The mortal turns to the eternal the ignorant and imperfect look away from themselves to the knowledge and perfection of the AllHoly It is Elsmeres drawing up I imagine—at any rate it is essentially modern expressing the modern spirit answering to modern need as I imagine the first Christian prayers expressed the spirit and answered to the need of an earlier day
Then follows some passage from the life of Christ Elsmere reads it and expounds it in the first place as a lecturer might expound a passage of Tacitus historically and critically His explanation of miracle his efforts to make his audience realise the germs of miraculous belief which each man carries with him in the constitution and inherited furniture of his mind are some of the most ingenious—perhaps the most convincing—I have ever heard My heart and my head have never been very much at one as you know on this matter of the marvellous element in religion
But then when the critic has done the poet and the believer begins Whether he has got hold of the true Christ is another matter but that the Christ he preaches moves the human heart as much as—and in the case of the London artisan more than—the current orthodox presentation of him I begin to have ocular demonstration
I was present for instance at his childrens Sunday class the other day He had brought them up to the story of the Crucifixion reading from the Revised Version and amplifying wherever the sense required it Suddenly a little girl laid her head on the desk before her and with choking sobs imploredPg 579 him not to go on The whole class seemed ready to do the same The pure human pity of the story—the contrast between the innocence and the pain of the sufferer—seemed to be more than they could bear And there was no comforting sense of a jugglery by which the suffering was not real after all and the sufferer not man but God
He took one of them upon his knee and tried to console them But there is something piercingly penetrating and austere even in the consolations of this new faith He did but remind the children of the burden of gratitude laid upon them Would you let him suffer so much in vain His suffering has made you and me happier and better today at this moment than we could have been without Jesus You will understand how and why more clearly when you grow up Let us in return keep him in our hearts always and obey his words It is all you can do for his sake just as all you could do for a mother who died would be to follow her wishes and sacredly keep her memory
That was about the gist of it It was a strange little scene wonderfully suggestive and pathetic
But a few more words about the Sunday service After the address came a hymn There are only seven hymns in the little service book gathered out of the finest we have It is supposed that in a short time they will become so familiar to the members of the Brotherhood that they will be sung readily by heart The singing of them in the public service alternates with an equal number of psalms And both psalms and hymns are meant to be recited or sung constantly in the homes of the members and to become part of the everyday life of the Brotherhood They have been most carefully chosen and a sort of ritual importance has been attached to them from the beginning Each day in the week has its particular hymn or psalm
Then the whole wound up with another short prayer also repeated standing a commendation of the individual, the Brotherhood the nation the world to God The phrases of it are terse and grand One can see at once that it has laid hold of the popular sense the popular memory The Lords Prayer followed Then after a silent pause of recollection Elsmere dismissed them
Go in peace in the love of God and in the memory of His servant Jesus
I looked carefully at the men as they were tramping out Some of them were among the Secularist speakers you and I heard at the club in April In my wonder I thought of a saying of Vinets Cest pour la religion que le peuple a le plus de talent cest en religion quil montre le plus desprit
In a later letter he wrote—
I have not yet described to you what is perhaps the most characteristic the most binding practice of the New Brotherhood It is that which has raised most angry comment cries ofPg 580 profanity wanton insult and what not I came upon it yesterday in an interesting way I was working with Elsmere at the arrangement of the library which is now becoming a most fascinating place under the management of a librarian chosen from the neighbourhood when he asked me to go and take a message to a carpenter who has been giving us voluntary help in the evenings after his days work He thought that as it was the dinner hour and the man worked in the dock close by I might find him at home I went off to the model lodginghouse where I was told to look for him mounted the common stairs and knocked at his door Nobody seemed to hear me and as the door was ajar I pushed it open
Inside was a curious sight
The table was spread with the midday meal Round the table stood four children the eldest about fourteen and the youngest six or seven At one end of it stood the carpenter himself in his working apron a brawny Saxon bowed a little by his trade Before him was a plate of bread and his horny hands were resting on it The street was noisy they had not heard my knock and as I pushed open the door there was an old coat hanging over the corner of it which concealed me
Something in the attitudes of all concerned reminded me kept me where I was silent
The father lifted his right hand
The Master said This do in remembrance of Me
The children stooped for a moment in silence then the youngest said slowly in a little softened cockney voice that touched me extraordinarily—
Jesus we remember Thee always
It was the appointed response As she spoke I recollected the child perfectly at Elsmeres class I also remembered that she had no mother that her mother had died of cancer in June visited and comforted to the end by Elsmere and his wife
Well the great question of course remains—is there a sufficient strength of feeling and conviction behind these things If so after all everything was new once and Christianity was but modified Judaism
December 22
I believe I shall soon be as deep in this matter as Elsmere In Elgood Street great preparations are going on for Christmas But it will be a new sort of Christmas We shall hear very little it seems of angels and shepherds and a great deal of the humble childhood of a little Jewish boy whose genius grown to maturity transformed the Western world To see Elsmere with his boys and girls about him trying to make them feel themselves the heirs and fellows of the Nazarene child to make them understand something of the lessons that child must have learnt the sights he must have seen and the thoughts that must have come to him is a spectacle of which I will not miss more than I can help Dont imagine however that I am converted exactly—Pg 581but only that I am more interested and stimulated than I have been for years And dont expect me for Christmas I shall stay here
New Years Day
I am writing from the library of the New Brotherhood The amount of activity social educational religious of which this great building promises to be the centre is already astonishing Everything of course including the constitution of the infant society is as yet purely tentative and experimental But for a scheme so young things are falling into working order with wonderful rapidity Each department is worked by committees under the central council Elsmere of course is exofficio chairman of a large proportion Wardlaw Mackay I and a few other fellows run the rest for the present But each committee contains workingmen and it is the object of everybody concerned to make the workman element more and more real and efficient What with the tax on the members which was fixed by a general meeting and the contributions from outside the society already commands a fair income But Elsmere is anxious not to attempt too much at once and will go slowly and train his workers
Music it seems is to be a great feature in the future I have my own projects as to this part of the business which however I forbid you to guess at
By the rules of the Brotherhood every member is bound to some work in connection with it during the year but little or much as he or she is able And every meeting every undertaking of whatever kind opens with the special word or formula of the society This do in remembrance of Me
January 6
Besides the Sunday lectures Elsmere is pegging away on Saturday evenings at The History of the Moral Life in Man It is a remarkable course and very largely attended by people of all sorts He tries to make it an exposition of the leading principles of the new movement of that continuous and only revelation of God in life and nature which is in reality the basis of his whole thought By the way the letters that are pouring in upon him from all parts are extraordinary They show an amount and degree of interest in ideas of the kind which are surprising to a Laodicean like me But he is not surprised—says he always expected it—and that there are thousands who only want a rallyingpoint
His personal effect the love that is felt for him the passion and energy of the nature—never has our generation seen anything to equal it As you perceive I am reduced to taking it all seriously and dont know what to make of him or myself
She poor soul is now always with him comes down with him day after day and works away She no more believes inPg 582 his ideas I think than she ever did but all her antagonism is gone In the midst of the stir about him her face often haunts me It has changed lately she is no longer a young woman but so refined so spiritual
But he is ailing and fragile There is the one cloud on a scene that fills me with increasing wonder and reverence
CHAPTER L
One cold Sunday afternoon in January Flaxman descending the steps of the New Brotherhood was overtaken by a young Dr Edmondson an able young physician just set up for himself as a consultant who had only lately attached himself to Elsmere and was now helping him with eagerness to organise a dispensary Young Edmondson and Flaxman exchanged a few words on Elsmeres lecture and then the doctor said abruptly—
I dont like his looks nor his voice How long has he been hoarse like that
More or less for the last month He is very much worried by it himself and talks of clergymans throat He had a touch of it it appears once in the country
Clergymans throat Edmondson shook his head dubiously It may be I wish he would let me overhaul him
I wish he would said Flaxman devoutly I will see what I can do I will get hold of Mrs Elsmere
Meanwhile Robert and Catherine had driven home together As they entered the study she caught his hands a suppressed and exquisite passion gleaming in her face
You did not explain Him You never will
He stood held by her his gaze meeting hers Then in an instant his face changed blanched before her—he seemed to gasp for breath—she was only just able to save him from falling It was apparently another swoon of exhaustion As she knelt beside him on the floor having done for him all she could watching his return to consciousness Catherines look would have terrified any of those who loved her There are some natures which are never blind never taken blissfully unawares and which taste calamity and grief to the very dregs
Robert tomorrow you will see a doctor she implored him when at last he was safely in bed—white but smiling
He nodded
Send for Edmondson What I mind most is this hoarseness he said in a voice that was little more than a tremulous whisper
Catherine hardly closed her eyes all night The room the house seemed to her stifling oppressive like a grave And byPg 583 ill luck with the morning came a long expected letter not indeed from the squire but about the squire Robert had been for some time expecting a summons to Murewell The squire had written to him last in October from Clarens on the Lake of Geneva Since then weeks had passed without bringing Elsmere any news of him at all Meanwhile the growth of the New Brotherhood had absorbed its founder so that the inquiries which should have been sent to Murewell had been postponed The letter which reached him now was from old Meyrick The squire has had another bad attack and is much weaker But his mind is clear again and he greatly desires to see you If you can come tomorrow
His mind is clear again Horrified by the words and by the images they called up remorseful also for his own long silence Robert sprang up from bed where the letter had been brought to him and presently appeared downstairs where Catherine believing him safely captive for the morning was going through some household business
I must go I must go he said as he handed her the letter Meyrick puts it cautiously but it may be the end
Catherine looked at him in despair
Robert you are like a ghost yourself and I have sent for Dr Edmondson
Put him off till the day after tomorrow Dear little wife listen my voice is ever so much better Murewell air will do me good She turned away to hide the tears in her eyes Then she tried fresh persuasions but it was useless His look was glowing and restless She saw he felt it a call impossible to disobey A telegram was sent to Edmondson and Robert drove off to Waterloo
Out of the fog of London it was a mild sunny winters day Robert breathed more freely with every mile His eyes took note of every landmark in the familiar journey with a thirsty eagerness It was a year and a half since he had travelled it He forgot his weakness the exhausting pressure and publicity of his new work The past possessed him thrust out the present Surely he had been up to London for the day and was going back to Catherine
At the station he hailed an old friend among the cabmen
Take me to the corner of the Murewell lane Tom Then you may drive on my bag to the Hall and I shall walk over the common
The man urged on his tottering old steed with a will In the streets of the little town Robert saw several acquaintances who stopped and stared at the apparition Were the houses the people real or was it all a hallucination—his flight and his return so unthought of yesterday so easy and swift today
By the time they were out on the wild ground between the market town and Murewell Roberts spirits were as buoyant as thistledown He and the driver kept up an incessant gossipPg 584 over the neighbourhood and he jumped down from the carriage as the man stopped with the alacrity of a boy
Go on Tom see if I am not there as soon as you
Looks most uncommon bad the man muttered to himself as his horse shambled off Seems as spry as a lark all the same
Why the gorse was out positively out in January and the thrushes were singing as though it were March Robert stopped opposite a bush covered with timid halfopened blooms and thought he had seen nothing so beautiful since he had last trodden that road in spring Presently he was in the same carttrack he had crossed on the night of his confession to Catherine he lingered beside the same solitary fir on the brink of the ridge A winter world lay before him soft brown woodland or reddish heath and fern struck sideways by the sun clothing the earths bareness everywhere—curling mists—blue points of distant hill—a gray luminous depth of sky
The eyes were moist the lips moved There in the place of his old anguish he stood and blessed God—not for any personal happiness but simply for that communication of Himself which may make every hour of common living a revelation
Twenty minutes later leaving the park gate to his left he hurried up the lane leading to the vicarage One look he might not be able to leave the squire later The gate of the woodpath was ajar Surely just inside it he should find Catherine in her garden hat the whitefrocked child dragging behind her And there was the square stone house the brown cornfield the redbrown woods Why what had the man been doing with the study White blinds showed it was a bedroom now Vandal Besides how could the boys have free access except to that groundfloor room And all that pretty stretch of grass under the acacia had been cut up into stiff little lozengeshaped beds filled he supposed in summer with the properest geraniums He should never dare to tell that to Catherine
He stood and watched the little significant signs of change in this realm which had been once his own with a dissatisfied mouth his undermind filled the while with tempestuous yearning and affection In that upper room he had lain through that agonised night of crisis the dawntwitterings of the summer birds seemed to be still in his ears And there in the distance was the blue wreath of smoke hanging over Mile End Ah the new cottages must be warm this winter The children did not lie in the wet any longer—thank God Was there time just to run down to Irwins cottage to have a look at the Institute
He had been standing on the farther side of the road from the rectory that he might not seem to be spying out the land and his successors ways too closely Suddenly he found himself clinging to a gate near him that led into a field He was shaken by a horrible struggle for breath The self seemed to be foundering in a stifling sea and fought like a drowning thingPg 585 When the moment passed he looked round him bewildered drawing his hand across his eyes The world had grown black—the sun seemed to be scarcely shining Were those the sounds of childrens voices on the hill the rumbling of a cart—or was it all sight and sound alike mirage and delirium
With difficulty leaning on his stick as though he were a man of seventy he groped his way back to the Park There he sank down still gasping among the roots of one of the great cedars near the gate After a while the attack passed off and he found himself able to walk on But the joy the leaping pulse of half an hour ago were gone from his veins Was that the river—the house He looked at them with dull eyes All the light was lowered A veil seemed to lie between him and the familiar things
However by the time he reached the door of the Hall will and nature had reasserted themselves and he knew where he was and what he had to do
Vincent flung the door open with his old lordly air
Why sir Mr Elsmere
The butlers voice began on a note of joyful surprise sliding at once into one of alarm He stood and stared at this ghost of the old rector
Elsmere grasped his hand and asked him to take him into the diningroom and give him some wine before announcing him Vincent ministered to him with a long face pressing all the alcoholic resources of the Hall upon him in turn The squire was much better he declared and had been carried down to the library
But lor sir there aint much to be said for your looks neither—seems as if London didnt suit you sir
Elsmere explained feebly that he had been suffering from his throat and had overtired himself by walking over the common Then recognising from a distorted vision of himself in a Venetian mirror hanging by that something of his natural colour had returned to him he rose and bade Vincent announce him
And Mrs Darcy he asked as they stepped out into the hall again
Oh Mrs Darcy sir shes very well said the man but as it seemed to Robert with something of an embarrassed air
He followed Vincent down the long passage—haunted by old memories by the old sickening sense of mental anguish—to the curtained door Vincent ushered him in There was a stir of feet and a voice but at first he saw nothing The room was very much darkened Then Meyrick emerged into distinctness
Squire here is Mr Elsmere Well Mr Elsmere sir Im sure were very much obliged to you for meeting the squires wishes so promptly Youll find him poorly Mr Elsmere but mending—oh yes mending sir—no doubt of it
Pg 586
Elsmere began to perceive a figure by the fire A bony hand was advanced to him out of the gloom
Thatll do Meyrick You wont be wanted till the evening
The imperious note in the voice struck Robert with a sudden sense of relief After all the squire was still capable of trampling on Meyrick
In another minute the door had closed on the old doctor and the two men were alone Robert was beginning to get used to the dim light Out of it the squires face gleamed almost as whitely as the tortured marble of the Medusa just above their heads
Its some inflammation in the eyes the squire explained briefly thats made Meyrick set up all this d—d business of blinds and shutters I dont mean to stand it much longer The eyes are better and I prefer to see my way out of the world if possible
But you are recovering Robert said laying his hand affectionately on the old mans knee
I have added to my knowledge said the squire drily Like Heine I am qualified to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth And I am not in bed which I was last week For Heavens sake dont ask questions If there is a loathsome subject on earth it is the subject of the human body Well I suppose my message to you dragged you away from a thousand things you had rather be doing What are you so hoarse for Neglecting yourself as usual for the sake of the people who wouldnt even subscribe to bury you Have you been working up the Apocrypha as I recommended you last time we met
Robert smiled
For the last four months Squire I have been doing two things with neither of which had you much sympathy in old days—holidaymaking and slumming
Oh I remember interrupted the squire hastily I was low last week and read the Church papers by way of a counterirritant You have been starting a new religion I see A new religion Humph
The great head fell forward and through the dusk Robert caught the sarcastic gleam of the eyes
You are hardly the man to deny he said undisturbed that the old ones laissent à désirer
Because there are old abuses is that any reason why you should go and set up a brandnew one—an ugly anachronism besides retorted the squire However you and I have no common ground—never had I say know you say feel Where is the difference after all between you and any charlatan of the lot Well how is Madame de Netteville
I have not seen her for six months Robert replied with equal abruptness
The squire laughed a little under his breath
Pg 587
What did you think of her
Very much what you told me to think—intellectually replied Robert facing him but flushing with the readiness of physical delicacy
Well I certainly never told you to think anything—morally said the squire The word moral has no relation to her Whom did you see there
The catechism was naturally most distasteful to its object but Elsmere went through with it the squire watching him for a while with an expression which had a spark of malice in it It is not unlikely that some gossip of the Lady Aubrey sort had reached him Elsmere had always seemed to him oppressively good The idea that Madame de Netteville had tried her arts upon him was not without its piquancy
But while Robert was answering a question he was aware of a subtle change in the squires attitude—a relaxation of his own sense of tension After a minute he bent forward peering through the darkness The squires head had fallen back his mouth was slightly open and the breath came lightly quiveringly through The cynic of a moment ago had dropped suddenly into a sleep of more than childish weakness and defencelessness
Robert remained bending forward gazing at the man who had once meant so much to him
Strange white face sunk in the great chair Behind it glimmered the Donatello figure and the divine Hermes a glorious shape in the dusk looking scorn on human decrepitude All round spread the dim walls of books The life they had nourished was dropping into the abyss out of ken—they remained Sixty years of effort and slavery to end so—a river lost in the sands
Old Meyrick stole in again and stood looking at the sleeping squire
A bad sign a bad sign he said and shook his head mournfully
After he had made an effort to take some food which Vincent pressed upon him Robert conscious of a stronger physical malaise than had ever yet tormented him was crossing the hall again when he suddenly saw Mrs Darcy at the door of a room which opened into the hall He went up to her with a warm greeting
Are you going in to the squire Let us go together
She looked at him with no surprise as though she had seen him the day before and as he spoke she retreated a step into the room behind her a curious film so it seemed to him darkening her small gray eyes
The squire is not here He is gone away Have you seen my white mice Oh they are such darlings Only one of them is ill and they wont let me have the doctor
Her voice sank into the most pitiful plaintiveness ShePg 588 stood in the middle of the room pointing with an elfish finger to a large cage of white mice which stood in the window The room seemed full besides of other creatures Robert stood rooted looking at the tiny withered figure in the black dress its snowy hair and diminutive face swathed in lace with a perplexity into which there slipped an involuntary shiver Suddenly he became aware of a woman by the fire a decent stronglooking body in gray who rose as his look turned to her Their eyes met her expression and the little jerk of her head towards Mrs Darcy who was now standing by the cage coaxing the mice with the weirdest gestures were enough Robert turned and went out sick at heart The careful exquisite beauty of the great hall struck him as something mocking and antihuman
No one else in the house said a word to him of Mrs Darcy In the evening the squire talked much at intervals but in another key He insisted on a certain amount of light and leaning on Roberts arm went feebly round the bookshelves He took out one of the volumes of the Fathers that Newman had given him
When I think of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish he said his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively and of the other hours I maundered away in services and selfexamination Thank Heaven however the germ of revolt and sanity was always there And when once I got to it I learnt my lesson pretty quick
Robert paused his kind inquiring eyes looking down on the shrunken squire
Oh not one you have any chance of learning my good friend said the other aggressively And after all its simple Go to your grave with your eyes open—thats all But men dont learn it somehow Newman was incapable—so are you All the religions are nothing but so many vulgar anæsthetics which only the few have courage to refuse
Do you want me to contradict you said Robert smiling I am quite ready
The squire took no notice Presently when he was in his chair again he said abruptly pointing to a mahogany bureau in the window The book is all there—both parts first and second Publish it if you please If not throw it into the fire Both are equally indifferent to me It has done its work it has helped me through half a century of living
It shall be to me a sacred trust said Elsmere with emotion Of course if you dont publish it I shall publish it
As you please Well then if you have nothing more rational to tell me about tell me of this ridiculous Brotherhood of yours
Robert so adjured began to talk but with difficulty The words would not flow and it was almost a relief when in the middle that strange creeping sleep overtook the squire again
Pg 589
Meyrick who was staying in the house and who had been coming in and out through the evening eyeing Elsmere now that there was more light on the scene with almost as much anxiety and misgiving as the squire was summoned The squire was put into his carryingchair Vincent and a male attendant appeared and he was borne to his room Meyrick peremptorily refusing to allow Robert to lend so much as a finger to the performance They took him up the library stairs through the empty bookrooms and that dreary room which had been his fathers and so into his own By the time they set him down he was quite awake and conscious again
It cant be said that I follow my own precepts he said to Robert grimly as they put him down Not much of the open eye about this I shall sleep myself into the unknown as sweetly as any saint in the calendar
Robert was going when the squire called him back
Youll stay tomorrow Elsmere
Of course if you wish it
The wrinkled eyes fixed him intently
Why did you ever go
As I told you before Squire because there was nothing else for an honest man to do
The squire turned round with a frown
What the deuce are you dawdling about Benson Give me my stick and get me out of this
By midnight all was still in the vast pile of Murewell Outside the night was slightly frosty A clear moon shone over the sloping reaches of the park the trees shone silverly in the cold light their black shadows cast along the grass Robert found himself quartered in the Stuart room where James II had slept and where the tartan hangings of the ponderous carved bed and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls and ceilings untouched for two hundred years bore witness to the loyal preparations made by some bygone Wendover He was mortally tired but by way of distracting his thoughts a little from the squire and that other tragedy which the great house sheltered somewhere in its walls he took from his coatpocket a French Anthologie which had been Catherines birthday gift to him and read a little before he fell asleep
Then he slept profoundly—the sleep of exhaustion Suddenly he found himself sitting up in bed his heart beating to suffocation strange noises in his ears
A cry Help resounded through the wide empty galleries
He flung on his dressinggown and ran out in the direction of the squires room
The hideous cries and scuffling grew more apparent as he reached it At that moment Benson the man who had helped to carry the squire ran up
My God sir he said deadly white another attack
The squires room was empty but the door into the lumberPg 590room adjoining it was open and the stifled sounds came through it
They rushed in and found Meyrick struggling in the grip of a white figure that seemed to have the face of a fiend and the grip of a tiger Those old bloodshot eyes—those wrinkled hands on the throat of the doctor—horrible
They released poor Meyrick who staggered bleeding into the squires room Then Robert and Benson got the squire back by main force The whole face was convulsed the poor shrunken limbs rigid as iron Meyrick who was sitting gasping by a superhuman effort of will mastered himself enough to give directions for a strong opiate Benson managed to control the madman while Robert found it Then between them they got it swallowed
But nature had been too quick for them Before the opiate could have had time to work the squire shrank together like a puppet of which the threads are loosened and fell heavily sideways out of his captors hands on to the bed They laid him there tenderly covering him from the January cold The swollen eyelids fell leaving just a thread of white visible underneath the clenched hands slowly relaxed the loud breathing seemed to be the breathing of death
Meyrick whose wound on the head had been hastily bound up threw himself beside the bed The nightlight beyond cast a grotesque shadow of him on the wall emphasising as though in mockery the long straight back the ragged whiskers the strange ends and horns of the bandage But the passion in the old face was as purely tragic as any that ever spoke through the lips of an Antigone or a Gloucester
The last—the last he said choked the tears falling down his lined cheeks on to the squires hand He can never rally from this And I was fool enough to think yesterday I had pulled him through
Again a long gaze of inarticulate grief then he looked up at Robert
He wouldnt have Benson tonight I slept in the next room with the door ajar A few minutes ago I heard him moving I was up in an instant and found him standing by that door peering through barefooted a wind like ice coming up He looked at me frowning all in a flame My father he said—my father—he went that way—what do you want here Keep back I threw myself on him he had something sharp which scratched me on the temple I got that away from him but it was his hands—and the old man shuddered I thought they would have done for me before any one could hear and that then he would kill himself as his father did
Again he hung over the figure on the bed—his own withered hand stroking that of the squire with a yearning affection
When was the last attack asked Robert sadly
A month ago sir just after they got back Ah Mr ElsmerePg 591 he suffered And hes been so lonely No one to cheer him no one to please him with his food—to put his cushions right—to coax him up a bit and that—and his poor sister too always there before his eyes Of course he would stand to it he liked to be alone But Ill never believe men are made so unlike one to the other The Almighty meant a man to have a wife or a child about him when he comes to the last He missed you sir when you went away Not that hed say a word but he moped His books didnt seem to please him nor anything else Ive just broke my heart over him this last year
There was silence a moment in the big room hung round with the shapes of bygone Wendovers The opiate had taken effect The squires countenance was no longer convulsed The great brow was calm a more than common dignity and peace spoke from the long peaked face Robert bent over him The madman the cynic had passed away the dying scholar and thinker lay before him
Will he rally he asked under his breath
Meyrick shook his head
I doubt it It has exhausted all the strength he had left The heart is failing rapidly I think he will sleep away And Mr Elsmere you go—go and sleep Benson and Ill watch Oh my scratch is nothing sir Im used to a roughandtumble life But you go If theres a change well wake you
Elsmere bent down and kissed the squires forehead tenderly as a son might have done By this time he himself could hardly stand He crept away to his own room his nerves still quivering with the terror of that sudden waking the horror of that struggle
It was impossible to sleep The moon was at the full outside He drew back the curtains made up the fire and wrapping himself in a fur coat which Flaxman had lately forced upon him sat where he could see the moonlit park and still be within the range of the blaze
As the excitement passed away a reaction of feverish weakness set in The strangest whirlwind of thoughts fled through him in the darkness suggested very often by the figures on the seventeenthcentury tapestry which lined the walls Were those the trees in the woodpath Surely that was Catherines figure trailing—and that dome—strange Was he still walking in Greys funeral procession the Oxford buildings looking sadly down Death here Death there Death everywhere yawning under life from the beginning The veil which hides the common abyss in sight of which men could not always hold themselves and live is rent asunder and he looks shuddering into it
Then the image changed and in its stead that old familiar image of the river of Death took possession of him He stood himself on the brink on the other side were Grey and the squire But he felt no pang of separation of pain for he himPg 592self was just about to cross and join them And during a strange brief lull of feeling the mind harboured image and expectation alike with perfect calm
Then the feverspell broke—the brain cleared—and he was terribly himself again Whence came it—this fresh inexorable consciousness He tried to repel it to forget himself to cling blindly without thought to Gods love and Catherines But the anguish mounted fast On the one hand this fastgrowing certainty urging and penetrating through every nerve and fibre of the shaken frame on the other the ideal fabric of his efforts and his dreams the New Jerusalem of a regenerate faith the poor the loving and the simple walking therein
My God my God no time no future
In his misery he moved to the uncovered window and stood looking through it seeing and not seeing Outside the river just filmed with ice shone under the moon over it bent the trees laden with hoarfrost Was that a heron rising for an instant beyond the bridge in the unearthly blue
And quietly—heavily—like an irrevocable sentence there came breathed to him as it were from that winter cold and loneliness words that he had read an hour or two before in the little red book beside his hand—words in which the gayest of French poets has fixed as though by accident the most tragic of all human cries—
Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées
He sank on his knees wrestling with himself and with the bitter longing for life and the same words rang through him deafening every cry but their own
Quittez—quittez—le long espoir et les vastes pensées
CHAPTER LI
There is little more to tell The man who had lived so fast was no long time dying The eager soul was swift in this as in all else
The day after Elsmeres return from Murewell where he left the squire still alive the telegram announcing the death reached Bedford Square a few hours after Roberts arrival Edmondson came up to see him and examine him He discovered tubercular disease of the larynx which begins with slight hoarseness and weakness and develops into one of the most rapid forms of phthisis In his opinion it had been originally set up by the effects of the chill at Petites Dalles acting upon a constitution never strong and at that moment peculiarly susceptible to mischief And of course the speaking and preaching of the last four months had done enormous harm
It was with great outward composure that Elsmere receivedPg 593 his arrêt de mort at the hands of the young doctor who announced the result of his examination with a hesitating lip and a voice which struggled in vain to preserve its professional calm He knew too much of medicine himself to be deceived by Edmondsons optimist remarks as to the possible effect of a warm climate like Algiers on his condition He sat down resting his head on his hands a moment then wringing Edmondsons hand he went out feebly to find his wife
Catherine had been waiting in the diningroom her whole soul one dry tense misery She stood looking out of the window taking curious heed of a Jewish wedding that was going on in the square of the preposterous bouquets of the coachman and the gaping circle of errandboys How pinched the bride looked in the north wind
When the door opened and Catherine saw her husband come in—her young husband to whom she had been married not yet four years—with that indescribable look in the eyes which seemed to divine and confirm all those terrors which had been shaking her during her agonised waiting there followed a moment between them which words cannot render When it ended—that halfarticulate convulsion of love and anguish—she found herself sitting on the sofa beside him his head on her breast his hand clasping hers
Do you wish me to go Catherine he asked her gently—to Algiers
Her eyes implored for her
Then I will he said but with a long sigh It will only prolong it two months he thought and does one not owe it to the people for whom one has tried to live to make a brave end among them Ah no no those two months are hers
So without any outward resistance he let the necessary preparations be made It wrung his heart to go but he could not wring hers by staying
After his interview with Robert and his further interview with Catherine to whom he gave the most minute recommendations and directions with a reverent gentleness which seemed to make the true state of the case more ghastly plain to the wife than ever Edmondson went off to Flaxman
Flaxman heard his news with horror
A bad case you say—advanced
A bad case Edmondson repeated gloomily He has been fighting against it too long under that absurd delusion of clergymans throat If only men would not insist upon being their own doctors And of course that going down to Murewell the other day was madness I shall go with him to Algiers and probably stay a week or two To think of that life that career cut short This is a queer sort of world
When Flaxman went over to Bedford Square in the afternoon he went like a man going himself to execution In the hall he met Catherine
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You have seen Dr Edmondson she asked pale and still except for a little nervous quivering of the lip
He stooped and kissed her hand
Yes He says he goes with you to Algiers I will come after if you will have me The climate may do wonders
She looked at him with the most heartrending of smiles
Will you go in to Robert He is in the study
He went in trepidation and found Robert lying tucked up on the sofa apparently reading
Dont—dont old fellow he said affectionately as Flaxman almost broke down It comes to all of us sooner or later Whenever it comes we think it too soon I believe I have been sure of it for some time We are such strange creatures It has been so present to me lately that life was too good to last You remember the sort of feeling one used to have as a child about some treat in the distance—that it was too much joy—that something was sure to come between you and it Well in a sense I have had my joy the firstfruits of it at least
But as he threw his arms behind his head leaning back on them Flaxman saw the eyes darken and the naïve boyish mouth contract and knew that under all these brave words there was a heart which hungered
How strange Robert went on reflectively yesterday I was travelling walking like other men a member of society Today I am an invalid in the true sense a man no longer The world has done with me a barrier I shall never recross has sprung up between me and it—Flaxman tonight is the storytelling Will you read to them I have the book here prepared—some scenes from David Copperfield And you will tell them
A hard task but Flaxman undertook it Never did he forget the scene Some ominous rumour had spread and the New Brotherhood was besieged Impossible to give the reading A hall full of strained upturned faced listened to Flaxmans announcement and to Elsmeres messages of cheer and exhortation and then a wild wave of grief spread through the place The street outside was blocked men looking dismally into each others eyes women weeping children sobbing for sympathy all feeling themselves at once shelterless and forsaken When Elsmere heard the news of it he turned on his face and asked even Catherine to leave him for a while
The preparations were pushed on The New Brotherhood had just become the subject of an animated discussion in the press and London was touched by the news of its young founders breakdown Catherine found herself besieged by offers of help of various kinds One offer Flaxman persuaded her to accept It was the loan of a villa at El Biar on the hill above Algiers belonging to a connection of his own A resident on the spot was to take all trouble off their hands they were to find servants ready for them and every comfort
Pg 595
Catherine made every arrangement met every kindness with a selfreliant calm that never failed But it seemed to Flaxman that her heart was broken—that half of her in feeling was already on the other side of this horror which stared them all in the face Was it his perception of it which stirred Robert after a while to a greater hopefulness of speech a constant bright dwelling on the flowery sunshine for which they were about to exchange the fog and cold of London The momentary revival of energy was more pitiful to Flaxman than his first quiet resignation
He himself wrote every day to Rose Strange loveletters in which the feeling that could not be avowed ran as a fiery undercurrent through all the sad brotherly record of the invalids doings and prospects There was deep trouble in Long Whindale Mrs Leyburn was tearful and hysterical and wished to rush off to town to see Catherine Agnes wrote in distress that her mother was quite unfit to travel showing her own inner conviction too that the poor thing would only be an extra burden on the Elsmeres if the journey were achieved Rose wrote asking to be allowed to go with them to Algiers and after a little consultation it was so arranged Mrs Leyburn being tenderly persuaded Robert himself writing to stay where she was
The morning after the interview with Edmondson Robert sent for Murray Edwardes They were closeted together for nearly an hour Edwardes came out with the look of one who has been lifted into heavenly places
I thank God he said to Catherine with deep emotion that I ever knew him I pray that I may be found worthy to carry out my pledges to him
When Catherine went into the study she found Robert gazing into the fire with dreamy eyes He started and looked up to her with a smile
Murray Edwardes has promised himself heart and soul to the work If necessary he will give up his chapel to carry it on But we hope it will be possible to work them together What a brick he is What a blessed chance it was that took me to that breakfast party at Flaxmans
The rest of the time before departure he spent almost entirely in consultation and arrangement with Edwardes It was terrible how rapidly worse he seemed to grow directly the situation had declared itself and the determination not to be ill had been perforce overthrown But his struggle against breathlessness and weakness and all the other symptoms of his state during these last days was heroic On the last day of all by his own persistent wish a certain number of members of the Brotherhood came to say goodbye to him They came in one by one Macdonald first The old Scotchman from the height of his sixty years of tough weatherbeaten manhood looked down on Robert with a fatherly concern
Pg 596
Eh Mister Elsmere but its a fine place yur gawin tu they say Yell do weel there sir—yell do weel And as for the wark sir well keep it oop—well not let the Deil mak hay o it if we knaws it—the auld leer he added with a phraseology which did more honour to the Calvinism of his blood than the philosophy of his training
Lestrange came in with a pale sharp face and said little in his ten minutes But Robert divined in him a sort of repressed curiosity and excitement akin to that of Voltaire turning his feverish eyes towards le grand secret You who preached to us that consciousness and God and the soul are the only realities—are you so sure of it now you are dying as you were in health Are your courage your certainty what they were These were the sort of questions that seemed to underlie the mans spoken words
There was something trying in it but Robert did his best to put aside his consciousness of it He thanked him for his help in the past and implored him to stand by the young society and Mr Edwardes
I shall hardly come back Lestrange But what does one man matter One soldier falls another presses forward
The watchmaker rose then paused a moment a flush passing over him
We cant stand without you he said abruptly then seeing Roberts look of distress he seemed to cast about for something reassuring to say but could find nothing Robert at last held out his hand with a smile and he went He left Elsmere struggling with a pang of horrible depression In reality there was no man who worked harder at the New Brotherhood during the months that followed than Lestrange He worked under perpetual protest from the frondeur within him but something stung him on—on—till a habit had been formed which promises to be the joy and salvation of his later life Was it the haunting memory of that thin figure—the hand clinging to the chair—the white appealing look
Others came and went till Catherine trembled for the consequences She herself took in Mrs Richards and her children comforting the sobbing creatures afterwards with a calmness born of her own despair Robson in the last stage himself sent him a grimly characteristic message I shall solve the riddle sir before you The doctor gives me three days For the first time in my life I shall know what you are still guessing at May the blessing of one who never blessed thing or creature before he saw you go with you
After it all Robert sank on the sofa with a groan
No more he said hoarsely—no more Now for air—the sea Tomorrow wife tomorrow Cras ingens iterabimus æquor Ah me I leave my new Salamis behind
But on that last evening he insisted on writing letters to Langham and Newcome
Pg 597
I will spare Langham the sight of me he said smiling sadly And I will spare myself the sight of Newcome—I could not bear it I think But I must say goodbye—for I love them both
Next day two hours after the Elsmeres had left for Dover a cab drove up to their house in Bedford Square and Newcome descended from it Gone sir two hours ago said the housemaid and the priest turned away with an involuntary gesture of despair To his dying day the passionate heart bore the burden of that too late believing that even at the eleventh hour Elsmere would have been granted to his prayers He might even have followed them but that a great retreat for clergy he was just on the point of conducting made it impossible
Flaxman went down with them to Dover Rose in the midst of all her new and womanly care for her sister and Robert was very sweet to him In any other circumstances he told himself he could easily have broken down the flimsy barrier between them but in those last twentyfour hours he could press no claim of his own
When the steamer cast loose the girl hanging over the side stood watching the tall figure on the pier against the gray January sky Catherine caught her look and attitude and could have cried aloud in her own gnawing pain
Flaxman got a cheery letter from Edmondson describing their arrival Their journey had gone well even the odious passage from Marseilles had been tolerable little Mary had proved a model traveller the villa was luxurious the weather good
I have got rooms close by them in the ViceConsuls cottage wrote Edmondson Imagine within sixty hours of leaving London in a January fog finding yourself tramping over wild marigolds and mignonette under a sky and through an air as balmy as those of an English June—when an English June behaves itself Elsmeres room overlooks the bay the great plain of the Metidja dotted with villages and the grand range of the Djurjura backed by snowy summits one can hardly tell from the clouds His spirits are marvellous He is plunged in the history of Algiers raving about one Fromentin learning Spanish even The wonderful purity and warmth of the air seem to have relieved the larynx greatly He breathes and speaks much more easily than when we left London I sometimes feel when I look at him as though in this as in all else he were unlike the common sons of men—as though to him it might be possible to subdue even this fell disease
Elsmere himself wrote—
I had not heard the half—O Flaxman An enchanted land—air sun warmth roses orange blossom new potatoes green peas veiled Eastern beauties domed mosques and preaching Mahdis—everything that feeds the outer and the inner man To throw the window open at waking to the depth of sunlit airPg 598 between us and the curve of the bay is for the moment heaven Ones soul seems to escape one to pour itself into the luminous blue of the morning I am better—I breathe again
Mary flourishes exceedingly She lives mostly on oranges and has been adopted by sixty nuns who inhabit the convent over the way and sell us the most delicious butter and cream I imagine if she were a trifle older her mother would hardly view the proceedings of these dear berosaried women with so much equanimity
As for Rose she writes more letters than Clarissa and receives more than an editor of the Times I have the strongest views as you know as to the vanity of letterwriting There was a time when you shared them but there are circumstances and conjunctures alas in which no man can be sure of his friend or his friends principles Kind friend good fellow go often to Elgood Street Tell me everything about everybody It is possible after all that I may live to come back to them
But a week later alas the letters fell into a very different strain The weather had changed had turned indeed damp and rainy the natives of course declaring that such gloom and storm in January had never been known before Edmondson wrote in discouragement Elsmere had had a touch of cold had been confined to bed and almost speechless His letter was full of medical detail from which Flaxman gathered that in spite of the rally of the first ten days it was clear that the disease was attacking constantly fresh tissue He is very depressed too said Edmondson I have never seen him so yet He sits and looks at us in the evening sometimes with eyes that wring ones heart It is as though after having for a moment allowed himself to hope he found it a doubly hard task to submit
Ah that depression It was the last eclipse through which a radiant soul was called to pass but while it lasted it was black indeed The implacable reality obscured at first by the emotion and excitement of farewells and then by a brief spring of hope and returning vigour showed itself now in all its stern nakedness—sat down as it were eye to eye with Elsmere—immovable ineluctable There were certain features of the disease itself which were specially trying to such a nature The long silences it enforced were so unlike him seemed already to withdraw him so pitifully from their yearning grasp In these dark days he would sit crouching over the wood fire in the little salon or lie drawn to the window looking out on the rainstorms bowing the ilexes or scattering the meshes of clematis silent almost always gentle but turning sometimes on Catherine or on Mary playing at his feet eyes which as Edmondson said wrung the heart
But in reality under the husbands depression and under the wifes inexhaustible devotion a combat was going on which reached no third person but was throughout poignant and tragic to the highest degree Catherine was making her lastPg 599 effort Robert his last stand As we know ever since that passionate submission of the wife which had thrown her morally at her husbands feet there had lingered at the bottom of her heart one last supreme hope All persons of the older Christian type attribute a special importance to the moment of death While the man of science looks forward to his last hour as a moment of certain intellectual weakness and calmly warns his friends beforehand that he is to be judged by the utterances of health and not by those of physical collapse the Christian believes that on the confines of eternity the veil of flesh shrouding the soul grows thin and transparent and that the glories and the truths of Heaven are visible with a special clearness and authority to the dying It was for this moment either in herself or in him that Catherines unconquerable faith had been patiently and dumbly waiting Either she would go first and death would wing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not their own or when he came to leave her the veil of doubt would fall away perforce from a spirit as pure as it was humble and the eternal light the light of the Crucified shine through
Probably if there had been no breach in Roberts serenity Catherines poor last effort would have been much feebler briefer more hesitating But when she saw him plunged for a short space in mortal discouragement in a sombreness that as the days went on had its points and crests of feverish irritation her anguished pity came to the help of her creed Robert felt himself besieged driven within the citadel her being urging grappling with his In little halfarticulate words and ways in her attempts to draw him back to some of their old religious books and prayers in those kneeling vigils he often found her maintaining at night beside him he felt a persistent attack which nearly—in his weakness—overthrew him
For reason and thought grow tired like muscles and nerves Some of the greatest and most daring thinkers of the world have felt this pitiful longing to be at one with those who love them at whatever cost before the last farewell And the simpler Christian faith has still to create around it those venerable associations and habits which buttress individual feebleness and diminish the individual effort
One early February morning just before dawn Robert stretched out his hand for his wife and found her kneeling beside him The dim mingled light showed him her face vaguely—her clasped hands her eyes He looked at her in silence she at him there seemed to be a strange shock as of battle between them Then he drew her head down to him
Catherine he said to her in a feeble intense whisper would you leave me without comfort without help at the end
Oh my beloved she cried under her breath throwing her arms round him if you would but stretch out your hand to the true comfort—the true help—the Lamb of God sacrificed for us
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He stroked her hair tenderly
My weakness might yield—my true best self never I know Whom I have believed Oh my darling be content Your misery your prayers hold me back from God—from that truth and that trust which can alone be honestly mine Submit my wife Leave me in Gods hands
She raised her head His eyes were bright with fever his lips trembling his whole look heavenly She bowed herself again with a quiet burst of tears and an indescribable selfabasement They had had their last struggle and once more he had conquered Afterwards the cloud lifted from him Depression and irritation disappeared It seemed to her often as though he lay already on the breast of God even her wifely love grew timid and awestruck
Yet he did not talk much of immortality of reunion It was like a scrupulous child that dares not take for granted more than its father has allowed it to know At the same time it was plain to those about him that the only realities to him in a world of shadows were God—love—the soul
One day he suddenly caught Catherines hands drew her face to him and studied it with his glowing and hollow eyes as though he would draw it into his soul
He made it he said hoarsely as he let her go—this love—this yearning And in life He only makes us yearn that He may satisfy He cannot lead us to the end and disappoint the craving He Himself set in us No no—could you—could I—do it And He the source of love or justice——
Flaxman arrived a few days afterwards Edmondson had started for London the night before leaving Elsmere better again able to drive and even walk a little and well looked after by a local doctor of ability As Flaxman tramping up behind his carriage climbed the long hill to El Biar he saw the whole marvellous place in a white light of beauty—the bay the city the mountains oliveyard and orangegrove drawn in pale tints on luminous air Suddenly at the entrance of a steep and narrow lane he noticed a slight figure standing—a parasol against the sun
We thought you would like to be shown the short cut up the hill said Roses voice strangely demure and shy The man can drive round
A grip of the hand a word to the driver and they were alone in the highwalled lane which was really the old road up the hill before the French brought zigzags and civilisation She gave him news of Robert—better than he had expected Under the influence of one of the natural reactions that wait on illness the girls tone was cheerful and Flaxmans spirits rose They talked of the splendour of the day the discomforts of the steamer the picturesqueness of the landing—of anything and everything but the hidden something which was responsible forPg 601 the dancing brightness in his eyes the occasional swift veiling of her own
Then at an angle of the lane where a little spring ran cool and brown into a mossgrown trough where the blue broke joyously through the gray cloud of olivewood where not a sight or sound was to be heard of all the busy life which hides and nestles along the hill he stopped his hands seizing hers
How long he said flushing his light overcoat falling back from his strong wellmade frame from August to February—how long
No more It was most natural nay inevitable For the moment death stood aside and love asserted itself But this is no place to chronicle what it said
And he had hardly asked and she had hardly yielded before the same misgiving the same shrinking seized on the lovers themselves They sped up the hill they crept into the house far apart It was agreed that neither of them should say a word
But with that extraordinarily quick perception that sometimes goes with such a state as his Elsmere had guessed the position of things before he and Flaxman had been half an hour together He took a boyish pleasure in making his friend confess himself and when Flaxman left him at once sent for Catherine and told her
Catherine coming out afterwards met Flaxman in the little tiled hall How she had aged and blanched She stood a moment opposite to him in her plain long dress with its white collar and cuffs her face working a little
We are so glad she said but almost with a sob—God bless you
And wringing his hand she passed away from him hiding her eyes but without a sound When they met again she was quite selfcontained and bright talking much both with him and Rose about the future
And one little word of Roses must be recorded here for those who have followed her through these four years It was at night when Robert with smiles had driven them out of doors to look at the moon over the bay from the terrace just beyond the windows They had been sitting on the balustrade talking of Elsmere In this nearness to death Rose had lost her mocking ways but she was shy and difficult and Flaxman felt it all very strange and did not venture to woo her much
When all at once he felt her hand steal trembling a little white suppliant into his and her face against his shoulder
You wont—you wont ever be angry with me for making you wait like that It was impertinent—it was like a child playing tricks
Flaxman was deeply shocked by the change in Robert HePg 602 was terribly emaciated They could only talk at rare intervals in the day and it was clear that his nights were often one long struggle for breath But his spirits were extraordinarily even and his days occupied to a point Flaxman could hardly have believed He would creep downstairs at eleven read his English letters among them always some from Elgood Street write his answers to them—those difficult scrawls are among the treasured archives of a society which is fast gathering to itself some of the best life in England—then often fall asleep with fatigue After food there would come a short drive or if the day was very warm an hour or two of sitting outside generally his best time for talking He had a wheeled chair in which Flaxman would take him across to the convent garden—a dream of beauty Overhead an orange canopy—leaf and blossom and golden fruit all in simultaneous perfection underneath a revel of every imaginable flower—narcissus and anemones geraniums and clematis and all about hedges of monthly roses dark red and pale alternately making a roseleaf carpet under their feet Through the treetrunks shone the white sunwarmed convent and far beyond were glimpses of downwardtrending valleys edged by twinkling sea
Here sensitive and receptive to his last hour Elsmere drank in beauty and delight talking too whenever it was possible to him of all things in heaven and earth Then when he came home he would have out his books and fall to some old critical problem—his worn and scored Greek Testament always beside him the quick eye making its way through some new monograph or other the parched lips opening every now and then to call Flaxmans attention to some fresh light on an obscure point—only to relinquish the effort again and again with an unfailing patience
But though he would begin as ardently as ever he could not keep his attention fixed to these things very long Then it would be the turn of his favourite poets—Wordsworth Tennyson Virgil Virgil perhaps most frequently Flaxman would read the Æneid aloud to him Robert following the passages he loved best in a whisper his hand resting the while in Catherines And then Mary would be brought in and he would lie watching her while she played
I have had a letter he said to Flaxman one afternoon from a Broad Church clergyman in the Midlands who imagines me to be still militant in London protesting against the absurd and wasteful isolation of the New Brotherhood He asks me why instead of leaving the Church I did not join the Church Reform Union why I did not attempt to widen the Church from within and why we in Elgood Street are not now in organic connection with the new Broad Church settlement in East London I believe I have written him rather a sharp letter I could not help it It was borne in on me to tell him that it is all owing to him and his brethren that we are in thePg 603 muddle we are in today Miracle is to our time what the law was to the early Christians We must make up our minds about it one way or the other And if we decide to throw it over as Paul threw over the law then we must fight as he did There is no help in subterfuge no help in anything but a perfect sincerity We must come out of it The ground must be cleared then may come the rebuilding Religion itself the peace of generations to come is at stake If we could wait indefinitely while the Church widened well and good But we have but the one life the one chance of saying the word or playing the part assigned us
On another occasion in the convent garden he broke out with—
I often lie here Flaxman wondering at the way in which men become the slaves of some metaphysical word—personality or intelligence or what not What meaning can they have as applied to God Herbert Spencer is quite right We no sooner attempt to define what we mean by a Personal God than we lose ourselves in labyrinths of language and logic But why attempt it at all I like that French saying Quand on me demande ce que cest que Dieu je lignore quand on ne me le demande pas je le sais trèsbien No we cannot realise Him in words—we can only live in Him and die to Him
On another occasion he said speaking to Catherine of the squire and of Meyricks account of his last year of life—
How selfish one is always—when one least thinks it How could I have forgotten him so completely as I did during all that New Brotherhood time Where what is he now Ah if somewhere somehow one could——
He did not finish the sentence but the painful yearning of his look finished it for him
But the days passed on and the voice grew rarer the strength feebler By the beginning of March all coming downstairs was over He was entirely confined to his room almost to his bed Then there came a horrible week when no narcotics took effect when every night was a wrestle for life which it seemed must be the last They had a good nurse but Flaxman and Catherine mostly shared the watching between them
One morning he had just dropped into a fevered sleep Catherine was sitting by the window gazing out into a dawnworld of sun which reminded her of the summer sunrises at Petites Dalles She looked the shadow of herself Spiritually too she was the shadow of herself Her life was no longer her own she lived in him—in every look of those eyes—in every movement of that wasted frame
As she sat there her Bible on her knee her strained unseeing gaze resting on the garden and the sea a sort of hallucination took possession of her It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son of man passing over the misty slope in front of her that the dim majestic figure turned and beckoned In her halfPg 604dream she fell on her knees Master she cried in agony I cannot leave him Call me not My life is here I have no heart—it beats in his
And the figure passed on the beckoning hand dropping at its side She followed it with a sort of anguish but it seemed to her as though mind and body were alike incapable of moving—that she would not if she could Then suddenly a sound from behind startled her She turned her trance shaken off in an instant and saw Robert sitting up in bed
For a moment her lover her husband of the early days was before her—as she ran to him But he did not see her
An ecstasy of joy was on his face the whole man bent forward listening
The childs cry—thank God Oh Meyrick—Catherine—thank God
And she knew that he stood again on the stairs at Murewell in that September night which gave them their firstborn and that he thanked God because her pain was over
An instants strained looking and sinking back into her arms he gave two or three gasping breaths and died
Five days later Flaxman and Rose brought Catherine home It was supposed that she would return to her mother at Burwood Instead she settled down again in London and not one of those whom Robert Elsmere had loved was forgotten by his widow Every Sunday morning with her child beside her she worshipped in the old ways every Sunday afternoon saw her blackveiled figure sitting motionless in a corner of the Elgood Street Hall In the week she gave all her time and money to the various works of charity which he had started But she held her peace Many were grateful to her some loved her none understood her She lived for one hope only and the years passed all too slowly
The New Brotherhood still exists and grows There are many who imagined that as it had been raised out of the earth by Elsmeres genius so it would sink with him Not so He would have fought the struggle to victory with surpassing force with a brilliancy and rapidity none after him could rival But the struggle was not his His effort was but a fraction of the effort of the race In that effort and in the Divine force behind it is our trust as was his
Others I doubt not if not we
The issue of our toils shall see
And they forgotten and unknown
Young children gather as their own
The harvest that the dead had sown