IF YOU WANT TO 
 
 Build a House 
 
 DON'T FAIL TO BUY 
 
 Ogilvie's House Plans. 
 
 J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher, 
 
 P. O. Box 2767. 57 BOSE ST., NEW YORK 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD. 
 
 I 
 
 / 
 
 J. S. OGILVIE, Publisher, 
 $7 Rose Street, New York; 79 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. 
 
Dedicated to the Memory 
 
 OF 
 
 MY TWO FRIENE^.'. - 
 
 Separated, in my thought of them, by much diversity of circumstanc 
 and opinion; linked, in my faith about them, to each 
 other, and to all the shining ones of the 
 past, by the love of God and the 
 service of man: 
 
 THOMAS HILL GREEN 
 (Late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford), 
 Died 26th March, 1882; 
 
 AND 
 
 LAURA OCTAVIA MARY LYTTELTON, 
 Died Easter Eve, 1886. 
 
 i 
 
The person charging this material is rc 
 sponsible for its return on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
 are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
 result in dismissal from the University. 
 University of Illinois Library 
 
 OCT -8 
 
 970 
 
 
 APR 5'! 
 
 373 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 L161— O-1096 
 
A Companion Book to 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE 
 
 Jlas just been Issued Hntitled 
 
 "The World of Cant," 
 
 and is a vigorous story dealing with the shams of 
 the day in religious matters and beliefs. All 
 who read Robert Elsmere " should not fail to 
 read The World of Cant." 400 pages. Paper 
 cover, 50 cents ; bound in cloth, $1.00. Sold by 
 all dealers, or mailed on receipt of price by 
 
 J. S. Ogilvie. 
 
 By Author of Robert Elsmere, 
 
 mU illlllllOl, 
 
 Containing also Gladstone's Criticism on Robert 
 Elsmere. 
 
 Price, 25 cents in Paper Cover ; Cloth, $i.oo. 
 Mailed on receipt of price by J. S. Ogilvie. 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 WESTMORELAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was a brilliant afternoon toward the end of May. 
 The spring had been unusually cold and late, and it was 
 evident from the general aspect of the lonely Westmore- 
 land 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 Hngered 
 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 
 farm-houses sheltered by the crags at the head of the 
 valley and those far-away regions of town and civihzation 
 suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on the 
 southern horizon, was hned with masses of the white heck- 
 berry or bird-cherry, 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 farm-houses, gray roofed and gray 
 walled, 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 L^iig 
 Whmdale is tame and featureless. The hills at the lower 
 part are low and rounded, and the sheep and cattle pasture 
 
4 
 
 ROBERT EL6MERE. 
 
 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 bush-grown hedges of 
 the road, the whole valley looks hke a green map divided by 
 regular lines of grayish black. But as the walker penetrates 
 further, beyond a certain bend which the stream makes 
 half-way from the head of the dale, the hiUs grow steeper, 
 the breadth between them contracts, the inclosure lines are 
 broken and deflected by rocks and patches of plantation, 
 and the few farms stand more boldly and conspicuously for. 
 ward, 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 Kght struck full on a copper beech, which made a 
 welcome patch of warm color in front of a long gray line of 
 outhouses standing level with the house, and touched the heck- 
 berry blossom which marked the upward course of the Httle 
 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 sunk rapidly through a piece of young hazel 
 plantation, at this present moment a sheet of blue-bells, 
 toward 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 splendor and 
 superabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare 
 green valleys there is a sort of dehcate austerity even in the 
 summer; the memory of vv inter seems to be still hngering 
 about these wind-swept fells, about the farm-houses, with their 
 rough serviceable walls, of the same stone as the crags behind 
 them, and the ravines, in which the shrunken becks trickle 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 5 
 
 musically down through the debris of innumerable Decembers. 
 The country is blithe, but soberly blithe. Nature shows herself 
 dehghtf ul to man, but there is nothing absorbing or intoxicat- 
 ing about her. Man is still well able to defend himself against 
 her, to live his own independent life of labor 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 farm-houses 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 old-fashioned 
 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 front inclosures, was trimly 
 laid down in turf dotted with neat flower-beds, full at the 
 moment we are writing of with orderly patches of scarlet and 
 purple anemones, wall-flowers, and pansies. At the side of the 
 house a new bow-window, modest enough in dimensions ana 
 make, had been thrown out on to another close-shaven piece oi 
 lawn, and by its suggestion of a distant sophisticated order o^ 
 things disturbed the homely impressic q left b> the untouched 
 ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wide slate win- 
 dow-sills of the front. And evidently the line of sheds standing 
 level with the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals, 
 the carts, or the tools which make the small capital of a West- 
 moreland 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 graveled 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 center 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 modifi- 
 cations it had undergone, would have been greatly quickened 
 
0 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 by certain sounds which were streaming out on to the evening 
 air from one of the divisions of that long one-storied addition 
 to the main dwelHng we have already described. Some inde- 
 fatigable musician inside^ was practicing the vioHn with sur- 
 prising energy and vigor, and within the httle garden the 
 distant murmur of the river and the gentle breathing of the 
 west v^ind round the fell were entirely conquered and banished 
 by these triumphant shakes and turns, or by the flourishes and 
 the broad cantdbile passages of one of Spohr's Andantes. For 
 awhile, as the sun sunk lower and lower toward 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 hfe 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 west- 
 em boundary of the dale at its higher end, the house door 
 opened, and a young girl, shawled and holding some soft bur- 
 den 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 apple-tree, 
 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 aesthetic blue, a mass of reddish-brown hair flying 
 back from her face, also stepped out into the garden. 
 
 " Agnes!" cried the new-comer, who had the strenuous and 
 disheveled air natural to one just emerged from a long violin 
 practice. ''Has Catherine come back yet ?" 
 
 ''Not that I know of. Do come here and look at pussy; 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, mend- 
 ing my pink dress for to-morrow 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, pussy and I hav4 
 come out for a rest. We've earned it, haven't we, Chattie ? 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 7 
 
 And, as for you, Miss Artistic, I should like to know what you've 
 been doing for the good of your kind since dinner. I suppose 
 you had tea at the vicarage ?" 
 
 The speaker Ufted 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 self-possession. Agues Leyburn was not 
 pretty; the lower part of the face was a httle heavy in outline 
 and molding; 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 even-temperedness in look and tone which 
 had a pleasing effect on the by-stander. 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 smaUest 
 trace of fashion. Her skirts were cut with the most engaging 
 naivete, she w^as much adorned with amber beads, and her 
 red-brown hair had been tortured [ind 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 physi- 
 cally 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 promo- 
 tion depending on it, she has baked so many cakes and put 
 out so many dinner napkins ! I don't envy the young man. 
 She will have no wits left at all to entertain him with. I 
 actually wound up by administering some sal-volatile to her.' 
 
 ''Well, and after the sal-volatile did you get anything co- 
 herent 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. Elsmere's 
 father and his going to college, we had, let me see— the spare- 
 room curtains, the making of them and the cleaning of 
 them, Sarah's idiocy in sticking to her black sheep of a 
 young man, the price of tea when §be married, Mr. Thorn- 
 
8 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 burgh's singular preference of boiled mutton to roast, the poems 
 he had written to her when she was eighteen, and I can't 
 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." 
 
 "Mj ideas about him are not many, " said Agnes, rubbing her 
 cheek gently up and down the purring cat, "and there doesn't 
 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 curi- 
 ous. I can very well wait till to-morrow evening." 
 
 Oh, well, as to ideas about a person, one doesn't 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 cer- 
 tain number of his mother's pecuharities, which seem to be 
 Irish and curious, where his living is, how niuch it is worth, 
 likewise the color 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 per- 
 fections and the aesthetic freedom of her attire. 
 
 Because, my dear, Mrs. Thornburgh at the present mo- 
 ment 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 Eose, deliberately, her delicate cheek flushed 
 with her gymnastics, her eyes sparkling, "there is no saying. 
 ^Propinquity does it '—as Mrs. Thornburgh is always remind- 
 ing us. But where can Cathrine 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 beef -tea." 
 
 Rose frowned a little. 
 
 " And I suppose I ought to have been to the school or to see 
 
ItOBEtiT ELSMfiRE. 
 
 9 
 
 Mrs. Robson, instead of fiddling all the afternoon. I dare say I 
 ought— only, unfortunately, I like my fiddle, and I don't ]ike 
 stulfy 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 haven't been doing anything I don't hke, 
 but I got hold of that dress she brought home to make for httle 
 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 Sun- 
 day. Ah, there is Catherine. I heard the gate." 
 
 As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the 
 clump of trees which sheltered the httle entrance gate, and as 
 Eose sprung to her feet a tall figure in white and gray appeared 
 against the background of the sycamores, and came quickly 
 toward 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 doesn't matter," said Rose, as Catherine put her arm 
 round her shoulder; ''mamma hasn't been fidgeting, and as 
 for Agnes, she looks as if she never wanted to move again." 
 
 Catherine's clear eyes, which at the moment seemed to be 
 full of inward light, kindled in them by some foregoing experi- 
 ence, 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 
 six-and-twenty, 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 mushn 
 * handkerchief which was crossed over her breast. The face, 
 sheltered by the plain shady hat, was also a little spoiled 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 cheek- 
 bones, but the eyes, of a dark, bluish-gray, were fine, the nose 
 delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while the cpi?i- 
 plexion had caught the freshness and purity of Westmoreland 
 air and Westmoreland streams. About face and figure there 
 was a delicate austere charm, something which harmonized 
 with the bare stretches and lonely crags of the fells, something 
 which seemed to make her aj;rue daughter of the mountains, 
 
10 
 
 ROBEKT ELSMEltE. 
 
 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 sparely peopled 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 sweet-faced serious 
 women of the neighboring farms. 
 
 Now, as she and Eose stood together, her hand still resting 
 lightly on the other's shoulder, a question from Agnes banished 
 the faint smile on her lips, and left only the look of inward il- 
 lumination, the expression of one who had just passed, as it 
 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 to-day, says the 
 spine is hopelessly injured. He may live on paralyzed 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 Eose, 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 te 
 and fro, and poor Arthur in the inner room— all alone— waitinf 
 in suspense." 
 
 " And who told him? He has been so hopeful." 
 
 did," said Catherine, gently; **they made me. He 
 would know, and she couldn't— she fan out of the room. 1 
 never saw anything so pitiful." 
 
 "Oh, Catherine!" exclaimed Eose's moved voice, whQa 
 Agnes got up, and Chattie jumped softly down from her lap, 
 imheeded. 
 
 "How did he bear it?" 
 
 " Don't ask fne," said Catherine, while the quiet tears filled 
 her eyes and her voice broke, as the hidden feeling would havu 
 ^'ts way. "It was terrible ! I don't know how we got throug ? 
 that half hour— his mother and I. It v^ras like wrestling witu 
 fiome one in agony. At last he was exhausted— he let me sa> 
 the Lord's Prayer; I think it soothed him, but one couldn'i 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 11 
 
 tell. He seemed half asleep when I left. Oh!" she cried, lay- 
 ing her hand in a close grasp on Eose's 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 toward 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 over- 
 flowed. Eose 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, Eose ! 
 in that thin dress on the grass; I oughtn^t to have kept you 
 out. It is quite cold by now." 
 
 And she hurried them m, leaving them to superintend the 
 preparations for supper down-stairs while she ran up to her 
 mother. 
 
 A quarter of an hour afterward they were all gathered round 
 the supper-table, the windows open to the garden and the May 
 twilight. At Catherine's right hand sat Mrs. Leyburn, a tall 
 delicate-looking woman, wrapped in a white shawl, about 
 whom there 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 daught^ at all times and to all peo- 
 ple. The daughters winced under it; Catherine, because it 
 was a positive pain to her to hear herseK 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. Leybum's. Catherine's strength of 
 will could kept it in check sometimes, but in general it had tc 
 be borne with. A sharp word would have silenced the mother's 
 well-meant chatter at any time— for she was a fragile, nervous 
 woman, entirely dependent on her surroundings— but none of 
 of them were capable of it, and their mere refractoriness 
 counted for nothing. 
 
 The dining-room in which they were gathered had a good 
 
12 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 deal of homely dignity, and was to the Leybums full of asso- 
 ciations. The oak settle near the fire, the oak sideboard run- 
 ning 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 farm-house was a 
 survival from a south-country home, which had sheltered thei.^ 
 Hves for eight happy years. Over the mantel-piece hung th- 
 portrait of the girls' father, a long, serious face, not unlike 
 Wordsworth's face in outline, and bearing a strong reseiri- 
 blance to Catherine; a line of silhouettes adorned the mantel- 
 piece; on the walls were prints of Winchester and Worcester 
 Cathedrals, photographs of Greece, and two old-fashioned en- 
 gravmgs of Dante and Milton ; while a book-case, filled appar- 
 ently with the father's college books and college prizes and the 
 favorite authors— mostly poets, philosophers, and theologians 
 —of his later years, gave a final touch of habitableness to the 
 room. The httle meal and its appointments— the eggs, the 
 home-made bread and preserves, the tempting butter and old- 
 fashioned silver gleaming among the flowers which Rose ar- 
 ranged with fanciful skill in Japanese pots of her own provid- 
 ing—suggested the same family qualities as the room. Fru- 
 gality, a damty personal self-respect, a family consciousness, 
 tenacious of its memories and tenderly careful of all the little 
 material objects which were to it the symbols of those mem- 
 ories—clearly all these elements entered into the Ley bum tra- 
 dition. 
 
 And of this tradition, with its imphed assertions and de- 
 nials, clearly Catherine Leyburn, the elder sister, was, of all 
 the persons gathered in this little room, the most pronounced 
 embodiment. She sat at the head of the table, the little 
 basket of her own and her mother's keys beside her. Her 
 dress was a soft black brocade, with lace collar and cuff, 
 which had once belonged to an aunt of her mother's. It was 
 too old for her both in fashion and material, but it gave her a 
 gentle almost matronly Hignity which became her. Her long, 
 thin hands, full of character and dehcacy, moved nimbly 
 among the cups; all her ways were quiet and yet decided. It 
 was evident that among this Httle party she, and not the 
 plaintive mother, was really in authority. To-night, however 
 her looks were especiaUy soft. The scene she had gon^ 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 13 
 
 through in the afternoon had left her pale, with traces of pa- 
 tient fatigue round the eyes and mouth, hut all her emotion 
 was gone, and she was devoting herself to the others, respond- 
 ing with quick interest and ready smiles to all they had to say, 
 and contrihuting the Httle experiences of her own day in re- 
 ton. 
 
 Eose sat on her left hand in yet another gown of strange 
 bint and archaic outhne. Rose's gowns were legion. They 
 were manufactured by a farmer's daughter across the valley, 
 under her strict and precise supervision. She was accus- 
 tomed, as she boldly avowed, to shut herself up at the begin- 
 ing of each season of the year for two days' meditation on the 
 subject. An now, thanks to the spring warmth, she was en- 
 tering at last with infinite zest on the results of her April 
 Vigils. . 
 
 Catherine had surveyed hhr as she entered the room with a 
 smile, but a smile not altogether to Rose's taste. 
 
 ''What, another, Roschen?" she had said, with the sUghtest 
 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 pres- 
 ently 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 wide-awake, with a portmanteau be- 
 hind, so I imagine it must have been he." 
 
 " Did he look promising?" inquired Agnes. 
 
 *' I don't 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. Thorn- 
 burgh means to let them loose on his devoted head to-morrow 
 night." 
 
 " Who are coming?" asked Mrs. Leyburn, eagerly. The oc- 
 casional tea-parties of the neighborhood were an unfailing ex* 
 citement to her, simply because, by dint of the small adorn. 
 
14 
 
 BOBEET ELSMEBE. 
 
 ings, 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 hne of pearls round the shapely throat, a flower 
 in the brown hair, put there by Rose's imperious fingers ; to 
 sit in a corner well out of draughts, watching the effect of 
 Rose's half-fledged beauty, and drinking in the compHments 
 of the neighborhood on Rose's playing or Agnes's conversa- 
 tion, or Catherine's practical ability— these were Mrs. Ley- 
 bum's passions, and a tea-party always gratified them to the 
 full. 
 
 ''Mamma asks as if really she wanted an answer," re- 
 marked Agnes, dryly. '^Dear mother, can't 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 
 won't come. And I needn't say that, having moved heaven 
 and earth to get Mrs. Seaton, Mrs. Thombin-gh is now misera- 
 ble because she has got her. Her ambition is gratified, but she 
 knows that she has spoiled the party. Well, then, Mr. May- 
 hew, of course, his son, and his flute." 
 
 ''You to play his accompaniments?" put in Agnes, slyly. 
 Rose's lip curled. 
 
 " Not if Miss Barks knows it," she said, emphatically, "nor 
 if I know it. The Bakers, of course, ourselves, and the un- 
 known." 
 
 " Dr. Baker is always pleasant," said llxs. Leyburn, leaning 
 back and drawing her white shawl languidly round her. 
 "He told me the other day, Catherine, that if it weren't for 
 you he should have to retire. He regards you as his jimior 
 partner. ' Marvelous nursing gift your eldest daughter has, 
 Mrs. Leyburn,' he said to me the other day. A most agreea- 
 ble man." 
 
 " I wonder if I shall be able to get any candid opinions out 
 of Mr. Elsmere the day after to-morrow?" said Rose, musing. 
 "It is difficult to avoid having an opinion of some sort about 
 Mrs. Seaton." 
 
 " Oxford dons don't gossip and are never candid," remarked 
 Agnes, severely. 
 
 Then Oxford dons must be very dull, " cried Rose. ' ' How- 
 ever," and her countenance brightened, " if he stays here four 
 weeks we can teach him. " 
 
ROBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 15 
 
 Catherine, meanwhile, sat watching the two girls with a 
 soft, elder sister's 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 Eose, presently, ''I had nearly for- 
 gotten Mrs. Thornburgh's two messages. I informed her, 
 Agnes, that you had given up water-color and meant to try 
 oUs, and she told me to implore you not to, because * water- 
 color is so much more lady-hke than oils.' And as for you, 
 Catherine, she sent you a most special message. I was to tell 
 you that she just 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 drawing-room, and that she would never 
 forgive you if you didn't plait it so to-morrow night." 
 
 Catherine flushed faintly as she got up from the table. 
 
 ''Mrs. Thornburgh has eagle-eyes," she said, moving away 
 to give her arm to her mother, who looked fondly at her, mak- 
 ing some remark in praise of Mrs. Thornburgh's taste. 
 
 ''Rose!" cried Agnes, indignantly, when the other two had 
 disappeared, "you and Y.rs. Thornburgh have not the sense 
 you were bom 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 leaned 
 her head on one hand and drew meditative patterns on the 
 table-cloth with the other. "You know, Agnes," she said, 
 presently, looking up, " there are drawbacks to having a Saint 
 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, half aloud, " a little wichedness and she shook 
 her curly head defiantly. 
 
 A few minutes later, in the little drawing-room 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 further side of High Fell a light was shining.. 
 As Catherine's eyes caught it there was a quick response in 
 the fine Madonna like face. 
 
16 
 
 ROBEBr ELSMERE. 
 
 '*Any news for me from the Backhouses this afternoon?'* 
 she asked Eose. 
 
 No, I heard of none. How .is she?" 
 
 Dying," said Catherine, simply, and stood a moment look- 
 ing out. Rose did not interrupt her. She knew that the 
 house from which the Ught was shining sheltered a tragedy ; 
 she guessed with the vagueness of nineteen that it was a trag- 
 edy of passion and sin; but Catherine had not been communi- 
 cative on the subject, and Rose had for some time past set up 
 a dumb resistance to her sister's most characteristic ways of 
 - life and thought, which prevented her now from asking ques- 
 tions. She wished nervously to give Catherine's 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, 
 
 Roschen?" 
 
 I practiced for two hours," said the girl, shortly, ''and two 
 hours this morning. My Spohr is nearly perfect." 
 
 "And you didn't look into the school ?" asked Catherine, 
 hesitating; " I know Miss Merry expected you." 
 
 *' No, I didn't. When one can play the vioHn and can't 
 teach any more than a cockatoo, what's the good of wasting 
 one's time in teaching ?" 
 
 Catherine did not reply. A minute after Mrs. LeybTim 
 called her, and she went to sit on a stool at her mother's feet, 
 her hands resting on the elder woman's lap, the whole attitude 
 of the tall active figure one of beautiful and child-Uke abandon- 
 ment. 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 bed-time. 
 
 "Why couldn't she take as much interest in my Spohr ?" 
 thought Rose. 
 
 Late that night, long after she had performed all a maid's 
 offices for her mother, Catherine Leyburn was busy in her own 
 room arranging a large cupboard containing medicines and or- 
 dinary medical necessaries, a store-house whence all the sim- 
 plier emergencies of their end of the valley were supplied. She 
 had put on a white flannel dressing-gown and moved noiselessly 
 about in it, the very embodiment of order, of purity, of qmet 
 energy. The little white-curtained room was bareness and 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 17 
 
 neatness itself. There were a few book-shelves 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 httle faded monstrosities, representing Rose and Agnes 
 in different stages of childhood. On the table beside the bed 
 was a pile of well-worn 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 ; other- 
 wise no furniture that was not absolutely necessary, and no 
 ornaments. And yet, for all its emptiness, the httle 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 dressing-table, and stood a moment before the 
 common cottage looking-glass upon it. The candle behind her 
 showed her the outhnes of her head and face in shadow against 
 the white ceiling. Her soft brown hair was plaited liigh above 
 the broad white brow, giving to it an added statehness, while 
 it left unmasked the pure lines of the neck. Mrs. Thornburgh 
 and her mother were quite right. Simple as the new arrange- 
 ment was, it could hardly have been more effective. 
 ^ But the looking-glass got no smile in return for its informa- 
 tion. 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 free into the severest order, plaited it closely together, 
 and then, putting out her light, threw herself on her knees be- 
 side the window, which was partly open to the starlight and 
 the mountains. The voice of the river far away, wafted from 
 the mist-covered depths of the valley, and the faint rusthng 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 of 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. 
 
 a 
 
18 
 
 R013E2T ELSMEEE. 
 
 It is more comfortable, dear mother, and takes much less 
 time," said Catherine, reddening. 
 
 ''Poor Mi^. Thornburghl" remarked Agnes, dryly. 
 
 "Oh, Eose will make up!'**said Catherine, glancing, not 
 without a spark of mischief in her gray eyes, at Eose's tor- 
 tured locks; '^and mannna's new cap, which will be superb!'' 
 
 CHAPTEE n. 
 
 About four o'clock on the afternoon of the day which was 
 to be marked in the annals of Long Whindale as that of Mi-s. 
 Thoraburgh's "high tea," that lady was seated in the vicarage 
 garden, her spectacles on her nose, a large couvre-pied over 
 her knees, and the Whinborough newspaper on her lap. The 
 neighborhood of this last enabled her to make an intermittent 
 pretense of reading ; but in reality the energies of her house- 
 wifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The 
 vicar's 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 
 to-night 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 distiaction, 
 not on its solids or its savories, but on its sweets. A rural 
 hostess earns her reputation, not by a discriminating eye for 
 butcher's meat, but by her inventiveness in cakes and custards. 
 And it was just here, with regard to this bubble reputation," 
 that the vicar's wife of Long Whindale was particularly sensi- 
 tive. Was she not expecting Mrs. Seaton, the wife of the Eec- 
 tor of Whinborough — odious woman — to tea? Was it not in- 
 cumbent on her 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 old- 
 fashioned, and who had an exasperating beUef in the suffi- 
 ciency of buttered " whigs" and home-made marmalade for all 
 requirements? Stung by these thoughts, Mrs. Thornburgh 
 had gone prowling about the neighboring town of Whinbor- 
 
HOBEHT ELSMERE. 
 
 19 
 
 ough till the shop window of a certain newly-arrived confec- 
 tioner had been revealed to her, stored with the most airy and 
 appetizing trifles — of a make and coloring quite metropolitan. 
 She had flattened her gray cm^ls against the window for one 
 deliberate moment ; had then rushed in ; and as soon as the 
 carrier's cart of Long Whindale, w^hich 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 the 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 
 seK-contained, a certain discredit attaches in every well-regu- 
 lated 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 ^'WilUam" 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, Hngered. And at last the drowsiness of 
 the afternoon overcame even those pleasing expectations we 
 have described, and Mrs. Thornburgh's newspaper dropped un- 
 heeded to her feet. The vicarage, under the shade of which 
 she was sitting, was a new gray-stone building with wooden 
 gables, occupying the side of what had once been the earlier 
 vicarage house of Long Whindale, the primitive dwelling- 
 house of an incumbent, whose chapelry, after sundry aug- 
 mentations, amounted to just twenty-seven pounds a year. 
 The modern house, though it only contained sufficient accom- 
 modation 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 be- 
 longed to another race— a race sprung from the soil and con- 
 tent 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 
 Ho inherited interest in the Cumbrian folk and their ways, had 
 only a very faint idea, and that a distinctly deprecatory one, of 
 what these mythical predecessors of his, with their strange social 
 status and unbecoming occupations, might be like. But there 
 
20 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 were one or two old men still lingering in the dale who cotilc 
 have told him a great deal about them, whose memory wein 
 back to the days when the relative social importance of the 
 dale parsons was exactly expressed by the characteristic 
 Westmoreland saying : ' Ef ye'll nobbut send us a gude schule- 
 measter, a verra' moderate parson 'ull deal" 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 farm-house on any occa- 
 sion of local festivity, or driving his sheep to Wliinborough 
 Market with his own hands like any other peasant of the dale.l 
 
 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 unre- 
 membered 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 emphasized by -the 
 disappearance of the old parsonage houses with their stone 
 floors, their parlors lustrous with oak carving on chest or 
 dresser, and their encircling farm-buildings and meadows, in 
 favor 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 half cent- 
 ury has worked its will even in the remotest comers of the 
 Cumbrian country, and soon not a vestige of the homely wor- 
 shiping-places 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 re- 
 placed had lasted long, and in the course of many generations 
 time had clothed its moss-grown walls, its slated porch, and 
 tombstones worn with rain in a certain beauty of congruity and 1 
 association, linking it with the purple distances of the fells, and 
 the brawling river bending round the gray inclosure. 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 ^>*eography of which had to be caro' 
 
KOBERT JELSMERE. 
 
 fully learned 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 slowly mov- 
 ing folk of the valley came to the conclusion that "summat 'ull 
 hevtobe deun." And by the help of the bishop and Queen 
 Anne's bounty, and what not, aided by just as many half 
 crowns as the valley found itself unable to defend against the 
 encroachments of a new and '^moiderin" parson, ^'summat" 
 was done, whereof the results— namely, the new church, vicar- 
 age, and school-house — 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 beg- 
 ging which had raised the church, nor was he likely on other 
 lines to reach preferment. He and his wife, who possessed 
 much more'sahence 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 influ- 
 ences, 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 par- 
 sonage had got themselves rebuilt, the parson had had his in- 
 come raised, had let off his glebe to a neighboring 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 well- 
 meaning but rather dull man. who stood on his dignity and 
 
22 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 wore a black coat all the week, there was no real community. 
 Rejoice in it as we may, in this final passage of Parson Prim- 
 rose 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. Thomburgh woke up with a start^ 
 and stumbling over newspaper and couvre-pied^ hurried across 
 the lawn as fast as her short squat figure would allow, gray 
 curls and cap-strings flymg 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, there's naw cakes. They're all left behind on t' 
 counter at Randall's. 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 he'd got past t' bridge, and then it wur too 
 late to go back." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh stood transfixed, something of her fresh 
 pink color slowly deserting her face^ as she reahzed the enor- 
 mity 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 Sarah's mind, but ran with httle pattering, im- 
 dignified steps across the front garden and down the steps to 
 where Mr. Backhouse the carrier stood, bracing himself for 
 self-defense. 
 
 " Ya may weel fret, mum," said Mr. Backhouse, interrupt- 
 ing the flood of her reproaches, with the comparative sang- 
 froid of one who knew that, after all, he was the only carrier 
 on the road, and that the vicarage was five miles from the nec- 
 essaries of life; "it's a bad job, and I's not goin' to say it isn't. 
 But ya jest look 'ere, mum, what's a man to du wi' a daft 
 thingamy Uke that, as caan't teak a plain order, and spiles a 
 ' poor man's business as caan't help hissel'-^" 
 
 And Mr. Backhouse pointed with withering scorn to a small, 
 shrunken old man, who sat danghng his legs on the shaft of 
 the cart, and whose countenance wore a singular expression of 
 mingled meelqiess and composure, as his partner flourished an 
 indignant finger toward him. 
 
 "Jim," cried Mi-s. Thornburgh, reproachfully, "I did think 
 you would have taken more pains about my oi'der !" 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 23 
 
 Yis, mum," said the old man, placidly, ya might V thowt 
 it. I's reet sorry, bit ya caan't help these things st^m-times — 
 an' it's naw gud a-hollerin' ower 'em like a-mad bull. Aa tuke 
 yur bit paper to Randall's and aa laf t 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 doon't say ee dud — but ee may, I ween't sweer. 
 Hawsomiver, aa niver thowt naw mair aboot it, nor mair did 
 John, so ee needn't taak — till we wur jest two mile from 'ere. 
 An' ee's a gon' on sense ! My ! an' a larroping the poor beeast 
 like onything !" 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh stood aghast at the calmness of this auda- 
 cious recital. As for John, he looked on surveying his brother's 
 philosophical demeanor at first with speechless wrath, and 
 then with an inscrutable mixture of expressions, in which, 
 however, any one accustomed to his weather-beaten counte- 
 nance would have probably read a hidden admiration. 
 
 "Weel, aa niver!" he exclaimed, when Jim's explanatory 
 remarks had come to an end, swinging hinaself 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. Aa've doon wi' yer. 
 Aa aims to please ma coostomers, an' aa caan't abide sek wark. 
 Yur like on oald kneyfe, I can mak' nowt o' ya', nowder back 
 nor edge. 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh wrung her fat short hands in despair, mak- 
 ing little incoherent laments and suggestions as she saw him 
 about to depart, of which John at last gathered the main pur- 
 port 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 vicar's 
 wife that he meant to '' gie that oald man nawtice when he got 
 haum; he wasn't goan to hey his bisness spiled for nowt by an 
 oald ijiot wi' a hed as full o' yale as a hay-rick's full of mic5," 
 he raised his whip and the clattering vehicle moved forward ; 
 Jim meanwhile preserving through all his brother's wrath and 
 Mrs. Thomburgh's wailings the same mild and even counte- 
 nance, the meditative and friendly aspect of the philosopher 
 letting the world go ''as e'en it will." 
 
 So Mrs. Thornburgh was left gasping, watching the progress 
 <^t the lumbering cart along the bit of road leading to the ham- 
 
24 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 let at the head of the valley, with so limp and crest-faller. 
 an aspect that even the gaunt and secretly jubilant Sarah wafc 
 moved to pity. 
 
 "Why, missis, we'll do very well. I'll hev some scones in 
 t' oven in naw time, an' theer's finger biscuits, an' wi' buttered 
 toast an' sum o' t' best jams, if they don't hev enuf to eat they, 
 ought to." Then, dropping her voice, she asked, with a hur- 
 ried 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, dis- 
 tance. 
 
 "How's your daughter to-day, John?" ' i 
 
 The old man's face, peering round the oil-cloth 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 re- 
 ceding 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. 
 
 "He sparin' ov 'is speach is John Backhouse," said Sarah, 
 grimly, as her mistress retin*ned to her. "May be ee's aboot 
 reet. It's a bad business an' ee'll not mend it wi' taakin'." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh, however, could not apply herself to the 
 care of Mary Backhouse. At any other moment it would have 
 excited in her breast the shuddering interest which, owing to 
 certain peculiar attendant cn-cumstances, it awakened in every 
 other woman in Long Whindale. But her mind — such are the 
 limitations of even clergyman's wives — was now absorbed by 
 her own misfortune. Her very cap-strings seemed to hang 
 limp with depression, as she followed Sarah dejectedly into the 
 kitchen, and gave what attention she could to those second- 
 * best arrangements so depressing to the idealist temper. 
 
 Poor soul ! AU the charm and glitter of her little social ad- 
 venture 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. Sea- 
 ton. The universe obeyed her nod. No carrier conveying 
 goods to her august door ever got drunk or failed to deliver his 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 25 
 
 onsignment. The thing wasjnconceivable. Mrs. Thornburgh 
 ras well aware of it. 
 
 Should Wilham be informed ? Mrs. Thornburgh had a rooted 
 elief in the brutahty of husbands in all domestic crises, and 
 rould have preferred not to inform him. But she had also a 
 ismal certainty that the secret would burn a hole in her till it 
 ras confessed— bill and all. Besides— frightful thought !— 
 ^ould they have to eat up all those meringues next day? 
 Her reflections at last became so depressing that, with a nat- 
 ral epicurean instinct, she tried violently to turn her mind 
 way from them. Luckily she was assisted by a sudden per- 
 Bption of the roof and chimneys of Burwood, the Leyburn's 
 ouse, peeping above the trees to^the left. At sight of them a 
 nile overspread her plump and gently wrinked face. She fell 
 radually into a train of thought, as feminine as that in which 
 le had just been indulging, but infinitely more pleasing. 
 For, with regard to the Leyburns, at this present moment 
 [rs. Thornburgh felt herself in the great position of tutelary 
 ivinity or guardian angel. At least if divinities and guardian 
 Qgels do not concern themselves with the questions to which 
 [rs. Thornburgh's mind was now addressed, it would clearly 
 ave been the opinion of the vicar's wife that they ought to do 
 ). 
 
 '*Who else is there to look after these girls, I should like to 
 now," Mrs. Thornburgh inquired of herself, ^'if I don't do 
 ? As if girls married themselves ! People may talk of their 
 idependence nowadays as much as they like — it always has to 
 3 done for them, one way or another. Mrs. Leyburn, poor 
 ickadaisical thing ! is no good whatever. No more is Cath- 
 dne. They both behave as if husbands tumbled into your 
 louth for the asking. Catherine's too good for this world- 
 Lit if she doesn't do it, I must. Why, that girl Eose is a 
 sauty— if they didn't let her wear those ridiculous mustard- 
 )lored things, and do her hair fit to frighten the crows ! Agnes 
 )o— so lady-like and well-mannered; she'd do credit to any 
 lan. Well, we shall see, we shall see !" 
 
 And Mrs. Thornburgh gently shook her gray curls from side 
 ) side, while her eyes, fixed on the open spare- room window, 
 lone with meaning. 
 
 *'So eligible, too— private means, no incumbrances, and as 
 Dod as gold." 
 
 She sat lost a moment in a pleasing dream. 
 
26 
 
 BOBERT ELSMKRK. 
 
 Shall I bring oot the tea to you theer, mum ?" called 
 Sarah, gruffly, from the garden door. Master and Mr. Els 
 mere are just coomin' down t' field by t' stepping-stones." 
 
 Mi^. Thornburgh signalled assent and the tea-table 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 mat- 
 ter, like her dreams of cakes and confections, being all part of 
 her determination to move with the times, in spite of the sta- 
 tion to which Providence had assigned her. 
 
 A minute afterward the vicar, a thick-set, gray-haired 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 Ithat 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 
 stepping-stones," repKed his wife, pleased, however, by any 
 mark of appreciation from her mankind, however small. 
 " Eobert, I hope you haven't been walked off your legs?" 
 
 " What, in this air, Cousin Emma? J coiild walk from sun- 
 rise to simdown. Let no one call me an invalid any more. 
 Henceforth I am a Hercules." 
 
 And he threw himself on the rug which Mrs. Thornburgh's 
 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 anodd wildnessand 
 aggressiveness. She involuntarily thought, basing her inward 
 comment on a complexity of reasons—*' Dear me, what a pity'; 
 it spoils his appearance !" 
 
 "I apologize, I apologize. Cousin Emma, once for all," said 
 the yoimg man, surprising her glance, and despairingly smooth- 
 ing 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 Mure well." 
 
 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 27 
 
 spite of the grotesqueness of his cropped haii-, her guest was a 
 most attractive creature. Not that he could l;)oast 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 naivete 
 like a vigorous, unfinished sketch. This bluntness of line, how- 
 ever, was balanced by a great dehcacy of tint— the pink and 
 white complexion of a girl, indeed— enhanced by the bright 
 reddish hair, and quick gray eyes. 
 
 The figure was also a little out of drawing, so to speak ; it 
 was tall and loosely jointed. 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 Els- 
 mere's 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. Thomburgh 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 liis wife. But 
 Mrs. Thomburgh, it was soon evident, was giving him but a 
 scatter-brained attention. Her secret was working in her ample 
 breast. Very soon she could contain it no longer, and break- 
 ing in upon her husband's parish news, she tumbled it all out 
 pell-mell, with a mixture of discomfiture and defiance infinite- 
 ly 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 imfeeling comments 
 which drove Mrs. Thomburgh to desperation. 
 
 *'If you will set your mind, my dear, on things we plain 
 folks can do perfectly well without" — et ccetera, et ccetera— 
 the husband's point of view can be imagined. Mrs. Thorn- 
 burgh could have shaken her good man, especially as there was 
 nothing new to her in his remarks ; she had known to a T be- 
 forehand exactly what he would say. She took up her knit- 
 ting 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, 
 
28 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 which were only very slightly modified by the presence of a 
 stranger. 
 
 Robert Elsmere meanwhile lay on the grsCss, his face dis- 
 creetly turned away, an uncontrollable smile twitching the 
 comers of his mouth. Everything was fresh and piquant up 
 here in this remote corner of the north country, whether the 
 mountain air or the wind-blown streams, or the manners and 
 customs of the inhabitants. His cousin's 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 by-gone world— Miss Austen's or Miss 
 Ferrier's— unearthed for his amusement. He could not for 
 the hfe of him help taking the scenes of this remote rural ex- 
 istence, 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 a 
 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 couldn't 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 evening's festivities, put his last sermon into the waste- 
 paper 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 any- 
 body's life a burden to them about here that isn't; but it's no 
 use." 
 
 And she fell back on her knitting with redoubled energy, her 
 face full of a half -tearful intensity of meaning. Robert Els- 
 mere 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 ^nd histories of the guests. How Miss Aus- 
 tenish it sounded : the managing rector's wife, her still more 
 m anaging old maid of a sister, the neighboring clergyman who 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 20 
 
 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 Leybums, who 
 seemed to be on a different level, and who he heard mentionecj 
 so often since his arrival by both husband and wife. 
 
 ^'Tell me about the Miss Ley burns," he said, presently. 
 "You and Cousin William seem to have a great affection foi 
 them. Do you 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 hei 
 eye eagerly fixed upon him, she fell into a more or less incohC' 
 rent account of her favorites. She laid on her colors 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." 
 
 **0h, 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. They're real Westmoreland peo- 
 ple." 
 
 What does that mean exactly ?" 
 *'0h, their grandfather was a farmer, just like one of the 
 common farmers about. Only his land was his own, and their's 
 isn't." 
 
 '*He was one of the last of the statesmen," interposed Mr. 
 Thornburgh— who, having rescued his sermon from Jane's ten- 
 der mercies, and put out his modest claret and sherry for the 
 evening, had strolled oufc again and found himself impelled as 
 usual to put some precision into his wife's statements—" one of 
 the small freeholders who have almost disappeared here as 
 elsewhere. The story of the Ley burns always seems to me 
 typical of many things." 
 
 Robert looked inquiry, and the vicar, sitting down — having 
 first picked up his wife's ball of wool as a peace-offering, which 
 was loftily accepted— launched into a narrative which may be 
 here somewhat condensed. 
 
30 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEK12. 
 
 '*The Leybm^ns' grandfather, it appeared, had been a typical 
 north country peasant— honest, with strong passions both of 
 love and hate, thinking nothing of knocking down his wife with 
 a poker, and frugal in all things save drink. Drink, however, 
 was ultimately his ruin, as it was the ruin of most of the Cum- 
 berland 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, rolUcking, strong-natured person had 
 sons and daughters— plenty of them. Most of them, even the 
 daughters, were brutal and rollicking too. Of one of the daugh- 
 ters, 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, Eichard, who showed such a persistent 
 tendency to ''book-lamin'," 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 foot- 
 ing 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 Queen's 
 College. 
 
 His family watched his progress with a gaping, half -contempt- 
 uous 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. 
 
 From that moment they practically lost sight of him. He 
 sent the class hst which contained his name among the Firsts 
 to his father ; in the same way he communicated the news ®f 
 his fellowship at Queen's, his ordination and his appointment to 
 the headmastership of a south-country grammar school. None 
 t)f his communications were ever answered till, in the very 
 
ROBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 31 
 
 last year of his father's 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 famUy neces- 
 sities. The money was promptly sent, together with photo- 
 graphs of Dick's wife and children. These last were not taken 
 much notice of. These Leybums were a hard, limited, incuri- 
 ous set, and they no longer regarded Dick as one of them- 
 selves. 
 
 ^^Then came the old man's death," said Mr. Thornburgh. 
 
 It happened the year after I took the living. Eichard Ley- 
 bum 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 Leyburn's 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. Eichard 
 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, absent-looking eyes 
 which, as George, the eldest brother, said, gave you the impres- 
 sion 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 couldn't 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 remem- 
 ber Leyburn threw back his head and drank ifc in. 'I haven't 
 breathed this air for five-and-twenty 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 refined 
 looking 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 Kfe had disappointed hin 
 somehow." 
 
 *'Yet one would think," said Eobqj^t, opening his eyes, 
 that he had made a very considerable success of it !" 
 ''Well, I don't 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 
 
32 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the lands his father had lost. And George, the eldest brother, 
 who had mherited the farm, watched him without a word, in 
 the way these Westmoreland folk have, and at last offered 
 iiim what remained of the place for a fancy price. I told him 
 it was a preposterous sum, but he wouldn't bargain. ' I shall 
 bring my wife and children here in the hohdays,^ he said, 
 ' and the money wHl 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. There's no accounting for tastes." 
 
 ''And then the next summer they all came down," inter- 
 rupted Mrs. Thornburgh. She dishked a long story as she 
 disUked 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 don't care what 
 Wmiam 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 dehcately brought-up children going in and out 
 of the parlor where old Leyburn used to sit smoking and drink- 
 ing- and Dick Leyburn walking about in a white tie, and the 
 same men touching their hats to him who had belabored him 
 when he was a boy at the village school-it was queer." 
 
 "A curious little bit of social history," said Eismere. 
 '* WeU, and then he died and the family lived on ?" 
 
 " Yes he died the year after he bought the place. And per- 
 haps the most interesting thing of all has been the develop- 
 ment 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, 
 smiUng. ' ' I don't count for much, she counts for a great deal. 
 I can't get the people to teU 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 won't take it from us. Perhaps it is the 
 feeling of blood. Perhaps they think it as mysterious a dis- 
 pensation of Providence as I do that that brutal, swearing, 
 whisky-drinking stock should have ended in anything so 
 saintly and so beautiful as Catherine Leyburn." 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 33 
 
 The quiet, commonplace clergj^man 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 
 Catherme. People generally like the other two much better 
 Catherine is so stand-off." 
 
 ^'Oh, the other two are very well," said the vicar, but in a 
 different tone. 
 
 Robert sat ruminating. Presently his host and hostess went 
 m, and the young man went sauntering up the climbing garden- 
 path to the point where only a railing divided it from the fell- 
 side. From here his eye commanded the whole of the upper 
 end 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 UUswater dis- 
 trict. Below him were church and parsonage: beyond the 
 stone- filled 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 farm-houses, the heck- 
 berry trees along the river and the road, caught and empha- 
 sized the golden rays which were flooding into the lower valley 
 as into a broad green cup. Close by, in the little vicarage or- 
 chard, were fruit trees in blossom ; the air was mild and fra- 
 grant, 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 
 well-worn volume was in his pocket, but he did not need to 
 bring it out; and his voice had aU a poet's intensity of empha- 
 sis as he strolled along, reciting under his breaths 
 
 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 Bur- 
 wood, lying beneath him on its promontory of land, in the 
 quiet shelter of its protecting trees. He stopped, and a 
 
34 ROBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 cate sense of harmonious association awoke in him. That girl 
 atonmg as it were by her one white Ufe for all the crimes and 
 coarseness of her ancestry, the idea of her seemed to stea 
 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. Thomburgh was presid- 
 ing Opposite to her, on the vicar's left, sat the formidable 
 rector's wife Poor Mrs. Thornburgh had said to herself as she 
 entered the room on the arm of Mr. Mayhew, the incumbent 
 of the neighboring valley of Shanmoor, that the first coup 
 d^ceU was good. The flowers had been arranged m the after- 
 noon by Eose; Sarah's exertions had made the silver shme 
 again; a pleasing odor of good food underlay the scent of the 
 bluebdls and fern; and what with the snowy table-hnen, ana 
 the pretty dresses and bright faces of the younger people, the 
 room seemed to be full of an incessant play of cnsp and delicate 
 color 
 
 But just as the vicar's wife was sinking into her seat with a 
 Uttle sigh of wearied satisfaction, she caught sight suddenly o. 
 an eyeglass at the other end of the table slowly revolvmg in a 
 large and jewelled hand. The judicial eye behind the eyeglass 
 travelled round the table, hngering, as it seemed to Mrs. Thorn- 
 burgh's excited consciousness, on every spot where cream or 
 ielly 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 ot the 
 meal which did but confirm her neighbor-a grim, uncommu- 
 nicative person-in his own devotion to a poUcy of silence. 
 Meanwhile, the vicar was grappling on very unequal tenns 
 with Mrs. Seaton. Mrs. Leyburn had faUen to young Elsmere. 
 Catherine Leyburn was paired off with Dr. Baker, Agnes with 
 Mr Maybe w's awkward son— a tongue-tied 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 
 
 Rose was on Robert Elsmere's right. Agnes had coaxed her 
 into a white dress as being the least startling garment she pos 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 35 
 
 sessed, and she was like a Stothard picture with her high waist, 
 her blue sash ribbon, her slender neck and brilhant 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 molding of the brow, nose, and 
 upper lip. The hollows in the cheek struck him, and the w^ay 
 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 founda- 
 tions. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it, and 
 not a vestige of Rose's peach- like 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 talk! 
 Eobert, who, out of his four years' experience as an Oxford tu- 
 tor, had an abundant compassion for and understanding of such 
 beings as young Mayhew, watched her with a pleased amuse- 
 ment, wondering how she did it. What? Had she got him on 
 carpentering, engineering— discovered his weak point? Water- 
 wheels, inventors, steam-engines— and the lumpish lad aU in a 
 glow, talking away nineteen to the dozen. What tact, what 
 kindness in her gray blue 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 Well-known Sussex 
 county family. She was a large and commanding person, clad 
 
36 EGBERT ELSMBEK. 
 
 in black moire 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. Fixmg her 
 neighbor with a bland majesty of eye, she inquired of him if he 
 were "any relation of Sir Mowbray Elsmere?'' Robert repUed 
 that Sir Mowbray Elsmere was his father's cousin, and the pa- 
 tron of the living to which he had just been appointed. Mrs. 
 Seaton then graciously informed him that long ago-" when 1 
 was a girl in my native Hampshire "—her family and Sir Mow- 
 bray 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 re- 
 spect, sir, for your name." , , v ^v, 
 
 Robert bowed, but it was not clear from his look that the 
 rector's 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 lady's look and pose. He 
 would have been still more entertained had he known the nature 
 of the intimacy to which she referred. Mrs. Seaton's father, m 
 his capacity of soUcitor 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 triumphant- 
 ly returned at a bye-election; and two years later, when a repe- 
 tition of the tactics, so successful in the previous contest, led 
 to a petition, and to the disappearance of the heir to the Els- 
 mere property from parliamentary hfe. 
 
 Of these matters, however, he was ignorant, and Mrs. Seaton 
 did not enlighten him. Drawing herself up a Uttle, and pro- 
 ceeding in a more neutral tone than before, she proceeded to 
 put him through a catechism on Oxford, alternately cross-ex- 
 amining him and expounding to him her own views and her 
 husband's on the functions of universities. She and the arch- 
 deacon conceived that the Oxford authorities were mainly occu 
 pied in ruining the young men's health by overexamination, ant. 
 poisoning their minds by free-thinking opinions. In her behe^ 
 if it went on, the mothers of England would refuse to send thei.- 
 sons to these ancient but deadly resorts. She looked at him 
 sternly as she spoke, as though defying him to be flippant m 
 return And he, indeed, did his polite best to be serious, 
 ■^ut it somewhat disconcerted him in the middle to find Miss 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 SI 
 
 Leybum's 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 lighted 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 Eose. Mrs. Seaton was 
 soon engaged in giving the vicar advice on his parochial affairs, 
 an experience which generally ended by the appearance of cer- 
 tain truculent elements in one of the mildest of men. So Eob- 
 ert was free to turn to his girl neighbor and ask her what peo- 
 ple meant by calHng the Lakes rainy. 
 
 I understand it is pouring at Oxford. To-day your sky here 
 has been without a cloud, and your rivers are running dry." 
 
 "And you have mastered our climate in twenty-four hours, 
 hke^he tourists— isn't it?— that do the Irish question in three 
 weeks?" 
 
 Not the answer of a bread-and-butter 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 brilHant coloring, her gestures as fresh and 
 untamed as the movements of the leaping river outside, the mix- 
 ture in her of girhsh pertness and ignorance, with the promise 
 of a remarkable general capacity, made her a most taking, pro- 
 voking 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 radi- 
 ant. 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 Sarah's make-shifts, there was the master of the 
 house pouring the whole tale of his wife's aspirations and dis- 
 appointment into Mrs. Seaton's 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 thi^ moment have 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 performed such a feat. She nodded and coughed and fidgeted 
 
 in vain 1 
 
 The vicar's confidences were the result of a fit of nervous (ex- 
 asperation. Mrs. Seaton had just embarked upon an ax^count 
 of "our charming time with Lord Fleckwoofl." Now, Lord 
 Fleckwood was a distant cousin of Archdeacon Seaton, and the 
 gi-eat magnate of the neighborhood, not, however, a very re- 
 spectable magnate. Mr. Thornburgh had heard accounts of 
 Lupton Castle from Mrs. Seaton on at least half a dozen differ- 
 ent occasions. Privately he beheved them all to refer to one 
 visit, an event of immemorial antiquity periodically brought 
 up to date by Mrs. Seaton^s imagination. But the vicar was a 
 timid man, without the courage of his opinions, and in his 
 eagerness to stop the flow of his neighbor s eloquence he could 
 think of no better device, or more suitable lival subject, than 
 to plunge into the story of the drunken carrier, and the pastry 
 still reposing on the counter at Eandall's. 
 
 He blushed, good man, when he was well in it. His wife's 
 horrified countenance embarrassed him. But anything was 
 better than Lord Fleckwood. Mrs. Seaton listened to him with 
 the sKghtest smfie on her formidable lip. The story was pleas- 
 ing to her. 
 
 ^' At least, my dear sir," she said when he paused, noddmg 
 her diademed head with stately emphasis, *^Mrs. Thornburgh's 
 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 inaptitude 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 w^hich this awe-inspiring woman was more 
 awe-inspiring 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 aboCit 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 disestabhsh 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 par- 
 ticular about trifles." 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 39 
 
 Trifles?'' repeated Mrs. Seaton, in a deep voice, thiowing 
 up her eyes. But she would not venture an argument with Dr. 
 Baker. He had all the cheery self-confidence of the old estab- 
 lished local doctor, who knows himself to be a power, and 
 neither Mrs. Seaton nor her restless, intriguing httle husband 
 had ever yet succeeded in putting him down. 
 
 You must see these two old charactei's," 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 
 doesn't measure his cups, but he would scorn to be floored by 
 them. I don't believe he does drink much, but if he does there 
 is pr/oably no amount of whisky that he couldn't carr3^ 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 can never refuse this glass, and as the temp- 
 tation generally seizes him when they are on their rounds, he 
 is always getting John into disgi-ace. 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 denud- 
 ing 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 John's. 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, 
 dryly. 
 
 '*0h, my dear madame," said the doctor, shrugging his 
 shou.ders, we can't all be so virtuous. If old Jim is a drunk- 
 ard, he has got a heart of his own somewhere, and can nurse a 
 dying niece like a woman. Miss Leybum can tell us some- 
 thing about that." 
 
 And he tm-ned round to his neighbor with a complete, change 
 of expression, and a voice that had a new note in it of affection- 
 ate respect. Catharine colored as if she did not like being ad- 
 dressed 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 old-world even in its ways 
 of dying. I have been a doctor in these parts for five-and- 
 twenty years. I have seen what you may call old Westmore- 
 
40 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 land die out— costume, dialect, superstitions. At least, as to 
 dialect, the people have become bi-lingual. I sometimes think 
 they talk it to each other as much as ever, but some of them 
 won't talk it to you and me at all. And as to superstitions, 
 rhe only ghost story I kno'w 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 pene- 
 trate 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 afterward for each 
 operation. The pull was soon forgotten; the sixpence lived on 
 gratefully in a child's warm memory. 
 
 *^Tell it," she said; **we give you leave. We won't inter- 
 rupt you unless you put in too many inventions." 
 
 You invite me to break the first law of story-telling. Miss 
 Rose," said the doctor, lifting a finger at her. "Everyman 
 is bound to leave a story better than he found it. However, I 
 couldn't tell it if I would. I don't 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 Ley burn 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 
 strengfh of her own and other people's belief in tBe ghost's 
 summons. " 
 
 Mrs. Seaton's grim mouth relaxed into an ungenial smile. 
 She put up her eyeglass and looked at Catherine. "An un- 
 pleasant household, I should imagine," she said, shortly, "for 
 a young lady to visit. " 
 
 Dr. Baker looked at the rector's wife, and a kind of flame 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 41 
 
 came into his eyes. He and Mrs. Seaton were old enemies, and 
 he was a quick-tempered mercurial sort of man. 
 
 **I presume that one's guardian angel may have to follow 
 one sometimes into unpleasant quarters," he said, hotly. If 
 this girl lives it will be Miss Ley burn's doing; if she dies, saved 
 and comforted, instead of lost in this world and the next, 
 it will be Miss Leyburn's doing, too. Ah, my dear yotmg 
 lady, let me alone ! You tie my tongue always, and I won't 
 have it." 
 
 And the doctor turned his weather-beaten elderly face upon 
 her with a look which was half defiance and half apology . She, 
 on her side, had flushed painfully, laying her white finger-tips 
 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. Ley burn, 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 dining- 
 room. 
 
 As Catherine Ley bum went out, Elsmere stood holding the 
 door open. She could not help raising her eyes upon him, eyes 
 full of a half -timid, half -grateful friendliness. His own re- 
 turned her look with interest. 
 
 ' A spirit, but a woman, too,' " lie thought to himself, with 
 a new-born 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 heron the dinner-table— what poten- 
 tial depths of feeling in the full, dark-fringed eye; 
 
 Half an hour later, when Elsmere re-entered the drawing- 
 room, he found Catherine Leybum 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, red-armed maiden, 
 with a pretty face, set off, as she imagined, by a vast amount 
 
42 
 
 ROBERT EI.SMERE. 
 
 of cheap finery, was sitting beside her, studying her with a 
 timid adoration. The doctor's daughter regarded Catherine 
 Levburn, who dui*ing 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 awiiy, gently stroking the whOe the girVs 
 rough hand which lay on her knee, to the mingled pain and 
 bhss of its owner, w^ho was outraged by the contrast between 
 her own ungainly member and Miss Leybum's delicate fingers 
 
 Mrs. Seaton was on the sofa beside Mrs. Thorn burgh, amply 
 avenging hei-self on the vicar's 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, fight 
 colorless hair suiTOOunted by a cap adort.ed with artificial 
 nasturtiums, and white-lashed eyes, aiTOed with spectacles, 
 was haviag her way with Mrs. Leyburn, inquiring into the 
 household arrangements of Burwood with a cross-examining 
 power which made the mild widow as pulp before her. 
 
 When the gentlemen entered, Mi^. Thornburgh looked 
 round hastily. She herself had opened that door into the gar- 
 den. 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 back- 
 gi'ound of garden and fell. It somewhat disappointed the 
 vicar's wife to see her tall guest take a chair and draw it be- 
 side Catherine— while Adehne Baker awkwardly got up and 
 disappeared into the garden. 
 
 Elsmere felt it an unusually interesting momenv, so stroni 
 bad been his sense of attraction at tea; but Hka the rest of u . 
 he could find nothing more telling to start with than a remark 
 about the weather. Catlierine, in her reply, asked him if ho 
 were quite recovered from the attack of low fever he was un- 
 derstood to have been suffering from. 
 
 Oh, yes," he said, brightly. I am very nearly as fit as I 
 ever was, and more eager than I ever was to get to vvork. Th^ 
 idhng of it is the worst part of iUness. However, in a montlv 
 from now I must be at my living, and I can onlv hope it wiK 
 give me enough to do " 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 43 
 
 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 owner's passing torment, standing up round 
 the high open brow, seemed to help the general impression of 
 alertness and vigor. 
 
 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 hving 
 which has just been bestowed on me is my father's old living. 
 It is in the gift of my cousin, Sir Mowbray Elsmere. My great- 
 uncle"— he drew himself together suddenly. ''But I don't 
 know why I should imagine that these things interest other 
 people," he said, with a little quick, almost comical, accent of 
 self-rebuke. 
 
 ''Please go on," cried Catherine, hastily. The voice and 
 manner were singularly pleasant to her; she wished he would 
 not interrupt himself for nothing. 
 
 '^Eeally? Well, then, my great-uncle, 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 
 one's dreams come to nothing. I got ill at Oxford. The doc- 
 tor forbade the town work. The old incumbent who had held 
 the living since my father's death died precisely at that mo- 
 ment. 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 old-fashioned 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 Eomney 
 picture. 
 
 " You do not find it so, I imagine," he repUed, bending for- 
 ward 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 ^int Elizabeth. He could 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 almost have fancied the dark red flowers in her white lap. But 
 his comparison had another basis of feeling than Rose's. 
 
 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 of 
 fiber in her which for the moment chilled him. But as he got 
 her into talk about the neighborhood, the people and their 
 ways, the impression vanished again^ so far at least as there 
 was anything repellent about it. Austerity, strength, individ- 
 uality, all these words indeed he was more and more driven to 
 apply to her. She was hke 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 attain- 
 ments which in his ordinary south-country women friends he 
 would have assumed as a matter of course. 
 
 "I understand French very httle, and I never read any," 
 she said to him once, quietly, as he Ml to comparing some 
 peasant story she had told him with an episode in one of 
 George Sand's Berry novels. It seemed to him that she knew 
 her Wordsworth by heart. And her own mountain hfe, her 
 own rich and meditative soul, had taught her judgments and 
 comments on her favorite 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 well-known fine of Shelley's she 
 asked him where it came from. She seemed to him deeper and 
 simpler at every moment ; her very hmitations of sympathy 
 and knowledge, and they were evidently many, began to 
 attract him. The thought of her ancestry crossed him now 
 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 re- 
 finement, what delicate perception and self-restraint! 
 
 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 quad- 
 rangles, and a long street, a great building with a dome, and 
 such beautiful trees !" 
 
 Did your father often go back ? ' 
 
 '*Noi never toward the latter part of his life"— and Iwv 
 
KOBBRT ELSMERE. 45 
 
 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 fel- 
 lows he saw when he went back scorned everything he cared 
 for Every visit to Oxford was Uke a stab to him. It seemed 
 to him as if the place was fuU of men who only wanted to de- 
 stroy and break down everything that was sacred to him 
 
 Elsmere reflected tkat Kichard Leyburn must have left Ox- 
 ford about the beginning of the Liberal reaction which fol- 
 lowed Tractarianism, and in twenty years transformed the 
 
 ^"^.^^'^he said, smiUng 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 sweU of a religious revival 
 ■ Catherine looked up at him with a sweet sympathetic look. 
 That dim vision of Oxford, with its gray, tree-lined walls lay 
 very near to her heart for her father's sake. And the keen 
 face above her seemed to satisfy and respond to her mner teel- 
 
 ™" I know the High Church influence is very strong," she said 
 hesitating; " but I don't know whether father would have liked 
 
 that much better." , , 
 
 The last words had sUpped out of her, and she checked her- 
 self suddenly. Eobert saw that she was uncertam as to his 
 opinions, and afraid lest she might have said something dis- 
 
 ''"'itTnot only the High Church influence," he said quickly 
 "it is a mixture^f influences from all sorts of quarters that 
 has brought about the new state of^thmgs. Some of the tac- 
 in thfchange were hardly Chriltians at aU nam^^^^^^ 
 they have all helped to make men think, to stir then- hearts, to 
 win them back to the old ways." 
 
 His voice had tal^en to itself a singular magnetism. Evi 
 dently the matters they were discussing ^^^e matters m which 
 he felt a deep and loving interest. His young ^^y^ J f 
 grown grave; there was a striking dignity and weight in his 
 Lk and manner, which suddenly roused m Catherine the 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 sense that she was speaking to a man of distinction, accustomed 
 to deal on equal terms with the large things of life She rS 
 her eyes o him for a moment, and he saw in them a beautiM 
 mystical Iight-responsive, lofty, full of soul ""^^'^^tul, 
 The next moment, it apparently struck her sharply that their 
 conversation was becoming incongruous with its surrouSr 
 Behind them Mrs. Thornburgh was busthng about witTcanX 
 and music-stools, preparing for a performance on the flute by 
 Mr. Mayhew. the black-browed vicar of Shanmoor a d the 
 room seemed to be pervaded by Mrs. Seaton's stSnt tice 
 Her strong natural reserve asserted itself, and her face slttled 
 
 SWos?' T^''^ characteSc S 
 
 She rose and prepared to move further into the room 
 
 Wemusthsten,"shesaid tohim, smiling, over her shoulder 
 
 burn He had a momentary sense of rebuff. The man quick 
 sensitive, sympathetic, felt in the woman the presence of a 
 strength a self-sufficingness which was not all atlactiVe His 
 vanity, if he had cherished any during their convei^f il^' 
 not flattered by its close. Bu^t as he Wd agS* h^'^ 
 dow-frame waiting for the music to begin, he^oSd haX 
 keep his eyes from her. He wa« a man 4o by force of tern 
 perament, made friends readily with women, ^oS except 
 tor a passing fancy or two he had never beer in wf f 3 
 sense of difficulty with regard to Sl^^^^^^ 
 
 Miss Barks seated herself deliberately, after much fiddling 
 
 oXTaisS JCfi "'^'^ '™ *^ ^^-^^ flute%nd ne^^: 
 ousJy praised the fierce igusic he made on it. Miss Barks en 
 
 joyed amonopoly of his accompaniments, and iherTw^ 4nv 
 
 er^namtt d 'T'^'^IJ ^ " "P- Sw"! 
 
 w^-fh oTh . I ^* OreekmeofcingGreek for 
 
 -Has it begun ?" said a hurried whisper at Elsmere's elbow 
 and turnmg he saw Rose and Agnes on the step of the ^ndow,' 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Rose's cheek 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 in- 
 side while Mrs. Thornburgh, in obedience to complaints of 
 draughts from Mrs. Seaton, motioned to have the window shut. 
 Eose estabhshed herself against the wall, her curly head thrown 
 back, her eyes half shut, her mouth expressing an angry en- 
 durance. Eobert watched her with amusement. 
 
 It was certainly a remarkable duet. After an adagio open- 
 ing in which flute and piano were at magnificent cross pur- 
 poses 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. Eose stamped her little foot. 
 
 ''Two bars ahead last page," she murmured, three bars 
 this : will no one stop her !" 
 
 But the pages fiew.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 
 afe to that ! Crash, came the last chord, and the poor flute, 
 nearly half a page behind, was left shriUy 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 Eose, hiding herself in fhe 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 ?" 
 
48 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 But before he could answer, Mrs. Thornburgh called to the 
 girl: 
 
 Rose ! Rose ! Don't go out again ! It is your turn next !" 
 
 Rose advanced reluctantly, her head in air. Robert, remem- 
 bering 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 v/ith the more alacrity, 
 as it brought him once more within reach of Mrs. Leyburn 'a 
 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 daughter's play- 
 ing will please you." 
 
 Catherine moved abruptly. Robert, while he made some 
 pleasant answer, divined that the reserved ^d stately daughter 
 must be often troubled by the mother's 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 accom- 
 panist Agnes, after routing out from her music a couple of 
 Fantasie Stuckey wjiich 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 old-fashioned 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, beauti- 
 fully formed, but stiU wanting the roundness of womanhood, 
 raised high for action, the lightly poised head thrown back 
 with an air. Robert thought her a bewitching, half-grown 
 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 musician. 
 
ROBEFvT ELSMEEE. 
 
 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 hstening to was re- 
 markable, was out of the common range. Still more evident 
 was this, when from the humorous piece with which the sisters 
 led oif — a dance of clowns, but clowns of Arcady— they slid 
 into a delicate rippling chant d'amour, the long-drawn notes of 
 the violin rising and falling on the piano accompaniment with 
 an exquisite plaintiveness. Where did a filette, unformed, in- 
 experienced, win the secret of so much eloquence— only from 
 the natural dreams of a girPs 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 Hkewise, turned not to the musician 
 but the figure beside Mrs. Leybum, 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 comphments of Dr. Baker. 
 
 Excellent !" cried Elsmere. How in the name of fortune. 
 Miss Leybum, if I may ask, has your sister managed to get on 
 so far in this remote place V 
 
 ''She goes to Manchester every year to some relations we 
 have there," said Catherine, quietly; " I beheve ^he 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 don't 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 afterward 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 moonlighted mountains ; the doctor tucked himself and his 
 daughter into his high gig, and drove off with a sweeping, 
 ironical bow to Eose, who had stood on the steps teasing him 
 
50 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 to the last ; and Robert Elsmere offered to escort the Misses 
 Leyburn and their mother home. 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh was left protesting to the vicar's incredu- 
 lous ears that never— never as long as she lived— would she 
 have Mrs. Seaton mside her doors again. 
 
 ''Her manners' —cried the vicars wife, fuming— ''her man- 
 ners would disgrace a Whinborough shop-girl. She has none 
 — positively none !" 
 
 Then suddenly her round comfortable face brightened and 
 broadened out into a beaming smQe: 
 
 ''But, after all, Wilham, say what you wiU— and you always 
 do say the most unpleasant things you can thmk of —it was a 
 great success. I know the Leyburns enjoyed it. And bs for 
 Robert, I saw him looking— looking at that Uttle minx Rose 
 while she was playing as if he couldn't take liis eyes off her. 
 What a picture she made, to be sure !" 
 
 The vicar, who had been standing with his back to the fire- 
 place and his hands in his pockets, received his wife's remarks 
 first of aU 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 whip hand of her like 
 this. Mrs. Thornburgh looked at him in amazement. 
 
 " Do you mean to say," he asked, in raised tones, " that you 
 didn't 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* 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Before, however, we go on to chronicle the ultimate success 
 or failure of Mrs. Thornburgh as a match-maker, 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 con- 
 triving mind. And, indeed, these antecedents are important 
 to us. For the interest of an uncomplicated story will entire- 
 ly depend upon the clearness with which the reader may have 
 grasped the general outlines of a quick soul's development. 
 And this development had already made considerable progress 
 before Mrs. Thornburgh set eyes upon her husband's cousin, 
 Robert Elsmere. 
 
 Robert Elsmere, then, was well born and fairly well provided 
 with this world's goods ; up to a certain moderate point, indeed, 
 a favorite of fortune in all respects. His father belonged to 
 the younger line of an old Sussex family, and owed his pleas- 
 ant country living to the family instincts of his uncle. Sir 
 William 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. Seaton's 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 nephew's wife had not much in common, and 
 rarely concerned themselves with each other. Mrs. Elsmere 
 was an Irish woman 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 husband's uncle met no more. But 
 when he died it was found that the old man's 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 attainini^ manhood ghow any disposition to enter the 
 
 OF ILL LIB. 
 
52 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Church, all possible steps were to be taken to endow him with 
 the family living of Murewell, which had been his father's, 
 and which at the time of the old baronet's 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 fulfilhnent of his wishes. And so it proved. 
 No sooner was his father dead than Sir Mowbray curtly com- 
 municated his instructions to Mrs. Elsmere, then hving 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 boy's 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 baronet's will. 
 
 At the moment when Sir Mowbray's 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 Httle 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 
 colors, hitched now to this side now to that, her swaying gait 
 and looped-up skirts, her spectacles, and the dangling parcels 
 in which her soul dehghted, were the outward signs of a per- 
 sonality 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 halting-place between two journeys. Vis- 
 its 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 de- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 53 
 
 Kghtfulto her; action, energy, influence, were delightful to her; 
 she could only breathe freely in the very thick of the stir- 
 ring, many-colored tumult of existence. Whether it was a 
 pauper in the work-house, or boys from the school, or a girl 
 <3aught in the tangle of a love aifair, 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 inher- 
 ent nobility and soundness of the nature, that in spite of her 
 curious Irish fondness for the vehement romantic sides of ex- 
 perience, 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 some- 
 thing contagious in her enjoyment of Hfe, and with all her 
 strong religious faith, the thought of death, of any final pause 
 and silence in the whir 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, 
 learned with him, commimicating to him through all his les- 
 sons 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 to- 
 gether Eobert would find her the most fascinating playmate, 
 story-teller, and romp, and forget all his precocious interest in 
 history or vulgar fractions. In ^fter y ears when Eobert looked 
 back upon his childhood, he was often reminded of the stories 
 of Goethe's bringing-up. He could recall exactly the same 
 scenes as Goethe describes — mother and child sitting together 
 in the gloaming, the mother's dark eyes dancing with fun or 
 kindling with dramatic fire, as she carried an imaginary hero 
 or heroine through a series of the raciest ad ventures ; 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 
 stimulus to the mother's 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 other's arms, and end the evening with a 
 long croon, sitting curled up together in a big arm-chair in 
 
54 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 front cf 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 tree-climbing 
 and bird-nesting. 
 
 And through it all he had the quick memory of his mother's 
 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 self-reproach which made them so stirring to the 
 child's affection ; and he could realize their old far-off life at 
 Murewell, the joys and the worries of it, and see her now gos- 
 siping with the village folk, now wearing herself impetuously 
 to death in their service, an4 now roaming with him over the 
 Surrey heaths in search of all the dirty, delectable things 
 in which a boy-naturalist dehghts. And through it all he 
 was conscious of the same vivid energetic creature, dispos- 
 ing with some diflSculty and fracas of its own excess of nerv- 
 ous life. 
 
 To return, however, to thiS same critical moment of Sir 
 Mowbray's offer. Eobert at the time was a boy of sixteen, 
 doing very well at school, a favorite both with boys and mas- 
 ters. But as to whether his development would lead him in the 
 direction of taking Orders, his mother had not the shghtest 
 idea. She was not herself very much tempted by the pros- 
 pect. There were recollections connected with Murewell, and 
 with th© long death. in hfe which her husband had passed 
 through there, which were deeply painful to her; and, more- 
 over, 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 favorite preju- 
 dice. Fortune had handed over the parish of Harden to a rit- 
 ualist vicar. Mrs. Elsmere's 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 nar- 
 row way, the small-headed, emaciated vicar was a hero, and 
 he and Mrs. Elsmere had soon taster^ each other's quality, and 
 formed a curious aUiance, founded on true similarity, in differ- 
 ence. 
 
 But the criticism thus wardea off the vicar expended itself 
 
ROBERT ELSMERS. 
 
 55 
 
 with all the more force on his subordinates. The Harden cu- 
 rates* were the chief crook in Mrs. Elsmere's otherwise tolerable 
 lot. Her parish activities brought her across them perpetually, 
 and she could not away with them. Their cassocks, their pre^ 
 tensions, their stupidities, roused the Irish woman's sense of 
 humor at every turn. The individuals came and went, but the 
 type it seemed to her was always the same ; and she made theii 
 peculiarities the basis of a pessimist theory as to the future of 
 the English Church, which was a source of constant amuse- 
 ment to the very broad-minded young men who filled up the 
 school staff. She, so ready in general to see all the world's 
 good points, was almost bhnd when it was a curate's virtues 
 which were in question. So that, in spite of all her persistent 
 church-going, and her love of church performances as an essen- 
 tial 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 generalizations, 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 posi- 
 tion 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 re- 
 flected that it would certainly be better to say nothing of it to 
 Robert until he should be at college. His impressionable tem- 
 perament, and the pov^^er he had occasionally shown of absorb- 
 ing himself in a subject till it produced in him a fit of intense 
 continuous brooding, unfavorable 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 re- 
 sponsibility. As a boy, he had always shown himself religiously 
 susceptible to a certain extent, and his mother's 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 
 
56 
 
 ROBERT BLSMERE. 
 
 precocious about his religious development, and at sixteen ot 
 seventeen, in spite of his affectionate compliance, and his nat- 
 ural 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 school -boy 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 al- 
 lowed : 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 hterary instincts, which had al- 
 ways been present in him, and which his mother had largely 
 helped to develop by her own restless imaginative ways of ap- 
 proaching life and the world, made themselves felt with con- 
 siderable force. Some time before his cousin's letter arrived 
 he had been taken with a craze for Enghsh poetry, and, but for 
 the corrective influence of a favorite tutor, would probably have 
 thrown himself into it with the same exclusive passion as he 
 had shown for subject after subject in his eager ebuUient child- 
 hood. His mother found him at thirteen indicting a letter on 
 the subject of ''The Faerie Queene" to a school friend, in 
 which, with a sincerity which made her forgive the pomposity, 
 he remarked : 
 
 "I can truly say, with Pope, that this great work has af- 
 forded me extraordinary pleasure.'' 
 
 And about the same time, a master who was much interest- 
 ed in the boy's prospects of getting the school prize for Latin 
 verse, a subject for which he had always shown a special apti- 
 tude, asked him, anxiously, after an Easter holiday , what he had 
 been reading; *the boy ran his hand 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 Yirgil. 
 
 "I have just finished Belial!" he said, with a sigh of satis- 
 faction, "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 Colum- 
 bus, or with moral essays in the manner of Pope, castigating 
 the vices of the time with an energy which sorely tried the grav- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 57 
 
 ity of the mother whenever she was called upon, as she invari- 
 ably 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 ^schylus appealed to the same 
 fibers, the same susceptibilities, as Milton and Shakespeare, 
 and the boy's quick, imaginative sense appropriated Greek and 
 Latin life with the same ease which it showed in possessing it- 
 self of that by-gone English life whence sprung the Canter- 
 bury 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 Hf e to keep the boy's aspiring nose to the grindstone of gram- 
 matical minutice, began about the time of Sir Mowbray's letter 
 to prophesy very smooth things indeed to his mother as to his 
 future success at college, the possibility of his getting the fa- 
 mous St. Anselm's scholarship, and so on. 
 
 Evidently such a youth was not likely to depend for the at- 
 tainment 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 mother's fancy wandered 
 rashly through the coming years. And for many reasons she 
 isecretly allowed herself to hope that he would find for himseK 
 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 Mow- 
 bray, informing him that the intentions of his great-uncle 
 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 boy's immediate pros- 
 pects, in the care of his health, which was uneven and tried 
 somewhat by the strain of preparation for an attempt upon the 
 St. Anselm's 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 set- 
 tled themselves early in November in Oxford lodgings. Robert 
 was to have a few days' complete holiday before the examina- 
 
58 
 
 tion, 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 hght 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 deli- 
 cate crimson on the coUege waUs; the gardens were damp and 
 forsaken. But to Mrs. Elsmere and Robert the place needed 
 neither sun nor summer ''for beauty's 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 lad's heart and alternately soothed and stimulated 
 that keen individual consciousness which naturally accompa- 
 nies the first entrance into manhood. Here, on this soil, steeped 
 in memories, his problems, Ms struggles were to be fought out 
 in their turn. ' ' Tate up thy manhood, " said the inward voice, 
 ''and show what is iu thee. The hour and the opportunity 
 have come !" 
 
 And to this thi-ill of vague expectation, this young sense of 
 an expanding wor-M, something of pathos and of sacredness was 
 added by the duznb influences of the old streets and weather- 
 beaten stones. How tenacious they were of the past! The 
 dreaming cit;f seemed to be stHl brooding in the autumn calm 
 over the long fiuccession of her sons. The continuity, the com- 
 plexity of human experience; the unremitting effort of the 
 race ; the stream of purpose running through it all— these were 
 the kind of tJioughts which, in more or less inchoate and frag- 
 mentary shape, pervaded the boy^s sensitive mind as he ram- 
 bled with his mother from college to college. 
 
 Mrs. Elsmere, too, was fascmated by Oxford. But for all her 
 eager interest, the historic beauty of the place aroused in her 
 an under-mood of melancholy, just a^ 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 in the fate for each of them. For the first ^ime in 
 their lives they were parted. The mother's long guardianship 
 was coming to an end. Had she loved him, erough? 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, craven heart bear to see 
 him absorbed by fresh mterests and passions, in which her 
 share could be only, at the best, secondary and indirect? 
 
 One day— it was on the aSJu^jcnoon preceding the examination 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 59 
 
 --slie gave hurried, haif-laughing utterance to some of these 
 misgivings of hers. They were walking down the Lime Walk 
 of IVinity Gardens ; beneath their feet a yellow, fresh-strewn 
 carpet of leaves, brown interlacing branches overhead, and C« 
 red, misty sun shining through the trunks. Eobert 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 specta- 
 tors 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 self-command of both 
 of them. She dashed wildly into another subject, and then sud- 
 denly it occurred to her impulsive mind that the moment had 
 come to make him acquainted with those dying intentions of 
 his great-uncle which we have already described. The diversion 
 was a welcome one, and the duty seemed clear. So, according- 
 ly, she made him give her all his attention wliile she told him 
 the story and the terms of Sir Mowbray's letter, forcing herself 
 the while to keep her own opinions and predilections as much 
 as possible out of sight. 
 
 Eobert listened with interest and astonishment, the sense of 
 a new-found manhood waxing once more strong within him, as 
 his mind admitted the strange picture of himself occupying the 
 place which had been his father's; 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, though^Mly, when she paused, "it would be hard upon 
 you to go back to Murewell 1'* 
 
 ''Oh, you mustn't think of me when the time comes," said 
 Mrs. Elsmere, sighing. " I shall be a tiresome old woman, and 
 you will be a young naan wanting a wife. There, put it out of 
 your head, Eobert. I thought I had better tell you, for, aft(^r 
 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 himseH up to his full height, and tossed his 
 tumbling reddish hair back from his eyes. He was nearly six 
 feet already, with a long thin body and head, which amply 
 justified his school nickname of '*the darning-needle." 
 
 Don't you trouble either, mother," he said, with a tone of 
 decision; I don't feel as if I should ever take Orders." 
 
 Mrs. Elsmere was old enough to know what importance to 
 
60 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 attach to the trenchancy of eighteen, but still the words were 
 pleasant to her. 
 
 The next day Bobert went up for examination, and after three 
 days of hard work, and phases of alternate hope and depres- 
 sion, in which mother and son excited on© another to no useful 
 purpose, there came the anxious crowding round the college 
 gate in the November twilight, and the sudden flight of dispers 
 ing messengers bearing the news over Oxford. The scholarship 
 had been won by a precocious Etonian with an extraordinary 
 talent for ''stems," and all that appertaineth thereto. But the 
 exhibition feU to Eobert, 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 au- 
 thorities were willing, and on the Saturday following the an- 
 nouncement of his success he was matriculated, saw the pro- 
 vost, and was informed that rooms would be found for him 
 without delay. His mother and he gayly 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 tea-pot for 
 herself with half the fervor which she now threw into the pur- 
 chase of Eobert's; and the young man, accustomed to a rather 
 bare home, and an Irish lack of the httle elegancies of Hfe, was 
 overwhelmed when his mother actually dragged him into a 
 print-seller's, 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 white-haired host thawed under the influ«= 
 ence of Mrs. Elsmere's 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 marvelous drab poplin, 
 adorned with fresh pink rutjhings 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 m the thrill which 
 
61 
 
 she felt creeping over her when she found herself on the arm 
 of one who had been the rallymg point of a hundred struggles, 
 and a centre of influence over thousands of EngHsh lives. 
 
 And then followed the proud moment when Kobert, in his 
 exhibitioner's gown, took her to service in the chapel on Sun- 
 'day. The scores of young faces, the full unison of the hymns, 
 and finally the provost's sermon, with its strange brusqueries 
 and simplicities of manner and phrase— simplicities so^ sugges- 
 tive, so full of a rich and yet disciplined experience that they 
 haunted her mind for weeks afterward— completed the general 
 impression made upon her by the Oxford life. She came out, 
 tremulous and shaken, leaning on her son's 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, hence- 
 forth she could but watch him from the shore. Brought into 
 contact with this imposing university organization, with all its 
 suggestions of virile energies and functions, the mother sudden- 
 ly felt herself insignificant and forsaken. He had been her all, 
 her own, and now on this training-ground of English youth, it 
 seemed to her that the great human society had claimed him 
 from her. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 In his Oxford hf e Robert surrendered himself to the best and 
 most stin;^ulating 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 po- 
 tent men in the world's history, always lay rooted. He had 
 his mother's delight in living. He loved the cricket-field, 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 Mrr* , 
 
•62 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 knew that his mother was bound up in him, and his being was 
 set to satisfy, so far as he could, all her honorable ambitions. 
 
 His many under-graduate friends, strong as their influence 
 must have been in the aggregate on a natm^e so receptive, hard- 
 ly concern us here. His future life, so far as we can see, was 
 most noticeably affected by two men older than himself, and 
 belonging to the dons— both of them fellows and tutors of St. 
 Anselm's, though on different planes of age. 
 
 The first one, Edward Langbam, was Robert's 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 Enghsh barbarian 
 has an aversion to the intrusion of more manner into life than 
 is absolutely necqpsary. Now, Langham was overburdened 
 with manner, though it was manner of the depreciating and 
 not of the arrogant order. Decisions, it seemed, of all sorts 
 were abominable to him. To help a friend he had once con- 
 sented to be pro-proctor. He resigned in a montb, and none of 
 his acquaintances ever afterward dared to allude to the experi- 
 ence. If you could have got at his inmost mind, it was afl^rmed, 
 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 half 
 past nine to inquire whether he would ''dine in." Being a 
 scholar of considerable eminence, it pleased him to fissume on 
 all questions an exasperating degree of ignorance ; and the wags 
 of the college averred that when asked if it rained, or if collec- 
 tions 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 Hke Elsmere. Edward 
 Langham, however, notwithstanding under-graduate tales, was 
 a very remarkable person. In the first place he was possessed 
 of exceptional personal beauty. His coloring was vividly black 
 and white, closely curling jet-black 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 brilhance was 
 balanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He 
 had the brow. Use nose, the upper ^p, the finely molded chin, 
 
ROBERT ElSMERJC. 68 
 
 which belong to the more severe and spiritual Greek type. Cer- 
 tainly of Greek bhtheness and directness there was no trace. 
 The eye was wavering and profoundly melancholy ; all the move- 
 ments of the tall, finely built frame were hesitating and doubt- 
 ful. 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 boy's idiosyn- 
 crasies as much as possible. They did not want an exceptional 
 and abnormal son, and they tried to put down his dreamy, self- 
 conscious habits by forcing him into the common, middle-class, 
 EvangeUcal groove. As soon as he got to college, however, 
 the 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 son's initials ap- 
 pended, and articles of philosophical art-criticism, published 
 while the boy was still an under -graduate — 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 hard-earned savings on the support 
 of a free-thinking scribbler, and the young man wrote no more 
 till just after he had taken a double first in Greats. Then the 
 pubhcation 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 prob- 
 able fellowship. His college was one of the narrowest and most 
 backward in Oxford, and it was made perfectly plain to him be- 
 fore the fellowship examination that he would not be elected. 
 
 He left the college, took pupils for awhile, then stood for a 
 vacant fellowship at St. Anselm's, the Liberal head-quarters, 
 and got it with flying colors. 
 
 Thenceforward one would have thought that a brilliant and 
 favorable 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 suc- 
 cess, which never recurred. It was as though this outburst of 
 action and liberty had disappointed him, as if some deep-rooted 
 
64 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 instinct —cold, critical, reflective— had reasserted itself, con- 
 demning him and his censors equally. The uselessness of utter- 
 *ance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal, 
 the practical absurdity of trying to realize any of the mind's 
 inward dreams ; these were the kind of considerations which 
 descended upon him, slowly and fatally, cinishing 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, 
 large-eyed 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 quarreled no more, he meddled with 
 the great passionate things of life and expression no more. On 
 his taking up residence in St. Anselm's, indeed, and on his be- 
 ing appointed first lecturer and then tutor, he had a momen- 
 tary pleasure in the thought of teaching. His mind was a store- 
 house of thought and fact, and to the man brought up at a dull 
 provincial day-school 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 
 to scatter this illusion, too. He could not be simple, he could 
 not be spontaneous ; he was tormented by self -consciousness, 
 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 con- 
 tributor to dictionaries, a microscopic student of texts, not in 
 the interest of anything beyond, but simply as a kind of men- 
 tal stone-breaking. 
 
 The only survival of that moment of glow and color in liis lif 9 
 was his love of music and the theater. Almost every year be 
 disappeared to France to haunt the Paris theaters for a fort- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 65 
 
 night ; 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 thorough-going sceptic and thorough-going 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 mean's instincts, at this period of his life, at any 
 rate, were habitually kindly and affectionate. He knew noth- 
 ing of women, and was not liked hy 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 Hght of sympathy which was always escaping 
 him, and which he was powerless to compel. He met it for 
 the first time in Eobert Elsmere. The susceptible, poetical boy 
 was struck at some favorable 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 
 coUege toward him. He showed his liking impetuosly, boy- 
 ishly, 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 en- 
 slaves 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, red-haired youth— with his eagerness, 
 his boundless curiosity, his genius for all sorts of lovable mis- 
 fcakes -he disquieted himself greatly. He tried to discipline the 
 roving mind, to infuse into the boy's literary temper the del- 
 icc^cy, the precision, the sublety of his own. His fastidious, 
 critical habits of work supplied exactly that antidote which 
 Elsmere's main faults of haste and carelessness required. He 
 was always holding up before him the inexhaustible patience 
 and labor 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. 
 
66 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 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 boy's matriculation, 
 Elsmere brought him an essay after Hall, and they sat on talk- 
 ing afterward. It was a rainy, cheerless evening ; the first con- 
 test 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. Langham's 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 man's vanity. 
 
 Eobert looked up with a joyful exclamation when he had fln- 
 ished the letter. 
 
 ' ' 1 congratulate you, sir. " 
 * a have refused it," said Langham, abruptly. 
 His companion sat oi)en-mouthed. 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 vibra- 
 tion, 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 ram- 
 pagious 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 imperi- 
 ously. The youth felt the nervous tension in the elder man's 
 voice and manner, was startled by a confidence never before 
 bestowed upon him, close as that imequal 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 self -distrustful, so absurdly diffident of respon- 
 sibility, 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 jl while. Then he looked up and 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 stretched out a hand toward a book which lay on a table near. 
 It was the "Reveries " of Senancour. ''My answer is written 
 ^e," he said. ''It will seem to you now, Elsmere, mere mid- 
 summer madness. May it always seem so to you. Forgive 
 me. The pressm'e of solitude sometimes is too great." 
 
 Elsmere looked up with one of his flashing, affectionate 
 smiles, and took the book from Langham's hand. He f oimd 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 1 
 will; I will do all that is right— all that is natural. But soon 
 resistance, difficulty, unforseen, 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 realize their impotence : we have time and strength to 
 do what we must, never what we wiQ. Men go on repeating 
 the words work, genius^ success. Fools! Will all these re- 
 sounding 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 bom 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 goiiig 
 to Scotland. They would request me to resign in a week." 
 
 Long after Elsmere, who had stayed talking awhile 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 tutor's mind that Els- 
 mere 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 Robert's ears as 
 that of a person of great influence and consideration at St. An- 
 selm's. His tutor at Harden had spoken of him in the boy's 
 hearing as one of the most remarkable men of the generation, 
 
68 
 
 ROBEET ELSMERB. 
 
 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 the 
 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 in- 
 troduced to him by that namCr but the nervousness of the mo- 
 ment 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 occa- 
 sionally met Mr. Grey in the quadrangle or in the street, and 
 the tutor, resembling the thin, bright-faced 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 con- 
 cerned. 
 
 However, a day or two after the conversation we have de- 
 scribed, Robert, going to Langham's rooms late in the after- 
 noon to return a book which had been lent to him, perceived 
 two figures standing talking on the hearth-rug, and by the 
 western light beating in recognized 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, smil- 
 ing and shaking hands with the boy. A first interview with 
 the provost is always formidable. I remember it too well my- 
 seK. 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. Good-night." 
 
 Langham stood a moment after the door closed, eying young 
 Elsmere. There was a curious struggle going on in the tutor's 
 mind. 
 
 Elsmere," he said at last, abruptly, would you hke to go 
 to-night and hear Grey preach ?" 
 
 * ' Preach 1" exclaimed the lad. * ' I thought he was a layman, " 
 
 So he is. It will be a lay sermon. It was always the cus- 
 tom 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 lay- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 69 
 
 man, to carry on the practice. It was an extraordinary effort, 
 for he is a man to whom words on such a subject are the coin- 
 ing of his heart's 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. 
 *'Isitopen?" 
 
 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 Grey's influence like a fish to water," 
 thought the tutor to himself when he was alone, not without 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 o'clock 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 
 feUows 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 afterward 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. Grey's voice with its broad in- 
 tonation, 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 gas-light behind him, began his address. 
 
 All the main points of the experience which followed stamped 
 themselves on Robert's 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 
 figiu'e of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk 
 under the brows, the Midland accent, the make of limb and 
 features 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 I Here, indeed, was a man on whom his fellows might lean, 
 a man in whom the generatian of spiritual force was so strong 
 
70 
 
 ROBERT BLSMERK. 
 
 and continuous that it overflowed of necessity into the poorer, 
 barrener Uves around him, kindling and enriching. Robert 
 felt himself seized and penetrated, filled with a fervor and an 
 admiration which he was too young and immature to analyze, 
 but which was to be none the less potent and lasting. 
 
 Much of the sermon itself, indeed, was beyond him. It was 
 of the meaning of St. Paul's 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 resiu-rection 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 re-enacted in the soul of man, and consti- 
 tuting 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. Grey's treatment of these questions was clothed, through- 
 out a large portion of the lecture, in metaphysical language, 
 ^hich 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 sei-mon, 
 whicL so profoundly affected young Elsmere. It was the 
 speake: himself, and the occasional passages in which, address- 
 ing himself to the practical needs of his hearers, he put before 
 them the claims and conditions of the higher hfe with a preg- 
 nan' simpHcity and rugged beauty of phrase. Conceit, selfish- 
 neb vice— how, as he spoke of them, they seemed to wither 
 fro- his presence! How the "pitiful, earthly self" with its 
 passion and its cravings, sunk 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 breath- 
 ing through the divine workshop; and in place of natural dis- 
 position and reverent compliance, there sprung up in him sud- 
 
ROBBKT BLSMEBE. 
 
 71 
 
 denly 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, lighted 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 evei 
 given, I think. Good-night." 
 
 An d 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 hero-worship 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. Grey's house. 
 Eismere 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 new- 
 born sense of devotion. The quiet unpretending house with its 
 exquisite neatness and its abundance of books, the family life, 
 with the heart-happiness underneath, and the gentle trTOt 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 lad's imagination, touched in 
 him responsive fibers 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, friend- 
 ly host, surrounded by a group of men talking the ordinary 
 pleasant Oxford chit-chat — the river, the schools, the union, 
 the football matches, and so on. Every now and then, as Els- 
 mere stood at the edge of the circle listening, the rugged face 
 
72 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 in the center 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 
 self-forgetfulness. Sometimes the conversation strayed into 
 I)oUtics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, would throw 
 back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flash- 
 ing occasionally into grim humor which seemed to throw light 
 on the innate strength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puri- 
 tan breed from which he sprung. Nothing could be more im- 
 like the inspired philosopher, the mystic surrounded by an 
 adoring school, whom Eobert 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 boy's 
 flush of pleasure showed how much he valued the permission. 
 
 For three years those Sunday half hours were the great 
 charm of Robert Elsmere's 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 hving interest in the 
 needs and training of that broadening democracy on which the 
 future of England rests ; a few graphic sayings about individu- 
 als ; above all, a constant readiness on the host's part to hsten, 
 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 sin- 
 cerity, had got to say— these were the sort of impressions they 
 had left behind them, re-enforced always, indeed, by the one 
 continuous impression of a great soul speaking with difficulty 
 and labor, but still clearly, still effectually, through an unblem- 
 ished 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 Uve;" 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 boat-races in festive attire 'to which 
 
she had devoted her most anxious attention for Eobert's sake, 
 and which made her, dear, good, impracticable soul, the obn 
 served of all observers. When she came she and Kobert 
 talked all day, so far as lectures allowed, and most of tho 
 night, after their own eager, improvident fashion; and sh« 
 soon gathered, with that solemn, half- tragic sense of change 
 which besets a mother's heart at such a moment, that there 
 were many new forces at work in her boy's mind, deep under- 
 currents of feeling, stiiTed in him by the Oxford influencesL 
 which must before long rise powerfully to the surface. 
 
 He was passing from a bright buoyant lad into k man, and h 
 man of ardor and conviction. And the chief instrument in the 
 transformation was Mr. Grey. 
 
 Elsmere got his first in Moderations easily. But the Pinal 
 Schools were a different matter. In the LrsL days of his re- 
 turn to Oxford, in the October of his third year, while he was 
 still making up his lecture hst, and takiug a general oversight 
 of the work demanded from him, bef jre plunging definitely 
 into it, he was oppressed with a s^nse ihat the two years lying 
 before him constituted a problem vyhich would be harder to 
 solve than any which had yet been ^et 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 
 smoldering fires, which Oxfoid was preparing for him, those 
 fascinating moments of intellectual fence with minds as eager 
 and as crude as his own, aad of all the delightful dipping into 
 the very latest Uterature, «»7^hich such moments encouraged and 
 involved, seemed to comvey a sort of warning to the boy's 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 impossibihties 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 digres- 
 sion 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 the 
 ' place. He, the most laborious, the most diainterested of sohfi" 
 
74 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ars, turned himself almost into a crammer for Elsmere's bene* 
 fit. He abused the lad's multifarious reading, declared it was 
 no better than dram-drinking, 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 befere many weeks were over that Els- 
 mere would miss his first in Greats. He was too curious, too 
 restless, too passionate about many things. Above all he was 
 beginning, in the tutor's opinion, to concern himself disas- 
 trously early with that most overwhelming and most brain- 
 confusing of all human interests— the interest of religion. 
 Grey had made him earnest" with a vengeance. 
 
 Elsmere was now attending Grey's 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 teacher's. The whole basis of Grey's 
 thought was ardently idealist and Hegelian. He had broken 
 with the popular Christianity, but for him, God, conscious- 
 ness, duty, were the only realities. None of the various forms 
 of materialist thought escaped his challenge; no genuine utter- 
 ance of the spiritual life of man but was sure of his sympathy. 
 It was known that after having prepared himself for the Chris- 
 tian ministry he had remained a layman because it had be- 
 come impossible to him to accept miracle ; and it was evident 
 that the commoner type of Churchmen regarded him as an an- 
 tagonist 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 puy>ils. He was reserved, he talked with 
 difficulty, and his repect "or the immaturity of the young lives 
 near him was complete, ^o that what he sowed others often 
 reaped, or to quote the expression of a well-known rationalist 
 about him : The Tories wore always carrying off his honey to 
 their hive." Elsmere, for instance, took in all that Grey had 
 to give, drank in all the ideal fervor, the spiritual enthusiasm 
 of the great tutor, and then, as Grey himself would have done 
 some twenty years earlier, carried his religious passion so stim- 
 ulated into the service of the great positive tradition around 
 him. 
 
 And at that particular moment in Oxford history, the passage 
 from philosophic idealism to 5lad acquiescence in the received 
 
BOBBKT ELSMBEB. '5 
 
 Christian system, was a peculiarly easy one. It was the most 
 natural thing in the world that a young man of Elsmere s tem- 
 perament should rally to the Church. The place was passmg 
 through one of those periodical crises of reaction agamst an 
 overdriven rationalism, which show themselves with tolerable 
 regularity in any great center of inteUectiial activity. It had 
 begun to be recognized with a great burst of enthusiasm and 
 astonishment, that, after all, Mill and Herbert Spencer had not 
 said the last word on all things in heaven and earth. And now 
 there was exaggerated recoil. A fresh wave of religious roman^ 
 ticism was fast gathering strength; the spirit of Newman had 
 reappeared in the place which Newman had loved and left; 
 rehgion was becoming once more popular among the most 
 trivial souls, and a deep reality among a large proportion of the 
 
 nobler ones. , , e a 
 
 With this movement of opinion Eobert had very soon found 
 himself in close and sympathetic contact. The meager im- 
 pression left upon his boyhood by the somewhat grotesque sue 
 cession of the Harden curates, and by his mother's shafts ot 
 wit at their expense, was soon driven out of him by the stateh- 
 aess 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 organized and 
 venerable faith, the great public functions and expressions of 
 that faith, possessed the boy's imagination more and more. As 
 he sat in the under-graduates' gallery at St. Mary's on the Sun- 
 days, when the great High Church preacher of the moment oc- 
 cupied the pulpit, and looked down on the crowded bmlding, 
 full of grave, black-gowned figures, and framed in one continu- 
 ous belt of closely packed boyish faces; as he listened to the 
 preacher's vibrating voice, rising and falling with the orator s 
 instinct for musical effect; or as he stood up with the great 
 surrounding body of under-graduates to send the melody ot 
 some Latin hymn rolUng mto the far recesses of the choir, the 
 sight and the experience touched his inmost feelmg, and satis- 
 fied all the poetical and dramatic mstincts of a passionate nature. 
 The system behmd the sight took stronger and stronger hold 
 upon him; he began to wish ardently and continuously to be- 
 come a part of it, to cast in his lot definitely with it. 
 
 One May evening he was wandering by himself along the 
 towing-path which skirts the upper river, a prey to many 
 ,Ai0Ughts, to forebodings about the schools which were to begnn 
 
76 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 in three weeks, and to speculations as to how his mother w aid 
 take the news of the second class, which he himself felt 1 j 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 mother's 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 town meadow, 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 hfe. 
 
 And when he rose, half an hour afterward, and turned his 
 steps homeward, he knew witli an inward tremor of heart that 
 the next great step of the way was practically taken. For there 
 by the ghding river, and m view of the distant Oxford spires, 
 which his fancy took to witness the act, he had vowed himself 
 in prayer and self-abasement 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 sin- 
 gle 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 tii-ed, 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. G-rey. 
 
 Come with me for a walk,,Elsmere; you look as if some air 
 would do you good." 
 
 Eobert acquiesced, and the two men turned into the passage- 
 way leading out on to Radchffe Square. 
 
 I have done for myself, sir,-' said the youth, with a sigh, 
 haK impatience, half depression. ''It seems to me to-day 
 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 mustn't be too much cast down about 
 it if you don't get your first." 
 This imphed acceptance of his partial defeat coming from 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 atiother's lips, struck the excitable Robert like a lash. It was 
 only what he had been saying to himself, but in the most pes- 
 simist forecasts we make of ourselves, there is always an un- 
 der protest of hope. - 
 
 ''I have been wasting my time here lately," he said, hur- 
 riedly raising his college cap from his brows as if it oppressed 
 them, and pushing his hair back with a weary restless ges- 
 ture. 
 
 *'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 don't 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 httle 
 over-confident, perhaps "—the speaker's smile took all the sting 
 out of the words— -"but you have grown into a man, and you 
 are fit now for man's work. Don't let yourself be depressed, 
 Elsmere. You will do better in life than you have done in ex- 
 amination." 
 
 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 in- 
 finitely 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 June, 
 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 awhile, 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 brusqueness of manner. 
 
 "No," said Robert, eagerly. "I never had any. Per- 
 haps," he added, with a sudden humility, it is because I have 
 never gone deep enough, What I believe might have been 
 
78 
 
 EOBEET ELSMERE, 
 
 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 toward it, and the great eyes under the furrowed 
 brow had a pecuUar 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 con^ 
 scious 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 words 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 tutor's reti- 
 cence and the younger man's 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 
 Elsmere's gifts were. It was absurd that he should not have 
 made more of them in sight of the pubUc. Le clericalisme 
 viola Vennemi r was about the gist of Langham's mood during 
 the days that followed on the class hst. 
 
 Elsmere, however, did not divulge his intention of taking | 
 Orders to him till ten days afterward, when he had carried off | 
 Langham to stay at Harden, and he and his old tutor were 
 smoking in his mother s little garden one moonhghted night. 
 I When he had finished his statement Langham stood still a mo- 
 ment watching the wreaths of smoke as they curled and van- 
 ished. The curious interest in Elsmere's 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 diffi- 
 culty 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. 
 
 "Simply ideas, or experiences, personified," said Langham, 
 puffing away. "I take it they are the subject-matter of all - 
 theologies." 
 
 I don't understand you," said Robert, flushing. "To the 
 Christian, facts have been the medium by which ideas the 
 yrprld could not otherwise have come at have been communis 
 
EOBEBT ELSMERB, 
 
 10 
 
 cated to man. Christian theology is a system of ideas indeed, 
 but of ideas realized, 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, dryly. 
 
 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 Eobert held forth, and Lang- 
 ham kept him going by an occasional remark which acted like 
 the prick of a spur. The tutor's psychological curiosity was 
 soon satisfied. He declared to himself that the intellect had 
 precious little to do with Elsmere's 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 intellectug,l con- 
 viction—by moral passion, by love, by feeling, by that mysti- 
 cism, 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 skeptics, ^*and he 
 has never so much as exerted it. What a brute I am to pro- 
 test!" 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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, don't 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 son's fortunes, 
 she realized with humorous distinctness that for some years 
 past Eobert had been educating her as well as himself. Her 
 old rebellious sense of something inheritently absurd in the 
 clerical status had been gradually slain in her by her long con- 
 tact 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 satis- 
 faction of her own essentially lay instincts; but at bottom she 
 knew perfectly well that, when the moment came, no mother 
 
80 
 
 ROBERT SLSMEHiflL 
 
 could be more loyal, more easily imposed upon, than she would 
 be. 
 
 '^I suppose, then, Eobert, we shall be back at MureweU be- 
 fore very long," she said to him one morning, abruptly, study- 
 ing him the while out of her small, twinkling eyes. What dig- 
 nity there was already in the young, lightly-built frame! what 
 frankness and character in the irregular, attractive face I 
 
 Mother," cried Elsmere, indignantly, ''what do you take 
 tne for?" Do you imagine I am going to bury myself in the 
 country ac five or six-and-twenty, take six hundred a year, and 
 nothing to do for it? That would be a deserter's act indeed." 
 
 Mrs. Elsmere shrugged her shoulders. Oh, I supposed you 
 would insist on killing yourself, to begin with. To most peo- 
 ple nowadays that seems to be tlie 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 ta 
 his cousin Mowbray Elsmere. He annoimced to him that he 
 was about to read foi Orders, and that at the same time he re- 
 linquished all claim on the living of Murewell. Do what you 
 hke with it when it falls vacant," he wrote, '^without refer- 
 ence to me. My views are strong that before a clergyman in 
 health and strength, and in no immediate want of money, al- 
 lows himself the luxury of a country parish, he is bound, for 
 some years at any rate, to meet the challenge of evil and pov- 
 erty where the fight is hardest — among our English town pop* 
 ulation." 
 
 Sir Mowbray Elsmere replied, curtly, in a day or two, to the 
 effect that Robert's letter seemed to him superfluous. He, Sir 
 Mowbray, had nothing to do with his cousin's views. When 
 the living was vacant— the present holder, however, was un- 
 common tough and did not mean dying— he should follow out 
 the instructions of his father's wiQ, and if Eobert 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 com- 
 pletely 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. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postpon- 
 ing for awhile that London curacy and that stout grapple with 
 
81 
 
 human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining. Stay 
 here a year or two," Grey said, bluntly; you are at the be- 
 ginning 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 afterward, and there is no lack of work here for 
 a man's moral energies." 
 
 Langham took the same line, and Elsmere submitted. Three 
 happy and fruitful years followed. The young lecturer de- 
 veloped 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 de- 
 mands of a college class in which he was deeply interested. He 
 became a stimulating and successful teacher, and one of the 
 most popular of men. His passionate sense of responsibility 
 toward his pupils made him load himself with burdens to whicL 
 he was constantly physically unequal, and fill the vacation^j 
 almost as full as the terms. And as he was comparatively a 
 man of means, his generous impetuous temper was able to 
 gratif yitself in ways that would have been impossible to others. 
 The story of his summer reading-parties, for instance, if one 
 could have unraveled it, would have been found to be one 
 long string of acts of kindness toward 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 mother's Evan- 
 gehcal training of him and Mr. Grey's influence, together, per- 
 haps, 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 
 EngHsh Church as a great national institution for the promo- 
 tion of God's work on earth no one could have been more 
 deeply loyal, and none coming close to him could mistake the 
 fervor and passion of his Christian feeling. At the same time 
 he did not know what rancor 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 dan- 
 gerous 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 coffee-palace and 
 lecture-room just started by them in one of the suburbs; while 
 in the second year of his lectureship the success of some first 
 
82 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 attempts at preaching fixed the attention of the religious lead- 
 ers upon him as upon a man certain to make his mark. 
 
 So the three years passed— years not, perhaps, of great in- 
 tellectual advance, for other forces in him than those of the 
 intellect were mainly to the fore, but years certainly of contin- 
 uous growth in character and moral experience. And at the 
 end of them Mowbray Elsmere made his offer, and it was ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 The secret of it, of course, was overwork. Mrs. Elsmere, 
 from the little house in Meiion Street, where she had estab- 
 lished herself, had watched her boy's meteoric career through 
 these crowded months with very frequent misgivings. No one 
 knew better than she that Eobert was constitutionally not of 
 the toughest fiber, and she realized 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. Grey's common sense, nor Langham's 
 fidgety protests had any effect on the young enthusiast to whom 
 self -slaughter 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 last, 
 in the January of his fourth year, the collapse became so de- 
 cided that he consented, bribed by the prospect of the Holy 
 Land, to go away for three months to Egypt and the East, ac- 
 companied 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 hying 
 from Sir Mowbray. At the moment when the letter arrived 
 he was feeling desperately tired and ill, and in after-life he 
 never forgot the haK-superstitious thrill and deep sense of de- 
 pression with which be received it. For within him was a 
 slowly emerging, 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 labor 
 and the worst forms of English poverty. And the coincidence 
 of the Murewell iacumbent's 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 one 
 thousand two hundred souls, and no curate, is a sinecure. As 
 
83 
 
 for hard town work, it is absurd— you couldn't 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, Elsmere's competence to fulfill all the du- 
 ties 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 fore- 
 seen 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 hfe there. 
 
 In the end Eobert 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 every- 
 body 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 mother's heart. 
 
 ''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 aU. Heigh ho! 
 How is one to preach to people who has stuffed you up with 
 gooseberries, or swung you on gates, or Ufted 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 pummeled me into the middle of next week for dis- 
 turbing his bird-trap? 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. 
 
84 
 
 ROBERT ELSMER12. 
 
 *' So I hear," said Mrs. Elsmere, dryly. He won't be much 
 good to you." 
 
 He sat on meditating wliile 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 revolution- 
 ary 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 Robert's 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 we^'e in England, aud Robert, now con- 
 valescent, had accepted an invitation to spend a month in Long 
 Whindale with his mother's cousins, the Thomburghs, who 
 offered him quiet, embracing air. He was to enter on his 
 duties at Miu*ewell 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 dining-room 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 flower-sprinkled valley 
 might have beheved that, after all, England, and even northern 
 England, had a summer. Early in the season as it was, the sun 
 was already drawing the color 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 gray-blue 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 Phoebus. 
 
 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 
 colly, who lay at her feet panting, but studying her with his 
 bright eyes, and evidently ready to be off again at the first in- 
 dication that his playmate had recovered her wind. Chattie 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 85 
 
 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 Kose, holding out a 
 hand to her; if Miss Barks were ever pretty she must have 
 looked like you at this moment." 
 
 I won't have Chattie put upon," said Agnes, establishing 
 herself at the other side of the little tea^able; she has done 
 you no harm. Come to me, beastie. I won't 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 Agnes's lap and 
 eurled herself up there. 
 
 ''Nothing but cupboard love," said Eose, scornfully, in an- 
 swer to Agnes's laugh ; ' ' she knows you will give her bread and 
 butter and I won't, 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 didn't 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 didn't 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 dra- 
 matic glance round the garden: My heart is whole. How is 
 yours ?" 
 
 ^''Intact,'''' said Agnes, calmly, **as that French bric-a-brac 
 man in the Brompton Eoad 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 tea-spoon in 
 it eloquently round— ''he won't have his hair cut close. I 
 must have luxuriant locks, and I will take no excuse ! Une 
 chevelure depoete, the eye of an eagle, the mustache of a hero, 
 the hand of a Rubenstein, and, if it pleases him, the temper of 
 a fiend. He w^ll be odious, insufllerable for all the world be- 
 sides, 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 cbeek.__ 
 
86 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 "No doubt," said Agnes, dryly. **But you can't wondet 
 if under the circumstances I don't pine for a brother-in-law. 
 To return to the subject, however, Catherine liked him. She 
 said so." 
 
 **0h, that doesn't coupt," replied Hose, 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. Rose's 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 fir cone lying near and threw it at the 
 nose of the colly, who made a jump at it, and then resumed 
 an attitude of blinking and dignified protest against his mis- 
 tress's follies. 
 
 Agnes again studied her sister. What's the master with 
 you. Rose ?" 
 
 **The usual thing, my dear," replied Rose, cmiily, **only 
 more so. I had a letter this morning from Carry Ford — the 
 daughter, you know, of those nice people I stayed in Manches- 
 ter with last year. Well, she wants me to go and stay the 
 winter with them and study under a first-rate man, Franzen, 
 who is to be in Manchester two days a week during the 
 winter. I haven't said a word about it — what's the use. I 
 know all Catherine's arguments by heart. Manchester is not 
 Whindgde, and papa wished us to live in Whindale ; I am not 
 somebody else and needn't earn my bread; and art is not re- 
 ligion; 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 tfie road. 
 
 Catherine, and an unknown. Catherine driving at a foot's 
 pace, and the unknown walking beside her. Oh, I see, of 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 87 
 
 eourse— Mr. Elsmere. He will come in to tea, so I'll go for a 
 cup. It is his duty to call on us to-day." 
 
 When Rose came back in the wake of her mother, Catherine 
 and Robert Elsmere were coming up the drive. Something 
 had given Catherine more color than usual, and as Mrs. Ley- 
 burn shook hands with the young clergyman her mother's 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 tea-maker, dispensed her wares; Cath- 
 erine took her favorite low seat beside her mother, clasping 
 Mrs. Leyburn's thin mittened hand awhile tenderly in her 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 differ- 
 ence 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, Roschen ?" 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 mother's feet and her caress of her 
 sister were Uke flowers breaking through the stern March soil 
 and changing the whole spirit of the fields. 
 
 Presently he said something of Oxford, and mentioned Mer- 
 ton. Instantly Mrs. Leyburn fell upon him. Had he ever seen 
 
 g ^ who had been a Fellow there, and Rose's godfather? 
 
 "I don't acknowledge him," said Ro^e, pouting. "Other 
 people's 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 question ? Mrs. Leyburn became quite animated, 
 and, diving into her memory, produced a number of fragmen- 
 tary reminiscences of her husband's queen's 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 defer- 
 tmcie ^ of youth to ag^, which confirmed the liking of the 
 
88 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 whole party for him. Then the mention of an associate oi 
 Richard Leybum's 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 hermit-veteran Pusey, as though by another Ehas re- 
 turning to the world to dehver 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, inv/ardly 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 de- 
 scribing St. Anselm's 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 natu- 
 rally to talk of Mr. Grey, then, next to the provost, the most 
 prominent 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 bright-haired 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 ?" 
 
 *'0h, 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 Hke," said Robert. What I meant was that 
 
BOBERT ELSMEEE, 
 
 89 
 
 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 Cath- 
 erine's 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 under- 
 voice she began to give Mrs. Leyburn the news of her after- 
 noon expedition. 
 
 Eose 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 1" 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. Catherine's "musts" were 
 never disputed. She moved toward Elsmere with outstretched 
 hand. But he also sprung up. 
 
 "I, too, must be going," he said; "I have paid you an un- 
 conscionable 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. Ag- 
 nes, 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 seerped 
 more alive to the outer world, more hke other people, less 
 nun-like, than usual. 
 
 When they had left the garden together, as they had come 
 into it, and Mrs. Leyburn, complaining of chilliness, had re- 
 treated to the drawing-room. Rose laid a quick hand on her 
 sister's arm. 
 
 "You say Catherine likes him? Ow! 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 toward the vicarage. He thought, uneasily, she was a 
 
00 
 
 ROBERT ELSKERE. 
 
 little more reserved with him than she had been in those 
 pleasant moments after he had overtaken her in the pony- 
 carriage ; 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 boimd for High GhyU?" 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 Catherine's cheek. 
 Then she looked up with a smile. It was amusing to be taken 
 care of by this tall stranger. 
 
 '*It is most imfeminine, I am afraid,'' she said, ^*but I 
 couldn't be tired if I tried." 
 
 Elsmere grasped her hand. 
 You make me feel myself , more than ever a shocking ex- 
 ample," he said, letting it go with a httle sigh. The smart of 
 his own renunciation was stiU 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 Ley bums, as he had managed to shift 
 it once or twice before that day, flattering himself, of course, on 
 each occasion that his maneuvers 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 
 baU rolling merrily. 
 
 **Miss Leyburn seems to have very strong religious views," 
 said Robert, a propos of some remark of the vicar's as to the 
 assistance she was to him in the school. 
 
 Ah, she is her father's daughter," said the vicar, genially. 
 He had his oldest coat on, his favorite pipe between his hps, 
 and a bit of domestic carpentering on his knee at which he 
 \ias fiddling away, and. being perfectly happy, was also per- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 9L 
 
 fectly amiable. Richard Ley burn was a fanatic— as mild as 
 you please, but immovable." 
 What line?" 
 
 ''Evangelical, with a dash of Quakerism. He lent me 
 * Madame Guyon's Life' once to read. I didn't 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 httle thing. 
 And such a dreamer ! When he came to live up here just be- 
 fore his death, and all his active life was taken off him, I be- 
 lieve half his time he was seeing visions. He used to wander 
 over the fells and meet you with a start, as though you be- 
 longed 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 squire's daughter some- 
 where near the school of which he was master— a good family, 
 I believe— she'll tell you so, in a lady-like 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 al- 
 ways 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 
 heither bend nor break him. I don't believe anybody but 
 Richard Ley burn could have gone through Oxford at the height 
 of the Oxford Movement, and, so to speak, have known noth- 
 ing 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 favorite 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 
 Churchman— which he had gtade for himself, and which he 
 
92 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 and Catherine knew by heart. In some ways he was not a 
 bigot at all. He would have had the chiu^ch make peace with 
 the dissenters ; he was all for upsetting tests so far as uncon- 
 formity was concerned. But he drew the most rigid line be- 
 tween belief and imbelief. He would not have dined at the 
 same table with a Unitarian if he could have helped it. I re- 
 member a furious article of his in the ' Record ' against admit- 
 ting Unitarians to the universities or allowing them to sit in 
 Parhament. ' England is a Christian state,' he said; 'they ai^e 
 not Christians; they have no right in her except on sufeance.' 
 Well, I suppose he was about right," said the vicar, with a 
 sigh. "We are all so half-hearted nowadays." 
 
 "Not he," cried Eobert, hotly. "Who are we that because 
 a man differs from us in opinion we are to shut him out from 
 the education of pohtical and civil duty? But never mind, 
 Cousin William. Goon." 
 
 "There's no more that I remember, except that of course 
 Catherine took all these ideas from him. He wouldn't let his 
 children know any unbehever, 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 ^vife and daughters 
 to Uve 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 Hving the old-fashioned 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 Eobert, "all very well for Miss Ley bum, 
 but I don't see the father in the two yorlnger girls." 
 
 "Ah, there is Catherine's difficulty," said the vicar, shrug- 
 ging his shoulders. "Poor thing ! How well I remember her 
 after her father's death ! She came down to see me in the din- 
 ing-room 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. Thomburgh, help me to look after the 
 others !' And that's been ^her one thought since then— that, 
 next to following the narrow road»" 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 93 
 
 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 in- 
 conveniently high standards, and her influence, surpassing his 
 own, in his own domain. 
 
 "I should like to know the secret of the little musician's in- 
 dependence," said Robert, musing. There might be no tie of 
 blood at all between her and the elder, so far as I can see." 
 
 ^' Oh, I don't know that! There's more than you think, or 
 Catherine wouldn't 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 shouldn't she?" 
 
 ''Ah, well, you see, my dear fellow, I am old enough, and 
 you're 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 ad- 
 mitted that a girl who hadn't got her own bread or her family's 
 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 mucic lessons. ' 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 wasn't 
 consistent. Nobody is. It was actually he that brought Rose 
 her first violin from London in a green baize bag. Mrs. Ley- 
 burn took me in one night to see her asleep with it on her pil- 
 low, and ail her pretty curls lying over the strings. I dare 
 say, poor man, it was one of the acts toward his children that 
 tormented his mind in his last hour." 
 
 "She has certainly had her way about practicing 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 mother's 
 side of the family. Lately she has got quite out of hand. She 
 went to stay with some relations they have in Manchester, got 
 I drawn into the musical set there, took to these funny gowns, 
 and now she and Catherine are always half at war. Poor 
 
54 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 it's no use. I wish the little wild thing would get herself 
 well married. She's not meant for this humdrum place, and 
 she may kick over the traces." 
 
 "She's pretty enough for anything and anybody," said 
 Robert. 
 
 The vicar looked at him sharply, but the young man's criti- 
 cal 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. Thornburgh's 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 tire- 
 some mai^ from Randall's. I've 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 we'd had to eat them up. 
 Well, now, my dears " 
 
 The vicar's wife paused. Her square short figure was be- 
 tween the two girls ; she had an arm of each, and she looked 
 significantly from one to another, her gray curls fiapping 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 Rose's 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 brother-in-law?" she 
 inquired, beginning in a whisper, with slow emphasis, patting 
 Rose's arm, and bringing out the last words with a rush. 
 
 Agnes caught the twinkle in Rose's eye, but she answered 
 for them both demurely. 
 
 " We have no objection to entertain the idea. But you must 
 ^plain." 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 95 
 
 Explain!" cried Mrs. Thornburgh. ''I should think it 
 explains itself . At least if you'd been in this house the last 
 twenty-four hours you'd think so. Since the moment when he 
 first met her, it's been 'Miss L^yburn,' 'Miss Leyburn,' all 
 the time. One might have seen it with half an eye from the 
 beginning." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh had not sem it with two eyes, as we know, 
 till it was pointed out to her - but her imagination worked with 
 equal liveliness backward or forward. 
 
 ''He went to see you yesterday, didn't he— yes, I know he 
 did— and he overtook her m the pony-carriage— the vicar saw 
 • them from across the vaRey— and he brought her back from 
 your house, and then he kept WilHam up till nearly twelve 
 talking of her. And no'v he wants a picnic. Oh, its as plain 
 as a pi^e-staff. And, mj dears, nothing to be said against 
 him. Fifteen hundred a year if he's a penny. A nice Kving, 
 only his mother to iook after, and as good a young fellow as 
 ever stepped." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh stopped, choked almost by her own elo- 
 quence. The girls, who had by this time established her be- 
 , tween them on a garden-seat, looked at her with smiling com- 
 ^ posure. Tb^y 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 in- 
 terrogation. Rose, still smiling, slowly shook her head. 
 
 "What!" cried Mrs. Thornburgh; then, with charming in- 
 consistency, " oh, you can't know anything in two days." 
 
 "That's just it," said Agnes, intervening; "we can't know 
 anything in two days. No one ever will know anything about 
 Catherine, if she takes to anybody, till the last minute." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh's face fell. " It's very difficult when peo- 
 ple 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 vicar's wife sketched out a programme of festivities 
 for the next fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive 
 head, which took the sister's breach away. Rose bit her )ip to 
 
96 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 keep in her laughter. Agnes, with vast self-possession, took 
 Mrs. Thornburghiu 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, help, 
 lessly. " Look at the weather! We must have some picnics, 
 if it's only to amuse Robert I" 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effer- 
 vescence 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 prom- 
 ised her two or three expeditions and one picnic at least; the;y 
 said they would do their best; they promised they would re- 
 port what they saw and be very discreet, both feehng the 
 comedy of Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion ; and 
 then they departed to their early dinner, leaving the vicar-.-^^ 
 wife decidedly less self-confident than they found her. 
 
 *'The fii-st matrimonial excitement of the family," cried 
 Agnes, as they walked home. "So far no one can say the 
 Misses Leyburn have been besieged !" 
 
 '^It will be all moonshine," Rose replied, decisively. "Mr. 
 Elsmere may lose his heart ; we may aid and abet him ; Cather- 
 ine 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 grace. 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 hfe. 
 Besides, she understood that there was a soreness at the bottom 
 of Rose's heart that was always showmg itself in unexpected 
 connections. 
 
 There was no necessity, indeed, for elaborate schemes for as- 
 sisting Providence. Mrs. Thornbrn-gh 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 do 
 her many offices of charity; he offered the vicar to take a class 
 in the school, aad was naively 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 incon- 
 venient respect for his cloth and Mra Leyburn sent Lim oij 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 97 
 
 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 pn paralyzed 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 intel- 
 lectual life was becoming plain to her, while his moral life was 
 still something of a mystery. The look in Elsmere's 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 savt 
 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 afterward for having 
 juggled in the matter. Was it not her duty to manage a little 
 society and gayety 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 moun- 
 tain grass, or forded the mountain streams with the energy 
 and the grace of perfect health, trembling afterward 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 fort- 
 night as though something were suddenly relaxed in her, and 
 she felt a swift Bunyan-like 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 
 another's case — the little arts and maneuvres of those about 
 her. It did not strike her that Mrs. Thornburgh was more 
 flighty and more ebullient than ever; that the vicar's 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 Mv- BIp 
 
98 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 mere, whom both of them liked, and that in consequence his 
 society almost always fell to her. Nor did she ever analyze 
 what would have been the attraction of those walks to her with- 
 out that tall figure at her side, that bounding step, that pict- 
 uresque, 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 bhndly 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 
 learned with wonderful quickness and thoroughness to know 
 each other. The two households so near together, and so iso 
 lated from the world besides, were necessarily in constant com- 
 munication. And Elsmere made a most stirring element in 
 their common Ufe. Never had he been more keen, more 
 strenuous. It gave Catherine new Hghts on modem 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 neighborhood, plunging into reports of agri- 
 cultural commissions, or spending his quick brain on village 
 sanitation, with the oddest results sometimes, so far as his con- 
 versation was concerned. And then in the middle of his dis- 
 quisitions, 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 re- 
 former 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 
 ^o 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 
 
 good-bye! . ^ ^ 
 
 And on her side she felt that she knew almost as much about 
 MureweU as he did. She could imagine the wHd beauty of the 
 Surrey heatbland, she could see the white square rectory with 
 its sloping waUed garden, the juniper common just outside the 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 99 
 
 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 shrunk from 
 hearing, and share the anxieties of the young rector as to his 
 future relations toward a personality so marked and so im- 
 portant to every soul in the little community he was called to 
 rule. Here all was plain sailing ; she understood him perfectly, 
 and her gentle comroents, or her occasional sarcasms, were 
 friendliness itself. 
 
 But it was when he turned to larger things— to books, move- 
 ments, leaders of the day — that she was often puzzled, some- 
 times 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 
 clergyman's 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 — soli- 
 tary, intense, and deeply reflective from her earliest youth— 
 was still thinking and speaking in the language of her father's 
 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 fur- 
 ther than she knew from her father's stand-point. Even among 
 those solitudes, far from men and literature, she had uncon- 
 sciously felt the breath of her time in some degree. As he pen- 
 etrated 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 
 homeward under a cloudy evening sky, he came upon the great 
 problem ol her life— Rose and Rose's 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 
 
100 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 lawful for the Christian to spend the few short years of the 
 earthly comhat in any pursuit, however noble and exquisite, 
 which merely aimed at the gratification of the senses, and im- 
 plied in the pnrsuer the emphasizing rather than the surrender 
 of self? 
 
 He argued it very much as Kingsley would have argued it, 
 tried to hft her to a more intelhgent 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 apti- 
 tudes to be explained unless the Great Designer meant them to 
 have a use and function in His world? She repUed, doubtfully, 
 that she had always supposed they were lawful for recreation, 
 and like any other trade for bread-winning, but- 
 Then he told her much that he knew about the humanizing 
 effect of music on the poor. He described to her the efforts of 
 a London society, of which he was a subscribing member, to 
 popularize the best music among the lowest class; he dwelt 
 almost with passion on the difference before the joy to be got 
 out of such things and the common brutalizing 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 hghtening 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 Httle, if only by the 
 fact of speech about it. She was not convinced exactly. She 
 was too strong a nature to reUnquish 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 self -surrender 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 Hving in Whinborough came 
 ro see them. She was their father's youngest sister, and the 
 ^vif e of a man who had made some money as a builder in Whin- 
 ooi^ough. When Eobert came in he found her sitting on the 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 101 
 
 sofa having tea, a large, homely looking 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 Westmore- 
 land accent : 
 
 ''Very pleased indeed to make your acquaintance, sir," 
 while she inclosed his fingers in a capacious hand. 
 
 Mrs. Leybum, looking fidgety and uncomfortable, was sitting 
 near her, and Catherine, the only member of the party who 
 showed no sign of embarrassment when Eobert entered, was 
 superintending her aunt's tea and talking busily the while. 
 Robert sat down at a Httle distance beside Agnes and Rose, 
 who were chattering together a little artificially and of set pur- 
 pose 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. Leybum the evangelistic exploits of her 
 eldest son, who had recently obtained his first circuit as a Wes- 
 leyan minister. He was shrewd e'hough, 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' marvel- 
 ous," he heard her say, with uphfted hands and eyes, "some- 
 thin' marvelous. The Lord has blessed him indeed ! It doesn't 
 matter what it is, whether it's meetin's, or sermons, or parlor 
 work, or just faithful dealin's with souls one by one. Satan 
 has no cliverer foe than Edward. He never shuts his eyes; as 
 Edward says himself, it's Hke 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 road-side, 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 you're just doin' the devil's work every nail 
 you put in, and hammerin' away, mon, at your own damna- 
 ti6n.' And here's 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 
 
102 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 minis- 
 ters. A bit further I met a boy carrying a load of turnips. To 
 him, too, I was faithful, and he went on, taking, without know- 
 ing it, a precious leaflet with him in his bag. Glorious work I 
 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. 
 
 ''There's 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 clergy- 
 man 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, fer- 
 vently ; "but a minister doesn't 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 prayer-meetin's on the Sabbath such outpourin's 
 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 provo- 
 cation, "with the labors of our Wesleyan ministers?" 
 
 "No," said Eobert, with his pleasant smile, "not person- 
 ally. But I have the greatest respect for them as a body of 
 devoted men." 
 
 The look of battle faded from the woman's face. It was not 
 an unpleasant face. He even saw strange reminiscences of 
 Catherine in it at times. 
 
 " You're aboot right there, sir. Not that they dare take any 
 credit to themselves— it's 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 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 103 
 
 from me. Ministers are good things, but God can do without 
 them." 
 
 And she laid her hand on her aunt's 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 
 she's sick, an' a' dwinnelt away, and I'm gettin' auld, and 
 can't wark as I'd 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 dawn't matter to naebody, the Lord found 
 un. It war leyke as thoo His feeace cam' a-glisterin' an' 
 a~shinin' through t' mist. An' iver sence then, miss, aa've 
 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 mount- 
 ain side which was covered with plantation. And all the way 
 along the path for ever so long I could hear him singing, chop- 
 ping away, and quavering out: * Eock 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 leaped suddenly outward. And yet the gesture, the 
 attitude, was simplicity and unconsciousness itself. Eobert 
 had never heard her say anything so intimate before. Nor 
 had he ever seen her so inspired, so beautiful. She had trans- 
 muted 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 rever- 
 ence. 
 
 "I wasn't thinkin' of narrowin' the Lord down to minis- 
 ters," said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. We all 
 know He can do with 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 
 fervors of revivalist anecdote, and while she hunted for gloves 
 and reticule— officiously helped by the younger girls— Eobert 
 crossed over to Catherine. 
 
 ''You lifted us on to your own high places!' ho sciid, heiid 
 
104 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ing down to her; shall carry your story with me through 
 the fells." 
 
 She looked up, and as she met his warm, moved look, a Ut- 
 tie glow and tremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted 
 expression. He broke the spell; she sunk 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. Fleming's disappear- 
 ance, 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 river-fields 
 gave himself up to the mounting tumult witliin. Gradually, 
 from the half-articulate chaos of hope and memory, there 
 emerged the deliberate voice of his inmost manhood. 
 
 **In her and her only is my heart's 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 feelings gave him a rare clear-sightedness. He real- 
 ized that he had no certainty of success, scarcely even an en- 
 tirely reasonable hope. But what of that? Were they not 
 together, alone, practically, in these blessed sohtudes? Would 
 they not meet to-morrow, 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 ser<^ the last transmuting glow. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 105 
 
 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 sung this morning!" she said to her- 
 self with curving lip. ''Talk of the natural north-country 
 gift for music ! What ridiculous fictions people set up ! Dear 
 me, what clouds ! Perhaps we sha'n't get our walk to Shan- 
 moor after all, and if we don't, and if— if "—her cheek flushed 
 with a sudden excitement— ''if Mr. Elsmere doesn't 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 
 doesn't come off to-day, she'll be for reversing the usual pro- 
 ceeding, and asking Catherine her intentions, which would 
 niin 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 straight-edged curtain was already low- 
 ering. 
 
 "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 homeward, meditating, her thin fingers 
 clasped before her, the wind blowing her skirts, the blue rib- 
 bons on her hat, the little gold curls on her temples, in a 
 pretty many-colored turmoil about her. When she got to 
 Burwood she shut herself into the room which was pecuHarly 
 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 chiffrons, 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 girl's mem- 
 ory. 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 farm-house of the neigh- 
 
106 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 borhood, and paid for it with her own money. There a group 
 of unfinished headlong sketches of the most fiercely impres- 
 sionist description— the work and the gift of a knot of Man- 
 chester artists, who had feted and flattered the heautif ul little 
 Westmoreland girl, when she was staying among them, to 
 her heart's content. Manchester, almost alone among our 
 great towns of the present day, has not only a musical, hut 
 a pictorial hfe ol its own; its young artists dr!: themselves 
 a school," study in Paris, and when they come home scout 
 the Academy and its method^ and pine to set up a rival art- 
 center, skilled in all the methods of the Salon, in the murky 
 north. Eose's uncle, originally a clerk in a warehouse, and a 
 rough diamond enough, had more or less moved with the times, 
 (ike his hrother Eichard ; at any rate he had grown rich, had 
 married a decent wife, and was glad enough to befriend his 
 <lear brother's 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 Eose went to stay with her childless uncle and 
 aunt, she found long-haired 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, 
 imformed creature of London and Paris and Italy, and set 
 her pining for that golden vie de Boheme which she alone 
 apparently of all artists was destined never to know. 
 
 For she was an artist— sh<^ would be an artist— let Catherine 
 5^y what she would ! She i-ame back from Manchester restless 
 lor she knew not what, th crsty for the joys and emotions of 
 art, determined to be fret, reckless, passionate; with Wagner 
 and Brahms in her young blood ; and found Burwood waiting 
 for her— Burwood, the lonely house in the lonely valley, c^. 
 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 self -repression,, the most determined sacrificing of * ^ this 
 warm, kind world," with all its indefensible delights, to a cold 
 other-world with its torturing inadmissible claims. Even in 
 the midst of her stolen joys at Manchester or London, this 
 mere name, the nir re mental image of Catherine moving through 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 107 
 
 life, wrapped in a religious peace and certainty as austere as 
 they were beautiful, and asking of all about her the same abso- 
 lute surrender to an awful Master she gave so easily herself, 
 was enough to chill the wayward Eose, 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. Eose 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 Brahms's ^-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 looking-glass, by which she often 
 arranged her rufSed locks; she glanced at it now; it showed 
 her a brilhant face enough, but drooping lips, and eyes dark- 
 ened with the extravagant melancholy of eighteen. 
 
 *'Itis 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, /saw him gath- 
 er up those violets she threw away yesterday on Moor Crag. 
 And as for her, I don't believe she has realized the situation a 
 bit. At least, if she has she is as unlike other mortals in thi^ 
 as in everything else. But when she does—" 
 
 She frowned and meditated, but got no light on the problem 
 Chattie jumped up on the window-sill, with her usual stealthj 
 aplomb, and rubbed herself against the girl's face. 
 
 ''Oh, Chattie!" cried Eose, throwing her arms round tb, 
 cat, "if Catherine'll only marry Mr. Elsmere, my dear, and b^ 
 happy ever afterward, and set me free to live my own life \ 
 bit, I'll be so good, you won't know me, Chattie. And yoi 
 shall have a new collar, my beauty, and cream till you die o 
 it I" 
 
 And springing up she dragged jn^th*^ '-^t, and snatching 
 
108 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 Chattie's nose. 
 Won't she? Will she? Won^t she? Will— Tiresome 
 flower, why did Nature give it such a beggarly few petals? II 
 I'd had a daisy it would have all come right. Come, Chattie, 
 waltz, and let's forget this wicked world I" 
 
 And, snatching up her viohn, 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 move 
 ment, and the intoxication of sound— the cat meanwhile fol- 
 lowing her with little mincing, perplexed steps, as though not 
 knowing what to make of her. 
 
 *'Eose, 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 
 berseK 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. S.till 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 deh- 
 cious 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 re- 
 markable tenacity. Probably the neighborhood of Mrs. Thorn- 
 burgh was enough to make the veriest chatter-box secretive. 
 But notwithstanding, no one possessing the clew could live in 
 the same house with him these Jime 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 w^atchful, and playing up to his wife m fine style, and U 
 the situation had so worked on the vicar, Mrs. •ThombunT" 
 state is casie]- imagined than described. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. l^'-* 
 
 The walk to Shanmoor need not be clironicled. The party 
 kept together. Robert fancied sometimes that there was a cer- 
 tain note of purpose in the way in which Catherine emng 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 gay- 
 etv broke through her tranquil manner, as though she, uKethe 
 others, had caught exhHaration from the sharpened breeze and 
 the towering mountains, restored to all their grandeur oy the 
 
 storm-clouds. ^ . , ^ m ov. 
 
 And yet she had started in some little mward trouole. 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 night-school she held m a htde 
 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 wait- 
 ing in the road for the vicar and Elsmere. Agnes had thought 
 her looking depressed and pale, and even dreamed for a mo- 
 ment 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 gayety itself . He kept up an inces- 
 sant war with Rose ; he had a number of little jokes going at 
 the vicar's expense, which kept that good man m a half pro- 
 testing chuckle most of the way; he cleared every gate that 
 presented itself in first-rate Oxford form, and climbed every 
 point of rock with a cat-like agUity that set the girls scoffing 
 at the pretense of invalidism under which he had foisted him- 
 self on Whindale. , . J 
 "How fine all this black purple is !" he cried, as they topped 
 the ridge, and the Shanmoor vaUey lay before them bounded 
 on the other side byline after line of mountain Wetherlam 
 and the Pikes and Fairfield in the far distance, piled somberiy 
 under a somber 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. Drown- 
 ing from now till I depart ? No matter. I can bear a second 
 
IIG 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 deluge with an even mind. On this enchanted soil all things 
 are welcome !" 
 
 She looked up, smihng 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 Httle way off laughing and chat- 
 tering. As their eyes met, a strange new pulse leaped 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 stand- 
 ing in front of the inn, and Mrs. Thornburgh's gray curls shak- 
 ing at the window. 
 
 WiUiam !" 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 sign-board, 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, light-filled river; beyond, a little huddled 
 village backed by and apparently built out of the great slate 
 quarry which represented the only industry of the neighbor- 
 hood, and a tiny towered church— the scene on the Sabbath of 
 Mr. Mayhew's 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 rain-clouds were trailing. There was a little lurid 
 storm-light on the river, but, in general, the color was ail dark 
 and rich, the white inn gleaming on a green and purple back- 
 ground. He took it all into his heart, covetously, greedily, 
 trying to fix it there forever. 
 
 Presently he was called in by the vicar, and found a tempt- 
 ing tea spread in a light upper room, v/here Agjnes and Rose 
 were already making fun of the chromo-lithographs and rum- 
 maging the visitors' book. The scrambling, chattering meal 
 passed Uke a flash. At th i beginning of it Mrs. Thornburgh's 
 small gray eyes had traveled restlessly from face to face, as 
 
EOBKET ELSMERE. Ill 
 
 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 after- 
 ward but the scene : the pecuhar clean mustiness of the room 
 only just opened for the summer season, a print of the Princess 
 of Wales on the walls opposite him, a stuffed fox over the 
 mantel-piece, Eose's golden head and heavy amber necklace, 
 and the figure at the vicar's 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. Els- 
 mere and Kose hung over the gray stone parapet, nottled with 
 the green and gold of innumerable mosses, and looked down 
 through a fringe of Enghsh maiden-hair 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 sHpping between 
 two great rain-clouds. 
 
 How well that hat and dress becomes your sister!" he said, 
 the words breaking, as it were, from his lips. 
 
 " Do you think Catherine pretty?" said Rose, with an excel- 
 lent pretense of innocence, detaching a little pebble and fling- 
 ing it harmlessly at a water-wagtail 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 over- 
 spread with a quite irrepressible smile. He reddened still more, 
 then they stared into each other's eyes, and without a word 
 more understood each other perfectly. 
 
 Rose held out her hand to him with a little brusque bon com- 
 arade 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. 
 
112 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEIUC. 
 
 Meanwhile Catherine was standing by the side of the pony- 
 carriage, watching Mrs. Thornburgh's i)reparations. 
 
 You're sure you don't mind driving home alone?" she said, 
 in a troubled voice. Mayn't I go with you?" 
 
 My dear, certainly not ! As if I wasn't accustomed to going 
 about alone at my time of life ! No, no, my dear, you go and 
 have your walk; you'll 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 look- 
 ing after her. 
 
 *'Now, then, right about facQ and quick march!" exclaimed 
 the vicar. We've got to race that cloud over the^Pike.' It'll 
 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 de- 
 scended earlier in the afternoon. Catherine for some little way 
 walked last of the party, the vicar in front of her. Then 
 Slsmere picked a stone-crop, 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. 
 
 " You have crushed me," he said, laughing, as he put the 
 flower carefully into his pocket-book; *'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 able-bodied 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 night-school in Poll Ghyll, for in- 
 stance?" he said, with another note in his voice. 
 
 Catherine looked at him and colored. Rose has been tell- 
 ing 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 
 
jROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 113 
 
 is dark, and I know every inch of the ground, and Bob is al- 
 ways with me; aren't you, Bob?" 
 
 And she stooped down to pat the colley beside her. Bob 
 looked up at her, bhnking with a proudly confidential air as 
 though to remind her that there were a good many such secrets 
 between them. 
 
 ' ' I Hke 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 the 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. 
 
 ^' Don't fancy it at all," she said, laughing. *'It is a very 
 small and very natural incident of one's life here. Look back, 
 Mr. Elsmere ; the rain has beaten us !" 
 
 He looked back and saw the great Pike over Shanmoor vil. 
 lage blotted out in a moving deluge of rain. The quarry oppo^ 
 site on the mountain-side gleamed green and vivid against the 
 ink-black fell; some clothes hanging out in the field below th(^ 
 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 homeward along the road 
 the walking party had just quitted; the stream beneath, spread- 
 ing broadly through the fields, shivered and wrinkled under the 
 blast. Up it came, and the rain mists with it. In another min- 
 ute 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, evidently 
 with the view of performing for them the same office Elsmere 
 had just performed for Catherine. 
 
 Bobert and his companion struggled on for awhile in a breath- 
 less 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 rimning, that his heart fiUed with the shrunken 
 becks as th^ flood leaped along them. Let the elements thunder 
 
114 
 
 ROBERT EliiMERK. 
 
 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 nm 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 Uttle scatteil3rain had, of course, forgotten her 
 cloak, ^ut, monstrous ! There was Catherine stripping off her 
 own, Kose refusing it. In vain. The sister's 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 Ley bum, 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 tak- 
 ing thought of other people and allowing no one to take thought 
 for you?" 
 He held it out to her. 
 No, no I 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 my- 
 self if you got a chill after your illness !" 
 
 You will not be called upon," he said, in the most matter-of- 
 fact tone. " Men's coats are made to keep out weather," and 
 he pointed to his own, closely buttoned up. '*Your dress— I 
 can't help being disrespectful under the circumstances— will be 
 wet through in ten minutes." 
 
 Another silence. Then he overtook her. 
 Please, Miss Leybum,'l^he said, stopping her. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 315 
 
 There was an instant's 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, think 
 ing, bold man, as she turned her rosy, rain-dewed face to him, 
 of Wordsworth's " Louisa," and the poet's 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 invisiblehnesof defense about 
 her. A sort of divine fear of her mingled with his rising pas- 
 sion. 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, storm-beaten 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 yes- 
 terday 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 
 ^pite 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 ]ixie after line, Ungering over the cadences. 
 
 ''It was my father's favorite 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. r 
 
 Yet tears to human suffering are due, 
 And mortal hopes defeated and overthrown 
 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. ' ' Wa<? 
 teaching what he liked ?" 
 "Oh, yes— only— " Catherine paused and then added, hur 
 
116 
 
 ROBERT JSLSMERE.- 
 
 riedly, as though drawn in spite of herself by the grave sympa- 
 thy of his look, " I never knew anybody so good who thought 
 himself of so httle 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 wag. 
 always blaming, scourging himself. And all the time he was 
 the noblest, purest, 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 child's brooding love 
 and loyalty were in perpetual protest, even now after this 
 lapse of years, against the verdict which an overscrupulous, 
 desponding soul had pronounced upon itself. Did she feel that 
 he had gone uncomf orted out of Hfe— even by her— even by re- 
 ligion ?— was that the sting ? 
 
 Oh, I can understand !" he said, reverently— I can under- 
 stand. I have come across it once or twice, that fierce self- 
 judgment of the good. It is the most stirring and hiunbling 
 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 Com- 
 fort: 
 
 ' Oh, my only Light ! 
 It can not be 
 That I am he 
 On whom Thy tempests fell at night!' " 
 
 The words fell from the softened voice like noble music. 
 
 There was a pause. Th^ 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 bim, 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 fight 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. 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 117 
 
 The stepping-stones came in 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 moment's 
 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 he helped over stepping-stones. 
 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 forever. 
 She was wrapped up grotesquely in his mackintosh; her hat 
 was all bedraggled; her gloves dripping in his; and in spite of 
 all he could have vowed that anything so lovely as that deli- 
 cately cut, gravely smiling face, swaying above the rushing 
 brown water, was never seen in Westmoreland wilds before. 
 
 ''It is clearing," he cried, with ready optimism, as they 
 reached the bank. ''We shall get our picnic to-morrow 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 Robert's 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 Robert's drenched 
 condition, but he gave her no time to make remarks. 
 
 "Don't take it off," he said, with a laughing wave of the hand 
 to Catherine; "I will come for it to-morrow morning." 
 
 And he ran up the drive, conscious at last that it might be 
 prudent to get himself into something less sponge-like than his 
 present attire as quickly as possible. 
 
 The vicar followed him. 
 
UOliEUT ELSMEEE. 
 
 ''Don't keep Catherine, my dear. There's nothing to tell. 
 Nobody's the worse." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh took no heed. Opening the iron gate, she 
 went through it on to the deserted rain-beaten road, laid both 
 her hands on Catherine's shoulders, and looked her straight in 
 the eyes. The vicar's anxious hint was useless. She could 
 contain herself no longer. She had watched them from the 
 vicarage come down the fell together, bad seen them cross the 
 stepping-stones, lingeringly, hand in hand. 
 
 ''My dear Catherine I" she cried, effusively kissing Cathe- 
 rine's glowing cheek under the shelter of the lauristinus that 
 made a bower of the gate. ''My dear Catherine !" 
 
 Catherine gazed at her in astonishment. Mrs. Thornburgh's 
 eyes were all alive, and swarming with questions. If it had 
 been Kose she would have let them out in one fell flight. But 
 Catherine's personality kept her in awe. And after a second, 
 as the two stood together, a deep flush rose on Catherine's feice, 
 and an expression of half -frightened apology dawned in Mrs. 
 Thornburgh's. 
 
 Catherine drew herself away. ^'Will you please give Mr. 
 Elsmere his mackintosh?" she said, taking it off; "I shan't 
 want it this little way." 
 
 And putting it on Mrs. Thornburgh's arm she turned away, 
 walking quickly round the bend of the road. 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh watched her open-mouthed, 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 vindic- 
 tive 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 
 ©n the watch," she thought to herself, bitterly. The strong 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 110 
 
 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 any- 
 body. Agnes and Rose noticed the change at once, whispered 
 to each other when they found an opportunity, and foreboded 
 ill. 
 
 After their tea-supper, 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 satu- 
 rated 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 new-born 
 rivulet, the child of the storm, and destined to vanish with the 
 night. Catherine's 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 Bnd 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 
 twihght ; 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, eastward and northward, Catherine looked out 
 upon a wild sea of moors wrapped in mists, sullen and storm- 
 beaten, 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 abso- 
 lutely alone. She descended till she reached a point where a 
 little stream had been turned into a stone trough for cattle. 
 Abo v<& it stood a gnarled and solitary thorn. Catherine sunk 
 
120 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 down on a rock at the foot of the tree. It was a seat slie 
 knew well ; she had hngered there with her father ; she had 
 thought and prayed there as girl and woman ; she had wres- 
 tled 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 her- 
 self and Robert Elsmere apart. 
 
 And then— beyond the departure from Shanmoor she 
 seemed to loose 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 self- 
 reproach, recapturing the empire of the soul with a strong ef- 
 fort. 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 
 pecuhar interest in her. Their eyes had been open. She real- 
 ized now with hot cheeks how many meetings and tete-d-tetes 
 had been managed for her and Elsmere, and how complacently 
 she had fallen into Mrs. Thornburgh's 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 of 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 121 
 
 sixteen, prematurely old and thoughtful, she had sat beside 
 her father's deathbed, whie her delicate hysterical mother, in 
 a state of utter collapse, was kept away from him by the doc- 
 tors? 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 im- 
 agination 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, long-drawn 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 
 God's help. Oh, with God's help !" 
 
 That long-past 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 inces- 
 sant devotion, on the time 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 father's 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, Eose eighteen, with all experience to come. 
 And Eose— Ah! at the thought of Eose, Catherine's heart sinks 
 deeper and deeper— she feels a culprit before her father's mem- 
 ory. What is it has gone so desperately wrong with her train- 
 ing of the child ! Surely she has given love enough, anxious 
 thought enough, and here is Eose only jSghting to be free 
 from the yoke of her father's 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 mother's 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 
 
122 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 she will have given him cause to think of her hardly, slighting 
 ly. She flinches painfully under th# thought. But it does not 
 ah.er the matter. This girl, brought up in the austerest school 
 of Christian self-government, knows nothing of the divine 
 rights of passion. Half modern literature is based upon them. 
 Catherine Leybum 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 care 
 so very much. The time is so short— there is so little in her, 
 comparatively, to attract a man of such resource, such attain- 
 ments, such access to the best things of life. 
 
 She can not— in a kind of terror — she will not, believe in her 
 own love-worthiness, in her own power to deal a lasting wound. 
 
 Then her own claim? Has she any claim, has the poor 
 bounding heart that she can not silence, do what she will 
 through all this strenuous debate, no claim to satisfaction, to joy 7 
 
 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 scv^ 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 further 
 he departeth from all earthly comfort. " 
 
 ''If thou couldst perfectly annihilate thyself and empty thy- 
 self of aJl created love, then should I be constrained to flow into 
 thee with greater abundance of grace.^'' 
 
 ' ' When thou looJcest unto the creature the sight of the Creator 
 is withdrawn from thee. " 
 
 ''Learn in all things to overcome thyself for the love of th]f 
 Creator. ..." 
 
 She presses the sentence she has so often meditated in hei 
 long solitary walks about the mountains into her heart. And 
 one fragment of George Herbert especially rings in her ears, 
 solemnly, funereaBy— 
 
 Thy Saviour sentenced joy !" 
 
 Ay, sentenced it forever— 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 new-born joy at the feet c £ the 
 Master. 
 
ROBEET ELSIAERE. 
 
 123 
 
 She stayed where she was for awhile after this crisis in a 
 kind of bewilderment and stupor, but maintaining a perfect out- 
 T^ard tranquility. 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 Eose. How often she had pondered it since 1 In this in- 
 tense trance of feeling it breaks upon her finally that he is right. 
 May it not be that be with his clearer thought, his wider knowl- 
 edge of life, has laid his finger on the weak point in her guardian- 
 ship 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 in 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 Elsmere's 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 north- 
 ern 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 unten- 
 anted 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 for 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 Rose's desire, and 
 she had received the news with her habitual silence. 
 
 The house was lighted up when she returned. Her mother 
 had gone upstairs. Catherine went to her, but even Mrs. Ley- 
 burn discovered that she looked worn out, and she was sent off 
 to bed. She went along the passage quickly to Rose's room, 
 listening a moment at the door. Yes, Rose was inside, croon- 
 ing some German song, and apparently alone. She knocked 
 and went in. 
 
 Eose was sitting on the edge of her bed, a white dressing 
 
124 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 gown over Ijer shoulders, her hair in a glorious confusion all 
 about her. She was swaying backward and forward dreamily 
 singing, and she started up when she saw Catherine. 
 
 ''Roschen," 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 half- covered shoulders, ''you never 
 told me of that letter from Manchester, but Agnes did. Did 
 you think, Roschen, 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, Roschen. 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 Cath- 
 erine's long resistance. And what a strange white Catherine ! 
 What did it mean ? Catherine withdrew her arms with a httle 
 sigh and moved away. 
 
 " I just came to tell you that, Roschen," 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 mat- 
 ter ?" 
 
 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. 
 "Good-night! 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 downward 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 under- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 125 
 
 stand without a scene, without a definite proposal and a defin- 
 ite rejection. It was no use letting things drift. Something 
 brusque and marked there must be. She quietly made her dis- 
 positions. 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment, and she thought of one or two worthy old maids she 
 knew in the neighborhood 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 God's." StHl, what- 
 ever its source, it had been there at command, and the reflec- 
 tion carried with it a sad sense of security. It was as though 
 a soldier after his first skirmish should congratulate himself on 
 being bullet-proof. 
 
 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 and 
 lowering, but not raining, and he represented to Mrs. Thorn- 
 burgh, 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 vicar's wife. 
 She was all sighs and flightiness. She "supposed they could 
 go," and "didn't 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 Eobert suspected some- 
 thing desperately wrong with the household, and withdrew lest 
 male guests might be in the way. Then she pursued him into 
 
126 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the study and thrust a Spectator " mto his hands^ begging 
 him to convey it to Burwood. She asked it lugubriously with 
 many sighs, her cap much askew. Kobert 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. 
 whisthng. 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 Leybum would die an 
 old maid. 
 
 Meanwhile Eobert had strolled across to Birrwood with the 
 lightest heart. By way of keeping all his anticipations within 
 the bounds of strict reason, he told himself that it was impos- 
 sible 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. 
 
 "GoneP^ he cried. ''But it was all arranged with her 
 yesterday." Mrs. Leyburn shrugged her should n's. She, too, 
 was evidently much put out. 
 
 "So I told her. But you know, Mr. Elsmtre"— and the 
 gentle widow dropped her voice as though communicating a 
 secret— "when Catherine's 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 day for the orphan asylum, and one or two other pieces 
 of business, and she must go." ^ 
 
121 
 
 ''Mrs. ThornburghP^ And not a word for him— for him 
 to whom she had given her promise ? She had gone to Whin- 
 borough 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 ofi 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 Leyburn's 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 afterward Mrs. Thornburgh's 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 clamoring to be 
 done, and this morning in the week belonged to them by im- 
 memorial 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 nowa- 
 days, because she didn't. 
 
 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 considera- 
 tion of 2s. 8d. plus 2s. lid. minus 9d. 
 
 And I suppose, WilHam," said his wife to him at last, with 
 withering sarcasm, ''that you'd sit by and see Catherine break 
 that young man's heart, and send him back to his mother no 
 better than he came here, in spite of all the beef-tea and jelly 
 Sarah and I have been putting into him, and never lift a finger. 
 You'd see his life blasted and you'd do nothing — ^nothing, i 
 suppose." 
 
 And she fixed him with a fiercely interrogative eye. 
 
 ''Of course," cried the vjcar, roused; "I should think so. 
 
128 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 What good did an outsider ever get by meddling in a love 
 affair ? Take care of yourself, Emma. If the girl doesn't care 
 for him, you can't make her." 
 
 The vicar's wife rose, the upturned comers of her mouth 
 saying unutterable things. 
 
 " Doesn't care for him !" she echoed, in a tone which im- 
 plied that her husband's head-piece was past praying for. 
 
 ' ' Yes, doesn't 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 Catherine's behavior. In her opinion it was all pure 
 ^' cussedness." Catherine Ley burn had always conducted her 
 life on principles entirely different from those of other people. 
 Mrs. Thornburgh wholly denied, as she sat bridUng 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 de- 
 voted 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 w'hen everybody is breathlessly 
 awaiting the natural denouement, 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 hair-shirts 
 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. ' 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 129 
 
 *'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 toward an 
 elder male, especially a male in love with some one else. 
 wonder whether he think she knows anything about Catherine?" 
 
 But her own feeling to-day was very soft and complex. 
 Yesterday it had been all hot rebellion. To-day it was all re- 
 morse 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, dis- 
 courteous thing to-day ? Eose, having been delayed by the loss 
 of one of her goloshes in a bog, had bee^ once near her and 
 Elsmere during that dripping descent from Shanmoor. They 
 bad 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, however, th^t 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 it's our salvation in this world and the next 
 that's in the way," thought Eose, sitting crouched up in a 
 grassy nook in the garden, her shoulders up to her ears, her 
 chin in her hands. wish to goodness Catherine wouldn't 
 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 don't 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 ni^ht ! Oh, 
 dear, I wish she'd let me do something for her; I wish she'd 
 ask me to black her boots for her, or put in her tuckers, or tidy 
 her drawers for her, or anything worse still, and I'll do it and 
 welcome!" 
 
 It was getting uncomfortably serious all round, Eose ad- 
 mitted. But there was one element of comedy besides Mrs. 
 Thornburgh, and that was Mrs. Leyburn's 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 she'd scorn to believe that any- 
 body 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. 
 
130 
 
 ROBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 Of course the most eligible persons would be only too thankful 
 to marry them when the moment came. Meanwhile her devo- 
 tion 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 occiu-red to her to notice that 
 Robert Elsmere had been paying special attentions to any one 
 in the family, she would have suggested ^vith perfect naivete 
 that it was herself. For he had been to her the very pink of 
 courtesy and consideration, and she was of opinion that *'poor 
 Richard's 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 th^ 
 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 sym- 
 pathy, 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 couldn't 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 half -childish audacity. 
 
 " Catherine will have a good day for all her business," she 
 said, carelessly. 
 
 He assented quietly. Oh, after that hand-shake 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 youn^ 
 girl's 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 httle face. I'm not a Ley- 
 bum; I wear aesthetic dresses, and Aunt EUen has 'special 
 leadings of the spirit ' to the effect that the violin is a soul-de- 
 stroying instrument. Oh, dear !"— and the girl's mouth twisted 
 —"it's alarming to think, if Catherine hadn't been Catherine, 
 how like Aunt Ellen she might have been I" 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 135 
 
 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 Eose, and then was silent a moment. You know, Mr. 
 Elsmere," she went on at last, obeying some inward impulse — 
 
 or perhaps you don't know— that, at home, we are all Cath- 
 erine's creatures. She does exactly what she likes with us. 
 ¥7hen 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 wasn't 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 neighbors 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 man- 
 aged 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 can't 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 maybe 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 needn't 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 pas- 
 sionate inner admiration struggling with rebellion and protest. 
 
 They had reached the gate of the vicarage. Elsmere stopped 
 and looked at his companion with a singular Hghtening of ex- 
 pression. 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 im- 
 press on him in her eager way that such Hves as her sister's were 
 not to be gathered at a touch, without difficulty, from the branch 
 thP-t b^ar^ them. She wa^ exhorting^ him to courage— nay, he 
 
132 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 caught njore than e:^hortation— a sort of secret message from 
 her bright excited looks and incoherent speech that made his 
 heart leap. But pride and deUcacy forbade him to put his feel- 
 ing into words. 
 
 You don't 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 turn- 
 ing 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 medita- 
 tively over the cloudy fells. After all he was only where he 
 was, before the blessed madness, the upflooding hope, nay, al- 
 most certainty, of yesterday. His attack had been for the mo- 
 ment repulsed. He gathered from Rose's manner that Cather- 
 ine's action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaning 
 nor accidental, as on second thoughts he had been half trying 
 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 stepping-stones, the bit of white road. The min- 
 utes passed in a kind of trance of memory. Oh, that soft child- 
 like movement to him, after his speech about her father ! that 
 heavenly yielding and self-forgetfulness which shone in her ev- 
 ery look and m.ovement as she stood balancing on the stepping- 
 stones ! 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, un- 
 questioned, unarraigned. 
 
 But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that 
 any man, least of all a man of Elsniere's 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 
 dreamed? He recognizes 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 modem 
 sense, deeply Christianized as it is, assumes almost without 
 argument the sacredness of passion and its claim— wherein a 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 133 
 
 vast difference between himseif 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 hia 
 change of mood, there was in him a certain natural dignity 
 which hfe greatly developed, but which made it always possi- 
 ble 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 top- 
 ics of conversation, and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a 
 run up the fells to the nearest fragment of the Eoman road 
 which runs, with such magnificent disregard of the humors of 
 Mother Earth, over the very top of High Street toward Penrith 
 and Carlisle. 
 
 Next day it looked as though after many waverings, the char- 
 acteristic 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 out- 
 ward 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 
 \vhole green hollow was vocal with the sounds of water — water 
 flashing and foaming in the river, water leaping downward 
 from the rocks, water dripping steadfly from the larches and 
 sycamores and the slate eves of the houses. 
 
 Elsmere sat in-doors reading up the history of the parish sys- 
 tem 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 in- 
 stead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she would 
 give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In real- 
 ity Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world hut what 
 Catherine Leyburn might be doing that morning. Judging a 
 north countrywoman by the pusillanimous southern standard, 
 
134 
 
 ROBEHT ELSMBBB. 
 
 he found himself glorying in the weather. She could not wan- 
 der far fi'om him to day. 
 
 After the early dinner he escaped, just as the vicar's wife 
 was devising an excuse on which to convey both him and her- 
 seK to Burwood, and salhed forth with a mackintosh for a rush 
 down the Whinborough road. It was still raining, but the 
 clouds showed a momentary hghtening, and a few gleams of 
 watery sunshine brought out every now and then that sparkle 
 on the trees, that iridescent beauty of distance and atmosphei-e 
 which goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petu- 
 lant abundance of moimtain 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, measming 
 his tall frame against the gusts, spirits and mascuHne 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 i-ain beating fi-om the west struck on 
 his uplifted face. He welcomed it as a friend. Eain 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 com^^ge ! 
 
 Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming 
 out from the white mists surging round it. A shait of sun- 
 light lay across its upper end, and he caught a marvelous ap- 
 parition of a sunlighted 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 rolUng rain-clouds. 
 
 Suddenly between him and that enchanter's vision he saw a 
 dark slim figure against the mists, walking before him along 
 the road. It was Catherine— Catherine just emerged from a 
 foot-path across the fields, batthng with wind and rain, and 
 quite unconscious of any spectator. Oh, what a sudden thiil 
 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 haK 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 hke 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 pur- 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 135 
 
 suer — a quick change of expression. She wore a close fitting 
 water-proof dress and cap. Her hair was hghtly 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, gayly. Noth- 
 ing, 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 step- 
 ping-stones. 
 
 ^' Look, "he said, pointing to the wxst; '^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 I^^' 
 
 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. 
 
 *'0h, yes. As usual, she is doing everything for me," he 
 said, smiHng. It is disgraceful that I should be idling here 
 while she is struggling with carpenters and paperers, and puz- 
 zling out the decorations of the drawing-room. 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 weren't 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 
 aitting-room papers till I arrive. For the drawing-room sh^ 
 
m 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 j^vows a passionate preference for one all cabbage-roses 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 con- 
 versation." 
 
 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 buoy- 
 dncy^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 father's long struggle for life in that house is a 
 very painful memory. I wished her 4;o 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 Ley burn !" 
 
 At this she could not help meeting his glance and smile, 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 every- 
 day 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." 
 
 "Isn't it wonderful to you?" said Catherine, after a little 
 elecjijic pause— aijd her voice was steadier and clearer than it 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 13* 
 
 had been since the beginning of their conversation — "how lit- 
 tle the majority of sons and daughters regard their parents 
 when they come to grow up and want to live their own hves? 
 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 self-sacrifice go for noth- 
 ing." 
 
 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 speak- 
 ing with a distinctness which caught his ear painfully, '^and so 
 are the greater debtors I There is no excuse, I think, for any 
 chM^4east^<tf all for the child who has had years of understand- 
 ing love to look back upon, if it puts its own claim first; if i\ 
 insists on satisfying itself, when there is age and weakness ap- 
 peahng 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 o! 
 steel. Eobert's 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 child's nature? What have mother and father been 
 working for, after all, but the perfecting of the child's life! 
 Their longing is that it should fulfil itself in all direstions. 
 New ties, new affections, on the child's part, mean the enrich- 
 ing of the parent. What a cruel fate for the elder generation, 
 to make it the jailer and burden of the younger I" 
 
 He spoke with heat and anger, with a sense of dashing him- 
 self 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 auickly, and her eye meeting his with 
 
138 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 child's help and care, the child is bound to give it; that is 
 all it needs to knovY. 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, strugghng hard to preserve her 
 perfect calm of manner: he could not know that she was trem- 
 bhng 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 be- 
 tray. We are not here only to be happy." 
 
 And she turned to him deadly pale, the faintest, sweetest 
 smile on her Hp. He was for the moment incapable of speech. 
 He began phrase after phrase, and broke them off. - A whirl- 
 wind of feeling possessed him. The strangeness, the unworld- 
 liness of what she had done struck him singularly. He realized 
 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 self-control. The man in him rose up against the woman's 
 unlooked-for, unwelcome strength. 
 
 But as the hot words she had dared so much in her simplic- 
 ity 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 over- 
 flowed, and for a few yards' distance the water stood about 
 eight inches deep from hedge to hedge. Eobert 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, di-ew her up the bank, 
 forced his way througn the loosely growing hedge himself, and 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 139 
 
 holding back some young hazel saplings and breaking others, 
 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 wUd impulses, as perforce she leaned 
 her light weight upon his arm. ''Life is not so simple. It is 
 so easy to sacrifice others with one's self, to slay all claims m 
 honor of one, instead of knitting the new ones to the old. Is 
 Hfe to be allowed no natural expansion ? Have you forgotten 
 that, in refusing the new bond for the old bond's sake, the 
 chM 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 stiU. 
 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 
 ji 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 can not risk the old bond. 
 One dare not trust one's self— or circum.stance. The responsi^ 
 bility is too great: one can but follow the beaten path, cling to 
 the one thread. But don't let us talk of it any more. We 
 must make for that gate, Mr. Elsmere. It will bring us out oi^. 
 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 mow 
 tenacious than his own, which had visited him in a slight pass 
 ing way on the first evening they ever met, and now filled hiri 
 with a kind of despair. As they pushed silently along the edg 
 of the dripping meadow, he noticed with a pang that the step 
 ping-stones lay just below them. The gleam of sun had die 
 away, the aerial valley in the clouds had vanished, and a fresl 
 storm 01 rain brought back the color to Catherine's cheek. O; 
 their left hand was the roaring of the river, on their right the; 
 could already hear the wind moaning and tearing through th 
 >^treams which shelter^ Burwood. The nature which an hou 
 
140 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE» 
 
 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 all 
 good women under the circumstances. But as he met it for 
 one passionate instant, he recognized 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 wjis gone. 
 
 She toiled up to the gate with difficulty, the gray, rain- washed 
 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 drawing-room. Catherine 
 submitted with all her usual outward calm, faintly smihng at 
 her sister's 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 
 sunk hea\dly into the chair. 
 
 " Cathie, you are famt," 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 wOl go upstairs and lie 
 down a minute or two. Oh, no, don't come; I will be down 
 f!>T t^a directly." 
 
 Ancl refusing all help, she guided herself out of the room, 
 fcsr face the color of the foam on the beck outside. Agass 
 
ROBEBT ELSMEEB. 
 
 141 
 
 Blood dumbfounded. Never in her life before had she seen 
 Catherine betray any such signs of physical exhaustion. 
 
 Suddenly Eose ran in, shut the door carefully behmd 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. It'a 
 as plain as the nose on your face." 
 
 Agnes set 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 1" 
 
 "Eose!" 
 
 " She does, my dear, she does," cried the girl, frowning. "1 
 know it in a hundred ways." 
 Agnes ruminated. ^ ^. , 
 
 " And it's all because of us?" she said at last, reflectively. 
 "Of course! I put it to you, Agnes"- and Eose stood still 
 with a tragic air-" I put it to you, whether it isn't too bad 
 that three unoffending women should have such a role 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 help- 
 less laughter. Eose meanwhile stood in the window, her thm 
 form drawn up to its full height, angry with Agnes, and en- 
 raged with all the world. _ UT 1, 1^ 
 "It's absurd, it's 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, or say oiir 
 prayers, and prevent each other from running away with ad- 
 venturers! I won't be always in leading-strings. 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 Eose turned to her sister, the defiant head thrown back, 
 a passion of manifold protest in the giriish looks. 
 
 "It is very easy, my dear, to be judge in one's own case, 
 replied Agnes, calmly, recovering herself. " Suppose you tell 
 Catherine some of these home truths?" 
 
 Eose collapsed at once. She sat down despondently, and 
 fell, head drooping, into a moodv silence. Agnes watched her 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 with a kind of triumph. When it came to the point, she knev. 
 perfectly weU that there was not a will among them that could 
 measure itself with any chance of success against that lofty 
 but unwavering will of Catherine's. 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 won't say them to Catherine, say them 
 to mamma," she suggested presently, but half ironicaUy 
 
 Mamma is no good," cried Rose, angrily; "why do vou 
 bnng herm? Catherine would talk her round in ten minutes " 
 Long atter every one else in Bm-wood, even the chafing ex- 
 cited Rose, was asleep, Catherine, in her dimly lighted room 
 where the stormy north-west wind beat noisily against her 
 wmdow, was sitting in a low chair, her head leaning against 
 her bed, her httle weU-wom Testament open on her knee But 
 she was not readibg. Her eyes were shut; one hand" hung 
 down beside her, and tears were raining fast and sUently 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 
 md this inner smart and tumult mean, this rebellion of the 
 self against the will which had never yet found its mastery 
 tail It? It was as though from her childhood till now she had 
 lived m a moral world whereof the aims, the dangers, the joys 
 were aU she knew; and now the waUs of this w^rld wS 
 crumbhng round her, and strange hghts, strange voices, 
 strange colors were breaking through. All the Ljmgs of 
 
 S'thifi 'i*''''**^ her heart for years, to-Sght 
 
 for the first time seemed 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 recofl. This girl 
 amid her mountains had carried reUgion as far as rehgion can 
 be carried before it meets life in the wrestle appoSited it 
 The calm, simple outlines of things are blurring before her 
 eyes; the great placid deeps .of the soul are breaking up 
 
 ...1 n F^"*-^* T,^*''' ^ of tliis kind is hardly 
 
 real. Catherine felt a bitter surprise at her own pain Yes- 
 
 Senid^wnl ''^''''^ ^ 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 143 
 
 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 counseled, 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 sprung, 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 miser- 
 able hour in the vicar's study afterward, 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 Elsmere's mind with a tormenting, 
 torturing bliss. What could they mean? What had her pale- 
 ness, 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 weU? 
 
 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 Leyburn's 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 evi- 
 dent moral straits, no physical or pecuniary need, and who, as 
 Rose 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 mat- 
 ter ! He realized with despair the brooding scrupulous force of 
 moral passion to which her lonely life, her antecedents, and her 
 father's nature working in her had given so rare and marked 
 a development. No temper in the world is so little open to rea- 
 son as the ascetic temper. How many a lover and husband, 
 bow many a parent and friend, have realiized to their pam^ 
 
144 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 since history began, the overwhelming attraction which all the 
 processes of self-annihilation have for a certain order of minds! 
 Eobert's heart sunk before the memory of that frail, indomita- 
 ble 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 re- 
 produced the scene, she had been white— trembhng: her hand 
 had rested on the moss-grown wall beside her for support. Oh, 
 why had he been so timid? why had he let that awe of her, 
 which her personahty 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 look- 
 ing 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 diffi- 
 culty, breaking down antagonism and compelling consent. 
 
 At the high tea which represented the late dinner of the 
 household he was wary and self-possessed. Mrs. Thornburgh 
 got out of him that he had been for a walk, and had seen Cath- 
 erine, but for all her ingenuities of cross-examination she got 
 nothing more. Afterward, when he and the vicar were smok- 
 ing together, he proposed to Mr. Thornburgh that they two 
 should go off for a couple of days on a walking tour to Ulls- 
 water. 
 
 want to go away," he said, with a hand on the vicar's 
 shoulder, ''and I want to come bach'' The deliberation of the 
 last words was not to be mistaken. The vicar emitted a coil 
 tented puff, looked the young man straight in the eyes, and with- 
 out another word began to plan a walk to Patterdale via High 
 Street, Martindale, and Howtown, and back by Haweswater. 
 
 To Mrs. Thornburgh Eobert annoimced 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 dumbfounded her. A 
 good time, indeed! with everything begun and nothing fin- 
 ished; with two households thrown into perturbation for a de- 
 lusion, and a desirable marriage spoiled, all for want of a little 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 145 
 
 common sense and plain speaking, which one person at least m 
 the valley could have supplied them with, had she not been ig- 
 nored and browbeaten 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 
 stuck-up, 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 Elsmere's remark to himself like a man, and aL 
 lowed himself certain counsels against matrimonial meddling 
 which plunged Mrs. Thornburgh into well -simulated 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 sleepOy 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 breaks 
 fast the vicar and Elsmere started off. Eobert turned back at 
 the top of the High FeU pass and stood leaning on his alpen- 
 stock, sending a passionate farewell to the gray distant house, 
 the upper window, the copper beach 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 appear- 
 ance in the school treat which was to come off in a fortnight, in 
 a new set of covers for the drawing-room, and in Sarah's 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 Leyburn's. 
 Eose 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— 
 Elsmere's absence and approaching departure. They cautiously 
 communicated to her their own suspicions as to the incident of 
 the preceding afternoon; and Eose gave vent to one fiery on- 
 slaught 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 vicar's wife was not communicative in return. That the 
 situation should have driven even Mrs. Thornburgh to finesse 
 
146 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 was a surprising testimony to its gravity. "What between her 
 sudden taciturnity and Catherine's pale silence, the girl's sense 
 of expectancy was roused to its highest pitch. 
 
 '^They come back to-morrow night," said Eose, thought- 
 fully, '^and he goes Saturday— 10:20 from Whinborough -one 
 day for the fifth act! By the way, why did Mrs. Thornburgh 
 ask us to say nothing about Saturday at home ?" 
 
 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 draw- 
 ing-room 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 win- 
 dow 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 com- 
 monly 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 north-west 
 wind was stOl rushing through the valley, and the trees round 
 Burwood were swaying and groaning under the force of its on- 
 slaught. 
 
 ''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 practicing." 
 
 & ''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. Leyburn's mild eyes 
 gazed at her with astonishment. The two women were a curi- 
 ous contrast: Mrs. Thornburgh short, inclined, as we know, to 
 be stout, ample and abounding in all things, whether it were 
 curls or cap-strings or conversation ; Mrs. Leyburn tall and 
 wen-proportioned, well dresse#^ the same graceful ways 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. ' 
 
 and languid pretty manners as had first attracted ker hus- 
 band's attention thirty years before. She was fond of Mrs. 
 Thornburgh, but there was something in the ebuUient energies 
 of the vicar's wife which always gave her a sense of bustle and 
 
 ^^^^f^a'm sure you wHl be sorry to hear," began her visitor, 
 
 that Mr. Elsmere is going." 
 Going?" said Mrs. Leybum, 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, an^ 
 then pausing with a most effective air of sudden gravity and 
 recollection." ' , t 
 
 /^Then why-what's the matter?" asked Mrs. Leyburn, 
 
 wondering. ^ . ^ . 
 
 Mrs Thornburgh did not answer for a minute, and Mrs. 
 Leybum began to feelja Uttle 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 vicar's wife, m a stage- 
 whisper, drawing back after a pause to see the effect of her 
 
 announcement. i i • -u^ 
 
 Oh! with whom ?" asked Mrs. Leyburn, her look bright- 
 ening. She liked a love affair as much as ever. • 
 
 Mrs Thornburgh furtively looked round to see if the door 
 was shut and aU 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 any- 
 
 thing?" . ... 
 
 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 can't 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, ab- 
 ruptly, laying her hand on Mrs. Leyburn's knee, and watching 
 the effect 
 
148 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 With Catherine I" stammered Mrs. Leyburn ; ^^with Cath 
 
 erine /" 
 
 The idea was amazing to her. She took up her knitting with i 
 trembling fingers, and went on with it mechanically a second I 
 or two. Then laying it down — Are you quite sure? has he 
 told you?" 
 
 ''No, but one has eyes," said Mrs. Thornburgh, hastily. 
 '^WilHam and I have seen it from the very first day. And i 
 we are both certain that on Tuesday she made him understand i 
 in someway or other that she wouldn't marry him, and that is 5 
 why he went off to Ullswater, and why he made up his mind I 
 to go south before his time is up." 
 
 ''Tuesday?" cried Mrs. Leyburn. *'In that walk, do youv 
 mean, when Catherine looked so tired afterward? 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 didn't care for him !" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Leyburn, opening her blue eyes wider and wider. * ' Cath- 
 erine's not like most^ girls ; she would always know what she 
 felt, and would never keep a man in suspense." 
 
 "Well, I don't somehow believe," said Mrs. Thornburgh, 
 boldly, "that she doesn't care for him. He is just the young 
 man Catherine might care for. You can see that yourself." 
 
 Mrs. Leyburn once more laid down her knitting and stared 
 at her visitor. Mrs. Thornburgh, after aU her meditations, 
 had no very precise idea as to why she was at that moment in 
 the Burwood drawing-room bombarding Mrs. Leyburn in this 
 fashion. All she knew was that she had sallied forth deter- 
 mined somehow to upset the situation, just as one gives a shake 
 purposely to a bundle of spillikins on the chance of more favor- 
 able openings. Mrs. Leyburn's mind was just now playing the 
 part of spillikins, and the vicar's wife was shaking it vigorous- 
 ly, though with occasional qualms as to the lawfulness of the 
 process. 
 
 "You think Catherine does care for him?" resumed Mrs. 
 Leyburn, tremulously. 
 
 "Well, isn't he just the kind of man one would suppose 
 Catherine would like?" repeated Mrs. Thornburgh, persuasive 
 y; "he is a clergyman, and she likes serious people; and he's 
 sensible and nice and weU-naaanered. And then he can talk 
 
EOBEBT ELSMERE. ^ ^ ^ 
 
 about books, just like her father used-I'm sure WiUiam thinks 
 he knows everything! He isn't as nice-lookmg as he might be 
 iust now, but then that's his hair and his fever, poor man 
 And the^ he isn't hanging about. He's got a l^vmg and 
 there'd be the poor people all ready, and everythmg else Cath- 
 erine Ukes. And now I'U just ask you-did you ever see Cath- 
 eSSe more-more-Zfoe??/-welI, I know that's not just the 
 word, but you know what I mean-than she has been the last 
 
 ^%utMm Leybm-n only shook her head helplessly. She did 
 not know in the least what Mrs. Thomburgh meant She 
 never thought Catherine doleful, and she agreed that certainly 
 "lively" was not the word. „j 
 
 "Girls get so frightfuUy particular nowadays," contmued 
 the vicar's wife, with reflective candor. " Why, when Wxlham 
 fell in love with me, I just fell in love with him-at once-be- 
 cause he did And if it hadn't beenWiUiam, but somebody 
 eClt would have been the same. I don't believe girls have 
 got hearts Uke pebbles-if the man's nice, of course! 
 
 Mrs Leyburn listened to this summary of matrimomal phi- 
 losophy with the same yielding, flurried attention as she was 
 alwavs 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?" ™ , t, 
 
 '^Because she won'* have UmT said Mrs. Thornburgh, en- 
 ergetically, 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 won't have him, my dear Mrs. Leyburn ! And 
 -and-I'msure nothing would make me interfere like this if 
 I weren't so fond of you all, and if WUliam and I didn't know 
 for certain that there never was abetter young man born! 
 And then I was just sure you'd be the last person m the world, 
 if you knew, to stand in young people's way !" 
 ^ " I r" cried poor Mrs. Leyburn-" I stand in the way ! She 
 was getting tremulous and tearful, and Mrs. Thomburgh felt 
 herself a brute. 
 
 "WeU," she said, plunging on desperately, I have been 
 thinking over it night and day. I've been watching him, and 
 I've been talking to the girls, and I've been putting two and 
 two together, and I'm just about sure that there might be a 
 
150 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB, 
 
 chance for Eobert, if only Catherine didn't feel that you and 
 the girls couldn't get on without her!" 
 
 Mrs. Leyburn took up her knitting again with agitated fin- 
 gers. She was so long in answering that Mrs. Thomburgh sat 
 and thought with trepidation of all sorts of unpleasant conse- 
 sequences which might result from this audacious move of hers. 
 
 ''I don't 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, per- 
 haps 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? Where's his living? Would he want 
 to be married soon?" 
 
 The voice was weak and tearful, but there was in it unmis- 
 takable eagerness to be informed. Mrs. Thomburgh, over- 
 joyed, let loose upon her a flood of particulars, painted the 
 virtues and talents of Mrs. Elsmere, described Eobert's Oxford 
 career, with an admirable sense for effect and a truly feminine 
 capacity for murdering every university detail, drew pictures 
 of the Murew-ell living and rectory, of which Eobert had pho- 
 tographs with him, threw in adroit information about the 
 young man's private means, and in general showed what may 
 be made of a woman's mind under the stimulus of one of the 
 occupations most proper to it. Mrs. Leyburn brightened visi- 
 bly as the flobd proceeded. Alas, poor Catherine ! How little 
 room there is for the heroic in this trivial every-day life of 
 ours! 
 
 Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions 
 of a white, soft morsel in which Catherine's eyes and smile 
 should live again— all these thoughts went trembling and flash- 
 ing through Mrs. Leyburn's mind as she listened to Mrs. 
 Thornburgh. There is so much of the artist in the maternal 
 liiind, 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 self -surrender, had perhaps forgotten 
 that her mother too had a heart ! 
 
 Yes, it all sounds very well," said Mrs. Leyburn at last, 
 sighing, *'but, you kuow, Catherine isn't easy to mana.ge." 
 
BOBERT ELSMERBJ. 
 
 15i 
 
 ^X'ould you talk to her— find out a little?" 
 Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her. Doesn't it seem 
 to you that when a girl takes up notions like Catherine's, she 
 hasn't time for thinking about the young men? Why, she's as 
 full of business all day long as an egg's full of meat. Well, it 
 was my poor Eichard's doing— it was his doing, bless him I I 
 am not going to say anything against it. But it was different 
 — once." 
 
 Yes, I know," said Mrs. Thornburgh, ttioughtfully. 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 to-day?" 
 
 ''Oh, she'll be busy all to-day and to-morrow; I hardly ex- 
 pect^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." 
 
 "Don't you remember," said Mrs. Leyburn, staring in her 
 turn, and drawing herself up a little, "that to-morrow is Mid- 
 summer-day, and that Mary Backhouse is as bad as she can be?" 
 
 "Mary Backhouse! Why, I had forgotten all about her!" 
 cried the vicar's wife, with sudden remorse. And she sat pen- 
 sively eying the carpet awhile. 
 
 ^hen she got what particulars she could out of Mrs. Ley- 
 burn. Catherine, it appeared, was at this moment at High 
 Grhyll, 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 two's 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 work- 
 ing the while at railway speed on the facts presented to her. 
 
 "How do you get her home to-morrow night?" she asked, 
 with sudden animation. 
 
 "Oh, we send our man Richard at ten. He takes a lantern 
 if it's dark." 
 
 Mrs. Thornburgh said no more. Her eyes and gestures were 
 
152 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 all alive again with energy and hope. She had given her shake 
 to Mrs. Leyburn's mind. Much good might it do ! But, after 
 all, she had the poorest opinion of the widow's capacities as an 
 ally. 
 
 She and her companion said a few more excited, affection- 
 ate, 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 dehcious excitement, to act as the head of the family. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Thomburgh was laying pltins of jher own 
 account. 
 
 ''Ten o'clock— moonlight," said that contriving person to 
 herself, going home— "at least if the clouds hold up— that'll 
 do — couldn't be better. " 
 
 To any person familiar with her character, the signs of some 
 unusual preoccupation were clear enough in Mrs. Leyburn dur- 
 ing this Thursday evening. Catherine noticed' them at once 
 when she got back from High Ghyll about eight o'clock, 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 del- 
 icate nervous mother all the anxieties and perplexities of life. 
 It was a system in which the subject of it had always acqui- 
 esced with perfect contentment, and Catherine had no qualms 
 about it. If there was good news, it was presented in its most 
 sugared f oi*m 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 abet- 
 ted 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 mother's best gray poplin, 
 when one of the greatest surprises of her life burst upon her. 
 
 She was in Mrs. Leyburn's bedroom that night, helping to 
 put away her mother's things, as her custom was. She had 
 just taken off the widow's 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, 
 
BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 153 
 
 in an agitated voice, laying a thin hand on her daugkter's arm. 
 V* Oh, Catherine, I want to speak to you!'' 
 
 Catherine knelt Hghtly down by her mother's side, and put 
 her arms round her waist. 
 
 Yes, mother, darling," she said, half smiling. 
 
 **0h, Catherine! if—if— you like Mr. Elsmere, don't mind 
 —don't think— about us, dear. We can manage— we can man- 
 age, dear!" 
 
 i The change that took place in Catherine Leyburn's face is 
 indescribable. She rose instantly, her arms faUing behind her, 
 her beautiful brows drawn together. Mrs. Leyburn looked up 
 at her with a pathetic juixture 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 I'm a bad mother, Catherine!" And she caught her 
 ^daughter's dress and drew her toward her. " Do you care for 
 him ?" 
 
 Catherine did not answer. She knelt down again, and laid 
 her head on her mother's hands. 
 
 "I w9»t Bothing," she said, presently, in a low voice of in- 
 tense ei7>otion— " I want nothing but you and the girls. You 
 are my life, I ask for nothing more. I am abundantly—con- 
 tent." 
 
 Mrst> 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 gently 
 hollowed cheek; she looked almost younger than her pale 
 daughter. 
 
 "But— he is very nice," she said, timidly. "And he has a 
 good Hving. Catherine, you ought to be a clergyman's wife." 
 
 "I ought to be, and I am your daughter," said Catherine 
 smihng a little with an unsteady lip, and kissing her hand. 
 
 Mrs. Leyburn sighed and looked.^traight before her. Per- 
 haps in imagination she saw the vicar's 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 
 
154 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 wants you*to marry him, Cathrine ? Your father would havt 1 
 liked him— oh, I know your father would have liked him! And * 
 his manners to me are so pretty, I shouldn't mind being Ms ! 
 mother-in-law. 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 imag 
 inations— the pallor, the latent storm of Catherine's look- 
 exciting her more and more. 
 
 Catherine was silent a moment, then she caught her mother's \ 
 hand again. 
 
 Dear little mother— dear, kind little mother! You are an i 
 angel, you always are. But I think, if you'll keep me, I'll I 
 stay." 
 
 And she once more rested her head clingingly on Mrs. Ley- 
 burn's knee. 
 
 But do you— do you love him, Catherine ?" 
 love you, mother, and the girls, and my life here." 
 . *'0h, dear," sighed Mrs. Leyburn, as though addressing a 
 third person, the tears in her mild eyes, ''she won't, and she 
 ivould Hke 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 gxeat deal to us if you did marry, 
 Catherine!" cried Mrs. Leyburn, almost with an accent of pet- 
 tishness. ' ' People have to do without their daughters. There's 
 Agnes— I often think, as it is, you might let her do more. And 
 if Eose were troublesome, why, you know it might be a good 
 thing— a very good thing— if there were a man to take her in 
 band!" 
 
 "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 I'm siire I should li^ his mother, 
 though she is Irish !" 
 
 It was the bitterest moment of Catherine Leybum's 'ife. In 
 it the heroic dream of years broke down. Nay, the shriveling 
 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 years2 She threw herself down by 
 
 I 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 155 
 
 the wi_dow-s side, her face working with a passion that terri 
 fied 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. Catherine's sore heart was 
 soothed a httle by her mother's 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. Ley- 
 burn stiU persisted. It was the cheapening— the vulgarizing, 
 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 to-night, my dear— and he goes on Satur- 
 day. 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 woe-begone for Eismere as for herself. 
 
 ''Don't talk about it any more, mother," Catherine im- 
 plored. ''You won't 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 fin- 
 gers on which the worn wedding-ring lay sHpping forward— in 
 itself a history— left her at last to sleep. 
 
 "And I don't kiiow much more than when I began !" sighed 
 the perplexed widow to herself. " Oh, I wish Eichard was 
 here— Idol" 
 
 Catherine's night was a night of intense mental struggle. 
 Her struggle was one with which the modern world has per- 
 haps 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 out- 
 grown so many of the older complications of the sentiment of 
 honor. And meanwhile half the tragedy of our time lies in 
 this perpetual clashing of two estimates of life— the estimate 
 which is the offspring of the scientific spirit, and which is fov 
 
156 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 ever making the visible world fairer and more desirable in 1 |j 
 mortal eyes; and the estimate of Saint Augustine. ^ i 
 
 As a matter of fact, owing to some traveling difficulties, the ' j 
 vicar and Elsmere did not get home till noon on Friday. Cath- g 
 erine knew nothing of either delay or arrival. Mrs. Leybum i f 
 watched her with anxious timidity, but she never mentioned ' [ 
 Elsmere's name to any one on the Friday morning, and no one i , 
 dared speak of him to her. She came home in the afternoon ' ; 
 from the Backhouses' absorbed apparently in the state of the j 
 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 win- 
 dow looking affcer her sister's retreating figure. *'It is all 
 over 1 They can't meet now. He will be off by nine to-morrow. " | 
 
 The girl spoke with a lump in her throat, and flung herself | 
 down by the window, moodily watching the dark form against 
 the fells. Catherine's coldness seemed to make aU life colder 
 and niore chilling— to fling a hard demal in the face of the 
 dearest claims of earth. 
 
 The stormy light of the afternoon was fading toward sunset. | 
 Catherine walked on fast toward the group of houses at the 
 nead of the valley, in one of which lived the two old carriers 
 who had worked such havoc with Mrs. Thomburgh's house- | 
 keeping 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 self-respect 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 rehgious sense deepening her discomfiture at every 
 step. How rich her life had always been in the conviction of 
 usefulness — nay, indispensableness ! Her mother's persuasions 
 had dashed it from her. And religious scruple, for her tor 
 ment, showed her her past, transformed, alloyed with all sorts 
 of personal prides and cravings, which stood unmasked now in 
 a white light. 
 
 And be ? Still near her for a few short hours ! Ev^ery 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 hQ 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 157 
 
 had stayed on, lie 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 tor- 
 tured, half soothed by the prospect of his going. Perhaps when 
 he is gone she will recover something of that moral equilibrium 
 which has been so shaken. At present she is a riddle to her- 
 self, invaded by a force she has no power to cope with, feeling 
 the moral groulid of years crumbling beneath her, and strug- 
 gling feverishly f or « self-control. 
 
 As she neared the head of the valley the wind became less 
 tempestuous. The great wall of High FeU, toward 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 cov- 
 ered the group of houses and trees toward which she was walk- 
 ing, 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 north v/ard all was stony 
 loneliness and desolation, and saw in front of her the gray 
 stone house, backed by the somber red of a great copper beech, 
 and overhung by crags, she had perforce to take herself by 
 both handg, try and reaUze her mission afresh, and the scene 
 which lay before her. 
 
 . CHAPTER X. 
 
 Mary Backhouse, the girl whom Catherine had been visit- 
 ing with regularity for many weeks, and whose frail life was 
 this evening nearing a terrible and long-expected crisis, was the 
 victim of a fate sordid and common enough, yet not without 
 its elements of dark poetry. Some fifteen months before this 
 mid-summer 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 snow- 
 drifts so deep that no doctor could reach them, her mother had 
 passed away. She had been then strong and well favored, 
 possessed of a certain masculine black-brov/ed beauty, and of 
 a temper which sometimes gave to it an edge and glow such as 
 an artist of ambition migbjt have been glad to catch. At the 
 bottom of all the outward sauvdgerie, however, there was a 
 
158 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 heart, and strong wants, which only affection and companion- 
 ship could satisfy and tame. Neither was to be found in suf- 
 ficient measure within her home. Her father and she were or 
 fairly good terms, and had for each other up to a certain point 
 the natural instincts of kinship. On her uncle, whom she re- : 
 garded as half-witted, 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 eiJect on his curious nonchalance] 
 which nothing else had. For the rest, they had no neighbors 
 with whom the giii could fraternize, and Whinborough was 
 too far off to provide any 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 neighboring 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 mo- 
 tives, partly passion, partly jealousy, partly ennui, awoke one 
 day to find herseK rained, and a grim future hung before her. 
 She had realized her doom for the first time in its entii^ety on 
 the Mdsummer-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 fulfill- 
 ment 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 
 recognized as her death sentence. 
 
 What had she seen? An effect of moouHghted mist— a shep- 
 herd boy bent on a practical joke— a gleam of white waterfall 
 among the darkening rocks? What had she heai^d? The even- 
 ing greeting of a passer-by, wafted down to her fi-om some higher 
 path along the fell? distant voices in the farm inclosm-es beneath 
 her feet ? or simply the eerie sounds of the mountain, those weird 
 earth- whispers ^hich haunt the lonely places of nature? Who 
 can tell? Nerves and brain were strained to their uttermost. The 
 legend ©f the ghost— of the ^\ who had thrown her baby and 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 159 
 
 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 Mary's 
 mind as she left the white- walled 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 untow^ard ; to 
 be spoken to by the phantom voice was death. No one so ad- 
 dressed could hope to survive the following Midsummer-day. 
 Eevolving these things in her mind, along with tbe terrible de- 
 tails 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 
 neighborhood. 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 eld^r brother ; the 
 noodle's eyes wandered and ghttered more ; his shrunken frame 
 seemed more shrunken as he sat dangling his spindle legs from 
 the shaft of the carrier's cart ; his absence of mind was for a 
 time more marked, and excused with less buoyancy and in- 
 ventiveness 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 farm-houses of the hamlet about some disputed payment. 
 The old man came in cold and weary, and the sight of the half- 
 tended kitchen and neglected fire — they paid a neighbor 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 yhat Westmoreland 
 folk call the "hoMse" or sitting-room of the farm, was open. 
 The room had hardly been used since Mary's 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 windo^\ all the summer be- 
 had died into dry, blac^gped stalks ; and the dust lay heavy 
 
i60 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 on the room, in spite of the well-meant but wholly ineffective 
 efforts of the char- woman nexfc door. The two old men had 
 avoided the place for months past by common consent, and the 
 door into it wa,s 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 
 Dn a wooden rocking-chair, which had been her mother's favor- 
 ite seat, sat Mary Backhouse, her feet on the curved brass fen- 
 der, her eyes staring into the parlor grate. Her clothes, her 
 face, her attitude of cowering chill and mortal fatigue, produced 
 an impression v/hich struck through the old man's dull senses, 
 and made him tremble so that his hand di'opped from the handle 
 of the door. The slight sound roused Mary, and she turned 
 toward 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. Ye'd may be not expect me?" 
 
 There was a sound behind on the cobbles outside kitchen 
 door. 
 
 "Yur feyther!" cried Jim between his teeth. "G-ang up- 
 stairs wi' ye." And he pointed to a door in the wall concealing 
 a staircase to the upper story. 
 
 She sprung up, looked at the door and at him irresolutely, 
 and then stayed where she vv^as, gaunt, pale, fever-eyed, the 
 wreck and ghost of her old self. 
 
 The steps neared. There was a rough voice in the kitchen, 
 a surprised exclamation, and her father had pushed passed his 
 brother into the room. 
 
 John Backhouse no sooner saw his daughter than his dull, 
 weather-beaten face flamed into violence. With an oath he 
 raised the heavy whip he held in his hand, and flung himself 
 toward her. 
 
 *'Naw, ye'll not du'at!" cried Jim, throwing himself with all 
 his feeble strength on to his brother's arm. John swore and 
 struggled, but the old man stuck like a limpet. 
 
 "You let 'un aleann," said Mary, drawing her tatteted shawl 
 over her breaat. ''If he aims to kill me, aa'll not say naa. 
 But he needn't moider hisself! There's them abuve as ha' 
 taken care o' that!" 
 
 She sunk 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 fe^^ impossible. 
 
ROBEET ELSMKRE. 
 
 161 
 
 The father's 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. 
 
 Ye'll not hev to wait lang. Doan't ye fash yerseF. May- 
 be it ull comfort ye to knaw sumat ! Lasst Midsummer-day 
 aa was on t' Shanmoor road, i' t' gloaming. An' aa 8aw 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 ter- 
 rible black eyes, which gazed past the two figures within their 
 immediate range into a vacancy peopled with horror. 5,*hen a 
 film came over them, the grip relaxed, and she fell back '^itha 
 lurch of the rocking-chair in a dead swoon. i * 
 
 With the help of the neighbor from next door, Jim got her 
 upstairs into the room that had been hers. She awok«> from 
 her swoon only to fall into the torpid sleep of exhaustion. >?v^hich 
 lasted for twelve hours. ^ 
 
 Keep her oot o' ma way," said the father with an cnth to 
 Jim, or aa'll not answer nayther for her nor me !" 
 
 She needed no telling. She soon crept down-stairs again, and 
 went to the task of house-cleaning. The two men lived in the 
 kitchen as before; v/hen they were at home she ate and sat in 
 the parlor alone. Jim watched her as far as his dull brain 
 was capable of watching, and he dimly understood tbat 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 north-country peasant 
 is in many places quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his 
 ghosts to the Time Spirit as any ''bold, bad " haunter of scien- 
 tific associations could wish him to be. But in a few of the 
 remoter valleys they still linger, though beneath the surface. 
 Either of the Backhouse's, 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 moun- 
 tain-side was awful with the sounds of tempest, had gro^n up 
 
162 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 with them, had entered deep into the tissue of consciousness. 
 In Mary's imagination the ideas and images connected with it 
 had now, under the stimulus of circumstance, become instinct 
 with a hving, pursuing terror. But they were present, though 
 in a duller, blunter state, m the minds of her father and uncle; 
 and as the weeks passed on, and the days lengthened toward 
 midsummer, a sort of brooding horror seemed to settle on the 
 louse. 
 
 Mary grew weaker and weaker; her cough kept Jim awake 
 at night; once or twice when he went to help her with a piece 
 of work which nob even her extraordinary will could carry her 
 through, her hand burned him like a hot cinder. But she kept 
 all other wom.en 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 color of the events from wliich the disease 
 itself had started. Cold, exposure, long-continued 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 Midsimimer- 
 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 of! 
 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 wdthin him, and he went up to her and forci- 
 bly took it from her. Their looks met, and her poor mad eyes 
 gazed intensely into his. As he moved forward toward the house 
 she crept after him, passing him into the parlor, where she sunk 
 down breathless on the settle wh^re she had been sleeping toi 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 163 
 
 the last few nights, rather than face climbing 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 Leybum. He stammer- 
 ingly 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 de- 
 signs 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 doctor's 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 aU, 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 de- 
 lirium. 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 
 Httle, built up the girl's hidden tragedy before her eyes. Lon- 
 don streets, London lights, London darkness, the agony of an 
 endless wandering, tie little, clinging, puny life, which could 
 never be stilled or satisfied, biting cold, intolerable pain, the 
 cheerless work-house order, and, finally, the arms without a 
 burden, the breast without a child— these were the sharp frag- 
 ments of experience, so common, so terrible to the end of time, 
 which rose on the troubled surface of Mary Backhouse's de- 
 lirium, and smote the tender heart of the listener. 
 
 Then in the mornings she would lie suspicious and silent, 
 watching Catherine's face with the long gaze of exhaustion, as 
 though trying to find out from it whether her secret had escaped 
 
164 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 her. The doctor, who had gathered the story of the bogle 
 from Catherine, to whom Jim had told it, briefly and reluctant- 
 ly, and with an absolute reservation of his own views on the 
 matter, recommended that if possible they should try and de- 
 ceive 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 
 which the darkened mind kept always in view that one absorb- 
 ing expectation. Words fell from her at night which seemed 
 to show that she expected a smnmons— a voice along the fell, 
 calling her spirit into the dark. And then would come the 
 shriek, the struggle to get loose, the choked waMng, the wan- 
 dering, horror-stricken eyes, subsiding by degrees into the old 
 silent watch. 
 
 On the morning of the 23d, when Eobert, 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 austerft 
 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 pretenses of personal happiness so hol- 
 low and delusive, after such a sight I 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 Cath- 
 eiine, 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 sootl&g, as she read in 
 her low, vibrating voice, or sat silently stroking the emaci- 
 ated hand, raising it every now and then to her hps with a rush 
 of that intense pitif ulness which was to her the most natural of 
 all moods. 
 
 The doctor, whom she met there, said that this state of cahn 
 was very possibly only transitory. The night had been passed 
 in a succession of paroxysms, and they were almost sure to re- 
 turn upon her, especially as he could get her to swallow none 
 of the sedaliT^e which might have carried her in unconscious- 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 165 
 
 ness 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 intelHgence still left to her; so the 
 only thing to be done was to wait and see the result. I will 
 come to-morrow,'' said Catherine^ briefly; "for the day cer- 
 tainly, longer if necessary." She had long ago established her 
 claim so 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 neighbor] ''shall be close at 
 hand. I will come in the afternoon and try to get her to take 
 an opiate ; but I can't give it her by force, and there is not the 
 smallest chance of her consenting to it." 
 
 All through Catherine's 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 Eomanist ; as she pressed it 
 into her thought, it recovered from time to time the failing 
 forces of the will. Need life be empty because self was left un- 
 satisfied ? 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 car- 
 riage 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. 
 
 ''She's in a taaking way, " said Jim, who looked more attenu- 
 ated and his face more hke a pink and white parchment than 
 ever. "She's been knacking an' taaking a long while. She 
 vvoan't know ye. Luk 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, she'll stay in wf ye 
 —she's not afeerd !" 
 
 The superstitious excitement which the looks and gestures of 
 the old man expressed ^^ouched Catherine's imagination, and 
 she entered the room with an inward shiver. 
 
 Mary Backhouse lay raised high on her pillows, talking to 
 i^^Tstelf or to imaginary other persons, with eyes wide open but 
 recant, and senses conscious of nothing but the dream world 
 
166 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 in which the mind was wandering. Catherine sat softly down 
 beside her, unnoticed, thankful for the chances of disease. Ji 
 this deUrium lasted till the ghost-hour— the time of twilight, 
 that is to say, which would begin about half -past eight, and the 
 duration of which would depend on the cloudiness of the even- 
 ing—wa^ over, or, better still, till midnight were passed, the 
 strain on the girl's agonized senses might be relieved, and death 
 come at last in sotter, lander guise. 
 
 ''Has she been long like this?" she asked, softly, of the 
 aeighbor who sat quietly knitting by the evening light. 
 
 The woman looked up and thought. 
 
 ''Ay !" she said. " Aa came in at tea time, an' she's been 
 maistlv taakin ivver sence 1" 
 
 The'^incoherent whisperings and restless movements, which 
 obUged Catherine constantly to replace the coverings over the 
 poor wasted and fevered body, went on for some time. Cath- 
 erine noticed presently, with a little thrHl, that the light was 
 beginning to change. The weather was growing darker and 
 stormier; the wind shook the house in gusts; and the further 
 shoulder of High Fell, seen in distorted outline through the 
 casemented window, was almost hidaen by the traUing 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 window, 
 brushed the panes every now and then ; and in the silence every 
 surrounding sound— the rare movements in the next room, the 
 voices of quarreling children round the door of a neighboring 
 douse, the far-off barking of dogs— made itself distinctly audible. 
 
 Suddenly Catherine, sunk in painful reverie, noticed that the 
 ttiutterings from the bed had ceased for some httle time. She 
 toned her chair, and was startled to find those weird eyes fixed 
 mth recognition on herself. There was a curious malign in- 
 tensity, a curious triumph in them. 
 
 " It must be— eight o'clock," said the gasping Yoice— ''-eight 
 o'clock,'' 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, falhng on her knees beside the bed, 
 and taking one of the restless hands forcibly into her own, 
 "can't 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." 
 
ROBEET ELSMERE, 
 
 167 
 
 It was the first time for many days she had spoken openly of 
 the thought which was in the mind of ail, and her whole plead- 
 ing soul was in her pale, beautiful face. There was no response 
 in the sick girl's countenance, and again that look of triumph, 
 of sinister exultation. They had tried to cheat her into sleep- 
 ing, and hving, and in spite of them, at the supreme momen-t^ 
 every sense was awake and expectant. To what was the mate- 
 rialized peasant imagination looking forward ? To an actual 
 call, an actual foUowing to the free mountain-side, 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 
 ^nd 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 woman's ex- 
 pression. While she waited for the answer there was a noise 
 in the kitchen outside, an opening of the outer door, and a 
 voice. Catherine's heart stood still. She had to make a super- 
 human 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. 
 
 Go!" it repeated insistently, with a sort of wild beseeching; 
 then, brokenly, the gasping breath interrupting. "There's 
 naw fear— naw fear— fur the likes o' you!" 
 
 Catherine rose. 
 
 "I'm 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. Irwin's 
 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 tK* 
 light of the fire, shooting and dancing through the June twi- 
 
168 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 light, thi-ew such fantastic shadows over the face on the pillow 
 that all expression was lost. What was moving in the crazed 
 mind? Satisfaction, perhaps, at haying 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, 
 waitmg — the images of insanity whirhng through her brain ^ 
 while the light slowly, slowly waned. 
 
 Catherine opened the door into the kitchen. The two car- 
 riers were standing there, and Robert Elsmere also stood with 
 his back to her, talking to them in an under- tone. 
 
 He turned at the sound behind him, and his start brought a 
 sudden flush to Catherine's cheek. Her face, as the candle- 
 light struck it amid the shadows of the door way, 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 self-possession was com- 
 plete. 
 
 "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 liour 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 gav/in' oot — noil 
 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 
 Don't leave her; go back." And Catherine motioned her back 
 with a little peremptory gesture. 
 
 "Doan't ye let 'ur, sir," said the woman, excitedly, to Rob- 
 ert. "One's eneuf aa'm thinking" And she pointed with ^ 
 meaning gesture to the room behind her. 
 
# 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERJ5. 
 
 169 
 
 Robert looked at Catherine, who was moving toward the 
 outer door. 
 
 **I11 go with her," he said, hastily, his face lighting up- 
 There is nothing whatever to be afraid of, only don't 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 fell-side climbing a rough stony path, which in places waa 
 almost a water-course, and which wound up the fell toward a 
 tract of level swampy moss or heath, beyond which lay the 
 descent to Shanmoor. Dayhght 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 mount- 
 ain forms; a desolate tempestuous wind drove a gusty rain into 
 their faces ; a little beck roared beside tHem, and in the dis- 
 tance from the black gulf of the valley the swollen river thun- 
 dered. 
 
 Elsmere looked down on his companion with an indescriba- 
 ble 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 al- 
 lowed to stand in the way of that last wrestle with her, of 
 which he had planned all the methods, rehearsed all the argu- 
 ments. 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. Thorn- 
 burgh meanwhile looking on, saying what civility demanded, 
 and surprisingly little else. Then in the evening Mrs. Thorn- 
 burgh had asked of him with a manner of admirable indiffer- 
 ence whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High 
 Ghyll to inquire after Mary Backhouse. The request fell in 
 excellently with a lover's restlessness, and Robert assented at 
 once. The vicar saw him go with puzzled brows and a quicb 
 look at his wife, whose head was bent close over her worsted 
 work. 
 
 It never occurred to Elsmere— or if it did occur he pooh* 
 poohed the notion— that he should find Catherine still at hei 
 post far from home on this dexk stormy evening. But in the 
 
170 ilOBEM ELSMERB. ^ 
 
 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 and 
 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 mountain-side. " The ghost is sup- 
 posed to walk along this bit of road above the houses, till it 
 reaches the heath on the top, and then it turns toward Bleacliff 
 Tarn, which lies higher up to the right, under High Fell." 
 
 " Do you imagine yom' report will have any effect ?" 
 
 "At any rate," she said, sighing, "it seemed to me that it 
 might divert her thoughts a Uttle 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 white-stemmed 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 
 tkat 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 Httle, and the sense of physical ex- 
 haustion, which had been banished like everything else — doubt. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 171 
 
 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 thrill- 
 ing her with a hundred different meaniogs. " I am glad I pre- 
 vented it." 
 
 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 
 silence, splashes of rain breaking in their faces. Eobert's in- 
 ward excitement was growing fast. Suddenly Catherine's 
 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— 1 can not 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. 
 
 told you," she said, almost whispering, 'Hhat 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 brothet 
 could. Come and enrich my life; you shall still fill and sheltei 
 theirs. I dare not think what my future might be without 
 you to guide, to inspire, to bless— dare not, lest with a word 
 Jrou should plunge me into an outer darkness I can not face." 
 He caught her unresisting h§iid, and raised it to his lips. 
 
172 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 *^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, v/here was this softness bearing her— this 
 emptiness of all will, of all individual power ? She hid her 
 eyes with her other hand, strugghng to recall that far away 
 moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused to work. Con* 
 sciousness 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 can not 
 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 ; timQ for you to think yourself and me into all sorts of 
 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 imagina- 
 tion, of impulsive eagerness there was through it all. The 
 more slowly moving 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 further 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 white-walled 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 W 
 
ROBEET ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 TOth dizzy, 
 unspeakable joy. 
 
 About twenty minutes later Catherine and Eobert, having 
 hurried back with all speed from the top of Shanmoss, reached 
 the farm-house door. She knocked. No one answered. She 
 tried the lock; it yielded, and they entered. No one in the 
 kitchen. She looked disturbed and conscience-stricken. 
 
 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. 
 
 ''It's bin awfu' work sence you left, miss," whispered Mrs. 
 Irwin to Catherine, excitedly, as she joined them. 'vShe 
 thowt she heerd soombody fleytin' and caHin'-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— it's bin as much as we could a' du to hod 'er." 
 
 ' ' Luke ! Steady 1" exclaimed Jim. ' ' She'U try it again . " 
 
 For the hands were moving restlessly from side to side, and 
 the face was working again. There was one more desperate 
 effort to rise, which the two men checked-gently enough, but 
 effectually— and then the exhaustion seemed complete. The lids 
 feU, and the struggle for breath was pitiful. 
 
 Catherine fiew 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 barley-water 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 
 
174 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 fewer people and fche more air the better. And please let the 
 door be open; the room is too hot."^ 
 
 They went out silently, and Catherine sunk down beside the 
 bed. Her heart went out in unspeakable longing toward the 
 poor human wi-eck 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 forever. 
 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 cHmbedall 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 Grod and love that are real. Ob, 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 forever; and he has sent you a sign by me." . . 
 She lifted her head from the pillow, trembhng and hesitating. 
 Still that feverish, questioning gaze on the face beneath her, as 
 it lay in deep shadow cast by a light on the window-sill 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— God's mes- 
 senger—sending me to meet the joy of my w-hole life! There 
 was some one waiting here just now," she went on, hurriedly, 
 breathing her sobbing words into Mary's 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 larch-wood, up to the 
 top, where the stream goes under the road. And there he spoke 
 to me, and I couldn't help it any more. And I promised to love 
 him and be his wife. And if it hadn't 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 while this life of ours ! Nothing matters— not 
 our worst sin and sorrow— but God, and our love 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 I" 
 
 She raised herself again and looked down with yearning, pas- 
 
KOBEBT ELSMERB. 175 
 
 sioDate pity on the shadowed form. Oh, blessed answer of heart 
 to heart I There were tears forming under the heavy hds, the 
 corners of the Hps was 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 hps 
 to the parched mouth of the dying. When she Hfted 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 w^hich the invahd had been a stranger 
 for days stole httle by little over the wasted frame. The grasp 
 of the fingers relaxed, the labored breath came more gently, and 
 in a few more minutes she slept. Twilight was long over. The 
 ghost-hour was passed, and the moon outside was slowly gain- 
 ing a wider empire in the clearing heavens. 
 
 It was a little after ten o'clock whenEose drew aside the cui 
 tain at Burwood and looked out. 
 
 ' ' There is the lantern, " she said to Agnes, ' ' just by the vicar- 
 age. 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 
 lighted for her benefit in the evenings, her white shawl drop- 
 ping 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 1" cried Eose, starting up. 
 A.gnes suspended her letter. 
 
 ''Perhaps the vicar," said Mrs Leyburn, with a little sigh. 
 
 A hand turned the drawing-room door, and in the door-way 
 stood Elsmere. Eose caught a gray dress disappearing up the 
 little stairs behind him. 
 
 Elsmere's look was enough for the two girls. They under- 
 stood in an instant. Eose 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 boy- 
 ish looks aglow, his voice unsteady. Will you let me be a 
 son to you?" 
 
176 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 | 
 wiU it. Give her to me again !" ] 
 
 Mrs. Leyburn's face worked pitifull3^ The rectory and the < 
 wedding-dress, which had lingered so regretfully in her »| 
 thoughts since her last sight of Catherine, sunk out of them al- < 
 together. ^ 
 She has been everything in the world to us, Mr. Elsmere." 
 
 ''I know she has," he said, simply. ''She shall be every- 
 thing in the world to you still. I have had hard work to per- 
 suade her. There vvdll be no chance for me if you don't 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 Eose, as she bade him good- 
 night, " that I don't know how to behave to a brother. And 
 I am equally sure that Mrs. Thomburgh doesn't know how to 
 behave to a fiance. " 
 
 Eobert 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 httle flash of half -irresolute wicked- 
 ness— " 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 nrouder woman in the three kingdoms 
 than Mrs. Thomburgh tnat night. After all the agitation 
 down-stairs she could not persuade herself to go to bed. She 
 first knocked up Sarah and communicated the news ; then she 
 
EGBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 177 
 
 sat down before a pier-glass in her own room studying the per- 
 son who had found Catherine Ley burn a husband. 
 
 ''My doing from beginning to end," she cried with a triumpti 
 beyond words. ''William has had nothing to do with it. 
 Eobert has had scarcely as much. And to think how little I 
 dreamed of it when I began ! Well, to be sure, no one could 
 have planned marrying those two. There's no one but Provi- 
 dence could have f orseen it— they're so different. And after 
 all it's done. Now then, whom shall I have next year?" 
 
 W^. " — 
 
 BOOK IL^SVRREr. 
 
 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 traveler, 
 even in its loneliest places. The heaths and woods of some dis- 
 tricts 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 
 tney please, either ignorant of intruding man or strangely lit- 
 tle incommoded by his neighborhood. 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 un- 
 der the touch of the sun; the scattered farm-houses, so mellow 
 in color, so pleasant in outline; the general softness and lavish- 
 ness of the earth and all it bears, make these Surrey commons 
 not a wilderness, but a paradise. Nature, indeed, here is hke 
 some spoiled, petulant child. She will bring forth nothing, or 
 almost nothing, for man's 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 abandon- 
 ment, all the energy, that heart could wish. 
 It is oa the borders of one of the wilder districts of a coimty, 
 
178 
 
 ROBEET ELSMERB. 
 
 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 corn-fields and^ 
 woods to a plain of boundless heather on the south, and climbed . 
 away on the north toward the long chalk ridge of the Hog's ; 
 Back. It was a square white house pretending neither to j 
 beauty nor state, a Httle awkwardly and barely placed, with i 
 only a small stretch of grass and a low hedge between it and 
 the road. A few tall firs chmbing above the roof gave a httle 
 grace and clothing to its southern side, and behind it there was i 
 a garden sloping softly down toward the village at its foot— a i 
 garden chiefly noticeable for its grass walks, the luxuriance of : 
 the fruit trees chnging to its old red walls, and the masses of : 
 pink and white phloxes which now in August gave it the flow- 
 eriness and the gayety of an Elizabethan song. Below in the 
 hollow and to the right lay the picturesque medley of the village 
 —roofs and gables and chimneys, yellow-gray thatch, shining 
 whitewash, and mellowed brick, making a bright patchwork^ 
 among the softening trees, thin wreaths of blue smoke, hke airy- 
 ribbons, tangled through it all. Eising over the rest was a 
 house of some dignity. It had been an old manor house, 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 lovehness. All around it- 
 north, south, and west— there spread, as it were, a vast play- 
 ground of heather and wood and grassy common, in which the 
 few workaday patches of hedge and plowed land seemed in- 
 gulfed and lost. Close under the rectory windows, however, 
 was a vast sloping cornfield, belonging to the glebe, the largest 
 and fruitfulest of the neighborhood. 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, summer-scorched belt of wood, and beyond, over 
 the distance, rose a blue-pointed hill, , which seemed to be there 
 only to attract and make a center for the sunset 
 
BOBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 1?9 
 
 As compared with her Westmoreland Hfe, the first twelve 
 months of wifehood had been to Catherine Elsmere a time of 
 rapid and changing experience. A few days out of their honey- 
 moon, 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 Robert's. The bride and 
 bridegroom were much feted 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 uncomfort- 
 able ; and Langham devoted himself to taking the wife through 
 colleges and gardens, schools and Bodleian, in most orthodox 
 fashion, indemnifying himself afterward for the sense of con- 
 straint her presence imposed upon him by a talk and a smoke 
 with Eobert. 
 
 He could not understand the Elsmere marriage. That a crea- 
 ture 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 an- 
 other illustration of the mysteries of matrimony. He could 
 not get on with her, and after awhile did not try to do so. 
 
 There could be no doubt as to Elsmere's devotion. He was 
 absorbed, wrapped up in her. 
 
 She has affected hira," 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 re- 
 member that she decidedly does not like me— which may cut 
 tne off from Elsmere. However"— and Langham sighed over 
 bis 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 mold 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 hid- 
 den somewhere under his careless boyish ways, noticed many 
 points of change about his old friend. Langham seemed to 
 
180 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 him less human, more strange, than ever ; the points of con! 
 tact between him and active life were lessening in numbe: ' 
 term by term. He lectured only so far ^s was absoluteh 
 necessary for the retention of his post, and he spoke witl 
 wholesale distate of his pupils. He had set up a book on *'Th( 
 Schools of Athens," but when Eobert saw the piles of discon 
 nected notes already accumulated, he perfectly understooc 
 that the book was a mere blind, a screen, behind which a difii; 
 cult fastidious nature trifled and procrastinated as it pleased 
 
 Again, when Elsmere was an undergraduate Langham anc 
 Grey had been intimate. Now, Langham's tone apropos oi 
 Grey^s politics and Grey's dreams of church reform was a? 
 languidly sarcastic as it was with regard to most of the strenu 
 ous things of life. ''Nothmg particular is true," his mannei 
 said, "and all action is a degrading pis-aller. Get through the 
 day somehow, with as little harm to yourself and other peopk 
 as may be ; do your duty if you like it, but, for Heaven's sake, 
 don't cant about it to other people !" 
 
 If the affinities of character count for much, Catherine and 
 Henry Grey should certainly have imderstood each other. The 
 tutor liked the look of Elsmere's 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 oi 
 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 with 
 a sort of troubled admiration, puzzled, evidently, by the halo 
 of moral dignity surrounding him, which contended with some- 
 thing else in her mind respecting him. Some words of Eobert's 
 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 home-coming 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 acquain- 
 tance of her daughter-in-law, for she had been the Thorn- 
 burgh's guest for ten days before the marriage in September, 
 and Catherine, moreover, had paid her a short visit earlier in 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 181 
 
 B bhe summer. But it was now that for the first time she realized 
 
 J to the full the character of the woman Eobert had married. 
 Catherine's manner to her was sweetness itself. Parted from 
 i iher own mother as she was, the younger woman's strong filial 
 lijinstincts spent themselves in tending the mother who had been 
 the guardian and hfe of Eobert's youth. And Mrs. Elsmere in 
 return was awed by Catherine's moral force and parity 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 briiUancy. 
 
 ^ 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 daughter-in-law she would revenge herself in all 
 sorts of droll ways, and with occasional flashes of petulent Irish 
 wit which could make Catherine color 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 
 ^ew daughter was decidedly deficient in the sense of humor. 
 
 I believe it's that father , of hers," she would say to herself, 
 «!rossly. "By what Eobert tells me of him he must have been 
 one of the people who get ill in their minds for want of a good 
 nouth-fiUing laugh now and then. The man who can't 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 
 lake Mrs. Elsmere on the right side. For instance, Catherine 
 was more often scandalized than impressed by her mother in- 
 law's charitable performances. 
 
 Mrs. Elsmere's little cottage was filled with work-house or- 
 phans sent to her from different London districts. The train- 
 ing 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 gener- 
 ally did well, and they invariably adored Mrs. Elsmere, but 
 Catherine did not much like to think about them. Their 
 
182 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 1 
 
 household teaching under Mrs. Elsmere and her old servant 
 Martha — as great an original as herself — was so irregular, their 
 rehgious training so extraordinary, the clothes in which they 
 were allowed to disport themselves so scandalous to the sober 
 taste of the rector's 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 o'clock in 
 the morning, find her mother-in-law in bed, half dressed, with 
 all her hand-maidens about her, giving her orders, reading her 
 letters and the newspaper, cutting out her girls' frocks, in- 
 structing them in the fashions, or delivering little homilies on 
 questions suggested by the news of the day to the more intelli- 
 gent of them. The room, the whole house, would seem to 
 Catherine in a detestable litter. If so, Mrs. Elsmere never 
 apologized for it. On the contrary, as she saw Catherine 
 sweep a mass of miscellaneous debris 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. Elsmere's relations with 
 the poor of the parish often made Catherine miserable. She her- 
 self had the most angelic pity and tenderaess 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, Eobert's wife would go away 
 and wrestle with herself, that she might be betrayed into noth- 
 ing harsh toward Eobert's mother. 
 
 But fate allowed their differences, whether they were deep or 
 shallow, no time to develop. A week of bitter cold at the be- 
 ginning of January struck down Mrs. Elsmere, whose strange 
 ways of living were more the result of certain long-standing deli- 
 cacies 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 agonized wrestling with that terror of death 
 which had haunted the keen, vivacious soul from its earliest con- 
 sciousness, ending in a glow of spiritual victory — and Eobert 
 found himself motherless. He and Catherine had never left 
 her since the beginning of the ilkiess. In one of the intervals 
 toward the end, when there was a faint power of speech, she 
 drew Catherine's cheek down to her and kissed her. 
 
 Grod bless you 1" the old woman's voice said, with a solem- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 188 
 
 nity in it which Eobert knew well, but which Catherine had 
 never heard before. Be good to him, Catherine— be always 
 good to him 1" 
 
 And she lay looking from the husband to the wife with a cer- 
 tain wistf ulness which pained Catherine, she knew not why. 
 i But she answered with tears and tender words, and at last the 
 mother's face settled into a peace which death did but confirm. 
 
 This great and unexpected loss, which had shaken to their 
 I 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 bur- 
 den. He felt with passionate gratitude that his wife helped him 
 to bear it so that he came out from it not lessened but enno- 
 bled, 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 weaknesss, 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 illimit- 
 able 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 hfe 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 visi- 
 I tors. Catherine had sent the pony-carriage to the station to 
 I meet Rose and Langham, who was to escort her from Waterloo. 
 For various reasons, all characteristic, it was Rose's first visit 
 to Catherine's new home. * 
 
 Now she had been for six weeks in London, and had been per- 
 suaded to come on to her sister, at the end of her stay. Cath- 
 j erine was looking forward to her coming with many tremors, 
 i The wild ambitious creature had been not one atom appeased 
 i by Manchester and its opportunities. She had gone back to 
 I Whindale in April only to fall into more hopeless discontent 
 than ever. ' ' She can hardly be civil to anybody, " Agnes wrote 
 to Catherin-e. The cry now is all ' London ' or at least ' Ber- 
 lin,' and she can not imagine why papa should ever have 
 «7i«ibed to condemn us to such a prison." 
 
m 
 
 KOBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 Catherine grew pale with indignation as she read the worda^l 
 and thought of her father's short-hved joy in the old house am 
 its few green fields, or of the confidence which had soothed hii 
 last moments, that it would be well there with his wife anc 
 children, far from the hubbub of the world. 
 
 But Eose and her whims were not facts which could be pwi 
 aside. They would have to be grappled with, probably hu 
 mored. As Catherine strolled out into the garden, listening 
 alternately for Robert and for the carriage, she told herself tha 
 it would be a difficult visit. And the presence of Mr. Langhani 
 would certainly not dinimish its difficulty. The mere thought; 
 of him set the wife's young form stiffening. A cold breatt 
 seemed to blow from Edward Langham, which chilled Cath 
 erine's 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. Th( 
 more difficult their intercourse became, the more determinec 
 the younger man seemed to be to maintain it. Catherine im 
 agined that he often scourged himself in secret for the fact thai 
 the gratitude which had once flowed so readily had now becomt 
 a matter of reflection and resolution. 
 
 ^'"Why should we always expect to get pleasure from oui ' 
 friends ?" he had said to her once with vehemence. It shoulc | 
 be pleasure enough to love them." And she knew very wel: 
 of whom he was thinking. ' 
 
 How late he was this afternoon. He must have been a lon^ 
 round. She had news for him of great interest. The lodge 
 keeper from the Hall had just looked in to tell the rector thai i 
 the squire and his widowed sister were expected home in foui , 
 days. 
 
 But', interesting as the news was, Catherine's looks as sht- 
 pondered it were certainly not looks of pleased expectation, 
 Neither of them, indeed, had much cause to rejoice in th( 
 squire's advent. Since their arrival in the parish the splendic 
 Jacobean Hall had been untenanted. The squire, who wai 
 abroad with his sister at the time of their coming, had senli 
 a civil note to the new rector on his settlement in the par- 
 ish, naming some common Oxford acquaintance, and desiring 
 him to make what use of the famous Murewell Library hi 
 pleased. '*I hear of you as a friend to letters," he wrote 
 *'do my books a service by using them." The words were I 
 graceful enough. Robert had answered them warmly. H( 
 
ROBBBT ELSMEBK. 
 
 186 
 
 liad also avaUed himself largely of the permission they had 
 3onveyed. We shall see presently that the squire, though ab- 
 sent, had already made a deep impression on the young man's 
 imagination. 
 
 But unfortunately he came across the squire in two capacities. 
 Kr. Wendover was not only th^ owner of Murewell, he was also 
 bhe owner of the whole land o^ the parish, where, however, by a 
 3urious accident of inheritance, dating some generations back, 
 ind implying some very remotf' connection between the Wend- 
 over and Elsxnere families, he was not the patron of the living, 
 D^pw the more Elsmere studied him under this aspect, the 
 ieeper 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 
 bhe parish, had formed the very poorest opinion. Eobert, enter- 
 ing upon his duties with the ardor of the modern reformer, 
 armed not only with chanty 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 land-owner 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 admir- 
 ably. 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 
 I for any human being on his estate in any other capacity than 
 las a rent-payer or wage-receiver. What ! Live for thirty 
 I years in that great house, and never care whether your ten- 
 ants and laborers lived like pigs or like men, whether the 
 I old people died of damp, or the children of diphtheria, which 
 iyou might have prevented I Robert's brow grew dark over 
 it. 
 
 The click of an opening gate. Catherine shook off her dream- 
 I iness 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 kindhng 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. 
 
186 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 She answered briefly, butVith 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 awhile, 
 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, 4;o 
 let the old and bad cottages fall to pieces. He sneers at 
 one for supposing any land-owner has money for ' philan- 
 thropy' just now. If the people don't 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 tyran 
 nize over the estate as he does, I cannot conceive. Oh, Cath 
 erine, 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." 
 
 Eobert started. "Are these our lavSt days of peace?" htr 
 said, wistfully—" the last days of our honey-moon, Catherine?" 
 
 She smiled at him with a Httle quiver of passionate feeling 
 under the smile. 
 
 " Can anything touch that?" 3he 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, ^^th a shiver, 
 almost petulantly. " There will be dark hours enough. It 
 so good to be happy." 
 
 She leaned her cheek fondly against his shoulder. To her 
 Ufe always meant self-restraint, self -repression, self-deaden^ 
 ing, if need be. The Puritan distrust of personal joy as some^ 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 187 
 
 thing dangerous and ensnaring was deep ingrained in her. It 
 had no natural hold on him. 
 
 They stood a moment hand in hand frontmg the corn-field 
 and the sun-filled west, while the afternoon breeze blew back 
 the man's curly reddish hair, long since restored to all its nat^ 
 ural abundance. 
 
 Presently Eobert broke into a broad smile. 
 What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Eose 
 with on the way, Catherine? I wouldn't miss her remarks to- 
 night on the escort we provided her for a good deal." 
 
 Catherine said nothing, but her delicate eyebrows went up a 
 little. Robert stooped and Hghtly kissed her. 
 
 You never performed a greater act of virtue even m your 
 hfe, Mrs. Elsmere, than when you wrote Langham that nice 
 letter of invitation." 
 
 And then the young rector sighed, as many a boyish mem- 
 ory came crow^din^ upon him. 
 
 A sound of wheels ! Robert's 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 Catherine's kiss, and the two 
 sisters walked up to the door together, whHe Robert and Lang- 
 ham loitered after them talking. 
 
 ' **0h, Catherine 1" Said Rose, under her breath, as they got 
 into the drawing-room, with a little theatrical gesture, **why 
 on earth did you inflict that man and me on each other for two 
 mortal hours?'' ... 
 Sh-shl" said Catherine's lips, while her face gleamed with 
 
 laughter. 
 
 Rose sunk 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. Langhp-m would never have found me," said Rose, 
 dryly; '^but I pounced on him at last- just, I believe, as he 
 was beginning 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 apologeticaUy ; 
 "it was my eyes, not my will, that were at fault." 
 
 Rose's iips curled little. ''And Robert," she cried, bend- 
 ing forward as though something had just occurred to her, 
 
188 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 \ 
 
 do tell me— I vowed I would ask— Mr. Langham a Liberal 
 or a Conservative? He doesn't 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 toward 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. 
 
 ''Ohj^ dear, no!" said Rose, nonchalantly. ''Only I have 
 just come from a house where everybody either loathes Mr. 
 Gladstone or would die for him to-morrow. There was a girl 
 of seven and a boy of nine who were always discussing ' Co- 
 ercion' in the corners of the school-room. So, of course, I 
 have grown political, too, and began to catechise Mr. Lang- 
 ham at once, and when he said ' he didn't 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 
 brother-in-law, "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 aU those instances in their Oxford 
 past, when he had taken an humble share in one of the hercu- 
 lean efforts on the part of Langham's 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 com. No bread because the 
 machine can't work !" 
 
 "Defend me from my friends!" cried Langham, roused. 
 '* Elsmere, wh@n 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 enter- 
 tain 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE* 
 
 had young women put on all these airs? In his young days 
 they knew their place. 
 
 Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister. The child was 
 more beautiful than ever, but in other outer respects the Eose 
 of Long Whindale had undergone much transformation. The 
 puffed sleeves, the aesthetic skirts, the naiVe adornment of bead 
 and shell, the formless hat, which it pleased her to imagine 
 ''after Gainsborough," had all disappeared. She was clad in 
 some soft, fawn-colored garment, cut very much in the fashion ; 
 her hair was closely rolled and twisted about her lightly hah 
 anced head; everything about her was neat and fresh and 
 tight fitting. 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 rest- 
 lessness, the self -consciousness of Long Whindale we7'e still 
 there; but they spoke to the spectator in different ways. 
 
 But in her anxious study of her sister, Catherine did not for- 
 get 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 ^.aid, turning to 
 her, and feeling through all his critical seme, fae difference be- 
 tween the gentle, m^atronly dignity of the <^ne sister and the 
 young self assertion of the other. 
 
 "Ah," said Robert,"! 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 re- 
 lation of Bishop Fisher's ; then largely rebuilt under James I. 
 Elizabeth stayed there twice. There is a trace of a visit of Sid- 
 ney's. 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 beautl* 
 ful as a dream, to begin with." 
 
 " And the owner of all this is the author of ' The Idcds of the 
 Market-place?'" 
 
 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 dinccT at 
 
190 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the vice chancellor's, now I remember. A bizarre and formid- 
 able person— very difficult to talk to," he added, reflectively. 
 
 Then as he looked up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose 
 Leyburn's hps and understood it in a moment. Incontinently 
 he forgot the squire and fell to asking himself what had pos- 
 sessed 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 mor- 
 bid idiot with as much sang-froid as usual. 
 
 Robert interrupted his rQflections by some Oxford question, 
 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 Retsch's Song of the 
 Bell," which had been the companions of their own childhood, 
 on the walls— and something stirred in the girl's 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 sister's shoulders. 
 
 ^'Everything but worthiness!" said Catherine, softly, a mist 
 rising in her calm gray eyes. ' ' And you, Roschen, " she added, 
 wistfully, ''have you been getting a httle more what you 
 want?" 
 
 "What's the good of asking?" said the girl, with a little 
 shrug of impatience. " As it creatures hke me ever got what 
 they want ! London has been good fun, certainly— if one could 
 get enough of it. Catherine, how long is that marvelous per- 
 son going to stay?" and she pointed in the direction of Lang- 
 ham's room. 
 
 ''A week," said Catherine, smiling at the girl's disdainful 
 tone. "I was afraid you didn't 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 wasn't even quite certain it was a fine day ! I 
 wonder if you set fire to him whether he w^ould be sure it hurt ! 
 A week, you say? Heigh ho! what an age!" 
 
 *' Be kind to him," said Catherine, discreetly veiling her own 
 
191 
 
 jfeeiings, and caressing the curly golden head as they moved 
 toward the door. " He's a poor lone don, and he was m good 
 
 toEobei^i!" 
 
 Exctrllent reason for you, Mrs. Elsmere," said Bose, pout- 
 ing; ^'but-" 
 
 Her forther remarks were cut short by the ^und of the 
 front-doof bell. 
 
 Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Newcome!" cried Cp.therine, start- 
 ing. Come down soon, Eose, and help as, though." 
 
 ^' Who is he ?" inquired Eose, sharply. 
 A High Church clergyman near here, whom Eobert asked 
 to tea this afternoon," said Catherine, ef>caping. 
 
 Eose took her hat off very leisurely. The prospect down- 
 stairs did not seem to justify dispatch. 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 play- 
 ing Brahms with a long-haired pupil of Eubinstein's, who had 
 dropped on one knee and kissed her hand at the end of it, etc. 
 During the last six weeks the color of this threadbare world" 
 had been freshening before her in marvelous fashion. And 
 now, as she stood looking out, the quiet fields opposite, the 
 BJght of a cow pushing its head through the hedge, the infinite 
 -simset sky, the quiet of the house, filled her with a sudden 
 depression. How dull it all seemed — how wanting in the glow 
 of life! 
 
 CHAPTEE Xn. 
 
 Meanwhile down-stairs a curious little scene was passing, 
 matched by Langham, who, in his usual anti-social way, had 
 retreated into a corner of his own as soon as another visitor 
 appeared. Beside Catherine sat a Eituahst clergyman in cas- 
 <sock 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 
 saint's wasted, unearthly look, the ascetic brow high and nar- 
 row, the veins showing through the skin, and a personality as 
 magnetic as it was strong. 
 
 Catherine listened to the new-comer, and gave him his tea, 
 with an aloofness of manner which was not lost on Langham. 
 
 ?h€» is the Thirty-niixe 4^iiicles in the flesh !" he said to him^ 
 
192 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 self. ''For her there must neither be too much nor too little.^ 
 How ean Elsmere stand it ?" 
 
 Elsmere apparently was not perfectly happy. He sat balanc- 
 ing his long person over the arm of a chair listening to the re- , 
 cital of some of the High Churchman's parish troubles with a 
 Blight half-embarrassed smile. The vicar of Mottringham wasi 
 always in trouble. The narrative he was pouring out toofel 
 shape in Langham's 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 churchi: 
 wardens, and treacherous bishops. Catherine's fine face grew 
 more and more set, nay disdainful. Mr. Newcome was quite 
 bUnd to it. Women never entered into his calculations excepi 
 as sisters or as penitents. At a certain diocesan conference h( 
 had discovered a sympathetic fiber in the young rector o^ 
 Murewell, which had been to the imperious persecuted zealoi 
 like water to the thirsty. He had come to-day, drawn by tht 
 same quality in Elsmere as had originally attracted Langhan 
 to the St. Anselm's under-graduate, and he sat pouring him 
 self out with as much freedom as if all his companions hac 
 been as ready as he was to die for an alb, or to spend hal: 
 their days in piously circumventing a bishop. 
 
 But presently the conversation had sHd, no one knew how 
 from Mottringham and its intrigues to London and its teeminf 
 east. Robert was leading, his eye now on the apostoHc-lookinf 
 prie^vt, now on his wife. Mr. Newcome resisted, but Rober 
 had his way. Then it came out that behind these battles o 
 kites and crows at Mottringham, there lay an heroic period 
 when the pale ascetic had wrestled ten years with Londoi 
 poverty, leaving health and youth and nerves behind him ii 
 the melee, Robert dragged it out at last, that struggle, int( 
 open view, but with difficulty. The Ritualist may glory ii 
 the discomfiture of an Erastian bishop— what Christian dar^ 
 parade ten years of lof e to God and man ? And presently 
 round Elsmere's lip there dawned a little smile of triumph 
 Catherine had shaken off her cold silence, her Puritan aloof 
 ness, was bending forward eagerly — listening. Stroke b;^ 
 stroke, as the words and facts were beguiled from him, all tha 
 was futile and quarrelsome in the sharp-featured priest sunl 
 out of sight; the face glowed with inward hght; the stature o 
 the man seemed to rise ; the angel in him unsheathed its wings 
 S^:sddenly a story of the slijms that Mr. Newcome was telling- 
 
EOBEKT ELSMERE- 
 
 193 
 
 a story of the purest Christian heroism told in the simplest 
 way— came to an end, and Catherine leaned toward him with 
 a long, quivering breath. 
 
 Oh, thank you, thank you I 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 
 m 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 fiber of the man was set vibrat- 
 ing, 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. Newcome's 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 im- 
 pression of combat, of the spiritual athlete, that hung about 
 him. 
 
 "1 don't know," said Robert, brightly, as he leaned against 
 the mantel-piece, 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 dry est voice, but sadly. 
 
 You are one of the people who believe in what you call toler- 
 ance — 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 (|[iickly. Strange glow and intensity 
 Ct the fanatical eyes—strange beauty of the wasted persecuting 
 Bps! 
 
 "Tolerance!" he said, with irritable vehemence— "toler- 
 Ifiince ! Simply another name for betrayal, cowardice, desertion 
 I —nothing else. God, Heaven, Salvation on the one side, the 
 devil and hell on the other— and one miserable life, one wretch- 
 ed sin-stained will, to win the battle with; and in such a state 
 tjf things you "—he dropped his voica. t^r^^n^ out evei'y 
 
194 
 
 BOBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 word with a sccrnfu], 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 baga- 
 telle and om* faith a mere alternative. Island for Christ, and 
 His foes are mine." 
 
 ^' By which I suppose you mean," said Eobert, quietly, '' that 
 you would shut your door on the writer of ' The Idols of the 
 Market-place'?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 And the priest rose, his whole attention concentrated on Rob- 
 ert, as though some deeper-lying 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 Christian's 
 path is clear. We are but soldiers under orders. What busi- 
 ness have we to be truce-making on our own account? The 
 war is not ours, but God's !" 
 
 Eobert's eyes had kindled. He was about to indulge himself 
 in such a quick passage of arms as all such natures as his de- 
 light in, when his look traveled 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 sympa- 
 thy. It was HLe the sudden re-emergence of something re- 
 pressed, the satisfaction of something hungry. Robert move I 
 closer to her, and the color flushed over all his young boyish 
 face. 
 
 " To me," he said, in a low voice, his eyes fixed rather on 
 her than on Nev/come, "a clergyman has enough to do with 
 those foes of Christ he cannot choose but recognize. There is 
 no making truce with vice or cruelty. Why should we com- 
 plicate 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, "tiU you have watched 
 that man's 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 I" 
 
BOBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 195 
 
 There was an awkward pause. Langham, with his eyeglass 
 on, was carefully examining the make of a carved paper-knife 
 lying near him. The strained, preoccupied mind of the High 
 Churchman had never taken the smallest account of his pres- 
 ence, of which Eobert had been keenly, not to say humorously, 
 conscious throughout. 
 
 But after a minute or so the tutor got up, stroUed forward, 
 and addressed Eobert on some Oxford topic of common inter- 
 est. Nevfcome, in a kind of dream which seemed to have sud- 
 denly descended on him, stood near them, his priestly cloak 
 faUing 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 
 savor of Langham's modes of speech, and of his languid indif- 
 ferent personality. 
 
 ''1 must go," he said, abruptly, after a minute or two, 
 breaking in upon the friends' conversation. shaU 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 
 dowa 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 
 Newcome's inmost being, a protest winged by the gathered pas- 
 sion 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 Elsmere's talk, in Els- 
 mere's choice of friends. It was the eternal cry of the mystic 
 of aU ages. 
 
 Scholarship! learning!" Eyes and Hps flashed into a ve- 
 hement scorn. You allow them a value in themselves, apart 
 from the Christian's test. It is the modern canker, the mod- 
 ern curse! Thank God, my years in London burned it out of 
 me! Oh, my friend, what have you and I to do with all these 
 curious triflings, which lead men oftener to rebelhon than to 
 worship? Is this a time for wholesale trust, for a maudlin uni* 
 
196 
 
 ROBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 versal sympathy? Nay, rather a day of suspicion, a day of re- 
 pression !— a time for trampUng 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 then to understand !" 
 
 Robert was silent a moment, and they stood together, New- 
 come's 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 op- 
 portimity. I can not conceive of God as the Arch-plotter 
 against His own creation 1" 
 
 Newcome dropped his hold abruptly. 
 A groundless optimism," he said, with harshness. '*0n 
 the track of the soul from' birth to (4eath there are two sleuth- 
 hounds— Sin and Satan. Mankind forever flies them, is for. 
 ever vanquished and devoured. I see fife always as a thread- 
 like path between abysses along which man creeps "—and his 
 gesture illustrated the words—'' with bleeding hands and feet 
 toward one— narrow— solitary outlet. Woe to him if he turn 
 to the right hand or the left— 'I wiU 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 hfe ! what an indomitable soul ! Husbandhood, father- 
 hood, and all the sacred education that flows from human joy 
 forever seK-f orbidden, and this grim creed for recompense ! 
 
 He caught Newcome's hand with a kind of fihal 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 
 Newcome's face. There is a tyrannical element in all fanati- 
 cism, an element which makes opposition a torment. He 
 turned abruptly away, and Eobert 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 corn-field, his whole being wrought into a pas- 
 sionate protest— a passionate invocation of all things beautiful 
 and strong and free, a clinging to life and nature as to ^ouae- 
 thing wronged and outraged. 
 
ROBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 197 
 
 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 toward him as though 
 to make amends— for she knew not what. Something—some 
 sharp momentary sense of difference, of antagonism, had hurt 
 that inmost fiber 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 half indifferent 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 Eose appeared in pale blue, and it seemed 
 to Langham, fresh from the absolute seclusion of college rooms 
 in vacation, that everything looked flat and stale beside her, be- 
 side the flash of her white arms, the gleam of her hair, the con- 
 fident grace of ev§ry movement. He thought her much too self- 
 conscious and self-satisfied; 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 Eose constantly on 
 the point of rebelling. He caught the wrinkling of Catherine's 
 brow as Eose presently, in emulation apparently of some ac- 
 quaintances 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 Eobert 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 afterward edging over to 
 the comer where she sat with the rectory cat on her knee— an 
 inferior animal, but the best substitute for Chattie availabla 
 
198 
 
 BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 So it was, however; and once in her neighborhood he made 
 another serious effort to get her to talk to him. The Elsmeres 
 had never seen him so conversational. He dropped his para- 
 doxical melancholy; he roared as gently as any suckmg dove; 
 and Kobert, catching from the pessimist of St. Anselm's, as the 
 evening went on, some hesitating commonplaces worthy of a 
 bashful undergraduate on the subject of the boats and Com- 
 memoration, had to beat a hasty retreat, so greatly did the 
 situation tickle his sense of humor. 
 
 But the tutor made his vai'ious ventures under a discourag- 
 ing sense of failure. What a capricious ambiguous creature it 
 was, how fearless, how disagreeably alive to all his own dam- 
 aging pecuhari ties ! 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 through- 
 out 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 Httle party separated for the night Langham 
 had given it up, and had betaken himself to Catherine, re- 
 minding himself with some sharpness that he had come down 
 %G study his friend's life, rather than the humors of a provoking 
 girl. How still the summer night was round the isolated rec- 
 i ory ; how fresh and spotless were all the appointments of the 
 house; what a Quaker neatness and refinement everywhere! 
 5e drank in the scent of air and flowers with which the rooms 
 ✓-ere filled ; for the first time his fastidious sense was pleasantly 
 conscious of Catherine's grave beauty; and even the mystic 
 c^eremonies of family prayer had a certain charm for him, pagan 
 he was. How much dignity and persuasiveness it has still, 
 >ie thought to himself, this commonplace country life of om'S, 
 its best sides ! 
 
 Half past ten arrived. Eose just let him touch her hand; 
 Catherine gave him a quiet good-night, 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, aod smoked 
 their fill. The study was an astonishing medley Books, nat- 
 ural history snecimens, a half written sermon, fishing-rods. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 199 
 
 cricket-bats, a huge medicine cupboard— all the main elements 
 of Elsmere's new existence were represented there. In the 
 drawing-room with his wife and his sister-in-law he h|.d befen 
 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 
 skepticism. 
 
 Eobert for awhile, 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 
 counselor as Langham. Langham, indeed, was but faintly 
 interested in the squire's crimes as a landlord, but there was a 
 certain interest to be got out of the struggle in Elsmere's 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 ordi- 
 nary 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. Wendover's 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 Eobert, with energy. ^^He is not un- 
 popular exactly with the poor down here. When they want 
 to belabor anybody they lay on at the agent, Henslowe. On 
 the whole, I have come to the conclusion the poor Uke a mys- 
 tery. They never see him ; when he is here the park is shut 
 up; the common report is that he walks at night; and he hves 
 alone in that enormous house with his books. The country 
 folk have all quarreled with him, or nearly. It pleases him to 
 get a few of th6 humbler people about, clergy, professional 
 men, and so on, to dine with him sometimes. And he often 
 fiUs 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, **sbe is 
 as little Uke other people as himself. A queer elfish little creat- 
 
200 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ore, 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 preach- 
 ers, I beheve, 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 big. 
 wigs, as though she were the purest parvenu. The squire of 
 course makes mock of her, and she has no influence with him. 
 Hov/ever, 4here is something naive in the stories they tell of 
 her! I feel as if I might get on with he7\ 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 con- 
 versation 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 sof cried Robert, brightening at once. 
 Last winter I causticked all the diphtheretic 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, it's a pleasure I may promise my- 
 seK most years. But it shan't 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 arm-chair. 
 
 I will make myself a public nuisance, but the people shall 
 have their drains !" 
 
 *'It seems to me," said Langhorn, musing ''that in my 
 youth people talked about Buskin; now they talk about 
 drains." 
 
 ''And quite right too. Dirt and drains, Catherine says I 
 have gone mad upon them. It's all very well, but they are the 
 foundations of a sound religion." 
 
 "Dirt, drains, and Darwin," said Langham, meditatively, 
 taking up Darwin's "Earthworms," which lay on the study- 
 table beside him, side by side with a volume of Grant Allen's 
 " sketches." " I didn't know you cared for this sort of thing!" 
 
^01 
 
 Robert did not answer for a moment, and a faint flush stole 
 into his face. 
 
 " Imagine, Langham !" he said, presently, 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 one's self to understand 
 the whole hypothesis and the grounds for it, is a very different 
 matter. It is a revelation." 
 
 *'Yes," saidLangham; 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 shrunk 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 battle-field is fall 
 ing into new lines. But the old truth remains the same. 
 Where and when and how you will, but somewhen and some- 
 how, 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 men's logical sense is easily benumbed where their 
 hearts are concerned. 
 
 ''Not that every one need be troubled with the new facts," 
 resumed Robert, after awhile, 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 clear- 
 ness and courage of mind." 
 
 His voice altered as he mentioned his wife— grew extraordi- 
 narily 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 hdlds the old ideas as she 
 was taught them. It is all beautiful to her. what may seeor 
 
202 
 
 KOBEET ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 shoe- 
 strings." 
 
 The young husband's face seemed to gleam in the dim Ught 
 which fell upon it. Langham involuntarily put up his hand in 
 silence and touched his sleeve. Eobert gave him a quiet 
 friendly 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, flower-scented 
 house. Catherine, who was an admirable housewife, had put out 
 her best guest-sheets for his benefit, and the tutor, accustomed 
 for long years to the second-best of college service, looked at 
 their shining surfaces and frilled edges, at the freshly matted 
 floor, at the flowers on the dressing-table, at the spotlessness 
 of everything in the room, with a distinct sense that matri- 
 mony 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. 
 Robert's parsonage, however, and Robert's wife had no attrac- 
 tions 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 
 Ley bum might be, she was not commonplace. The demon of 
 convention had no large part ill her ! Langham lay awake for 
 a time analyzing his impressions of her with some gusto, and 
 meditating, with a whimsical candor which seldom failed 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 pre-eminently 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 bjirden he had more than half ex- 
 
BOBERT EISMERE. 
 
 203 
 
 pected them to be. He lay and thought of the unbroken soli- 
 tude of his college rooms, of Senancour's 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 
 futne 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 law courts. 
 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 girl's 
 voice drew him to the window, which was open. In the garden 
 stood Eose, on the edge of the sunk fence dividing the rectory 
 domain from the corn-field. She was stooping forward playing 
 with Eobert's 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 sun- 
 shine caught the curls of auburn hair, the pink cheek, the 
 white moving hand, the lace ruflies at her throat and wrist. 
 The lithe, glittering figure stood thrown out against the heavy 
 woods behind, the gold of the corn-field, the blues of the dis- 
 tance. All the gayety and color which is as truly representa- 
 tive 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 Eose's 
 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 Eose, 
 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 theii 
 friends if they could not keep up even the ordinary decent pre 
 tenses of society? 
 
204 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Eobert had to go off to some clerical business afterward, and^ 
 Langham wandered out into the garden by himself. As ka* 
 thought of his Greek texts and his untenanted Oxford rooms,: 
 he had the same sort of craving that an opium-eater has cut off ' 
 from his drugs. How was he to get through? 
 
 Presently he walked back into the study, secured an armfull 
 of volumes, and carried them out. True to himself in the- 
 smallest things, he could never in his itf e be content with the^ 
 companionship of one book. To cut off the possibihty 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 iti 
 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 yellow-covered , 
 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 theater 
 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 shrugged 1 
 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 wa« 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 i 
 stretched its grass paths and tangled flower-masses down the 
 further slope of the hill. The transition was sharp from 
 Dumas's heated atmosphere of passion and crime to the quiet 
 Enghsh rectory, its rural surroundings, and the figures of the 
 two English women advancing toward 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. Eipe- 
 ness, 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, stiT 
 
ROBEBT BLSMEEB. 
 
 205 
 
 ''imgbesidehim and retaining with slight imperceptible force 
 " Rose's 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 " Man- 
 lanne" 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. ux 
 
 "You are reading 'Marianne,' " she exclaimed, the shght- 
 lest possible touch of wonder in her tone. 
 
 "Yes, it is 'Marianne,'" said Langham, surprised in his 
 turn. He had very old-fashioned notions about the limits of a 
 girl's acquaintance with the world, knowing nothing, therefore, 
 las may be supposed, about the modern young woman, and he 
 '< was a trifle scandalized by Eose's 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 Desforets comes again, as everyone expects." 
 
 ' ' Who wrote it ?" asked Catherine, innocently. The theater 
 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 Rose's dramatic in- 
 stincts with success. . • i 
 
 " Dumas >iZs," said Langham, dryly. 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 
 teadagood many others. Mrs. Pierson lent me a volume. 
 And when I was introduced to Madame Desforets last week, 
 ehe agreed with me that ' Marianne ' is nearly the best of aU. 
 
 All this of course, with the delicate nose well in air. 
 
 "You were introduced to Madame Desforets?" cried Lang- 
 ham, surprised this time quite out of discretion. Catherme 
 looked at him with anxiety. The reputation of the black-eyed 
 Uttle French actress, who had been for a year or two the idol ot 
 the theatrical pubhc of Paris and London, had reached even to 
 her, and the tone of Langham's exclamation struck her pam- 
 
 was," said Robe, proudly. "Other people may think it 
 a disgrace, /thought it an honor!" 
 I^nghftm coHld not help smilmg, the girl's naivete was so 
 
206 EOBEET ELSMESE. m 
 
 evident. It was clear that, if she had read Marianne," she 1 
 had never undei'stood it. 5 
 
 ''Rose, you don't 'know!" exclaimed Catherine, turning to | 
 her sister with a sudden trouble in her eyes. don't think - 
 Mrs. Pierson ought to have done that without consulting mam- 
 ma especially. " 
 
 ''Why not?" cried Rose, vehemently. Her face was buru' 
 ing and her heart was full of something like hatred of Lang^ > 
 ham, but she tried hard to be calm. 
 
 " I think," she said, with a desperate attempt at crursliing dig- 
 nity, "that the way in which all sorts of stories are beheved 
 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 Jcnoiv, 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 isn't her work, or a cold, or anything else that's 
 made her ill — it's calumny I' 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 smaU full mouth pursed indignantly, the gi^eenish-gray 
 eyes flashing and brilliant. 
 
 As for Langham, the cynic within him was on the point of 
 uncontrollable laughter. Mme. Desforets complaining of cal- 
 umny to this little Westmoreland maiden ! But his eyes invol- 
 untarily met Catherine's, and the expression of both fused into 
 a common wonderment — amused on his side, anxious on hers. 
 " What a chQd, what an infant it is!" they seemed to confide 
 to one another. Catherine laid her hand softly on Rose's, 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 nm up from the school 
 to deliver a message. She hurried across the drive to him and 
 afterward into the house, while he disappeared. 
 
 Rose got up from her perch on the arm-chair and would 
 have followed, but a moment of obstinacy or quixotic wrath, ^ 
 or both, detained her. 
 
 "At any rate, Mr. Langham," she said, drawing herself up, 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 207 
 
 and speaking with the most lofty accent, if you don't know 
 anything personally about Madame Desf orets, 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 shm, 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 
 Mme. Desf orets and her causes celehres which were coursing 
 through the brain behind them, and with a momentary im- 
 pression 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 women's so- 
 ciety 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 read- 
 ing, he suddenly heard the sounds of music. 
 
 Who was playing, and in that way ? He got up and strolled 
 past the drawing-room window to find out. 
 
 Rose had got hold of an accompanist, the timid dowdy daugh- 
 ter of a local soHcitor, with some capacity' for reading, and was 
 now, in her lavish, impetuous fashion, rushing through a quan- 
 tity of new music, the accumulations of her visit to London. 
 She stood up beside the piano, her hair gleaming in the shadow 
 of the drawing-room, 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. 
 
208 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 What astonishing playing! Why had no one warned him oi 
 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 
 ^spoiled and solitary life had come to him so far through music, 
 ^and through such music as this ! For she was playing Wagner, 
 Brahms, and Eubinstein, interpreting all those passionate voices 
 ^f the subtlest moderns, through which the heart of our own 
 day has expressed itself even more freely and exactly than 
 ijhrough the voice of hterature. Hans Sachs's immortal song, 
 echoes from the love duets in Tristan and Isolde,'' fragments 
 from a wild and alien dance-music, they rippled over him in a 
 warm intoxicating stream of sound, stirring association after 
 association, and rousing from sleep a hundred by-gone moods 
 of f eehng. 
 
 What magic and mastery in the girl's 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 man's 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 I 
 
CHAPTER Xin, 
 
 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 investi- 
 gation. 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, Eob- 
 ert's old tutor was a good deal more interested by Robert's ser- 
 mon than he had expected to be. It was on the character of 
 David, and there was a note in it, a note of historical imagina- 
 tion, a power of sketching in a background of circumstance, 
 and of biting into the mind of the Ustener, as it were, by a de- 
 tail 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 de- 
 file out of the church: This sort of thing wiU go down, will 
 make a mark: Elsmere is at the beginning of a career !" 
 
 In the afternoon Robert, who was feeling deeply guilty toward 
 his wife, in that he had been forced to leave so much of the en- 
 tertainment of Langham to her, asked his old friend to come 
 for him to the school at four o'clock and take him for a walk 
 between two engagements. Langham was punctual, and Rob- 
 ert 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 out-door capacities which were prob- 
 ably always dormant in his Elsmere blood, the blood of gene- 
 rations 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 Ox- 
 ford to get him into his college eleven, had stood him in speci- 
 ally good stead with the Mure well villagers. That his play was 
 not elegant they were not likely to find out; his bowling they 
 
210 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 set small store by ; but his batting was of a fine, slashing, supe- 
 rior sort which soon carried the Murewell Club to a much higher 
 position among the clubs of the neighborhood 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 Workmen's Institute, which stood at the edge 
 of it. He explained that the institute had been the last achieve- 
 ment of the agent before Henslowe, a man who had done his 
 duty to the estate according to his Hghts, 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' 
 aub." 
 
 And he opened the institute door. Langham followed in 
 the temper of one getting up a subject for examination. 
 
 Poor Eobert ! His labor 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 Lang- 
 ham through it all, not, indeed, sympathetic creature that he 
 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 
 gi^anted that they were extremely creditable. Into the old- 
 fashioned window-sills glazed compartments had been fitted, 
 and these were now fairly filled with specimens, with eggs, but- 
 terflies, moths, beetles, fossils, and whatnot. A' case of stuffed 
 tropical bii^ds presented by Robert stood in the center of the 
 room ; another containing the birds of the district was close by. 
 On a table further 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 Robert's neatest hand. On the same table 
 stood jars full of strange creatures— tadpoles and water larvae 
 of all kinds, over which Robert hung now absorbed, poking 
 among them with a straw, while Langham, to whom only the 
 
ROBERT ELSMESE. 
 
 211 
 
 generalizations 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 
 Uke a tremor of emo^on passing over his gnarled counte- 
 nance. 
 
 The rector's eyes glistened. 
 Halloo ! I say, Irwin, where in the name of fortune did 
 you get that ? You lucky fellow ! Come in, and let's 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 Eobert, he could have taken pas- 
 sionate interest in rare moths or common plowboys ; but Na- 
 ture 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 I" said Eobert, turning his friend into a country 
 road leading out of the village, ''he's found ore of the rarest 
 moths of the district. Such a hero he'll be in the oiub to-mor- 
 row night. It's extraordinary what a rational interest has 
 done for that fellow I I nearly fought him in public last win- 
 ter." 
 
 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, dryly. "I 
 wouldn't have given much for your chances against those 
 shoulders." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. I should have had a little science on my 
 side, which counts for a great deal. We turned him out of th^ 
 club for brutality toward the old grandmother he lives with— 
 turned him out in public. Such a scene ! I shall never forget 
 the boy's face. It was Hke 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 1 She left her cottage that 
 
212 
 
 ROBERT EtSMElllS. 
 
 night, thinking he would murder her, and went to a friend. At 
 the end of a week he came into the friend's house, where shoei 
 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 wouldn't do her no mischief.' Everybody dissuaded her 
 but the plucky old thing went. A ^ek or two afterward 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 T she said, ' it 
 do remind me, when he sits glowering at nights, of those folks 
 in the Bible, when the devils inside 'em kep' a-tearing 'em. But 
 he's like a new-born 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 Eobert, 
 his eyes kindling, his whole frame dilating. 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 lik^ 
 one clothed and in his right mind. If there is any trouble in 
 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 fel* 
 low came trudging up every night after his work to ask foi- 
 me— well, never mind ! but it gives one a good glow at one's 
 heart to ^ink about it." 
 
 The speaker threw back his head impulsively, as though de- 
 fying his own feeling. Langham looked at him curiously. The \ 
 pastoral temper was a novelty to him, and the strong develop- 
 ment 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 low- wooded hill above the 
 village, and the church clock rung out, "I must hurry, or I 
 shall be late for my story-telling." 
 
 Story-telling!" said Langham, with a half -exasperated 
 shrug. What next? You clergy are too inventive by half I" 
 Eobert laughed a trifle bitterly. 
 
 **I can't congratulate you on your epithets," he said, thrust- 
 ing his hands far into his pockets. " Good heavens, if we were' 
 — ^if we were inventive as a body, the Church wouldn't be where 
 she is in the rural districts! My story-telhng is the simplest « 
 thing in the world. I began it in the winter with the object of 
 somehow or other gettmg at the imagination of these rustics. 
 
EGBERT JELSMEEB. 
 
 213 
 
 Force; them for only half an hour to live some one else's life— 
 t is the one thing worth doing with them. That's what I have 
 jeen aiming at. I told my stories all the winter— Shakespeare, 
 Don Quixote, Dumas— Heaven knows what! And on the 
 wrhole it answers best. But now we are reading * The Talis- 
 nan.' Come and inspect us, unless you're a purist about your 
 3cott ! None other of the Immortals have such tbngueurs as 
 lie, and we cut him freely." 
 
 *'By all means," said Langham; ''lead on." And he fol- 
 lowed his companion without repugnance. After all there was 
 something contagious in so much youth, and hopefulness. 
 
 The story-telling was held in the institute. 
 
 A group of men and boys were hanging round the door when 
 jbhey 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 half filled 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 
 ithose arts of look and gesture which make a spoken story tell- 
 ing and dramatic, and Langham marveled with what energy, 
 after his hard day's work and with another service before him, 
 ihe was able to throw himself into such a hors d'oeuvre as this. 
 He was reading to-night one of the most perfect scenes that even 
 the Wizard of the North has ever conjured : the scene in the tent 
 of Richard Lion-Heart, when the disguised slave saves the hfe 
 lof the king, and Richard first suspects his identity. As he read 
 Ion, his arms resting on the high desk in front of him, and his 
 eyes, full of infectious enjoyment, traveling from the book to 
 his audience, surrounded by human bemgs 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 
 I had found his metier, found his niche in the world, and the best 
 ! means of filling it. If to attain to an ''adequate and masterly 
 i-expression of one's self" be the aim of life, Robert was fast 
 achieving it. This parish of twelve hundred souls gave him now 
 I all the scope he asked. It was evident that he felt his work to 
 I 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. 
 
214 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 on the civilizing of a few hundred of England's rural poor. The 
 future might bring him worldly success — Langham thought it 
 must and would. Clergymen of Robert's 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 hghtly, 
 he was happy— deeply abundantly happy, at peace with God, 
 at one with man. 
 
 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 realization, warm, stimulat- 
 ing, provocative, of another man's happiness. 
 
 Outside the shadows lengthened across the green ; groups of 
 distant children or animals passed in and out of the golden 
 light-spaces; the patches of heather left here and there glowed 
 as the sunset touched them. Every now and then his eye 
 traveled vaguely past a cottage garden, gay with the pinks and 
 carmines of the phloxes, into the cool browns and bluish -grays 
 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 expans- 
 iveness 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 friend's con- 
 fidence only made Langham as melancholy as Job. 
 
 What was it based on? In the first place, on Ofiristianity— 
 ''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 
 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 un- 
 pleasant facts !" 
 
 , In the evening Langham, with the usual reaction of his after- 
 noon self against his morning self, felt that wild horses should 
 not take him to church again, and, with a longing for some- 
 thing purely mundane, he stayed at home with a volume of 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 215 
 
 Montaigne, while apparently all the rest of the household went 
 to evening service. 
 
 After a warm day the evening had turned cold and stormy; 
 fche 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 Eobert's 
 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 him- 
 self down into Robert's chair with a sigh of Sybaritic satisfac- 
 tion. Good! Now for something that takes the world less 
 naively," 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 up 
 and listening. "Anybody who wants the spoons needn't 
 trouble about me. I don't leave this fire." 
 
 And he plunged back again into his book. At last there was 
 a sound of the swing-door which separated Robert's passage 
 from the front hall opening and shutting. Steps came quickly 
 toward the study, the handle was turned, and there on the 
 threshold stood Rose. 
 
 He turned quickly round in his chair with a look of astonish- 
 ment. She also started as she saw him. 
 
 "I did not know any one was in," she said, awkwardly, the 
 color spreading over her face. "I came to look for a book.'' 
 
 She made a delicious picture as she stood framed in the dark- 
 ness of the door-way, her long dress caught up round her in one 
 hand, the other resting on the handle. A gust of some deli- 
 cate perfume seemed to enter the room with her, and a thrill 
 of pleasure passed through Langham's 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 don't 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. 
 
^16 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 You can't reach those upper shelves/' he said; please le 
 me." 
 
 He was already beside her, and she gave way. 
 
 I want 'Charles Auchester,"' she said, still forbiddingly 
 It ought to be there." 
 
 *'0h, that queer musical novel— I know it quite well. N<: 
 sign of it here," and he ran over the shelves with the practice( 
 eye of one accustomed to deal with books. 
 
 Robert must have lent it," said Rose, with a httle sigh; 
 
 Never mind, please. It doesn't matter," and she was already 
 moving away. 
 
 *'Try some other instead," he said, smiling, his arm stil; 
 upstretched. ''Robert has no lack of choice." His manne. 
 had an animation and ease usually quite foreign to it. Rose 
 stopped, and her hps relaxed a little. 
 
 '^ He is very nearly as bad as the novel-reading bishop, whc 
 was reduced at last to steahng the servant's ' Family Herald 
 out of the kitchen cupboard," she said,' a smile dawning. 
 
 Langham laughed. 
 
 ''Has he such an episcopal appetite for them? That ac 
 counts for the fact that when he and I begin to talk novels ]1 
 am always nowhere." 
 
 "I shouldn't have supposed you ever read them," said Rose, 
 obeying an irresistible impulse, and biting her Hp the momenii 
 afterward. 
 
 "Do you think that we poor people at Oxford are always 
 condemned to works on the 'enclitic '?" he asked, his fine 
 eyes lighted up with gayety, and his head, of which the Greek 
 outlmes were ordinarily so much disguised by his stoop and 
 hesitating look, thrown back against the books behind him. 
 
 Natures Hke Langham 's, in which the nerves are never nor- 
 mal, have their moments of feHcity, balancing their weeks oi 
 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'a 
 had happened to Robert's 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. 
 
ROBERT ELSi/eRE. 217 
 
 Except London, and the great world, and Madame Des- 
 ' forets !" he answered, laughing. Is that so Httlet' 
 i She flashed a quick, defiant look at him, as he mentioned 
 ! Mme. Desforets, hut his look was imperturhahly kind and gay. 
 I She could not help softening toward him. What magic had 
 ^ passed over him? 
 
 ' ' Do you know, " said Langham, moving, ' 'that you are stand- 
 ing in a draught, and that it has turned extremely cold ?" 
 
 For she had left the passage-door wide open behind her, and 
 as the window was partially open the curtains were swaying 
 . I hither and thither, and her muslin dress was being blown in 
 
 coils round her feet. 
 \ * So it has, said Eose, shivering. * * I don't envy the Church 
 I people. You haven't found me a book, Mr. Langham?" 
 i 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, 
 i She glanced at the fire and at him, irresolute. His breath 
 'quickened. She too had passed into another phase. Was it 
 I the natural effect of night, of solitude, of sex? At any rate, 
 she sunk softly into the arm-chair opposite to that in which he 
 j had been sitting. 
 
 I "Find me an exciting one, please." 
 
 Langham shut the door securely, and went back to the book« 
 case, his hand trembling a little as it passed along the books. 
 
 I I 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 
 
 i i 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 
 i again as abruptly as it had risen. Eose turned the pages of her 
 book, sitting a little stiffly in her long chair, and Langham 
 gradually began to find Montaigne impossible to rea^d. He be- 
 came instead more and more ahve to every detail of the situa- 
 ; tion into which he had fallen. At last seeing, or imagining, 
 ! i that the fire wanted attending to, he bent forward and thrust 
 I the poker into it. A burning coal fell on the hearth, and Eose 
 H hastily withdrew her foot from the fender and looked up. 
 
 "I am so sorry !" he interjected. " Coals never do what you 
 i want them to do. Are you very much interested in * Villette?' 
 ! i Deeply," said Eo^, letting the book, however, drop on her 
 ! I lap. She laid back her head with a little sigh, which she did 
 i\ her best to check,^ half-way through. What ailed her to-night? 
 
518 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 She seemed wearied; for the moment there was no fight in her 
 with anybody. Her music, her beauty, her mutinous mocking 
 gayety— these things had all worked on the man beside her; but 
 this new softness, this touch of childish fatigue, was adorable. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte wrote it out of her Brussels experience, 
 didn't 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 don't 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 brilhancy of that look of his, 
 which had suddenly grown so personal, so manly. Instead, 
 
 Villette" slid a little further from her hand, and her pretty 
 head still lay lightly back against the cushion. 
 
 "No, I don't 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 don't 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 aU her work. It is dreadful to 
 have to work after somebody who has a genius for doing just 
 what you do worst." 
 
 The young girl's hands fell across one another with a little im- 
 patient gesture. Langham made a movement of the most de- 
 lightful compassion toward the petulanfc, childish creature. It 
 was as though their relative positions had been in some mys- 
 terious way reversed. During their two days together she had 
 been the superior, and he had felt himself at the mercy of her 
 scornful, sharp-eyed youth. Now, he knew not how or why. Fate 
 seemed to have restored to him something of the man's natural 
 advantage, combined, for once, with the impulse to use it. 
 
 "Your sister, I suppose, has been always happy in charity?" 
 he said. 
 
 " Oh, dear, yes," said Eose, irritably ; " anything that has two 
 legs and is ill, that is all Catherine wants to make her happy." 
 "And you want somethin^K amte diif^-^^^^i^i, something more 
 
EOBEET ELSMERE, 
 
 219 
 
 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. Eose met his look irresolutely, a little 
 tremor of self-conscfBfesness 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 bom for; I can't have pa- 
 tience with old women, but I could slave all day and aU 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 under-self which was the work and the heritage of her 
 father in her, and which, beneath all the wilfulness and defi- 
 ances of the other self, held its own moral debates in its own 
 way, well out of Catherine's sight generally, began to emerge, 
 v/ooed 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 relig- 
 ion. If he had lived, of course I should never have been al- 
 lowed 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 Eose. " I hava told Catherine so 
 a hundred times. People— good people— think quite differently 
 about art now, don't they, Mr. Langham?" 
 
 She spoke with perfect naivete. 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, smil- 
 ing. 
 
 Rose r/iade a little face. 
 
 "I shouldn't," she said, wltii frank brevity. ' But then 
 there's something else. You know where we hve— at the very 
 ends of the earth, seven miles from a station, in the very lone- 
 liest valley of all Westmoreland. What's to be done with a 
 fiddle in such a place? Of course, ever since papa died I've 
 just been plotting and planning to get away. But there's the 
 difiiculty," and she crossed one white finger over another as 
 Bhe laid out her case. " That house where we live has been 
 
220 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 lived in by Leyburns ever since— the flood ! Horrid set they 
 were, I know, because I can't ever make mamma or even 
 Catherine talk about them. But still, when papa retired, he 
 came back and bought the old place from l^ii^ brother. Such a 
 dreadful, dreadful mistake!" cried the child, letting her hands 
 fall over her knee. 
 
 Had he been so happy there?" 
 *'Happy !"— and Eose's lip curled. **His brothers used to 
 kick and cuff him, his father was awfully unkind to him, he 
 never had a day's peace till he went to school, and after he went 
 to school he never came back for years and years and year^ 
 till Catherine was fifteen. What could have made him so fond 
 of it ?" 
 
 And again looking despondently into the fire she pondered 
 that far-off perversity of her father's. 
 
 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 wouldn't, " she said, irritably. ' ' But that 
 isn't 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 wasn't going to Hve 
 long— he wasn't 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 com- 
 forted 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 reUgion, and us, and the poor. So he always took it 
 away on Simday s. Then I hated Sundays, and would never be 
 good on them. One Sunday I cried myself nearly into a fit on 
 the dining-room floor because I mightn't 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 
 
EGBERT BLSMEEiEa 
 
 221 
 
 me not to make him sad before God that he had given me that 
 violin ; so I never screamed again— on Sundays !" 
 
 Her companion's eyes were not quite as clear as before. 
 
 *^Poor little naughty child," he said, bending over to her. 
 think your father must have been a man to be loved." 
 
 She looked at him, very near to weeping, her face all work 
 ing 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 preach- 
 ing to us what he wished. You see what a chain it's been— 
 what a weight ! And as I must struggle — musty because I was 
 I— to get back into the world on the other side of the moun- 
 tains, and do what all the dear wicked people there were doing, 
 why, I have been a criminal all my life ! And that isn't exhil- 
 arating always." 
 
 And she raised her arm and let it fall beside her with the - 
 quick over-tragic emotion of nineteen. 
 
 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: am not 
 quite the mummy you thought me, after all !" And she colored 
 sHghtly. 
 
 "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 sHght 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, marveling in- 
 wardly at his own role 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 learned 
 to take pleasure in your pleasure, and to fit your gift somehow 
 into his scheme of things." 
 
%22 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 "Catherine hasn't moved with the times," said Rose, dole- 
 fully. 
 
 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 Leybum 
 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 can't help 
 having qualms, though one doesn't tell them to one's sist^ers 
 and cousins and aunts. And sometimes"— she turned her chin 
 round on her hand and looked at him with a delicious shy im- 
 pulsiveness— ^'sometimes a stranger sees clearer. Do you 
 think me a monster, as Catherine does?" 
 
 Even as she spoke her own words startled her— the con- 
 fidence, the abandonment of them. But she held to them 
 bravely; only her eyelids quivered. She had absurdly mis- 
 judged 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 
 mantel-piece, looking down upon her gravely, with the air, as 
 it seemed to her, of her friend, her confessor. Her white child- 
 ish brow, the little curls of bright hair upon her temples, her 
 parted hps, the pretty folds of the musHn dress, the httle foot 
 on the fender — every detail of the picture impressed itself once 
 for all. Langham will carry it with him to his grave. 
 
 Tell m@," she said again, smiling divinely, as though to en- 
 courage 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 ap- 
 proaching. Rose sprung up, and, for the first time during all 
 the latter part of their conversation, felt a sharp sense of em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 *'How early you are, Robert!" she exclaimed, as the study 
 door opened, and Robert's wind-blown head and tall form, 
 wrapped in an Inverness cape, appeared on the threshold. *'Is 
 Catherine tired?" 
 
 Rather,'' said Robert, the slightest gleam of surprise be- 
 
KOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 228 
 
 fcraying itself on his face. " She has gone to bed, and told me 
 fco ask you to come and say good -night to her." 
 
 ''You got my message about not coming from old Martha?" 
 asked Rose. ''I met her on the comrnon." 
 
 ''Yes, she gave it us at the church door." He went out 
 again into the passage to hang up his great-coat. She fol- 
 lowed, 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 good-night a little abruptly. 
 
 "How tempting that fire looks !" said Robert, re-entering the 
 study. ' ' Were you very cold, Langham, before you lighted it ?" 
 
 "Very," said Langham, smiling, his arm behind his head, 
 Ms eyes fixed on the blaze; "but I have been delightfully 
 warm and happy since. . 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Catherine stopped beside the drawing-room window with 
 a start, caught by something she saw outside. 
 
 It was nothing, however, but the figures of Rose and Lang- 
 ham strolling round the garden. A by-stander would have 
 been puzzled by the sudden knitting of Catherine's brows 
 over it. • 
 
 Rose held a red parasol, which gleamed against the trees ; Dan- 
 die leaped 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 don't know 
 when I have seen Langham so brilliant or so alive as in our 
 smoking talk just now !" 
 
 Catherine had laughed him to scorn; but, all the same, she 
 had been a little longer going to sleep than usual. She felt her- 
 self almost as much as ever the guardian of her sisters, and the 
 old sensitive nerve was set quivering. And now there could be 
 ^o question about it— Rose had changed her ground toward Mr. 
 • angham altogether. Her manner at breakfast was evidence 
 mough of it. 
 
 <^a therine's self-torturing mind leaped on for an instant to all 
 
224 
 
 ROBERT ELSMtRii. 
 
 sorts of horrors. That metu I— and she and Robert responsible 
 to her mother and her dead father I Never I 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 new-born friendship on Rose's part., 
 And in five more days, the hmit of Langham's stay, nothing, 
 very dreadful could happen, argued the reserved Catherine. 
 
 But she was uneasy, and after a bit, as that tete-a-tete in the 
 garden still went on, she could not, for the hfe of her, help in- 
 terfering. She strolled out to meet them with some woolen stuff 
 hanging over her ann, 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 moment's 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 drawing-room table, Rose came in. She held an 
 armful of blue serge, and, going up to a table in the window, 
 she too'k fi'om it a little workrcase, 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 lunch- 
 eon time," she answered, demurely, with a countenance of 
 most Dorcas-like 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 don't know that 
 I too can accompany?" 
 
 You play I" she exclaimed, incredulous. 
 
 " Try me." 
 
 The light of his fine black eyes seemed to encompass her. She 
 'moved backward a httle, shaking her head. ''Not this morn- 
 ing," she said. ''Oh, dear, no, not this morning ! I am afraid 
 you don't know anything about tacking or fixing, or the abom- 
 inable 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 V!> 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 225 
 
 And not this afternoon, for Robert and I go fishing. But 
 this evening?" he said, detaining her. 
 
 She nodded Kghtly, 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 friend's 
 shoulder. Come and see the Hall, old fellow. It will be our 
 last chance, for the squire and his sister come back this after- 
 noon. I must parochialize a bit afterward, but you sha'n't be 
 much victimized." 
 
 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 corn-field, 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 debris, and 
 here and there noiseless prophetic showers of leaves were drop- 
 ping on the lawn. 
 
 Elsmere took his guest along a bit of common, where great 
 black junipers stood up hke magnates in council above the mot- 
 iey undergrowth of fern and heather, and then they turned into 
 the park. A great stretch of dimpled land it was, falling softly 
 toward the south and west, bounded 15^ 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 downward from the 
 moment of entering it, till at last, when they reached a wooden 
 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 house-archi- 
 tecture. It was fretted and jeweled with Renaissance terra- 
 cotta 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 bad kept it company for well-nigh t^vo cen 
 
226 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 turies 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 house-maid who hap- 
 pened 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 Langham's 
 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 deUcate fingers, the 
 love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits. Overhead, the 
 stucco-work 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 Bobert explained, 
 since the Jacobean days when it was first executed, hung 
 Renaissance tapestries which would have made the heart's de- 
 light of any romantic child, so rich they were in groves of 
 marvelous trees hung with red and golden fruits, in far-reach- 
 ing palaces and rock-buiifc citadels, in flying shepherdesses and 
 pursuing shepherds. Between the tapestries, again, there 
 were breadths of carved panehng, crowded with all things 
 round and sweet, with fruits and flowers and strange musical 
 instruments, with flying cherubs, and fair faces in laurel- 
 wreathed medalHons; while in the middle of the wall a great 
 oriel window broke the dim venerable surfaces of wood and 
 tapestry with stretches of jeweled light. Tables crowded with 
 antiques, with Tanagra figures or Greek vases, with Floren- 
 tine bronzes or specimens of the wilful, vivacious wood-carv- 
 ing of seventeenth-century Spain, stood scattered on the Per- 
 sian 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 hard-worn subtleties of man's by- 
 gone handiwork, with which the splendid room was incrusted 
 from top to bottom, were masked and reUeved here and there 
 by the careless easy splendor 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 hbrary, 
 and the housekeeper only met hipa to make an apology for 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 227 
 
 her working-dress, and to hand over to him the keys of the 
 hbrary book-cases, with the fretful comment that seemed to 
 have in it the ghostly voice of generations of house-maids : 
 
 Oh, Lor', sir, they are a trouble, them books!" 
 
 From the drawing-rooms, full of a more modern and less 
 poetical magnificence, where Langham turned restless and re^ 
 fractory, Elsmere with a smile took his guest silently back 
 into the hall, and opened a carved door behind a curtain. Pass> 
 ing through, they found themselves in a long passage lighted 
 by small windows on the left-hand side. * 
 
 ''This passage, please notice," said Kobert, *' leads to noth 
 ing but the wing containing the hbrary, or rather libraries, 
 which is the oldest part of the house. I always enter it with a 
 kind of pleasing avv e ! Consider these carpets, which keep out 
 every sound, and look how everything gets older as we gc on." 
 
 For half-way down the passage the ceiling seemed to desoend 
 upon their heads, the flooring became uneven, and wood- work 
 and walls showed that they had passed from the J acobean 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 
 diamond-paned window, filling almost half of the opposite 
 wall, faced the door by which they had come in; the heavy 
 carved mantel-piece was to their right ; an open door- way 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 book-cases, inclosed throughout in a frame 
 of oak carved in light classical relief by what appeared to be a 
 French hand of 4ihe sixteenth century. The checkered bind- 
 ings of the books, in which the creamy tints of vellum pre- 
 dominated, lined the whole surface of the wall with a delicate 
 sobriety of color; over the mantel-piece, 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 be- 
 neath him ; while on the window-side the book-lined ^vall was, 
 as it were, replaced by the wooded face of a hill, clothed in 
 dark lines of trimmed yews, which rose abruptly about a hun- 
 dred yards from tihe house and overshadowed the whole 
 
228 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 library wing. Between the window and the MQ, however, 
 was a small old Enghsh garden, closely hedged round with 
 yew hedges, and blazing now with every flower that an Eng- 
 lish August knows— with sunflowei-s, tiger-Lilies, and dahlias 
 while 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 bro^vns and blues of the Persian car- 
 pet, and the scarlet splendors of the courtier over the mantel- 
 piece. The room was lighted 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 Dona- 
 tello figure of a woman in marble, its subtle, sweet austerity 
 contrasting with the Greek frankness and bhtheness of its 
 companions. '4 
 
 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 splen- 
 dors of the drawing-room, were abundantly satisfied here. 
 
 ''So it was here," he said, lookmg round him, '^that that 
 man wrote ' The Idols of the Market-place?" 
 
 ''I imagine so," said Robert; '^if so, he might well have 
 felt a little more charity toward the human race in writing it. 
 The race can not be said to have treated him badly oh the 
 whole. But now look, Langham, look at these books— the 
 most precious things are here. " 
 
 And 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 title-page ; 
 you wQl find Gabriel Harvey's name on it. Here is the 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. Imag- 
 ine 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 Robert's hands 
 into his own, the scholar's passion hot within him. That glazed 
 case was indeed a store-house of treasures. Ben Jonson's Un- 
 derwoods " with his own corrections ; a presentation copy of 
 Andrew Marvell's " Poems," with autograph notes; manuscript 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 229 
 
 volumes of letters, containing almost every famous name known 
 to English literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
 ries, the hterary 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 Wal- 
 pole ; the first four folios of Shakespeare, all perfect, and most 
 of the quartos— every thing that the heart of the English collect- 
 or could most desire was there. And the charm of it was that 
 only a small proportion of these precious thing represented con- 
 scious and deliberate acquisition. The great majority of them 
 had, as it were, drifted thither one by one, carried thereby the 
 tide of Enghsh letters as to a warm and natural resting-place. 
 
 But Robert grew impatient, and hurried on his guest to other 
 things— to the shelves of French rarities, ranging from Du Bel- 
 lay's " Visions," with his autograph, down to the copy of *'Les 
 Memoires d'Outre-Tombe " presented by Chateaubriand to 
 Mme. Recamier, or to a dainty manuscript valume in the fine 
 writing of Lamartine. 
 
 "These," Robert explained, "were collected, I believe, by 
 the squire's father. He was not in the least literary, so they say, 
 but it had always been a point of honor to carry on the library, 
 and as he had learned 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 1" 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 T hear. Every one about here of course explains this man's 
 eccentricities by the family history. ' But I don't know," said 
 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 siiire his boyhood, and has a dog-like attachment to 
 him, is al ways hinting at mysterious excuses. Whenever I let 
 out to him, as I do sometimes, as to the state of the property , he 
 
230 
 
 ROBERT EL6MERE. 
 
 talks of ' inherited melancholy,' ' rash judgments,' and so forth. 
 I Uke the good old soul, hut I don't heheve 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 doesn't foUow," said Langham, who was, however, so 
 deep in a collection of Spanish romances and chronicles that 
 the squire's mental history did not seem to make much impres- 
 sion 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, Els- 
 mere, 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 Span- 
 ish 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 Eobert, with a shrug. ' ' I will 
 reserve my remarks on that subject. But you must reaUy tear 
 yourself away from this room, Langham, if you want to see the 
 the rest of the squire's quarters. Here you have what we may 
 call the ornamental sensational part of the hbrary, that part of 
 it which would make a stii' at Sotheby's; the working parts are 
 all to come." 
 
 Langham reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged away. 
 Robert held back the hangings over the door-way leading into 
 the rest of the wing, and, passing through, they found them- 
 selves in a continuation of the library totally different in char- 
 acter from the magnificent room they had just left. The walls 
 were no longer latticed and carved; they were closely packed, 
 in the most business-like way, with books which represented 
 the squire's 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 afterward. Look here," and he 
 pulled out a volume of St. Basil. 
 
 Langham looked, and saw on the title-page 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. 
 
 Robert nodded. But look at them ! There are the Tracts, 
 all lihe Fathers- all the Councils,, and masses, as you see, of 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 231 
 
 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 Mey- 
 rick, he buried his last chance of living like other men at Berlin. 
 His years of extravagant labor there have left marks upon him 
 physically that can never be effaced. But that book-case fas- 
 cinates 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 man's 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 Niebuhr's 
 ' ' History, " in the title-page of which a few lines in the historian's 
 handwaiting bore witness to much pleasant discourse between 
 the writer and Roger Wendover, at Bonn, in the summer of 
 1847." Judging from other shelves further down, he must also 
 have spent some time, perhaps an academic year, at Tiibingen. 
 for here were most of the early editions of the ''Leben Jesu,'' 
 with some corrections from Strauss's hand, and similar records 
 of Baur, Ewald, and other members or opponents of the Tiibingen 
 school. And so on, through the whole book-case. Something 
 of everything was there— philosophy, theology, history, philol- 
 ogy. The collection was a medley, and made almost a spot of 
 disorder in the exquisite neatness and system of the vast gather- 
 ing of which it formed part. Its bond of union was simply that 
 it represented the for^s 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 title-page was covered with minute writing, which, when 
 examined, proved to contain a record of lectures, or conversa- 
 tions with the author of the volume, sometimes a string of 
 anecdotes or a short biography, rapidly sketched out of the full- 
 ness of personal knowledge, and often seasoned with a subtle 
 causticity and wit. A history of modern thinking Germany, 
 of that unextinguished hearth" whence thQ mind of Europe 
 
232 
 
 KOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 has been kindled for three generations, might ahnost have been 
 evolved from that book-case and its contents alone. 
 
 Langham, as he stood peering among the ugly, vilely printed 
 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 auto- 
 biographical 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 Eobert. Eobert was at 
 the end of the room, a couple of volumes under his arm, another, 
 which he was reading, in his hands. 
 
 '' This is my corner," he said, smiling and flushing a little, as 
 his friend moved up to him. ''Perhaps you don't 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 shoi^d every- 
 body write books ? It was absurd ! The scholar w^ knows 
 what toll scholarship takes of life is always apt to resent the in- 
 trusion of the man of action into his domains. It looks to him 
 like a kind of ridiculous assumption that any one d'un coeur 
 leger can do what has cost him his heart's 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 be- 
 fore 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 tvorld 
 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. 
 
ROBERT ELSP^ERE. 
 
 233 
 
 Well, what is the ' great work' ?" he said at last, abruptly. 
 
 Historical. Oh; I shoulfl have written something without 
 G-rey ; 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 Empijre, especially the decay of the Empire. Some day I 
 mean to take up one of the episodes in tl^ great birth of 
 Europe— the makings of France, I think, most likely. It seems 
 to lead furtherest and tell most. I have beeu 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 Kobert threw 
 back his head with one of bis most brilliant enthusiastic smiles. 
 'I 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 book-cases 
 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 Eobert, incredulously. 
 
 The other nodded. Eobert left his place, and began to walk 
 up and down, trying to answer Langham's question, and at the 
 same time to fix in speech a number of sentiments and impres- 
 sions bred in him by the work of the past few months. After 
 awhile 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 Elsmere's parish plans, in his sermons, 
 in his dealings with the poor and the young— forces of imagina- 
 tion and sympathy. What was enchaining him to this new 
 study was not, to begin with, that patient love of ingenious ac 
 cumulation 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 color, a passionate desire to rescue something 
 more of human life from the drowning, submerging past, to 
 
234 
 
 ROBERT ELSMBRE. 
 
 reaKze for himself and others the solidarity and continuity of 
 mankind's long struggle from the beginning until now. 
 
 Langham had had much experience of Elsmere's versatility 
 and pliancy, but he had never realized it so much as now, while 
 he sat listening to the vivid, many-colored speech getting 
 quicker and quicker, and more and more telhng and original as 
 Robert got more absorbed and excited by what he had to say. 
 He was endeavoring to describe to Langham the sort of book 
 he thought might be written on the rise of modem society in 
 Gaul, dwelling first of all on the outward spectacle of the blood- 
 stained Frankish world as it was, say, in the days of Gregory 
 the Great, on its savage kings, its fiendish women, its bishops 
 ^d its saints; and then, on the conflict of ideas going on be- 
 hind all the fierce incoherence of the Empire's decay, the strug- 
 gle of Eoman order and of German freedom, of Roman luxury 
 and of German hardness ; above all, the war of orthodoxy and 
 hei€«y, with its strange poHtical oompHcations. And then, dis- 
 contented still, as though the heart of the matter were still un- 
 touched, he went on, restlessly wandering the while, with his 
 long arms hnked behind him, ''throwing out " words at an ob- 
 ject in his mind, trying to grasp and analyze that strange sense 
 which haunts the student of Rome's decline as it once over- 
 shadowed the infancy of Europe, that sense of a slowly de- 
 parting majesty, of a great presence just withdrawn, and 
 still incalcuiably potent, traceable throughout in that humbling 
 consciousness of Goth or Frank that they were but "beggars 
 hunting in a palace— the place had harbored greater men than 
 they !" 
 
 ''There is one thing," Langham said presently, in his slow, 
 nonchalant voice, when the tide of Robert's ardor ebbed for a 
 moment, ' ' that doesn't 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 #es^^mon^/. What 
 is the nature and the value of the 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 six- 
 teenth 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 tbf^ rector, smiling, "I am only just com- 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEEE. ^35 
 
 iBg to that. As I told you, I am only now beginning to dig for 
 self Till now it has all been work at second hand. I have 
 Sgettingageneral survey of the ground as quicldy as I could 
 S the hip of other men'slabors. Now I must go to work 
 Sby inch, and find out what the ground is made of. I won t 
 Srget your point. It is enormously important, I grant-enor- 
 mouslv " he repeated,reflectively. „ , 
 
 'Sould tMnk it is," said Langham to himself, as he rose; 
 "the whole of orthodox Christianity is in it, formstance. 
 
 There was not much more to be seen. A little wooden stair- 
 case 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 ail-neither chair nor 
 tabS nor carpet-but books only. . All the doors leadmg from 
 room to room had been taken off; the old worm-eaten boards 
 had been roughly stained; a few old French engravmgs 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 wmdows opening on to the hill, and letting in.dayj^y 
 day the summer sun-risings or the winter dawns, which had 
 shone upon them for more than three centuries. 
 
 " This is my last day of privHege," said Eobert. Everybody 
 .is shut out when once he appears, from this wing, and this part 
 of the grounds. This was his father's 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 sleep- 
 Lg room, which is of course connected with the more modem 
 
 side of the house." , < , ^ 4. j-j „„/i 
 
 " So this is where that old man ventured what Cato did and 
 Addison approved,' " murmured Langham, standing m the 
 middle of the room and looking round him. This particular 
 room was now used as a sort of lumber place, a receptecle for 
 the superfluous or useless books gradually thrown off by the 
 great collection aU 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 
 
 ^'^ He passed the threshold again with a little sigh, and saw 
 
286 
 
 ROBERT ELbMERE. 
 
 suddenly before him at the end of the suite of rooms, and 
 framed in the door-ways facing him, an engraving of a Greuae 
 picture— a girl's 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 scan- 
 dal. Both run by the same proprietor, if you please. There is 
 a hamlet down there in the hollow " —and he pointed to a gray 
 spect 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 re- 
 lations with him by a fierce attack on his drains and Ms pig- 
 sties." 
 
 He turned to his companion with a half -rueful spark of lau^-h- 
 ter 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 w^hich his quick | 
 mind was evidently full. Langham tried to listen, but was 
 conscious that his friend's social enthusiasms bored him a greafc ' 
 deal. A-nd side by side with the consciousness there slid in a 
 little stinging reflection that four years ago no talk of Elsmere's 
 could have bored him. 
 
 "What's the matter with this particular place?" he asked, 
 languidly, at last, raising his eyes toward the group of houses 
 now beginning to emerge from the distance. 
 
 An angry red mounted in Robert's cheek. 
 
 "What isn't the* matter with it ? The houses, which were 
 built on a swamp originally, are falhng into ruin; fche roofs, the ^_ 
 drains, the accommodation per head, are all about equally . 
 scandalous. The place is harried with illness; since I came 
 there has been both fever and diphthoria there. They are al] 
 
 I 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEB. 237 
 
 crippled with rheumatism, but that they think nothmg of; the 
 English laborer takes rheumatism as quite in the day's bargam ! 
 And as to wce-the vice that comes of mere endless persecuting 
 opportunity-I can tell you one's ideas of personal responsi- 
 bility get a good deal shaken up by a place Uke this. And 1 
 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, " wasn't it ?" 
 
 Eobert turned upon him fiercely. 
 
 " Ah' you think it so easy for those poor creatures to leave 
 their homes, their workmg 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, li they were turned out, there is noth- 
 ing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottage to be found 
 there I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide more cot- 
 tages than are wanted; but if the labor is wanted the laborer 
 should be decently housed. He is worthy of his hire, and woe 
 to the man who neglects or ill-treats him !" 
 
 Langham could not help smiling, partly at the vehemence ot 
 the speech, partly at the lack of adjustment between his friend s 
 mood and his own. He braced himself to take the matter 
 more seriously, but meanwhile Eobert 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 
 north-west 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 further side. 
 
 "There," said Eobert, stopping, "we are at our journey's 
 end. Now, then, what sort of a place of human habitation do 
 you call that V 
 
238 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 The bridge whereon they stood crossed the main channel oji 
 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 year's growth of shoots. On the other side of the river, 
 on ground all but level with the osier beds which interposed be- 
 tween them and the stream, rose a miserable group of houses, 
 huddled together as though theu' bulging walls and rotten roofs 
 could only maintain themselves at all by the help and support 
 which each wretched hovel gave to its neighbor. The mud walls 
 were stained with yellow patches of lichen, the paUngs round \ 
 the little gardens were broken and ruinous. Close beside them 
 all was a sort of open drain or water-course, 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 i 
 of oak-trees against the sky. The houses stood in the shadow i 
 of the bank looking north, and on this gray, lowering day, the 
 dreariness, the gloom, the squalor of the place were indescrib- 
 able. 
 
 ''Well, that^sa God-forsaken hole !" said Langham, study- 
 ing it, his interest roused at last, rather, perhaps, by the Ruys- 
 dael-like melancholy and picturesqueness of the scene than by 
 its human suggestiveness. ''I could hardly have imagined i 
 such a place existed in southern England. It is more like a bit 
 of Ireland." j 
 
 ' 'If it were Ireland it might be to somebody's interest to ferret I 
 it out," said Robert, bitterly. " But these poor folks are out of \ 
 the world. They may be brutalized 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 burned 
 into my mind, once for all, what is meant by a landlord's re- 
 sponsibiHty. 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 lit- | 
 tie bitterness— 'if Mister 'Enslowe would just 'a mended that ' 
 bit o' roof of ours last winter, Bessie needn't have laid in the 
 
ROBEET ELSMEEE. 239 
 
 wet SO many nights as she did, and she coughin' fit to break 
 your heart, for all the things yer could put over 'er.' " ^ 
 
 Eobert paused, his strong young face, so vehemently angry 
 a few minutes before, tremulous with feeling. Ah, weU," he 
 said at last, with a long breath, moving away from the parapet 
 of the bridge on which he ha^ been leaning, ''better be op- 
 pressed than oppressor, any day. Now, then, I must deliver 
 my stores. There's a child here, Catherine and I have been 
 doing our best to pull through typhoid." 
 
 They crossed the bridge and turned down the track leadmg 
 to the hamlet. Some planks carried them across the ditch, the 
 main sewer of the community, as Eobert pointed out, and they 
 made their way through the filth surrounding one of the near- 
 esf cottages. 
 
 A feeble elderly man, whose shaking hmbs and saUow blood- 
 less skin make him look much older than he actually was, 
 opened the door and invited them to come in. Eobert 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 man's quavering "kindly take a chair, sir; you've 
 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, inclosing an oblong space about eight yards long, divided 
 into two unequal portions by a lath and plaster partition, with 
 no upper story, a thatched roof , now entirely out of repair, and 
 letting in the rain in several places, and a paved floor little bet- 
 ter than the earth itself, so large and cavernous were the gaps 
 between the stones. The dismal place had no small adornmgs 
 -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 Ox- 
 ford man, accustomed to thQ odors of damp meadows m times 
 of ebbing flood and festering sun, knows so well. As old Mfl- 
 som began to talk to him in his weak tremulous voice, the 
 visitor's attention was irresistibly held by the details about him. 
 Fresh as he was from all the (delicate sights, the harmonious 
 colors and delightful forms of the squire's house, they made an 
 Urmsually sharp impression on his festidious senses. What 
 
240 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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? Lang- 
 ham felt a sudden inward movement of disgust and repulsion. 
 
 For heaven's 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 Httle 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 
 Robert's predecessor, a certain Mr. Preston, who had left be- 
 hind him a memory of amiable evangelical indolence. 
 Did you see much of him ?" he asked. 
 
 *'0h, law, no, sir!" replied the man, surprised into some- 
 thing 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, she's north- 
 country, she is, comes from Yorkshire ; sometimes she'd used 
 to say f 0 me : ' Passon 'ee ain't much good, and passon 'ee ain't 
 much harm. 'Ee's 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 wife's by-gone flight of metaphor and his own exact 
 memory of it. 
 
 As to the rector's 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— mflk 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 any- 
 thin' like it, nor my wife neither. People is clever nowadays," 
 said the speaker, dubiously. Langham realized that, in this 
 quarter of his parish at any.rdre, his friend's pastoral vanity, 
 if he had any, would not find much to feed on. Nothing, to 
 judge from this specimen at least, greatly affected an inhabi- 
 tant of Mile End. Gratitude, responsiveness, imply health and 
 
BOBEET EliSMERE. ^^^^ 
 
 energy, past or present. The only constant defense which the? 
 poor have against such physical conditions as those which pre- 
 vailed at Mile End is apathy. 
 
 As they came down the dilapidated steps at the cottage door 
 Eobert 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 pes^^ 
 tilential den? Father, mother, grown-up son, a girl of thirteen, 
 and grandchild, all huddled in a space just fourteen feet square. 
 Langham!" and he turned passionately on his companion, 
 " what defense 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 dryly; ''but as 
 you may want hereafter to make excuses for your man, and 
 he may give you occasion, I wouldn't begin by painting him to 
 yourself any blacker than need be." 
 
 Eobert laughed, sighed and acquiesced. " I am a hot-headed, 
 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 al- 
 most revealing some new source of poison and disease. Of 
 their various visits, however, Langham remembered nothing 
 afterward 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, black-eyed 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 dark-haired 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 
 
242 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 colorless mouths. The father, a picturesque, handsorae fellow 
 looking as though he had gypsy blood in his veins, had open 
 the door to their knock. Robert, seeing the meal, would hav 
 retreated at once, in spite of the children's shy inviting looks 
 but a glance past them at the mother's 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 imag 
 ination as he saw him then, standing beside the bent figure oi 
 the mother, his quick pitiful eyes taking in the pallor and ex- 
 haustion of face and frame, his hand resting instinctively on 
 the head of a small creature that had crept up beside him, hi^ 
 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 modem Man of Feeling,'' 
 as sensitive, as impressionable and as free from the burden of 
 self as his eighteenth-century .prototype. 
 
 On the way home Robert suddenly remarked to his compan- 1 
 ion: "Have you heard my sister-in-law play yet, Langham?! 
 What did you think of it?'' 
 
 " Extraordinary!" said Langham, briefly. The most con- 
 siderable 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 old- 
 world 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, brightening, 
 " would be to get her married. I don't wonder her belongings 
 dislike the notion of anjrthing go pretty and so flighty going oft 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 243 
 
 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 father's wishes, in a case of this kind, ten years 
 after his death, is surely excessive?" said Langham, with dry 
 interrogation; then, suddenly recoUecting himself, " I beg your 
 pardon, Elsmere. I am interfering." 
 
 Nonsense," said Eobert, brightly, '^I don't wonder, it 
 seems like a difficulty of our own making. Like so many dif- 
 I Acuities, it depends on character, present character, by-gone 
 I character— I' 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 
 I natural way out of it." 
 
 ' ' An easy way, I should think, " said Langham, after a pause. 
 ''It won't be so easy to find the right man. She is a young 
 [ person with a future, is Miss Eose. She wants somebody in 
 f 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 hasn't the ways of a poor man's 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 
 I smile had a touch of bitterness in it. " If hers agree, I proph- 
 ! esy you won't 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 mor- 
 tals 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 morn- 
 ing had broken into sunshine, which played mistily on the 
 sleeping woods, on the white fronts of the cottages, and the 
 wide green where the rain-pools glistened. On the hill leading 
 to the rectory there was the flutter of a woman's 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 it- 
 self against the road. A tumult within, half rage, half feeling, 
 showed itself only in an added rigidity of the finely cut feat- 
 ure's. 
 
 V 
 
244 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 hbrary was well worth 
 seeing. Since then we have been a parish round, distributing 
 stores." 
 
 Rose's 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 I" she said, scornfully. " Don't you won- 
 der how anyone can ever tear themselves away from the coun- 
 try?" 
 
 *'Rose, don't be abusive," said Robert, opening his eyes at 
 her tone. Then, passing his arm through h^rs, he looked ban- 
 teringly down upon her. ''For the first time since you left 
 the metropohs you have walked yourself into a color. It's be- 
 coming—and it's Murewell— so be civil 1" 
 
 "Oh, nobody denies you a high place in milkmaids!" she 
 said, with her head in air— and they went oflE into a minute's 
 sparring. 
 
 Meanwhile Langham, on the other side of the road, walked 
 up slowly, his eyes on the ground. Once, when Rose's eye 
 caught him, a shock ran through her. There was already a 
 look of slovenly age about his stooping bookworm's gait. Her 
 companion of the night before— handsome, animated, human— 
 where was he? The girl's 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 mechan- 
 ically made a quick movement for\^ard to anticipate her. 
 Their fingers touched; she drew her s 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 
 
EOBEKT ELSMEEE. 
 
 245 
 
 emphasis, while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circum- 
 stances swept through him. 
 
 That he, the poor and solitary student whose only sources of 
 self-respect 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 m love 
 with his brilliant, ambitious sister! His irritable self -con- 
 sciousness enormously magnified Elsmere's motive and Els- 
 mere's 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. xt- • 
 
 With sardonic scorn he pointed out to himself that his imag- 
 ination was still held by, his nerves were still thnllmg under 
 the mental image of a girl looking up to him as no woman had 
 ever looked-a girl, white-armed, white-necked-with softened 
 eyes of appeal and confidence. He bade himself mark that 
 during the whole of his morning walk with Eobert down to its 
 last stage, his mind had been really absorbed in some prepos- 
 terous dream he was now too self-contemptuous to analyze. 
 Pretty well for a philosopher, in four days! What a ridicu- 
 lous 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 Eobert. Eose, too, was fully occupied 
 in giving Catherine a sarcastic account of a singing lesson she 
 had been administering in the school that morning. Catherme 
 winced sometimes at the tone of it. 
 
 That afternoon Eobert, in high spirits, his rod over his shoul- 
 der his basket at his back, carried off his guest for a lounging 
 afternoon along the river. Elsmere enjoyed these fishing ex- 
 peditions like a boy. They were his holidays, relished all the 
 more because he kept a jealous account of them with his con- 
 science. He sauntered along, now throwing a cunning and ef- 
 fectual fly, now resting, smoking and chattering, as the fancy 
 took him. He found a great deal of the old stimulus and 
 piquancy in Langham's society, but there was an occasional irri- 
 tability in his companion, especiaUy toward himself personally, 
 which puzzled him. After awhile, indeed, he began to feel 
 himself the unreasonably cheerful person which he evidently 
 appeared to his companion. A mere ignorant enthusiast, ban- 
 ished forever from the realm of pure knowledge by certain 
 original and incorrigible defects-after a few hours' talk with 
 
246 
 
 KOIiEKT ELSMEKE. 
 
 Langham Hobert's quick insight always showed him soms 
 image of himself resembling this in his friend's mind. | 
 At last he turned restive. He had been describing to Lang? 
 ham his strong acquaintance with the Dissenting minister of 
 the place— a strong, coarse-grained fellow of sensuous, excita- 
 ble temperament, famous for his noisy conversion meetings," 
 and for a gymnastic dexterity in the quoting and combining 
 of texts, unrivaled in Eobert's experience. Some remark on 
 the Dissenter's logic, made, perhaps, a little too much in the 
 tone of the Churchman conscious of university advantages, 
 seemed to irritate Langham. 
 
 You think your Anghcan logic in dealing with the Bible so 
 superior! On the contrary, I am all for your Ranter. He is 
 your logical Protestant. Historically, you Anghcan parsons 
 are where you are and what you are, because Enghshmen, as 
 whole, hke 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 mat- 
 ter." 
 
 Robert smoked on a moment in silence. Then he flushed 
 and laid down his pipe. 
 
 " We are all fools in your eyes, I know ! A 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." 
 
 There was a ray of defiance, of emotion, in his look. Lang- 
 ham met it in silence. 
 
 deny you nothing," he said at last, slowly. *^0n 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 inde- 
 scribable 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 friend's shoulder. 
 
 Rose spent the afternoon 'n helping Catherine with various 
 parochial occupations. In the course of them Catherine asked 
 many questions about Long Whindale, Her thoughts clun^j 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 247 
 
 to the hiUs, to the gray farm-houses, the rough men and wom- 
 en inside them. But Rose gave her small satisfaction. 
 
 Poor old Jim Backhouse 1" said Catherine, sighing. ^'Ag- 
 nes tells me he is quite bedridden now. " 
 
 ''Well, and a good thing for John, don't you think," said 
 Rose, briskly, covering a parish library book the whUe in a way 
 which made Catherine's fingers itch to take it from her, and 
 for us? It's 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 colored a little, but Rose's hard lightness of tone 
 was unconquerable. 
 
 "Or if she didn't," 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 
 month's notice, and is still making the vicarage jams and walk- 
 ing out with the young man every Sunday. Mrs. Thornburgh 
 sees thalf it will 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 dispropor- 
 tionate 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 
 a decisive kind." 
 
248 BOBERT ELSMERE. £ 
 
 Catherine's hands worked away for awhile, then she laid doym 
 
 her book and said, lifting her clear large eyes on her sister: 
 
 "Was there 7ievei^ a time when you loved the valley, Rose?" 
 Never!" cried Rose. 
 
 Then she pushed away her work, and leaning her elbows om 
 the table, turned her brilliant face to Catherine. There was 
 frank mutiny in it. 
 
 "By the way, Catherine, are you going to prevent mamm&; 
 from letting me go to Berlin for the winter?'' 
 
 "And after Berhn, Rose?" said Catherine, presently, her gazei 
 bent upon her work. ' 
 
 'Mfter Berlin? What next?" said Rose, recklessly. "WeU, 
 after Berlin I shall try to persuade mamma and Agnes, I. sup- 
 pose, to come and back me up in London. We could still bet 
 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 tra- 
 dition. The hesitancy, the moral doubt of her conversation 
 with Langham, seemed to have vanished wholly in a kind of 
 acrid self-assertion. , , 
 
 Catherine felt a shock sweep through her. It was as though 
 all the pieties of life, all the sacred assumptions and self -surren- 
 ders at the root of it, were shaken, outraged by the girl's 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 1 
 it in so many words. Probably it seemed to her too strong, 
 too sacred, to be often handled. ' 1 
 
 But Rose sprung up, and pacing the little work-room with | 
 her white wrists locked behind her, she met that argument | 
 with aU the concentrated passion which her youth had for years 
 been storing up against it. Catherine sat presently over- 
 whelmed, bewildered. This language of a proud and tameless I 
 individuality, this modern gospel of the divine right of self -de- 
 velopment— 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: 
 
 "Do you see they have come back? We must go and dress." 
 
 And as she spoke she was conscious of a new sensation alto- !l 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 249 
 
 gether— the sensation of the wild creature lassoed on the 
 I prairie, of the bird exchanging in an instant its glorious free- 
 dom 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 
 I Eose's 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. 
 
 i Unmusical as she was, Catherine pined for her sister's music 
 that evening. Robert was busy in his study, and the hours 
 seemed interminable. After a little difficult talk Langham 
 
 I subsided into a book and a corner. But the only words of 
 which he was conscious for long were the words of an inner 
 
 j dialogue. ' ' I promised to play for her— Go and offer then !— 
 
 [ Madness I let me keep away from her. If sha asks me, of 
 course I will go. She is much too proud, and already she 
 
 I hinks me guilty of a rudeness." 
 
 I Then, with a shrug, he would fall to his book again, abomi- 
 I nably conscious, however, all the while of the white figure be- 
 i tween the lamp and the open window, and of the delicate head 
 
 and cheek lighted 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. 
 I Good-night, Mr. Langham. You are going in to smoke 
 I with Robert, I suppose ?" 
 
 Her bright eyes seemed to look him through. Their mock- 
 i ing hostility seemed to say to him, as plainly as possible : ' ' Your 
 I purgatory is over— go, smoke and be happy I" 
 ! "I will go and help him wind up his sermon," he said, with 
 
 ^n 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 
 i the darkness, chased along the passages by the hght she held. 
 
 She gained her room, and stood by the window, seized again 
 i 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 
 i London dissipations. 
 
250 ROBEBT ELSMERE. - 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XYI. f 
 
 The next morning after breakfast the rectory party were in 
 the garden — the gentlemen smoking, Catherine and her sister 
 strolhng arm-in-arm among the flowers. Catherine's vague 
 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 ten- 
 derness to her sister, and there was even a reaction of pity in 
 her heart toward the lonely skeptic 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 mo- 
 ment's perplexity, and they walked quickly to meet her. 
 
 Rose and Langham exchanged a few commonplaces till the 
 others j'oined them, and then for awhile the attention of every- 
 body in the group was held by the squire's sister. She was 
 very small, as thin and light as thistle-down, ill-dressed, and 
 as communicative as a babbling child. The face and all the 
 features were extraordinarily minute, and, moreover, blanched 
 and etherealized 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 gest- 
 ures about her, which made her thread gloves and rusty skirts 
 seem a mere whim and masquerade, adopted, perhaps, deliber- 
 ately, from a high bred 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 mo- 
 ment his various misgivings as to Mr, Weudover's advent. 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Then she stayed ckattering, studying Eose every now and then 
 out of her strange little eyes, restless and glancing as a bird's, 
 which took stock also of the garden, of the flower-beds, of 
 Elsmere's lanky frame, and of Elsmere's handsome friend in 
 the background. She ^ was most odd when she was grateful, 
 and she was grateful ior the most unexpected things. Sh^ 
 thanked Elsmere effusively for coming to live there, " sacrifice 
 ing yourself so nobly as to us country folk," and she thanked 
 him, with an appreciative glance at Langham, for having hi^ 
 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 beei^ 
 to see the squire's books. It would make conversation so easy 
 when they came to dinner. 
 
 ''Though I don't know anything about his books. He 
 doesn't like women to talk about books. He says they only 
 pretend— even the clever ones. Except, of course, Madame de 
 Stael. He can only gay she was ugly, and I don't deny it. But 
 I have about used up Madame de Stael," she added, dropping 
 into another sigh as soft and light as a child's. 
 
 Eobert 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 per- 
 sons of birth," she stood among them beaming, becoming more 
 and more whimsical and inconsequent, more and more deli- 
 ciously incalculable, as she expanded. At last she fluttered off, 
 only, however, to come hurrying back, with little, short, scud- 
 ding steps, to implore them all to come to tea with her as soon 
 as possible in the garden that washer special hobby , and in her 
 last new summer-house. 
 
 ''I build two or three every summer," she said. ''Now, 
 there are twenty-one! Eoger laughs at me," and there was a 
 momentary bitterness in the little eerie face, "but how can 
 one live without hobbies? That's one— then I've two more. 
 My album— oh, you will all write in my album, won't you? 
 When I was young— when I was maid of honor"— and she 
 drew herself up slightly—" everybody had albums. Even the 
 dear queen herself ! I remember how she made Monsieur 
 Guizot write in it; something q^iie stupid, after all. Those 
 
252 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 hobbies— the garden and the album— are quite harmless, aren't 
 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 Bacon's," 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 in- 
 deed, it is the purest of all human pleasures." 
 
 ''Oh, but how delightful r 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— I've another hobby—" 
 
 Here, however, she stopped, hung her head and looked de- 
 pressed. Eobert, with a httle 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, it's wrong. I know it 
 is— only I can't help it. Never mind. You'll know soon." 
 
 And again she turned away, when, suddenly, Eose attracted 
 her attention, and she stretched out a thin, white bird-claw of 
 a hand and caught the girl's arm. 
 
 "There won't be much to amuse you to-morrow, my dear, 
 and there ought to be— you're so pretty!" Rose blushed furi- 
 ously and tried to draw her hand away. " No, no! don't mind, 
 don't mind. I didn't at your age. Well, we'll do our best! 
 But your own party is so charming r 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 i-s when its 
 own affairs absorb it, had stood coldly outside the group which 
 * was making much of the squire's 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 stag-Hke, her 
 cheek still burning. Why should it be always open to the old 
 to annoy the young with impunity? 
 
 Langham watched her moimt the first step or two ; his eye 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 253 
 
 traveled 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 heen 
 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 fiber, she only half knew why, wa» 
 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 oppo- 
 nent unexpectedly gives ground. She paused, she turned her 
 white throat. His eyes, upturned, met hers. 
 
 ''The phloxes, did you say?" she asked, coolly re-descending 
 the steps. *' Then round here, please." 
 
 She led the way, he followed, conscious of an utter relaxa- 
 tion of nerve and will which for the moment had something 
 i intoxicating in it. 
 
 "There are your phloxes," she said, stopping before a splen- 
 did line of plants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole 
 again; her spirits rose at a bound. *' I don't know why you ad- 
 mire 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 Kttle 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,;' ke said. " After this morning it will be long before 1 
 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 
 garden, 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 o'er delicate white." 
 
 Oh ! Oxford is countrified enough," she said, indifferently, 
 moving down the broad grass-path whijsh divided the garden 
 into two equal portions. 
 
254 . ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 But I am leaving Oxford, at any rate for a fyear," 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 I" 
 
 ''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 ap- 
 ples, as I suppose they are at 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. " Ev- 
 ery Oxford man always behaves as if he were the cream of the 
 universe. Oh! I don't 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 Eobert talk, Catherine and I feel quite as hum- 
 ble as we ought." 
 
 The words were hardly out before she could have bitten the 
 tongue that spoke them. He had made her feel her indiscre- 
 tions 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 bum 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 awhile 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 half -ruined, de- 
 graded manor bouse spread out below them. Then suddenly 
 he turned: 
 
 If I could imagine for a moment it would interest you to 
 
MOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 255 
 
 hear my reasons for leaving Oxford, I could not flatter myself 
 I you would see any sense in them. I hnow that Eobert will think 
 them moonshine; nay, more, that they will give him pain." 
 
 He smiled sadly. The tone of gentleness, the sudden breach 
 I in the man's melancholy reserve affected the girl beside him for 
 ; the second time, precisely as they had affected her the first time. 
 The result of twenty -four hours' resentful meditation turned 
 , out to be precisely nil. Her breath came fast, her proud look 
 ; I melted, and his quick sense caught the change in an instant. 
 ' Are you tired of Oxford?" the poor child asked him, almost 
 shyly. 
 
 I Mortally!" he said, still smiling. " And what is more im- 
 i portant still, Oxford is tired of me. I have been lecturing there 
 for ten years. They have had more than enough of me." 
 I **0h! but Robert said—" began Eose, impetuously, then 
 
 ' I 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 cahber, should confide in her, should speak to her intimate- 
 ly of himself? After all, she said to herself, angrily, with a ter- 
 rified 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 
 tne most?" 
 
 His tone had in it the most delicate, the most friendly defer- 
 ence. But Rose fiushed furiously. 
 
 ''That girls are very ready to talk about themselves, I im- 
 agine," 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 musician's life." 
 
 And you never wished for anything?" she cried, 
 j '' When Elsmere was at college, " he said, smiling, " I believe 
 j I wished he should get a first class. This year I have certainly 
 I wished to say good-bye to St, Anselm's, and to turn my back 
 for good and all on my men. I can't remember that T have 
 wished for anything else for six years." 
 
KOBEliT ELSMEfiE. 
 
 She looked at him perplexed. Was his manner merely lai 
 guid, or was it from him that the emotion she felt invadia 
 herself first started ? She tried to shake it off. 
 
 And I am just a bundle of wants/' she said, half mocl! 
 ingly. ^'Generally speaking, I am in the condition of bein' 
 ready to barter all I have for eomo folly or other— one in th 
 morning, another in the afternoon. What have you to say t 
 such people, Mr. Langham V 
 
 Her eyes challenged him mPtgnificently, mostly out of shee| 
 nervousness. But the face they rested on seemed suddenly t 
 turn to stone before her. The life died out of it. It grew sti '\ 
 and rigid. 
 
 " Nothing,'' he said, quietly. "Between them and me ther 
 is a great gulf fixed. I watch them pass, and I say to mysell 
 ' There are the Uvmg—that is how they look, how they speat 
 Eealize once for all that you have nothing to do with therr 
 Life is theirs— belongs to them. You are already outside i1 
 Go your way, and be a specter among the active and the happ; 
 TiO longer." ' 
 
 He leaned his back against the gate. Did he see her ? Wa 
 -le conscious of her at ail in this rare impulse of speech whicl 
 had suddenly overtaken one of the most withdrawn an< 
 silent of human beings ? All her airs dropped off her; a kin< 
 of fright seized her, and involuntarily she laid her hand on hi 
 arm. 
 
 Don't— don't — Mr. Langham ! Oh, don't say such things 
 Why shoidd you be so unhappy ? Why should you talk so 
 Can no one do anything ? Why do you live so much aJone 
 Is there no one you care about ?" 
 
 He turned. What a vision ! His artistic sense absorbed i ' 
 in an instant — the beautiful tremulous lip, the drawn whit< 
 brow. For a moment he drank in the pity, the emotion, o 
 those eyes. Then a movement of such self -scorn as even h< 
 had never felt sweep through him. He gently moved away 
 her hand dropped. 
 
 *'Miss Leyburn," he said, gazing at her, his olive face sin 
 gularly pale, ' ' don't waste your pity on me, for Heaven's sake 
 Some madness made me behave as I did just now. Years ag( 
 the same sort of idiocy betrayed me to your brother; never be 
 fore or since. I ask your pardon, humbly," and his ton( 
 seemed to scorch her, "that this second fit of ranting shoulc 
 have seized me in your presence." 
 
ROUEirf ELSMKRE. 
 
 25? 
 
 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 man's whole nature had for 
 the moment broken up, become disorganized. She could not 
 bear ifc. 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 life-time. 
 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, 
 v||are my own making— every one." 
 
 And belaid a sort of vindictive emphasis on the words. The 
 tears of excitement were^in her eyes. 
 
 "Won't you let me be your friend ?" she said, trembling, 
 with a kind of reproach. " I thought— the other night- we 
 were to be friends. Won't 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 circum- 
 stance, of individual character, seemed to drop from her. He 
 ;[ forgot the difference of years; he saw her no longer a.« she was 
 r— a girl hardly out of the school-room, vain, ambitious ianger- 
 HiOusly responsive, on whose crude, romantic sense he vas wan- 
 Ijtonly playing; she was to him pure beauty, purewompoi. 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 h^ never 
 1 ; 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 hap- 
 jpiness and success at college, of his first attempts to make him- 
 Iself a power among younger men, of the gradual dismal failure 
 of all his efforts, the dying down of desire and ambitio^a. From 
 the general narrative there stood out little pictures of individual 
 persons or scenes, clear cut and masterly— of his father, the 
 Gainsborough church-warden ; of his Methodistical mother, 
 who had all her life lamented her own beauty as a special snare 
 of Sa^n, and who since her husband's death had refused to see 
 her son on the ground Uat his opinions " had vexed his father;'* 
 of his first ardent worship of knovv^Iedge, and passion to com- 
 municate it; and of the first intuitions in lecture face to ^ace. 
 
258 
 
 ROBBUT ELSMEBE, 
 
 with an under-graduate, alone in college-rooms, sometimes alonisf 
 on Alpine heights, of something cold, impotent and baffling in 
 himself, v^hich was to stand forever between him and action, be-' 
 tween him and human affection ; the growth of the critical pes- 
 simist sense which laid the ax 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. 
 
 Eose followed iim breathlessly. If she had known more of 
 literature she would have reahzed 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 i 
 anything but literary, and she could not analyze her excitement. 
 The man's 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 girhsh 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 a 
 desperate anxiety to be equal to the occasion, to play her part 
 well. 
 
 ''So you see," said Langham at last, with a great effort (tc 
 do him justice) to climb back on to some ordinary level of con- 
 versation, *' all these transcendentalisms apart, I am about the 
 most unfit man in the world for a college tutor. The under- 
 graduates'regard me as a shilly-shallying pedant. On my part, ' 
 he added dryly, ' ' I am not slow to retaliate. Every term I hv€ 
 I find the young man a less interesting animal. I regard the 
 whole university system as a wretched sham. Kno wledge ! II 
 has no more to do with knowledge than my boots. 
 
 And for one curious instant he looked out over the village, 
 his fastidious scholar's soul absorbed by some intellectual irrita- 
 tion, of which Eose 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 ofl 
 
I ROBERT ELSMERB. 259 
 from the only Kfe 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, ^he 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 feehng 
 break in words. Vaguely at first, and then with a growing 
 flame and force, he fell to describing to her what the Hfe of 
 thought may be to the thinker, and those marvelous moments 
 ' jwhich belong to that life when the mind which has divorced itself 
 - ifrom desire and sense sees spread out before it the vast realms 
 ^ pf knowledge, and feels itself close to the secret springs and 
 sources of being. And as he spoke, his language took an ampler 
 bum, the element oi smallness which attaches to all mere per- 
 sonal complaint vanished, his words flowed, became eloquent, 
 inspired, till the bewildered child beside him, warm through 
 md through as she was with youth and passion, felt for an in- 
 stant by sheer fascinated sympathy the cold spell, the ineffable 
 prestige, of the thinker's voluntary death in life, 
 i But only for an instant. Then the natural sense of chill 
 f bmote her to the heart. 
 
 t " You make me shiver, " she cried, interrupting him. ^ ' Have 
 Huhose strange things— I don't understand them — made you 
 
 happy? Can they make any one happy? Oh, no, no I Hap- 
 
 jpiness is to be got from living, seeing, experiencing, making 
 > iMends, enjoying nature ! Look at the world, Mr. Langham 
 
 she said, with bright cheeks, half smiling at her own magnilo- 
 1 l^uence, her hand waving over the view besore them. What 
 
 Lias it done that you should hate it so? If you can't put up with 
 t jpeople you might love nature. I —I can't be content with nature, 
 i [because I want some life first. Up in Whindale there is too much 
 • Inature, 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 some- 
 !i thing else, but afterward if I can't get it, or if I get too much 
 ifi|of it, why then I will love you, live with you. You are my sec- 
 4 bud string, my reserve. You— and art— and poetry,' " 
 
260 
 
 ROBEKT ELSMERE. 
 
 **But everything depends on feeling," he said, softly, btf^ 
 lightly, as though to keep the conversation from sUpping bad 
 into those vague depths it had emerged from ; and if one hai 
 forgotten how to feel— if when one sees Or hears somethin| 
 beautiful that used to stu^ one, one can only say : ' I remembei 
 it moved me once l'~if f eehng dies, like hf e, 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 itl" she cried. shall feel to my 
 /ai^thour.'' Then, after a pause, in another tone: '*But, Mr 
 I^ngham, you say music excites you, Wagner excites you?" - 
 
 •'Yes, a sort of strange second life I can still get out o» 
 music," he admitted, smiling. 
 
 "Well, then," and she ]ooked at him persuasively, '^whj 
 not give yourself up to music? It is so easy— so httle troubkl 
 to one's self— it just takes you and carries yoy away." 
 
 Then, for the first time, Langham became conscious— proba! 
 bly through these admonitions of hers— that the situation hac 
 absurdity in it. 
 
 It is not my m^f/e?'," he said hastily. The self that en 
 joys music is an outer self, and can only bear with it for a shon j 
 time. No, Miss Leybum, I shall leave Oxford, the college wil 
 sing a Te Deum, I shall settle down in London, I shaU keep f 
 big book going, and cheat the years, after all, I suppose, sd 
 weU as most people." I 
 
 **And you will know, you will remember," she said, falterl 
 ing, reddening, her womanliness forcing the words out of herl 
 **that you have friends: Eobert— my sister— all of us?" I 
 
 He faced her with a httle quick movement. And as theiil 
 eyes met, each was struck once more with the personal beauty I 
 of the other His eyes shone— their black depths seemed al i 
 tenderness. 
 
 I will never forget this visit, this garden, this hour," h< 
 said, slowly, and they stood looking at each other. Rose fel 
 herself swept off her feet into a world of tragic mysteiioui 
 emotion. She all but put her hand into his again, asking hin 
 childishly to hope, to be consoled' But the maidenly impulse I 
 restrained her, and once more he leaned on the gate, burying I 
 his face in his hands. I 
 Suddenly he felt himself utterly tired, relaxed. Strong nerv f 
 ous reaction set in. What had all this scene, this tragedy, bee> i 
 about? And then in another instant was that sense of the n j 
 
BOBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 26] 
 
 H Jdiculous again clamoring to be heard. He - the man of thirty- 
 five — confessing himself, making a tragic scene, playing Man- 
 fred or Cain to this adorable^ half-fledged' creature, whom he 
 had known five days ! Supposing Elsmere had been there to 
 hear— Elsmere with his sane eye, his laugh ! As he leaned over 
 fthe gate he found himself quivering with impatience to be away 
 i—by himself —out of reach— the critic in him making the most 
 bitter remorseless mock of all these heroics and despairs the 
 other seK had been indulging in. But for the life of him he 
 could not find a word to say — amove to make. He stood hesi- 
 itating, 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 
 don't mean to release you from it, but if I don't go in now and 
 finish the covering of those library books, the youth of Mure- 
 iwell will be left without any literature till Heaven knows 
 
 Mwhen!" 
 
 He could have blessed her for the tone, for the escape into 
 % Icommon mundanity. 
 
 i\ **Hang literature— hang the parish library!" he said, with 
 I la laugh as he moved after her. Yet his real inner feeling 
 i itoward that parish library was one of infinite friendliness. 
 $1 Hear these men of letters!" she said, scornfully. Bui she 
 
 was happy ; there was a glow on her cheek. 
 
 I A bramble caught her dress ; she stopped and laid her white 
 I hand to it, but in vain. He knelt in an instant, and betwe^rt 
 
 them they wrenched it away, but not till those soft sHm finger.'^' 
 • had several times felt the neighborhood of his brown ones, anc? 
 ' tiU there had flown through and through him once more, as she? 
 I f stooped over him, the consciousness that she was young, tha^ 
 
 she was beautiful, that she had pitied him so sweetly, tha-t 
 ' they were alone. 
 **Eose!" 
 
 i It was Catherine calling— Catherine, who stood at the end 
 
 si i of the grass-path, with eyes all indignation and alarm. 
 
 ^1 Langham rose quickly from the ground. 
 
 ^ I He felt as though the gods had saved him— or damned him— 
 
 J i which? 
 
262 
 
 EOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MUREWELL Eectory during the next forty-eight hours w 
 the scene of much that might have been of interest to a ps 
 chologist gifted with the power of divining his neighbors. 
 
 In the first place Catherine's terrors were all alive agai 
 Robert had never seen her so moved since those days of stor 
 and stress before their engagement. 
 
 **I can not bear it!" she said to Robert at night in tbi 
 room. I can not bear it ! I hear it always in my ears : ' Wh 
 hast thou done with thy sister?' Oh, Robert, don't min 
 dear, though he is your friend. My father would have shrui 
 from him with horror. An alien from the household of fait) 
 An enemy to the Cross of Christr 
 
 She flung out the words with low, intense emphasis ai 
 frowning brow, standing rigid by the window, her han< 
 locked behind her. Robert stood by her, much perplexed, fet 
 ing himself a good deal of a culprit, but inwardly conscioi 
 that he knew a great deal more about Langham than she did. 
 
 *'My dear wife," he said to her, ''I am certain Langhai 
 has no intention of marrying." 
 
 *'Then more shame for him!" cried Catherine, flushinj 
 ' * They could not have looked more conscious, Robert, when 
 found them together, if he had just proposed." 
 
 What, in five days?" said Robert, more than half incline 
 to banter his wife. Then he fell into meditation as CatheriD 
 made no answer. ''I believe with men of that sort," he sai 
 at last, "relations to women are never more than half real- 
 always more or less literature — acting. Langham is tasting a 
 experience, to be bottled up for future use." 
 
 It need hardly be said, however, that Catherine got sma 
 consolation out of this point of view. It seemed to her Robei 
 did not take the matter quite rightly. 
 
 After all, darling," he said at last, kissing her, *^you ca 
 act dragon splendidly ; you have already — so can I. And yo 
 really cannot make me believe in anything very tragic in 
 week." 
 
 But Catherine was conscious that she had already played th 
 dragon hard, to very little purpose. In the forty hours tha 
 intervened between the scene in the garden and the squire's dir 
 aer-party, Robert was always wanting to carry off Langham 
 
ROBERT £:LSMERB. 
 
 26S 
 
 ■feherine was always asking Rose's help in some household 
 Rainess or other. In vain. Langham said to himself, calmly 
 [his time, that Elsmere and his wife were making a f ooUsh mis- 
 kke in supposing that his friendship with Miss Leyburn was 
 I ny thing to be alarmed about, that they would soon be amply 
 [onvinced of it themselves, and meanwhile he should take his 
 wn way. And as for Rose, they had no sooner turned back 
 ill three from the house to the garden than she had divined 
 'verything in Catherine's mind, and set herself against her sis- 
 jer with a willful force in which many a past irritation found 
 xpression. 
 
 How Catherine hated the music of that week ! It seemed to 
 iier she never opened the drawing-room door but she saw Lang- 
 kam at the piano, his head with its crown of glossy, curling 
 Ijilack hair, and his eyes lighted with unwonted gleams of laugh- 
 er and sympathy, turned toward Rose, who was either chatting 
 yildly to him, mimicking the airs of some professional, or tak- 
 tig olf the ways of some famous teacher; or else, which was 
 iTorse, playing with all her soul, flooding* the house with sound 
 -now as soft and delicate as first love, now as full and grand 
 .s storm waves on an angry coast. And tKe sister, going with 
 ompressed lip, to her work-table, would recognize sorely that 
 lever had the girl looked so handsome, and never had the 
 [ghtnings of a wayward genius played so finely about her. 
 ^ As to Langham, it may well be believed that after the scene 
 p the garden he had rated, satirized, examined himself in the 
 fiost approved introspective style. One half of him declared 
 hat scene to have been the heights of melodramatic absurdity ; 
 lie other thought of it with a thrill of tender gratitude toward 
 lie young pitiful creature who had evoked it. After all, why, 
 ecause he was alone in the world and must remain so, should 
 te feel bound to refuse this one gift of the gods, the delicate 
 •assinggift of a girl's— a child's friendship? As for her, the 
 aan's very real, though wholly morbid, modesty scouted the 
 lotion of love on her side. He was a likely person for a beauty 
 •n the threshold of life and success to fall in love with ; but she 
 Qeant to be kind to him, and he smiled a little inward indul- 
 i;ent smile over her very evident compassion, her very evident 
 ntention of reforming him, reconciling him to life. And, fin- 
 illy, he was incapable of any further resistance. He had gone 
 ^00 far withv her. Let her do what she would with him, dear 
 Jhildj with the sharp tongue ^xA tlie Bof t heart, aiid the touch 
 
£64 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 elder-brotherly fash- 
 ion ; and if every now and then some disturbing memory of that 
 strange scene between them would come to make his present 
 r61e 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 m 
 that morning train to London. Throughout it is probable that 
 that morning train occupied the saving background of hki 
 thoughts. 
 
 The two days passed by, and the squire's dinner-party ar j 
 rived. 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 hac 
 arranged it so, and Langham, who understood perfectly thai 
 his friendship with her young sister was not at all to Mrs. Els 
 mere's taste, and who had by nov>^ taken as much of a dishki 
 to her as his natm^e was capable of, was certainly doing noth 
 ing to make his walk with her otherwise than difficult. Am 
 every now and then some languid epigram would bring Cath 
 erine's eyes on him with a fiery gleam in their gray depths 
 Oh, fourteen more hours and she would have shut the rector: 
 gate on this most unwelcome of intruders ! She had never f el 
 so vindictively anxious to see the last of any one in her life 
 There was in her a vehemence of antagonism to the maQ'i 
 manner, his pessimism, his infidehty, his very ways of speaii 
 ing and looking, which astonished even herself. 
 
 Robert's eager soul meanwhile, for once irresponsive to Catl 
 erine's, was full of nothing but the squire. At last the momcDi 
 was come, and that dumb spiritual friendship he had forme 
 through these long months with the philosopher and the savaEi 
 was to be tested by sight and speech of the man. He bad 
 himself a hundred times pi^;ch his expectations low. But cur 
 osity and hope were keen, in spite of everything. 
 
 Ah, those parish worries! Robert caught the smoke of MiJ. 
 End in the distance, curling above the tmhght woods, and laii 
 about hhn vigorously with his stick on the squire's shrubs, i 
 he thought of those poisonous hovels, those ruined lives ! Bu 
 after all, it might be mere ignorance, and that wretch Hen. 
 lowe might have been merely trading on his master's morbl' 
 love of solitude. 
 
BOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 26a 
 
 And then— -all men have their natural conceits. Eobert Els- 
 imere would not have heen the very human creature he was if, 
 I j half consciously, h^ had not counted a good deal on his own 
 Ipowers of influence. Life had been to him so far one long 
 social success of the best kind. Very likely, as he walked on 
 i to the great house over whose threshold lay the answer to the 
 [ enigma of months, his mind gradually filled with some na'ive 
 I young dream of winning the squire, playing him with all sorts 
 !lof honest arts, beguiling him back to life— to his kind. 
 
 Those friendly messages of his through Mrs. Darcy had been 
 
 I very pleasant. 
 
 ' ^'I wonder whether my Oxford friends have been doing me 
 
 II a good turn with the squire," he said to Eose, laughing. He 
 I knows the provost, of course. If they talked me ever it is to 
 ' be hoped my scholarship didn't come up. Precious little the 
 provost used to think of my abilities for Greek prose !" 
 
 Eose yawned a little behind her gloved hand. Eobert had 
 i already talked a good deal about the squire, and he was certainly 
 I the only person in the group who was thinking of him. Even 
 I Catherine, absorbed in other anxieties, had forgotten to feel 
 any thrill at their approaching introduction to the man who 
 I imust of necessity mean so much to herself and Eobert. 
 i 
 
 ''Mr. and Mrs. Eobert Elsmere," said the butler, throwing 
 I open the carved and gilded doors. 
 
 I Catherine— following her husband, her fine grave head and 
 i beautiful neck held a little more erect than usual— was at first 
 conscious of nothing but the dazzle of western light which flood- ^ 
 
 I ed the room, striking the stands of Japanese lilies, and the white 
 [figure of a clown in the famous Watteau opposite the window, 
 
 , I 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 
 
 . I mistress of the Hah— as diminutive and elf-like as ever in spite 
 I of the added dignity of her sweeping silk and the draperies of 
 
 I ' black lace with which her tiny head was adorned— kept tight 
 
 i j hold of Catherine, and called a gentleman standing in a group 
 
 1 1) just behind her. 
 
 ''Eoger, here are Mr. and Mrs. Eobert Elsmere. Mr. Els- 
 
 j mere, the squire remembers you in petticoats, and I'm not sure 
 
 jji that I don't too." 
 
 Eobert, smiling, looked beyond her to the advancing figure* 
 
266 
 
 BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 of he squire, but if Mr. Wendover heard his sister's remark h' 
 took no notice of it. He held out his hand stiffly to Rober: 
 bowed to Catherine and Eose before ext?nding to them tb 
 same formal greeting, and just recognized Langham as havini 
 met him at Oxford. 
 
 Having done so he turned back to the knot of people wit 
 whom he had been engaged on their entrance. His manne 
 had been reserve itself. The hauteur of the grandee on his ow 
 ground was clearly marked in it, and Eobert could not hel 
 fancying that toward himself there had even been somethin, 
 more. And not one of those phrases which, under the circuo: 
 stances, would have been so easy and so gracious, as to Rol 
 ert's childish connection with the place, or as to the squire' 
 remembrance of his father, even though Mrs. Darcy had givei 
 him a special opening of the kind. I 
 
 The young rector instinctively drew himself together, lik*. 
 one who has received a blow, as he moved across to the other 
 side of the fire-place to shake hands with the worthy family doc 
 tor, old Meyrick, who was already well known to bun. Cath 
 erine, in some discomfort, for she too had felt their reception a 
 the squire's hands to be^a chilling one, sat down to talk to Mrs 
 Darcy, disagreeably conscious the while that Rose and Lang, 
 ham left to themselves were practically tete-a-tete, and that 
 moreover, a large stand of flowers formed a partial screen be 
 tween her and them. She could see, however, the gleam o: 
 Rose's upstretched neck, as Langham, who was leaning on thd 
 piano beside her, bent down to talk to her; and when she 
 looked next she caught a smiling motion of Langham's heac 
 and eyes toward the Romney portrait of Mr. Wendover'^ 
 grandmother, and was certain, when he stooped afterward tc 
 say something to his companion, that he was commenting ons 
 certain surface likeness there was between' her and the youn^ 
 auburn-haired 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 oJ 
 the squire— a tall, imperious, loud-voiced woman, famous m 
 London society for her relationships, her audacity, and the saloB 
 which in one way or another she managed to collect round her: 
 her dark, thin, irritable-looking husband; two neighboring 
 clerics — the first, by name Longstaff e, a somewhat inferior speci- 
 men of the cloth, whom Robert cordially disliked ; and the other, 
 Mr. Bickerton*a gentle Evangelical, one of those men who help 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 267 
 
 I io ease the harshness of a cross-gramed world, and to reconcile 
 
 II ithe cleverer or more impatient folk in it to the worries of living, 
 i i Lady Charlotte was already known by name to the Elsmeres 
 1 las the aunt of one of their chief friends of the neighborhood— 
 
 the wife of a neighboring squire whose property joined that of 
 Murewell Hall, one Lady Helen Yarley, of whom more present- 
 ly. Lady Charlotte was the sister of the Duke of Sedbergh, one 
 : of the greatest of dukes, and the sister also of Lady Helen's 
 i mother, Lady Wanless. Lady Wanless had died prematurely , 
 r and her two younger children, Helen and Hugh Flaxman, 
 r creatures both of them of unusually fine and fiery quality, had 
 i owed a good deal to their aunt. There were family alliances 
 P between the Sedberghs and the Wendovers, and Lady Charlotte 
 fjmade a point of keeping up with the squire. She adored 
 : cynics and people who said piquant things, and it amused her 
 ^ jto make* her large tyrannous hand feit by the squire's timid, 
 
 crack-brained, ridiciilous little sister. 
 A As to Dr. Meyrick, he was tall and gaunt as Don Quixote. 
 I,., His gray hair made a ragged fringe round his straight-backed 
 I head; he wore an old-fashioned neck-cloth; his long body had 
 a perpetual stoop, as though of deference, and his spectacled 
 g. ■ look of mild attentiveness had nothing in common with that 
 I ! medical self-assurance with which we are all nowadays so 
 ^ familiar. Eobert noticed presently that when he addressed 
 A Mrs. Darcy he said ''ma'am," making no bones at all about it; 
 ]^ i and his manner generally was the manner of one to whom class 
 ij distinctions were the profoundest reahty, and no burden at all 
 
 I i on a naturally humble temper. Dr. Baker, of Whindale, ac- 
 )j I customed to trouncing Mrs. Seaton, would have thought him a 
 J, j poor creature. 
 
 I': When dinner was announced, Robert found himself assigned 
 , to Mrs. Darcy ; the squire took Lady Charlotte. Catherine fell 
 j to Mr. Bickerton, Eose to Mr. Wynnstay, and the rest found 
 ' their way in as best they could. Catherine, seeing the distribu- 
 
 I I tion, was happy for a moment, till she found that if Rose was 
 J I covered on her right she was exposed to the full fire of the 
 J enemy on her left; in other words, that Langham was placed 
 , I between her and Dr. Meyrick. 
 
 ''Are your spirits damped at aU by this magnificence?'^ 
 Langham said to his neighbor as they sat down. The table was 
 Ijjl entirely covered with Japanese lilies, save tor^the splendid sil- 
 ' ver candelabra from which the ligh^ashed, first on to the faces 
 
268 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 rose-water 
 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 soup-plates 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 Eose, carelessly. ''I don't know how 
 it is, I think I must have been born for a palace." 
 
 Langham looked at her, at the daring harmony of color made 
 by the reddish gold of her hair, the warm whiteness of her skin, 
 and the brown-pink tints of her dress, at the crystals playing the 
 part of diam^cnds on her beautiful neck, and remembered Rob- 
 ert's remarks to him. The same irony mingled with the same 
 bitterness returned to him, and the elder brother's attitude be- 
 came once more temporarily difficult. "Who is your neigh- 
 bor?" he inquired of her presently. 
 
 ''Lady Charlotte's husband," she answered, mischievously, 
 under her breath. ' ' One needn't know much more about him, 
 I imagine." 
 
 " And that man opposite?" 
 
 "Robert's pet aversion," she said, calmly, without a change 
 of countenance, so that Mr. T.ongstalTe opposite, who was study- 
 ing her as he always studied pretty young women, stared at her 
 through her remark in sublime ignorance of its bearing. 
 
 ' ' And your sister's neighbor?" 
 
 "I can't hit him off in a sentence, he's toe good !" said Rose, 
 laughing, "all I can say is that Mrs. Bickerton has too many 
 3hildren, and the children have too many ailments for her ever 
 to dine out." 
 
 "That will do; I see the existence," said langham, with a 
 3hrug. "But he has the look of an apostle, though a rather 
 iiunted one.. Probably nobody here, except Robert, is fit to tie 
 [lis shoes." 
 
 "The squire could hardly be called empresse^'' 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 we»^ 
 not auite egual to the house/ - 
 
EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 269 
 
 ' ' What possible reason could he-have for treating Eobert with 
 those airs?" said Eose, 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 smUed at 
 her as she leaned back in her chair, her white arms and wrists 
 lying on her lap, and her slightly flushed face turned toward 
 him. They had been on these pleasant terms of camaraderie 
 ail day, and the intimacy between them had been still making 
 
 strides. ^ 
 
 ^' Do you imagine I don't appreciate Robert because I make 
 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. 
 .1 can't like it— I can't— their life. I should hate it! And 
 yet—" 
 
 She sighed remorsefully, and Langham, who five mmutes 
 before could have wished her to be always smiling, could now 
 have almost asked to fix her as she was; the eyes veiled, the 
 Bolt lips relaxed in this passing instant of gravity. 
 
 ''Ah! I forgot"— and she looked up again with light be- 
 witching appeal— 'Hhere 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 speak- 
 ing to her, and Langham was left to the intermittent mercies 
 of Dr. Meyrick, who though glad to talk, was also quite con- 
 tent, apparently, to judge from the radiant placidity of his 
 look, to examine his wine, study his menu, and enjoy his en- 
 trees in silence, undisturbed by the uncertain pleasures of con- 
 versation. 
 
 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 
 vsith occasional flashes of shrill, ungainly laughter, to Lady 
 
270 
 
 KGB EST ELSMERE. 
 
 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 drawing-room, 
 all the lower half had a thin and shrunken look. But the 
 shoulders, which had the scholar's stoop, and the head were 
 massive and squarely outlined. The head was specially remark- 
 able 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 reddish-gray' the 
 eyes small, but deep set under fine brows, and the thin-lipped 
 wrinkled mouth and long chin had a look of hard, sarcastic 
 strength. 
 
 Generally the countenance was that of an old man; the fur- 
 rows were deep, the skin brown and shriveled. But the alert- 
 ness and force of the man's whole expression showed that, if 
 the body was beginning to faH, the mind was as fresh and 
 masterful as ever. His hair, worn rather longer than usual, 
 his loosely fitting dress and slouching carriage gave him an 
 un-English look. In general he impressed Robert as a sort of 
 curious combination of the foreign savant with the Enghsh 
 grandee, for while his manner showed a considerable conscious- 
 ness 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 weU knew, in points of social conduct. And as Robert 
 watched him, his thoughts flew back again to the hbrary, to 
 this man's past, to all that those eyes had seen and those hknds 
 had touched. He felt already a mysterious, almost a yearning 
 sense of acqaintance with the being who had just received him 
 with such chilling, such unexpected indifference. 
 
 The squire's manners, no doubt, were notorious, but even so 
 his reception of the new rector of the parish, the son of a man 
 mtimately connected for years with the place, and with his 
 father, and to whom he had himself shown what was for him 
 considerable civflity by letter and message, was sufficiently 
 startlmg. Robert, however, had no time to speculate on the 
 causes of it, for Mrs. Darcy, released from Mr. Wynnstay 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 211 
 
 threw herself with glee on to her longed-for prey, the young 
 and interesting-looking rector. First of all she cross-examined 
 him as to his Hterary employments, and when by dint of much 
 questioning she had forced particulars from him, Kobert's 
 mouth twitched as fee watched her scuttling away from the 
 subject, seized evidently with internal terrors lest she should 
 have precipitated herseK 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 Selden's last novel, ^%ove in a Marsh," 
 and when he confessed ignorance she paused a moment, fork 
 in hand, her smaU wrinkled face looking almost as bewildered 
 as when, three minutes before, her rashness had well-nigh 
 brought her face to face with Gregory of Tours as a topic of 
 conversation. n .jt 
 
 But she was not daunted long. With little airs and bridhngs 
 infinitely diverting, she exchanged inquiry for the most beguil- 
 ing 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 Eose, and the squire with 
 Lady Charlotte— that she had once written a novel f Eobert, 
 who had been posted up in many things concerning the neigh- 
 borhood by Lady Helen Varley, could answer most truly that 
 he had. Whereupon Mrs. Darcy beamed all over. 
 
 Ah! but you haven't read it," she said, regretfully. ''It 
 was when I was maid of honor, you know. No maid of honor 
 had ever written a novel before. It was quite an event. Dear 
 Prince Albert burrowed a copy of me one night to read in bed— 
 I have 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 queen's 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 attention^ as, in his opinion, a pmk and 
 white nobody at a country dinner-party ought to be, and was 
 -lad of the diversion afforded him by some aggressive remark 
 }f his wife, He and she differed on three main points— politics ; 
 
272 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the decoration of their London house, Mr. W} nnstay being a 
 lover of Louise Quinze, and Lady Charlotte a preacher of Morris; 
 and the composition of their dinner-parties. 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 Els- 
 mere, cat-and-m_ouse 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 hke 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 intrusted to the post and a publisher? 
 
 Eobert 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 remembcr,^^ she began, lookmg at him a little dark- 
 ly, askance," what I said about my hobbies the other day? 
 Nov/, Mr. Elsmere, wili|^;ou tell me— don't mind me— don't be 
 polite— have you ever heard people tell stories of me? Have 
 you ever, for instance, heard them call me a— a-tuft-hunter?" 
 
 ''Never!" said Robert, heartily. 
 
 '' They might," she said, sighing, ''lam a tuft-hunter. I 
 can't help it. And yet we are a good family, you know. I 
 suppose it was that year at court, and that horrid Warham 
 afterward. Twentv 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 hadn't 
 been for that I should have died— my husband knew I should. 
 It was the world, the flesh, and the devil, of course, but it 
 couldn't be helped. But now," and she looked plaintively at 
 her companion, as though challenging him to a candid reply, 
 ''you ivoiild be more interesting, wouldn't you, to tell the 
 truth, if you had a handle to your name?" 
 
 "Immeasurably," cried Robert, stifling bis laughter witb 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 273 
 
 immense difficulty, as he saw she had no inclination to laugh. 
 
 ^*Well, yes, you know. But it isn't 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— it's 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 aU comes right. His father didn't die in Brazil 
 without children, after all, and the title—" 
 
 What 1" cried Robert, " so he ivasn't Mr. Jones?" 
 
 Mrs. Darey looked a little conscious. 
 
 "Well, no," she said, guiltily, " not just at the end. But it 
 really doesn't 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 ex- 
 pression 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 Ubtle private 
 eddy was effaced. The squire had been telhng an anecdote, 
 and his clerical neighbors had been laughing at it. 
 
 "Ah !" cried Mr. Longstaffe, throwing himself back in his 
 chair with a chuckle, "that was an archbishop worth hav- 
 ing !" 
 
 " 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 squire's keen eye, as he 
 sat looking down the table, with his large nervous hands clasped 
 before him, w^as specially fixed upon himself. 
 
 " May we hear the story ?" he said, bending forward. Cath- 
 erine, 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 Heber's 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 expe- 
 rience has given me I hand on to you. Place before your eyes 
 
274 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 two precepts, and two only. One is, Preach the Gospel ; and 
 the other is— Put doivn enthusiasm P " 
 
 There was a sudden gleam of steely animation in the squire's 
 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 rela- 
 tions 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 squire's anecdote. Lady Char- 
 lotte's eyeglass, having adjusted itself for a moment to the dis 
 tant figure of the rector, -with regard to whom she had been 
 asking Dr. Meyrick for particulars, quite unmindful of Cath- 
 erine's neighborhood, turned back again tov/ard the squire. 
 
 *'An unblushing old worldling, I should call your arch- 
 bishop," 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 squire's neighborhood generally called out an 
 unusual crop of them. The squire was stiU 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, in- 
 differently. But that is a pet saying of mine— the Church of 
 England in a nutshell." 
 
 Robert flushed, and after a moment's hesitation bent for- 
 ward. 
 
 "What do you suppose," he asked, quietly, "your arch- 
 bishop meant, Mr. Wendover, by enthusiasm ? Nonconformity, 
 I imagine. " 
 
 "Oh, very possibly !" and again Robert found the hawk- 
 like 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 Eanglseys, 
 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 
 don't expect Mr. Elsmere to agree with you ?" 
 Mr. Wendover made her a littli* ^ow. 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 275 
 
 I have very fittle sangumeness of any sort in my composi- 
 tion/' he said, dryly. , 
 
 * a should like to know," said Robert, taking no notice ot 
 this by-play— I should like to know, Mr. Wendover, leaving 
 the archbishop out of count, whi^fc you imderstand by this word 
 enthusiasm in this maxim of youvs ?" 
 
 An excellent manner, " thought Lady Charlotte, who, for all 
 her noisiness, was an extremely shiawd woman, " an excellent 
 manner and an unprovoked attack.^' 
 
 ^Catherine's trained eye, however, had detected signs m 
 Eobert's 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. 
 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 
 right-hand neighbor with straw torn off the roof of your left- 
 hand neighbor ; the custom, in short, of robbing Peter to pro- 
 pitiate Paul." .J• 
 *'Preciseiy,"saidMr. Wynnstay, warmly; '^all the ridicu- 
 lous 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 
 nrinciple is always the same. " And mindful of all those intol- 
 erable 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. 
 
 ^' A n d 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 Us 
 market." 
 
 He spoke with a harsh, contemptuous insistence which was 
 gradually setting every nerve in Robert's body tingling. He 
 bent forward again, his long thin frame and boyish, bright- 
 complexioned face making an effective contrast to the squire's 
 bronzed and wrinkled sqfuareness. 
 
 Oh, if you and Mr.^Wyniistay are prepared to draw an in- 
 
276 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 dictment against your generation and all its works, 1 have no 
 more to say," he said, smiling still, though his voice had risen 
 a Httle 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, hut if it is to be made syn 
 onymous' with social progress I give up. The subject is to^^ 
 big. Only—" 
 
 He hesitated. Mr. Wynnstay was studying him with some- 
 what insolent coolness ; Lady Charlotte's eyeglass never wav- 
 ered from his face, and he felt through every fibre the tender, 
 timid admonitions of his wife's eyes. 
 
 However," he went on, after an instant, ^^I imagine that 
 we should find it difficult anyhow to discover common ground. 
 I regard your archbishop's maxim, Mr. Wendover," and his 
 tone quickened and grew louder, ''as first of all a contradic- 
 tion in terms; and in the next place, to me, almost all enthu- 
 siasms are respectable !" 
 
 "You are one of those people, I see," returned Mr. Wend- 
 over, after a pause, with the same nasal emphasis and the 
 same hauteur, who imagine we owe civilization 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 beheve that the world, so 
 far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by the Iiead,''' and 
 he flung the noun at Eobert 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, alJ 
 the half -pence. 
 
 The impassive tone had gradually warmed to a heat which 
 was unmistakable. Lady Charlotte looked on with increasing 
 rehsh. To her all society was a comedy played for her enter- 
 tainment, and she detected something more dramatic than 
 usual in the juxtaposition of these two men. That young rec- 
 tor might be v/orth 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 bis ears; while Mr. Long- 
 stafile, 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 disput- 
 
BOBEfiT ELSMEEB. ^77 
 
 ants- the storm clouds were deepening outside, aad rain had 
 begun to patter on the windows. Mrs. Darcy was just calimg 
 Sntion to the weather when the squire unexpectedly 
 returned to the charge. . . t ,.a^ 
 
 - Se one necessary thing in life," he said, turning to Lady 
 rharlotte a slight irritating smile playing round his strong 
 ^oS ' ' 'iB-nof to be duped. Put too much faith in these fine 
 Sgs the altruists talk of, and you arrive one day at the con- 
 S of Louis XIV. after the battle of Eamilhes : D^eu a dom 
 S S ce i^ai fait pour lui V Read yo- Kenan ; re- 
 mind yourself at every turn that it is quite possible after a 
 r^egSst rmy turn out to be in the right of it, and you wdl 
 find at any rat, that the world gets on excellently well with- 
 nnt vour blundering efforts to set it straight. And so we get 
 baK the archbishop's maxim -adapted, no doubt to Eng- 
 S requirements," and he shrugged his great shoulders ex- 
 p^esSrX: " P<^^ Mr. Elsmere, of course, and the rest of our 
 
 ''ll'te^toked down the table, and the strident voice 
 sounded harsher than ever as it rose above the sudden noise of 
 the storm outside. Robert's bright eyes were fixed on the 
 squire, and before Mr. Wendover stopped, Catherme could see 
 the words of reply trembhng on his lips. ^ . ^ 
 
 - 1 am well content," he said, with a curious dry mtens^y 
 of tone " I give you your Eenan. Only leave us poor dupes 
 our Xsions.' wJwiU not quarrel with the division. Wi.h 
 you all the cynics of history; with us all the 'scorners of the 
 ground 'from the world's beginning until now!" 
 
 The squire made a quick impatient movement. Mr. Wynn- 
 stay looked significantly at his wife, who dropped her eyeglass 
 with a little irrepressible smile. 
 
 As for Eobert, leaning forward with hastened breath, it 
 seemed to him that his eyes and the squire's crossed like 
 swords In Robert's 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 man's culpable 
 neglect. The dinner party, the splendor of the room, the con- 
 versation, excited a kind of disgust in him. If it were not for 
 Catherine's pale face opposite he could hardly have maintained 
 his self control, 
 
278 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Mrs. Darcx, 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 philo- 
 sophical. It's 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 voire frere, madame, &est 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 didn't you support Robert ?" she said to him, impul- 
 sively, 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 
 ^as 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 Cathe- 
 rine, 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 clergyman's 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. Elsmere's sister ?" said a loud voice over Rose's 
 head ; and Rose, who had been turning over an illustrated book, 
 with a mind wholly detached from it, looked up to see Lady 
 Charlotte's massive form standing over her. 
 
 ''No, his sister-in-law," said Rose, fiushing in spite of herself, 
 for Lady Charlotte was distinctly formidable. 
 
 "Hum," said her questioner, depositing herself beside ber. 
 
EOBEBT ELSMERE, 
 
 279 
 
 never saw two sisters more unlike. You have got a very- 
 argumentative brother-in-law." 
 
 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 en- 
 thusiasms. I suppose you muddle about among the poor like 
 other people ?" 
 
 I know nothing about the poor, " said Rose. 
 
 ^*0h, 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 
 ^he 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. 
 
 Don't read," said Lady Charlotte, complacently. **Look 
 at me. It's your duty to talk to me, you know ; and I won't 
 make myself any more disagreeable than I can help. I gene- 
 rally 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, and 
 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 inter- 
 esting, 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 
 ^emselves. Rose's brilliant, vivacious beauty had caught her 
 
280 
 
 BOBERT EL8MERE. 
 
 eye at dinner ; she adored beauty as she adored anything effect- 
 ive, and she always took a queer pleasure in bullying her way 
 into a girl's liking. It is a great thing to be persuaded that at 
 bottom you have a good heart. Lady Charlotte was so per- 
 suaded, and allowed herself many things in consequence. 
 
 What shall we talk about?" said Rose, demurely. What 
 a magnificent old house .this is !" 
 
 Stuff and nonsense ! I don't 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 Hne 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 tor- 
 inentor, felt her spirits rise to an encounter. 
 
 "Really— Lady Charlotte"— and she looked down, and 
 then up, with^ 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? 
 More's the pity. No woman who respects herself ought to 
 play the piano nowadays. A professional told me the other 
 day that until nineteen twentieths 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 can't 
 conceive anything more passe than, amateur pianoforte play- 
 ing !" 
 
 " I don't 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 neighbor, 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 in- 
 formation ; 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, Byronic- 
 looking creature who came witii^ j-ou? I should not have im^ 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 281 
 
 agined 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 Eose, inwardly furi- 
 ous, was obHged 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 Eose never 
 trusted to any other hands but her own without trepidation, 
 had just arrived, and its owner, more erect than usual, be- 
 cause more nervous, was trying to prop up a dilapidated music- 
 stand which Mrs. Darcy hari unearthed for her. As Langham 
 came in, she looked up and beckoned to him. 
 
 ''Do you see?" she said to him, impatiently, 'Hhey have 
 made 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 half -plaint- 
 ive 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 music-stand. '' I never saw 
 such a person in my life." 
 
 ''Macaulay's Lady Holland without the brains," suggested 
 Langham, with languid vindictiveness as he gave her the note. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Wynnsfcay and the squire sauntered in to- 
 gether. 
 
 village Norman-Neruda?" whispered the guest to the 
 host. The squire shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ''Hush!" said Lady Charlotte, looking severely at her hus- 
 band. Mr. Wynnstay's smile instantly disappeared ; he leaned 
 against the doorway and stared sulkily at the ceiHng. 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 pony- 
 
282 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 carriage which would take him back to his pale, overweighted 
 spouse. 
 
 First came wild snatches of march music, primitive, savage, 
 non-European; 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 melan- 
 cholies of modern feeling. 
 
 '^Ah, but excellent!'''' said Lady Charlotte once, under her 
 breath, at a pause; and what entrain — what beauty!" 
 
 For Eose's 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 picture-like distinctness. There 
 was jasmine at her waist and among the gold of her hair; the 
 crystals on her neck, and on the little shoe thrown forward be- 
 yond her dress, caught the lamp-light. 
 
 "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. Darey, who had a piano in her sitting- 
 room 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 people's feeling, Catherine realized 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 sister-in law's success, 
 went smiling to talk of it to Mrs. Darcy, while Catherine, with 
 a gentle coldness, answered Mr. Longstaife's 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 
 
IP 
 
 ROBEET ELSMEBE. 283 
 
 eyes taking in the same vision that had charmed Lady Char- 
 iotte's. What a " child of grace and genius !" 
 
 " But do you like it?" she persisted. 
 
 ' * Like it~ltke accompanying your playing ?" 
 r '^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 Bee^ 
 thoven. How the girl threw herself into it, bringing out the 
 Trailing love-song of the Andante, the dainty tripping mirth of 
 the Scherzo, in a way which set every nerve in Langham vibrat- 
 ing! Yet the art of ifc 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 to night, 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 paralyze 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 Cath- 
 erine as to how her sister's 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 softly and friendly. She smiled. How little I im- 
 agined that first evening that you cared for music !" 
 
 ''Or about anything else worth caring for?" he asked her, 
 laughing, but with always that little melancholy note in the 
 iaugh. 
 
 '' Oh, if you like," she said, with a shrug of her white shoul- 
 ders. '' I believe you talked to Catherine the whole of the first 
 evening, when you weren't reading ' Hamlet ' in the corner, 
 about the arrsingements for women's education at Oxford." 
 
 Could I have found a more respectable subject?" be in- 
 quired of her. 
 
284 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ''The adjective is excellent," she said, with a little lace, as 
 she put her violin into its case. '' If I remember right, Cath- 
 erine 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 Moliere wrote plays in it, and German because of 
 Wagner. But they are my French and my Grerman. I wouldn't 
 advise anybody else to steal them !" 
 
 Langham was silent, watching the movements of the girl's 
 agile fingers. 
 
 '' I wonder," he said at last, slowly, ''when I shall play that 
 Beethoven again?" 
 
 /' To-morrow morning if you have a conscience," she said, 
 dryly; "we murdered one or two passages in fine style." 
 
 He looked at her, startled. "But I go by the morning 
 train!" There was an instant's 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 to-morrow after- 
 noon." o 
 
 "Then we sha'n't 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 dehghtful intimity, of artistic freedom and pleas- 
 ure, and those threadbare, monotonous weeks into which he 
 was to slip back on the morrow, awoke in him a mad, inconse- 
 quent sting of disgust, of self-pity. 
 
 "No, we shall finish nothing," he said, in a voice which only 
 she could bear, 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 aU our own doing. Perhaps destiny begins things 
 — friendship, for instance ; but afterward it is absurd to talk of 
 anything but ourselves. We keep our friends, our chances, our 
 
:B0BERT EtSMEBE. 
 
 285 
 
 ! -^our joys," she went on, hurriedly, trying desperately to gen- 
 ' eralize, ' ' or we throw them away willfully, because we choose. " 
 
 Their eyes were riveted on each other. 
 I ' ' Not willfully, " he said, under his breath. ' ' But— no matter. 
 ^ May I take you at your word, Miss Leyburn ? Wretched shirker 
 that I am, whom*^ even Kobert's 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 key-board, in- 
 stinctively felt for hers, for one instant— and another, and m- 
 • other— she gave it to him. 
 
 Albert, come here!" exclaimed Lady Charlotte, beckoning 
 to her husband; and Albert, though with a bad grace, obeyed. 
 
 I >' Just go and ask that girl to come and talk to me, will you? 
 Why on earth didn't you make friends with her at dinner?" , 
 
 I The husband made some irritable answer, and the wife 
 
 i laughed. 
 
 I " Just like you !" she said, with a good humor which seemed 
 to him solely caused by the fact of his non-success with the 
 beauty at table. ' ' You always expect to kill at the first stroke. 
 
 I I mean to take her in tow. Go and bring her here." 
 
 Mr. Wynnstay sauntered off with as much dignity as his 
 
 l-^' stature was capable of. He found Eose tying up her music al 
 
 I one end of the piano, while Langham was preparing to shut 
 the key-board. 
 
 There was something appeasing in the girl's handsomeness 
 I Mr. Wynnstay laid down his airs, paid her various compli 
 ments, 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. 
 
 '*0h, Mr. Langham, you play so beautifully! Do play t 
 solo!" 
 
 He subsided on to the music bench obediently. On any or 
 ! dinary occasion tortures could not have induced him to per« 
 form in a room fuU of strangers. He had far too lively anci 
 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 arm-chair a little way off, hei 
 tii>v toot beating time. Eose stopped talking, started, tried to 
 1 listen. But Lady Charlotte had had enough music, and so had 
 
286 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERJBl. 
 
 Mr. Longstaffe, who was endeavoring to joke himself into the 
 good graces of the Duke of Sedbergh's sister. The din of con- 
 versation rose at the challenge of the piano, and Langham was 
 soon overcrowded. 
 
 Musically, it was perhaps as well, for the player's inward 
 tumult was so great that what his hands did he hardly knew 
 or cared. He felt himself the greatest criminal unhung. Sud- 
 denly, through all that willful mist of epicurean feeling which 
 had been in wrapping him, there had pierced a sharp, illumin- 
 ing beam from a girl's eyes aglow with joy, with hope, with 
 tenderness. 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 I 
 encroach on a young life, like some creeping parasitic growth, 
 taking all, able to give nothing in return— not even one genu- 
 ine 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 ahke to forget ! He shrinks from himself as one shrinks 
 from a man capable of injuring anything weak and helpless. 
 To despise the world's social code, and then to fail conspicu- 
 ously below its simplest articles ; to aim at being pure intelli- 
 gence, pure, open-eyed rationality, and not even to succeed in 
 being a gentleman, as the poor common-place world under- 
 stands it! Oh, to fall at her feet, and ask her pardon before 
 r^arting forever! But no— no more posing; no more drama- 
 tizing. How can he get away most quietly— make least sign? 
 7he thought of that walk home in the darkness fills him with a 
 passion of irritable impatience. 
 
 Lpok at that Romney, Mr. Elsmere ; just look at it I" cried 
 Dr. Meyrick, excitedly; ''did you ever see anything finer? 
 There was one of those London dealer fellows down here last 
 summer ofiPered the squire four thousand pounds down on the 
 nail for it." 
 
 In this way Meyrick had been taking Robert round the draw- 
 ing-room, doing the honors 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 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 287 
 
 i in him was still tingling with anger, he had done his best to 
 j keep up indifferent talk on local matters with Mr. Bickerton. 
 i Inwardly he was asking himself whether he should ever sit at 
 j the squire's table and eat his bread again, tt seemed to him 
 1 fehat they had had a brush which would be difficiiit to forget. 
 A.nd as he sat there before the squire's 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 ! 
 I * But as the minutes passed on, the rector had cooled down. 
 i-The sweet, placable, scrupulous nature began to blame itself, 
 i ^'What, play your cards so badly, give up the game so rashly, 
 the very first round? Nonsense! Patience and try agciin. 
 I There must be some cause in the background. No need to be 
 i white-livered, but every need, in the case of such a man as the 
 I squire, to take no hasty, needless offense." 
 I So he had cooled and cooled, and now here were Meyrick and 
 he close to the squire and his companion. The two men, as 
 the rector approached, were discussing some cases of common 
 -inclosure that had just taken place in the neighborhood. 
 Robert listened a moment, then struck in. Presently, when 
 the chat dropped, he began to express to the squire his pleas- 
 ure in the use of the library. His manner was excellent, 
 courtesy itself, but without any trace of effusion. 
 I ''I believe," he said at last, smiling, ''my father used to be 
 I allowed the same privileges. If so, it quite accounts for the 
 way in which he clung to Mure well." 
 
 "I had never the honor of Mr. Edward Elsmere's facquaint- 
 ance," said the squire, frigidly. ''During the time of his occu- 
 pation 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?" 
 
 ''1 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 north-east corner of the 
 park?" 
 
 Robert was inexpressibly galled by the movement, by the 
 words themselves. The sq^e had not yet addressed a single 
 
288 
 
 ROB^UT ELSMERE. 
 
 1 
 
 •4 
 
 remark of any kind about Murevvell to him. There was a de- 
 liberate intention to exclude implied in this appeal to the man 
 who was not the man of the place, on such a local point, wliich 
 struck Robert very forcibly. 
 
 He walked away to whei*e his wife was sitting. 
 
 ''What time is it?" whispered Catherine, looking up at him. 
 
 '' Time to go," he returned, smiling, but she caught the dis- 
 composure 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 Eose?" 
 
 A minute later there was a general leave-taking. 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 lighted up, 
 the thin, bony fingers gesticulating freely. 
 
 The husband and wife exchanged glances as they stood wait- 
 ing, while Lady Charlotte, in her loudest voice, was command- 
 ing Rose to come and see her in London any Thursday after 
 the first of November. Robert was very sore. Catherine pas- 
 sionately 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 gram- 
 mar-school head master. Why can't you leave people where 
 they belong?" 
 
 "I have already pointed out to you," Lady Charlotte ob- 
 served, calmly, "that the world has moved on since you were 
 launched into it. I can't keep up class distinctions, to please 
 you; otherwise, no doubt, being the devoted wife I am, I might 
 try. However, my dear, we both have our fancies. You col- 
 lect Sevres china with or without a pedigree," and she coughed 
 
BpBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 289 
 
 drjly; collect promising young women. On the whole, I 
 think my hobby is more benejQcial to you than yours is profita- 
 ble to me." 
 
 Mr. Wynnstay was furious. Only a week before he had been 
 childishly, shamefully taken in by a Jew curiosity dealer from 
 Vienna, to his wife's huge amusement. If looks could have 
 crushed her. Lady Charlotte would have been crushed. Put 
 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, mur- 
 muring under his mustache words that would hardly have 
 borne publicity, while Ladj^ 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 water-proof 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 
 Catherine's 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— d la Henslowe— of my proceedings 
 since I came. Henslowe lays it on thick— paints with a will. 
 The squire receives me afterward as the meddlesome pragmat- 
 ical priest he understands me to be; puts his foot down to 
 begin with ; and, hinc illce lacrymce. It's as clear as daylight I 
 I thought that man had an odd twist of the lip as he passed 
 pie." • - 
 
290 
 
 /fOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 '^Tlienv* disagreeable evening will be the worst of it," said 
 Catherine, proudly. imagine, Eobert, you can defend 
 
 yourself against that bad man?" 
 
 •He has got the start; he has no scruples; and it remains 
 t^j 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 can't 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, unman- 
 ageable,- inexplicable being !" 
 
 Elsmere sighed aloud. Like all quick, imaginative natures 
 he was easily depressed, and the squire's somber figure had fo^ 
 the moment darkened his wdiole horizon. Catherine laid her 
 cheek against his arm in the darkness, consoling, remonstrat- 
 ing, every other thought lost in her sympathy with Eobert's 
 worries. Langham and Rose shpped out of her head ; Elsmere's 
 step had quickened, as it always did when he was excited, and 
 6he kept up without thinking. 
 
 When Langham found the others had shot ahead in the 
 darkness, and he and his neighbor were tete-a-tete, 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 deUberation 
 born of his inner conflict into a discussion of the German sys- 
 tem 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. 
 Anselm's under-graduate, one Dashwood, an old pupil of his, 
 had been lately at Berlin for six months, studying at the Con- 
 servatorium. Not long ago, being anxious to become a school- 
 master, he had written to Langham for a testimonial. His 
 letter had contained a full account of his musical life. Lang- 
 ham 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 role was dismally over- 
 done. 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 291 
 
 /or 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 half mile 
 of listening is better guessed than analyzed. There are certain 
 moments of shame, which only women know, and which seem 
 to sting and burn out of youth all its natural sweet self -love. A 
 woman may outlive them, but never forget them. If she pass 
 ihrough one at nineteen her cheek will grow hot over it at sev- 
 enty. Her companion's measured tone, the flow of deliberate 
 speech which came from him, the nervous aloofness of his atti- 
 tude—every detail in that walk seemed to Eose's excited sense 
 an insult. 
 
 As the park gate swung behind them she felt a sick longing 
 for Catherine's shelter. Then ail the pride in her rushed to the 
 rescue and held that swooning dismay at the heart of her in 
 check. And forthwith she capped Langham's minute account 
 of the scale-method of a famous Berlin pianist by some witty 
 stories of the latest London prodigy, a child- violinist, incredibly 
 gifted, dirty, and greedy, whom she had made friends with in 
 town. The young girl's voice rang out sharp and hard under, 
 the trees. Where, in fortune's name, were the lights of tlie 
 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, Eobert has gone to the study; will you go 
 and smoke with him?" 
 
 ''By all means. Good-night, then, Mrs. Elsmere." 
 
 Catherine gave him her hand. Rose was trying hard to ill 
 the lock of the gate into the hasp, and had no hand free. Be 
 sides, he did not approach her. 
 
 " Good-night!" she said to him over her shoulder. 
 
 ''Oh, and Mr. LanghamJ" Catherine called after him as ho 
 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 o'clock train." 
 
 "There should be a law against interfering with people's 
 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 girl's reck- 
 
292 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 less voice? Catherine could not see her in the darkness, x>m 
 the sister felt a sudden trouble invade her. 
 Eose, darling, you are not tired?" 
 " Oh, dear, no ! Good-night, sleep well. What a goose Mrs. 
 Darcy is r 
 
 And, barely submitting to be kissed, Rose ran up the steps 
 and upstairs. 
 
 Langham and Eobert smoked till midnight. Langham for 
 the first time gave Elsmere an outline of his plans for the fut- 
 ure, and Robert, filled with dismay at this final breach of Ox- 
 ford and human society, and the only form of practical life pos- 
 sible to such a man, threw himself into protests more and more, 
 vigorous and affectionate. Langham Hstened to them at first 
 with somber silence, then with an impatience which gradually 
 reduced Robert to a sore puffing at his pipe. There was a long 
 space dm^ing which they sat together, the ashes of the Httle 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 sprung up with an impatient shake of his long body, and 
 Langham took the hint, gave him a cold good-night, 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 eaemy, and comes nearer than ever before to losing an 
 eld 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. 
 
 j^ose !— pshaw ! Catherine httle 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 discom- 
 fort that weighed upon him were so many that the weary mind 
 made no attempt to analyze them. He had a sense of disgrace, 
 of having stabbed something gentle that had leaned upon him, 
 mingled with a strong intermittent feehng of unutterable relief. 
 Perhaps his keenest regret was that, after all, it had not been 
 love! He had offered himself up to a girl's just contempt, but 
 he had no recompense in the shape of a great addition to knowl- 
 edge, to experience. Save for a few doubtfixl moments at the 
 
ROBEBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 293 
 
 beginning, when he had all but- surprised himself in somettiing 
 more poignant, what he had been conscious of had been noth- 
 ing more than a suave and delicate charm of sentiment, a 
 subtle surrender to one exquisite aesthetic impression after 
 another. And these things in other relations the Y/orld had 
 yielded him before. 
 
 Am I sane?" he muttered to himself. Have I ever been 
 sane ? - Probably not. The disproportion between my motives 
 and othpr men's is too great to be normal. Well, at least I am 
 sane enough to shut myself up. Long after that beautiful 
 child had forgotten she ever saw me I ^hall still be doing pen- 
 ance 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 toward 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. Eose, when she came in, 
 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 self- 
 scorn. The incidents of the^ week passed before her one by 
 one— her sallies, her defiances, her impulsive friendliness, the 
 elan, the happiness of the last two days, the self-abandonment 
 of this evening. Oh, intolerable — intolerable ! 
 
 And all to end with the intimation that she had been behav- 
 ing like a forward child — had gone too far and must be admon- 
 ished—made to feel accordingly ! The poisoned arrow pierced 
 deeper and deeper ii^*^ girl's shrinking pride. The very 
 foundations of self-respect seemed overthrown. 
 
 Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her 
 own flgure, 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. Eose sprung 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 dress- 
 ing-gown, that fell loosely about it ; a rounded arm upstretched ; 
 
294 
 
 ROBEET EL8MERE. 
 
 a head, still crowned with its jasmine 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. 
 
 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 Langham's, 
 looked over the corn-fields and the distance. The stubbles 
 gleamed faintly ; the dark woods, the clouds teased by the ris- 
 ing wind, sent a moaning voice to greet her. 
 
 I hate him I I hate him !" she cried to the darkness, clinch- 
 ing her cold little hand. 
 
 Then presently she slipped on to her knees, and buried her 
 head in the bed-clothes. 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, ahen nature which has 
 laid this paralyzing spell upon her as it is, to reason herself 
 back to peace— to indiflerence. The poor child flies from her 
 own half -understood trouble ; will none of it ; murmurs again 
 wildly: 
 
 ''I hate him! I hate him! Cold-blc^ded— ungrateful— un- 
 kind!" 
 
 In vain. A pair of melancholy eyes haunt, inthrall her in- 
 most soul. The charm of the denied, the inaccessible is on 
 her, woman-like. 
 
 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 many-colored lights it had thrown 
 upon life, the intoxicating sense of artistic power. In vain. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 295 
 
 " The stream will not flow, and the hills will not rise; 
 4-nd the colors 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 paiB 
 does a woman first begin to live ? Ah ! why should it hurt so 
 — this long-awaited birth of the soul? 
 
 BOOK IIL—THE SQUIRE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The evening of the Murewell Hall dinner-party proved to bc^ 
 a date of some importance in the lives of two or three persons. 
 Eose was not likely to forget it ; Langham carried about with 
 him the picture of the great drawing-room, its stately light and 
 shade, and its scattered figures, through many a dismal subse- 
 quent 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 squire's sentiments 
 toward him, which had been on the whole friendly enough, with 
 the exception of a'slight nuance of contempt provoked in Mr. 
 Wendover's mind by all forms of the clerical calling, had been 
 completely transformed in the course of the afternoon before the 
 dinner-party, and transformed by the report of his agent. Hens- 
 lowe, who knew certain sides of the squire's character by heart, 
 had taken Time by the forelock. For fourteen years before Rob- 
 ert entered the parish he had been king of it. Mr. Preston, Rob- 
 ert's predecessor, had never given him a moment's trouble. The 
 agent had developed a habit of drinking, had favored his friends 
 and spited his enemies, and had allowed certain distant portions 
 of the estate to go finely to ruin, quite undisturbed by any senti- 
 mental meddling o| the priestly sort. Then the old rector had 
 been gathered to the majority, and this long-legged busybody 
 had taken his place, a man, according to the agent, as full of com- 
 munisticalnotious as an egg is full of meat, and always ready to 
 poke his nose into other people's business. And as all men like 
 mastery, but especially Scotchmen, and as during even the first 
 few months of the new rector's tenure of office it became tolera- 
 bly evident to Henslowe that young Elsmere would soon become 
 
296 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the ruling force of the neighborhood unless measures were taken 
 to prevent it, the agent, over his nocturnal drams, bad taken 
 sharp and cunning councils with himself concerning the young 
 man. 
 
 The state of Mile End had been originally the result of indo- 
 lence and caprice on his part rather than of any set pm:pose of 
 neglect. As soon, however, as it was brought to his notice by 
 Elsmere, who did it, to begin with, in the friendliest way, it 
 became a point of honor with the agent to let theplace go to the 
 devil, nay, to hurry it there. For some time notwithstanding, 
 he avoided an open breach with the rector. He met Elsmere's 
 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 ill-success had 
 probably excited in Elsmere a confidence of ultimate victory 
 which had tended to keep him cool in the presence of Henslowe's 
 hostility. But Henslowe had been all along merely waiting for 
 the squire. He had served the owner of the Mure well estate 
 for fourteen years, and if he did not know that owner's peculi- 
 arities by this time, might he obtain certain warm comers in 
 the next hfe 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 
 life-time— 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 utii 
 ized. He saw the squire within forty-eight hours of his arrival 
 at Murewell. His fancy picture of Robert and his doings was 
 introduced with adroitness, and colored with great skill, and he 
 left the squu^e walking up and down his library, chafing alter- 
 nately at the monstrous fate which had planted this sentimen- 
 tal agitator at his gates, and at the memory of his own misplaced 
 civilities toward the intruder. In the evening those civilities 
 were abundantly avenged, as we have seen. 
 
BOBEBt ELSMEEE. 
 
 29^ 
 
 Robert was mucli perplexed as to his next step. His heart 
 was very sore. The condition of Mile End— those gaunt-eyed 
 women and wasted children, all the sordid details of their un- 
 just, avoidable suffering weighed upon his nerves perpetually. 
 But he was conscious that this state of feeling was one of ten- 
 sion, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it was impossible he 
 shoiild let the matter alone, he was anxious to do nothing rashly. 
 
 However, two days after the dinner-party 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 slighest pos- 
 sible 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 impos- 
 sibility of carrying his wishes with regard to Mile End into ef- 
 fect. They had been laid before the squire, of course, but the 
 squire had his own ideas and wasn't 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. % ■ 
 
 'Thave seen him, but I have not talked to him on this par- 
 ticular matter," said the rector, quietly, though the red mount- 
 ed in his cheek. ' ' You may, however, be very sure, Mr. Hens- 
 lowe, that everything I know about Mile End the squire shall 
 know before long. 
 
 ''Oh, Lor' bless me, sir!" cried Henslowe, with a guffaw, 
 "it's all one to me. And if the squire ain't satisfied with the 
 way his work's done now, why he can take you on as a second 
 string, you know. You'd show us all, I'll be bound, how to 
 make the money fly." 
 
 Then Robert's temper gave way, and he turned upon the 
 half -drunken brute before him with a few home-truths delivered 
 with a rapier-like force which for the moment staggered Hens- 
 lowe, 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 Jp reply, Robert strode on, leav- 
 ing 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. 
 
298 
 
 He knew his master, and he knew himself, and he thought be- 
 tween them they would abput 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 protract- 
 ing 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 foot-path 
 after dinner, watching a chilly autumnal moonrise over the 
 stubbles of the corn-field, the answer came. 
 
 ''H'm," said Robert, dubiously, as he opened it, holding it 
 up to the moonlight; can't be said to be lengthy." 
 
 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 rector's 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 i?ae to say so, than yom' own. 
 I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 # ' ' Roger Wendo ver. " 
 
 Catherine returned the letter to her husband with a look of 
 dismay. He was standing with his back to the chimney-piece, 
 
ROBERT ELSMERK, 299 
 
 his bands thrv^st far into his pockets, hi? upper lip quivering. In 
 his happy expansive life this was the sharpest personal rebuff 
 thati had ever happened to him. He jould not but smart under 
 it. 
 
 **Not a word," he said, tossing j^is hair back impetuously , as 
 Catherine stood opposite watching him— ''not one single word 
 about the miserable people themselves 1 What kind of stuff 
 can the man be made of 
 
 '' Does he believe you ?" a&ked Catherme, bewildered. 
 If not, one must try nr>d make him," he said, energetically, 
 after a moment's pause. ''To-morrow, Catherine, I go down 
 to the Hall and see him." 
 
 She quietly acquier.ced, and the following afternoon, first 
 thing after luncheor, 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 plaririg through it with pale, invading shafts. 
 
 The butl'Br looked at him with some doubtfulness. It was 
 never safe io admit visitors for the squire without orders. But 
 he and Eobert had special relations. As the possessor of a bass 
 voice worthy of his girth, Vincent, under Eobert's rule, had 
 become the pillar of the choir, and it was not easy for him to 
 refuse the rector. 
 
 So Eobert 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. Eobert passed a mag- 
 nificent lacquered screen newly placed round the door, and 
 found himself in the squire's presence. 
 
 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 book-lined walls. The great room, so impressive 
 ly bare when Eobert and Langham had last seen it, was no^ 
 full of the signs of a busy man's constant habitation. An odor 
 of smoke pervaded it; the table in the window was piled with 
 books just unpacked, and the half-emptied case from which 
 they had been taken lay on the ground beside the squire'fc^ 
 chair. 
 
 "I persuaded Vincent to admit me, Mr. Wendover," said 
 Eobert, advancing hat in hand, while the squire hastily ^zf 
 
300 ^OBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 down the German professor's pipe he had just heen enjoying, 
 and coldly accepted his proffered greeting. ''I should have 
 preferred not to disturb you without an appointment, but af- 
 ter your letter it seemed to me some prompt p^^rsonal explana- 
 tion was necessary." 
 
 The squire stiffly motioned toward a chair, which Robert 
 took, and then slipped back into his own, bis w-nnkled eyes 
 fixed on the intruder. 
 
 Eobert, conscious of almost intolerable embarrassment, bu\ 
 maintaining in spite of it an excellent degree of self-control, 
 plunged at once into business. He took the letter he had just 
 received from the squire as a text, made a good-humored de- 
 fense 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 with- 
 out 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 ligidity of look and attitude. 
 
 So, after a moment or two, Eobert went on to describe in de- 
 tail some of those individual cases of hardship and disease at 
 Mile End, durmg 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 burned them into 
 the sense of almost any other listener. Not one of these woes 
 but he and Catherine had tended with a sickening pity and 
 labor of body and mind. That side of it he kept rigidly out of 
 sight. But all that he could hurl against the squire's feehng, 
 as it were, he gathered up, strangely conscious through it all 
 of his own young persistent yearning to right himself with this 
 man, whose mental history, as it lay chronicled in these rooms, 
 had been to him, at a time of intellectual hunger, so stimulat- 
 ing, so enriching. 
 
 But passion and reticence and hidden sympathy were alike 
 lost upon the squire. Before he paused Mr. Wendover bNt 
 
\ BOBEET ELSMERE. ^Vi 
 
 already ri^n restlessly from his chair, and from the rug was 
 
 glowering d6wn on his unwelcome visitor. 
 
 Good heavens! had he come home to be lectured in his own 
 i library by this fanatical slip of a parson? As for his stories, 
 1 the squire barely took the trouble to listen to them. 
 
 Every popularity -hunting fool, with a passion for putting his 
 I hand into other people's pockets, can tell pathetic stories; but 
 
 it was intolerable that his scholar's privacy should be at the 
 
 mercy of one of the tribe. 
 " Mr. Elsmere," he broke out at last with contemptuous 
 I emphasis, "I imagine it would have been better—infinitely 
 1 better— to have spared both yourself and me the disagreeables 
 I of this interview. However, I am not sorry we should under- 
 I stand 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 new-fangled ideas of a land-owner's duty, with 
 ' which your mind seems to be fulP'—the scornful irritation of 
 I the tone was unmistakable— I have never dabbled in them, 
 1 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 ag-* 
 
 ricultural laborer. That, however, is neither here nor there. 
 
 What is to the purpose is, that my business affairs are in the 
 I hands of a business man, deliberately chosen and approved by 
 i me, and that I have nothing to do with them. Nothing at aU !" 
 i he repeated with emphasis. It may seem to you very shock- 
 j ing. You may regard it as the object in life of the English 
 
 land-owner to inspect the pig-stys and amend the habits of the 
 i Enghsh laborer. I don't quarrel with the conception, I only 
 I ask you not to expect me to live up to it. I am a student first 
 I and foremost, and desire to be left to my books. Mr. Henslo we 
 I is there on purpose to protect my literary freedom. What he 
 I thinks' desirable is good enough for me, as I have already in- 
 j formed you. I am sorry for it if his methods do not commend 
 i themselves to you. But I have yet to learn that tKe rector 
 I of the parish has an ex-officio right to interfere between a 
 ! landlord and his tenants." " 
 
 i Kobert kept his temper with some difficulty. After a pause 
 he said, feeling desperately, however, that the suggestion was 
 not likely to improve matters: 
 
302 
 
 ROBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 " If I were' to take all the trouble and all the expense oft 
 your hands, Mr. Wendover, would it be impossible for you to 
 authorize me to make one or two alterations most urgently 
 necessary for the improvment of the Mile End cottages?" 
 
 The Bquire 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 man's powers of » adaptation." 
 
 Robert rose from his seat, his hand trembhng as it rested on 
 his walking-stick. 
 
 *'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 hrnnan 
 creature may sicken and die, poisoned by the state of your 
 property, for which you— and nobody else— are ultimately re- 
 sponsible." 
 
 The squire shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ''So you say, Mr. Elsmere. K 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 hve there," exclaimed Robert, "have 
 neithep 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," inteiTupted 
 the squire, studying him with sarcastic eyes. "Well, I have 
 no belief in a Gladstonian Ireland, still less in a Radical Eng- 
 land. 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 don't pull them down, or rather"— correcting himself 
 with exasperating consistency— " Mr. Henslowe doesn't 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 re- 
 mind 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 shaU find myself in the newspapers before long. If so, 
 I dare say I shall manage to put up with it. Society is made:\ 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. BOO 
 
 up of fanatics and the creatures they hunt. If I am to be 
 hunted I shstll be in good company." 
 
 Eobert stood hat in hand, tormented with a dozen, cross- 
 currents of feehng. He was forcibly struck with the bhnd 
 and comparatively motiveless pugnacity of the squire's con- 
 duct. There was an extravagance in it which for the first 
 time recalled to him old Meyrick's lucubrations. 
 
 "I have done no good, I see, Mr. Wendover," he said at 
 last, slowly. ^'I v/ish 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. Good-morning." 
 
 He bowed. The squire also bent forward. At that moment 
 Robert caught sight beside his shoulder of an antique, stand- 
 ing on the mantel-piece, which was a new addition to the room. 
 It was a head of Medusa, and the frightful stony calm of it 
 struck on Elsmere's ruffled nerves with extraordinary force. 
 It flashed across him that here was an apt syjnbol of that ab- 
 sorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blights the 
 heart and chiUs 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 pas- 
 sionate regret, "Shall I ever see this again?" he asked him- 
 self. During the past twelve months his pleasure in the great 
 house had been much more than sensuous. Within those wails 
 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 mag- 
 nificent pile, grander than ever in the sunny autumnal mist 
 which inwrapped it, seemed to look after him as he walked 
 away, mutely wondering that he should have allowed anything 
 so trivial as a peasant's grievance to come between him and its 
 perfections. 
 
 In the wooded lane outside the rectory gate he overtook Cath 
 erine. He gave her his report, and they walked on together, 
 arm-in-arm, 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." ' 
 
3 
 
 304 ROBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 He w^uld not dare, Robert thought. At any rate, the law 
 existed for such cases, and it was his bounden duty to call the 
 inspector's 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 th^t he felt himself distressingly young and inexperienced, 
 and would not for the world have harassed him by overad- 
 vice. 
 
 So she let him alone, and presently Robert threw the matter 
 from him with a sigh. 
 
 Let it be awhile," he said, with a shake of his long frame. 
 ''I shall get morbid over it if I don't mind. I am a selfish 
 wretch, too. I know you have worries of yoiu- own, wifie." 
 
 And he took her hand under the trees and kissed it with a 
 boyish tenderness. 
 
 ^^Yes," said Catherine, sighing, and then paused. Rob- 
 ert," 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 don't see it," said Robert, doubtfully. 
 
 Catherine looked at him with a httle angel scomjin her gray 
 eyes. That men should make their seeing in such matters the 
 measure of the visible ! 
 
 You have been studying the squii^e, sir~I have been study- 
 ing 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 Rose's proud effort to keep all the world, but especially 
 Catherine's, at arm's-length. And at the end her feeling swept 
 her into a denunciation of Langham, which was to Robei-t 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. 
 
 *'0f course I feel myself to blame," he said, when she 
 stopped. But how can 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 ner tnat that old debt had been more than effaced. 
 
ROBEET ELSMEBE. 305 
 
 \ You will have to send her to Berlin," said Elsmere, after 
 a pause. "You must play off her music against this unlucky 
 
 I feeling. If it exists it is your only chance." 
 
 I Yes, she must go to Berlin," said Catherine, slowly. 
 
 i Then presently she looked up, a flash of exquisite feeling 
 breaking up the delicate resolution of the face. 
 
 ^'lam not sad about that, Eobert. Oh, how you have 
 widened my world for me !" 
 
 Suddenly that hour in Marrisdale came back to her. They 
 werebAJ*- the wood-path. She crept inside her husband's arm 
 and put up her face to him, swept away by an overmastering 
 
 I impulse of self -humiliating love. 
 
 The next day Eobert w^alked over t(> the little market town 
 
 ■ jj of Churton, saw the discreet and long-established solicitor of 
 
 I the place, and got from him a complete account of the present 
 state of the rural sanitary law. The first step clearly was to 
 
 |imove the sanitary inspector; if that failed for any reason, then 
 
 jany bond fide inhabitant had an appeal to the local sanitary 
 authority, viz., the board of guardiar^. Eobert walked home 
 pondering his information, and totally ignorant that Henslowe, 
 who was always at Churton on market-days, had been in the 
 market place at the moment when the rector's tall figure had 
 disappeared within Mr. Dunstan's office door. 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 disa- 
 
 i greeable objects. 
 
 I In the evening Eose was sitting listlessly in the drawing- 
 ijroom. Catherine was not there, go her novel was on her lap, 
 j and her eyes were staring intently into a world whereof they 
 
 only had the key. Suddenly there was a ring at the bell. 
 I The servant came, and there were several voices and a sound 
 I of much shoe-scraping. Then the swing-door leading to the 
 
 study opened and Elsmere and Catherine came out. , Elsmere 
 j stopped with an exclamation. 
 
 I His visitors were two men from Mile End. One w^as old Mil- 
 j som, more sallow and palsied than ever. As he stood bent al- 
 I most double, his old knotted hand resting for support on the 
 I table beside him, everything in the little hall seemed to shake 
 I with him. The other was Sharland, the handsome father of 
 the twins, whose wife had been fed by Catherine with every 
 
306 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 imaginable delicacy since Eobert's last visit to the hamlet. 
 Even his strong youth had begun to show signs of premature 
 decay. The rolling gypsy 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 med- 
 dled any more they would all be turned out at a week's notice ■ 
 to shift as they could. And if you don't find Thurston Com- 
 mon nice lying this weather, v/ith the winter coming oi^^^ou'll | 
 know who to thank for it," the agent had flung behind him as 
 he rode off. . ! 
 
 Eobert turned white. Eose, watching the little scene with 
 listless eyes, saw him towering over the group like an em- 
 bodiment of wrath and pity. 
 
 If they turn us out, sir," said old Milsom, wistfully, look^ ' 
 ing up at Elsmere with blear eyes, there'll be nothing left but j 
 the house for us old 'uns. Why, Lor' bless you, sir, it's not so I 
 bad but we can make shift. " 
 
 ''You, Milsom !" cried Eobert; ''and you've just all but 
 lost your grandchild I And you know your wife'll never be j 
 the same woman since that bout of fever in the spring. 
 And—" 
 
 His quick eyes ran over the old man's broken frame with a 
 world of indignant meaning in them. 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir," said Milsom, unmoved. *'But if it isn't, 
 fevers, it's summat else. I can make a shilling or two where- 
 I be, speshaUy in the first part of the year, in the basket-work, | 
 and my wife she goes charring up at Mr. Carter's farm, and Mr. 
 Dodson, him at the further farm, he do give us a bit some- 
 times. Ef you git us turned away it will be a bad day s work 
 for all on us, sir, you may take my word on it. " 
 
 ''And my wife so ill, Mr. Elsmere," said Sharland, "and 
 all thoselchilder ! I can't walk three miles further to my work, 
 Mr. Elsmere, I can't nohow. I haven't got the legs for it. Let 
 un be, sir. We'll rub along." 
 
 Eobert 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 pub- 
 lic subscription, or support them out of his own pocket all thei 
 winter. A bold front, and Mr. Henslowe must give way. The 
 law on their side, and every laborer in Surrey would be the 
 
BOB^:^^ EJLSMEEE. 
 
 307 
 
 ; better off for their refusal to be housed hke pigs and poisoned 
 jlike vermin. 
 
 In vain. There is an inexhaustible store of cautious endur- 
 ance in the poor against which the keenest reformer constantly 
 j throwshimseif in vain. Elsmere was beaten. The two men 
 I got his word, and shufHed off back to their pestilential hovels, 
 a pathetic content beaming on each face. 
 
 Catherine and Kobert went back into the study. Eose heard 
 I her brother-in-law's passionate sigh as the door swung behind 
 them. 
 
 Defeated!" she said to herself, with a curious accent, 
 j ^' Well, everybody must have his turn. Eobert has been too 
 I 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 
 jl packing a case of books in the study. They were books from 
 
 the Hall library, which so far had been for months the insepar- 
 
 able companions of his historical work. 
 \ Catherine stood and watched him sadly. 
 I Must you, Eobert f 
 
 jl ''I won't be beholden to that man for anything an hour 
 
 longer than I can help, " he answered her. 
 j When the packing was nearly finished he came up to where 
 
 she stood in the open window. 
 
 Things won't be as easy for us in the future, darling," he 
 j 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 wife's shoulder— I could have made 
 I friends with the squire." 
 
 Catherine looked less responsive. 
 
 As squire, Eobert, or as Mr. Wendover ?" 
 ^'As both, of course, but specially as Mr. Wendover." 
 We can do without his friendship," she said, with energy. 
 I Eobert gave a great stretch, as though to work off his regrets, 
 i "Ah, but," he said, half to himself, as his arms dropped, 
 if you are just filled with the hunger to know, the people 
 
308 KOBERT ELSMERE. ■ 
 
 who know as much as the squire become very interesting to i 
 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 man's des- 
 tiny. 
 
 However, here go his books," said Robert. 
 
 Two days later Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes made their appear- 
 ance, Mrs. Leyburn all in a flutter concerning the event over.! 
 which, in her own opinion, she had come to preside. In hen 
 gentle fluid mind all impressions were short-lived. She had 1 
 forgotten how she had brought up her own babies, but Mrs. 
 Thornburgh, who had never had any, had filled her full of i 
 nursery lore. She sat retailing a host of second-hand hints and I 
 instructions to Catherine, who would every now and then lay ; 
 her hand smiHng on her mother's knee, well pleased to see the 
 flush of pleasure on the pretty old face, and ready, in her pa- 
 tient fihal way, to let herseK be experimented on to thet 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 Eose, was possessed by one thought through 
 many terrible hours, and one only— the though of Catherine's 
 safety. It was strange and unexpected, but Catherine, t^ 
 most normal and healthy of women, had a hard stfuggle forr 
 her own life, and her child's, and it was not tiU the gray 
 autumn morning, after a day and night which left a permanent t 
 mark on Robert, that he was summoned at last, and with the 
 sense of one emerging from black gulfs of terror, received from i 
 his wife's languid hand the tiny fingers of his first-bom. 
 
 The days that followed were full of emotion for these two 
 people, who were perhaps always overserious, oversensitive. 
 They had no idea of minimizing the great common experiences 
 of life. Both of them were really simple, brought up in old- 
 fashioned simple ways, easily touched, responsive to all that 
 high spiritual education which flows from the f amihar incidents 
 of the human story, approached poetically and passionately. 
 As the young husband sat in the quiet of his wife's room the 
 occasional restless movements of the small brown head against i 
 her breast causing the only sound perceptible in the country 
 silence, he felt all the deep familiar currents of human feeling 
 sweeping through him — lovejj'everence, thanksgiving — and all 
 
P ROBERT ELSMERE. 309 
 
 ' i •• 
 
 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 
 I tragic in life. 
 
 Catherine's recovery also was slower than might have been 
 expected, considering- her constitutional soundness, and for the 
 ifirst week, after that faint moment of joy when her child was 
 , laid upon her arm, and she saw her husband's 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 encroach- 
 ing September twilight, spea^iing with a sudden hurrying 
 j vehemence, wholly unhke her.:3lf, as though a barrier of re 
 J serve had given way: 
 
 Robert, I can not put it out of my head. I can not forget 
 it, the pain of the world /" 
 
 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 self -revelation, "to take the joy even out 
 of our love— and the child. I feel ashamed almost that mere 
 
 I physical pain should have laid such hold on me— and yet I 
 ' j can't get away from it. It's not for myself," and she smiled 
 
 ! faintly at him. Comparatively I had so little to bear ! But 
 
 I I know now for the first time what physical pain may mean— 
 
 I 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 I get well, how I will take care of the women here ! What 
 i women must suffer even here in out-of-the-way cottages — no 
 ! doctor, no kind nursing, all blind agony and struggle. And 
 
 women in London in dens like thjose Mr. Newcome got into, 
 '\ degraded, forsaken, ill-treated, the thought of the child only 
 I an extra horror and burden ! And the pain all the time so 
 
 ■ i merciless, so cruel — no escape ! Oh, to give all one is, or ever 
 I can be, to comforting 1 And yet the great sea of it one can 
 
 \ i never touch ! It is a nightmare — I am weak still, I suppose ; 1 
 
 \ I don't 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." 
 
310 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 She stopped, her large, gray-blue eyes dim with tears, tryui^^ 
 once more for that habitual self-restraint which physical weak 
 ness had shaken. 
 
 "You are weak," he said, caressing her, and that destro^ 
 for a time the normal balance of things. It is true, darling, 
 but we are not meant to see it always so clearly. God kno~ 
 v/e could not bear it if we did." 
 
 "And to think," she said, shuddering a little, "that the 
 are men and women who in the face of it can still refuse Chrigl. 
 and the Cross, can still say this hfe is aU I How can they live 
 —how dare they live ?" 
 
 Then he saw that not only man's pain, but man's defiance, 
 had been haunting her, and he guessed what persons and mem^ 
 ories had been flitting through her mind. But he dared no' 
 talk lest she should exhaust herself. Presently, eeeing a vol- 
 ume of Augustine's "Confessions," her favorite 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 compassion's sake, O Lord my God, 
 and tell me what art Thou to me I 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 but 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 resting-place, 
 my soul ! Lay up in Him whatever thou hast received from 
 Jlim. Commend to the keeping of the Truth whatever the 
 Truth hath given thee, and thou shalt lose nothing. And thy 
 dead things shall revive and thy weak things shall be made 
 whole 1" 
 
 She listened,- appropriating and clinging fco 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 
 fast-gathering darkness. His mind was full of that intense 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 spiritual life of Catherine's which in its wonderful self-con- 
 tainedness and strength was always a marvel, sometimes a 
 iieproach, to him. Beside her, he seemed to himself a light 
 creature, drawn hither and thither by' this interest, and hy 
 that, tangled in the fleeting shows of things— the toy and play- 
 thing of circumstance. He thought ruefully and humbly, as 
 he wandered on through the dusk, of his own lack of inward- 
 tiess: Everything divides me from Thee !" he could have cried 
 in St. Augustine's 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 1 Fix there thy resting-place, my soul !" 
 
 And presently, after this cry of self-reproach, he turned to 
 muse on that intuition of the world's pain which had been 
 troubling Catherine, shrinking from it even more than she 
 had shrimk from it, in proportion as his nature was more im- 
 aginative than hers. And Christ the only clew, 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 world's pain was not Christianity itself responsible? 
 His thoughts recurred with a kind of' anguished perplexity to 
 Bome 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 hair-splitting super- 
 stition, the selfish passion for power. He recalled Gibbon's 
 lamentation over the age of the Antonines, and Mommsen's 
 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. 
 
 0 corruptio optimi ! That men should have been so little 
 affected by that shining ideal of the new Jerusalem, descend- 
 ed out of Heaven from God," into their very midst— that the 
 
^312 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 print of the blessed feet" along the world's highway shouto 
 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 sombei 
 juniper among the yellowing fern, which stretched away on thci 
 left-hand side of the road leading to the Hall. He stood airfil 
 watched the masses of restless discordant cloud which tl^f 
 sunset had left behind it, thinking the while of Mr. Grey, oj ^ 
 his assertions and his denials. Certain phrases of his which 
 Eobert had heard drop from him on one or two rare occasionSj 
 dm-ing the later stages of his Oxford life ran through his head. , 
 
 ''The Fairy-Tale of Christianity," "The Origins of Christian 1 
 Mythology." He could recall, as the words rose in his mem- 
 ory, the simplicity of the rugged face, and the melancholy 
 mingled with fire which had always marked the gi*eat tutor'g 
 sayings about religion. 
 
 " Fairy Tale!" Could any reasonable man watch a life like 
 Catherine's and believe that nothing but a delusion lay at the! 
 heart of it ? And as he asked the question he seemed to hear 
 Mr. Grey's 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, perfuAed, 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 bend- 
 ing over her, the sacrament of the Lord's death in his hand. 
 The emotion, the intensity, the absolute self surrender of in- 
 numerable such moments in the past— moments of a common 
 faith, a common self-abasement — came flooding back uport 
 him. With a movement of joy and penitence he threw himself 
 at the feet of Catherine's master and his own: Fix there thyi 
 resting-place^ my soulT 
 
 . . i 
 
 1 
 
EOBBKT ELSM22RK. 
 
 313 
 
 CHAPTER 2X. 
 
 CATHF^fiXE's later convalescence dwelt in her mind in after 
 
 I years af". u t/irne of p^cDliar softness and peace. Her baby-girl 
 throve • "Bobert 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 €it the village club. At Mile 
 End, as though to put the rector in the wrong, serious illness 
 had for the time disappeared ; and Mrs. Ley burn's mild chatter, 
 as she gently poked about the house and garden, went out in 
 Catherine's pony-carriage, inspected Catherine's stores, and 
 hovered over Catherine's babe, had a constantly cheering effect 
 on the still languid mother. Like all theorists, especially those 
 at second-hand, Mrs. Leyburn's maxims had been very much 
 I routed by the event. The babe had ailments she did not under- 
 ! stand, or it developed likes and dislikes she had forgotten 
 ' existed in babies, and Mrs. ,Leyburn was nonplused. She would 
 j sit with it on her lap, anxiously studying its pecuharities. 
 f 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 unladfy-like to be 
 I too cheerful, even over a first grandchild. 
 
 Agnes meanwhile made herself practically useful, as washer 
 way, and she did almost more than anybody to beguile Cath- 
 erine's recovery by her hours of Long Whindale chat. She had 
 no passionate feeling about the place and the people as Cath- 
 I erine had, but she was easily content, and she had a good 
 I wholesome feminine curiosity as to the courtings and weddings 
 and buryings of the human beings about her. So she would 
 I sit and chat, working the while with the quickest, neatest of 
 I fingers, till Catherine knew as much about Jenny Tyson's 
 I Whinborough lover, and Farmer Tredall's troubles with his 
 son, and the way in which that odious woman Molly Eedgold 
 bullied her httle consumptive husband, as Agnes knew, which 
 I was saying a good deal. 
 
 [ About themselves Agnes was frankness itself. 
 I Since you went," she would say with a shrug, ^'I keep the 
 I coach steady, perhaps, but Eose 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 don't 
 generally mind being snubbed. It amuses her and doesn't hurt 
 
8U 
 
 KOBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 me ; and, of course, I know I am meant to be her foU. But, 
 
 really, sometimes she is too bad even for me." 
 
 Catherine sighed, but held her peace. Like all strong per- 
 sons, 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 l^t her go," said Agnes, sigTiificantly ; ''she 
 will go anyhow." 
 
 A few days afterward Catherine, opening the drawing-room 
 door unexpectedly, came upon Rose sitting idly at the piano, 
 her hands resting on the keys, and her great gray eyes strain- 
 ing out of her white face with an expression which sent the 
 sister's heart into her shoes. 
 
 "How you steal about, Catherine!" cried the player, getting 
 up. and shutting the piano. '' I declare you are just like Mil- 
 lais's 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 roimd 
 Rose's waist, and looked at her smiling, to see how she took it. 
 
 Rose had a strange movenlent of irritation. She drew her- 
 self out of Catherine's grasp. 
 
 " I don't know that I had settled on Berlin," she said, coldly. 
 
 Very possible Leipsic would be better." 
 
 Catherine's face fell. 
 
 ''Whichever you hke, 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 can't manage all 
 the expense we will help. Oh, Rose," and she came nearer 
 again, timidly, her eyes melting, "I know we haven't under- 
 stood 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 writ- 
 ten the history of all the prayers and yearnings of her youth 
 over the pretty wayward child who had been her joy and tor- 
 ment. Rose could not but meet that look — its nobleness, its 
 humble surrender. 
 
EGBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 316 
 
 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 head- 
 ache 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 
 stni that, as she told herself, Catherine was sending her to 
 Berlin as a consolation. When girls have love-troubles 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. 
 
 ^'lam sure you will be happy at Berlin, Eose. And you 
 . mustn't leave me out of your life, dear, though I am so stupid 
 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 Eose, 
 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 Christ's sake. And all the time I was blundering ! Oh, 
 Eose," and she sunk on her knees beside the chair, resting her 
 head against the girPs 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, Eose, 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, " 
 
316 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 She paused with a long, quivering sigh. Rose suddenly Iitt- 
 
 ed herself, and they fell into each other's arms. 
 
 Eose, shaken and excited, though, of course of that nigh 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 feehng 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 Catherine's spirit in the growing. ^ 
 Beside that sweet expansion, how poor and feverish and earth- 
 stained the poof 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 other's face. A 
 great wave of feehng 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 staried. But she met Rose's half -frowning eyes 
 steadily. 
 
 ''Never, Rose! To me it would not be marriage." | 
 The child's face lost its softness. She drew one hand away. ' 
 "What have we to do with it f she cried. "Each one for 
 himself." 
 
 "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. 
 
 " Rehgiondoes not fill uj) the soul," said Rose, slowly. Then 
 she added, carelessly, a passionate red flying into her cheek 
 against her will : ' ' However, I can not 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 key- 
 board of the piano. Her pose had a kind of defiance in it: her 
 knit brows forbade Catherine to ask questions. Catherine str)od \ 
 irresolute. Should she throw herself on her sister, imploring \ 
 her to gpeak, opening her own heart on the subject of this ; 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 317 
 
 mid, unhappy fancy for a man who would never think again 
 of the child he had played with? 
 
 But the north-country 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 moment's pause, she began in a different tone 
 upon the inquiries she had been making, the arrangements that 
 would be wanted for this musical winter. Eose was almost 
 listless at first. A stranger would ha%'e thought she was being 
 -^jpersuaded into something against her will. Bat 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 bewil- 
 dered, asked Catherine, doubtfully, the last thing at night, 
 whether she wanted Eose to be a professional. Catherine ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 ''But, my dear," said the widow, staring pensively into her 
 bedroom fire, ''what's she to do with all this music?" Then 
 after a second she added, half severely: "I don't believe her 
 father would have liked it; 1 don't, indeed, Catherine!" 
 
 Poor Catherine smiled and sighed in the background, but 
 made no reply. 
 
 "However, she never looks so pretty as when she's playing 
 the violin— never!" said Mrs. Leyburn presently in the dis- 
 tance, with a long breath of satisfaction. ''She got such a 
 lovely hand and arm, Catherine! They're prettier than mine, 
 and even your father used to notice mine." 
 
 ''Even,''' The word had a little sound of bitterness. In 
 'spite of ail his love, had the gentle, puzzle-headed woman 
 found her unearthly husband often very hard to live with? 
 
 Eose meanwhile was sitting up in bed, with her hands round 
 her knees, dreaming. So she had got her heart's desire ! There 
 did not seem to be much joy, in the getting, but that was the 
 way of things, one was told. She knew she should bate 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 tiicther 
 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. 
 
318 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the Rose of the present went straining to the Rose of the ful 
 ure, asking to be righted, to be avenged. 
 
 will learn— I will learn -I will learn fast— many thing 
 besides musici" she said to herself, feverishly. '*By April 
 shall be much cleverer. Oh, then I won't be a fool so easily 
 We shaU be sure to meet, of course. But he shall find out tha 
 it wa« only a child, only a silly, soft-hearted baby he playec 
 with down here. I sha'n't care for him in the least, of cours< 
 not, not after six months. I don't mean to. And I will make 
 him know it— oh, I will, though he is so wise, and so mud 
 older, and mounts on such stilts when he pleases I" 
 
 So once more Rose flung her defiance at fate. But when 
 Catherine came along the passage an hour later she heard low 
 sounds from Rose's 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 brain-waves, 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 awhile, 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 rehshed 
 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 ns 
 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 ground-floor between the study and the 
 dining-roorn to the women and girls of the village, as a sort of 
 drawing-room. Hard-worked mothers would come, who had 
 put their fretful babes to sleep, and given their lords to eat, and 
 had just energy left, whfle 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, Cath- 
 erine's kind face, the rector's jokes, and the illustrated papers 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 319 
 
 jr the 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 dress-making, 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 neighborhood 
 would have hardly recognized the reserved and stately Cath- 
 erine on these occasions. Here she felt herself at home, at 
 ease. She would never, indeed, have Robert's pliancy, his 
 quick divination, and for some time after her transplanting the 
 north-country 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, recog- 
 nizing all his gifts with an humble intensity of admiring love, 
 which said little but treasured ev^ything, and for herself her 
 inward happiness and peace shone through her quiet ways, 
 making her the mother and 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 lon<g 
 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 story-telling 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 
 j passion which burned in both their hearts into clear words or 
 j 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 
 
320 
 
 KOBEKT ELSMERE. 
 
 believed in a choir cliiefly as an excellent social and centi-aliz- 
 ing instmment. There had been none in Mr. Preston's day. 
 He was determined to have one, and a good one, and by sheer 
 energy he succeeded, delighting in his boyish way over the op- 
 position some of his novelties excited among the older and more 
 stiff -backed 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 poql 
 
 Of course that old problem of the agricultural laborer weighed 
 upon him— his grievances, his wants. He went about ponder- 
 ing the English land system, more than haK inclined one day 
 to sink part of his capital jn a peasant-proprietor experiment, 
 and ingulfed the next in ail the moral and economical objec- 
 tion, to the French system. JLand 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 
 squire's, apd not one inch of the squire's land would Henslowe 
 let young Elsmere have anything to do with if he knew it. He 
 would neither repair nor enlarge the Workmen's Institute ; and 
 he had a way of forgetting the squire's 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 man's coarse insolence and mean hatred 
 made themselves felt at every turn, besmirching and imbitter- 
 ing. 
 
 StiU it was very true that neither Henslowe nor the squire 
 could do Robert much harm. His hold on the parish was visi- 
 bly strengthening ; his sermons were not only filling the church 
 with his own parishioners, but attracting hearers from the dis 
 tricts round MureweU, 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 honorable and important 
 The gentry about showed them much kindness, and would have 
 shown them much hospitahty 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 good-tempered and 
 vivacious people do, he and Catherine decided that for the pres- 
 ent they had no time to spare for visits and county society. 
 Still, of course, there were many occasions on which the rou- 
 tine of their life brought them across their neighbors, and il 
 
EOEEET E1.SMEEE. 321 
 
 began to be pretty widely recognized that Eismere was a young 
 fellow of unusual promise and intelligence, that his wife too 
 was remarkable, and that between them they were IHiely to 
 raise the standard of clerical effort considerably in their part 
 of Surrey. 
 
 All the factors of this life-his work, his influence, his recov- 
 ered health, the lavish beauty of the country— Eismere enjoved 
 with all his heart. But at the root of aU there lay what gWe 
 value and savor to everything else-that exquisite home-life of 
 theirs, that tender, triple bond of husband, wife, and child. 
 
 Cathenne, 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 h^- 
 - which is one of the "first fruits of motherhood. There at the 
 window, between the lamp-Ught behind and the winter dusk 
 outside, would be the child in its nurse's arms, little wondering 
 motiveless smUes passing over the tiny puckered face that was 
 so oddly like Robert already. And afterward, in the fire light- 
 ed 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 
 kickmg, dimpled creature principally concerned protest as it 
 may against the over-refinements of civilization. Then when 
 the Uttle restless voice was stUled, and the cradle left sHent in 
 the darkened room, there would come the short watching for 
 Robert, his voice, his kiss, their simple meal together, a mo- 
 ment of rest, of laughter and chat, before some fresh effort 
 claimed them. Every now and then- white-letter days-there 
 would drop on them a long evening together. Then out would 
 come one of the few books-Dante or Virgil or Milton-which 
 had entered into the fiber of Catherine's 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 hearth- 
 rug, watching aU the while for her smile, her look of assent 
 Sometimes, late at night, when there was a sermon on his 
 mmd, 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 
 troni verse to verse, from thought to thought, till suddenly 
 perhaps the tide of feeling would rise, and while the wind 
 
g22 EGBERT BL8MBEB. 
 
 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, inwrappmg them. 
 
 So much for the man of action, the husband, the pManthro- 
 pist. In reality, great as was the moral energy of th^ pen^ 
 of Elsmere's life, the dominant distmgmshmg note of it was 
 not moral hut intellectual. 
 
 In matters of conduct he was but developmg habits and ten- 
 dencies already strongly present in him ; in 
 in- with every month of this winter he was becommg con- 
 scious of fresh forces, fresh hunger, fresh horizons^ 
 
 " One half of your day be Icivg of your world Mr. Grey 
 had said to him: ^'the otlwr half be tU slave of some thin& 
 which will take you out of your world into the general hfe,^ 
 the Ufe 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 Elsmere's type fj^e [^^^ 
 up once and for all as they became mature to the hfe of doing 
 and feeling, practically excluding the life of thought. It wa 
 Henry Grey's influence, in all probability, perhaps, too, tht 
 tmSig of In eaxUer Langham, that saved for Elsmere the h& 
 
 °^The form taken by this training of his own mind be hadb^r 
 thus encouraged not to abandon, was, as we ^^now the ^udj 
 of history. He had well mapped out before him that book oi 
 the origins of France which he had described to Langham, 1 
 was to take him years, of course, meanwhile, m his firs 
 enthusiasm, he was like a child, revehng m the treasure o 
 work that lay before him. As he had told Langham he had jus 
 got below the surface of a great subject and was beginning fr 
 dig into the roots of it. Hitherto he had been under the guid 
 ance of men of his own day, of the nineteenth century histoi 
 ian who refashions the past on the Unes of his own mmd, wh 
 gives it rationality, coherence, and, as it were, modernness 8 
 that the main impression he produces on us, so long as we loo ; ; 
 at that past through him only, is on the whole an impressio ■ 
 of continuity, of resemblance. . , «. „ i 
 
 Whereas, on the Contrary, the first impression left on a ma 
 bv the attempt to plunge into the materials of history for hip 
 self is almost always an extraordinarily sharp impression 
 difference, or contrast. Ultimatelv. of course, he sees m 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 323 
 
 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, be- 
 hind the Eenaissance or behind the Crusades into the actual 
 deposits of the past, is often struck with a kind of vertige. The 
 I men and women whom he has dragged forth into the hght of 
 ; . his own mind are to him like some strange puppet-show. They 
 I are called by names he knows— kings, bishops, judges, poets, 
 I priests, men of letters— but what a gulf between him and them ! 
 I What motives, what behefs, what embryonic processes of 
 thought and morals, what bizarre combinations of ignorance 
 i and knowledge, of the highest sanctity with the lowest cred- 
 I uhty or falsehood; what extraordinary prepossessions, bom 
 with a man and tainting his whole ways of seeing and think- 
 ing from childhood to the grave! Amid all the intellectual 
 dislocation of the spectacle, indeed, he perceives certain Greeks 
 ^d 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 Jcnowledge.'" And so for 
 the first time the modern recognizes 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 
 be penetrates does but make him grasp his own guiding light 
 the more closely. And yet, bit by bit, it has been prepared for 
 Mm by these groping, half-conscious generations, and the scru- 
 tiny which began in repulsion and laughter ends in a marvel- 
 ing gratitude. 
 
 But the repulsion and th^ 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 de- 
 caying Rome and emerging France, surrounded by Chronicles, 
 by Church Councils, by hves of the saints, by primitive sys- 
 tems of law,„pushing his imaginative, impetuous way through 
 
324 
 
 ROBERT BLSMERK. 
 
 them. Sometimes Catherine would be there, and he woul 
 pour out on her something of what was in his own mind. 
 
 One day he was deep in the Ufe of a certain saint. The saint 
 had been bishop of a diocese in Southern France. His biog- 
 rapher was his successor in the see, a man of high poUtic 
 importance in the Burgundian state, renowned besides fo 
 sanctity and learning. Only some twenty years separated th 
 biography, at the latest, from the death of its subject. It co" 
 tained some curious material for social history, and Robert w 
 reading it with avidity. But it was, of course, a tissue of mar 
 vels. The young bishop had practiced every virtue known t, 
 the time, and wrought every conceivable miracle, and th 
 miracles were better told than usual, with more ingenuity 
 more imagination. Perhaps on that account they struck th 
 reader's sense more sharply. 
 
 And the saint said to the sorcerers and to the practicers o 
 unholy arts, that they should do those evil things no more, fo 
 he had bound the spirits of whom they were wont to inquire 
 and they would get no further answers to their incantation 
 Then those stiff-necked sons of the devil fell upon the man o 
 God, scourged him sore, and threatened liim with death, if h 
 would not instantly loose those spirits he had bound. And se: 
 ing he could prevail nothing, and being, moreover, admonish 
 by God so to do, he permitted them work their own dam" 
 tion. For he called for a parchment and wrote upon it: 'AtTi 
 brose unto Satan— Enter P Then was the spell loosed, the spirit 
 returned, the sorcerers inquired as they were accustomed, an 
 received answers. But in a short space of time every one 
 them perished miserably and was deUvered unto his natu 
 lord Satanas, whereunto he belonged." 
 
 Robert made a hasty exclamation, and turned to Catherin 
 who was working beside him, read the passage to her, with 
 few words as to the book and its author. 
 Catherine's work dropped a moment on to her knee. 
 What extraordinary superstition!" she said, startled. " 
 bishop, Robert, and an educated man ?" 
 Robert nodded. 
 But it is the whole habit of mind," he said half to h" 
 staring into the fire, that is so astounding. No one esca 
 it. The whole age reaJJy is non-sane." 
 
 suppose the devout Cathohc would believe that?" 
 " I am not sure," said Robert, dreamily, aad remained s 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 825 
 
 rin thought for long after, while Catherine work^, and pon- 
 t dared a Christmas entertainment for her girls. 
 
 1 Perhaps it was his scientific work, fragmentary as it was, 
 
 ilthat was really quickening and sharpening these histoncal im^ 
 pressions of his. Evolution— once a mere germ in the mind- 
 was beginning to press, to encroach, to intermeddle with the 
 
 I mind's other furniture. 
 
 And the comparative instinct— that tool, par excellence^ of 
 
 1 modem 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 om 
 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 one's notions of the Old Testament. At pres' 
 ent they are just a chaos !" 
 He walked on awhile, struggling with the rainstorm which had 
 
 I overtaken him, till again the mind's quick life took voice. 
 
 '*But what matter? God is the beginning— God in the 
 prophets— in Israel's best life — God is Christ ! How are any 
 theories about the Pentateuch to touch that ?" 
 And into the clear eyes, the young face aglow with wind and 
 
 I rain, there leaped a light, a softness indescribable. 
 
 i But the vivider and the keener grew this new mental life of 
 Elsmere's, the more constant became his sense of soreness as to 
 
 I that foolish and motiveless quarrel which divided him from the 
 squire. Naturally he was forever being harassed and pulled up 
 
 i in his work by the mere loss of the Murewell libraiy. To have 
 
 i 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 somberly 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 much cut off from the great house and its 
 I 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 ht 
 
326 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 ain't in 'em f " he 
 said to himself, with a laugh and a shrug as he turned up the 
 lane to the rectory, and then, boy-hke, was ashamed of himself, 
 and greeted Catherine with all the tenderer greeting. 
 
 Only on two occasions during three months could he be sure 
 of having seen the squire. Both were in the twilight, when, as 
 the neighborhood declared, Mr. Wendover always walked, and 
 both made a sharp impression on the rector's 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 toward him. It passed without recogni- 
 tion of any kind, and for an instant Robert caught the long, 
 sharpened features and haughty eyes of the squire. 
 
 At another tim"^ 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 ap- 
 proaching hoofs stirred Robert's 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 re- 
 treating 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 ghm- 
 mering pools leeemed 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 Els- 
 mere as he stepped forward. 
 Undoubtedly the quarrel, helped by his work, and the per- 
 ^ petual 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 pre- 
 occupied with him. One of the signs of it was a strong desire 
 to read the squire's two famous books: one, ^'The Idols of the 
 Market-place," an attack on EngHsh beliefs; the other, '^Es- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 32? 
 
 says on English Culture," an attack on English ideals ot edu- 
 cation. He had never come across them as it happened, and 
 perhaps Newcome's 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 Eobert always remem- 
 ber 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 night-school, he found Catherine 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 writing-table. 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 Market-place."" 
 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 En- 
 glish ideas after his return from Berhn. Fresh from the spec- 
 ulative ferment of Germany and tfiie far profaner skepticism 
 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 strong- 
 hold of EngHsh 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, Tradi- 
 tion, the Fathers, Protestantism and Justification by Faith, 
 the Eighteenth Century, the Broad Church Movement, AngH- 
 can Theology— the squire had his say about them aU. 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 irrehgious 
 public to read, whether they would or no. A storm of con- 
 
328 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 troversy rose round the volumes, and some of the keenest ob- 
 servers 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 lighted on those pages in the Essay on the Gos- 
 pels where the squire fell to analyzing the evidence for the \ 
 Resurrection, following up his analysis by an attempt at recon- 
 ^ti ucting 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 treat- 
 ment. 
 
 Not a soTind in the house. Outside, the tossing, moaning 
 December night; inside, the faintly cracking 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 sunk 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 squire's 
 book, from the secret half-conscious recesses of the mind — 
 entered into it, and as it passed it seemed to scorch the heart. 
 
 He stayed bowed there awhile, then he roused himself with 
 a half groan, and hastily extinguishing his lamp he groped his 
 way upstairs to his wif e*s 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 
 wife's pillow was a table on which there lay open her little 
 Testament and the Imitation" her father had given her. 
 Elsmere sunk down beside her, appalled by the contrast be- 
 tween 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 him- 
 self, crying for pardon, for faith, feeling himself utterly un- 
 worthy to touch even the dear hand that lay so near him. 
 But gradually the traditional forces of his life reasserted them- 
 selves. The horror lifted. Prayer brought comfort and a 
 passionate healing self-abasement. ' ' Master, forgive — def end- 
 purify , " cried the aching heart. * ' There is none other that fight- 
 eth for us, but only Thou, O God r 
 
 He did not open the book again. Next morning he put it 
 
829 
 
 |, back into his shelves. If there were any Christian who could 
 affront such an antagonist with a light heart, he felt wixh a 
 jil shudder of memory it was not he. 
 
 » **Ihave neither learning nor experience enougk— yet," he 
 I said to himself slowly, as he moved away, ''of course it can 
 1 be met, but J must grow, must think— first." 
 
 And of that night's wrestle he said not a word to any living 
 soul. He did penance for it in the tenderest, most secret 
 ways, but he shrunk in misery from the thought of revealing 
 it even to Catherine. 
 
 CHAPTEB XXI. 
 
 Meanwhile the poor poisoned folk at Mile End lived and 
 apparently throve, in defiance of all the laws of the universe. 
 Eobert, 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 san- 
 itary nightmare. But he was not confiding enough to believe 
 that the people paid much heed, and he hoped more from a 
 hard dry 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 rheu- 
 matism, and he breathed again. 
 
 Christmas came and went, and with the end of December 
 the wet weather returned. Day after day roUing masses of 
 southwest cloud came up from the Atlantic and wrapped the 
 whole country in rain, which reminded Catherine of her West- 
 moreland 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, atid stepping out on the road skirting the green— the be- 
 dabbled 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 
 
350 
 
 BOBEB'B ELSMEBE. 
 
 striding along, his wide-awake over his eyes, and so absorbed 
 that she bad almost touched him before he saw her. 
 
 Darhng, is that you? Don't stop me, I am going to take 
 the pony-carriage in for Meyrick. I have just come back from 
 that accursed place ; three cases of diphtheria in one house, 
 Sharland's 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 Eobert in his brief hours at home 
 could find no relief in anything, so heavy was the oppression of 
 the day's memories. At first Catherine for the child's sake 
 kept away; but the little Mary was weaned, had a good Scotch 
 niirse, was in every way thriving, and after a day or two Cath- 
 erine's craving to help, to be with Robert in his trouble, was 
 too strong to be withstood. 'But she dared not go backward 
 and forward between her baby and the diphtheritic children. 
 So she bethought herself of Mrs, Elsmere's servant, old Martha, 
 who was still inhabiting Mrs. Elsmere's 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 Martha's lap, went 
 back to Robert. . 
 
 Then she and he devoted themselves to a hand-to-hand fight 
 with the epidemic. At the climax of it there were about twen- 
 ty children down with it in different stages, and seven cases of 
 fever. They had two hospital nurses; one of the better cot- 
 tages, turned iuto a sanatorium, accommodated the worst cases 
 under the nurses, and Robert and Catherine, directed by them 
 and the doctors, took the responsibihty of the rest, he helping 
 to nurse the boys and she the girls. Of the fever cases Shar- 
 land's wife was the worst. A feeble creature at aU times, it 
 seemed almost impossible she could weather through. But day 
 after day passed, and by dint of incessant nursing she still 
 lived. A youth of twenty, the main support of a nK)ther and 
 five or six younger children, w^as also desperately ill. Robert 
 hardly ever had him out of his thoughts, and the boy's dog-hke 
 
EOBERT ELSMEBE. 331 
 
 affection for the rector, struggling with his deathly weakness 
 was like a perpetual exemplification of Ahriraanand 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 dafiy hours spent at the rectory were 
 mere halts between successive acts of battle with the plague- 
 fiend-a more real and grim Grendel of the Marshes-for the 
 lives of children. Catherine could always sleep in these mter- 
 vals, quietly and dreamlessly; Eobert very soon could only 
 sleep by the help of some prescription of old Meyrick's. On all 
 occasions of strain since his boyhood there had been signs m 
 him of a certain lack of constitutional hardness which his 
 mother knew very weU, but which his wife was only just be 
 ginning to recognize. However, he laughed to scorn any at- 
 tempt to restrain his constant goings and comings, or those 
 hours of night-nursing, in whicll, 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 oppres- 
 sion. 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 water-proof from head to foot, walking be- 
 side him, the rays fiashingnow 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 man's 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 pas- 
 sionate gratitude, of faith in an immortal union reaching be- 
 yond change or death, lost in a kiss which was a sacrament. 
 Th^.n there were the moments when they saw their child, held 
 high in Martha's arms at the window, and leaping toward her 
 mother; th^ moments when one x>^id. sickbr bein^ after an- 
 
 I 
 
332 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERi:. 
 
 other was pronounced out of danger ; and by the help of them 
 
 the weeks passed away. 
 
 Nor were they left without help from outside. Lady Hele» 
 Varley no sooner heard the news than she hurried over. Rob- 
 ert, on his way one morning from one cottage to another, saw 
 her pony-carriage in the lane. He hastened up to her before 
 she could dismoimt. 
 
 "No, Lady Helen, you musn't come here," he said to her, 
 peremptorily, as she held out her hand. 
 
 **0h, 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 
 Frencb sentence which originally applied to the Duchess de 
 Choiseul. Une cliarmante petite fee sortie cTun ceuf en- 
 chante /"—so it ran. Certainly, as Elsmere looked down upon 
 her now, fresh from those squalid, death-stricken hovels behind 
 him, he was brought more abruptly than ever upon the con- 
 trasts 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 ioved her opals as she loved all bright things ; if it pleased 
 her to wear them in the morning, she wore them ; and in j&ve 
 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, reti- 
 cences, 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 differenqes 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 engomments. But Rose 
 belonged to the class whi(^ struggles, where each individi^ 
 
BOBEET HLSMEEE. 333 
 
 depends on himself and know? it. Lady Helen had never strug- 
 gled 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 men's eyes followed her, fluttering through 
 life, with much the same feeling as was struck from Clough's 
 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 I" 
 
 "Uncaring," however, little Lady Helen never was. If she 
 was a fairy, she was a fairy aU heart, all frank, foolish smiles 
 
 N^Lady Helen-no," Eobert said again. " Thisisno place- 
 for you, and we are getting on capitally." 
 She pouted a little. , .„. i „ 
 
 " I believe you and Mrs. Elsmere are just killmg yourselves 
 all in a comer, with no one to see," she said, mdignantly It 
 you won't let me see, I shall send Sir Harry. But who -and 
 her brown fawn's eyes ran startled over the cottages before her 
 who, Mr. Elsmere, does this dreadful place belong to? 
 "Mr. Wendover," said Eobert, shortly. 
 "Impossible!" she cried, incredulously. "Why I wouldnt 
 ask one of my dogs to sleep there," shepomtedto thenear^ 
 est hovel, whereof the walls were tottenng outward the thatch 
 was faUing to pieces, and the windows were mended with any- 
 thing that came handy-rags, paper, orthecrownof an old hat 
 "No, you would be ill advised," said Eobert, looking with 
 a bitter Uttle smile at the sleek dachshund that sat bhnkmg 
 beside its mistress. 
 " But what is the agent about?" , a- 
 
 Then Eobert told her the story, not mincing his words, bmce 
 the epidemic had begun, all that sense of imaginative attraction 
 which had been reviving in him toward 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. AU that agony of wrath and pity he 
 had gone through in the last ten days sprung to his hps now as 
 he talked to Lady Helen, and poured itself into his words. 
 " Old Meyrick and I have taken things into our own hands 
 
334 
 
 ROBEKT ELSMERE. 
 
 now," he said at last, briejly. We have ah-eady made two 
 cottages fairly habitable. To-morrow the inspector comes. I 
 told the people yesterday I wouldn't 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 pres- 
 ent we get all our water from one of the farms on the brow." 
 
 ''Money I" said Lady Helen, impulsively, Jier looks warm 
 with sympathy for the pale, harassed young rector. **Sit 
 Harry shall send you as much as you want. And anything 
 else— blankets— coals ?" 
 
 Out came her note-book, 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 nothing 
 but talk about your sister-in-law. Why did you keep her all 
 to yourself ? Is it kind, is it neighborly, to have such a won- 
 der to stay with you and let nobody share ?" 
 
 '' A wonder ?" said Robert, amused. " Rose plays the viohn 
 very well, but — " 
 
 "As if relations ever saw one in proper perspective!" ex- 
 claimed 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 I'm there, and Miss Ley bum will let me make 
 friends with her, why, you know, Jean just protect her a little 
 from Aunt Charlotte !" 
 
 The httle laughing face bent forward again; Robert, smiling, 
 raised his hat, and the ponies whirled her off. If anybody else. 
 Elsmere would have thought aU this effusion insincere or 
 patronizing. But Lady Helen was the most spontaneous of 
 mortals, and the only high-bom woman he had ever met who 
 was really, and not only apparently, free from the "nonsense 
 of rank." Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlotte's social 
 tolerance to be a mere varnish. But this little person, and her 
 favorite brother Hugh, to judge from the accounts of him, must 
 always have found Ufe too romantic, too wildly and dehght- 
 f ully interesting from top to bottom, to be measured by any 
 JbPt romantic standards. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 335 
 
 Next day Sir Harry Varley , a great burly country squire, who 
 ored his wife, kept the hounds, owned a model estate, and 
 thanked God every morning that he was an Englishman, rode 
 over to Mile End. Eobert, 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 check 
 behind him, rode oif with a discharge of strong language, at 
 which Robert, clergyman as he was, only grimly smiled. 
 
 A few days later Mr. Wendover's crimes as a land-owner, his 
 agent's brutality, young Elsmere's devotion, and the horrors of 
 the Mile End outbreak, were in everybody's mouths. The 
 county was roused. The Radical newspaper came out on the 
 Saturday with a flaming article ; Robert, much to his annoy- 
 ance, 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 drink- 
 ing bout, turning over all possible plans of vengeance and 
 evasion. Toward the evening, however, his wife, a gaunt 
 clever Scotch woman, who saw ruin before them, and had on 
 occasion an even sharper tongue than her husband, managed 
 td capture the supplies of brandy in the house and effectually 
 conceal them. Then she waited for the moment of collapse 
 which came on toward morning, and with her hands on her 
 hips she poured him a volley of home-truths which not even 
 Sir'Harry Varley could have bettered. Henslowe's nerve gave 
 way. He went out at day-break, 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 inspector's directions, and the rector was satis- 
 fied. 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 man's bloodshot 
 eyes were on him. Such a look! If hate could have killed, 
 Elsmere would have fallen where he stood. Yet the man's 
 hand mechanically moved to his hat, as though the spell of his 
 wife's 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. 
 
986 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Then he called one of the agent's 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 httle emaciated creat- 
 ures 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 sohtude of Murewell. A fortnight had 
 passed. Henslowe had been conquered, the county had rushed 
 to Elsmere's help, and neither he nor Mrs. Darcy had made a 
 sign. Their hf e was so abnormal that it was perfectly possible 
 they had heard nothing. Elsmere wondered when they would 
 hear. 
 
 The rector's 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 father's 
 junior partner, but as he was, besides, a young and briUiant 
 M. D. 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 easfly 
 be imagined that the subordination was purely nominal. In- 
 deed young Meyrick was fast ousting his father in all directions, 
 and the neighborhood, which had so far found itself unable 
 either to enter or to quit this mortal scene without old Mey- 
 rick's 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. 
 
 Young Elsmere's behavior 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 man's heart, an(f 
 he was the rector's 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 cock-sureness was 
 
337 
 
 irritating, and his manner to his father abominable. The 
 father, on the other hand, came over in the shabby pony-cart he 
 
 i 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 Rob- 
 
 j ert by the cautious hostility he would allow himself every now 
 and then toward his son's new-fangled devices. 
 At first Meyrick showed himself fidgety as to the squire. 
 
 1 Had he been seen, been heard from ? He received Robert's 
 sharp negatives with long sighs, but Robert clearly saw that, 
 like the rest of the world, he was too much afraid of Mr. Wen- 
 dover to go and beard him. Some months before, as it hap- 
 
 I pened, Elsmere had told him the story of his encounter with 
 the squire, and had been a good deal moved and surprised by 
 the old man's concern. 
 
 One day, about three weeks from the beginning of the out- 
 break, 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 com- 
 panion, with a certain excitement. 
 Robert flushed. 
 
 " Have you ?" he replied, with his hands behind him and a 
 world of expression in his sarcastic voice. 
 
 *'lFou misjudge him! You misjudge him, Mr. Elsmere!" 
 the old man said, tremulously. told you he could know 
 nothing of this business—and he didn't ! 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." 
 
 " Don't abuse the man," said Robert, looking up. '*It's not 
 worth while, when jou 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 unfor- 
 tunate 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 !" 
 
338 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 They strolled on together in silence. Robert was not inclined 
 to discuss the matter. But old Meyrick seemed to be laboring 
 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, gener- 
 ally his strongest characteristic, to the winds. He insisted on 
 telling his companion, who listened reluctantly, the whole 
 miserable and ghastly story of the old squire's suicide. He 
 described the heir's summons, his arrival just in time for the 
 last scene with all its horrors, and that mysterious condition 
 of the squire for some months afterward, when no one, not 
 even Mrs. Darcy, had been admitted to the Hall, and old Mey- 
 rick, directed at intervals by a great London doctor, had been 
 the only spectator of Roger Wendover's physical and mental 
 breakdown, the only witness of that dark consciousness of in- 
 herited fatality which at that period of his life not even the 
 
 .squire's iron will had been able wholly to conceal. 
 
 - Robert, whose attention was inevitably roused after awhile, 
 found himself with some curiosity realizing the squire from 
 another man's totally different point of view. Evidently Mey- 
 rick 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 cer- 
 tain soothing influence in the naivete and simplicity of the old 
 man's sympathy, had allowed himself at times, in the years 
 succeeding that illness of his, an amount of unbending in Mey- 
 rick's presence, such as probably no other mortal had ever 
 witnessed in him since his earliest youth. 
 
 And yet how childish the old man's 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 father's 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 Meyrick's was ludicrously far from the mark as an 
 adequate explanation of Mr. Wendover's later life. 
 
 Presently Meyrick became aware of the sort of tacit resist- 
 ance which his companion's mind was opposing to his own. He 
 dropped the wandering narrative he was busy upon with a sigh. 
 *'Ah, well, I dare say, it's h£^ it's hard," he said, with 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 839 
 
 patient acquiescence in his voice, to believe a man can't help 
 himself, I dare say we doctors get to muddle up right and 
 wrong. But if ever there was a man sick in mind— for all his 
 book-learning they talk about— and sick in soul, that man is 
 the squire." 
 
 Eobert looked at him with a softer expression. There was a 
 new dignity about the simple old man. The old-fashioned def- 
 erence, which had never let him forget in speaking to Robert 
 that he was speaking to a man of family, and which showed 
 itself in all sorts of antiquated locutions which were a torment 
 to his son, had given way to something still more deeply in- 
 grained. His gaunt figure, with the stoop, and the spectacles 
 and the long straight hair— like the figure of a superannuated 
 school-master— assumed, as he turned again to his younger 
 companion, something of authority, something almost of state- 
 iiness. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Elsmere," he said, laying his shrunk hand on the 
 younger man's sleeve and speaking with emotion, you're very 
 good to the poor. We're 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 man'U be good to him. The squire will make friends 
 with him, and Mr. Elsmere will have a good wife— and there'll 
 be children born to him— and the squire will take an interest— 
 and— and— may be— " 
 
 The old man paused. Robert grasped his hand silently. 
 
 ''And there was something in the way between you," the 
 speaker went on, sighing. ' ' I dare say you were quite right- 
 quite right. I can't judge. Only there are ways of doing a 
 thing. And it was a last chance; and now it's missed— it's 
 missed. Ah! it's no good talking; he has a heart— he has! 
 Many's the . kind thing he's done in old days for me and mine 
 —I'll never forget them ! But all these last few years— oh, I 
 know, I know. You can't 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, it's pitiful!" 
 
 It seemed to Robert suddenly as though there was a Divine 
 breath passing through the wintery lane and through the shak- 
 ing 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. 
 
340 
 
 KOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 Thank you, Meyrick, thank you, and God bless you! Don't 
 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 Meyrick's aging face, and they parted. 
 
 That night it fell to Robert to sit up after midnight with John 
 All wood, 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 neighbors were worn out, and it was.diffi- 
 cult to spare a hospital nurse for long together from the diph- 
 theria cases. Eobert, therefore, had insisted during the pre- 
 ceding week on talking alternate nights with one of the nurses. 
 During the first hours before midnight he slept soundly on a 
 bed made up in the ground-floor 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 winter's 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, and 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 nar- 
 row stairs as noiselessly as possible, and found himself in a 
 garret, faintly lighted, a bed in one corner and a woman sitting 
 beside it. The woman^^^ided away, the rector looked carefully 
 at the table of instructions hanging over the bed, assured him- 
 self 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 half hour, 
 and in this perpetual impulse to the system lay his only chance. 
 
 The rector had his Greek Testament with hinr, and could 
 just read it by the help of the dim light. But after awhile, a? 
 the still hours passed on, it dropped on to his knee, and he sat 
 thinking— endlessly thinking. The young laborer lay motion^ 
 less beside him, the lines of the long emaciated frame showing 
 through the bed-clothes. The night-light flickered on the 
 broken, discolored ceiling; every now and then a mouse 
 scratched in the plaster; the mother's 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. 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 341 
 
 The stern judgments, the passionate condemnations which his 
 nature housed so painfully, seemed lifted from it. The soul 
 breathed an ''ampler sether, a diviner air." Oh! the mys- 
 teries of hfe 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 man's poor will 
 to this tangled, tyrannous life— it was along these old, old Mnes 
 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 Meyrick's 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 further and further from 
 man to God, from human defect to the Eternal Perf ectness. 
 Never once during those hours did Elsmere's hand fail to per- 
 form 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 misgivings, as the barriers of sense between it and 
 the eternal enigma grew more ^d more transparent, wrestling 
 awhile, and then prevailing. And each golden moment of 
 certainty, of conquering faith, seemed to Robert in some sort a 
 gift from Catherine's 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 percepti- 
 ble 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 mur 
 mured to himself as he rose; ''they are the only real land- 
 marks." 
 
 It was eight o'clock, 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 rector's face as he talked in an under tone to the 
 nurse, his haggard eyes full of a dumb, friendly wistfulnesa 
 
342 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 When Eobert bent over him to say good-bye, thva expression 
 brightened into something more positive, and Eobert left bim, 
 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 reddish-brown 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 net- 
 work of their wintry twigs and branches set against stretches 
 of frost-whitened grass, till finally they climbed into the pale 
 aU completing blue. In a copse close at hand there were 
 wood-cutters at work, and piles of gleaming laths shining 
 through the underwood. Eobbins hopped along the frosty road, 
 and as he walked on through the houses toward the bridge, 
 Robert's quick ear distinguished that most wintery of aU sounds 
 —the cry of a flock of fleldfares 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 recognized 
 the squire. 
 
 He went up to him without an instant's -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 in- 
 stant. ''You may not, perhaps, be aware, Mr. Elsmere," he 
 said, endeavoring to speak with all his old hauteur, while his 
 heavy lips twitched nervously, '*that, for one reason and an- 
 other, 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 343 
 
 Tiow, Mr. Wendover, and I am in no great hurry taget 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 some- 
 thing 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. It's hard work for the nurses, and the rela- 
 tions sometimes, without help." 
 
 The squire moved on mechanically toward 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, f^here the new well was to 
 be, what the water supply had been till now, drew the squire's 
 attention to the roofs, the pig-sties, the drainage or rather 
 complete absense 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. Chil- 
 dren and adults, a pale emaciated crew, poured out into the 
 wintery air to look. The squire knit his brows with annoy- 
 ance 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 clear- 
 ing 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 was no mud floors left on the 
 
 estate—" 
 
 There are only three houses in Mile End without them," 
 said Robert, catching what he said. 
 
344 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 They went upstairs, and the mother stood open-eyed while 
 the squire's restless look gathered in the details of the room, 
 the youth's face, as he lay back on his pillow, whiter than 
 they, 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 worm-eaten boards, the spots in 
 the roof where the plaster bulged inward, as though a shake 
 would bring it down; the coarse china shepherdesses on the 
 mantel-shelf, 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 down-stairs again and into 
 the street. Then Robert took him across to the httle impro- 
 vised hospital, saying to him on the threshold, with a moment's 
 hesitation : 
 
 As you know, for adults there is not much risk, but there 
 is always some risk — " 
 
 A peremptory movement of the squire's hand stopped him, 
 and they went in. In the down-stairs room were half a dozen 
 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 Helen's stores, and enjoying 
 the breakfast which a nurse in white cap and apron had just 
 brought them. Upstairs, in a room from which a lath-and- 
 plaster partition had been removed, and which had been adapt- 
 ed, 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 Sharland's black-eyed children, was sitting up, sup- 
 ported by the nurse, and coughing its little life away. As soon 
 as he saw it Robert's step quickened. He forgot the squire al- 
 together. He came and stood by the bedside, rigidly still, for 
 he could do nothing, but his whole soul absorbed in that horri- 
 ble 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 corpse-like, but with a pitiful momentary re- 
 laxation of the drawn lines on its little brow. Robert stooped 
 and kissed the damp tiny hand. The child's 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 don't go home and rest 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 345 
 
 you'U be ill, too, and I'd like to know who'U be the better for 
 
 thatf . 
 
 "now many deaths?" asked the squire, abruptly, touching 
 Elsmere's arm, and so reminding Robert of his existence. 
 
 Mey rick spoke of deaths." 
 
 He stood near the door, but his eyes were fixed on the little 
 bed, on the half-swooning child. 
 
 ' ' Seven, " said Robert, turning upon him. ' ' Five of diphthe- 
 ria, two of fever. That little one will go, too." 
 
 Horrible !" said the squire, under his breath, and then moved 
 
 to the door. i • 
 
 The two men went down-stairs in perfect silence. Below, m 
 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— Milsom's 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 ahout whom various myths had gradually 
 formed themselves in the country-side. The squire walked away 
 from them hurriedly, followed by Robert, and again they halted 
 on the center 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 thriU 
 of it, or the association of wintery sunshine streaming down 
 upon a sparkhng world of ice and delicate woodland and foam 
 flecked river. 
 
 The squire turned toward him irresolutely ; his sharply cut, 
 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 wiU 
 think what can be done for the future. As for my relation to 
 you, it rests with you to say whether it can he amended. I 
 recognize that you have just cause of complaint." 
 
 What'invincible pride there was in the man's very surrender I 
 But Elsmere was not repelled by it. He knew that in their 
 hour together the squire had felt His soul had lost its bitter- 
 ness. The dead and their wrong were with God, 
 
346 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 He took the squire's outstretched hand, grasping it cordially, 
 a pure, unworldly dignity in his whole look and bearing. 
 
 Lefc us be friends, Mr. Wendover. It will be a great com- 
 fort to us— my wife and me. Will you remember us both very 
 kindly to Mr. 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 Eobert 
 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 
 120W 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, Eobert-yes ! Dear Eobert— thank God I" 
 Never think any more," he said at last, leading her in from 
 the Httle 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 arm-chair." ^ 
 
 He sunk down into it, and when she put his breakfast beside 
 him she saw with a start that he was fast asleep. The wife 
 st<sod and watched him, the signs of fatigue round eyes and 
 mouth, the placid expression, and her face was soft with ten- 
 derness and joy. ^' Of course — of coiu^se, 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 Catherine's Hfe stole on and on toward her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 As may be imagined, the Churton Advertiser" did not find 
 its way to Mure well. Ifc was certainly no pressure of social 
 disapproval that made the squire go down to Mile End in that 
 winter's 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 Ber- . 
 lin friends, had been a shock to him. A man may play the 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 347 
 
 intelligent recluse, may refuse to fit his life to his neighbors' 
 notions as much as he 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 f ortime 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^an's reign in any true sense was 
 over. 
 
 But afterward 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 gen- 
 tleman and a scholar to let the agent whom you have inter- 
 posed between yourself and a boorish peasantry have a free 
 hand; but, after all, the estate is yours, and to expose the rec- 
 tor of the parish to all sorts of avoidable risks in the pursuit of 
 his official duty by reason of the gratuitous filth of your prop- 
 erty, is an act of doubtful breeding. The squire in his most 
 rough-and-tumble 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. 
 
 After a night, therefore, less tranquil or less meditative than 
 usual, he rose early and saUied 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 
 JElsmere 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 
 
348 
 
 ROBERT KLSMEEE. 
 
 fanatic," he said to himself on the way home. ^'I suppose I 
 had forgotten it. There is nothing Hke a dread of being bored 
 for blunting your psychological instinct." 
 
 In the course of the day he sent off a letter to the rector, in- 
 timating in the very briefest, driest way that the cottages 
 should be rebuilt on a different site as soon as possible, and in- 
 closing a hberal contribution toward the i^xpenses incurred in 
 fighting the epidemic. When the letter was gone he drew his 
 books toward him with a sound which was partly disgust, 
 partly relief. This annoying business had wretchedly inter- 
 rupted 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 check had reached Eobert late the night 
 before, and, true to his new-born determination to make the 
 best of the squire, he had caught up his wide-awake at the fii-st 
 opportunity and walked off to the Hall to acknowledge the gift 
 in person. The interview opened as awkwardly as it was pos- 
 sible, 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, ail 
 the time, whether he could possibly be forced in the future to put 
 up with such an experience again, and Eobert f oimd 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 squire's 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 con- 
 quer his conscience sufficiently to become the possessor of it. 
 He took it up with an exclamation of delight, and a quiet criti- 
 cal remark that exactly hit the value and scope of the book. 
 The squire's eyebrows went up, and the corners of his mouth 
 slackened visibly. Half an hour later the two men, to the amaze- 
 ment of Mrs. Darcy, who was watching them from the draw- 
 ing-room window, walked back to the park gates together, and 
 what Robert's nobility and beauty of character would never 
 have won him, though he had worn himself to death in the 
 servicQ of the poor and the tormented under the squire's eyes, 
 
^OBEET ELSMEKJD. 
 
 340 
 
 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 long-past days— days in Berlin, in Paris, 
 where conversations such as that he had just passed through 
 were the daily relief and reward -of labor— was stirring in him. 
 Occasionally he had endeavored 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 EngUsh ground, and he suddenly realized 
 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 long-legged optimist?" The 
 squire shrugged his shoulders as he thought of the attempt in- 
 volved 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 ludicrous waste of time and opportunity 
 that he and this man should have been at cross-purposes hke 
 this. Why the deuce couldn't 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 scholar's avaricious sense 
 of the shortness of time, he would shake his head and frown 
 
850 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 over the three months which young Elsmere had already- 
 passed, grappHng with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the 
 spread of Monasticism in Gaul, and Heaven knows what be- 
 sides, half a mile from the man and the library which could 
 have supplied him with the best help to be got in England, un- 
 benefited by either ! Mile End was obhterated, and the annoy- 
 ance 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. 
 
 Kobert, rising in his place to begin morning service, and 
 wondering to see the congregation so good on suf^h a day, was 
 Buddenly startled, as his eye traveled 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 
 feehng was evidently shared by the congregation, which 
 throughout the service showed a restlessness, and excited tend- 
 ency to peer round corners and pillars that was not favorable 
 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 formidabje*'^ auditor. Then he pulled 
 himself together by a great effort, and fixing his eyes on a 
 shock-headed urchin half-way down the church, read the serv- 
 ice to him. Catherine, meanwhile, in her seat on the northern 
 side of the nave, her soul lulled in Sunday peace, knew noth- 
 ing of Mr. Wendover's 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 Christ's 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 sHght waver- 
 ing hither and thither— a difficult choice of words— and tRen 
 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 Cath 
 erine, slightly flushed and much puzzled for conversation, be- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ride 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 in- 
 quiries 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, ceremoni- 
 ously: 
 
 " With your leave, Mr. Elsmere, I will walk with you to the 
 rectory." Then, in another voice: ''Go home, Letitia, and 
 don't send anything or anybody." 
 
 He made a signal to the coachman, and the carriage fstarted, 
 Mrs. Darcy 's protesting head remaining out of the 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 raihng against her brother and by a queer inco- 
 herent melancholy, that Catherine felt them extremely un- 
 comfortable, and took care not to invite them. Clearly she 
 was mortally afraid of Roger, "and yet ushamed of being 
 afraid. Catherine could see that all the poor thing's 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 rec- 
 tory, followed at a discreet interval by groups of villagers cur- 
 ious to get a look at the squire. Robert was conscious of a 
 good deal of embarrassment, but did his best to hide it. Cath- 
 erine 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 
 squire's purpose to come in, so Robert invited him in. Cath- 
 erine threw open her little drawing-room 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 hearth- 
 rug, 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 nurso 
 
352 
 
 ROBERT EI.SMERE. 
 
 blushed, coiirtesied, and caught up the gurgling creature in a 
 twinkling. 
 
 Robert made a laughing remark on the tyranny and ubiquity 
 of babies. The squire smiied grimly. He supposed it was 
 necessary that the human race should be carried on. Cather- 
 ine meanwhile slipped out and ordered another place to be laid 
 at the dinner-table, 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 parlor-maid with a fel- 
 low-feeling which made it difficult for him during the early 
 part of the meal to keep a perfectly straight countenance. 
 After awhile, however, both he and Catherine were ready to 
 admit that the squire was making himself agreeable. He 
 talked 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 quill-drivers," he said, contemptu- 
 ously; '*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 don't run France into ad ventures, 
 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 in- 
 teresting 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 reckv 
 oned with, is dwindling more and more ?" 
 
 Absolutely dead," said the squire, emphatically, '*as an 
 intellectual force. They haven't got a writer, scarcely a preach- 
 er. Not one decent book has been produced on that side for 
 years." 
 
 And the Protestants, too," said Robert, ''have lost all theii 
 best men of late," and he mentioned one or two well-known 
 French Protestant names. 
 
 *'0h, as to French Protestantism "—and the squire's sara^ 
 was superb— *' Teutonic Protestantism is in the order of things^ 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 353 
 
 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 Catherine's 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 ani drank his 
 orddnaire 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 Catherine's housewifely care 
 sent after them, and accepting a cigar, he sunk into the arm- 
 chair by the fire and spread a bony hand to the blaze, as if he 
 had been at home in that particular corner for mon;ths, Rob- 
 ert, sitting opposite to him, and watching his guest's eyes 
 travel round the room, with its medicine shelves, its rods and 
 nets, and preparations of uncanny beasts, its parish litter, and 
 its teeming book-cases, felt that the Mile End matter was turn- 
 ing out oddly indeed. 
 
 ''I have packed you a case of books, Mr. Elsmere," said the 
 squire, after a puif 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 Rob- 
 ert had sent back. Robert flushed. He did not want the 
 squire to regard him as wholly dependent on Murewell. 
 
 I bought it,'* he said, rather shortly. have ruined my- 
 self in books lately, and the London Library 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 
 10," and he named one or two costly folios that Robert had 
 long pined for in vain. 
 
 The rector's eyes glistened. 
 That was very good of you," he said, simply. **They will 
 be most welcome." 
 
 ^' And now, how much fme," 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 
 
354 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 Elsmere, with a bright, half-defiant accent, '^cati't mak^ 
 grubbing among the Franks his main business. 
 
 The squire said nothing, and smoked on. Eobert 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 don't, it won't be for want of knowing what 
 the scholar's ideal is." And he lifted his hand with a smile 
 toward the squire's book on English Culture," which stood 
 in the book-case just above him. The squire, following the 
 gesture, smiled too. It was a faint, slight illumining, but it 
 changed the face agreeably. ^ ^ 
 
 Eobert 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 talk- 
 ing at his very best. 
 
 Racy stories of Mommsen or Yon 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 Brog^ 
 lie's salon— a contemptuous sketch of Guizot— a caustic sketch 
 of Renan. Robert presently even laid aside his pipe, and 
 stood in his favorite attitude, lounging against the mantel- 
 piece, looking down, absorbed, on his visitor. All that intel- 
 icctual passion which his struggle at Mile End had for a mo- 
 ment checked in him revived. Nay, after his weeks of exclu- 
 sive contact with the most hideous forms of bodily ill, this in- 
 terruption, these great names, this talk of great movements 
 and great causes, had a special savor and relish. All the hori- 
 zons of the mind expanded, the currents of the blood ran 
 quicker. 
 
 Suddenly, however, he sprung up. 
 I beg your pardon, Mr. Wendover, it is too bad to inter- 
 rupt you— I have enjoyed it immensely— but the fact is I have 
 only two minutes to get to Simday-school in !" 
 _ Mr. Wendover rose also, and resumed his ordinary manner. 
 ^ It is I who should apologize," 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 
 
KOBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 355 
 
 I: quotations in St. Matthew. It would interest you, I imagine, 
 I to see a recent Jewish book on the subject of the prophecies 
 L 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 packing-case arrived from the Hall, 
 and Robert could not forbear a little gloating over the treas- 
 ures 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 
 squire's 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 
 c.i 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 lunch- 
 eon, in the squire's 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 engage- 
 ment I must keep?" 
 
 There was a sort of jealousy for his work within him con- 
 tending with this new fascination of the squire's 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 Elsmere's society did in reality 
 provide him with a stimulus and recreation he had been too 
 long without, than in his imperious, willful way he began to 
 possess himself of it as much as possible. He never alluded ta 
 the trivial matters which had first separated and then united 
 them. He worked the better, he thought the more clearly, for 
 
 I 
 
356 
 
 BOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 these talks and walks with Elsmere, and therefore these talks 
 and walks became an object with him. They supphed a long- 
 stifled want, the scholar's want of disciples, of some form of 
 investment for aU that heaped-up capital of thought he had 
 been accumulating during a life-time. 
 
 As for Robert, he soon felt himself so much under the spell 
 of the squire's strange and powerful personahty that he was 
 forced to make a fight for it, lest this new claim should en- 
 croach upon the old ones. He would v/alk when the squire 
 liked, but three times out of four these walks must be parish 
 rounds, interrupted by descents into cottages and chats in 
 farm-house parlors. The squire submitted. The neighborhood 
 began to wonder over the strange spectacle of Mr. Wendover 
 waiting grimly in the winter dusk outside one of his own farm- 
 houses while Elsmere was inside, or patroling 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. 
 
 Rumors 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 Els- 
 mere said, as plain as words: Oh, you young wonder! what 
 hook has served you with this leviathan?" 
 
 On another occasion, close to Churton, a mUn in a cassock 
 and cloak came toward them. The squire put up his eyeglass. 
 
 ''Humph!" he remarked; do you know this merry- An- 
 drew, Elsmere?" 
 
 It was Newcome. As they passed, Robert, with slightly 
 heightened color, gave him an affectionate nod and smile. 
 Newcome's quick eye ran over the companions, he responded 
 stiffly, and his step grew more rapid. A week or two later 
 Robert noticed a little prick of remorse that he had seen noth- 
 ing 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 Cafcherine? Naturally this new and most unexpected re- 
 lation of Robert's to the man who had begun by insulting him 
 was of considerable importanr^e to the wife. In the first place 
 it broke up to some extent the exquisite tete-a-tete of their 
 home life; it encroached often upon time that had always been 
 hers; it filled Robert's mind more and more with matters in 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 35? 
 
 wMcb she had no ©oneern. All these things many wives might 
 have resented. Catherine Elsmere resented none of them. It 
 m probable, of course, that she had her natural moments of re- 
 gret 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 recognize at once Kobert's need of intellectual com- 
 radeship, isolated as he was in this remote rural district. She 
 knew perfectly that a clergyman's life of perpetual giving 
 forth becomes morbid and unhealthy if there is not some cor- 
 responding taking in. 
 
 If only it had not been Mr. Wendover ! She marveled over 
 the fascination Eobert found in his dry, cynical talk. She won- 
 dered that a Christian pastor could ever forget Mr. Wendover's 
 antecedents ; that the man who had nursed those sick children 
 eoitld forgive Mile End. All in all as they were to each other, 
 she felt for the first time that she often understood her hus- 
 band imperfectly. His mobility, his eagerness, were sometimes 
 now a perplexity, even a pain to her. 
 
 It must nob be imagined, however, that Eobert let himself 
 drift into this intellectual intimacy with one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of anti-Christian thinkers without reflecting on its 
 possible consequences. The memory of that night of misery 
 which '^The Idols of the Market-place " had inflicted on him 
 was enough. He was no match in controversy for Mr. Wend- 
 over, and he did not mean to attempt it. 
 
 One morning the squire unexpectedly plunged into an ac- 
 count of a German monograph he had just received on the sub- 
 ject 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 materiel 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 ^nd a 
 little. Suddenly the man who was walking beside him inter- 
 tupted him. 
 
 I think we ought to understand one another perhaps, Mr. 
 Wendover," Robert said, speaking under a quick sense of op- 
 pression, 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 an;vthing, 
 
358 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 only- 1 am no match for you on points of scholarship, and I 
 should just hke 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 isn't as if we differed slightly. We differ funda 
 mentally— 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. 
 
 And the talk went forward again, Robert joining in more 
 buoyantly than ever, perhaps because he had achieved a neces- 
 sary but disagreeable thing and got done with it. 
 
 In reality he had but been doing as the child does when it 
 sets up its sand- barrier 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 swal- 
 lows, 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. Leybum, 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 359 
 
 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 Eobert forlorn. 
 
 Now, however, she was in London, whither she had gone for 
 a few days on her way home, to meet Eose and to shop. 
 Robert's opinion was that all women, even St. Elizabeths, have 
 somewhere rooted in them an inordinate partiality for shop- 
 ping; 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 sup- 
 posed it must be all Rose's fault. He behoved that Rose spent 
 a great deal too much on dress. 
 
 Catherine's letters, of course, were full of her sister. Rose, 
 she said, had come back from Berlin handsomer than ever, and 
 claying 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 hor as a pupil and given her un- 
 usual attention. 
 
 ''And now', of course," wrote Catherine, ''she is desperately 
 disappointed that mamma and Agnes can not 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 see 
 that the idea of an indefinite time Burwood is intolerable to 
 her. As to Berlin, I think she has enjoyed it, but she talks 
 very scornfully of German Schwdrmerei and German womSn, 
 and she tells the oddest stories of her professors. With one or 
 two of them she seems to have been in a ^tate of war from the 
 beginning; but some of them, my dear R-^bert, I am persuaded 
 were just simply in love with her! I don't— no, I never shall 
 believ^e, that independent, exciting student's hfe is good for a 
 girl. But I never say so to Rose. When she forgets to be ir- 
 ritable and to feel that the world is going against her, she is 
 often very sweet to me, and I can't bear there should be any 
 conflict." 
 
 His next day's letter contained the following : 
 " Are you properly amused, sir, at your wife's performances 
 in town? Our three concerts you have heard all about. * I still 
 can't get over them. I go about haunted by the seriousness, 
 the Ufe-and-death interest peoi^^^ ^hrow into mu^ic. It is as- 
 
360 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 tonishing! And ^ outside, as we got into our hansom, sUch 
 sights and sounds! -such starved, fierce-looking men, such 
 ghastly women ! 
 
 "But since then Eose has been taking me into society. Yes- 
 terday afternoon, after I wrote to you, we went to see Rose's 
 artistic friends— the Piersons— with whom she was staying last 
 summer, and to-day we have even called on Lady Charlotte 
 Wynnstay. 
 
 As to Mrs. Pierson, I never saw such an odd bundle of rib- 
 bons and rags and queer embroideries as she looked when we 
 called. However, Rose says that, for *an aesthete '—she de- 
 spises them now hei^elf — Mrs. Pierson has wonderful taste, 
 and that her wall-papers and her gowns, if I only understood 
 them, are not the least like those of other aesthetic persons, but 
 very recherche— may be. She talked to Rose of nothing 
 but acting, especially of Mme. Desforets. No one, according to 
 her, has anything to do with an actress's 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 
 entree. 
 
 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 hght 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 
 Chaxlotte 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, talk- 
 ing to the two gentlemen and being kind to Lady Charlotte. I 
 am sure everybody in the room was amused by her self-posses- 
 sion. Lady Charlotte inclurled. The gentlemen stared at her 
 a great deal, and Lady Charlotte paid her one or two compli- 
 ments on her looks, which / thought she would not have vent- 
 ured 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 under-secretary for 
 something, but he and Rose and Lady Charlotte talked again 
 of nothing but musicians and actoi-s. It is strango that poli- 
 ticians should have t?'^f^ tQ know so much of these things. The 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 361 
 
 other gentleman reminded me of Hotspur's popinjay. I think 
 now I made out that he wrote for the newspapers, hut at the 
 moment I should have felt it insulting to accuse liim of any- 
 thing so humdrimi 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 awhile 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 high-and-mightiness ! 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 couldn't and Lady 
 Charlotte pitied her dreadfully for having a family, and the un- 
 der-secretary said that it was one's first duty in life to trample 
 on one's relations, and that he hoped nothing would prevent 
 his hearing her play soms 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 Raphael's 'Vigil of the Knight,' 
 when suddenly I saw Rose, who was looking away toward the 
 door into the long gallery, turn perfectly white. I followed her 
 eyes, and there, in the door-way, disappearing— I am almost 
 certain— was Mr. Langham ! One can not 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! lam 
 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 
 J2e did but love me a little more ! It must be my fault I know. 
 
862 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Yes, as you say, Bur wood may as well be shut up or let 
 Riy dear, dear father !" 
 
 Eobert could imagine the sigh with which Catherine had laid 
 down her pen. Dear tender soul, with all its old-world fidehties 
 and pieties pure and unimpaired ! He raised the signature to 
 his hps. 
 
 Next day Catherine came back to him. Robert had no words 
 too opprobrious for the widowed condition from which her re- 
 turn 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 tete-a-tete with the squire— oh, and Mrs. Darcy, of course. 
 I am always forgetting her, poor little thing, which is most un- 
 grateful rf me. A pathetic life that, Catherine. She seems to 
 me, m her odd way, perpetually hungering for affection, for 
 praise. No doubt, if she got them, she wouldn't know what 
 to do with them. She would just touch and leave them as she 
 does every thing. Her talk and she are both as light and wan- 
 dering as thistle-down. But still, meanwhile, she hungers, and 
 is never satisfied. There seems to be something pecuharly an- 
 tipathetic in her to the squii^e. I can't make it out. He is 
 sometimes quite brutal to her when she is more inconsequent 
 than usual. I often wonder slfe goes on hving with him." 
 
 Catherine made some indignant comment. 
 Yes," said Robert, musing. " Yes, it is bad." 
 
 But Catherine thought his tone might have been more im- 
 qualified, and marveled again at the curious lenity of r'r^dgment 
 he had always shown of late toward Mr. Wendover. And all 
 his judgments of himself and others were generally so quick, 
 so uncompromising! 
 
 '*0n the second occasion we had Freake and Dash wood," 
 naming two well known 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 dining- 
 room. But afterward, 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 s(;en§ie was describing. 
 
BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 S63 
 
 ''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 store-house of knowledge !" 
 
 He spoke in a glow of energy and enthusiasm. Catherine 
 eat 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— accumula- 
 tion— 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 tona 
 
 " Well?" she inquired. 
 
 He shook his head ruefully. 
 
 "The squire is a tough customer— most men of sixty-seven 
 with strong wills are, I suppose. At any rate, he is like one 
 of the Thurston trout— sees through all my maneuvers. But 
 one piece of news will astonish you, Catherine!" And he 
 sprung up to deliver it with effect. " Henslowe is dismissed." 
 
 "Henslowe dismissed!" Catherine sat properly amazed 
 while Eobert told the story. 
 
 The dismissal of Henslowe indeed represented the price 
 which Mr. Wendover had been so far willing to pay for Els- 
 mere's socilty. Some quid pro quo there must be— that he was 
 prepared to admit— considering their relative positions as squire 
 and parson. But, as Eobert 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 Elsmere's 
 pastoral naivete in general. The evidences of the young rec- 
 tor's power and popularity were, however, on the whole, pleas- 
 ant to Mr. Wendover. If Elsmere had his will wtth 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 in-* 
 tellectually eager and pliant than any he had yet come across 
 
364 
 
 EOREKT ELSMERS. 
 
 among younger men ; perpetual food, toe, for his sense of irony, 
 in the intellectual contradictions, wherein Elsmere's develop- 
 ing ideas and information were now, according to the squire, 
 involving hirn 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 
 v/ith 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. Eobert's opin> 
 ion of Henslowe, and Henslowe's now more cautious but still 
 incessant hostihty 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. Els- 
 mere would do him the favor of looking through some applica- 
 tions 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 realize that he had brought a man to ruin. 
 
 **He has a ^vife and children," he said," quickly, looking at 
 the squire. 
 
 *'0f course I have pensioned him," replied the squire, im- 
 patiently; ''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 3f 
 
 one with a conscience couid have held out a finger to 
 keep Henslowe in his po^t. But though Elsmere took the let- 
 ters 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 f^ailt that^ from the moment of his a> 
 
EOBEET BLSMBEB. 365 
 
 rival in the parish, Henslowe had made him the target of a 
 vulgar and imbittered hostility, and so far as he had struck 
 ^ut in return it had been for the protection of persecuted and 
 defenseless creatures. But aU the same, he could not get the 
 thought of the man's collapse and humiliation out of his mmd. 
 How at his age was he to find other work, and how was he to 
 endure life at Murewell without his comfortable house Ms 
 smart gig, his easy command of spirits, and the crmging of the 
 
 farmers? .. i * 
 
 Tormented by the sordid misery of the situation almost as 
 though it had been his own, Elsmere ran down impulsively m 
 the evenmgto the agent's house. Coiild nothing be done to 
 assure the man that he was not really his enemy, and that 
 anything the parson's influence and the parson's money could 
 do to help him to a more decent Uf e, and work which offered 
 fewer temptations and less power over human bemgs, should 
 
 be done? ^ i. t 
 
 It need haxdly be said that the visit was a co^Pl«*« ^^^^J; 
 Henslowe, who was drmking hard, no sooner heard Elsmere s 
 voice in the Uttle 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 chaxges-there was nothing that the °^add«°f^sot now 
 fairly unmasked, denied himself. Elsmere, pale and ere^, 
 tried to make himself heard. In vam. Henslowe was physi- 
 cally incapable of taking in a word. t,r,;ofWfl„T. 
 
 At last the agent, beside himself, made a rush, his three un^ 
 tidv children, who had been hanging open-mouthed in the 
 ^ig^und, ;et up a howl of terror and his Scotch w^e m^^ 
 pinched and sour than ever, who had teeen so far a gloomy 
 spectator of the scene, interposed. . 
 
 "Have doon wi' ye," she said, suUenly^^ putting o^* ^ long 
 bony arm in front of her husband, " or I'U oust lock oop that 
 tlldy where ye'll naw find it if ye pull the house doon Now 
 turning to Elsmere, "would ye jest be going^ Ye^an 
 it weel. I daur say, but ye've doon yer wark. and ye maun 
 
 'Tndshe motioned him out, not without a somber dignity. 
 Elsmere went home crest-fallen. The enthusiast is a good deal 
 too apt to under-estimate the stubbornness of moral fact, and 
 these rebuffs have their stem uses for charaxjter. 
 
366 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERR, 
 
 They intend to go on living here, I am told," Elsmere said, 
 as he wound up the story, ''and as Henslowe is still church- 
 warden, he may do us a world of mischief yet. However, I 
 think that wife wHl 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 squire's remittances. It is a wretched bus- 
 iness, and I don't take a man's 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 Henslowe's fall, and a wicked 
 man's hatred, according to her, mattered only to himself. 
 The squire's conduct, on the other hand, made her uneasily 
 proud. To her, naturally, it simply meant that he was fallilljr 
 under Robert's spell. So much the better for him, but^ . 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 That same afternoon Robert started on a walk to a distant 
 larm, where one of his Sunday-school boys lay recovering from 
 rheumatic fever. The rector had his pocket full of articles— 
 a story-book in one, a puzzle map in the other— destined for 
 Master Carter's amusement. On the way he was to pick up 
 Mr. Wendover at the park gates. 
 
 It was a dehcious 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, unusuaUy sUent and 
 absent too on their walks. What ims he always at work on? 
 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 per- 
 sonal 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 men's labors by the hour, but not of 
 his own. Elsmere reflected on the fact, mingling with the re- 
 lection a certain humorous scorn of his own constant open- 
 •iess and readiness to tatbe cotiniSiBl with the world. 
 
ROBEBT ELSMBBB. 
 
 367 
 
 However, Ms book isn't a mere excuse, as Langham's is," 
 Elsmere inwardly remarked. Langbam, in a certain sense, 
 plays even with learning; Mr. Wendover plays at nothing." 
 
 By the way, he had a letter from Langbam 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 Jight on it either 
 way. 
 
 I find myself a good deal reconciled to life by this migra- 
 tion of mine," wrote Langbam. ' ' Now that my inforced duties 
 to them are all done with, my fellow-creatures seem to me 
 much more decent fellows than before. The great stir of Lon- 
 don, in which, unless I please, I have no part whatever, at- 
 tracts 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 
 make-believe, and the creature left behind feels lighter and 
 nimbler than he has felt for years. I go to concerts and thea- 
 ters ; I look at the people in the streets ; I even begin to take 
 an outsider's interest in social questions, in the puny dykes 
 which well-meaning people are trying to raise all round us 
 against the encroaching, devastating labor-troubles of the 
 future. By dint of running away from life, I may end by cut- 
 ting a much more passabe figure in it than before. Be con- 
 soled, my dear Elsmere; reconsider your remonstrances." 
 
 There, under the great cedar by the gate, stood Mr. Wend- 
 over. Illumined as he was by the spring sunshine, he struck 
 Elsmere as looking unusually shrunken and old. And yet un- 
 der the look of physical exhaustion there was a new serenity, 
 almost a peacefulness of expression, which gave the whole 
 man a different aspect. 
 
 Don't 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, warm- 
 ly. *^You ought to have a long rest. But mayn't 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 if 
 
KOBERT KLSMERE. 
 
 ' And Elsmere's smile bad in it a touch of most friendly re» 
 proach. Fatigue had left the scholar relaxed, comparatively 
 defenseless. His sunk and wrinkled eyes hghted up with a 
 smile, faint indeed, but of unwonted softness. 
 
 A task indeed," he said, with a sigh, "the task of a life- 
 time. To-day I finished the second third of it. Probably be- 
 fore 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." 
 
 *'Elsmere's eyes were still interrogative. " Oh, well," said 
 the squire, hastily, it is a book I planned just after I took my 
 doctor's 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.' " 
 
 Eobert started. The library/ flashed into his mind, and 
 Langham's 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 stand-point 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 scrutinizing look dwelling on the 
 face beside him, as though to judge whether he were under- 
 stood. 
 
 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 think- 
 er's ardor, fixed on the squire. 
 
 The squire received the outburst in silence— a somewhat am- 
 biguous 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 Newman's vic- 
 tims. Then, when Newman departed, I went over body and 
 bones to the Liberal reaction which followed his going. In 
 the first ardor of what seemed to me a release from slavery I 
 migrated to Berlin, in search ot J^nowled^-^ wVnVh fhere was no 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRE. 
 
 36^ 
 
 getting in England, and there, with the taste of a dozen aim- 
 less theological controversies still in my mouth, this idea first 
 took hold of me. It was simply this : Could one through an 
 exhaustiv,e examination of human records, helped by modern 
 physiological and mental science, get at the conditions, physi- 
 cal and mental, which govern the greater or lesser correspond- 
 ence between human witness and the fact it reports?" 
 
 * ' A giant's task !" cried Eobert ; ' ' hardly conceivable !" 
 
 The squire smiled slightly— the smile of a man who looks 
 back with indulgent half-melancholy satire on the rash ambi- 
 tions 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 sev- 
 eral Oriental languages— Sanskrit amoag 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 deahng with classical 
 antiquity— with India, Persia, Egypt, and Judaea. To-day 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 tftrned to him with wonder, with a movement of 
 irrepressible homage. Thirty years of unbroken solitary labor 
 for one end, one cause. In our hurried fragmentary life a 
 purpose of this tenacity, this power of realizing itseif , strikes 
 the imagination. 
 
 And your two books?" 
 
 * * Were a mere interlude, " repHed the squire, bri^y. * ' 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, dryly. 
 
 ' Elsmere was silent, thinking this then was the explanation 
 ■ of the squire's minute and exhaustive knowledge of the early 
 Christian centuries, a knowledge into which — apart from cer- 
 tain forbidden topics— he had himself dipped so freely. Sud- 
 denly, as he mused, there awoke in the young man a new 
 : hunger, a new unmanageable impulse toward frankness of 
 speech. All his nascent intellectual powers were alive and 
 clamorous. For the moment his past reticences and timidities 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 half -defiant, half -nervous energy, **you have given your 
 best attention all these years to the Christian problems." 
 
 ''Naturally," said the squire, dryly. Then, as his compan- 
 ion 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?" rephed Elsmere, flushing. ''I think 
 I only wanted to make my own position clear and prevent mis- 
 understanding. 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 and 
 seemed to consider. His tired eyes, fixed on the spring lane 
 before them, saw in reahty only the long retrospects of the 
 past. Then a light broke in them, transformed them — a fight 
 of battle. He turned to the man beeide 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. Wendov^er, in spite of his 
 philosophy, had never been proof all his life against an anti- 
 clerical instinct worthy almost of a Paris municipal councilor. 
 In spite of his fatigue there woke in him a kind of cruel whim- 
 sical 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 f eUow who thought he could condescend 
 to science f rora the standpoint of the Christian miracles ! 
 
 Results?" he said, interrogatively. Well, as you will 
 imderstand, it is tolerably difficult to summarize such a mass 
 at a moment's 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. Wendover's orig- 
 inal intention. There was something in the situation, in Eis- 
 mere's comments, or arguments, or silences, which after a 
 while banished the scholar's sense of exhaustion and made him 
 obfivious of the country distances. No man feels another's 
 soul quivering and struggling in l\is grasp without excitement, 
 let his nerve and his self-restraint be what they may. 
 
ROBERT BLSMERI2. 
 
 As for Elsmere, that hour and a half, little as he realized it 
 at the time, represented the turning-point 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 squire's closely knit sentences would be for 
 the moment wholly disarranged. On the whole, he proved 
 himself no mean guardian of all that was most sacred to him- 
 self and to Catherine, and the squire's intellectual respect for 
 him rose considerably. 
 
 AU^ 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 lawfc^ 
 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 resist- 
 ance which was in itself anguish. 
 
 As to th.e squire's talk, it was simply the outpouring of one 
 of the richest, most skeptical, and most highly trained of 
 minds on the subject of Christion 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, to 
 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 after struggle. 
 
 Testimony like every other human product has developed, 
 Man's 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 cave-dweller 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 inj^istory may be defined as 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 the * science oi what is credible,' and in literature as Hhe 
 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. Paul's 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, half -childish products of the mind of 
 the first century, of quite insignificant or indirect value io the 
 historian of fact, of enormous value to the historian of testi- 
 mony 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 molds, the channels into 
 which the testimony of the time must run. I look for these 
 molds, of course, in the dominant ideas, the intellectual pre- 
 conceptions 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 favor 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. Eead 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, half -trained, pre-scien- 
 tific, but all through perfectly natural. The wonder would 
 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 can not die, but fifty years after his death is still 
 looked for as the inaugurator of a millennium of horror. The 
 Eesurrection 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 
 
BOBBRT ELSMERB. 
 
 definite historical origin ; those, for instance, flowing from the 
 pre-Christian, apocalyptic literature of the Jews, taking the 
 Maccabean legend of Daniel as the center of inquiry— those 
 flowing from Alexandrian Judaism and the school of Phiio— 
 those flowing from the Palestinian schools of exegesis. Ex- 
 amine 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 inteUigence to refuse 
 to read his Livy in the hght 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 ration- 
 ality when the man who is perfectly capable of deaUng sanely 
 with legend in one connection, and, in another, will insist on 
 confounding it with history proper, can not 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 bound- 
 aries between reason and unreason !" 
 
 And so on. These are mere ragged gleanings from an ampre 
 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 con- 
 scious for many bitter moments of that same constriction of 
 heart which had overtaken him once before at Mr. Wendover's 
 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 re-examine some of these intellectual founda- 
 tions of faith. But as to the faith itself, that is its own wit- 
 ness. It does not depend, after all, upon anything external, 
 but upon the living voice of the Eternal in the soul of man !" 
 
 Id voluntarily bis pace quickened. The whole man wa.* 
 
374 
 
 liOEERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 gathered into one great, useless, pitiful defiance, and the 
 outer world was forgotten. The squire kept unwith difficulty 
 awhile, a faint gliramer of sarcasm playing^ow and then 
 roimd the straight thin-Hpped mouth. Then suddenly he 
 stopped. 
 
 ''No, let it be. Forget me and my book, Elsmere. Every- 
 thing 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 beheve. With your leave, VYl sit down in one 
 of them, and send to the Hall for the carriage. 
 
 EJsmere's 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 sym- 
 T)athy. No living being, certainly not his foolish little sister, 
 had any right to take care of the squire. And as the signs of 
 age become more apparent, this one fact had often worked 
 powerfully on the sympathies of Elsmere's chivalrous youth, 
 though as yet he had been no more capable than any one else 
 of breaking through the squire's haughty reserve. 
 
 As they turned down the newly worn track to the cottages, 
 whereof the weekly progress had been for some time the de- 
 light of Elsmere's heart, they met old Meyrick in his pony- 
 carriage. He stopped his shambling steed at sight of the pair. 
 The bleared, spectacled eyes lighted up, the prim mouth broke 
 into a smile which matched the April sim. 
 
 ''Well, squire; well, Mr. Elsmere, are you going to have a 
 look at those places? Never saw such palaces. I only hope I 
 naay end my days in anything so good. Will you give me a 
 lease, squire?" 
 
 Mr. Wendover's deep eyes took a momentary survey, half 
 indulgent, half contemptuous, of the naive, awkward-looking 
 old creature in the pony-carriage. Then, without troubling to 
 find an answer he went his way. 
 
 Robert stayed chatting a moment or two, knowing perfectly 
 well what Meyrick's gay garruhty meant. A sharp and bitter 
 sense of the ironies of life swept across him. The squire hu- 
 
EOBEET ELSMEBB. 
 
 8^5 
 
 manized, influenced by him— he knew that ms the imagfe m 
 Meyrick's mind ; he remembered with a quiet scorn its pres«^ 
 ence in his own. And never, never had he felt his own weak- 
 ness and the strength of that grim personality so much as at 
 that instant. 
 
 That evening Catherine noticed an unusual silence and de- 
 pression in Robert. She did her best to cheer it away, to get 
 at the cause of it. In vain. At last, with her usual wise ten- 
 derness, 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 in 
 stinctive upward leap of prayer. 
 
 Robert was no sooner alone than he put down his pipe and 
 sat brooding over the fire. All the long debase of the after- 
 noon 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 squire's conversation by certain 
 allusions to arguments drawn from the Book of Daniel. It 
 was not a subject with which Robert had any great famihar- 
 ity. He remembered his Pusey dimly, certain Divinity lec- 
 tures, an article of Westcott's. 
 
 He raised his hand quickly and took down the monograpji 
 on -'The Use of the Old Testament in the New," which the 
 squire had sent him in the earliest days of their acquaintance. 
 A sacred 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 
 aecond 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 apochryphal book 
 of the time of the Maccabees, would be to confess that she had 
 made a mis|^ake; if see 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 critici^. Robert found all these ways enumerated 
 in the brilliant and vigorous pages of the book before him. 
 
 In the first place, like the orthodox Saint-Sulpicien, the 
 
876 
 
 HOBEST ELSMEM5. 
 
 Protestant meets the critic with a flat non possvmus. *'Tour 
 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 recognize its authority. The 
 AJl-True and All-Knowing ^an not 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 argimaents are perfectly just," he says to the critic; 
 
 the book is a patriotic fraud, of no value except to the his- 
 torian of nterature. But how do you know that our Lord 
 quoted it as t7me in the strict sense? In fact He quoted it as 
 literature, as a Greek might have quoted Homer, as an English- 
 man might quote Shakespeare." 
 
 And many a harassed Churchman takes refuge forthwith in 
 the ilew explanation. It is very difficult, no doubt, to make 
 the passages in the Gospels agree with it, but at the bottom oi 
 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 
 parf^ pris to defend, and states the matter calmly, dispassion- 
 ately, 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 b. c. 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 
 thoUj^ht, 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 be- 
 fore 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. Iti the stillness of the 
 night there rose up weirdly before him a whole new mental 
 picture— effacing, pushing out, innumerable older images of 
 
ROBKET ELSMEEB, 
 
 thought. It was the image of a purely human Christ— a purely 
 human, explicable, yet always wonderful ChristiaDity. It 
 broke his heart, but the spell of it was like some dream- 
 country wherein we see all the familiar objects of life in new 
 relations and perspectives. He gazed upon it fascinated, the 
 wailing underneath checked awhile 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 I'' 
 A slight sound overhead in Catherine's 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 Elsmere's 
 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, of 
 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 imbittered 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 
 Elsmere's hands, he had formally invited Elsmere's remarks 
 upon it; and the air of Murewell seemed still echoing with his 
 sentences, stiU astir with his thoughts. That curious instinct 
 of pursuit, that avid, imperious wish to crush an irritating re- 
 sistance, 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 fiber that made it impos- 
 sible?— that had placed him in this way at the squire's disposal? 
 
378 
 
 EOBBET ELSMEEE. 
 
 Half the world would answer yes. Might not the other half 
 plead that in every generation there is a minority of these mo- 
 bile, impressionable, defenseless 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 minor- 
 ity that aU human advance comes? 
 
 During these three miserable months it can not 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 behefs of its time, the Gospel of St. John, 
 the evidence as to the Kesurrection, the intellectual and moral 
 conditions surrounding the formation of the Canon. His mind 
 swayed hither and thither, driven from each resting-place in 
 turn by the pressure of some new difficulty. And-~let it be 
 said again~a*ll through, the only constant element in the whole 
 dismal process was hia 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 indif- 
 ferent material now plowed its agonizing way, bit by bit, into 
 the most intimate recesses of thought and faith. 
 
 Much of the actual struggle he was able to keep from Cather- 
 ine's view, as he had vowed to himself to keep it. For after the 
 squire's departure Mrs. Darcy too went joyously up to London 
 to flutter awhile through the golden alleys of Mayf air ; and Els- 
 mere was left once more in undisturbed possession of the Mure- 
 well Hbrary. There for awhile on every day— oh, pitiful relief ! 
 —he could hide himself from the eyes he loved. 
 
 But, after all, married love allows of nothing but the shallow- 
 est concealments. Catherine had already had one or two alarms. 
 Once, in Robert's study, among a tiunbled 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 affect- 
 ed 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 
 
BOBEKT ELSMEBB. 
 
 book dropped abruptly from her hand, and she stood a moment 
 by her husband^s table, her fine face pale and frowning. 
 
 She noticed with bitterness Mr. Wendover's name on the title- 
 page. Was it right for^Eobert 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 c^n't understand," she said to her- 
 self, with an almost agonized energy. It is I who am timid, 
 f aitkless ! 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 deli 
 cate moral scruple warned her she might easily allow her dis- 
 hke 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 squire's departure 
 Catherine suddenly realized that the whole atmosphere of their 
 home-Hfe was changed. 
 
 Robert was giving himself to his people with a more scrupu- 
 lous energy than ever. Never had she seen him so pitiful, so 
 lull of heart for every human creature. His sermons, with 
 their constant imaginative dwelling on the earthly Hf e 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 self-depreciation 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 to-morrow all the rubs of to- 
 day, 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 old gossips of the place spoke their mind freely to Cath- 
 erine on the subject of the rector's looks, coupling their remarks 
 with a variety of prescriptions, out of which Robert did some- 
 times manage to get one of his old laughs. His sleeplessness, 
 too, which had always been a constitutional tendency, had b^- 
 
S80 
 
 BGBEBT ELSMEBS. 
 
 come now so constant and wearing that Catherine began to feel 
 a nervous hatred of his book- work, 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 hoHday, 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 recognized 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 dressing-gown into 
 the study in search of a Christian Year" she had left behind 
 her, she found Eobert 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, Eobert ? Do come to bed !" 
 
 He sat up, and with a pathetic gesture held out his arms vO 
 her. She came on to his knee, putting her white arms round 
 his neck, while he leaned his head against her breast. 
 
 *'Are you tired with all your walking to-day?" she said, 
 presently, a pang at her heart. 
 
 I am tired," he said, but not with walking." 
 Does your book worry you ? You s[houldn't work so hard, 
 Robert— you shouldn't I" 
 
 He started. 
 
 Don't talk of it. Don't let us talk or think at all, only 
 feell" ' 
 
 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 ol grace 1" 
 
BOBERT BLSMBES. S81 
 
 too have been thinking of her to-night,'* said Catherine, 
 |. uoftly, *^and of the walk to Shanmoor. This evening in the 
 ^rden 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 Eobert— 
 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 mount- 
 ains, their serenity, their strength. Say me that Duddon son- 
 net 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 good-bye to that blessed spot. Oh ! how I sit and 
 think of it sometimes, when hfe seems to be going crookedly, 
 that rock on the fell- side where I found you, and caught you, 
 and snared you, my dove, forever." 
 
 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 toward the silent tomb we go, 
 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower. 
 We feel that we are greater than we know.*' 
 
 *'He has divined it all," said Eobert, drawing a long breath 
 when she stopped, which seem to relax the fibers 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 kindhng, 
 and her rare passion breaking through; **how little in com- 
 parison !" 
 
 For her thoughts were with him of whom it was said: JEZe 
 needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, 
 for he Jcnew what was in man." But Robertas only response 
 was silence and a kind of quivering sigh. 
 
 Robert I" 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 I" he said to her, after another 
 
882 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 pause, m a tone of strange tension she never forgot; ''genera- 
 tions of men and women have known what it is to be led spirit- 
 ually 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 can not come through it with me, my darhng— 
 no not even you ! It is loneliness— it is solitariness itself—'' 
 and he shuddered. ' But pray for me— pi-ay that He may be 
 with me, and that at the end there may be Hght !" 
 
 He pressed her to him convulsively, then gently released her. 
 His solemn eyes, fixed upon her as she stood there beside him, 
 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 upstaii*s. 
 
 Oh ! but at last she thought she imderstood him. She had 
 not passed her girlhood, side by side with a man of dehcate 
 fiber, 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 
 forever. But she went back to them now, straining her eyes 
 through the darkness of her own past, recalling her father's 
 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 half contempt 
 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 self-blame, she would have 
 been able now to understand Eobert better— to help him more. 
 
 She thought as she lay awake after those painful moments in 
 the study, the tears weUing 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 traveled over his 
 months of intercourse with the squire; and the memory of Mr. 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 383 
 
 Newcome's attitude toward the man whom he conceived to be 
 his Lord's adversary, as contrasted with Eobert's, filled her 
 with a shrinking pain she dared not analyze. 
 
 Still all through, her feeling toward her husband was in the 
 main akin to that of the English civilian at home toward Eng- 
 lish 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 Enghsh society, by a steady 
 refusal to know what, however, any educated university man 
 must perforce know. But such a course of action was impos- 
 sible for Eobert. He had been forced into the open, into the 
 full tide of the Lord's 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 doubts as to the issue 
 of this sudden crisis ia her husband's consciousness, even when 
 she came nearest to apprehending its nature. As well might 
 she doubt the return of daylight as dream of any permanent 
 eclipse descending upon the faith which had shone through 
 every detail of Robert's ardent impulsive life, with all its strug- 
 gles, 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 believer's 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 Robert's depression still continued, 
 Catherine surrounded him with the tenderest and wisest affec- 
 tion. 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 re- 
 sults of his long strain of body and mind during the Mile End 
 epidemic. And for the rest she would not argue ; she would laot 
 inquire. She only prayed that she might so lead the Christian 
 life beside him, that the Lord's tenderness, the Lord's consola- 
 tion, 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 work- 
 Hh in me." But now, whenever she came across any striking 
 <race of his power over the weak or the impure, the sick or iksk 
 
384 
 
 EOBEET ELSMKRK. 
 
 sad, she would in some way make it known to him, offering it 
 to him in her dehcate 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 wife's faith, the 
 power of her love, wrought in Eobert, 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 intel- 
 lectual 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 toward the end of July Eobert was coming home 
 from the Hall before lunch, tired and worn, as the morsing 
 always left him, and meditating some fresh sheets of the squire's 
 proofs which had been in his hands that morning. On the 
 road crossing that to the rectory he suddenly saw Eeginald 
 Newcome, thinner and whiter than ever, striding along as fast 
 as cassock and cloak would let him, his eyes on the ground, 
 and his wide-awake drawn over them. He and Elsmere had 
 scarcely met for months, and Robert had lately made up his 
 ttiind that Newcome was distinctly less friendly, and wished to 
 
 ^^Msmere had touched his arm before Newcome had perceived 
 toy 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 m 
 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 lock returning to Elsmere; I hear 
 you as always together." 
 
BOBERT ELSMEBS. 
 
 385 
 
 We have made friends, and we walk a great deal when the 
 squire is here," said Robert; meeting Newcome's 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 
 A^igust or September. The best building of the kind in the 
 cruntry by far, and Mr. Wendover's gift." 
 
 I suppose you use the library a great deal?" said Newcome, 
 paying no attention to these remarks, and still eying his com- 
 panion closely, 
 great deal." 
 
 Robert had at that moment under his arm a German treatise 
 on the history of the Logos doctrine, which, afterward, looking 
 back onthelittle scene, he thought it probable Newcome recog- 
 nized. They turned toward the rectory together, Newcome 
 still asking abrupt questions as to the squire, the length of 
 time he was to be a?7ay, Elsmere's work, parochial and literary, 
 during the past six months, the numbers of his Sunday congre- 
 gation, of his comjaunicants, etc. Elsmere bore his catechism 
 ^vith perfect tem.per, though Newcome's manner had in it . a 
 Grange and almost judicial imperativeness. 
 
 ''Elsmere," said his questioner presently, after a pause, ''I 
 xm going to have a retreat for priests at the Clergy House next 
 .nonth. Father H ," mentioning a famous High Church- 
 man, ''will conduct it. You would do me a special favor"— 
 4nd suddenly the face softened, and shone with all its old mag- 
 netism 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 other's arm. 
 
 "No, Newcome, no; I am in no mood for H ." 
 
 The High Churchman looked at him with a quick and pain* 
 ful 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—" it 
 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 God's sight 
 only!" 
 
386 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 It was the first burst ot confidence which had passed his lip? 
 to any one but Catherine. 
 
 Newcome stood stiU, a tremor of strong emotion runmng 
 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 Eobert, quietly. 
 Opinions?" 
 
 Opinions, I suppose-or facts," said Robert, his arms drop- 
 ping 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 curi- 
 osity. 
 
 A kind of flash passed over Mr. Newcome s face. 
 
 ''Have I ever known r 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 hps moving, his 
 ga^e 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 feat- 
 ure working painfuUy. , 1 
 
 **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 don't 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-Si 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 wiU 
 
 iand only one way." . , ^i. • 
 
 The Hthe hand caught Robert's 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 ag'ainst His Omnipotence? Submit 
 -submit-humble yourself, my brother ! Fling away the free- 
 dom which is your ruin. There is no freedom for man. Either 
 a slave to Christ, or a slave to his own hists-there is no other 
 choice. Go away; exchange your work here for a time tor 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRB. 387 
 
 work in London. You have too much leisure here: Satan has 
 too much opportunity. I f orsaw it— I f orsaw it when you 
 and I first met. I felt I had a message for you, and here I de- 
 liver it. In the Lord's name, I bid you fly, bid you yield in 
 time. Better to be the Lord's captive than the Lord's he- 
 trayerr 
 
 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 in 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 soul's purest instincts I 
 Newcomb had done it— why not he? 
 
 And then, suddenly, as be stood gazing at his companion, 
 the spring sun, and murmur all about them, another face, an- 
 other 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 unintelli- 
 gible. " * ' Such honor rooted in dishonor stands; such faith un- 
 faithful makes us falsely true,'' God is forever reason: and 
 His communication^ His revelation^ is reason." 
 
 He turned away with a slight sad shake of the head. The 
 spell was broken. Mr. Ne wcome's arm dropped, and he moved 
 somberly on besides Eobert— the hand, which held a little book 
 of Hours against his cloak, trembling slightly. 
 
 At the rectory gate he stopped. 
 
 '^Good-bye — I must go home." 
 
 ''You won't come in? No, no, Newcomb; 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 God's, and all thought— not only a fraction of it. Hb 
 can not let me wander very far !" 
 
 But the cold fingers he held so warmly dropped from his, 
 and Newcome turned away. 
 
 A week afterward, or thereabouts, Robert had in some sense 
 followed Newcome's 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 invad- 
 ing feebleness of the will, which refused, as it were, to carry 
 on the struggle any longer, at such a life-destroying pitch of 
 ^nsity. The intellectual oppression of itself brought about 
 
388 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 wild reaction and recoil, and a passionate appeal to that in- 
 ward witness of the SQul 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 squire's letters. It 
 contained a short but masterly analysis of the mental habits 
 and idiosyncrasies of St. Paul, apropos of St. Paul's witness to 
 the Resurrection. Every now and then, as Elsmere turned 
 the pages, the orthodox protest would assert itself , the ortho- 
 dox arguments make themselves felt as though in mechanical, 
 involuntary protest. But their force and vitality were gone. 
 Between the Paul of AngUcan theology and the fiery, faUible 
 man of genius— so weak lo^cally, so strong in poetry, in 
 rhetoric, in moral passion, whose portrait has been drawn for 
 us hy a free 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 
 squire's, with its imperious demands upon the tired, irritable 
 brain, was the last straw. 
 
 He sunk 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, far-off sunlight 
 struggled on to the library floor, and lay in ghostly patches 
 on the poHshed boards and lower ranges of books. 
 
 The simplest rehgious 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 dehberately, laid the squire's letter among his other 
 papers, and tied them up carefully; then he took up the books 
 which lay piled on the squire's writing-table: all those volumes 
 of Grerman, French, and English criticism, liberal or apolo- 
 getic, which he had been accumulating round him day by day 
 with a feverish, toilsome impartial^'ty 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 
 
r 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 889 
 
 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 Cath- 
 erine's figure glided backward and forward 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 reHgious dread, religious shame; 
 that terror of disloyalty to the divine images which have filled 
 the soul's 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 Catherine's 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 bomCc 
 
 He walked home, counting up the engagements of the next 
 few weeks— the school-treat, two club field-days, a sermon in 
 the country town, the probable opening of the new Workmen's 
 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, slowly moving river, half hidden beneath the 
 rank fiower growth, the tansy and willow-herb, the luxuriant 
 elder and trailing brambles of its August banks, and thought 
 with hungry passion of the clean-swept Alpine pasture, the fir- 
 woods, and the tameless mountain streams. In three weeks 
 or less he and Catherine should be chmbing 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, Elsmere's wife slept in peace and woke without 
 dread of the day before her. 
 
 BOOK IV.— CRISIS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 j The next fortnight was a time of truce. Elsmere neither 
 read nor reasoned. He spent his days in the school, in the vil- 
 lage, pottering about the Mile End cottages, or the new insti- 
 
390 EGBERT ELSMKRE. 
 
 tute— sometimes fishing, sometimes passing long summer bourfl 
 on the commons with his club boys, hunting the ponds for cad- 
 dises, newts, and water-beetles, peering into the furze-bushes 
 for second broods, or watching the sand-martins in the gravel- 
 pits, and trudging home at night in the midst of an escort of 
 enthusiasts, all of them with pockets as full and miiy as his 
 own, to deposit the treasures of the day in the club-room. 
 Once more the rector, though physically perhaps less ardent 
 than of yore, was the Hfe of the party, and a certain awe and 
 strangeness which had developed in his boys' minds toward 
 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 man's being had reasserted 
 themselves He could feel and love and pray again ; and Cath- 
 erine, seeirg the old glow in the eyes, the old spring in the 
 step, 'made the whole of Hfe one thank-offering. 
 
 On the <^>vening following that moment of reaction m the 
 Murewell Ubrary, Robert had written to the squire. His letter 
 had beer practically a withdrawal from the correspondence. 
 
 ^^I fipd," he wrote, ''that I have been spending too much 
 time an<l energy lately on these critical matters. It seems to 
 me tha*. 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. . r ^ 
 
 -My heart is where it was, but my head is often confused. 
 Let controversy rest awhile. My wife says I want a holiday ; 
 I thixik so myself, and we are off in three weeks ; not, however, 
 I hope, before we have welcomed you home again, and got you 
 to ^pen the new institute, which is already dazzling the eyes 
 of the village by its size and splendor, and the white pamt that 
 Harris the builder has been lavishing upon it." ^ 
 Ten days later, rather earlier than was expected, the squirt 
 and Mrs. Darcy were at home again. Robert re-entered the 
 ^reat house the morning after their arrival with a strange re- 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEB* 
 
 391 
 
 luctance. 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 liirn on any 
 homeward journey. He was more brown, more wrinkled, 
 more shrunken; more full of force, of harsh epigram, of grim 
 anecdote than ever.^ Kobert sat on the edge of the table laugh- 
 ing over his stories of French Orientalists, or Eoman 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 Elsmere's 
 letter. But EJsmere suspected in him a good deal of suppressed 
 irritability ; and, as after awhile 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 shilly-shally in this way ? He is convinced already, as he 
 knows— those later letters were conclusive! His living, per- 
 haps, and his work! Not for the money's 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 can't speak your mind, it is some- 
 thing at any rate to possess one— nine tenths of the clergy being 
 without the appendage. But Elsmere— pshaw! he will go 
 muddling on to the end of the obapteri" 
 
392 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 The squire, indeed, was like a hunter whose prey escapee him 
 at the very moment of capture, and there grew on him a mock- 
 ing, 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. Wend- 
 over, 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 wiU have some of them — 
 regard me as an old reprobate, and the poor people, I imagine, 
 as a kind of ogre. To me it doesn't matter a twopenny damn 
 — I apologize ; it was the Duke of Wellington's favorite stand- 
 ard of value— but I can't 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 frown- 
 ing eyes wandered round the great room before him. For the 
 first time he was conscious that now, as soon as the charm of 
 Elsmere's 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, how- 
 ever — unparalleled since the brief days when even Bobert 
 Wendover had his friends and his attractions Hke other men- 
 was soon lost in renewed chafing at Elsmere's absurdities, 
 the squire had been at fii^t perfectly content — so he told him- 
 self —to limit the field of their intercourse, and would have been 
 content to go on doing so. But Elsmere himseK 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 can not face the intellectual change, and he must, I suppose, 
 dread lest it should affect his work. Good God, what nonsense I 
 As if any one inquired what an English parson believed nowa- 
 days, so long as he perform^ etll the usual antics decently I" 
 
KOBEBT ELSMEEB. 898 
 
 And, meanwlnle, it never occurred to the squire that Elsmere 
 had a wife, and a pious one. Catherine had heen dropped out 
 of his calculation as to Elsmere's future, at a very early stage. 
 
 The following afternoon Eohert, 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." 
 
 Eohert 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 sun-flooded 
 distance, the shining loops of the river, the feeding deer, or any 
 ,of those natural witcheries to which eye and sense were gener- 
 ally so responsive. The laborers going home, the children — 
 with aprons full of crab-apples, and lips dyed by the first black- 
 berries—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 laboring in aUen and dreary 
 seas. 
 
 He roused himself to remember that he had been curious to 
 see Mme. de Netteville. She was an old friend of the squire's, 
 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. Eenan gave me a card to her. An extraordinary 
 woman. No particular originality; but one of the best persons 
 ' to consult about ideas,' like Joubert's Madame de Beaumont, 
 I ever saw. Eeceptiveness 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 yew -clothed hill on which 
 the library looked out. Evelyn himself had planned it. Along 
 its upper side ran one of the most beautiful old walls, broken 
 by niches and statues, tapestried with roses and honeysuckle, 
 and opening in the center to reveal Evelyn's 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 
 
394 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 jeweled rim of flowers; and as the hill fell 
 steeply imderneath, 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 recog- 
 nized by him as a fellow of the Royal Society, a famous mathe- 
 matician, skeptic, bo7i vivant, and sayer of good things. The 
 other was a young Liberal Catholic, the author of a remarkable 
 collection of essays on mediaeval subjects in which the squire, 
 treating the man's opinions of coui'se as of no account, had in- 
 stantly recognized the note of the true scholar. A pale, small, 
 hectic creature, possessed of that restles energy of mind which 
 often goes with the heightened temperature of consumption. 
 
 Eobert took a seat by Mme. de Netteville, whose appearance 
 was picturesqueness itself. Her dress, a skillful 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 half light brought admirably out the 
 rich, dark smoothness of the tints, the black luster of the eyes. 
 A delicate blue- veined 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. R,obert 
 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 neighbor- 
 hood, 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 off hand. He was in a 
 mood to be impatient with a mondaine's languid inquiries into 
 clerical work, and it seemed to him the squire's description 
 had been overdone. 
 
 ^'So you try to civilize your peasants," she said at last, 
 " Does it succeed— is it worth while?" 
 
EOBEET ELSMEEB. 
 
 395 
 
 **That depends upon your general ideas of what is worth 
 while," he answered, smihng. 
 
 Oh, everything is worth while that passes the time," she 
 said, hurriedly. The clergy of the old regime went througk 
 life half asleep. That was their way of passing it. Your way, 
 being a modem, is to bustle and try experiments." 
 
 Her eyes, half closed but none the less provocative, ran over 
 Elsmere's keen face and pUant frame. An atmosphere of in- 
 tellectual and social assumption inwrapped her, which an- 
 noyed Robert in much the same way as Langham's philosophi- 
 cal 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 sharp- 
 ness or mental resource. Mme. de Netteville's tone insensibly 
 changed, her manner quickened, her great eyes gradually un- 
 closed. 
 
 Suddenly, as they were in the middle of a skirmish as to the 
 reality of influence, Mme. de Netteville paradoxically main- 
 taining that no human being had ever really converted, trans- 
 formed, or convinced another, the voice of young Wishart, 
 shrOl and tremulous, rose above the general level of talk. 
 
 I am quite ready ; I am not the least afraid of a definition. 
 Theology is organized knowledge in the field of religion, a 
 science like any other science !" 
 
 Certainly, my dear sir, certainly," said Mr. Spooner, lean- 
 ing forward with his hands round his knees, and speaking with 
 the most elegant and good-humored sang froid imaginable, 
 **the science of the world's, ghosts I lean not imagine any 
 more fascinating." 
 
 **Well," said Mme. 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 summer's afternoon ! Oh, Mr. Spooner 1" she 
 said, raising her voice, ''don't play the heretic here 1 There is 
 no fun in it ; there are too many with you." 
 
 ''I did not begin it, my dear madame, and your reproach is 
 unjust. On one side of me Archbishop Manning's 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 
 mustache, bis long straw-colored bieard, and his Panama hat 
 
896 
 
 EOBEET ELSMERB. 
 
 Mme. de Netteville surveyed him with cool, critical eyes. 
 Robert smiled sHghtly, 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 ill the * Fortnightly 1' 
 How you skeptics miss the point !" 
 
 And out came a stream of argument and denunciation which 
 had probably lain lava-hot at the heart of the young convert 
 for years, waiting for such a moment as this, when he had be- 
 fore him at close quarters two of the most famous antagonists 
 of his faith. The outburst was striking, but certainly unpar- 
 donably ill-timed. Mme. de Netteville retreated into herself 
 with a shrug. Robert, in whom a sore nerve had been set jar- 
 ring, did his utmost to begin his talk with her again. 
 
 In vain !— f or the squire struck in. He had been sitting hud- 
 dled together — his cynical eyes wandering from Wishart to 
 Elsmere— when suddenly some extravagant remark of the 
 young Cathohc, and Robert's effort to edge away fi'om the con- 
 versation, 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 yoimg 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, Mme. de NetteviUe 
 listened. Robert's 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 and 
 famihar 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 fiber to break up 
 the party by an abrupt exit, which could only have been inter- 
 preted in one way. 
 
 So he stayed, and perforce listened, but in complete silence. 
 ITone of Mr. Wendover's side-hits 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 Catholi? 
 
J&OBERT ELSMEEB. 
 
 395 
 
 convert, already, for those who knew, marked with the signs 
 of deatn, to the bronzed visage of the squire, grew duller- 
 more instinct with a slowly dawning 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 apologize 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 pres- 
 ent 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 Ufe 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 sym- 
 pathy — the heart's yearning assent, even when the intellect 
 was most perplexed. Now that inmost strand had given away. 
 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. Wishart's 
 hopes and hatreds, and sublime defiances of man's petty facul- 
 ties, 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 Eobert that he was going thi;ough, once more, 
 that old fierce temptation of Bunyan's : 
 
 For after the Lord had in this manner thus graciously de- 
 livered 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 month: 
 no. not sometimes one hour in many days together, for it did 
 
398 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMBBE. 
 
 always, in almost whatever I thought, intermix itself there- 
 with, 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, seU Him!' " 
 
 Was this what lay before the minister of God now in this 
 selva oscura of Mfe? 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 intellec- 
 tual 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. Augus- 
 tine which he had read to CatherinCj 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 stiU, and with his hands locked behind him, 
 and his face turned like the face of a blind man toward a world 
 of which it saw nothing, went through a desperate catechism 
 of himself. 
 
 "Do J believe in Godf Surely, surely! 'Though He slay 
 me yet will I trust in Him !' Do I believe in Christ f Yes— iq 
 the teacher, the martyr, the symbol to us Westerns of all 
 things heavenly and abiding, the image and pledge of the in 
 visible life of the spirit— with all my soul and all my mind ! 
 
 " But in the Man- God, the Word from Eternity— in a wob 
 der-working Christ, in a risen and ascended Jesus, in the h> 
 ing Intercessor and Mediator for the lives of His doorri»*^l 
 brethren?" 
 
 He waited, conscious that it was the crisis of his history, and 
 there rose in him, as though articulated one by onv hf 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 <livine wor- 
 ship, and ' miracles do not happen P " 
 
 It was done. He felt for the moment as Bitiiyan did after 
 his lesser defeat. 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRB. 
 
 399 
 
 ** 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 a heart as mortal man I think could 
 bear, where for the space of two hours I was like a man bereft 
 ofhfe." 
 
 All these years of happy, spiritual certainty, of rejoicing 
 oneness with Christ, to end in this wreck and loss ! Was not 
 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 gently- 
 breathing nature, sounds of birds and swaying branches and 
 intermittent gusts of air rustling through the gorse and the 
 drifts of last year's 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 dove-cote on the 
 side lawn, the gold of the August wheat in the great corn-field 
 showing against the heavy girdle of oak-wood. 
 
 Eobert 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. 
 
 ^'Oh,God! My wife—my work P' 
 
 —There was a sound of a voice calling— Catherine's voice 
 calling for him. He leaned against the gate of the wood-path, 
 struggling sternly with himself. This was no simple matter of 
 his own intellectual consistency or happiness. Another's 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 toward her. She was strolHng 
 along the path looking out for him, one delicate hand gather- 
 ing up her long evening dress— that verj^ same black brocade 
 she had worn in the old days at Burwoo *-the other playing 
 
400 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 toward the 
 house, however, she scolding him for overwalking, he won his 
 battle with himself. He went through the evening so that 
 even Catherine's jealous eyes saw nothing but extra fatigue. 
 In the most desperate straits of life love is stiQ the fountain of 
 all endurance, and if ever a man loved it was Robert Elsmere. 
 
 But that night, as he lay sleepless in their quiet room, with 
 the window open to the stars and the rising gusts of wind, 
 which blew the petals of the cluster-rose outside in di'ifts of 
 ''fair weather snow" on to the window-sill, he went through 
 an agony which no words can adequately describe. 
 
 He must, of course, give up his hving 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 hve on in the ministry of the Church, doing 
 the humane and charitable work of the Church, while refusing 
 assent to the intellectual and dogmatic frame-work on which 
 the Chm-ch system rests; but for himself it would be neither 
 right nor wrong, but simply impossible. He did not ar^^ue or 
 reason about it. There was a favorite axiom of Mr. Grey's 
 which had become part of his pupil's 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 child's waking 
 soon after midnight in the room overhead ; the cry of the owls 
 on the oak-wood ; the purrihg of tne night-jars on the com- 
 mon; the morning chatter of the swallows round the eaves. 
 
 With the first invasion of the dawn Robert raised himself 
 
EOBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 40S 
 
 i and looked at Catherine. She was sleeping with that light 
 I sound sleep which belongs to health of body and mind, one 
 I hand under her face, the other stretched out in soft relaxation 
 1 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 ex- 
 quisite self -surrender, 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 
 I springs of her womanhood. Oh, how she must suffer! The 
 1 thought of it and his own helplessness wrung his heart, 
 j Oh, could he keep her love through it all ? There was an 
 ! unspeakable dread mingled with his grief — his remorse. It 
 I had been there for months. In her eyes would not only pain 
 I 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 
 i cry of the soul to that God it yearned and felt for through all 
 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 Eobert still slep^ 
 on after their usual waking time, and remembering his exhaus- 
 tion of the night before, left him softly, and kept the house 
 quiet that he might not be disturbed. She was in charge ot 
 the now toddling Mary in the dining-room when the door 
 opened and Eobert appeared. 
 
 At sight of him she sprung up with a half cry; tiie face 
 seemed to have lost all its fresh color, its look of sun aiA air; 
 the eyes were sunk ; the lips and chin lined and drawn. It was 
 
 I like a face from which the youth had suddenly been struck 
 
 i out. 
 
 ** Eobert !— but her question died on her lip^. 
 
402 EOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 A bad night, darling, and a bad headache," he said, grop- 
 ing his way, as it seemed to her, to the table, his hand leaning 
 on her arm. Give me some breakfast." 
 
 She restrained hei'self at once, put him into an arm-chair 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, • be able to 
 think over quietly what was best for her— fo- them both. 
 There must be a next step, and in her neighborhood 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: Don't make 
 arrangements for our going next week, Catherine ; it can't be 
 so soon." 
 
 Catherine looked at him with eyes of utter dismay. The 
 sustaining hope of all these difScult 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 Jmany things to arrange," he said, sharply, al- 
 most irritably. Then his tone changed: Don't urge it, Cath- 
 erine." 
 
 His eyes in their weariness seemed to entreat her not to 
 argue. She stooped and kissed him, her lips trembling. 
 
 "When do you want to go to Thurston?" 
 As soon as possible. Can you find me my fishing-basket 
 and get me some sandwiches? I shall only lounge there and 
 take it easy." 
 
 She did everything for him that wifely hands conld do. 
 Then when his fishing-basket was strapped on, and his lunch 
 was slipped into the capacious packet of the well-worn shooting 
 coat, she threw her arms round him. 
 
 "Robert, you will come away soo/i." 
 
 He roused himself and kissed her. 
 
 will," he said simplyi* withdrawing, however, from her 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 403 
 
 grasp, as though he could not bear those close, pleading eyes. 
 
 Good bye ! 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 corn-field. She was miserable, 
 and all at sea. A week ago he had been so hke 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 abandon- 
 ment like a chM's, strong soul that she was, " why won't you 
 tell me, dear? Why won't you let me share? I might help 
 y on through— I might. " 
 
 She supposed he must be again in trouble of mind. A 
 weaker woman would have implored, tormented, till she knew 
 all. Catherine's 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 over- 
 strain—expressing itself in characteristic mental worry, just as 
 daily life reproduces itself in dreams. The wordly 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, Eobert was trudging along tc 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 Esau- 
 like 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 ^t 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 birch-wood. Here, after pushing 
 his way through the closely set trees, he made some futile at 
 tempts at fishing, only to put up his rod long before the mom 
 ing was over and la y it beside him on the bank. And there 
 
404 
 
 KOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 sat for hours, vaguely watching the reflection of the clouds, 
 the gambols and quarrels of the water-fowl, the ways of the 
 birds, the alternations of sun and shadow on the softly moving 
 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 i-egret. 
 
 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 Mure well. What a ghastly mis- 
 take it had all been ! He felt a kind of sore contempt for him- 
 self, for his own lack of prescience, of self-knowledge. 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 consist- 
 ency of the man she loves. As he sat there by the water he 
 touched the depth of self-humihation: 
 
 As to religious behef, 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 foimdations 
 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 man's. The 
 soul had been stripped of its old defenses, 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 
 house-fronts, the awning over the village shop, the vane on the 
 old Manor House," 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 
 weather-beaten or brutalized peasant whose history he knew, 
 «vhose tragic secrets he had learned— 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 reaUstic sharpness, on every detail which lay before 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 405 
 
 him— the arrangements with his locum tenens, the mterview 
 with the bishop, the parting with the rectory. It even occurred 
 to him to wonder what must be done with Martha and his 
 mother's cottage. 
 
 His mother? As he thought of her a wave of unutterable 
 longing rose and broke. The difficult tears stood in his eyes. 
 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. Wendover's start of mingled triumph and impa- 
 tience—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 indiscrimi- 
 nating world as bound to the same negations, the same hostih- 
 ties. The thought roused in him a sudden fierceness of moral 
 repugnance. The squire and Edward Langham— they were 
 the only skeptics 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 squire's hands, yet in this 
 strait of Hfe how he shrinks from them both!— souls at war 
 with life and man, without holmess, without perfume ! 
 
 Is it the law of things? Once loosen a man's religio, once 
 fling away the old binding elements, the old traditional re 
 straints which have made him what he is, and moral deterio- 
 ration is certain." How often he has heard it said! How 
 often he has indorsed it! Is it true? His heart grows cold 
 within him. What good man can ever contemplate with pa- 
 tience 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 soulf 
 
 And then, for his endless comfort, there rose on the inward 
 eye the vision of an Oxford lecture-room, of a short sturdy fig- 
 ure, of a great brow over honest eyes, of words ahve with 
 moral passion, of thought instinct with the beauty of holiness. 
 Thank God for the saint in Henry Grey ! Thinking of it, Eob- 
 ert felt his own self-respect reborn. 
 
 Oh! to see Grey in the flesh, to get his advice, his approval! 
 Byen though it was the depth of vacation, Grey was so closely 
 
406 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 hi^i, 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 noth- 
 ing 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 
 and grief, he sat on beside the water, unconscious of the pas- 
 ing of time, his gray eyes staring sightlessly at the wood-pig- 
 eons as they flew past him, at the occasional flash of a king- 
 fisher, at the moving panorama of summer clouds above the 
 trees opposite. 
 
 At last he was startled back to consciousness by the fall ot 
 a few heavy drops of warm rain. He looked at his watch. 
 It was nearly four o^clock. He rose, stiff and cramped with 
 sitting, and at the same instant he saw beyond the birch-wood 
 on the open stretch of common a boy's figure, which, after 
 a step or two, he recognized as Ned Irwin. 
 
 You here, Ned?'' he said, stopping, the pastoral temper in 
 him reasserting itself at once. ''Why aren't you harvest- 
 ing?" 
 
 ''Please, sir, I finished with the Hall medders yesterday, 
 and Mr. Carter's job don't begin till to morrow. He's got a 
 machine coming from Witley, he hev, and they won't let him 
 have it till Thursday, so I've been out after things for the 
 club." 
 
 And opening the tin box strapped on his back, he showed the 
 day's capture of butterflies, and some belated birds' eggs, the 
 plunder of a bit of common where the turf for the winter's 
 burning was just being cut. 
 
 "Goat-sucker, linnet, stone-chat," said the rector, fingering 
 them. ' ' Well done for August, Ned. If you haven't got any- 
 thing better to do with them give them to that small boy of 
 
BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 Mr. Carter's that's been ill so long. He'd thank you for them, 
 I know." _ 
 
 The lad nodded with a guttural sound of assent. Then his 
 new-bom scientific ardor seemed to struggle with his rustic 
 costiveness of speech. 
 
 I've been just watching a queer creetur," he said at last, 
 hurriedly ; ' ' I b'leeve he's that un. " 
 
 And he pulled out a well-thumbed hand-book, and pointed to 
 a cut of the grasshopper warbler. 
 
 •^Whereabouts?" asked Eobert, wondering the while at his 
 own start of interest. 
 
 In that bit of common t'other side the big pond," said Ned, 
 pointing, his brick-red countenance kindUng 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 tht^ note which had roused the lad's 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, 
 Eobert's eager hand on the boy's arm, whenever the clumsy 
 rustic movements made too much noise among the under- 
 wood. 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 further, but otherwise showing 
 no sign of alarm at their presence. Then suddenly the im- 
 pulse which 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, there's my sister at the cottage, her as married 
 Jim, the under-keeper. I be going there for my tea." 
 Come along, then ; we can go together." 
 
 They trudged along in silence; presently Eobert 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 boy's face 
 
408 
 
 BOBEKT ELSMEBB, 
 
 resumed its ordinary expression: But some day, Ned, I shall 
 go for good. I don't know whether youVe been depending on 
 me— you and some of the others. I think perhaps you have. 
 If so, don't depend on me, Ned, any more ! It must all come 
 to an end— every thing must— everything /—except the struggle 
 to be a man in the world, and not a beast— to make one's 
 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 be^ 
 side 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 drooped 
 over his deep-set eye; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling 
 with his butterfly net— awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irre- 
 sponsiveness, in his whole attitude. 
 
 Kobert gathered himself together. 
 
 " Well, good night, my lad," he said, with a change of tone, 
 Good luck to you ; be off to your tea !" 
 
 And be turned away, striding swiftly over the short, burned 
 August grass in the direction of the Murewell woods, which 
 rose in a blue haze of heat aprainst the slumberous afternoon 
 sky. He had not gone a hundred yards before he heard a clat- 
 tering after him. He stopped, and Ned came up with him. 
 
 "They're 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." 
 
 Robert's eyes gleamed. 
 
 '^They are no weight, Ned— 'cause why? I've been lazy 
 and caught no fish ! But there "—after a moment's hesitation 
 he slipped off the basket and rod, and put them into the be- 
 grimed hands held out for them. Bring them when you- 
 like ; I don't know when I shall want them again. Thank you, 
 and God bless you !" 
 
 The boy was off with his booty in a second. 
 
 ** Perhaps he'll like to think he did it for me, by and by.** 
 
EOBEBT ELSMERB. 
 
 409 
 
 said Robert, sadly to himself, moving on, a Uttle moisture in 
 the clear gray eye. 
 
 About three o'clock 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 Catherine's when he had 
 told her of his plan, trying in vain to make it look merely 
 casual and ordinary. 
 
 **lt is more than a year since I have set eyes on Grey, Cath- 
 erine. And the day's 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 noth- 
 ing but the most passionate imploring affection. 
 
 ^'Have patience a Httle more, Catherine!" he justly mur- 
 mured. Oh, how I have blessed you for silence! Only till 
 I come back!" 
 
 **TiU 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 per- 
 fectly open with her. 
 
 A few hours later his cab deposited him at the well-known 
 door. It seemed to him that he and the scorched plane-trees 
 hning the sides of the road were the only living things in the 
 wide, sun-beaten street. 
 
 Every house was shut up. Only the Greys' open windows, 
 amid their shuttered neighbors, 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 fronting 
 
410 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEBB. 
 
 each other: Mr. Grey, a light of pleasure on the rugged, dark- 
 complexioned face, looking up at his taller and paler visitor. 
 
 But Robert could find nothing to say in return; and in an 
 instant Mr. Grey's quick eye detected the straiiked nervous 
 emotion of the man before him. 
 
 Come and sit down, Elsmere— there, in the window, where 
 we can talk. One has to Hve on this east side of the house this 
 weather. In the first place," said Mr. Grey, scrutinizing him, 
 as he returned to his own book-littered comer of the window- 
 seat— ^' in the first place, my dear fellow, I can't congratulate 
 you on your appearance. I never saw a man look in worse 
 condition — to be up and about." 
 
 "That's nothing!" said Eobert, almost impatiently. 
 want a holiday, I believe. Grey!" and he looked nervously 
 out over garden and apple-trees, 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 Eobert, after a 
 moment, with quick abruptness, "that I ought now — at this 
 moment—to leave the Church, and give up my Hving, 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 half -frowning expression. How often 
 Robert had seen some rash exuberant youth quelled by that 
 momentary frown I 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 be- 
 fore 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 wa^ profoundly true, 
 though I didn't really mean it. But this year— No, no, I have 
 
ROBERT BLSMBRB. 
 
 4H 
 
 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. Grey's firmly, almost with 
 solemnity, "^t was as if in the last few moments he had been 
 instinctively testing the quality of his own conduct and mo- 
 tives by the touch-stone of the rare personality beside him; 
 and they had stood the trial. There was such pain, such sin 
 cerity, above all such freedom from littleness of soul implied in 
 words and looks that Mr. Grey quickly held out his hand. 
 Eobert grasped it, and felt that the way was clear before him, 
 
 *'Will you give me an account of it?" said Mr. Grey, an(^ 
 his tone was grave sympathy itself . Or would you rather 
 confine yourself to generalities and accomplished facts?" 
 
 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 garden walls 
 between them and the new museum, he went through the his- 
 tory of the last two years. He described the beginnings of his 
 historical work, the gradual enlargement of the mind's hori- 
 zons, and the intrusion within them of question after question, 
 and subject after subject. Then he mentioned the squire's 
 name. 
 
 Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Grey, I had forgotten you were that 
 man's neighbor. I wonder he didn't set you against the whole 
 business, inhuman old cynic !" 
 
 He spoke with the strong dislike of the idealist, devoted in 
 practice to an every-day ministry to human need, for the in- 
 tellectual egotist. Eobert caught and relished the old pugna- 
 cious 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 man's 
 genius is incontestable, his learning enormous. He found me 
 in a susceptible state, and I recognize that his influence im- 
 mensely accelerated a process already begun." 
 
 Mr. Grey was struck with the simplicity and fullness 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 ac- 
 tion recalling vividly to Robert the Sunday afternoons of by- 
 gone years— he began to put questions with a clearness and 
 decision that made them so many guides to the man answer- 
 ing, through the tangle of his own recollections. 
 
412 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 "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. 1 
 am old fashioned enough" — and he smiled — "to stick to the d 
 priori, impossibily of miracles, but then I am a philosopher! 
 You have come to see how miracle is manufactured, to recog- 
 nize in it merely a natural inevitable outgrowth of human tes- 
 timony, in its pre-scientific stages. It has been aU experi- 
 mental, inductive. I imagine"— he looked up— **you didn't 
 get much help out of the orthodox apologists?" 
 
 Eobert 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 so 
 extraordinarily limited. Westcott, for instance, who means so 
 much nowadays to the English religious world, first isolates 
 Christianity from aU the other religious phenomena of the 
 world, and then argues upon its details. You might as well 
 isolate English jurisprudence, and discuss its dietails without 
 any reference to Teutonic custon or Koman 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 Mterature in the world. And you can not 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 be- 
 hind 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 can't teU you," said Eobert, 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 aU I should see 
 more of God in the world than I ever saw before." 
 
 The tutor's eye flashed. Robert had gone back to the win- 
 dow, and was miserably looking out. After all, he had told 
 pnly half his story. 
 
 i 
 
ROBERT BLSMERE. 
 
 418 
 
 *' And so you feel you must give up your living?" 
 ''What else is therefor 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 settlelinto, who 
 are still in the Church of England, doing admirable work there !" 
 
 "I know," said Elsmere, quickly— "I know; I can not con- 
 ceive it, nor could you. Imagine standing up Sunday after 
 Sunday to sa|^ the things you do not beheve— using words as a 
 convention which those who hear you receive as literal truth 
 —and trusting the maintenance of your position either to your 
 neighbor's 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 cmigregation 
 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 can't be said the Broad Church movement has helped 
 us much! How greatly it promised !— how little it has per- 
 formed! For the private person, the worshiper, it is differ- 
 ent — 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." 
 
 But his tone had grown hesitating and touched with melan- 
 choly. 
 
 There was a moment's 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 under-graduate, "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 awhile, 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 impres- 
 
414 
 
 ROBEET ELSMEEB. 
 
 sions of Catherine left on him by his last year's sight of her. 
 That pale, distinguished woman with her look of strength and 
 character— he remembered Langham's analysis of her, and of 
 the silent reH^ious intensity she had brought with her from 
 her training among the northern hills. 
 
 "Was there a bitterly human tragedy preparing under all 
 this thought-drama he had been listening to? 
 
 Deeply moved, he went up to Robert, and laid his rugged 
 hand almost timidly upon him. 
 
 ''Elsmere, it won't 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 can not 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 rend- 
 ing 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 further 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 fife, 
 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 I 
 Look for Him in it all ; see how, Kttle by little, the divine in- 
 dwelHng force, using as its tools— but merely as its tools I— 
 man's physical appetites and conditions, has built up conscience 
 and the moral life ; think how every faculty of the mind haa 
 been trained in turn to take its part in the great work of faith 
 
210BERT ELSMERE. 
 
 415 
 
 Upon the visible irorM } Love and imagination built up religion 
 —shall reason destroy ifc? No !— reason is God's, like the rest I 
 Trust it— trust Him. Xhe leading-strings of the past are drop- 
 ping from you ; they are dropping from the world, not wanton- 
 ly, or by chance, but in the providence of God. Learn the les- 
 son of your own pain- -learn to seek God, not in any single event 
 of past history, but in your own soul— in the constant verifica- 
 tions 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 be- 
 lief, faith, the faith which saves, has always been rooted here I 
 All things change— creeds and philosophies and outward sys- 
 tems—but God remains I 
 
 ' Life, that in me has rest. 
 As I, undying Life, have power in Theel' 
 
 The lines dropped with low vibrating force from lips unac- 
 customed indeed to such aa 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 man's 
 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 tutor's 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 Eobert's bishop, the least 
 conspicuous mode of withdrawing from the living, and so on- 
 all with gentleness and sympathy indeed, but with an indefina- 
 ble 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. Grey's 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 self controlled than usual in hia 
 i?resence. Robert felt now the bracing force of ii. 
 
41 g ROBERT fitSMMfi. 
 
 Will you stay with us to dinner?" Mr. orrey aske4 when at 
 last Elsmere got up to go. There nre on^ or two lone Fellows 
 coining— asked before your telegram came, oi course. Do ex- 
 actly as you like." 
 
 ''1 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 vis- 
 itor to the door. 
 
 Good-bye, good-bye I Let me always know what I can do 
 for you. And your wife— poor thing, poor thing I Go and tell 
 her, Elsmere; don't lose a moment you can help. God help 
 her and you I" 
 
 iThey grasped each other's hands. Mr. Grey followed him 
 down the stairs and along the nari-ow hall. He opened the hall 
 door, and smiled a last smile of encouragement and sympathy 
 into the eyes that expressed such a young moved gratituiie. 
 The door closed. Little did Ebmere realize that never, in this 
 life, would he see that smile or bsar that voice again I 
 
 CHAFTEfC XXVIIL 
 
 In half an hour from the time Mr. Grey^s door closed upon 
 him, Elsmere had caught a convenient cross-country train, and 
 had left the Oxford towors, and spires, the shrunken summer 
 Isis, and the flat, hot river meadows far behind him. He had 
 meant to stay at Mertou, as we know, for the night. Now, his 
 one thought was to got back to Catherine. The urgency of 
 Mr. Grey's words wa/3 upon him, and love had a miserable 
 pang that it should have needed to be urged. 
 
 By eight o'clock 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 moon- 
 rise 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 dweUings further and further to the rear of him, till at 
 last he emerged on a boundless tract of common, and struck to 
 the right into a cart-track 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 inu» 
 
 i 
 
rob£:bt elsmeee. 
 
 41? 
 
 which he was soon to plunge, rose the woods of Murewell, black 
 and massive in the twilight distance. To the left, but on a 
 nearer plane, the undulating common stretching downward 
 from where he stood rose suddenly toward a height crowned 
 with a group of gaunt and jagged firs— landmarks for aU the 
 plain—of which every ghostly bough and crest was now sharp- 
 ly 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 
 net-work of pearl-white cloud, suif used at the moment with a 
 sHver radiance, so intense that a spectator m.ight 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 awhile not a sound of 
 human life, save the beat of Eobert's 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 sunk sharply to the lower levels. Here 
 was a marvelous point of view, and the rector stood a moment, 
 beside a bare, weather-blasted fir, a ghostly shadow thrown 
 behind him. AU around the gorse and heather seemed stm 
 radiating light, as though the air had been so drenched in sun- 
 shine 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 color of the heather, now in lavish bloom, 
 could be felt though hardly seen. 
 
 Before him melted line after line of woodland, broken by 
 hollow afterhoUow, filled with vaporous wreaths of mist. About 
 him were the sounds of a wild nature. The air was resonant 
 with the purring of the night-jars, 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 caUed to 
 tech other, and certain sharp sounds betrayed to the solitary 
 MBtener the presence of a flock of swans on a neighboring 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 thunderotffis rush of a 
 ^in through the wide wooded landscape beyond the heath. 
 
1 
 
 418 EOBERT KLSMERB. 
 
 Behind that frowing mass of wood lay the rectory. The 
 lights must be lighted in the Httle drawing-room; 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 shop-front or casement streaming out on to the green ; he 
 thinks of his child, of his dead mother, feeling heavy and bit- 
 ter within him all the time the message of separation and 
 exile. 
 
 But his mood was no longer one of mere dread, of Ehelpless 
 pain, of miserable self -scorn. Contact with Henry Grey had 
 brought him that rekindling- of the flame of conscience, that 
 medicinal stirring of the soul's waters, which is the most pre- 
 cious boon that man can give to man. In that sense which at- 
 taches to every successive resurrection of our best life from 
 the shades of despair or selfishness, he had that day, almost 
 that hour, been bom again. He was no longer filled mainly with 
 the sense of personal failure, with scorn for his own blimder- 
 ing, impetuous temper, so lacking in prescience and in balance; 
 or, in respect to his wife, with such an anguished, impotent re- 
 morse. He was nerved and braced; whatever oscillations 
 the mind might go through in its search for another equiUb- 
 rium, to-night 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 1" 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 new/. 
 clad,|re-entering the desolate heart in a white-winged process 
 sion 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 pent-up 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 toward 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 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 419 
 
 dreams, my delusions, with my fellows. I was weak; I suf- 
 fered; 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 world's eternal 
 lesson — man's 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 forget- 
 
 j ting, if it be but faithful, shall find ever fresh power of real- 
 
 I izing and renewing itself." 
 
 I 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, 
 passed an ethereal string of tiny lakes just touched by the moon- 
 
 \ rise, beside some of the first cottages of Murewell, up the hill, 
 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 lamp-Hght, the open windows, the white 
 muslin curtains, swaying a little in the soft evening air, and 
 Catherine's 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 win- 
 dow. 
 
 * * Eobert !" she cried, in amazement. 
 Yes," he answered, stiU some yards from her, his voice 
 coming strangely to her out of the moonlighted darkness. I 
 did my errand early ; I found I could get back ; and here I am." 
 
 She flew to ihe door, opened it, and felt herself caught in his 
 arms. 
 
 ** Eobert, 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 sup- 
 per directly." 
 
 X don't waut any food now," he said, hanging up his hat. 
 
420 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 I got some lunch in town, and a cup of soup at Heading com. 
 ing back. Perhaps you will give me some tea soon— not yet.'* 
 He came up to her, pushing back the thick, disordered locks 
 of hail' 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 
 ]£new— her look was enough. He put his arm round her, and 
 as he opened the drawing-room door, holding her pressed 
 against him, she felt the desperate agitation in him penetrating, 
 beating against an almost iron self-control 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 child's wail. His brow contracted still 
 more painfully. 
 
 ''My darUng," he said; '* my darUng— 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 tender- 1 
 ness, which seemed to rend his whole nature. • 
 
 ' ' Tell me— tell me— Robert !" ! 
 
 He guided her gently across the room, past the sofa over|) 
 which her work lay scattered, past the flower-table, now a 
 many-colored mass of roses, which was her especial pride, past u 
 the remains of a brick castle which had dehghted Mary's won- n 
 dering eyes and mischievous fingers an hour or two before, to 
 a low chair by the open window looking on the wide moonlights 
 ed expanse of corn-field. He put her into it, walked to the win-i 
 dow on the other side of the room, shut it, and drew down the 
 blind. Then he went back to her, and sunk down beside her, 
 kneehng, 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 re- 
 member 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 religioiu'* 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 421 
 
 *' ^xid X know," he said, with an outburst of feeling, kissing 
 her hands as they lay in his— know very well that you 
 went upstairs and prayed for me, nay white-souled 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 con- 
 science—to say and do the truth !" 
 
 Robert," she said, piteously, deadly pale, *M don't under- 
 stand." 
 
 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 gray-blue eyes— the quiv- 
 ering 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 God's 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 whole 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 
 
422 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 brought her there? She sat stunned, realizing 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 httle: 
 
 **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 pas- 
 sionately. Am I poisoning even the memory of our past for 
 you?" he cried. Then, restraining himself at once, he hiuried 
 on again: After Mile End you remember I began to see much 
 of the squire. Oh, my wife, don't 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 don't wish to minimize 
 it. I was not made to stand alone !" 
 
 And again that bitter, perplexed, half -scornful sense of his 
 own pHancy 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 bands away. 
 
 ''Was it well," she said, in a voice which sounded Hke a 
 harsh echo of her own, *' was it right for a clergyman to dis- 
 cuss sacred things — with such a man?" 
 
 He let her hands go, guided for the moment by a delicate im- 
 i;)erious instinct which bade him appeal to something else than 
 (ove. Eising, he sat down opposite to her on the low window 
 Beat, while she sunk back into her chair, her fingers clinging to 
 ^he arm of it, the lamp-light far behind deepening all the 
 shadows of the face, the hollows in the cheeks, the Une of ex- 
 perience 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 realized 
 the situation, and that blow after blow still remained to him 
 to deal. 
 
 *'Was it right that I should discuss religious matters with 
 the squire ?" he repeated, his f ace resting on his hands. ' ' What 
 are religious matters, Catherine, and what are not?" 
 
 Then, still controlling himself rigidly, fiis eyes fixed on the 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 423 
 
 Bhadowy 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 squire's influence, on his gradual, pitiful surrender. 
 1^ Then he told the story of the last memorable walk before the 
 • I squire's journey, of the moment in the study afterward, and 
 ^ of the months of feverish reading and wrestling which had 
 followed. Half-way through it a new despair seized him. 
 ^ I What was the good of all he was saying? He was speaking a 
 I language she did not really understand. What were all these 
 ^ critical and literary considerations to her? 
 ^ I The rigidity of her silence showed him that her sympathy 
 I was not with him, that in comparison with the vibrating pro- 
 1^ I test of her own passionate faith which must be now ringing 
 I through her, whatever he could urge must seem to her the 
 J I merest culpable trifling with the soul's awful destinies. In an 
 iidstant 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, con- 
 ^ vincing force of all that he was saying. There were gulfs be- 
 tween them— gulfs which, as it seemed to him, in a miserable 
 ^ insiglht, could never be bridged again. Oh, the frightful sepa- 
 
 I rateness of experience ! 
 ' I Still he struggled on. He brought the story down to the con- 
 ^ versation at the Hall, described— in broken words of fire and 
 pain— the moment of spiritual wreck which had come upon 
 I 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 Love's. 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 
 I story of intellectual change. 
 
 , At the mention of Mr. Grey Catherine grew restless ; she sat 
 J up suddenly, with a cry of bitterness. 
 
 ^ * * Robert, why did you go away from me? It was cruel. I 
 Bhould have known first. He had no right— no right !" 
 
 ^ She clasped her hands round her knees, her beautiful mouth 
 
 J 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 rf 
 
424 BOBSBT ELSMBBE. 1| 
 
 proach, her jealousy. He dared not speak of what Mr. Grey 1 
 
 had done for him, of the tenderness of his counsel toward her 
 specially. He felt that everything he could say would but 
 torture the wounded heart stiU more. 
 
 But she did not notice the outstretched hand. She covered 
 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 
 
 ''I cannot follow all you have been saying," she said, almost 
 harshly. know so Uttle of books, I can not give them the 
 place you do. You say you have convinced yourself the 6o9- ' 
 pels are like other books, full of mistakes, and credulous, like 
 the people of the time; and therefore you can't take what they 
 say as you used to take it. But what does it all quite mean? \ 
 Oh, I am not clever— I can not see my way clear from thing to 
 thing as you do. If there are mistakes, does it matter so— so — i 
 terribly to you?" and she faltered. Do you think nothing is 
 true because something may be false ? Did not— did not— J esus 
 still live, and die, and rise agam?— 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 her, through the na- 
 ture saturated and steeped as hers was in Christian association^ ', 
 with a bitter, accusing force. But he did not flinch from them. ^ 
 can believe no longer in an Incarnation and Resurrec- 
 tion," 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— pre-eminently, 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 P 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? 
 
ROBEET ELSMEBE. 425 
 
 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, Eobert ?" 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. 
 
 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 min- 
 ister 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 can not be ! It is a 
 madness— a delusion. God is trying you, and me ! You can 
 not be planning so to desert Him, so to deny Christ— you can 
 not, 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 backward, smiling at him with an ex- 
 quisite tenderness. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. 
 They were wet on his own. Another moment and Robert would 
 have lost the only clew which remained to him through the 
 mists of this bewildering world. He would have yielded again 
 as he had paany times yielded before, for infinitely less reason 
 
1 
 
 426 IftOBEBT EtSM^ltS. 
 
 to the urgent pressure of another's individuality, and having 
 jeopardized 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 rehgion altogether. I see Grod's 
 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 
 
 She heard, but through her exhaustion, through the bitter 
 sinking of hope, she only half understood. Only she realized 
 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 
 iorm 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 in- 
 stant or two he had done for her all that his medical knowledge i 
 could suggest with rapid, decided hands. She was not quite i 
 unconscious ; she drew up round her, as though with a strong, 
 vague sense of chill, the shawl he laid over her, and gradually 
 the sUghtest shade of color 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 be- 
 side 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 dowrn 
 at her. Then he went. 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 427 
 
 CHAPTER XXTX. 
 
 He shut the door softly and went down-stairs 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 child's bricks, he 
 pushed the chairs back into their places, and then he paused 
 awhile 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 eif ect of some occasional 
 gusts of night wind on the moonlighted corn-field; 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 wood-path 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 nerves had been sufficiently weakened already. 
 For his wife's sake, his people's sake, his honorable reputa- 
 tion's 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 
 Catherine's hands; but he knew that finely tempered soul; he 
 knew that when she had mastered her poor woman's self, as 
 she had always mastered it from her childhood, she would not 
 bid him wait. He hardly took the possibility into considera- 
 tion. 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 hi^ 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 davs with them 
 
428 
 
 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 Eobert to get hold of the man at once, before 
 the next Sunday. It was strange how the interview with his 
 wife seemed to have crystallized, 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 Robert's 
 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 renun- 
 ciation. 
 
 To-morrow he must write to the bishop. The bishop's resi- 
 dence was only eight or ten miles from Mure well; 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 argu- 
 ments that would be brought to bear upon him. Oh, that it 
 were done with— this wearisome dialectical necessity! His 
 hfe 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 insti- 
 tute, which had been fixed for the Saturday— the next day but 
 one. How was he— but much more how was Cathertne— to get 
 through it? His lips would be sealed as to any possible with- 
 drawal from the hving, 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 Catherine's white face, and their bitter joint 
 consciousness. • 
 
 And then he said to himself, sharply, that his own feelings 
 counted for nothing. Catherine should be tenderly shielded 
 from all avoidable pain, but for himself there must be no 
 flinching, no self -indulgent weakness. Did he not owe every 
 last hour he had to give to the people among whom he had 
 planned to spend the best energies of life, and from whom 
 his own act was about to part him in this lame, impotent 
 fashion? 
 
 Midnight! The sounds rolled silverly out, effacing the soft 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 429 
 
 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 new-born day 
 to God. 
 
 Then he turned toward the house, put the light out m the 
 drawing-room, and went upstairs, stepping cautiously. He 
 opened the door of Catherine's room. The moonUght was 
 streaming in through the white blinds. Catherine, who bad 
 undressed, was lying now with her face hidden in the pillow, 
 and one white^sleeved arm flung across little Mary's cot. The 
 night was hot, and the child would evidently have thrown 
 off all its coverings had it not been for the mother's 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 hght 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 sunk. For the first time that look seemed to 
 exclude him from her inmost life. 
 
 He sunk 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 fiber 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 1" 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 self-control. 
 
 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 
 
430 
 
 ROBBET ELSMEBE. 
 
 as to reach his book without touching either mother or child. 
 He had run over the book-shelf in his own room, shrinking 
 painfully from any of his common religious favorites 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 Elsmere's extraordinary 
 powers of self -suppression could avail to check the outward ex- 
 pression 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 sUpped on to his 
 knees. 
 
 " 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 honor due 
 That Cometh in to you. 
 
 With trembling steps and humble reverence. 
 She Cometh in before the Almighty's view. " 
 
 Tlie 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 
 mountain-ash— winding on and up into the heart of wild hilte 
 dyed with reddening fern, the sun-gleams stealing from crag 
 to crag and shoulder to shoulder; inside, row after row of in- 
 tent faces, all turned toward the central passage, and, moving 
 toward him, a figure **clad all in white, that seems a virgin 
 best," whose every step brings nearer to him the heaven of his 
 heart's desire. Everything is plain to him— Mrs. Thomburgh's 
 round cheeks and marvelous curls and jubilant airs, Mrs. Ley- 
 burn's mild and tearful pleasure, the vicar's soHd satisfaction. 
 With what confiding joy had those who loved her given her to 
 him I And he knows well that out of all griefs, the grief he 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRB. 
 
 43X 
 
 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 crie# 
 to her in his heart. Ought I to have had more self-knowl- 
 edge? could I have guessed where I was taking you? Oh, hovt 
 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 Elsmere's turns very quickly 
 from despair to hope; from the sense of failure to the passion- 
 ate planning of new effort. In time will he hot be able to com- 
 fort her, and, after a miserable moment of transition, to repair 
 her trust in him and make their common life once more rich 
 toward 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 realizing 
 as best he can all the changes which his great change must in- 
 troduce 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 d ^epest heart, 
 any las :ing difference between them will surely be impossible. 
 Each will complete the other, and love knit up the raveled 
 strands again into a stronger unity. 
 
 Gradually he lost himself in half-articulate prayer, in the 
 solemn girding of the will to this future task of recreating 
 love. And by the time the morning light had well established 
 itself sleep had fallen on him. When he became sensible of the 
 longed-for 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 wild-bird 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 triinn- 
 phantly, with one diminutive leg and rosy foot douMed under 
 her- and her father's thick hair at the mercy of he? invading 
 
432 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 sprung up with a start. Mary was frightened by the 
 abrupt movement, perhaps disappointed by the escape of her 
 pi ey, 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, wi h 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 con- 
 fined, on the further 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. 
 
 Nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and no sign of Catherine. 
 
 *'Your mistress must have been detained sonjewhere," he 
 said, as quietly and carelessly as he could to Susan, the parlor- 
 maid, 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 rector's haggard mien and restless 
 movements. 
 
 Nursing other people indeed!" she observed, severely, 
 down-stairs, glad as we all are at times to pick holes in excel- 
 lence which is inconveniently high. Missis had a deal better 
 stay at home and nurse Mm .'" 
 
 The day was excessively hot. Not a leaf moved in the gar- 
 den: over the corn-field the air danced in long vibrations of 
 heat; the woods and hills beyond were indistinct and colorless. 
 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 
 corn-field reaping was beginning. Eobert stood on the edge of 
 the sunk fence, his blind eyes resting on the line of men, his 
 
m 
 
 ear catching the shouts of the farmer directing operations from 
 his gray horse. He could do nothing. The night before, in the 
 wood-path, he had clearly mapped out the day's work. A mass 
 of business was waiting, clamoring to be done. He tried to be- 
 p-in on this or that, and gave up everything with a groan, wan- 
 dering out again to the gate on to the wood-path to sweep the 
 distances of road or field with hungry, straining eyes. 
 
 The wildest fears had taken possession of him. Kunning m 
 bis head was a passage from '^The Confessions," describing 
 Monica's horror of her son's heretical opinions. *'Shrinkmg 
 from and detesting the blasphemies of his error, she began to 
 doubt whether it was right in her to allow her son to Mve in her 
 house and to eat at the same table with her ;" and the mother's 
 heart, he remembered, could only be convinced of the lawful- 
 ness of its own yearning by a prophetic vision of the youth's 
 conversion. He recalled, with a shiver, how in the life of Mme. 
 Guyon, after describing the painful and agonizing death of a 
 kind but comparatively irrehgious 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 White's life, caused 
 by the slow dropping-off of friend after friend, on the groimd 
 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, self -destructive consistency as 
 the faith of the past ? He knew that to such Christian purity, 
 such Christian inwardness as Catherine's, the ultimate sanction 
 and legitimacy of marriage rest, both in theory and practice, on 
 a common acceptance of the definite commands and promises oi 
 a miraculous revelation. He had had a proof of it in Cath- 
 erine's passionate repugnance to the idea of Eose's marriage 
 with Edward Langham. 
 
 Eleven o'clock striking from the distant tower. He walked 
 desperately along the wood-path, meaning to go through the 
 copse at the end of it toward 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 further 
 side of it lead on to the road. He hurried on ; the trees closed 
 behind him; the grassy path broadened; and there, under an 
 
434 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 arch of young oak and hazel, stood Catherine, arrested hy 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 Gathering spnmg forward 
 with a sob and threw herself on his breast. 
 
 They clung to each other, she in a passion of tears— tears of 
 such self-ahandonment as neither Eobert nor any other hving 
 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 1" 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, sud- 
 denly, too ghastly to be beheved; 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 sit- 
 ting in a comer of the park, where no one ever comes. I be- 
 gan 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 hke 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 my- 
 self on a long road, escaping with Mary in my arms, escaping 
 from you! Oh, Robert! it wasn't 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 
 agonized by the thought that I was not my own— I and my 
 child were Chrisfs. Could I risk what was His? Other men 
 and women had died, had given up all for His sake. Is there 
 no one now strong 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 
 
BOBEET EtSMEBE. 
 
 435 
 
 of that by-gone moment had seized upon her again and com- 
 municated itself to him. 
 
 ^'And then— and then," she said, sobbing, ''I don't know 
 how it was. One moment I was sitting up looking straight be- 
 fore 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— forever ! And the 
 next I was lying on the ground crying for you, Eobert, 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 God's will that I 
 should leave you, or torture you, my poor husband ! I had not 
 only been wicked toward 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, ten- 
 derest smile breaking on the marred, tear-stained face— I will 
 never give up hope, I will pray for you night and day. God 
 will bring you back. You can not 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 Hve beside you— in 
 your heart— and love you always. Oh, how could I— ho w 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 
 offense against love. As for him, he was beyond speech. If 
 he had ever lost his vision of God his wife's love would that 
 moment hav^ given it back to him. 
 
 ''Eobert," she said presently, urged on by the sacred yearn- 
 ing 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, Eobert; I will be your 
 faithful wife unto our liv»es' end." 
 
 He kissed her, and in that kiss, so sad, so pitiful, so clinging, 
 their new life was bom. 
 
CHAPTEK XXX. 
 
 But the problem of these two lives was not solved by a bnrst 
 of feeling. Without that determining impulse of love and pity 
 in Catherine's 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 Catherine's nature, was there, or was there 
 not, the true stuff of fanaticism? Mme. Guy on 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 blimting and dull- 
 ing, because in truth the religious motive itself is being con- 
 stantly modified, whether the religious person knows it or not. 
 Is it possible now for a good woman with a heart, in Catherine 
 Elsmere's position, to maintain herself against love, and all 
 those subtle forces to which such a change as Elsmere's opens 
 the house doors, without either hardening, or greatly yielding? 
 Let Catherine's further story give some sort of an answer. 
 
 Poor soul ! As they sat together in the study, after he had 
 brought her home, Kobert, 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 
 week's notice, to give it up forever! For Eobert's 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, *Hhat 
 we are coming back. Of course we need say nothing. Armit- 
 stead will be here for next week certainly. Then afterward I 
 can come down and manage eveiything. I shall get it over in 
 a day if I can, and see nobody. I can not say good-bye, nor 
 can you." 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRE. 
 
 437 
 
 And next Sunday, Kobert?" she asked him, after a pause. 
 
 I shall write to Armitstead this afternoon, and ask him, if 
 he possibly can, to come to-morrow afternoon, instead of Mon- 
 day, and take the service." 
 
 Catherine's hands clasped each other still more closely. So 
 then she had heard her husband's 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, Eobert— 
 of— of our future?" 
 
 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. 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 win- 
 ter." ^ 
 
 She acquiesced silently. How mean and shrunken a future 
 it seemed to them both, beside the wide and honorable range 
 of his clergyman's life as he and she had developed it. But she 
 did not dwell long on that. Her thoughts were suddenly in- 
 vaded 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 Mil^*End hovels, had gone at Christ- 
 mas 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, half-witted 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 fibers of 
 life were being violently wrenched from all their natural con- 
 nections. 
 
 Eobert!" she cried at last, with a start. "Had you for- 
 gotten the institute to-morrow?" 
 
 jJo— no," he said, with the saddest smile. No, I had not 
 forgotten it. Don't go, Catherine—don't go. I must. But 
 why should you go through it?" 
 
 *'But there are aU those flags and wreaths," she said, get- 
 
438 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ting up in pained bewilderment. I must go and look after 
 them." 
 He caught her in his arms. 
 
 '*0h, 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, Eobert," she said, simply, her face colorless 
 but perfectly calm. 
 
 Half an hour later, after he had worked through some let- 
 ters, he went into the work-room and found her surrounded 
 with flags, and a vast litter of paper roses and evergreens, 
 which she and the new agent's daughters who had come up to 
 help her were putting together for the decorations of the mor- 
 row. 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 tfie 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 front, 
 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 super- 
 intending, stabbed every now and then by the unsuspecting 
 friendhness of those about him, or worried by their blunt com- 
 ments on his looks. He could not bear more than a glance 
 into the new rooms apportioned to the NaturaUsts' Club. 
 There against the wall stood the new glass case he had wrung 
 out of the squire, with various new collections lying near, ready 
 to be arranged and unpacked when time allowed. The old col- 
 lections stood out bravely in the added space and light; the 
 walls were hung here and there with a wonderful set of geo- 
 graphical 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 frugaUty at home, handed over to 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 439 
 
 Bome possibly unsympathetic stranger. The heart beat pain- 
 fully against the iron bars of fate, rebelHng against the power 
 of a mental process so to aifect a man's whole practical and 
 social life. 
 
 He went out at last by the back of the institute, where a 
 httle bit of garden, spoiled with building materials, led down 
 to a lane. 
 
 At the end of Jhe 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 rector's 
 figure emerged into view. 
 
 Kobert had recognized the slouching gait and unwieldy form 
 of Henslowe. There were at this moment all kinds of grew- 
 some stories afloat in the village about the ex-agent. It was 
 said that he was breaking up fast; it was known that he was 
 extensively in debt; and the village shop-keepers 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 toward his custom in future. The man, in- 
 deed, 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, half -malicious 
 pity wherewith the village had till now surveyed his fall into 
 that more active species of baiting which the human animal is 
 never very loath to try upon the limping specimens of his 
 race. 
 
 Henslowe stopped and turned as he heard the steps behind 
 him. Six months' self -murdering had left ghastly traces. He 
 was many degrees nearer the brute than he had been even when 
 Eobert made his ineffectual visit. But at this actual moment 
 Robert's practiced eye— for every EngUsh parish clergyman 
 becomes dismally expert in the pathology of drunkenness— saw 
 that there was no fight in him. He was in one of the drunk- 
 ard's periods of collapse— shivering, flabby, starting at every 
 sound, a misery to himself and a spectacle to others. 
 
 *'Mr. Henslowe I" cried Eobert, still pursuing him, *'may 
 I speak to you a moment?" 
 
 The ex-agent 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 Robert's summons his legs would 
 have given way under him. 
 
 Robert came up with him and stood a second, fronting the 
 
440 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 evU silence of the other, his boyish face deeply flushed. Per 
 haps 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. 
 
 **Iam 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 i)ersist in making an enemy of me? If 
 I did you an injiu'y 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 deli- 
 cacy, but Henslowe found energy in return for an outburst ol 
 quavering animosity, from which, however, physical weaknesa 
 had extracted aU its sting. 
 
 I'U thank you to make your canting offers to some one 
 else, Mr. Elsmere. When I 'want your advice I'U 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 year's 
 time you will be in your grave, and your poor wife and chil- 
 dren strugghng to keep themselves from the work-house. 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 lc= 
 me speak to you as one strugghng 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 yourself into his hands, and to obey him, and your wife; 
 and let me"— the rector hesitated — *' let me make things pecu- 
 niarily easier for Mrs. Henslowe till you have pulled yourself 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBS. 
 
 441 
 
 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 self-importance, and a tumultuous 
 flood of self-pity, roused irresistibly in him by Eobert's piercing 
 frankness, and aided by his own more or less maudHn condi- 
 tion. The latter sensation quickly undermined the former; he 
 turned his back on the rector and leaned over the railings of 
 the lane, shaken by something it is hardly worth while to dig- 
 nify by the name of emotion. Robert stood by, a pale embodi- 
 ment 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 honor for 
 such as Henslowe to touch. Constrained by the moral force 
 radiating from his look, the other took it with a kind of help- 
 less sullenness. 
 
 Then, seizing at once on the slight concession, with that 
 complete lack of inconvenient self -consciousness, or hindering 
 indecision, which was one of the chief causes of his effect on 
 men and women, Robert began to soimd 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. Robert's 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 de 
 vising for itself. They walked on into the open country, and 
 what with the discipline of the rector's presence, the sobering 
 effect wrought by the shock to pride and habit, and the un- 
 wonted brain exercise of the conversation, the demon in Hens- 
 lowe had been for the moment most strangely tamed after half 
 an hour's talk. Actually some reminiscences of his old ways 
 of speech and thought, the ways of the once prosperous and 
 self-reliant 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 was no risk in the 
 
1 
 
 442 BOBEBT ELgMEBE. 
 
 matter, and that benevolence ran on all-fours 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 ex-agent 
 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. 
 
 How had it been done? Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever 
 quite knew. Henslowe walked home in a bewildtjrment which 
 for once had nothing to do with brandy, but was simply th^ 
 result of a moral shock acting on what was still human in thG 
 man's 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 iiiCi 
 dent had appeased in him a kind of spiritual hunger —tlie 
 hunger to escape awhile from that incessant process oi: de- 
 structive 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 Els 
 mere and for Catherine. She pleaded to go, promising quietly 
 to keep out of his sight, and they started together — a misera- 
 ble pair. 
 
 Crowds, heat, decorations, the grandees on the platform, 
 and conspicuous among them the squire's 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 
 much as possible in dark comers, but was in truth the one 
 thing sharply present to him— these \^ere the sort of impres- 
 sions that remained with Elsmere afterward of this last meet- 
 ing with his people. 
 
 He had made a speech, of which he never could remember a 
 word. As he sat down there had been a sHght flutter of sur- 
 prise in the sympathetic looks of those about him, as though 
 the tone of it had been somewhat unexpected and dispropor- 
 tionate 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 squire's ironical glance, and 
 wondered with quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been 
 talking. 
 
 Then a neighboring clergyman, who had been hia warm sup- 
 
 4 
 
bObeet blsmbrb. 
 
 443 
 
 porter and admirer from the beginning, sprung up and made a 
 rambling panegyric on him and on his work, which Elsmere 
 w rithed under. His work ! absurdity ! What could be done in 
 two years? He saw it all as the merest nothing, a ragged be- 
 ginning which might do more harm than good. 
 
 But the cheering was incessant, the popular feeling intense. 
 There was old Milsom waving a feeble armi^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, most 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 Els- 
 mere's opinion as to '*a bit of prapperty"he and two other 
 brothers as ancient as himself had been quarreling over for 
 twenty years, and were likely to go on quarreling over till aU 
 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 goiie 
 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 talk with him, and he and his 
 companion had tramped miles to see the function, to rattle 
 their sticks on the floor in Elsmere's honor, 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 
 other's hands. A low groan broke from Elsmere's hps ; Cath- 
 erine 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 
 
444 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 I When I see you and 
 people like you throwing yourselves at the heads of the people, 
 I always think of Scaliger's remark about the Basques: * They 
 say they understand one another— J don^t believe a loord of it P 
 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, dryly, sitting down on one 
 of the library stools, *'of some of those sentiments you ex- 
 pressed 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 man's 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 won't acknowledge it. Who ever yet got a parson 
 to confess himself !" 
 
 *^ Strangely enough, Mr. Wendover," said Robert, fixing 
 him 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 rec- 
 tor's look, his gold spectacles falhng 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 to-morrow, which is possible, to-day has been my last 
 public appearance as rector of this parish!" 
 
 The squire looked at him dumbfounded. 
 And your reasons?" he said, with quick imperativeness. 
 
 Robert gave them. He admitted, as plainly and bluntly as 
 he had done to Grey, the squire's own part in the matter; but 
 here a note of antagonism, almost of defiance, crept even into 
 his confession of wide and illimitable defeat. Be was there, so 
 
445 
 
 to speak, to hand over his sword. But to the squire^ his sur- 
 render 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 hending forward, his 
 sharp small eyes peering at his companion. 
 
 * ' Simply because I prefer to feel myself an honest man. How- 
 ever, I have not acted without advice. Grey of St. Anselm's— 
 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 tbing to do." 
 
 Oh, Grey," exclaimed the squire, with a movement of im- 
 patience. Grey of course wanted you to set up a church of 
 your own, or to join hia! He is like all idealists, he has the 
 usual foolish contempt for the compromise of institutions." 
 
 **Notatall," 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 man's public 
 profession and practice he should recognize that two and two 
 make four." 
 
 It was clear to him from the squire's tone and manner that 
 Mr. Wendover's 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 serious- 
 ly, whether for protest or for sympathy. But he was too w^eary 
 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 life's work, were at 
 the moment absolutely indifferent lo him. They were effaced 
 by something else much harder to analyze. Whatever it was, 
 ifc drove him to throw himseK into Robert's position with a 
 perverse, bewildering bitterness. 
 
 ''Why should you break up your life in this wanton way? 
 Who, in God's 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 busi- 
 ness of the practical man to live. If I had your altruist emo- 
 tional 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 
 
446 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 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 can not," Eobert 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 formulae— 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 squire's brow gi^ew darker. He took up the argument 
 again, more pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest at- 
 tempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into 
 the fold. Robert's resentment was roused at last. The squire's 
 temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments con- 
 tradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He got up 
 to take his leave. 
 
 What are you 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 mi^f." 
 
 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, Elsmere's 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 
 somber figiu^, 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 Eobert, 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 expletive 
 or other, walked up to his writing-table, drew some folios that 
 were lying on ife toward him, with hasty maladroit movements 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 447 
 
 wiiicli sent his papers flying over the floor, and plunged dog- 
 gedij into work. 
 
 He and Mrs. Darcy dined alone. After dinner the squire 
 leaned against the mantel-piece sipping his coffee, moro gloom 
 iiy 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 ¥/ith 
 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 
 I come and look whenever the pink or the blue dansuese exe- 
 ; cuted a more surprising somersault than usual. 
 
 He took not the smallest spoken notice of her, though his 
 1 eyes followed her contemptuously as she moved from window 
 to window with her toy in pursuit of the fading light. 
 
 Oh, Eoger," she called presently, still throv/ing 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. Ihu remember what I told you once about my 
 ^ imps ' ? I have seen them all my life, since I was a child in 
 I France with papa, and I have never been able to draw them 
 i 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 fiipperty fiopperty 
 creature that flies out at you when you open a drawer; there is 
 the twisty-twirly person that sits jeering on the edge of your 
 hat when it blows away from you ; and "—her voice dropped— 
 *Hhat 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 offense to-morrow I 
 should have them— the beauties— all safe." 
 
 She came toward him, her bizarre little figure swaying from 
 side to side, ber eyes glittering, her restless hands pulling at 
 the lace round her blanched head and face. The squire, his 
 hands behind him, looking at her frow^ning, an involuntary 
 horror dawning on his dark count<?nance, turned abruptly; 
 and left the room. 
 
I 
 
 448 ROBERT ELSMERE. j| 
 
 Mr. Wendover worked till midnight; then, tired out* 
 turned to the bit of fire to which, in spite of the oppressivene 
 of the weather, the chilliness of age and nervous strain had h 
 him to set ahght. He sat there for long, sunk in the blacke 
 reverie. He was the only living creature in the great librai 
 wing which spread around and above him— the only wakii 
 creature in the whole vast pile of Murewell. The silver lam] 
 shone with a steady melancholy light on the checkered wal ' 
 of books. The silence was a silence that could be felt ; and tl , 
 gleaming Artemis, the tortured frowning Medusa, were hard" 
 stiller in their frozen calm than the crouching figure of tl 
 squire. 
 
 So Elsmere was going ! In a few weeks the rectory would 1 
 once more tenanted by one of those nonentities the squire hi 
 either patronized or scorned all his life. The park, the lane 
 the room in which he sits, will know that spare young figur 
 that animated voice, no more. The outlet which had brougl 
 so much relief and stimulus to his own mental powers is close* 
 the friendship on which he had unconsciously come to depei 
 so much is broken before it had well begun. 
 
 All sorts of strange thwarted instincts make themselves fe 
 in the squire. The wife he had once thought to marry, tl 
 children he might have had, come to sit hkft ghosts with hi 
 beside the fire. He had never, like Augustine, * ' loved to love 
 he had only loved to know. But none of us escapes to the la 
 the yearnings which make us men. The squire becomes co: 
 scious that certain fibers he had thought long since dead in hi 
 had been all the while twining themselves silently round tl 
 disciple who had shown him in many respects such a filial co 
 sideration and confidence. That young man might have b 
 come to him the son of his old age, tl^e one human being fro 
 whom, as weakness of mind and body break him down, ev( 
 his indomitable spirit might bave accepted the sweetness 
 human pity, the comfort of human help. 
 
 And it is his own hand which has done most to break ti 
 nascent, slowly forming tie. He has bereft himself. 
 
 With what incredible recklessness had he been acting i 
 these months ! 
 
 It was the levity of his own proceeding which stared him 
 the face. His rough hand had closed on the delicate wings 
 a 5!oul as a boy crushes the butterfly he pursues. As Elsme 
 nad stood looking back at him from the library door, the suffe 
 
 1 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 449 
 
 mg which spoke in every line of that changed face had stirred 
 , a sudden troubled remorse in Eoger Wendover. It was mere 
 
 justice that one result of that suffering should be to leave him- 
 . 3elf forlorn. 
 
 He had been thinking and writing of religion, of the history 
 •[ d£ ideas, all his life. Had he ever yet grasped the meaning of 
 ^ religion to the religious manf God and faith—what have 
 these venerable ideas ever mattered to him personally, except 
 :3.s the subjects of the most ingenious analysis, the most deli- 
 , pate historical inductions ? Not only skeptical to the core, but 
 i3onstitutionally indifferent, the squire had always found 
 ' anough to make Kfe amply worth living in the m.ere dissection 
 u pf other men's beliefs. 
 
 .\ But to-night ! The unexpected shock of feeling, mingled with 
 ^ihe terrible sense, periodically alive in him, of physical doom, 
 jeems to have stripped from the thorny soul its outer defenses 
 )f mental habit. He sees once more the hideous spectacle of 
 ■ lis father's death, his own black, half -remembered moments 
 |)f warning, the teasing horror of his sister's increasing weak- 
 less of brain. Life has been on the whole a burden, though 
 |, iberehas been a certain joy no doubt in the fierce intellectual 
 J struggle of it. And to-night it seems so nearly over! A cold 
 ,. prescience of death creeps over the squire as he sits in the 
 :amplighted siknce. His eye seems to be actually penetrating 
 , pe eternal vastness which lies about our life. He feels him- 
 . lelf old, feeble, alone. The awe, the terror which are at the 
 .. wt of all religions have fallen even upon him at last. 
 
 The fire burns lower, the night wears on; outside, an airless, 
 nisty moonhght hes over park and field. Hark I was that a 
 . lound upstairs, in one of those silent empty rooms ? 
 ^ ; The squire half rises, one hand on his chair, his blanched 
 Bce strained, listening. Again ! Is it a footstep or simply a 
 , lelusion of the ear ? He rises, pushes aside the curtains into 
 he inner library, where the lamps have almost burned away, 
 j TOeps up the wooden stair, and into the deserted upper story. 
 Why was that door into^he end room- his father's room— 
 )pen ? He had seen it closed that afternoon. No one had been 
 here since. He stepped nearer. Was that simply a gleam of 
 noonlight on the polished floor— confused lines of shadow 
 hrown by the vine outside ? And was that sound nothing but 
 he stirring of the rising wind of dawn against the ope^ case 
 nent window? Or; 
 
450 EGBERT ELSMERB. f 
 
 ''My Godr 
 
 The squire fled down-stairs. 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 brain-process on sensation, which it had been part 
 of his Kfe's work to ilhistrate. The philosopher had time to 
 reahze a shuddering fellowship of weakness with liis kind, to 
 see himself as a helpless instance of an inexorable law, before 
 he fell back in his chair; a swoon, born of pitiful humr.n terror 
 — terror of things unseen— creeping over heart and brain. 
 
 BOOK v.— ROSE, 
 
 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. 
 
 '^Meanw^hile, in defiance of the inferno outside, festal prepara- 
 tions were being made in a little house on Campden Hill. Lamps 
 were Hghted ; in the drawing-room chairs were pushed back ; the 
 piano w^as open, and a violin stand towered beside it; chrysan- 
 themums were everywhere; an invalid lady in a ''best cap"oc-. 
 cupied the sofa; and two girls were flitting about, clearly mak-^ 
 ing the last arrangements necessary for a "musical afternoon.'^ 
 
 The invaUd was Mrs. Leybm-n, the girls, of course, Rose and- 
 Agnes. Rose at last was safely settled in her longed-for Lon- 
 don, and an artistic company, of the sort her soul loved, was = 
 coming to tea with her. 
 
 Of Rose's summer at Burwood very Uttle need be said. She i 
 was conscious that she had not borne it very well. She had 
 been oif-hr.nd with Mrs. Thornburgh, and had enjoyed one or 
 two open skirmishes with Mrs. Seaton. Her whole temper had 
 been iiTitating and irritable— she was perfectly aw^are of it. 
 Toward her sick mother, indeed, she had controlled herself; 
 not, for such a restless creature, had she made a bad nurse. 
 But Agnes had endured much, and found it all the harder be- 
 cause she was so totally in the dark as to the whys and where- 
 fores of her sister's moods. 
 
 Rose herself would have scornfully denied that any whys 
 and wherefores -beyond her rooted dishke of Whindale— ex- 
 isted. Since her return from Berlin, and especially since that 
 
ROBEBT ELSMEBE, 
 
 451 
 
 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 heart-wholeness. Berlin had devel- 
 oped her precisely as she had desired that it might. The ne- 
 cessities of the Bohemian studefnt's 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 
 reason. 
 
 Oh, of course, she understood him perfectly. In the first 
 place, at the time of their first meeting she had been a mere 
 bread-and-butter 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 suppos- 
 ing he had been ever inclined to fall in love with her, which 
 her new sardonic fairness of mind obliged her to regard as en- 
 tirely doubtful, he was a man to whom marriage was impossi- 
 ble. How could any one expect such a superfine dreamer to 
 turn bread-winner for a wife and household? Imagine Mr. 
 Langham interviewed by a rate-collector 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 imvard restlessness would break through, and she 
 would spend a passionate hour pacing up and dov/n, and hun- 
 gering for the moment when she might avenge upon herself 
 and him the week of silly friendship he had found it neces- 
 sary as her elder and monitor to cut short ! 
 
 In September came the news of Robert's resignation of his 
 living. Mother and daughters sat looking at each other over 
 the letter, stupified. That this calamity, of all others, should 
 have fallen on Catherine, of all women 1 Eose 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 sang froid, was outraged by 
 what, seemed to her Eose's callousness. She wrote a letter t0 
 
452 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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, sud- 
 denly some phrase of Catherine's letter recurred to her. She 
 smv, as only imaginative people see, with every detail visual- 
 ized, her sister's suffering, her sister's 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 harboring somewhere at the bottom of her a wicked and 
 furtive satisfaction that Catherine might now learn there were 
 more opinions in the wocld than one. 
 
 As for the rest of the valley, Mrs. Leybum soon passed 
 from bewaihng to a plaintive indignation with Eobert, which 
 was a relief to her daughters. It seemed to her a reflection on 
 
 Richard" that Robert should have behaved so. Church 
 opinions had been good enough.for "Richard." "The young 
 men seem to think, my dears, their fathers were all fools 1" 
 
 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. Thwnburgh's dismay there was a se- 
 cret 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 Elsmere's 
 Ufe took shape in the uneasy consciousness of the vicar's 
 spouse as a more or less sharp admonition against wiUfuiness 
 in match-making. 
 
 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, Campdea Hill, which Catherine had secured for 
 them on her way through town to the Continent. 
 
 As soon as Mrs. Leyburn had been made comfortable, ^ftose 
 set to work to look up her friends. She owed her acquaint- 
 ance ia London hitherto mainly to Mr. and Mrs. Pierson, the 
 young barrister and his sesthetic wife whom she had originally 
 met and made friends with in a railway-carriage. Mr. Pierson 
 was busthng 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 by -gone generation, was small, untidy, and 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 453 
 
 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 Eose with 
 greater effusion than ever, in proportion as shi was more 
 beautiful and more indisputably gifted than ever. They 
 placed themselves and their house at the girl's service, partly 
 out of genuine admiration and good nature, 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 satis- 
 fied with it, and the friendship of the girl-violinist, whose viva- 
 cious beauty and artistic gift made a stir wherever she went, 
 was a very welcome addition to their resources. They feted 
 her in their own house; they took her to the houses of other 
 people; society smOed on Miss Leyburn's 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, 
 
 i 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 tea parties of her 
 own, to which Mrs. Ley burn 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 peo- 
 pie she remarked in a dubious voice to Agnes. ''Some of 
 them are queer, I admit; but, after all, those two supejior per- 
 sons will have to get used to my friends some time, and they 
 may as well begm." 
 
 You can not expect poor Cathie to come," said Agnes with 
 sudden energy. 
 
 Rose's eyebrows went up. Agnes resented her ironical ex- 
 pression, and with a word or two of quite unusual sharpness 
 got up and went. 
 
 feose, left alone, sprung up suddenly, and clasped her white 
 fingers above her head, with a long breath. 
 
 ''*Where my heart used to be there is 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 can't 
 remember it!" 
 
454 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 ' She stayed so a minute or more; then two tears suddenly i 
 broke and fell. She dashed them angrily away, and sat down 1 
 again to her note -writing. j 
 
 Among the cards she had still to fill up was one of which the - 
 envelope was addressed to the Hon. Hugh Flaxman, 90 St. 
 James's Place. Lady Charlotte, though she had afterward 
 again left town, had been in Martin Street at the end of Octo- 
 ber. The Leyburns had lunched there, and had been intro- 
 duced by her to her nephew and Lady Helen's brother, Mr. 
 Flaxman. The girls had found him agi'eeable ; he had called i 
 the week afterward when they were not at home; and Rose ' 
 DOW carelessly sent him a card, with the inward reflection that 
 he was much too great a man to come, and was probably en- 
 joying himself at country houses, as every aristocrat should, 
 ir^^November. ' 
 
 The following day the two girls made their way over to Bed- 
 ford Square, where the Elsmeres had taken a house in order to 
 be near the British Museum. They pushed their way upstairs 
 thi^ough a medley of packing-cases and a sickening smell of 
 paint. There was a sound of an opening door, and a gentle^ 
 man stepped out of the back room, which was to be Elsmere^ 
 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 sister's defiant, smiling ease and the stranger's em- 
 barrassment; then she went on to find Catherine. The two 
 left behind exchanged a few banal questions and answers. 
 Langha-ai had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling: 
 face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterward he stood 
 making a study of the gi*ound, and answering her remarks in 
 his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her 
 veice— simply the soft callow sounds of first youth? And 
 what a personage she had grown in these twelve months— how 
 formidably, consciously brilHant in look and dress and man-: 
 ner! 
 
 Yes, he was still in town— settled tkere, indeed, for some 
 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. 
 
 **0h, dear, yes! Will you come next Wednesday, for hx' 
 instance, and inspect a musical menagerie ? The animals will 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 455 
 
 go tiirougii 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 m.ore repellent 
 to him, but he got out an acceptance somehow. She nodded 
 lightly to him and passed on, and he went down-stairs, ais 
 
 I head in a whirl. Where ha,d the crude pretty child of yester- 
 year 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 
 
 I ail her resources, tried the edge of all her weapons, and knew 
 her own place too well to ask for anybody else's appraisement. 
 What beauty— good heavens !— what aplomb I The rich hus- 
 band Elsmere talked of would hardly take much waiting for. 
 
 So cogitating, Langham took his way westward to his Beau- 
 mont Street rooms. They were on the second-fioor, small, dingy, 
 choked with books. Ordinarily he shut the door behind him with 
 a sign of content. This evening they seemed to him intolerably 
 confined and stuffy. He thought of going out to his club and a 
 
 %ncert, 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 unexpect- 
 ed meeting. 
 
 The drawing-room at No. 27 was beginning to fill. Eose 
 j stood at the door receiving the guests as they flowed in, while 
 I Agnes in the background dispensed tea. She was discussing with 
 herself the probability of Langham's 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 
 i 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 golden- 
 bearded 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 fhe 
 I quartet began. The young German aforesaid played the viola, 
 1 while the 'cello was divinely played by a Hungarian, of whose 
 outer man it need only be said that in wild profusion of much-' 
 
 1 
 
456 
 
 KOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 tortured 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 continental 
 musician. Eose 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 drawing-room door. Through the heads about him, 
 he could see her standing a Utile m advance of the others, her 
 head turned to one side, really in the natural attitude of violin- 
 playing, but, as it seemed to him, in a kind of ravishment of 
 hstening— cheeks flushed, eyes shining, and the right arm and 
 high-curved wrist managing the bow with a grace born of 
 knowledge and fine training. 
 
 ''Very much improved, eh?" said an English professional to 
 a German neighbor, lifting his eyebrows interrogatively. 
 ' The other nodded with the business-like air of one who 
 knows. "Joachim, they say, wm^ daruber entzucM, and did 
 
 his best vid her, and now D has got her"— naming a fa- ^ 
 
 mous viohnist— " she vill make fast brogress. He vill schtamp " 
 upon her treecks 1" 
 
 "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. ' ' Veil, vid a bretty woman 
 
 —uherhaiipt— it dosn't m.ean business! « It's zoziety— the dukes 
 
 and the duchesses— that ruins all the young 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^ dehght 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 
 
ROBERT SLSMERE. 
 
 457 
 
 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 get- 
 ting 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- 
 smoldering pain; but as she caught his look, the look of the 
 nervous, short-sighted scholar and recluse, as her glance swept 
 over the delicate refinement of the face, a sudden softness 
 quivered in her own. The game was so defenseless ! 
 
 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 don't disturb yourself about 
 me, Miss Leyburn.v I come out of my hole so seldom, every- 
 thing 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 pref- 
 erence for the people that are not new ! There is such a thing 
 as concentrating one's attention. I came to hear you play, 
 Miss Leyburn !" 
 
 WeU?" 
 
 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 half mechanically. ''I had no 
 notion a winter's work would have done so much fo 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 dogmatize 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 em- 
 barrassment, however, drove him into rashness, as often hap- 
 pens. 
 
 I thought I had enough to go upon!" he said in another 
 
458 
 
 BOBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 tone; and his black eyes, sparkling as thoiigh 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 friend- 1 
 ship, and had then gone away and forgotten her. Clearly 
 what she meant him to see now was that they were strangers i 
 again. Well, she was amply in her right. He suspected that 
 his allusion to their first talk over the fire had not been imwel- 
 come 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 disen- 
 gaged himseK and went to stand in a comer and study his . 
 neighbors. 
 
 Close to him, he found, was the poet of the party, got up in i 
 the most correct professional costume— long hair, velvet coat, 
 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 fine-ear gift for catching ; 
 conversation, heard him saying to an open-eyed ingenue be- ; 
 side 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 candor, "at 
 my age I don't 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 neighborhood 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 humors of the crowd without com- 
 ing too closely in contact with them. What a miscellaneous 
 collection it was! He began to be irritably jealous for Eose's 
 place in the world. She ought to be more adequately sur- 
 
EOBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 450 
 
 rounded than this. What was Mrs. Leybum—what were the 
 Elsmeres about? He rebelled against the thought of her liv- 
 ing perpetually among her inferiors, the center of a vulgar 
 publicity, queen of the second-rate. 
 
 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 Eose and the long-haired, long-nosed 
 violoncellist. Evidently she did not want to play some par- 
 ticular piece, and wished to put it out of sight. Whereupon 
 the Hungarian, who had been clamoring for it, rushed to its 
 rescue, and there was a mock fight over it. At last, amid the 
 applause of the room, Eose was beaten, and her conqueror, 
 flourishing the music on high, executed a kind of pas seul of 
 triumph. 
 
 ''VictoriaP^ he cried. "Now denn for de conditions of 
 peace. Mees Eose, 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 Eose, with fine emphasis, crossing her white wrists be- 
 fore her. 
 
 The Hungarian looked at her, the wild, poetic strain in him 
 which was the strain of race reasserting 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 the- 
 atricality finding immediate response. Langham was remorse- 
 lessly conscious of the man's absurd chevelure and ill-fitting 
 clothes. But Eose 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, de- 
 positing 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 sud- 
 denly opened. The fluttered parlor-maid mumbled a long 
 name, and, with a port of soldierly uprightness, there advanced 
 
460 
 
 ilOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 behind her a large, fair-haired woman, followed by a gentle 
 man, 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 fel 
 on the chattering circle of musicians. 
 
 '*Good heavens!" said Langham to himself, "Lady Char 
 lotte Wynnstay !" 
 
 "How do you do, Miss Ley burn?" said one of the most 
 piercing of voices. " Are you surprised to see me? You didn't ' 
 ask me— perhaps you don't want me. But I have come, you 
 see, partly because my nephew was coming," and she pointed 
 to the gentlemen behind her, "partly because I meant to pun- 
 ish you for not having come to see me last Thursday. WhyJ 
 didn't you^" 
 
 " Because we thought you were still away," said Rose, who 
 had by this time recovered her self possession. "But if youi 
 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?" 
 
 "Ob, 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 toward the speaker. It was Mr. 
 Flaxman, Lady Charlotte's companion. 
 
 " You need not have drawn the picture too black, Mr. Flax- 
 man. There is an escape. If Lady Charlotte wiU 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 brother-in-law? 
 Robert, will you get Lady Charlotte some tea?" 
 
 " Jam not going to be banished," said Mt. Flaxman, look- 
 ing down upon her, his well-bred, slightly worn face aglow 
 with animation and pleasure. 
 
 "Then you will be deafened," said Rose, laug^iing, as she 
 escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song fi-om a tall, 
 formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's 
 contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ample 
 promise of her frame. 
 
 " Your sister is a terribly self-possessed young person, Mr. 
 Elsmere^" said Lady Charlotte, as Robert piloted her aoiw 
 the room. 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 461 
 
 Does that imply praise or blame on your part, Lady Char- 
 otte?" asked Eobert, smiling. 
 
 ''Neither at present. I don't know Miss Leyburn well 
 enough. I merely state a fact. No tea, Mr. Elsmere. I have 
 iad 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 in- 
 vahd was immediately seized with terror of her voice and ap- 
 pearance, and was infinitely grateful to Eobert for removing 
 her as promptly as possible to a chaii' on the border of the two 
 koms where she could talk or listen as she pleased. For a 
 lew moments she listened to Fraulein Adelmann's veiled, un- 
 manageable contralto; then she turned magisterially to Eobert 
 ^ standing behind her. 
 
 '^The art of singing has gone out,'' she declared, '^smce 
 the Germans have been allowed to meddle in it. By the way, 
 Mr Elsmere, how do you manage to be here? Are you taking 
 ahoUday?" 
 Eobert looked at her with a start. 
 ' ' I have left Mure well. Lady Charlotte. " 
 Left Murewell!" she said, in astonishment, turning round 
 to look at him, her eyeglass in her eye. ''Why has Helen 
 tm me nothing about it? Have you got another livmg? 
 
 ''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 Elsmere's letter to her, had not been very eager 
 to hand over the woes of her friends to her aunlfs cool and 
 irresponsible comments. ^ . ^ i 
 
 Lady Charlotte deliberately looked at him a mmute longer 
 through her glass. Then she let it fall. 
 
 "You don't mean to tell me any more, I can see, Mr. Els- 
 mere But you wHl allow me to be astOnisned 
 ' " Certainly," he said, smiling sadly, and immediately after- 
 
 ^'^'n^:';SZtZ nnire lately." he a^ed her, af1.r 
 
 ^ -Not from him. We are excellent friends when we meet, 
 but he doesn't consider me worth writing to. His sister-Jittle 
 Sor-writes to me every now and then. But she has not 
 vouchslfed me a letter since the summer. I should say from 
 the last accounts that he was breakmg." 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 He had a mysterious attack of illness just before I left,'' 
 said Robert, gravely. * ' It made one anxious. " 
 
 Oh, it is the old story. AU the Wendovers have dieST of 
 weak heai-ts or queer brains— generaUy of both together. I im- 
 agine you had some experience of the squire's queerness at one 
 time, Mr. Elsmere. I can't say you and he seemed to be on 
 particularly good terms on the only occasion I ever had the 
 pleasure of meeting you at Mure well." 
 
 She looked up at him, smiling grimly. She had a cmdously 
 exact memory for the unpleasant scenes of life. 
 
 '^Oh, you remember that unlucky evening!'' said Robert, 
 reddening a Kttle. **We soon got over that. We became 
 great friends." 
 
 Agam, however, Lady Charlotte was struck by the quiet mel- 
 ancholy of his tone. How strangely the look of youth— which 
 had been so attractive in him the year before— had ebbed from 
 the man't face — from complexion, eyes, expression! She 
 stared at him, full of a brusque, tormenting curiosity as to the 
 how and why. 
 
 hope there is some one among you strong enough to 
 manage Miss Rose," she said, presently, with an abrupt change 
 of subject. That Httle sister-in-law 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 mo- 
 ment 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 doesn't look to me a person of nerve enough," 
 said Lady Charlotte, coolly. " She is a girl certain— absolute- 
 ly certaiQ— to have adventures, and you may as well be prcs 
 pared for them." 
 
 **I can only trust she will disappoint your expectations, 
 Lady Charlotte, "said Robert, with a slightly sarcastic em- 
 phasis. 
 
 Elsmere, who is that man talking to Miss Leybum ?" asked 
 
EGBERT ELSMEEB, 
 
 Langham as the two friends stood side by side, a little later, 
 watching the spectacle. 
 
 A certain Mr. Flaxman, brother to a pretty little neighbor 
 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 Ber- 
 lin last year ?" 
 
 ^'Yes, I believe so. A striking person altogether. He is 
 enormously rich, Lady Helen tells me, m spite of an elder 
 brother. All the money in his mother's family has come to him, 
 and he is the heir to Lord Daniel's great Derbyshire property. 
 Twelve years ago I used to hear him talked about incessantly 
 by the Cambridge men one met. ''Citizen Flaxman "they 
 calie^ him, for his opinions' sake. He would ask his scout to 
 dinner, and insist on dining with his own servants, and shak- 
 ing hands with his friends' butlers. The scouts and the butlers 
 put an end to that, and altogether, I imagine, the world disap- 
 pointed him. He has a story, poor fellow, too— a young wife, 
 who died with her first baby ten years ago. The world sup- 
 poses him never to have got over it, which makes him all the 
 more interesting. A distinguished face, don't you think?— the 
 good type of English aristocrat." 
 
 Langham assented. But his attention was fixed on the group 
 in which Rose's bright hair was conspicuous; and when Eobert 
 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- 
 self-confident 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 further and further 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- 
 
464 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Flaxman. Mr. Flaxman bent over her, and as he spoke Lang- 
 ham caught her iBlush 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 to- 
 ward 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 small-talk was. She 
 hardly listened, but presently she looked up nervously, com- 
 pelled as it were by the great melancholy eyes above her. 
 
 *'We are not always in this turmoil, Mr. Langham. Per- 
 haps some other day you will come and make friends with my 
 mother?" ^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXXn. 
 
 Naturally, it was during their two months of autumn 
 travel that Elsmere and Catherine first realized in detail what 
 Elsmere's 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 finely natured people such re- 
 solves were infinitely easier *to make than to carry out. 
 
 I will not preach to you — I will not persecute you !" Cath- 
 erine 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 accom- 
 panied Elsmere's withdrawal from Murewell— the letters which 
 followed them, the remonstrances of pubhc 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, cer- 
 tain 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 Robert's grief; she never once re- 
 proached 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 immense- 
 ly strengthened that puritan independent fiber in her which her 
 youth had developed, and which her happy marriage had only 
 temporarily masked, not weakened. Never had Catherine be- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 465 
 
 lieved 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 child's, her Lord's, 
 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 ^ork 
 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 these new ardors with which his mind was filling — 
 she who loved him !— except by building, at any rate for the 
 time, an inclosure 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 Catherine's 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 God's mercies in Christ. 
 
 So gradually vv^ith a gentle persistency she withdrew certain 
 parts of herself from Robert's ken ; she avoided certain subjects, 
 or anything that might lead to them ; she ignored the rehgious 
 and philosophical books he was constantly reading; she prayed 
 and thought alone— always of 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 break- 
 ing links, a perpetual series of dumb wounds and griefs on both 
 sides. There came a moment when, as he sat alone one even- 
 ing in a pine wood above the Lake of Geneva, Elsmere suddenly 
 awoke to the conviction that in spite of all his efforts and illu- 
 sions, their relation to each other was altering, dMndling, im- 
 poverishing: 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 
 
466 
 
 EOBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 was one of those people, as we know, who throw off readily; to 
 whom sympathy, expansion, are indispensable; who suffer phys- 
 ically 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 be- 
 gan to feel the presence of this cold and rigid something. He 
 was ever conscious of self-defense on her side, of pained draw- 
 ing back on his. And with every succeeding effort of liis at 
 self-repression, 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, ponder 
 ing, 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 beUever 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 f orlomness 
 should bring about hers. But in spite of the intellectual con- 
 fusion, which inevitably attends any wholesale reconstruction of 
 a man's platform of action, he had "never been more suro of 
 God, or the Divine aims of the world, than now ; never more 
 open than now, amid this exquisite Alpine world, to those pas- 
 sionate moments of religious trust which are man's eternal de- 
 fiance to the iron silences about him. Originally, as we know, 
 he had shrunk from the thought of change in her correspond- 
 ing to his own ; now that his own foothold was strengthening, 
 his longing for a new union was overpowering that old dread. 
 The proselytizing instinct may be never quite morally defensi- 
 ble, 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 neutrahzed for the momenf 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. 
 
 They were in a bare attic room at the very top of one of the 
 
EOBSRT SLSMEB«. 
 
 46» 
 
 huge newly built 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 Swit- 
 zerland. But it had been followed by a warm and mellow Sep- 
 tember, and the favorite 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 side- 
 ways 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 splendors of the ^^Valais depths profound." Whatmadethe 
 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 even- 
 ing, 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 at- 
 tendant 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 Eobert could see a world of high moonUght, 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 
 cHmbing most of the afternaon, 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 candle-light. 
 
 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 well-worn volume at the point reached in their 
 last reading at Murewell. He opened upon it, and began the 
 eleventh chapter of St. John. i tt 
 
 Catherine trembled when she w him take up the book. He 
 
468 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 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 Httle Testament, and bent toward 
 her, his look full of feeling. 
 
 Catherine! can't you let me— will you never let me tell 
 you, now, how that story— how the old things— affect me, from 
 the 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 Lazainis, 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 of Jesus for Nazareth is 'resurrection' and 
 Mife.'" 
 
 He spoke with the most painful diffidence, the most wistful 
 
 tenderness. 
 
 There was a pause. Then Catherine said, in a rigid, con- 
 strained voice : 
 
 If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, as reality, I 
 can not see how they are true at all, or of any value." 
 
 The next minute she rose, and going to the Httle wooden 
 dressing-table, 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 to- 
 ward her and took her in his arms. 
 
 4^ Catherine," he said to her, his hps trembhng, ''am I never 
 to speak my mind to you any more? Do you mean always to 
 hold me at arm's-length— to refuse always to hear what I have 
 to say in defense 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. 
 
 " Eobert, I can not! Oh! you must see I can not. It is not 
 because I am hard, butJbecause 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 mtolerable fear of what love might 
 do with her if she once gave it an opening. He felt himself 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 469 
 
 cruel, brutal, and yet an urgent sense of all that was at stake 
 
 drove him on. ^ . , .„ i 
 
 '^I would not press or worry you, God knowsT'he said, 
 ulmost piteously, kissing her forehead as she lay against him. 
 
 But remember, Catherine, I can not 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 can not. 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 wood-path after her flight and return in their mmds, and 
 both vfere filled with a despairing sense of the difficulty of 
 living, not through great crises, but through the details of 
 
 every day. , • j * 
 
 Could you not work at other things?" she whispered. 
 He was silent^ looking straight before him into the moon- 
 light shimmer and white spectral hazes of the valley, his arms 
 
 still round her. , r. 
 
 ' ' No 1" 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 myseK-and to 
 others," he added, deliberately. 
 
 Her heart sunk within her. The last words caUed 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 would find words-'' is my wife 
 never going to let me speak freely to her? Am I to act, think, 
 iudge without her knowledge? Is she to know less of me 
 than a friend, less even than the public for whom I write or 
 sneak?" 
 
 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 contem- 
 plated from the beginning. 
 "Eobert, I can not defend myself agamst you, she cri^d 
 ain clinging to him. ' ' Oh, think for me ! _ You know what 
 feel; that I dare not risk what is not mmel 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 He kissed her again, and then moved away from her to the 
 window. It began to be plain to him that his effort was mere- 
 ly 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 don't think you can, Catherine 
 —what part the reasoning faculty, that faculty which marks 
 us out from the animal, was meant to play in Hfe? 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 dressing gown, and framing 
 the nobly featured face blanched by the moonlight. She did 
 not attempt a reply, but the melancholy of an invincible reso- 
 lution, which was, so to speak, not her own doing, but rather 
 was hke 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 Donatella 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 hotly 
 beating heart told film that he was perfectly right, and that to 
 accept the barriers she was setting up would impoverish all 
 their future Mfe together: But he could not struggle with 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 ilhmitable possibilities of the rehgious 
 temper, the dread of which had once before risen specter-hke 
 in his heart. 
 
 So once more he yielded. She rewarded him with all the 
 charm, all the deUghtfulness, 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 Lu- 
 gano. 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 dehcate give and 
 take both suffered : both felt that the promise of their marriage 
 had failed them, and that they had come dismally down to sec- 
 ond best. But after all they were young, and the autumn was 
 
EOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 m 
 
 beautiful— and though they hurt each other, they were alone 
 together and constantly, passionately, interested in each other. 
 Italy, too, softened all things— even Catherine's 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 battle-ground and highway of nations^ 
 which roused all Eobert's historical enthusiasm, and set him 
 reading, discussing, thinking, in his old impetuous way, about 
 something else than minute problems of Christian evidence— 
 the new-born 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 Catherine's dearest 
 memories was the memory of their first installment in the Bed- 
 ford Square house. Robert's anxiety to make it pleasant and 
 home-like was pitiful to watch. He had none of the modern 
 passion for upholstery, and probably the vaguest notions of 
 what was aesthetically 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 mi2:ht brighten th^ 
 <-ooms in which Catherine was to live. He would pub every- 
 thing in its place with a restless eagerness, and then Catherine 
 would bej3alled in, and would play her part bravely. She would 
 smile and ask questions, and admire, and then when Eobert 
 had gone, she v/ould 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 Mure well corn-field, the wood-path, the village, the free air- 
 bathed spaces of heath and common. Oh I this huge London, 
 with its unfathomable poverty and its heartless wealth— ho wit 
 om)ressed and bewildered her ! Its mere grime and squalor, its 
 murky poisoned atmosphere, were a perpetual trial to the coun- 
 trywoman 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? Witji Catherine everything really depended 
 on the moral state. She could have followed Robert to a Lon- 
 don living with a joy and hope which would have completely 
 deadened all these repulsions of the senses now so active in her. 
 
472 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERlD. 
 
 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 ever-increasing tenacity, Mled 
 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 morn- 
 ing the night, too, seemed to have been alive with conflict— 
 All Thy leaves 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 encour- 
 aged 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 fasci- 
 nate 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 fiber. 
 
 And fche work among the poor was difficult. Robert instinct- 
 * ively 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, Catherine's 
 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 char- 
 itable 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 pity- 
 ing 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 man's table, the very copy which contained Robert's 
 name among the list of men who durin^r the last ten yeai'^ had 
 thrown up ihe Ang£ican mmistiry. '£he delicate fape fluslici* 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRE. 
 
 473 
 
 miserably from brow to chin. Pitied for being Eobert's wife! 
 Oh, monstrous !— incredible ! 
 
 Meanwhile Eobert, man-like, in spite of all the griefs and 
 sorenessis of the position, had immeasurably the b6st 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 pro- 
 jects, 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 lit- 
 tle to do with Elsmere's relinquishment of the Church of Eng- 
 land. But as soon as the Christian bases of faith were over- 
 thrown, 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 rever- 
 ent and adoring living that nothing could destroy it. Y\rith 
 Elsmere, as with all men of religious temperament, belief in 
 Christianity and faith in God had not at the outset been a mat- 
 ter of reasoning at all, but of sympathy, feeling, association, 
 daily experience. Then the intellect had broken in, and de- 
 stroyed 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 mo- 
 ments of real intimacy he had enjoyed with him at Oxford, 
 ''My interest iii philosophy springs solely from the chance it 
 ofters me o£ 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 ot man's 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 sphere in 
 him of a patient ignorance which abstains from all attempts at 
 knowing what man can not know, and substitutes trust for 
 either knowledge or despair, was perpetually widening. "I 
 take my stand on conscience and the moral life!'' was the up- 
 shot of it all. ''In them I find my God! As for all these 
 various problem?, ethical and scientific, which you press upon 
 me, my pessimist friend, I, too, am bewildered; I, too, have 
 
474 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 writ- 
 ten 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 college 
 friend of Elsmere's. He was a High Churchman of a singu- 
 larly gentle and delicate type, and the manner in which he had 
 received Elsmere's 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 hero-worship, and, since 
 Oxford, an example of pastoral efficiency, had painfully affect- 
 ed young Armitstead, and he began a correspondence with Rob- 
 ert which was in many ways a relief to both. In Switzerland 
 and Italy, when his wife's 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 favorite 
 Christian dilemma— Christianity or nothing. Inside Christian- 
 ity, light and certainty; outside it, chaos. " If it were not for 
 the Gospels and the Church I should be a Positivist to-morrow. 
 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 ex- 
 planation of things Theism can never he disproved. At the 
 worst it must always remain in the position of an alternative 
 hypothesis, which the hostile man of science can not destroy, 
 though he is under no obligation to adopt it. Broadly speak- 
 ing, 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 Tbeistic inference will, to put it at the lowest, always have 
 its place, always command respect. Th© nxan of science may 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 475 
 
 not adopt it, but by no advance of science that I, at any rate, 
 can forsee, 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 facts, 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 ex- 
 planation 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, emd in whom this training 
 has not been neutralized by any overwhelming bias of tempera- 
 ment, it can be as clearly demonstrated that the miraculous 
 Christian story rests on a tissue of mistake, as it can be demon- 
 strated that the Isidorian Decretals were a forgery, or the cor- 
 respondence of Paul and Seneca a pious fraud, or that the 
 mediaeval beliei in witchcraft was the product of physical igno- 
 rance and superstition." 
 
 You say," he wrote again, in another connection, to Armit- 
 stead 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 coun- 
 try practically without religion— the spectacle in fact of Latin 
 Europe as a whole, and the practical Atheism in which it is in- 
 gulfed? My dear friend, the problem of the world at this mo- 
 ment is— how to find a religion f — some great conception which 
 shall be once more capable, as the old were capable, of welding 
 societies, and keeping man's brutist 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 deelii.e of Christianity? And yet this last is in- 
 finitely 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 minimize the results of this decline 
 for human life, nor can I bring myself to believe that Positiv- 
 ism 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 
 
476 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 faith? It looks like it. What does the artisan class, what does 
 the town democracy throughout Europe, care any longer for 
 Christian checks or Okristian 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 any- 
 thing like it ; such spiritual anarchy and poverty combined with 
 such material power and resource. Every society — Christian 
 and non-Christian — 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 world's 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 
 human mind against God, the momentary triumph of Satan. 
 And so you acquiesce, heavy-hearted, in G-od's present defeat, 
 looking for vengeance and requital hereafter. Well, I am not 
 so ready to believe in man's capacity to rebel against his Maker ! 
 Where you see ruin and sin, I see the urgent process of Divine 
 education. God's steady ineluctable command *^to put away 
 childish things," the pressure of His spirit on ours toward new 
 ways of worship and new forms of love !" 
 
 And after awhile, 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 com- 
 plete than the eager soul, incapable then, as always, of resting 
 in negation or opposition, pressed passionately forward to a nev/ 
 synthesis, not only speculative, but practical. Before it rose 
 perpetually the haunting vision of another' palace of faith — an- 
 other church or company of the faithful, which was to become 
 the shelter of human aspiration amid the desolation and anarchy 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 411 
 
 caused by the crashing of the old ! Hov/ 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 toward 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 Foram of Eome they are 
 at the center of human things. I am more thrilled by West- 
 minster than Eome ; 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 free- 
 dom in the true sense, you alone have religion. I would give 
 a year of life to know what you will have made of your free- 
 dom and your religion two hundred years hence !" 
 
 As Robert recalled the words, the abbey lay before him, 
 wrapped in* the bluish haze of the inter 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 care- 
 less 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 lighted; 
 lines of 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. 
 
 Eobert filled his eye and sense, and then walked quickly 
 away toward the Embankment. Carrying the poetry and 
 grandeur of England's past with him, he turned his face east- 
 ward to the great new-made London on the other side of St. 
 Paul's, the London of the democracy, ol:' the nineteenth cent- 
 ury 3 and of the future. He was wrestling vv^ith himself, a prey 
 
478 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEEE. , 
 
 to one of those critical moments of life, when circumstance 
 
 seems once more to restore to us the power of choice, of dis- 
 tributing a Yes or a No among the great solicitations which 
 meet the humaa spirit on its path from silence to silence. The 
 thought of his friend's reverence, and of his own personal debt 
 toward 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 lielp|me — how can I help England, — say!" 
 
 Ah ! that vast chaotic London south and east of the great 
 church 1 He already knew something of it. A Liberal clergy- 
 man there, settled in the very blackest, busiest heart of it, had 
 already made him welcome on Mr. Grey's 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, Hght- 
 filled 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 disap- 
 pearances, the sudden ingulf ments, 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- 
 colored success, as it claimed to be, where the primitive tend- 
 ency of man toward the organized excitement of religious 
 ritual, visible in all nations and civilizations, had been appealed 
 to with more energy and more results than usual. But in gen- 
 eral, 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 inscruta- 
 ble Will of God. 
 
 Bill is it not time we assured ourselves, he was always ask- 
 ing, whether God is still in truth behind the offer man is per- 
 petu lily making to his brother man on His behalf ? He was 
 behind it once, and it had eflScacy, had power. But now— 
 what if all these processes of so called destruction and decay 
 were but the mere workings of that divine plastic force which 
 
js fore^rer molding 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 world's 
 history, not the props, but the hindrances, of man ? 
 
 And if aU these large things were true, as he believed, what 
 should be the individual's part in this transition in 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 self delusion, ''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 ut- 
 most efforts should b^t 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 
 one's self ridiculous— absurdly lonely and powerless ! All great 
 changes are preceded by numbers of sporadic, and as the by- 
 stander thinks, impotent efforts. But while the individual 
 effort sinks, drowned perhaps in mockery, the general move- 
 iD^snii quickens, gath,ers 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 sunk over the river; all the gray and purple dis- 
 tance with its dim edge of spires and domes against the sky, all 
 the vague, intervening blackness of street, or bridge, or rail- 
 way station were starred and patterned with lights. The vast- 
 ness, the beauty of the city filled him with a sense of my terious 
 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 . 
 
480 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 ''What does it matter if one's work be raw and uncomeljli r 
 All that lies outside the great organized traditions of an age j 
 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 otherwise people ' 
 may prefer a policy of silence. A man has but the one puny 
 life, the one tiny spark of faith. Better be venturesome with 
 both for God's 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. Bob- 
 ert had nothing of the sectary about him by nature ; he was * 
 always too deeply and easily affected by the great historic ex*: ^ 
 istences about him. But when the Oxford man or the ex-offi-1 
 cial of one of the most venerable and decorous of societies 
 protested, the behever, 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 fronjj 
 the dining room. 
 
 *'Eobert, 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 nibnths were to him months of incessant 
 travail of spirit, and she caught at this moment the old strenu 
 ous 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 sunk within her. 
 
 She turned and kissed him. He bent his head fondly over 
 her. But inwardly all the ardor of his mood collapsed at the 
 touch of her. For the protests of a world in arms can be witb 
 stood with joy, but the protest that steals into your heart, thaJi 
 takes love's garb and uses love's wsijs— there is the difficulty! 
 
 I 
 
BOBSBT JSLSMBBB. 
 
 481 
 
 CHAPTER XXXm. 
 
 i 
 
 I But Robert was some time in finding his opening, in realiz- 
 I ing any fraction of his dream. At first he tried to work under 
 the Broad Church vicar to whom Grey had introduced him. He 
 undertook some rent-collecting, and some evening lectures on 
 elementary science to boys and men. But after awhile he 
 I began to feel his position false and unsatisfactory. In truth, 
 i 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 necesary 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 conse- 
 I quence he was involved, as Robert held, in endless contradic- 
 i tions 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 hard- working and kind-hearted, 
 but the perpetual divorce between thought and action, which 
 his position made inevitable, was constantly blunting and 
 I weakening all he did. His whole hfe, indeed, was one long 
 i waste of power, simply for lack of an elementary frankness. 
 I But if these became Robert's views as to Vernon, Vernon's 
 I feehng toward Elsmere after six weeks' acquaintance was not 
 i less decided. He was constitutionally timid, and he probably 
 divined in his new helper a man of no ordinary caliber, whose 
 I influence might very well turn out some day to be of the in- 
 jcalculably 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 differ- 
 I ent, could not long co-operate. 
 
 However, just as the fact was being brought home to Elsmere* 
 I a friendly chance intervened. 
 
 Hugh Flaxman, the Leyburns' new acquaintance and Lady 
 Helen's brother, had been drawn to Elsmere at first sight; and 
 a meeting or two, now at Lady Charlotte's, now at the Ley- 
 
482 ROBERT ELSMERE. ' 
 
 bums', had led both men far on the way to a friendship. O! 
 Hugh Flaxman himself more hereafter. At present all that 
 need be recorded is that it was at Mr. Flaxman's house, over- 
 looking St. James's Park, Eobert first met a man who was to , 
 give him the opening for which he was looking. 
 
 Mr. Flaxman was fond of breakfast-parties a la Rogers, and 1 
 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 sUp of a feUow, whose saUies of fun i' 
 and invincible good humor attracted him greatly. \ 
 Sparkling brown eyes, full hps rich in humor and pugnacity, 
 lockes crull as they were layde in presse," the same look of f! 
 '^wonderly" activity, too, in spite of his short stature andl- 
 dainty make, as Chaucer lends his squire— the type was so fresh , 
 and pleasing that Robert was more and more held by it, espec- i 
 ially when he discovered to his bewilderment that the supposed i; 
 strippling must be from his talk a man quite as old as himself, 
 an official besides, filling what was clearly some important place ' 
 in the worid. He took his full share in the politics and literar 
 ture started at the table, and presently, when conversation fell 
 on the proposed municipality for London, said things to which 
 the whole party listened. Robert's curiosity was aroused, and 
 after breakfast he questioned his host and was promptly intro-' 
 duced to Mr. Murray Edwardes." 
 
 Whereupon it turned out that this baby-faced sage was filhng 
 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 river-side 
 districts of the city, and in his wfil he endeavored to do some- 
 thing according to his lights for the place in which he had , 
 amassed his money. He left a fairly large bequest wherewith , 
 to bufid and endow a Unitarian chapel and found certam Uni- 
 tarian charities, in the heart of what was even then one of the 
 densest and most poverty-stricken 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 Hlogical creed 
 that exists, and certainly it has never been the creed of the ' 
 poor. In old days it required the presence of a certam and< 
 Btratum of the middle classes to live and thrive at all. Thif 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 483 
 
 stratum was not to be found in E , which rejoiced instead 
 
 in the most squalid types of poverty and crime, types where- 
 with the ijLild, shriveled Unitarian minister had about as much 
 power of grappling as a poet laureate with a Trafalgar Square 
 Socialist. 
 
 Soon alter the erection of the chapel, there arose that shaking 
 of the dry bones of religious England which we call the Trac- 
 
 tarian movement. For many years the new force left R— 
 
 quite undisturbed. The parish church droned away, the Uni- 
 tarian minister preached decorously to empty benches, know- 
 ing nothing of the agitations outside. At last, however, toward 
 the end of the old minister's life, a powerful church of the new 
 type, staffed by friends and pupils of Pusey, rose in the center 
 
 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 jproceedings at this new and splendid St. Wil- 
 frid's 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— the hec- 
 , tic clergy heading exasperated processions of 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 au- 
 thorities 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 curly haired youth, as he was then in reahty, 
 and as to hi-s own quaint vexation he went on seeming to be 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 three-fourths of the district, there was a small 
 party consisting of an aristocracy of the artisans, whose pro- 
 test against the Puseyite doings was of a much quieter, sterner 
 sort, and among 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 gen©r- 
 
484 ROBERT BLSMEEE. 
 
 ous Uving: and he lectured, taught, brought down workers 
 from the West End, and before he had been five years m bar- 
 
 ness had not only made himself a power in R , but was be- 
 
 ging to be heard of and watched with no smaU interest by many 
 
 outsiders. , , . vi j r>„ 
 
 This was the man on whom Robert had now stumbled. Be- 
 fore they had talked twenty minutes each was fascinated by 
 the other They said good-bye to their host, and wandered out 
 together into St. James's 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 bad never dreamed 
 of ioining 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, ihe 
 young man's creed, as he presented it, had grace, persuasive- 
 ness, even unction, and there was somethmg m his tone of 
 mind which was like a fresh wind blowing over the fevered . 
 nlaces of the other's heart. . , . 
 
 They talked long and earnestly, Edwardes descnbmg his own 
 work, and the changes creeping over the modern Umtarian 
 body,' Elsmere saying little, asking much. 
 
 M last the young man looked at Elsmere with eyes of bnght 
 
 (\ poision • 
 
 " You can not work with the Church !" he said-" it is impos- 
 sible. You will only wear yourself out in efforts to restrain 
 what you could do infinitely more good, as things stand noyf,bj 
 pouring out. Come to us-I will put you in the way You 
 shall be hampered by no pledges of any sort, ^^ome and take 
 the direction of some of my workers. We have aU got our 
 hands morethanfuU. Your knowledge, y^"';^^^?^.™'^^^^ 
 be invaluable. There is no other opening hke it m England 
 just now for men of your way of thinkmg and mme. Come 
 Who knows what we may be putting our hands to-what frmt 
 may grow from the smallest seed?" . d^u 
 
 The two men stopped beside the Hghtly frozen water. Ro^ 
 ert gathered that in this soul, too, there had risen the samelar^ 
 mtolicating dream of a reorganized Christendom, a new wide- 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 485 
 
 spreading 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 Eobert got home late after a busy day full of 
 various engagements. Mary, after some waiting up for 
 i Fader," had just been carried protesting, red lips pouting, 
 I and fat legs kicking, off to bed. Catherine was straightening 
 the room, which had been thrown into confusion by the child's 
 romps. 
 
 i It was with an effort— for he knew it would be a shock to her 
 j —that he began to talk to her about the breakfast- party at Mr. 
 I Flaxman's, 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 hps becoming more and more compressed. Yes, it 
 was hard to her, very hard ; the people among whom she had 
 I been brought up, her father especially, would have held out 
 ! the hand of fellowship to anybody of Christian people, but not 
 ! to the Unitarian. No real barrier of feeling divided them from 
 I 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 hfe of her, as he told his tale, she could find noth- 
 ing but embarrassed monosyllables, and still more embar- 
 rassed silences wherewith to answer him. Till at last he, too, 
 fell silent, feeling once more the sting of a now habitual dis- 
 comfort. 
 
 Presently, however, Catherine came to sit down beside him. 
 She laid her head against his knee, saying nothing, but gather- 
 ing his hand closely in both her own. 
 
 Poor woman's heart ! One moment in rebellion, the next a 
 suppliant. He bent down quickly and kissed her. 
 
 * ' Would you hke, "he said, presently, after both had sat silent 
 
 I 
 
486 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 awhile in the fire-light, " would you care to go to Madame de 
 
 Netteville's to-night?" 
 
 *'By all means," said Catherine, with a sort of eagerness. 
 
 It ivas Friday she asked us for, wasn't it? We will be quick 
 over dinner, and I will go and dress." 
 
 In that last ten minutes which Eobert had spent with the 
 squire in his bedroom, on the Monday afternoon when they 
 were to have walked, Mr. Wendover had dryly recommended 
 Elsmere to cultivate Mme. 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. ..,11 
 
 ^' You had better go there," he'said, huskily, *^it will do you j 
 good. She gets the first-rate people and she makes them talk, , 
 which Lady Charlotte can't. Too many fools at Lady Char- 
 lotte's; 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 Elsmere's 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, be- 
 hind the physical breakdown, there was to Eobert^s sense some- 
 thing else, a spiritual something, infinitely forlorn and piteous, I 
 which revealed itself wholly against the elder man's wiU, and 
 fiUed the younger with a dumb, helpless rush of sympathy. 
 Since his departure Eobert had made the keeping up of his cor- 
 respondence with the squire a binding obligation, and he was 
 to-night chiefly anxious to go to Mme. de Netteville's that he 
 might write an account of it to Murewell. 
 
 Still the squire's talk, and his own glimpse of her at Mure- 
 well, had made him curious to see more of the woman herself. 
 The sq^iire's ways of describing her were always half approv- 
 ing, half sarcastic. Eobert sometimes imagined that he himselJ 
 had been at one time more under her speU than he cared to con- 
 fess. If so it must have been when she was still in Paris, thi 
 young English widow of a man of old French family, rich, fa^ 
 cinating, distinguished and the center of a small salon, admis 
 sion to which was one of the social blue ribbons of Pans. ^ 
 Since the war of 1870 Mme. de Netteville had fixed her head 
 quarters in London, and it. was to her house m Hans Place tha 
 
r 
 
 ROBEBT ELSMEEB. 48? 
 
 the squire wrote to her about the Elsmeres. She owed Eoger 
 
 Wendover debts of various kinds, and she had an encouraging 
 i memory of the young clergyman on the terrace at Mureweil. 
 
 So she promptly left her cards, together with the intimation 
 I that she was at home always on Friday evenings, 
 i I have never seen the wife," she meditated, as her delicate 
 
 jeweled hand drew up the window of her brougham in front of 
 
 the Elsmeres' lodgings. But if she is the ordinary country 
 
 clergyman's spouse, the squire of course will have given the 
 i young man a hint." 
 
 But whether from oblivion, or from some instinct of grim 
 
 humor toward Catherine, whom he had always vaguely dis- 
 I liked, the squire said not one word about his wife to Robert in 
 I the course of their talk of Mme. de Netteville. 
 I Catherine took pains v/ith her dress, sorely wishing to do 
 
 Robert credit. She put on one of the gowns she had taken to 
 ' Mureweil when she married. It was black, simply made, and 
 
 had been a favorite with both of them in the old surroundings. 
 So they drove off to Mme. de Netteviile's. Catherine's heart 
 ; was beating faster than usual as she mounted the twisting 
 j stairs of the luxurious little house. All these new social ex- 
 ; periences were a trial to her. But she had the vaguest, most 
 
 imsuspicious ideas of what she was to see in this particular 
 
 house. 
 
 I A long low room was thrown open to them. Unlike most 
 English rooms, it was barely though richly furnished. A Per- 
 j sian carpet, of a self-colored grayish blue, threw the gilt French 
 I chairs and the various figures sitting upon them into delicate 
 I relief. The walls were painted white, and had a few French 
 || mirrors and girandoles upon them, half a dozen* fine French 
 I 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 Ute-d^-tite, or to the assembled company, to per- 
 I fection, so cunningly was it all devised. 
 
 ! When the Blsmei-es entered there were about a dozen people? 
 present-^ten gentlemen and two ladies. One of the ladies, 
 Mme. d© Nette*^ill@, was lying back in the corner of a velvet 
 I divan placed against the wall, a screen between her and a 
 lM)lendid fire that threw its blaze out into the room. The other, 
 
488 EOBEET ELSMBEB. 
 
 a slim woman with closely curled fair hair, and a neck ahnor- 
 mally 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; Mme. de -J 
 Netteville half rose with a puzzled look. It was more than a f 
 month since she had dropped her invitation. Then a fl^h, not ^ 
 altogether of pleasure passed over her face, and she said a few ^ 
 hasty words to the woman near her, advancmg the moment^ 
 afterward 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 m every-1 
 thing, were not cordial, for aU their smile. | 
 Catherine, looking up at her, was overpowered by her exc^- . 
 sive manner, and by the woman's look of conscious sarcastic 
 strength, struggling through all the outer softness of beauty 
 and exquisite dress. r. 4. t „. 
 
 "Mr. Elsmere, you will find this room ahnost as hot, I am 
 afraid, as that afternoon on which we met last. Let me intro-- 
 duce you to Count Wielandt-Mr. Elsmere. Mrs. Elsmere, will 
 you come over here, beside Lady Aubrey Willert. " 
 
 Eobert found himself bowing to a young diplomatist, who 
 seemed to him to look at him very much as he himself might 
 have scrutinized an inhabitant of New Guinea. Lady Aubrey 
 made an imperceptible movement of the head as Catherine was 
 presented to her, and Mme. de Netteville, smiling and bitmg 
 her lip a little, fell back into her seat. . „ . 
 
 There was a faint odor of smoke in the room. As Catherme 
 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 be- 
 side her hand. ^ t. i. -ji * 
 Everybody there had the air more or less of an Jmbttu9 (O. 
 the house; and when the conversation began again the Els- 
 meres found it very hard, in spite of certain perfunctory efforts 
 on the part of Mme. de Nettevflle, to take any share in it. , : 
 "Well, I beheve the story about Desfor^ts is true," said tbS' 
 fair-haked young Apollo, who had thrown away his cigarette, 
 loIUng back in his chair. 
 Catherine started, the little scene with Eose and Langhamw 
 
48d 
 
 the English rectory garden flashing incongruously back upon 
 her. 
 
 ' ' If you get it from the ' Ferret, ' my dear Evershed, " said the 
 ex-Tory minister, Lord Eupert, *^you may put it down as a 
 safe lie. As for me, I belive she has a much shrewder eye to 
 the main chance." 
 
 What do you mean?" said the other, raising astonished eye- 
 brows. 
 
 Well, it doesn^t 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 don't imagine it will make any difference to you, my 
 good friend," returned Lord Eupert, imperturbably ; *'but the 
 British public haven't got your nerve. They may take it awk- 
 wardly— I don't say they will— when a woman who has turned 
 her own young sister out-of-doors at nighty 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 actress's private life, my dear 
 Lord Eupert?" asked Mm e. 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 don't want to be obtrusively moral— Heaven 
 forbid ! But there is such a thing as destroying the illusion to 
 such an extent that you injure jonr pocket. Desforets is do- 
 ing it — doing it actually in Paris, too." 
 There was a ripple of laughter. 
 
 ^* Paris and illusions— O mon Dieuf'^ groaned young Ever- 
 shed, when he had done laughing, laying meditative hands on 
 his knees, and gazing into the fire. 
 
 '*I teUyouI have seen it," said Lord Eupert, waxing com- 
 bative, and slapping the leg he was nursing with emphasis. 
 
 The last time I went to see Desforets in Paris the theater was 
 crammed, and the house — theatrically speaking— They 
 received her in dead silence— they gave her not one single recall 
 
490 
 
 SOBEKT ELSMEBE. 
 
 —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 hi^ opponent, " it is only because they are tired 
 of her. Her vagaries don't 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 Bern- 
 hardt." 
 
 ''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, under- 
 standing his reference to the avidity with which certain Eng- 
 lish aristocratic scandals had been lately seized upon by the 
 French papers, laughed out— so did Lady Aubrey. Mme. de 
 Netteville contented herself with a smile. 
 
 ''They profess to be shocked, too, by Eenan's last book," 
 said the editor from the other side of the room. 
 
 ''Dear mel" said Lady Aubrey, with meditative scorn, fan- 
 ning 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 Eenan's case, of course," 
 said Mme. de Netteville, "is that every book he w^rites now 
 gives a. fresh opening to the enemy to blaspheme. Your emi- 
 nent freethinker can't 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 mayn't care a rap about him personally, I prefer that a man 
 on my own front bench shouldn't make a public ass of himself 
 if he can help it— not for his sake, of course, but for mine !" 
 
 Eobert looked at Catherine. She sat upright by the side of 
 Lady Aubrey ; her face, of which the beauty to-night 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 Hterary club to which he had belonged since Ox- 
 ford davs. He made a remark about it now to Count Wielandt : 
 
ROBERT JBLSMEEE. 
 
 491 
 
 and the diplomatist, turning rather unwillingly to face his 
 questioner, recognized that the remark was a shrewd one. 
 
 Presently the young man's frank inteUigence had told. On 
 his way to and from the Holy Land three years before Kobert 
 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 awhile 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 
 
 I in his rapid voracious way all that came across him at Mure- 
 well, especially in the squire's foreign newspapers and reviews, 
 and storing it when read in a remarkable memory. 
 
 Catherine, after the failure of some conversational attempts 
 between her and Mme. de Netteville, fell to watching her hus> 
 band 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 countrywoman's dis- 
 like, filled her with a kind of bewilderment. 
 
 '*Are you new to LT^ndon?" Lady Aubrey asked her pres- 
 ently, in that tone of absolute detachment from the person 
 
 I addressed which certain women manage to perfection. She, 
 
 I too, had been watching the husband, and the sight had im- 
 
 i pressed her with a momentary curiosity to know what the stiff, 
 
 I handsome, dowdily dressed wife was made of. 
 
 We have been two months here," said Catherine, her large 
 gray eyes taking in her companion's very bare shoulders, the 
 
 1 costly fantastic dress, and the diamonds flashing against the 
 white skin. 
 
 , "In what part r 
 
 I 
 
■1 
 
 492 EOBEET HLSMBEE. 
 
 * ' 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 Eobert no credit at all, and anxious to talk 
 if only something could be found to talk about. 
 
 ^' Oh, yes, you are near the theaters," said the other in- i 
 differently. 
 
 This was hardly an aspect of the matter which had yet oc- 
 curred to Catherine. A flash of bitterness ran through her. 
 Had they left their Mure well life to be near the theaters, "and 
 kept at arm's-length by supercilious great ladies ? ' 
 
 '*Weare very far from the park," she answered, with an 
 effort. I wish we weren't, for my little girl's sake." 
 
 Oh, you have a little girl ! How old ?" I 
 Sixteen months." I 
 
 ''Too yoxmg to be a nuisance yet. Mine are just old enough | 
 to be in everybody's way. Children are out of place in Lon- 
 don. I always want to leave mine in the country, but my 
 husband objects," said Lady Aubrey, coolly. There was a cer- 
 tain piquancy in saying frank things to this stiff Madonna- 
 faced woman. | 
 
 Mme. de Netteville, meanwhile, was keeping up a conversa- 
 tion in an under-tone 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 per- 
 sons present. The handsome, dissipated, ill-conditioned youth 
 had been her slave and shadow for the last two years. His 
 devotion now no longer amused her, and she was endeavoring/ 
 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 new-comers whom 
 the squire's introduction had brought to her that night. When 
 the Elsmeres rose to go, she said good-bye to Catherine with an 
 excessive pohteness, nnder which her poor guest, conscious of 
 her own gauchei^ie during the evening, felt the touch of satire 
 she was perhaps meant to feel. But when Catherine was well 
 ahead Mme. de Netteville gave Eobert one of her most brilliant 
 smiles. 
 
 Friday evening, Mr, Elsmere; always Fridays. You will 
 remember ?" 
 
 Ihe naivete of Eobert's social view, and the mobility of ly« 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 493 
 
 temper, made him easily responsive. He had just enjoyed half 
 an hour's brilliant talk with two or three of the keenest and 
 most accompHshed men in Europe. Catherine had slipped out 
 of his sight meanwhile, and the impression of their entree had 
 been effaced. He made Mme. de Netteville, therefore, a cor- 
 dial smiling reply before his tall, slender form disappeared 
 after that of his wife. 
 
 ''Agreeable— rather an acquisition!" said Mme. de Netteville 
 to Lady Aubrey, with a light motion of the head toward Eob- 
 ert's retracting 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 don't 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 toe would 
 dress her." 
 
 Mme. 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 
 and ill at ease. She was vexed that she had not done better, 
 and yet she was wounded by Robert's enjoyment. The Puri- 
 tan in her blood was all aflame. As she sat looking into the 
 motley lamp-Hghted night, she could have "testified" like any 
 prophetess of old. . 
 
 Robert meanwhile, his hand slipped into hers, was thinking 
 of Wielandt's talk, and of some racy stories of Berlin celebrities 
 told by a young attache 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 sunk 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 hid- 
 den- -" the old landmarks swallowed up I I am always judging 
 and condemning—always protesting. What am I that I should 
 judge ? But how— how— oa^ I help it ?" 
 
494 EGBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 She drew herself away from him, once more looking into the 1 
 fire with drawn brows. | 
 Darling, the world is full of difference. Men and women ] 
 take life in different ways. Don't be so sure yours is the only ll 
 right one." | 
 
 He spoke with a moved gentleness, taking her hand the while. 8 
 * 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 mantel-piece. 
 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 wood-path? 
 It must be trying the study window now, blowing the vinej 
 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 with li 
 the tenderest words remorseful love could find. But the con- | 
 fiict of feeling — grief, rebellion, doubt, self -judgment — 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 j 
 the dying fire Hght, 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 1 
 poor Catherine's life was compassed, it began to be plain to her | 
 that, in spite of the hard and mocking tone Rose generally 1 
 adopted with regard to him, Edward Langham was constantly 1 
 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 496 
 
 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 Kobert in the study, leaving her behind to realize 
 the gulf that lay between the present and that visit of his to 
 Murewell, when Robert and she had felt in unison toward him, 
 his opinions, and his conduct to Rose, as toward 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 
 Catherine's alarms seriously. 
 
 An attentive on-looker, however, would have admitted that 
 this time, at any rate, they had their justification. Why Lang- 
 ham was so much in the Leyburns' drawing-room during these 
 winter months was a question which several people asked— him- 
 self not least. He had not only pretended to forget Rose Ley- 
 burn during the eighteen months which had passed since their 
 first acquaintance at Murewell— he had for all practical pur- 
 poses 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 
 MureweU, soon put down, and followed by a week of extremely 
 pleasant sensations, which, like most of his pleasures, had 
 ended in reaction and self -abhorrence. He had left Murewell 
 remorseful, melancholy, ^d ill at ease, but conscious, certain- 
 ly, of a great reUef that he and Rose Leyburn were not likely 
 to meet again for long. 
 
 Then his settlement in London had absorbed him, as aU such 
 matters absorb men who have become the slaves of their own 
 solitary habits, and in th@ joy of his new freedom, and the 
 fresh zest for learning it had aroused in him, the beautiful un- 
 manageable child who had disturbed his peace at Murewell was 
 not likely to be more, but less, remembered. When he stum- 
 
496 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 bled across her unexpectedly in the National Gallery, his de- 
 termining impulse had been merely one of flight. 
 
 However, as he had written to Eobert toward 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 ss soon as he had turned his back on it his men- 
 tal lungs seemed once more to fill with air. He took his modest 
 part in the life of the coital; 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 forever. 
 
 It was in this mood of greater cheerfulness and energy that 
 his fresh sight of Eose found him. For the moment, he was 
 perhaps more susceptible than he ever could have been before 
 to her young perfections, her beauty, her brilhancy, her pro- 
 voking stimulating ways. Certainly, from that first afternoon 
 onward 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 *4tem'— 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 
 hostihty in her mind. And aU 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 wiU find us next 
 Wednesday as usual; So-and-so is coming to play," Langham 
 svould walk home in a state of feeling he did not care to analyze^ 
 but which certainly quickened the pace of life a good deal. She 
 «\^ould 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? 
 
 It was not only his relations to the beauty, however, hia in- 
 terest in her career, or his perpetual consciousness of Irlrs. Els- 
 mere's cold dislike and disapproval of his presence in her motifi- 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 49? 
 
 er's drawing-room, that accounted for Langham's heightened 
 mental temperature this winter. The existence of the proceed- 
 ings 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 Robert's, " 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 evi- 
 dent physical and mental strain your brother-in-law htd gone 
 through, and he said, with a nonchalance I can not convey: 
 ' Yes, it is astonishing Elsmere should have ventured it. I con- 
 fess I often wonder whether it was worth while.' ' Why? ' said 
 I, perhaps a little hotly. Well, he didn't know— wouldn't say. 
 But I gathored 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 ere hardly worth the discomfort 
 of the change. It seemed to me the tone of the very cool spec- 
 tator, rather than the friend. However— does your sister Mke 
 him?" 
 
 *'I don't know," said Agnes, looking her questioner full m 
 the face. 
 
 Hugh Flaxman's 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. "Don't 
 you think so?" 
 
 "Yes," said Agnes, dubiously, "if he didn't stoop, and if he 
 didn't in general look half asleep." 
 
 Hugh Flaxman departed more puzzled than ever as to the 
 reason for the constant attendance of this uncomfortable anti- 
 social 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 reputa- 
 Hon so well sustained by scantiness of speech and the most 
 
498 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 picturesque capacity for silence, might have attractions for a 
 romantic and wiUful girl. But where were the signs of it? 
 Eose rarely talked to him, and was always ready to make him 
 the target of a sub-acid raillery. Agnes was clearly indifferent 
 to him, and Mrs. Leyburn equally clearly afraid of him. Mrs. 
 Elsmere, too, seemed to dishke 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 vari- 
 ous topics with him — university reform, pohtics, 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 wiU see 
 it out — I will see it out !" 
 
 And he stiff ened himself as he walked, feeling life electric all 
 about him, and a strange new force tinghng 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 — watch- 
 ing him the while with a half smile 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 Londonjs the only place of residence during the winter 
 for the man who jaspires to govern his hfe on principles of rea- 
 son. Through his influence and that of his aimt, Eose and 
 Agnes — Mrs. Leyburn never went out — were being carried into 
 all the high life that London can supply in November and 
 January. Wealthy, high-born, and popular, he was gradually 
 devoting his advantages in the freest way to Eose's 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 
 
BOBERT ELSMER:B. 
 
 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 friend's good will. 
 
 He was clearly touched hy Rose ; and what was to prevent his 
 making an impression on her ? To her sex he had always heen 
 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 deference 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 
 twenty-five, when he was still '^Citizen Flaxman" to his col- 
 lege friends, and in the first fervors of a poetic defiance of 
 prejudice and convention, he had married a gamekeeper's 
 pretty daughter. She had died with her child — died, almost, 
 poor thing ! of happiness and excitement— of the overgreatness 
 of Heaven's boon to her. Flaxman had adored her, and death 
 had tenderly embalmed a sentiment to which hfe might possi- 
 bly have been less kind. Since then he had lived in music, let- 
 ters, and society, refusing out of a certain fastidiousness to 
 enter politics, but welcomed and considered wherever he went, 
 tall, good-looking, 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 Flaxman's 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 v/ould not be 
 the least subdued or dazzled by his birth or 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. Pierson's 
 world, as we have said, contained a good many dubious odds 
 and ends, and she had handed them all over to Rose. The Ley- 
 burns' 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 somewhai; 
 from this earlier circle if Rose woxild have allowed it. But sue 
 
500 BOBEET ELSMEEfi. 1 
 
 clung persistently to its most unpromising specimens, partly 1 
 out of a natural generosity of feeling, but partly also for the j 
 sake of that opposition her soul loved, her poor, sickly soul, 1 
 full under all her gayety and indifference of the most desperate j 
 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 lips, to have her laugh out in private. But 
 Langham for a long time was defenseless. Many of her friends 
 in his opinion were simply pathological curiosities — their vani- 
 ty was so frenzied, their sensibilities so morbidly developed. 
 He felt a doctor's interest in them coupled with more than a 
 doctor's skepticism as to all they had to say about themselves. 
 But Eose would invite them, would assume a quasi-mtimacj 
 with them ; and Langham as well as everybody else had to put 
 up with it. 
 
 Even the trodden worm, however— And there came a time 
 when the concentration of a good many different lines of feel- . 
 ing in Langham's 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 irri- 
 tation 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 folUes. 
 
 One afternoon, at a crowded musical party, to which he had 
 come much against his will, and only in obedience to a com- 
 pulsion he dared not analyze, 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 drawing-room. 
 
 Langham searched the dining-room and the hall, and at last 
 found Mr. MacFadden — a fair, flabby, unwholesome youth — in 
 the little study or cloak-room, 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 with- 
 drawn from the drawing-room on the brink of hysterics, had 
 called for spirits, which had been provided for him with great 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 501 
 
 difficulty by Mrs. Leyburn's 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 draw- 
 ing-room, and a pubUc 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 Mac- 
 Fadden whimpering, he got rid of the man, shut the hall door 
 on him, and went back to the drawing-room. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Eose flushed deeply, and drew herself up with a look half 
 trouble, half defiance, at Langham. 
 
 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 ear shot of 
 the rest of the room. Langham's look turned significantly to- 
 ward 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 
 whose standards and instincts represented a coarser world than 
 Eose in reality knew anything about. 
 
 Her eyes followed his. 
 
 **Iknow," 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 men's ways don't matter in the least. They go their 
 road and I mine. But I deeply resent any danger of discom- 
 fort and annoyance to you 1" 
 
 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 realizing the drunken scene that 
 might have taken place in her presence if he had not succeeded 
 in getting tha.t man safely out of the house. But she felt that 
 
502 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 he was angry, and mostly angry with her, and there was some- 
 thing so piquant and unexpected in his anger ! 
 
 am afraid," she said, with a queer sudden submissive- 
 ness, you have been going through something very disagreea- 
 ble. I am very sorry. Is it my fault ?" she added, with a 
 whimsical flash of eye, half fun, haK 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 won't be for want of a mentor," she said, 
 dropping him a mock courtesy. But her lip trembled under 
 its smile, and her tone had not lost its gentleness. 
 
 At that moment Mr. Flaxman, who had gradually estabUshed 
 himself as the joint leader of these musical afternoons, came 
 forward to summon Eose to a quartet. He looked from one 
 to the other, a little surprise penetrating through his suavity 
 of manner. 
 
 Am I interrupting you ?" 
 
 *'Not at all," said Eose; then, turning back to Langham, 
 she said, in a hurried whisper: " Don't say anything about the 
 wretched man; it would make mamma nervous. He sha'n't 
 come here again." 
 
 Mr. Flaxman waited till the whisper was over, and then led 
 her off, with a change of manner which she immediately per- 
 ceived, and which lasted for the rest of the evening. 
 
 liangham 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, con- 
 vulsive laughter as the idea occurred to him. 
 
 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 ob- 
 scure Alexandrian, the old craving returned with added 
 istrength, and he turned involuntarily westward. 
 
 An acquaintance of his, recently made in the course of work 
 
EGBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 603 
 
 at the museum,fa young Eussian professor, ran after him, and 
 walked with him. Presently they passed a poster on the wall, 
 which contained in enormous letters the announcement of 
 Mme. Desforets's approaching visit to London, a list of plays, 
 and the dates of performances. 
 
 The young Euf sian suddenly stopped and stood pointing at 
 the advertisement, with shaking derisive finger, his eyes 
 aflame, the whole man quivering with what looked like antago- 
 nism and hate. 
 
 Then he broke into a fierce fiood of French. Langham list- 
 ened till they had passed Piccadilly, passed the park, and till 
 the young sat^ant turned southward toward his Brompton 
 lodgings. 
 
 Then Langham slowly cUmhed 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 inquiiy." 
 
 The maid threw open the drawing-room door, and there was 
 Eose sitting well into the fire— for it was a raw February after- 
 noon — with a book. 
 
 She received him with all her old hard brightness. He was, 
 indeed, instantly §orry 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 then talked 
 first about her mother's 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 ap- 
 pearance at Lady Charlotte's this evening ?" he asked her. 
 
 The omnivorous Lady Charlotte of course had made acquaint- 
 ance with him in the Ley burns' drawing-room, 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 
 
504 
 
 ROBEKT ELSMERB, 
 
 of you— and Albani on the other. I see they have given you 
 the most conspicuous part as violinist." 
 
 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. 
 
 don't 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 shouldn't 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. 
 
 *'0h, no, not yet!" she said, suddenly, with a return of 
 animation. "Madame Desforets 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 fire-light 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 Desforets is coming here ?" he sharply repeated, 
 bending forward, a curious accent in his tone. 
 
 " Yes !" she repKed, 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. Lang- 
 ham, I told you then that you were only echoing unworthy g03- 
 sip. I am in the same mind stiU. I have seen her, and you 
 haven't. To me she is the greatest actress in the world, and 
 an ill-used woman to boot !" 
 
 Her tone had warmed with every sentence. It struck him 
 that she had willfully brought up the topic— that it gave her 
 pleasure to quarrel v^^ith him. 
 
 He put down his hat deliberately, got up, and stood with his 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 505 
 
 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 Desf orets 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 men- 
 tion 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 Desforets," said Eose, 
 loftily, her quickened breath responding to the energy of his 
 tone. 'M have always chosen not to know them." 
 
 " The newspapers were full of this particular story just be- 
 fore Christmas. I should have thought it must have reached 
 you." • 
 
 ''I did not see it," she replied, stiffly; **and I can not 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 wiU 
 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 coin- 
 cidence, it has just this afternoon been repeated to me by a 
 man who was an eye-witness of part of it." 
 
 Eose 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 Desforets was acting in St. Petersburg. She 
 had with her a large company, and among them her own young 
 sister, Ehse Eomney, a girl of eighteen. This girl had been 
 always kept away from Madame Desforets by her parents, who 
 had never been sufficiently consoled by their eldest daugbter's 
 artistic success for the infamy of her life," 
 
 Eose started indignantly. Langham gave her no time to 
 speak. 
 
 "Elise Eomney, 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 sister's escapades. But she knew that she was 
 held to be the greatest actress in Europe— the photographs in 
 
506 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 the shops told her that she was beautiful. She conceived a ro- 
 mantic 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 Desforets in the 
 south of France. Madame Desforets seems at first to have been 
 pleased to have her. The girl's adoration pleased her vanity. 
 Her presence with her gave her new opportunities of posing. 
 I beheve," and Langham gave a little dry laugh, *Vthey 
 were photographed together at Marseilles with their arms 
 round each other's necks, and the photograph was 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 i\iejeune premier of the company, a 
 man"— the speaker became somewhat embarrassed— ''whom 
 Madame Desforets 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 on 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'traveHng, unhappy, and ill. One 
 night in Madame Desforets's apartment there was a supper- 
 party, and after it a horrible quarrel. No one exactly knows 
 what happened. But toward twelve o'clock that night Ma- 
 dame Desforets turned her young sister in evening-dress, a 
 light shawl round her, out into the snowy streets of St. Peters- 
 burg, barred the door behind her, and revolver in hand dared 
 the wretched man who had caused the fracas to follow her." 
 
 Eose sat immovable. She had grown pale, but the fire-light 
 was not revealing. 
 
 Langbam turned away from her toward 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 andthat— grew benumbed with cold and terror, 
 and was found unconscious in the early morning vmder the 
 archway of a house some two miles from her sister's lodgings.'^ 
 
 There was a dead silence. Then Eose drew a long, quiver- 
 ing breath, 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 507 
 
 r 
 
 ** I do not believe it she said, passionately. "I can not be- 
 lieve it f 
 
 *'It was amply proved at the time," said Langham, dryly, 
 
 though of course Madame Desforets tried to put her own 
 color on it. But I told you I had private information. On one 
 of the floors of the house where Elise Eomney was picked up, 
 lived a young university professor. He is editing an impor- 
 tant Greek text, and has lately had business at the museum. 1 
 made friends with him there. He walked home with me this 
 afternoon, saw the announcement of Madame Desforets's com- 
 ing, and poured out the story. He and his wif e*^nursed the un- 
 fortunate girl with devotion. She lived just a week, and died 
 of inflammation of the lungs. I never in my life heard any- 
 thing so pitiful as her 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 Eose too was staring at. At last he turned round. 
 
 I have told you a shocking story," he said, hurriedly. Per- 
 haps I ought not to have done it. But, as you sat there talk- 
 ing so hghtly, so gayly, it suddenly became to me utterly in- 
 tolerable 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 willfulness shall carry you so far 
 — ^you shall not do it !" 
 
 He hardly knew what he said. He was driven on by a pas- 
 sionate 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 girl's 
 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 hght 
 touched her glowing cheeks, her straight-lined grace, her 
 
508 
 
 BOBBRT ELSMEJRE, 
 
 white hand. Suddenly from the gulf of another's 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 — Catherine's voice. He roused 
 himself with a supreme effort. 
 
 ' ' To-night— at Lady Charlotte's ?" 
 To-night,'^ 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 Charlotte's 
 drawing-room fire, you may spare your admonitions, because 
 ifc 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 em- 
 phasis; ''I never flatter you, Hugh, and I don't mean to begin 
 now, but it would be mere folly not to recognize that you have 
 advantages which must tell on the mind of any girl in Miss 
 Ley burn's position." 
 
 Hugh Eiaxman rose, and, standing before the fire with his 
 hands in his pockets, made what seemed to be a close inspec- 
 tion of his irreproachable trouser knees. 
 
 "I am sorry for your theory. Aunt Charlotte," he said, stiQ 
 stooping, "but Miss Leyburn doesn't 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 don't quit© see,'* 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 509 
 
 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 nov- 
 elty, she excites me, I can't do without her. As to you, I can't 
 remember that you wanted much encouragement, but, I ac- 
 knowledge, after all these years of resistance— resistance to my 
 most legitimate eiforts 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, loosely gloved 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 drawing-rooms 
 were brilliantly lighted. Mr. Wynnstay was enjoying a cigar 
 in peace in the smoking-room, while his wife and nephew were 
 awaiting the arrival of the evening's guests upstairs. 
 
 Lady Charlotte's mind had been evidently much perturbed 
 by the conversation with her nephew of which we are merely 
 describing the latter half. She was laboring under an uncom- 
 fortable sense of being hoist with her own petard — an uncom- 
 fortable memory of a certain warning of her husband's, deliv- 
 ered 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. Flaxman's 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 see you amused. And it is only the last few weeks since y^n 
 
510 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 have begun to devote yourseK so tremendously, that I have 
 come to take the thing serious at all. I confess, if you hke, 
 that I have got you into the scrape— now I want to get you out 
 of it ! I am not thin-skinned, but I hate family unpleasant- 
 nesses—and you know what the duke will say." 
 
 The duke bd-translated !" said Flaxman, coolly. Noth- 
 ing 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 Ley- 
 bum 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, theElsmeres' 
 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," re- 
 plied 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 Ox- 
 ford 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 fam- 
 ily, nor social briUiance to recommend him. 
 
 Flaxman understood her perplexity, and watched her with 
 critical and amused eyes. 
 
 I should Hke to know," he said presently, with a curious 
 slowness and suavity, ''I should greatly like to know why 
 you asked him here to-night?" 
 
 ''You know perfectly well that I should ask anybody— r. 
 convict, a crossing-sweeper — if I happened to be half an hour 
 in the same room with him !" 
 
 Flaxman laughed. 
 
 "Well, it may be convenient to-night," he'said, reflectively. 
 *' What are we to do— some thought-reading?" - 
 
 "Yes. It isn't a crush. I have only asked about thirty or 
 forty people. Mr. Denman is to manage it." 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 511 
 
 She mentioned an amateur thought-reader g?eatly in request 
 at the moment. 
 
 Flaxman cogitated for awhile, and then propounded a httl© 
 plan to his aunt, to which she, after some demur, agreed. 
 
 " I want to make a few notes,'' he said, dryly/ 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 of 
 natural right, and Agnes never dreamed of protesting. To- 
 night the sisters were in white. Some soft creair j !^biS was 
 folded and draped about Rose's slim, shapely figure in such a 
 way as to bring out all its charming roundness and grace. Her 
 ^eck and arms bore the challenge of the dress victoriously. Her 
 M-gold hair gleamed in the light of Lady Charlotte's innu- 
 merable candles. A knot of dusky blue feathers on her shoul- 
 der, and a Japanese fan of the same color, 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 self-possession, distributing a few smiling 
 looks to the people she knew as she advanced toward 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 beenrvj^ work upon her, refining here 
 softening there, planing awayjawkardness, emphasizing grace, 
 disengaging as it were, week 4)y 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, Catberipe nnuidn't ^ome. A^nes and I arf» 
 alone in the world. Will you chaperon us 
 
 ''I don't kr.]ow whether I will accept the responsibility to- 
 ^igbt-"4ii that new gown," replied Lady Charlotte, grimly, 
 
512 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 particu- 
 iarly good and prim in a new frock." 
 
 Really? I should have thought it one of Satan s likeliest 
 moments," said Flaxman, laughing-his eyes, however, the 
 while saying quit^ other things to her, as they finished their 
 napection of her dress. 
 
 Lady Charlotte threw a sharp glance first at him and then i 
 At Rose's smiling ease, before she hurried off to other guests. 
 
 I have made a muddle as usual," she said to herself m dis- 
 gust perhaps even a worse one than I thought !" 
 
 Whatever might be Hugh Flaxman's state of mind, however, 
 he never showed gi^eater self-possession than on this particular ' 
 evening. 
 
 A few minutes after Eose's entry he introduced her for the ; 
 firet time to bis sister, Lady Helen. The Varleys had only just ■ 
 come up to town for the opening of Parliament, and Lady 
 Helen had come to-night to Martin Street, all ardor to see 
 Hugh's new adoration, and the girl whom all the world was he- 
 ginning to talk about— both as a beauty and as an artist. She 
 rushed at Rose, if any word so violent can be applied to any- 
 thing so light and airy as Lady Helen's movements, caught the 
 girl's hands in both hers, and, gazing up at her with undis- 
 guised admiration, said to her the prettiest, daintiest, most' 
 effusive things possible. Rose-who with all her hthe shapeli< 
 ness looked overtall and even a trifle stiff beside the tiny, bird-; 
 like 'Lady Helen— took the advances of Hugh Flaxman's sister i 
 with a pretty flush of flattered pride. She looked down at thb 
 small, radiant creature with soft and friendly eyes, and Hugh 
 Faxman stood by, so far well pleased. 
 
 Then he went off to fetch Mr. Denman, the hero of the even- 
 ing to be introduced to her. While he was away, Agnes, who 
 was behind her sister, saw Rose's eyes wandering from Lady' 
 Helen to the door, restlessly searching and then returmng. 
 
 Presently through the growing crowd round the entrance 
 Agnes spied a well-known form emerging. 
 
 "Mr. Langham ! But Rose never told me he was to be here 
 to-night, and how dreadful he looks !" 
 
 Agnes was so startled that her eyes followed Langham closdy 
 aeroBB the room. Rose had seen him at once; and they h«* 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 513 
 
 greeted each other across the crowd. Agnes was absorbed, 
 trying to analyze what had struck her so. The face was al- 
 ways melancholy, always pale, but to night it was ghastly, 
 and from the whiteness of cheek and brow, the eyes, the jet- 
 black hair stood out in intense and disagreeable relief. She 
 would have remarked on it to Rose, but that Rose's attention 
 was claimed by the young thought reader, Mr. Denman, whom 
 Mr. Flaxman had brought up. Mr. Denman was a fair-haired 
 young Hercules, whose tremulous, agitated manner contrasted 
 oddly with his athlete's 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. 
 
 *'0h, yes!" she said, flippantly. ''We have tried it some- 
 times. It is very good fun. " 
 
 He drew himself up. ''Not fun,'' he said, impressively, 
 *'not fun. Thought-reading wants seriousness; the most tre- 
 mendous things depend upon it. If established it will revolu- 
 tionize our whole views of life. Even a Huxley could not denv 
 that I" 
 
 She studied him with mocking eyes. ^' Do you imagine this 
 party to night looks very serious?" 
 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 peo- 
 ple's night after night in hot drawing-rooms? 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 ex- 
 periment of any kind," he added, with an odd change of voice. 
 Opme, Denman." 
 
gj4. KOBEBT ELSMEEB. 
 
 And the two went off. Langham came to a stand beside 
 Rose, while old Lord Rupert, as jovial as ever, and bubbling 
 ^er with gossip about the queen's speech, appropriated Lady 
 Helen, who was the darUng of aU elderly men 
 
 They did not speak. Bose sent him a ray from eyes full of 
 a new divine shyness. He smUed gently m answer to it, and 
 ?uuTf h^own^ung emotion, and of the effort to concea^^it 
 from aU the worid, she noticed none of that change which had 
 
 '*Tnd tnSe while, if she could have penetrated the man's 
 silence' An hour before this moment Langham tad ^owf 
 tSnothing should take him to Lady Charlotte's that mght. 
 And yet here he was, riveted to her side, alive hke any nor- 
 ^1 human being to everydet.il of ber loveliness, ^en to 
 his inmost being by the intoxicating message ^^^ l^^' ™ 
 transformation which had passed m an mstant over the teas 
 ing difficult creature of the last few months. 
 
 At Murewell his chagrin had been not to fed, no* to strug- 
 gle, to have been cheated out of experience. Well, T^^^ ^J^? 
 experience in good earnest! And Langham is ^J/f'^S 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 
 wmful passion! She stands strangely exiUtmg in her own 
 strange victory over a hfe, a heart, which had defied and 
 Sudef her The world throbs and thrills about her, the 
 cSbeSde her is aU um-eal, the air is full of whisper, of ro- 
 
 The'thought-reading followed its usual course. A murder 
 s^r^A its detection were given in dumb show. Then it was the 
 of cSSessing,\ank-note finding, and the various 
 Sr ?orms of TelepatMc hide and seek. Mr. Flaxman super- 
 Stended them all, his restless eye wandering every other mm^ 
 to the further drawing-room in which the l^g^taliad l^n 
 lowered, catching there always the same patch of black and 
 white-Eose's dress and the dark form beside her^ 
 
 " Are you convinced? Do you beUeve?" said Rose, mernly 
 looking up at her companion. j +v,o 
 
 telepathy^ Well-so far-I have not gpt beyond the 
 delic^cytrperfection of Mr. Denman's-muscular sensation. 
 
 '^^otbuHorsSticism is ridiculous!" she said, gayly. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 515 
 
 We know that some people have an extraordinray 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 to- 
 gether, conscious only of each other. 
 
 ''Now," said Mr. Denman, advancing to the door-way be- 
 tween the two drawing rooms, "I have done all I can— lam 
 exhausted. But let me beg of you all to go on with some ex- 
 periments 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 ar- 
 range everything, if any one will volunteer?" 
 
 The audience broke up into groups, laughing, chatting, 
 suggesting this and that. Presently Lady Charlotte's loud 
 dictatorial voice made itself heard, as she stood, eye glass in 
 hand, looking round the circle of her guests. 
 
 " Somebody must venture— we are losing time." 
 
 Then the eye glass stopped at Eose, who was sitting, tall 
 and radiant, on the sofa, her blue fan across her white knees. 
 " Miss Ley burn— you are always public-spirited— will you be 
 victimized for the good of science?" 
 
 The girl got up with a smile. 
 
 "And Mr. Langham— will you see what you can do with 
 Miss Ley burn? Hugh— we all choose her task, don't 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 sweep- 
 ing through him. But there was no time to demur ; that judi- 
 cial eye was on them; the large figure and towering cap bent 
 toward 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 
 groimd. 
 
 "Now, then, what shall Miss Leyburn do?" asked Lady 
 Oharlotte, in the same loud emphatic tone. 
 
515 BOBEBT BLSMEEE, 
 
 " If I might suggest something quite difierent from anything 
 that has been yet tried," said Mr. Flaxman, "suppose we re- 
 quire Miss Leybum to kiss the hand of the Uttle marble statue 
 of Hope in the far drawing-room. What do you say, Lang- 
 ham?" . ^ ^. K 
 
 " What you please !" said Langham, moving up to him. A 
 glance passed between the two men. In Langham's there waa 
 a hardly sane antagonism and resentment, in Flaxman's an 
 excited intelligence. . ■, ^ j-i 
 
 " Now then," said Flaxman, coolly, " fix your mmd steadily 
 on what Miss Leybum is to do-you must take her hand— but 
 except in thought, you must carefully foUow 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 ii-rational in- 
 dignation surged through him. , ^ ^ * i 
 Then she was led in blindfolded, one hand stretched out feel- 
 ing the air in front of her. The circle of people drew back. 
 Mr Flaxman and Mr. Denman prepared, note-book 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 
 foro'ot everything but her and this thing she was to do. He 
 had her m his grasp-he was the man, the master-and what 
 enchanting readiness to yield in the swaying pliant torm ! 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 moment's silent expectation. Every eye was 
 riveted on the two flgures-on the dark, handsome man-on 
 the bhndfolded gu-1. 
 
 At last Eose began to move gently forward. It was a strange 
 wavering motion. The breath came quickly through her 
 slightly parted hps; her bright color was ebbing. She was 
 conscious of nothing but the grasp m 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 anaesthetic ; a benumbmg gnp was 
 laid on all her faculties, and she knew nothing of how she 
 moved or where she was going. , . j i* 
 
 Suddenly the trance cleared away. It might have lasted half 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 511 
 
 OB hour or five seconds, for all she knew. But she was stand- 
 ing beside a small marble statue in the furthest drawing-room, 
 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 Langham's face, a marvelous glow and animation in every 
 line of it. 
 
 Have I done it ?" she asked, in a tremulous whisper. 
 
 For the moment her self-control was gone. She was still be- 
 wildered. 
 
 He nodded, smiling.. 
 
 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 in- 
 stant each saw nothing but the other. 
 
 The heavy curtain which had partially hidden the door of the 
 little old-fashioned powder-closet as they approached it, and 
 through which they had swept without heeding, was drawing 
 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." 
 
 Eose turned to him, still dazed, drav ing 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 ex- 
 periment from the main drawing-room ! His face was a curi- 
 ous 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 Eose, 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. 
 Agm@s, torji between her interest in what was going on and her 
 
i 
 
 518 ROBERT ELSMBRE. 
 
 desire to get back to her mother, had at last hurriedly accepted 
 this Mrs. Sherwood's offer of a seat in her carriage, imagining 
 that her sister would want to stay a good deal later, and rely- 
 ing on Lady Charlotte's promise that she should be safely put 
 into a hansom. 
 
 * ' I must go, " said Rose, putting her hand on 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! Good-night, Lady Charlotte f and giving her 
 hand first to her hostess, then to Mr. Flaxman's 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. 
 
 ''Don't spoil sport," he said* in a tone which, amid the hum 
 of discussion caused by the experiment, was heard only by his 
 aunt and sister. 
 
 They looked at him— the one amazed, the other grimly ob- 
 servant- and caught a slight significant motion of the head 
 toward Langham's distant figure. 
 
 Langham came up and made his farewells. As he turned 
 his back. Lady Helen's 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 be- 
 wildered sympathy of her look; "I wiU tell you all about it 
 to morrow. I have not been behaving well, and am not par- 
 ticularly pleased with myself. But for her it is aU right. 
 Poor, pretty little thing!" 
 
 And he walked away into the thick of the conversation. 
 
 Down-stairs the haU was already fuU of people waiting for 
 their carriages. Langham, hurrying down, saw Rose coming 
 out of the cloak room muffled up in brown furs, a pale, child- 
 like 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?" 
 
KOEEKT ELSMERE. 519 
 
 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 further 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 color was com- 
 ing 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 hugu unfinished house, the buUding 
 of which was being pushed on by electric light. The great 
 walls, ivory white in the glare, rose into the purply blue 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 other's 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 workmen's 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 wanderine; 
 of theirs. 
 
 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 %ind, 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, speak- 
 ing out of the far depths of her own thought to his. 
 * Sure!" he said, his ezpression changing. ''What can I 
 
ROBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 be sure of ? I am sure that I am not worth your lovhig, sure 
 that I am poor, insignificant, obscure, that if you give your- 
 self 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 httle I have to give you?" 
 
 I know," she answered, her face turned shyly awa,y from 
 him, her words coming from under the fur hood which had 
 fallen forward a Httle. ' ' 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 any- 
 thing 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 Mure well, though I loved you 
 there, they were strong enough to carry me away from you. 
 There is something paralyzing in me, which is always forbid- 
 ding 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. Oan 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 himc ''You 
 who ought to be a queen of this world, for whom everything 
 bright and brilUant is waiting if you will but stretch out youri 
 kand to it. It is a crime— an infamy— that I should be speak- 
 ing to you like this !" 
 
 Eose raised her head. A passing light shone upon her. She 
 was trembhng and pale again, i)ut her eyes were unchanged. 
 ^^No, no," she said, wistfully; " not if you love me." 
 He hung above her, an a^ony of feeling in the fine rigid face, 
 of which the beautiful features and surfaces were already 
 worn and blanched by the Hfe of thought. What possessed 
 him was not so much distrust of circumstance as doubt, hid- 
 eous doubt, of himself, of this very passion beating within him. 
 She saw nothing, meanwhile, but the self -deprecation which 
 she knew so well in him, and against which her love in its 
 rash ignorance and generosity cried out. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 521 
 
 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 mor( 
 turning away from him— " At least, if you don't, I am very- 
 very— unhappy . " 
 
 The soft words flew through his blood. For an instant he 
 felt himself saved, hke Faust— saved by the surpassing moral 
 beauty of one moment's impression. That she should need 
 him, that his hfe should matter to hers I 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 further. 
 
 *'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. To-morrow?" 
 To-morrow morning," he said, waving his hand to her, 
 and in another instant he was facing the north wind alone 
 
 He walked on fast toward 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 smoldering, and 
 striking a light, sunk into Lis 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 self- 
 forgetting 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. fThat 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 ha^e 
 neither wit nor conscience to have ordained it so; but fate has 
 so ordained it. Langham takes note of his victory, takes dis- 
 mal- note also that the satisfaction of it hag? already half de- 
 pa^rted. 
 
 So the great moment has ocsne and goaie. The one supreme 
 
522 
 
 ROBBRT ULSMERE. 
 
 experience which life and his own will had so far rigidly denied 
 him, is his. He has felt the torturing thrill of passion— he 
 has evoked such an answer as all men might envy him— and 
 fresh from Rose's kiss, from Rose's 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 he?— 
 and has the boon already, now that he has it in his grasp, lost 
 some of its beauty,? just as the sea-shell 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 Lang- 
 ham's ear. He was absorbed in the dialogue which was to 
 decide his life. 
 
 Opposite to him, as it seemed, there sat a spectral reproduc- 
 tion 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 specter self said, scornfully : 
 ''Courage and effort may as well be dropped out of your 
 vocabulary. They are words that you have no use for; Re- 
 place them by two others— T^aM^ and character. Slave as you 
 are of habit, of the character you have woven for yourseK 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 God's sake be- 
 guile no other human creature into trusting you with theirs!" 
 
 '' But she loves me I 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 
 uow to throw her gift back in her face— oh, monstrous— oh, 
 Snhuman !" and the cold drops stood on his forehead. 
 
EOBEKT ELSMERE. 
 
 628 
 
 But the otlier 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 
 God's 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, 
 mere imbittered— 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 deco- 
 rous 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 duU 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 Langham's 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 specter 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 
 hknself to a table and wrote. 
 
 Then for hours afterward he sat simk in his chair, the stupor 
 of fatigue broken every now and then by a flash of curious in- 
 trospection. 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 o'clock 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 gunsmith's, and stood looking 
 fascinated at the shining barrels. Then he moved away, 
 ahaking his head, his eyes gleaming as though the spectacle ol 
 
 ft 
 
524 
 
 ROBERT ELSMER:^. 
 
 himself had long ago passed the bounds or tragedy— become 
 farcical even. 
 
 I should only stand a month— arguing— with my finger on 
 the trigger." 
 
 In the httle 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 up- 
 stairs, v/here she heard him dragging books and boxes about as 
 though he were packing. 
 
 A little later Rose was standing at the dining-room 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, en- 
 livening, and the sparkle in Rose's mood answered to that of 
 Nature. 
 
 Breakfast had just been cleared away. Agnes was upstairs 
 ^ith 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 supposed. 
 With an expression half rueful, half amused, she fell to im- 
 agining 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 behavior 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 afterward, 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 won't 
 be angry or hard over it— poor Cathie !'' 
 
 And with regard to Mr. Flaxm"an. 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 toward her of late ; she begins 
 now to remember that her exit from Lady Charlotte's house 
 the night before had been a very different matter from the 
 royaUy attended leave-takings, presided over by Mr. Flaxman, 
 which generally befell her there. Had he undei^tood? With 
 a little toss of her head she said to herseK that she did not ca^ 
 
§25 
 
 if it was s@. ''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 clamor, will take up very 
 much the same hne. 
 
 What matter! The girl's 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 willful 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 sur- 
 prise and caprice in life. Eose had her full share of the 
 artistic love for the impossible and the difficult. 
 
 Besides— success! To make a man hope and love, and liv© 
 again— that shall be her success. She leaned against the win- 
 dow, her eyes fiUing, her heart very soft. 
 
 Suddenly she saw a commissionaire coming up the little 
 flagged passage to the door. He gave in a note, and imme- 
 diately afterward the dining-room door was 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. 
 
 ''Rose," she said, looking up, " was that some one brought 
 you a note?" 
 
 The girl turned with a start—the letter fell to the gi'ound. 
 She made a faint, ineffectual effort to pick it up^ and sunk into 
 ^ chair. 
 
 ''Rose— darling!" cried Catherine, springing up, "are you 
 ill ?" 
 
 Rose looked at her with a perfectly colorless fixed face, made 
 a feeble negative sign, and then laying her arms on the break- 
 fast-table 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 wat^." 
 
526 
 
 BrOBBKT ELSMERE. 
 
 She put some close to her sister's hand, but Rose pushed it 
 away. Don't talk to me," she said, with diflSlculty. 
 
 Catherine knelt beside her in helpless pain and perplexity, 
 her cheek resting against her sister's shoulder as a mute sign 
 of sympathy. What could be the matter? Presently her gaze 
 traveled from Rose to the letter on the floor. It lay with the 
 address uppermost, and she at once recognized Langham's 
 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 sister's 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 shiver- 
 ing 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." 
 
 ''Don't blame him!" said Rose, crouching down before the 
 fire, while Catherine fell into the arm-chair again. ' ' It doesn't 
 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 colorless mouth working painfully. 
 
 Catherine was cut to the heart. Oh, Rose !" she said, hold- 
 ing out her hands, 1 will blame no one, dear. I seem hard— 
 but I love you so. Oh, tell me— you would have told me every- 
 thing once !" 
 
 There was the most painful yearning in her tone. Rose lifted 
 a listless right hand and put it into her sister's outstretched 
 palms. But she made no answer, till suddenly, with a smoth- 
 ered cry, she fell toward Catherine. 
 
 ' ' Catherine ! I can not bear it. I said I loved him— he kissed 
 me— I could kill myself and him." 
 
 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, trades- 
 men calling, bells ringing-^-axxd bieire, at h^r feet, a speetaicle of 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 527 
 
 moral and mental struggle which she only half understood, but 
 which w^ung her inmost heart. Two strains of f eehng seemed 
 to be present in Eose— a sense of shock, of wounded pride, of 
 intolerable humihation, 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 ques- 
 tioned, and the younger seemed to answer, Catherine could 
 hardly piece the story together, nor would she find the answer 
 to the question filling her own indignant heart: Does she love 
 him?" 
 
 At last Eose 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— do wm-ight angry," she said, more 
 to herself than Catherine, it would do one good." 
 
 Give others leave to be angry for you!" cried Catherine. 
 Don't I" said Eose, almost fiercely, drawing herself away. 
 
 You don't 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 
 Eobert 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 one's 
 mind affect one's body like this? It shall not— it is humiUating ! 
 ' Miss Leybum has been jilted and can not see visitors '—that 
 is the kind of thing. Catherine, when you have finished that 
 document, wiU you kindly come and hear me practice 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 
 yoiu* peril, Catherine, not a word to any one but Eobert. I 
 shall tell Agnes. And Eobert is not to speak to me ! No, don't 
 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 mo- 
 ment upright with the letter in her hand— the blotted, incoher- 
 ent scrawl, where Langham had for once forgotten to be liter- 
 aay, whfer^ every pitiable haif-fim§fe4 seintence pleaded with 
 
ROBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 her— even in the first smart of her wrong— for pardon, for com- 
 passion, as toward something maimed and paralyzed from birth, 
 unworthy even of her contempt. Then the tears began to rain 
 over her cheeks. 
 
 ' ' 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 f 
 
 How lightly she had dreamed of healing, redeeming, chang- 
 ing ! 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 woman's pride. It is a strange stern sense 
 of law. Had she been other than she is— morelovmg, less self- 
 absorbed, 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— issmng inexorably from the facts of hfe and cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 Meanwhile Catherine was shut up down-stairs 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 mat- 
 ters 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 noth- 
 ing unusual of late, nothing to make her think a crisis w^as ap- 
 proaching. 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 ? 
 
 ' ' 1 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 
 
B#BEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 to US— he is bound to—he shall. It may b# 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 
 jier— 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 toward reversing so 
 plain a declaration of God's will ! She could not sympathize— 
 she would not consent. Robert watched her in painful inde- 
 cision. He knew that she thought him indifferent to her true 
 reason for finding some comfort even in her sister's 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 morn- 
 ing streets to Langham's lodgings. His mood was very hot by 
 the time he reached his destination, and he climbed the stair- 
 case to Langham's 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 somber as- 
 tonishment. The room was littered with books and packing- 
 cases with which he had been bnsy. 
 • v 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 jet- 
 
530 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 black hair falling forward over the marble pale face which had 
 been Eobert's young ideal of manly beauty. 
 
 The two men were only six years distant in age, but so strong 
 is old association that Robert's feeling toward his friend had 
 always remained in many respects the feeling of the under- 
 graduate toward 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. 
 
 ^'lam 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 twenty- 
 four hours he had clearly had the grace to suffer in the doing 
 of it. 
 
 **You can have nothing to say!" said Langham, leaning 
 against the chimney-piece and facing him with black, darkly 
 burning eyes. You know me." 
 
 Never had Robert seen him under this aspect. All the de- 
 spair, all the bitterness hidden imder the languid student's 
 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 ou '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 httle. Langham's strange individuahty 
 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 sim- 
 
BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 631 
 
 afraid of yourself in harness, and afraid of the responsibili- 
 ties of practical married life, I can not help begging you to talk 
 the matter over with me, and let us face it together. Whether 
 Eose would ever, under any circumstances, get over the shock 
 of this morning I have not the remotest idea. But "—and he 
 hesitated— '4t 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 girl's life. I don't 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 un- 
 conventional ; but I am your friend and her brother ; I brought 
 you together, and 1 ask you to take me into counsel. If you 
 had but done it before !" 
 
 There was a moment's dead silence. 
 You can not pretend to believe," said Langham at last, 
 with the same somber self-containedness, **that a marriage 
 with me would be for your sister-in-law's happiness?" 
 
 don't know what to believe !" cried Eobert. ^^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; apinori^ 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 as vile- 
 ly as you please. I have forfeited your friendship. But I should 
 be an even greater fiend and weakUng 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 Eobert, 
 could even grow to hate what came between me and them !" 
 
 Was it the last word of the man's life? It struck Eobert 
 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 in- 
 
502 R^ERT ELSMERE. 
 
 audibly, turning away, Robert's 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 hght tears— weeping for 
 her sister." 
 
 His voice dropped as though what he were saying wore in 
 truth too pitiful and too intimate for speech. 
 
 Langham said no more. His face had become a marble mask 
 again. 
 
 ''Good-bye!" said Robert, taking up his hat with a dismal 
 sense of having got foohshly through a fool's errand. "As I 
 said to you before, what Rose's feeling is at this moment I can 
 not even guess. Very likely she would b^ 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 packing-cases. 
 
 "I am going back to Oxford," said the other, briefly. "I 
 . can not 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 wresthng with something intangible 
 and phantom-like, 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 hand; 
 " 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. Imagina- 
 tion was at work again more feverishly than ever. He was 
 tortured by a fixed image of Rose, suffering and paling. 
 
EGBERT ELSMEEB. 
 
 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 hfe had been so long purely intel- 
 lectual 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. Afterward her custom was to come 
 back from St. James's 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 Gar- 
 dens, 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 o'clock 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 inconse- 
 quent memory of Mr. Flaxman's manner at the rehearsal. 
 Had she looked so ill? She flushed hotly at the thought, and 
 then realized si^am, with a sense of childish comfort, the kind 
 look and ^oice, th<G delicate care shown in shielding her from 
 any uune^ssary exertion, the brotherly grasp of the hand with 
 which he had put her into the cab that took her to the Under- 
 ground. 
 
 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 door-way of 
 /a large detached house not far off, which drew a certain illumi- 
 nation over him, though it left her in shadow. He said noth- 
 ing, 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 to-night is 
 last night! You and I have nothing to say to each other, Mr. 
 Langham." 
 
634 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 I have everything to say," he answered, under his breath ; 
 
 I have committed a crime— a villainy." 
 And it is not pleasant to you?" she said, quivering. I 
 am sorry— I can not help you. But you are wrong— it was no 
 crime— it was neccessary and profitable, like the doses of one's 
 childhood ! Oh ! I might have guessed you would do this ! No, 
 Mr. Langham, lam in no danger of an interesting decline. I 
 have just played my concerto very fairly. I shall not disgrace 
 myself at the concert to-morrow night. You may be at peace 
 —I have learned several things to-day that have been salutary 
 — very salutary." 
 
 She paused. He walked beside her while she pelted him— 
 unresisting, helplessly silent. 
 
 Don't come any further," she said, resolutely, after a min- 
 ute, turning to face him. ''Let us be quits! I was a tempt- 
 ingly 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 pride's sake, and restort's 
 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 centered in the voice— the half- 
 mocking, 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 pausea. . 
 He raised his eyes involuntarily, met hers, and stood bewil- 
 dered. 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 !"—wa^ 
 that the cry of them? A painful humility— a boundless pitj 
 —the rise of some moral wave within her he could neither 
 measurenor 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 further side, with, as it 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 585 
 
 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 loveT he said to himself, with an ac- 
 cent of infinite relief as he sunk into his chair. Her smart 
 will heal." 
 
 BOOK VL—NEW OPENINGS. 
 CHAPTER XXXVn. 
 
 Ten dajrs af ter^Langham's return to Oxford El§mere received 
 a characteristic letter from him, asking whether their friend- 
 ship was to be considered as still existing or at an end. The 
 calm and even proud melancholy of the letter showed a con- 
 siderable subsidence of that state of half -frenzied irritation and 
 discomfort in which Elsmere had last seen him. The writer, 
 indeed, was clearly settling down into another period of pessi- 
 mistic quietism such as that which had followed upon his first 
 young efforts at self-assertion 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, half angry, half relenting, put down the letter, he felt the 
 conviction that no fresh influence from outside would ever 
 again be allowed to penetrate the solitude of Langham's life. 
 In comparison with the man who had just addressed him, the 
 tutor of his under-graduate recollections was a vigorous and 
 sociable human being. 
 
 The relenting grew upon him, and he wrote a sensible, affec- 
 tionate letter in return. , Whatever had been his natural feel- 
 mgs of resentment, he said, he could not realize, 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 hais escaped either. It will be some 
 
53S 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 
 toward Catherine. Whatever might have been Catherine's 
 intense relief when Robert returned from his abortive mission, 
 she never afterward let a disparaging word toward Langham 
 escape her lips to Rose. She was tenderness and sympathy 
 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 hving, turned to Catherine as she had never done 
 since she was a tiny child. She would spend hours in a comer 
 of the Bedford Square drawing-room, 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 fire-light, 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 preci- 
 pice. She has had a fall, and she is sitting up, feeling all her 
 limbs. And, to her great astonishment, there is no bone 
 broken 1" 
 
 And she held herself back from Catherine's 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 Leybum's girhsh passion for Edward Lang- 
 ham had been a kind of accident um'elated to the main force? 
 of character. He had crossed her path in a moment of discon- 
 tent, 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 girl's immature romantic sense. His resistance had in- 
 creased the charm, and the interval of angry resentful separa- 
 tion had done nothing to weaken it As to the months in Lon- 
 
 9 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 don, they had been one long duel between herself and him— a 
 duel which had all the fascination of diflaculty and uncertainty, 
 but in which pride and caprice had dealt and sustained a large 
 proportion of the blows. Then, after a naoment of intoxicat- 
 ing victory, Langham's endangered habits and threatened indi- 
 viduality had asserted themselves once for all. And from the 
 whole long struggle— passi'on, exultation, and crushing defeat 
 —it often seemed to her that sh'e 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 pecu- 
 liarly keen interest in Langham's disappearance. On the after- 
 noon of the Searle House rehearsal he had awaited Rose's 
 coming in a state of extraordinary irritation. He expected a 
 blushing ^ancee, in a fool's 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 
 double-edged congratulations. 
 
 Then up the steps of the concert platform there came a pale, 
 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, a 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 I 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 dis- 
 covered 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 dur- 
 ing 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 hi^ friends, and given in the town house of 
 
538 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 his decrepit great-uncle, Lord Daniel— he had many opportuni- 
 ties of observing Eose. 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 reUsh 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 girl's hght, self-satisfied temper; some searching thrill 
 of experience had gone through the whole ^ture. She had 
 suffered, and she was quietly fighting down her suffering with- 
 out a word to anybody. 
 
 Flaxman's 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 of the kickings due to him !" 
 
 Then his very next impulse, perhaps, would be an impulse 
 of gratitude toward this same "creature," toward 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 to 
 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 seemed to mutely ask of her friends 
 was not to be made to feel. 
 
 He took his cue accordingly. He talked to his sister. H« 
 kept Lady Charlotte in order. After all her eager expectation 
 on Hugh's behalf, Lady Helen had been dxunfounded by the 
 sudden emergence of Langham at Lady Charlotte's party foi? 
 their common discomfiture. Who was the man?— why, whall 
 did il 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 I 
 Lady Helen made believe to be angry, and it was not till she 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 539 
 
 had reduced Hugh to a whimsical penitence and a full confes- 
 sion of all he knew or suspected, that she consented, with as 
 much loftiness as the physique of an elf allowed her, to he 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 Kose was made much of by 
 both brother and sister. Lady Helen chatted of gowns and 
 muisic and people, whisked Eose and Agnes off to this party 
 and that, brought fruit and flowers to Mrs. Leybiu'n, made 
 pretty deferential love to Catherine, and generally, to Mrs. 
 Pierson's disgust, became the girls' chief chaperon in a fast- 
 filling London. Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman was always there to 
 befriend or amuse his sister's protegees — always there, but 
 never in the way. He was bantering, sympathetic, critical, 
 laudatory, what you will ; but all the time he preserved a deli- 
 cate distance between himself and Eose, a bright nonchalance 
 and impersonaUty of tone toward her which made his compan- 
 ionship a perpetual tonic. And, between them, he and Helen 
 coerced Lady Charlotte. A few inconvenient inquiries after 
 Eose's health, a few unexplained stares and ^'humphs" and 
 grunts, a few irrelevant disquisitions on her nephew's 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 Eose for having been so blind and so presumptuous as to 
 prefer some one else to Hugh; anger with Hugh for his per- 
 sistent disregard of her advice and the duke's feelings; and a 
 burning desire to know the why and wherefore of Langham's 
 disappearance. She was too lofty to become Eose's aunt with- 
 out 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 Eose's 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 for- 
 get herself and her smaller woes in the pity of it. She stayed 
 in Bedford Square once for a week, and then for the first time 
 she realized 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 Eobert went 
 
540 
 
 ROBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 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 invadiog 
 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 Edwardes's 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 Bibhcal 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. Mean- 
 while Catherine was teaching in Mr. Clarendon's Sunday- 
 school, and attending his prayer meetings. The more expan- 
 sive Robert's energies became, the more she sulfered, 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 Cen- 
 tury" which contained his papers. Nor had he the heart to 
 ask her to read them. 
 
 Murray Edwardes had received Elsmere, on his first appear- 
 ance in R , with a cordiality and a helpfulness of the most 
 
 self-effacing 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 suppos- 
 ing," he added, smiHng, '' supposing I do in time set up a con- 
 gregation 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 20,000 persons. The exist- 
 ing churches, which, with the exception of St. Wilfrid's, were 
 miserably attended, provided accommodation at the outside 
 for 3,000. 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 541 
 
 most, hereret the wiser. Begin with us— then make your owm 
 circle." 
 
 And he forthwith carried off his visitor to the point from 
 which, as it seemed to him, Elsmere's work might start, viz., 
 a lecture-room 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 mis- 
 cellaneous staff of lay-curates. He asked no questions as to 
 religious opinions, but in general the men who volunteered 
 under him— civil servants, a young doctor, a briefless bar- 
 rister or two — were men who had drifted from received be- 
 liefs, 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 par- 
 ticularly promising comer 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, ex- 
 cept that they get a small share of our funds. But I known 
 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 night-school, for boys and men. Here, 
 t6 judge from the commotion round the doors, a lively scene 
 was going on. Outside, a gang of young roughs were hammer- 
 ing at the doors, and shrieking witticisms through the key-hole. 
 Inside, as soon as Murray Edwardes and Elsmere, by dint oi 
 good humor 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 
 school-room 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 E's. In 
 the middle stood the two philanthropists they were in search 
 of, freely bedaubed with tallow, one employed in boxing a boy's 
 ears, the other in saving a huge ink-bottle, whereon some ^ter- 
 prising 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 boy-minister, as 
 he looked, had been, in fact, bow" of the Cambridge ei^t, 
 
542 
 
 EOBEET ELSMEBE. 
 
 and possessed muscles which men twice his size might hare 
 envied. In three minutes he had put a couple of ringleaders 
 into the street by the scruff of the neck, relighted a lamp which 
 had been turned out, and got the rest of the riotei-s 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 
 don't 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, red-haired man addressed shook hands with Els- 
 mere, scrutinizing him from imder bushy eyebrows. He was 
 panting and beplastered w^th tallow, but^ the inner man was 
 evidently quite unruffled, and Elsmere Uked the shrewd Scotch 
 face and gray eyes. ^ 
 
 It isn't only a pair of arms vje want," he remarked, dryly, 
 
 but a bit of science behind them. Mr. Elsmere, I observed, 
 can use his." 
 
 Then he turned to a tall, affected-looking 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 school-room. 
 
 ''Well, Mackay, have they knocked the wind out of you? 
 My friend and helper— Mr. Elsmere. Come and sit down, 
 won't you, a minute? They've left us the chairs, I perceive, 
 and there's a spark or two of fire. Do you smoke ? Will you 
 Ught 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 ortho- 
 dox and bourgeois family, and who had a great idea of his own 
 social powers, was somewhat grudging and ungra<3ious through 
 it all. But Elsmere's proposals were much too good to be re- 
 fused. He offered to bring to the undertaking his time, his 
 clergyman's 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 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 543 
 
 said, as he very quietly and deliberately knocked the ashes out 
 of his pipe : 
 
 All right, I'm 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. Mac- 
 kay faintly indorsed his companion's 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. Ward- 
 law was giving his silent approval and invaluable help, while 
 young Mackay was in the first uncomfortable stages of a 
 hero-worship which promised to be exceedingly good for 
 him. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 There were one or two curious points connected with the be- 
 ginnings of Elsmere's venture in North E- — one of which 
 may just be noticed here. Wardlaw, his predecessor and col- 
 league, had speculatively little or nothing in common with Els- 
 mere or Murray Edwardes. He was a devoted and orthodox 
 Comtist, for whom Edwards 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 doctor's daughter and a national school- 
 mistress, had the same ardors 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 organization cases, into efforts for the 
 protection of work-house servants, into the homeliest act of min- 
 istry toward the sick, till her dowdy little figure and her face, 
 
544 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 which but for the stress of London, of labor, and of poverty, V f 
 would have had a blunt, fresh- colored dairy -maid's charm, be- 
 came 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^i 
 his evenings to teaching or committee work. They never aH-; i 
 lowed themselves to breathe even to each other that life might?-: y 
 have brighter things to show them than the neighborhood of ' [ 
 the Goswell Eoad. There was a certain narrowness in their de- ( 
 votion; they had their bitternesses and ignorance like other peo- - j 
 pie; but the more Eobert knew of them the more profound be*^-i \ 
 came his admiration for that potent spirit of social help which i | 
 in our generation Comtism has done so much to develop, even, il i 
 among those of us who are but moderately influenced by Conite's$ \ 
 philosophy, and can make nothing of the religion of Humanity. i 
 
 Wardlaw has no large part in the story of Elsmere's work iri| j 
 
 North E . In spite of Eobert's efforts, and against his willj^. 
 
 the man of meaner gifts and commoner clay was eclipsed by that i 
 brilliant and persuasive something in Elsmere which a kindr ] 
 genius had infused into him at birth. And we shall see that in: i 
 time Eobert's energies took a direction which Wardlaw could ^; i 
 not foUow with any heartiness. But at the beginning Elsmere i 
 owed him much, and it was a debt he was never tired of hon- I 
 oring. 
 
 In the first place, Wardlaw 's choice of the Elgood Street room 
 as a fresh center for civilizing effort had been extremely shrewd. 
 The district lying about it, as Eobert soon came to know, con- 
 tained a number of promising elements. 
 
 Close by the dingy street which sheltered their school-room \ 
 rose the great pile of a new factory of artistic pottery, a rival 
 on the north side of the river to Doulton's immense works on 
 the south. The old winding streets near it, and the blocks of i 
 workmen's 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 Eobert, after a 
 
ROBERT ELSMERK. 
 
 545 
 
 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 school-room windows, it was the potters who provided 
 him with his first hearers. 
 
 The rest of the parish was divided between a population of 
 dock laborers, settled there to supply the needs of the great dock 
 which ran up into the south-eastern corner of it, two or three 
 huge breweries, and*a colony of watch-makers, an offshoot cf 
 Clerkenwell, who lived together in two or three streets, and 
 showed the same peculiarities of race and specialized training 
 to be noticed in the more northerly settlement from which they 
 had been thrown oif like a swarm from a hive. Outside these 
 well-defined trades there was, of course, a ware-house popula- 
 tion, and a mass of heterogeneous cadging and catering which 
 went on chiefly in the river-side streets at the other side of the 
 parish from Elgood Street, in the neighborhood of St. Wilfrid's. 
 
 St. Wilfrid's 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 day-time crowded 
 the vast ware-houses 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 mani- 
 festations went, all but extinct. The cassocked, monk-like 
 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 
 Elsmere's mind— after he had been working some six weeks in 
 the district— -the forgotten, unwelcome fact that St. Wilfrid's 
 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 imme- 
 diately after his interview with the bishop. The letter had re* 
 mained unanswered, and it was by now tolerably clear that the 
 silence of its recipient meant a withdrawal from all friendly re- 
 lations with the writer. Elsmere's affectionate sensitive nature 
 took such things hardly, especially as he knew that Newcomers 
 life was becoming increasingly difficult and imbittered. Ab^I 
 
546 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 it gave him now a fresh pang to imagine how Newcome would 
 
 receive the news of his quondam friend's ''infidel propaganda," 
 estabhshed 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 swam with the stream, cheered by the support of 
 all the great and prevailing English traditfons. Here, he and 
 his few friends were fighting a solitary fight apart from the 
 organized system of English religion and EngUsh philan- 
 thropy. All the elements of culture and religion already ex- 
 ' isting in the place were against them. The clergy of St. Wil- 
 frid's passed them with cold, averted eyes; the old and fain- 
 eant rector of the parish church very soon let it be known 
 what he thought as to the taste of Elsmere's 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 20,000 souls, to cover the whole field, 
 bore clearly no relation at all to the facts. But every little in- 
 cident in this new struggle of his hf e 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 at- 
 tempt to carry enthusiasm into life. 
 
 It was soon plain to him that in this teeming section of Lon- 
 don the chance of the rehgious reformer lay entirely among 
 the upper worJcing class. In London, at any rate, aU 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 practi- 
 cally no hold whatever; and Dissent has nothing like the hold 
 which it has on similar material in the great towns of the 
 north. Toward religion in general the prevailing attitude is 
 one of indifference tinged with hostihty. "Eight hundred 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 547 
 
 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 the whole more conceited, more prejudiced, more given 
 over to crude theorizing, than his north country brother, the 
 mill-hand, whose mere position, as one of a homogeneous and 
 tolerably constant body, subjects him to a continuous disci- 
 pline of intercourse and discussion. Our popular rehgion, 
 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 " other- worldliness." Eelig- 
 ion 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 quick-witted and imaginative. The Greek 
 cities which welcomed and spread Christianity carried within 
 them much the same elements as are supplied by certain sec- 
 tions 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 recep- 
 tiveness, whether for good or evil. 
 
 As the weeks passed on, and after the first inevitable de- 
 spondency produced by strange surroundings and an un- 
 wonted isolation had begun to wear off, Eobert often found 
 himself filled with a strange flame and ardor of hope. But his 
 first steps had nothing to do with religion. He made himself 
 quickly felt in the night-school, SJnd 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 "^ry-telling, which had been so great a success at 
 Murewell. The story-telling struck the neighborhood as a 
 great novelty. At first only a few youths straggled in from 
 the front room, where dominoes and draughts, and the illus- 
 trated papers held seductive sway. The next night the num- 
 ber was increased, and by the fourth or fifth evening the room 
 was so well filled both by boys and a large contingent of arti- 
 sans, that it seemed well to appoint a special evening in the 
 
548 
 
 EGBERT ELSMEBB. 
 
 week for story-teiling, or the recreation-room would have been 
 
 deserted. 
 
 In these performances Elsmere's aim had always been two- 
 fold — 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 hair-breadth escapes; a collision in the river; astiing 
 of instances as true and homely and realistic as they could be 
 made of the way in which the poor help one another. Some- 
 times it would be stories illustrating the dangers and difficul- 
 ties of particular trades— a colhery explosion and the daring of 
 the rescuers; incidents from the life of the great northern iron- 
 works, or from that of the Lancashire factories ; or stories of 
 English country life and its humors, given sometimes in dia- 
 lect — Devonshire, or Yorkslure, 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 life-boats, 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 snow-field 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 per- 
 haps 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 Flax- 
 man, hearing from Eose of the success of the experiment, went 
 down to hear his new acquaintance tell the story of Monte 
 Cristo's escape from the Chateau d'If. He started an hour 
 earlier than was necessary, and with an admirable impartiality 
 he spent that hour at St. Wilfrid's 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 compHcated by all sorts of fas- 
 tidious conservative fibers, and when his friends talked rational, 
 ism, it often gave him a vehement pleasure to maintain that a 
 good Catholic or Ritualist service was worth all their argu. 
 
SOBERT J2LSMERE. 
 
 549 
 
 ments, 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 waste-paper basket. Altogether a not 
 very decipherable person in rehgious matters -as Eose had 
 already discovered. 
 
 The change from the dim and perfumed spaces of St. Wil- 
 frid's to the bare warehouse room with its packed rows of 
 hsteners was striking enough. Here were no bowed figures, 
 no reciieiUement. 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 dis- 
 turbance, but their neighbors 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 rehef ran through the crowd ; when at last 
 he reached terra firma there was a ringing cheer. 
 
 What is he, d'ye know ?" Flaxman heard a mechanic ask 
 his neighbor, as Eobert paused for a moment to get breath, the 
 man jerking a grimy thumb in the story-teller's direction mean- 
 while. ' ^ Seems like a parson somehow. But he ain't 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 goody-goody as an egg's full of meat. If he wur that 
 sort you wouldn't catch me here. Never heard him say any- 
 thing in the ' dear brethren ' sort of style, and I've been 'ere 
 most o' these evenings and to his lectures besides." 
 
 "Perhaps he's one of your d d sly ones," said the first 
 
 speaker, dubiously. ''Means to shovel it in by and by." 
 
 "Well, I don't know as I couldn't stand it if he did, "re- 
 turned his companion. He'd let other fellers have their say, 
 anyhow.'' 
 
 Flaxman looked curiously at the speaker, He was a young 
 man, a gas-fitter— 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. Dm 
 
550 EOBBET ELSMEKE. 
 
 ing the story Flaxman had noticed the man's thin, begrimed 
 hand, as it rested on the bench in front of him, trembling with 
 excitement. 
 
 Another project of Robert's, 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 Huxley's ''Lay 
 Sermons,'^ where the hint of such a school was fii^st thrown out. 
 However, since the introduction of science teaching into the 
 Board schools, the novelty and necessity of such a supplement 
 to a child's ordina-ry 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 Uttle 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 a number of large colored 
 plates of tropical fruits 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 school-room 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 
 cff 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 
 HameUn followed the magic of the Pied Piper. 
 
 Hardly any of those who came to him, adults or children, 
 while almost aU of the artisan class, were of the poorest class. 
 He knew it, and had laid his plans for such a result. Such 
 work as 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 downward. He only can receive 
 who already hath— there is no profounder axiom. 
 
 And meanwhile the months passed an, and he was still brood- 
 ing, still waiting. At last the spark fell. 
 
 There, in the next street but one to Elgood Street, rose the 
 
 famous Workmen's 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 551 
 
 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 lit- 
 tle dingy shop filled to overflowing with the coarsest free-think- 
 ing pubhcations. Colonel Ingersoll's books occupying the place 
 of honor in the window and the "Freethinker" placard flaunt- 
 ing at the door. Inside there was stiU more highly seasoned 
 literature even than the '^Freethinker" to be had. There was 
 in particular a smaU half-penny paper which was understood to 
 
 be in some sense the special orgaii 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 unsavory sheet began 
 to be more and more defiantly advertised through the parish as 
 Lent drew on toward Passion week, and the exertions of St. 
 Wilfrid's 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 boarding 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 kina going. Wood-cut this week-— Transfiguration." 
 
 His heart grew fierce within him. One night in Passion 
 week ne left the night-school about ten o'clock. His way led 
 him past the club, which was brilliantly lighted up and evi- 
 dently in full activity. Round the door there was a knot of 
 workmen lounging. It was a mild moonlighted April night, 
 and the air was pleasant. Several of them had copies of 
 "Faith and Fools," and were showing the week's wood-cut to 
 those about them, with chuckles and spurts 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 business-like sangfroid, which struck on 
 his tired nerves almost more painf uUy than the laughing bru- 
 tality of the men he had just passed. 
 
 Directly he found himself in another street he opened the 
 paper under a lamp-post. It contained a caricature of the 
 Crucifixion, the scroll emanating from Mary Magdalene's 
 
552 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEBB. 
 
 mouth, in particular, containing obscenities which can not 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 to-morrow is Good Friday!" 
 
 He walked fast in a north-westerly 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 v/alis 
 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 percep- 
 tion. The child of Nazareth, the morahst and teacher of 
 Capernaum and Gennesaret, the strenuous seer and martyr of 
 the later Jerusalem preaching — all these various images sprung 
 into throbbing, poetic life within him. That anything in hu- 
 man 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 toward such an object— present and mihtant 
 as that temper is in all the crowded centers of working Hfe 
 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 dis- 
 covers 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 f 
 
 He went home and lay awake half the night pondering. If 
 he could but pour out his heart! B^jt 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 story telling night. He spent it in 
 teUing 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 I'ranciscan 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 
 
BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 idiotic profanities with which the whole immediate neighbor- 
 hood seemed to be reeking. It was the first time he had ap- 
 proached any rehgious 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 watch- 
 maker, got up and made a dry and cynical little speech, noth- 
 ing moving but the thin lips in the shriveled mahogany face. 
 Robert knew the man well. He was a Genevese by birth, 
 Calvinist by blood, revolutionist by development. He com- 
 plained that Mr. Elsmere had taken his audience by surprise ; 
 tliat 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. !^ls- 
 mere 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 excite- 
 ment. 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 sprung 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 Elsmere's audience 
 separated in a glow of curiosity and expectation. 
 
 ''Didn't I tell ye?" the gas-fitter's snarling friend said to 
 him. "Scratch him and you find the parson. These upper- 
 class 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 can't get to heaven 
 without a certain number of 'em slung about 'em." 
 
 ''Wait a bit!" said the gas-fitter^ his quick dark eyes be- 
 traying 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 gen- 
 eral discussion. 
 
UOmUT ELSMEBB. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 It was the afternoon of Good Friday. Catherine had been 
 to church at St. Paul's, 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 Mary's weekly task to 
 embrace this horror, and the performance went by the name of 
 of kissing the Jabber wock." It had been triumphantly 
 achieved, and, as the reward of bravery, Mary was being car- 
 ried round the room on her father's 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 
 farm-yard which lay there spread out for her, and stood look- 
 ing, 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 sad- 
 ness, the emotion of the eyes, contradicted it. 
 
 " I want courage," he went on— '^courage to tell you some- 
 thing 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 hasn't 
 
 been religious as yet at all. Oh, of course, I have said things 
 here and there, but I haven't 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 Catherme, 
 after a pause, her eyes bent on the child's stockings she was 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 556 
 
 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 con- 
 sideration 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 emerg- 
 ing 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 to-night. 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 hoth you and I hold dear. And the men are decent fel- 
 lows. There will be no disturbance." 
 
 ''What are you going to do?" she asked, in a low voice. 
 
 " I have been trying to think it out," he said, with difficulty. 
 " I want dimply, if I can, to transfer to their minds that 
 image of Jesus of Nazareth which thought, and love, and read- 
 ing have left upon my own. I want to make them realize for 
 themselves the historical character, so far as it can be realized 
 —to make them see for themselves the real figure, as it went 
 in and out among men— so far as our eyes can now discern it" 
 
 The words came quicker toward the end, while the voice 
 sunk— 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 aU 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 
 WOoTiy baa-lamb, which was the fetish of her childish worshir 
 
556 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEREi 
 
 Her broken incessant baby-talk, and the ringing kisses with 
 which she atoned to the baa-lamb for each successive outrage, 
 made a running accompaniment to the moved under-tones of 
 the parents. 
 
 "Don't ask me, Bobert; don't ask me! Do you want me 
 to come and sit thinking of last year's 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 under- 
 stand," she said, somberly. 
 
 " And rather than try," he insisted, " you will go on believ- 
 ing 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 belief seems to me more dangerous than these 
 horrible things which shock you. For you can make it at- 
 tractive, 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 awhile leaning against the mantel-piece, deaf to 
 little Mary's clamor, 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 un« 
 
KOBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 657 
 
 I palatable truths which the optimist is always much too ready 
 to forget. 
 
 Heredity, the molding force of circumstance, the iron hold 
 of the past upon the present ~a man like Elsmere realizes the 
 , working of these things in other men's lives with a singular 
 r subtlety and clearness, and is forever overlooking them, run- 
 \ I ning his head against them, in his o wn . 
 
 i He turned and laid his arms on the chimney-piece, burying 
 ! his head on them. Suddenly he felt a touch on his knee, and, 
 I looking down, saw Mary peering up, her masses of dark hair 
 I streaming back from the straining little face, the grave open 
 I mouth and alarmed eyes. 
 
 I "Fader, tiss! fader, tiss!" she said, imperatively. 
 
 He lifted her up ai\d covered the little brown cheeks with 
 ! kisses. But the touch of the child only woke in him a fresh 
 I dread— the like of something he had often divined of late in 
 I 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 traveled from 
 I 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 
 I knows— who can answer for himself? Oh, the puzzle of hving !" 
 
 1^ When she came back into the room, pale and quiet, Catherine 
 said nothing, and Eobert.went to his letters. But after awhilft 
 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 
 sprung up with a flash in his gray eyes, and brought her a slip 
 of paper with a hst. 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 to Bedford Square, and, as Catherine was out, was 
 * shown into Elsmere's study. 
 
 " I have come," he announced, "to try and persuade you and 
 Mrs. Elsmere to go down with me to Q-ree.nlaws to-morrow. 
 
558 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 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 Eobert, taken aback. 
 You thought," repeated Flaxman, coolly, ''that your two 
 sisters-in-law were going down there with Lady Helen, to meet 
 some musical folk. Well, they are not coming. Miss Leybum 
 thinks your mother-in-law not very well to-day, and doesn't 
 Uke 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. 
 
 Eobert found it difficult to \make a suitable remark. His 
 sisters-in-law were certainly inscrutable young women. This 
 Easter party at Greenlaws, Mr. Flaxman's country house, had 
 been planned, he knew, for weeks. And certainly nothing 
 could be very wrong with Mrs. Leybum, or Catherine would 
 have been warned. 
 
 ^' I am afraid your plans must be greatly put out," he said, 
 with some embarrassment. 
 
 *'0f 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 hke." 
 
 But Elsmere had no intention of claiming it. The position of 
 al> Rose's kindred, indeed, at the present moment was not easy. 
 None of them had the least knowledge of Rose's mind. Had 
 she forgotten Langham? Had she lost her heart afresh to 
 Flaxman? No one knew. Flaxman's absorption in her was 
 clear enough. But his love-making, 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 particular- 
 ly 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 
 tQX6 the i^esponsibiUty of them. So, letting Rose alone, he 
 took up his vi^^or's invitation to themselves, and explained 
 the engagement fOT Easter-eve, which tied them to London. 
 
 Whew!" said Hugh Flaxm&iSa *'but that will be a shindy 
 woi th seeing. I must come !^ 
 
 N;?nsense !" said Robert, smiling. **Go down to Green- 
 
EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 559 
 
 laws, 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 fur- 
 ther advantage, that, after hearing you on Saturday night, I 
 can, with a blameless impartiality, spend the following day in 
 St. Andrew's, Well Street. Yes! I telegraph to Helen— she 
 knows my ways — and I come down to protect you against an 
 atheistical mob to morrow night!" 
 
 Kobert tried to dissuade him. He did not want Flaxman. 
 Flaxman's Epicureanism, the easy tolerance with which, now 
 that the effervescence of his youth had subsided, the man har- 
 bored 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 self-confidence. 
 
 But Flaxman was determined. 
 
 " No," he said; " this one day we'll give— to heresy. Don't 
 look so forbidding ! In the first place, you won't see me ; in 
 the next, if you did, you would feel me as wax in your hands. 
 I am Hke 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 ad- 
 mit, 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 daj—vive Elsmere and the Revo- 
 lution! If only Elsmere could persuade me intellectually I 
 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 Robert's shoulder, his eyes twinkhng 
 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 in- 
 tensity on quite another sort of antagonist, with whom the 
 mind was continuously grappling. 
 
 '*Ah, well— till to-morrow!" said Flaxman, with a smile, 
 shook hands, and went. 
 
 Outside he hailed a cab and drove off to Lady Charlotte's. 
 
 He found his aunt and Mr. Wynnstay in the drawing-room 
 -alone, one on either side of the fire. Lady Charlotte was read- 
 ing the latest poUtical biography with an apparent profundity 
 
560 
 
 ROBERT ET^MERE. 
 
 of attention; Mr. Wynnstay was lounging and caressing the 
 cat. But both his aunt's absorption and Mr. Wynnstay's non- 
 chalance seemed to Flaxman overdone. He suspected a domes- 
 tic 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 amoimt 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 
 Leybum, too, might like to hear her brother-in-law?" 
 
 ''Really, Hugh," cried Lady Charlotte, impatiently, ''I 
 think you might take your snubbing with dignity. Her re- 
 fusal this morning to go to G-reenlaws was brusqueness itself. 
 To my mind that young person gives herself airs !" And the 
 Duke of Sedbergh's sister drew herself up with a rustle of all 
 her ample frame. 
 
 ''Yes, I was snubbed," said Flaxman, unperturbed; ''that, 
 iiowever, is no reason why she shouldn't find it attractive to 
 go to-morrow night." 
 
 "And you will let her see that, just because you couldn't 
 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, com- 
 posedly. "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, sardonic- 
 ally. ''I can not imagine anything more piquant than an 
 atheistic slum on Easter-ev(i>." 
 
 "Nor can I!" she replied, her combativeness rousing at 
 once. "Much obliged to you, Hugh. I will borrow my house- 
 keeper's dress, and be ready to leave here at half past 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? Elsmere's? My dear aunt, when you happen to 
 be the orthodox wife of a rising heretic, your husband's opin- 
 ions are not exactly the spectacular performance they are to 
 you and me. I should think it most unlikely." 
 
 " Oh, she persecutes him, does she?" 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 661 
 
 " She wouldn't be a woman if she didn't I" observed Mr. 
 Wynnstay, sotto voce^ The small, dark man was lost in a 
 great arm-chair, his delicate painter's 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 Sociahstic celebrities— who might 
 any day be expected to make acquaintance with the police — 
 were coming to dine at his table, to finger his spoons a.nd mix 
 their diatribes with his champagne, on the following Tuesday. 
 Overt rebellion had never served him yet, and he knew per- 
 fectly well that when it came to the point he should smile 
 more or less affahly 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 Els- 
 meres. Dropping his bantering tone he delivered himself of a 
 very delicate critical analysis of Catherine Elsmere's tempera- 
 ment and position, as in the course of several months his in- 
 timacy with her husband had revealed them to him. He did 
 it v/ell, with acuteness and philosophical relish. The situation 
 presented 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 nephew's crisp 
 phrases, but also gradually gaining a perception of the human 
 reality behind this word play of Hugh's. That good heart " 
 of hers was touched; the large imperious face began to frown. 
 
 ^'Dear me!" she said, with a little sigh. ''Don't go on, 
 Hugh. I suppose it's because we all of us believe so little that 
 the poor thing's point of view seems to one so unreal. All the 
 same, however," she added, regaining her usual role of magis- 
 terial common sense, ''a woman, in my opinion, ought to go 
 with her husband in religious matters." 
 
 Provided, of course, she sets him at naught in all others," 
 put in Mr. Wynnstay, rising and daintily depositing the cat 
 **Many men, however, my dear, might be wHUng to compro- 
 mise 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 
 
562 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 menage, 
 
 Flaxman walked home again, not particularly satisfied with 
 himself and his maneuvers. Very hkely 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 hi? | 
 role and the whole lie of the situation, and if a man will be ai 
 idiot he must suffer for it. He had distinctly been put back a i 
 move. 
 
 The facts were very simple. It was now nearly three months ^ 
 since Langham's disappearance. During that time Rose Ley- I 
 burn had been, to Flaxman's mind, enchantingly dependent on ; 
 him. He had played his part so well, and the beautiful high- . 
 spirited child had suited herself so naively to his acting ! Evi- ! 
 dently she had said to hei-self 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 girl's true self had come outl-ywhat de- 
 lightful moments that intimacy had contained for him. | 
 
 He remembered how on one occasion he had been reading 
 some Browning to her and Helen, in Helen's Crowded, belit- 
 tered drawing-room, which seemed all piano and photographs j 
 and lilies of the valley. He never could exactly trace the con- ■ 
 nection between the passage he had been reading and what hap- 
 pened. Probably it was merely Browning's poignant, passion, 
 ate note that had affected her. In spite of all her proud, bright | 
 reserve, 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 three-year-old boy crying upstairs, and 
 ran up to see what was the matter. He and Rose were left 
 alone in the scented, fire-lighted room. And a jet of flame 
 suddenly showed him the girl's face turned away, convulsed * 
 with a momentary struggle for self-control. She raised a hand i 
 an instant to her eyes, not dreaming evidently that she could J 
 be seen in the dimness; and her gloves dropped from her lap. 
 
KOBERf ELSMEEB. 
 
 563 
 
 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 afterward 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 pro- 
 cured for her at that moment a coerced and transformed Lang- 
 ham, 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 sweet- 
 ness. 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 every- 
 thing was changed between them; she had turned resentful, 
 stand-off, nay, as nearly rude as a girl under the restraints of 
 modern manners can manage to be. He almost laughed as he 
 recalled Helen's report of her interview with Rose that morn- 
 ing, in which she had tried to persuade a young person out- 
 rageously on her dignity to keep an engagement she had her- 
 self spontaneously made. 
 
 *'I am very sorry, Lady Helen," Rose had said, her slim 
 figure drawn up so stiffly that the small Lady Helen felt her- 
 self 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 or refusal. 
 
 ''What have you been doing, Hugh ?" his sister asked him, 
 half dismayed, half provoked. 
 
 Flaxman shrugged his shoulders and vowed he had been do- 
 ing 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 
 flushed up, had said a few incoherent words, which he had un- 
 derstood to be words of reproach, had left Lady Helen's as 
 
564 
 
 EOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 quickly as possible, and next morning his Greenlaws party 
 fallen through. 
 
 Check, certainly," said Flaxman to himself, ruefully, 
 he pondered these circumstances— "not mate, I hope, if o 
 can but find out how not to be a fool in future." ^ 
 And over his solitary fire he meditated far into the night. H 
 Next day, at half past seven in the evening, he entered LadjH 
 Charlotte's drawing-room, gayer, brisker, more alert than ever ■ 
 Eose started visibly at the sight of him, and shot a quidiB 
 glance at the unblushing Lady Charlotte. H 
 I thought you were at Greenlaws," she could not help say» 
 ing to him, as she coldly offered him her hand. Why bacH 
 Lady Charlotte never told her he was to escort them? HeiB 
 iiTitation rose anew. Ml 
 
 What can one do," he said, lightly, '*if Elsmere will 
 such a performance for Easter-eve ? My party was at its laaH 
 gasp too; it only wanted a telegram to Helen to give it its cou^M 
 de grdce^ H 
 Kose flushed up, but he turned on his heel at once, and beH 
 gan to banter his aunt on the housekeeper's bonnet and veiliiB 
 which she had a httle too obviously disguised herself. 
 
 And certainly, in the drive to the East End, Rose had n< 
 reason to complain of importunity on his part. Most of th« 
 way he was deep in talk with Lady Charlotte as to a certaii 
 loan exhibition in the East End, to which he and a good manj 
 of bis friends were sending pictures; apparently his time am 
 thoughts were entirely occupied with it. Rose, leaning bad 
 silent in her comer, was presently seized with a httle shock q 
 surprise that there should be so many interests and relations ia 
 his life of which she knew nothing. He was talking now d 
 the man of possessions aud influence. She saw a ghmpse 6 
 him as he was in his public aspect, and the kindness, the disifi 
 terestedness, the quiet sense, and the humor of his talk inser 
 sibly affected her as she sat listenmg. The mental image c 
 hini which had been dominant in her mind altered a littk 
 Nay, she grew a httle hot over it. She asked herself scoit 
 fully whether she were not as ready as any bread-and-butte 
 miss of her acquaintance to imagine every man she knew r 
 love with her. 
 
 Very likely he had meant what he said quite differently, am 
 she— oh! humiliation— had flown into a passion v/ith him fo 
 no reasonable cause. Supposing be had meant, two days age 
 
EGBERT BLSMBEE. 
 
 665 
 
 hat if they were to go on being friends she must let him be her 
 over too, it would of course have been unpardonable. How 
 ' ould she let any one talk to her of love yet— especially Mr. 
 riaxman, who guessed, as she was quite sure, v/hat had hap- 
 i)ened to her? He must despise her to have imagined it. His 
 outburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulant re- 
 entment. Were all men self-seeking? Did all men think 
 : Ivomen shallow and fickle? Could a man and a woman never 
 ' >e honestly and simply friends? If he had made love to her, 
 ie could not possibly— and there was the sting of it— feel to- 
 ward her maiden dignity that romantic respect which she her- 
 elf cherished toward it. For it was incredible that any deli- 
 ate minded girl should go through such a crisis as she had 
 :one through, and then fall caLnly into another lover's arms a 
 ew weeks later, as though notlung had happened. 
 How we all attitudinize to ourselves ! The whole of life often 
 eems one long dramatic performance, in which one half of us 
 3 forever posing to the other half. 
 
 But had he really made love to her?— had he meant what she 
 lad assumed him to mean? The girl lost herself in a torment 
 f memory and conjecture, and meanwhile Mr. Flaxman sat 
 ipposite, talking away, and looking certainly as little love-sick 
 i s any man can well look. As the lamps flashed into the car- 
 iage her attention was often caught by his profile and finely 
 balanced head, by the hand lying on his knees, or the little ges- 
 Lires, full of life and freedom, with which he met some raid of 
 uady Charlotte's on his opinions, or opened a corresponding 
 ne on hers. There was certainly power in the njan, a bright, 
 luman sort of power, which inevitably attracted her. And 
 hat he was good too she had special grounds for knowing. 
 But what an aristocrat he was after all ! What an overpros- 
 
 : )erous, exclusive set he belonged to! She lashed herself into 
 i-nger as the other two chatted and sparred, with all these names 
 )f wealthy cousins and relations, with their parks and their 
 >edigrees and their pictures ! The aunt and nephew were de- 
 )atinghow they could best bleed the family, in its various 
 )ranches, of the art treasures belonging to it for the benefit of 
 
 . lie East-End ers; therefore the names were inevitable. But 
 i^ose curled her delicate lip over them. And was it the best 
 
 ; )reeding, she wondered, to lea ve a third person so ostentalious- 
 J outside the conversation? 
 
ggg EOBBBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 "Miss Leybum, why are you coughing?" said Lady Char 
 
 lotte, suddenly. . 
 
 " There is a great draught," said Eose, shivenng a httle. 
 " So there is!" cried Lady Charlotte. "Why, we have got 
 both the windows open. Hugh, draw up Miss Leybum's." 
 He moved over to her and drew it up. 
 " I thought you liked a tornado," he said to her, smihng. 
 " Will you have a shawl?— there is one behmd me." 
 
 " No, thank you," she repUed, rather stiffly, and he was silent 
 —retaining his place opposite to her, however. 
 
 " Have we reached Mr. Elsmere's part of the world yet? 
 asked Lady Charlotte, looking out. 
 
 " Yes, we are not far off— the river is to our right. We shaU 
 pass St.'wilfrid's soon." . 
 
 The coachman turned into a street where an open-au- market 
 was going on. The road-way and pavements were swarming; 
 the carriage could barely pick its way through the masses of 
 human beings. Flaming gas-jets threw it aU into strong satamc 
 Ught and shade. At the corner of a dingy aUey Eose could see 
 a fight going on; the begrimed ragged children, regardless of 
 the April rain, swooped backward and forward under the very; 
 hoofs of the horses, or flattened their noses against the win- 
 dows whenever the horses were forced into a walk. 
 
 The young girl-figure in gray, with the gray feathered hat, 
 seemed specially to excite then- notice. The glare of the street 
 brought out the lines of the face, the gold of the hau-. The 
 Arabs outside made loutishly flattering remarks once or twice,i 
 and Eose, coloring, drew back as far as she could into the car- 
 riage. Mr. Flaxman seemed not to hear; his aunt, with that 
 obtrusive thirst for information which is so fashionable now 
 among aU women of position, was cross-questioning him as tc 
 the trades and population of the district, and he was dryly r& 
 spending. In reality his mind was full of a whirl of feelmg, 
 of a wild longing to break down a futile barrier and trample oi 
 a baffling resistance, to take that beautiful tameless creature ii 
 strong, coercing arms, scold her, crush her, love her! Whj 
 does she make happiness so difficult? What right has she U 
 hold devotion so cheap? He too grows angry. " She was «« 
 in love with that spectral creature," the inner self declares witt 
 energy— ' ' I will vow she never was. But she is like all the res 
 —a slave to the merest forms and trappings of sentiment. Be 
 
KOBEKT ELSMEEE. 
 
 567 
 
 cause he ought to have loved her, and didn't, my love is to be 
 an offense to her! Monstrous— unjust !" 
 
 Suddenly they sped past St. Wilfrid's, resplendent with 
 lights, the jeweled 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 Galahad's seeking 
 eyes. 
 
 Eose bent forward involuntarily. *'What angel singing!" 
 ishe said, dropping the window again to listen to the retreating 
 sounds, her artist's eye kindling. Did you hear it? It was 
 the last chorus in the St. Matthew Passion music." 
 - did not distinguish it," he said— but their music is 
 famous." 
 
 His tone was distant ; their was no friendliness in it. It would 
 have been pleasant to her if he would have taken up her little 
 remark and let by-gones be by-gones. But he showed no readi- 
 ness to do so. The subject dropped, ancT presently he moved 
 back to his former seat, and Lady Charlotte and he resumed 
 their talk. Eose could not but see that his manner toward her 
 was much changed. She herself had compelled it, but all the 
 same she saw him leave her with a capricious little pang of re- 
 ^et, and afterward the drive seemed to her more tedious and 
 the dismal streets more dismal than before. 
 
 She tried to forget her companions altogether. Oh! what 
 would Eobert 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 fern) en ts at work in 
 I her. No one of her family, unless it were Agnes, suspected 
 I what was going on. But in truth the rich crude nature had 
 ! been touched at last, as Eobert's had been long ago in Mr. 
 j Grey's lecture-room, by the piercing under- voices of things— 
 j 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 
 i him, with everybody. Life was too difiSlcult as it was, without 
 I quarrels and misunderstandings to make it worse. 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEB, 
 
 CHAPTER XL. ^Ikt 
 
 A LONG street of warehouses— and at the end of it the hoiSHI^ 
 
 slackened. 
 
 " I saw the president of the club yesterday," said FlaxmanJ ' 
 looking out. He is an old friend of mine— a most intelligenl 
 fanatic— met him on a Mansion House Fund Committee las I 
 winter. He promised v/e should be looked after. But w I 
 shall only get back seats, and you'll have to put up with thl 
 smoking. They don't want ladies, and we shall only be theri 
 on sufferance." 
 
 The carriage stopped. Mr. Flaxman guided his charges witl 
 »^ome difficulty through the crowd about the steps, who Id 
 spected them and their vehicle with a frank and not over 
 friendly curiosity. At the door they found a man who had beeii 
 sent to look for them, and were immediately taken possessioi| 
 of. He ushered them into the back of a large bare hall, glaring 
 ly lighted, lined with white brick, and hung at intervals witl 
 political portraits and a few cheap engravings of famous men 
 Jesus ot Nazareth taking his turn with Buddha, Socrates 
 Moses, Shakespeare, and Paul of Tarsus. 
 
 " Can't put you any forrarder, I'm afraid," said their guidei 
 with a shrug of the shoulders. ''The committee don't lib 
 strangers commg, and Mr. Collett, he got hauled over th 
 coals for letting you m this evening." 
 
 It was a new position for Lady Charlotte to be anywhere oi 
 sufferance. However, in the presence of three hundred smok 
 mg men, who might all of them be poUtical assassins in dis 
 guise, for anything she knew, she accepted her fate with meek 
 ness; and she and Rose settled .themselves into their back sea 
 under a rough sort of gaUery, glad of their veils, and nearb| 
 blinded with smoke. i 
 
 The haU was nearly f uU, and Mr. Flaxman looked curiously 
 round upon its occupants. The majority of them were clearly 
 artisans — a spare, stooping, sharp-featured race. Here an( 
 there were a knot of stalwart dock-laborers, strongly marke< 
 out in physique from the watch-makers and the potters, or ai 
 occasional seaman out of w rk, ship-steward, boatswain, o 
 what not, generally bronzed, quick-eyed, and comely, sav 
 where the film of excess had already deadened color and 63 
 pression. Almost every one had a pot of beer before him, stand 
 ng on long wooden flaps attached to the benches. The rocii 
 
KOBEST ELSMERE. 569 
 
 wsls full of noise, coming apparently from the further end, 
 js^here some political bravo seemed to be provoking his neigh- 
 :)ors. In their own vicinity the men scattered about were for 
 he most part tugging silently at their pipes, alternately eying 
 the clock and the new-comers. 
 
 There was a stir of feet round the door. 
 ! There he is," said Mr. Flaxman, craning round to see, and 
 flobert entered. 
 
 I 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 Ohariotte, grimly, 
 pouncing at once on the unpromising side of things. If be 
 breaks down, are you prepared, Hugh, to play Elisha?" 
 I Flaxman was far too much interested in the beginnings of 
 bhe performance to answer. 
 
 Robert was standing f orv/ard on the platform, the chairman 
 Df the meeting at his side, members of the committee sitting 
 t)ehind on either hand. A good many men put down their 
 pipeSj and the hubbub of talk ceased. Others smoked on 
 stolidly. 
 
 i The chairman introduced the lecturer. The subject of the 
 address would be, as they already knew, The Claim of Jesus 
 jiipon Modern Life." It was not very likely, he imagined, that 
 Mr. Elsmere's opinions would square wdth those dominant in the 
 club; but, whether or no, he claimed for him, as for every- 
 ibody, a patient hearing, and the Englishman's privilege of fair 
 iplay. 
 
 The speaker, a cabinet maker dressed in a decent brown suit, 
 |spoke with fluency, and at the same time with that accent of 
 imoderation 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 ot the demoG-racy as the man sat 
 idown. Mr. FlaxmaT., glancing to the right, saw a group of 
 Imen standing, and among them a slight, sharp-featured thread- 
 I paper of a man, with a taller companion, whom he identified as 
 I the pair he had noticed od the night of the story- telling. The 
 I little gas-fitter was clearly all nervous fidget and expectation; 
 i the other, large and gaunt in figure, with a square, impassive 
 i face, and close shut lips that bad a perpetual mocking twist in 
 
570 
 
 EOBKRT ELSMEEB. 
 
 the comers, stood beside him like some clumsy modem ver- 
 sion, in a commoner clay, of Goethe's spirit that denies." 
 
 Robert came forward, with a roll of papers in his hand. 
 
 His first words were hardly audible. Rose felt her color ris- 
 ing, Lady Charlote glanced at her nephew, the standing 
 group of men cried ''Speak upl" 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 in- 
 clined to rank this first pubHc utterance very high among Els- 
 mere's performances. The speaker's own emotion had stood 
 somewhat in his way. A man argues better, perhaps, when 
 he feels less. 
 
 *'Ihave 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 nigbt. 
 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 patronized 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 to-night 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 tmth and intel- 
 lectual 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 ISTazareth, 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 
 
EOBEBT ELSMBRE. 671 
 
 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 hu- 
 mihty 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 mo- 
 ment's pause, changing his note a httle, *'a word about my- 
 self. I am not here to-night quite in the position of the casual 
 stranger, coming down to your district for the first time. As 
 some of you know, I am endeavoring to make what is practi- 
 cally 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 m me which may be worth your taking. Well, I im- 
 agine 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 
 wmg of M^. Edwardes" (some cheering), ^^who is so greatly 
 hked 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 per- 
 sonal 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, digni- 
 fied figure drew itself up, the voice took a certain dryness. All 
 this was distasteful, but the orator's instinct was imperious. 
 
 As he spoke about a score of pipes which had till now been 
 active in Flaxman's neighborhood went down. The silence in 
 the room became suddenly of a perceptibly different quahty. 
 
 ''Since then I have joined no other religious association. 
 But It is not-God forbid !— because there is nothing left me to 
 beheve, but because in this transition England it is well for a 
 man who has broken with the old things to be vevy patient. 
 No good can come of forcing opinion or agreement prematurely 
 A generation, nay, more, may h^ve to spend itself in mere wait- 
 ing 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 Hving through, has always produced in the 
 past, and wOl, we are justified in believing, produce again^ 
 But the hour and the men will come, and ' they also serve who 
 only stand and wait 1 ' " 
 
572 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 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. Tliere are 
 some of another, however, which I must touch upon for a mo- 
 ment. I am to speak to you to-night of the Jesus of history, 
 but not only as an historian. History is good, but rehgion is 
 better ! and if Jesus of Nazareth concerned me, and, in my be- 
 lief, concerned you, only as an historical figure, I should not 
 be here to-night. 
 
 ''But I am to talk religion to you, and I have begun by tell- 
 ing 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 preUminary confession of faith— as short and simple 
 as I can make it. You must let me describe certain views of the 
 universe and of man's place in it, which make the frame-work, 
 as it were, into which I shaU ask you to fit the picture of Jesus 
 which wiU come after." 
 
 Robert stood a moment considering. An instant's nervous- 
 ness, a momentary sign of self -consciousness, 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 toward his boys at Mure well, the man who is ad- 
 dressing you to-night believes in God ; and in Conscience, w^hich 
 is God's witness in the soul ; and in Experience, which is at once 
 the record and the instrument of man's education at God's 
 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 neighbor, 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 labors not 
 for his own gain but for that of the state I 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 mto 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 
 
EOBEET ELSMEEB. 573 
 
 wm ever be to the soul which trusts Him. In them the whole 
 effort or the speaker was reaUy to restrain, to moderate, to de- 
 personalize the voice of faith. But the intensity of each word 
 burned it into the hearer as it was spoken. Even Lady Char- 
 lotte turned a little pale-the tears stood in her eyes 
 
 Then from the witness of God in the soul, and in the history 
 of man s moral life, Elsmere turned to the glorification, of Ex- 
 perience "of that unvarying and rational order of the world 
 which has been the appointed instrument of man's training 
 since life and thought began." 
 "3'Aere,'' he said, slowly, "in the unbroken sequences of 
 I nature, m the piiysical history of the world, in the long histoT-y 
 of man, physical, intellectual, moral-there lies the revelation 
 or (jod. There is no other, my friends!" 
 
 Then, while the room hung on his words, he entered on a 
 bnef exposition of the text, " Miracles do not happen," restat- 
 ing Hume s old argument, and adding to it some of the most 
 cogent of those modern arguments drawn from literature, from 
 hisoory, from the comparative study of religions and religious 
 eviaence, which were not practically at Hume's disposal, but 
 which are now affecting the popular mind as Hume's reason- 
 ing could never have affected it. 
 
 '' We are now able to show how miracle, or the belief in it 
 which IS the same thing, comes mto being. The study of miracle 
 m all nations, and under all conditions, yields everywhere the 
 same results. Miracle may be the child of imagination, of 
 xove, nay, of a passionate sincerity, but invariably it Hves with 
 Ignorance and is withered by knowledge !" 
 
 And then, with lightening unexpectedness, he turned upon 
 his audience, as though the ardent Sftul reacted at once against 
 a strain of mere negation. 
 
 "But do not let yourselves imagine for an instant that be 
 cause m a rational view of history there is no place for a Resur. 
 rection and Ascension, therefore you may profitably allow 
 yourself a mean and miserable mirth of thts sort oVer the 
 past ! and his outstretched hand strack the ne^yspapers beside 
 him vvith passion. "Do not imagine for an instant that what 
 13 binding, adorable, beautiful in that past is done away with 
 wnen miracle is given up. No, thank God. We still • live by 
 aumiration, hope and love.' God only draws closer, great 
 iuen become greater, human life more wonderful as miracle 
 
ROBERT KLSMERE. 
 
 disappears. Woe to you if you can not see it !— it is the testing 
 truth of our day. 
 
 And besides— do you suppose that mere violence, mere in- 
 vective, and savage mockery ever accomphshed any thing— nay, 
 whafis more to the point, ever destroyed anything in human 
 history? No— an idea can not be killed from without it— it can 
 only be supplanted, transformed, by another idea, and that one 
 of equal virtue and magic. Strange paradox ! In the moral 
 world you can not pull down except by gentleness— you can 
 not revolutionize except by sympathy. Jesus only superseded 
 Judaism by absorbing and recreating all that was best in it. 
 There are no inexpHcable gaps and breaks in the story of 
 humanity. The religion of to-day, with all its faults and mis- 
 takes, 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 to- 
 day imagines himself dispensed by any increase of knowledge 
 from loving the Jesus of history. 
 
 But why'i you will ask me. What does the Jesus of his- 
 tory matter to me?" 
 
 And so he was brought to the place of great men in the de- 
 velopment 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, realized 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 Me in legend, that therefore you can escape from Jesus of , 
 Nazareth, you can put Hun aside as though He had never been? 
 Foil y ! Do what you willf you can not escape Him. His life and 
 death underlie oiu* institutions as the alphabet underlies our 
 Uterature. Just as the lives of Buddha and of Mohammed are 
 wrought ineffaceably into the civilization of Africa and Asia, 
 so the life of Jesus is wrought ineffaceably into the higher 
 civilization, the nobler social conceptions of Europe. It is 
 wrought into your being and into mine. We are what we 'are 
 to-night, as Englishmen and as citizens, largely because a 
 Gahlean peasant was born and grew to manhood, and preached, 
 and loved, and died. And you think that a fact so tremend- 
 ous 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 
 
BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 575 
 
 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 begin- 
 ning obscured by error and mistake; granted that those errors 
 l^nd 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 bold of Jesus on the love and remembrance of man. Whai^ 
 |then? The fact is merely a call to you and me, who recognize 
 fit, to go back to the roots of things, to reconceive the Christ, 
 to bring Him afresh into our lives, to make the life so f ra^ly 
 f^ven for man minister again in new ways to man's new needs. 
 Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of great ideas,' 
 capable, as aU 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 
 whi jh 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 ever-recurring 
 I^Msk of Europe since the beginning." 
 
 f: 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 half century— broadly speaking— on the facts and docu- 
 ments of primitive Christianity. From all sides and by the 
 help of every conceivable instrument those facts have been in- 
 vestigated, and now at last the great result— *Hhe revivified 
 reconceived truth "—seems ready to emerge ! Much may stiU 
 6e known— much can never be known, but if we will, we may 
 now discern the true features of Jesus of Nazareth, as no gen- 
 eration 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 Hfe of lives, that story of stories, as the labor 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 
 GalHee and the Christ of Jerusalem as He was, before a credu- 
 lous love and Jewish tradition and Greek subtlety had at once 
 dimmed and glorified the truth. A h ! do what we will, it is so 
 scanty and poor, this knowledge of ours, compared with all 
 
576 
 
 that we yearn to know— but, such as it is, let me, very humbly 
 and very tentatively, endeavor to put it before you." 
 
 At this point Flaxman's 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, disput- 
 ing in hurried under-tones with the men about the door. At 
 last he gained his point apparently,, for the men, with half- 
 angry, half-quizzing looks at each other, allowed him to come 
 •n, and he found a seat. Flaxman was greatly struck \)y 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 perspira- 
 tion 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. Wilfred's priests, I suppose," Flaxman said 
 to himself. **What on earth is he doing dam cette galeref 
 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 plat- 
 form he found that Robert, with Mackay's 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 Mure- 
 well. Then, adopting a somewhat different tone, he plimged 
 into the life of Jesus. He brought to it all his trained historical 
 power, all his story-teUing faculty, all his sympathy with th© 
 needs of feeling. And bit by bit, as the quick nervous sen- 
 tences 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, v;*atever may be 
 their literal origin, Jesus and Jesus only, gave currency and 
 immortal force. He dwelt on the magic, the permanence, the 
 ©xpansiveness, of the young Nazarene's central conception— 
 the spiritualized, universalized "Kingdom of God." Els- 
 mere's thought, indeed, knpw nothing of a perfect man, as it 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE, 
 
 577 
 
 knew nothing of an incarnate God ; he shrunk from nothing 
 that he heheved 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 
 Judaea. We can not learn the whole of God's 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- 
 that 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 sunk a little; 
 his notes dropped from his hand ; and the silence grew oppress- 
 ive. 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, imbittered 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 ex- 
 quisite fable of the Resurrection. How natural— and amid all 
 its falseness— how true, is that naive and contradictory story I 
 The rapidity with which it spread is a measure of many things. 
 It is, above all, a measure of the greatness of Jesus^ of tha 
 
578 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 force with which He had drawn to himself the heaiiis and im^ 
 aginations of men. . . . 
 
 And now, my friends, what of all this? If these Inings 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 modem 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 souie- 
 thing to worship, ar^d that if they can not 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 mu^t, if we are to be 
 men and not beasts. At all times and in all nations, as I have 
 tried to show you. man has helped himseK 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 East- 
 er!— we too shall have the right to say, He is not here, He is 
 risefii. Not here— in legend, in miracle, in the beautiful out- 
 worn forms and crystallizations 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 man s past, into which man's present has breathed 
 new meanings, shall be written: 
 
EOBEBT ELSMBKB. 
 
 679 
 
 '"In Thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust :' 
 
 and 
 
 " ' This do ia 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 room, the gas-fitter's 
 tall companion, Andrews, mounted the platform, whUe the gas- 
 fitter himself, with an impatient shrug, pushed his way into 
 the outgoing crowd, Andrews went slowly and deUberately 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 gi-eat 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 hadn't anything to say against 
 Jesus Christ, and he hadn't. He was a worki_ian and a fine 
 sort of man, and if he'd l^en alive now he'd have been a So- 
 cialist, ' ' as most of us are, " and he'd have made it hot for the 
 nch loafers, and the sweaters, and the middlemen, "as we'd 
 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 an uncommonly good thing out of it 
 pecuniarily speaking, he didn't see what they'd got to do with 
 keeping up, or mending, or presei-ving th^r 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 
 ' thout a harsh savor and eloquence, which was much clapped 
 by ^ ^e small knot of workmen amoag whom he had been 
 standing. 
 
 Then there followed a Socialist— an eager, ugly black- 
 bearded little feUow, 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 them- 
 selves, and appealed earnestly to his group of hearers " to help 
 m brmgmg religion back from heaven to earth, where it be- 
 longs." Mr. Elsmere's 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 
 tbe capitalists, they were not going to be such fools as put 
 
580 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 their necks under the heel of what were called the cjducate(X 
 
 classes." The people who wrote the newspapers Mr. Elsmere 
 objected to, knew quite enough for the working-man— and 
 people should not be too smooth-spoken; what the working 
 class wanted beyond everything just now was grit 
 
 A few other short speeches followed, mostly of the common 
 Secularist type, in defense of the newspapers attacked. But 
 the defense, on the whole, was shuffling and curiously half- 
 hearted. 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 himdreds present broke 
 into a sudden burst of cheering. Lady Charlotte pressed for- 
 ward to him through the crowd, offering to take him home. 
 
 Come with us, Mr. Elsmere; you look like a ghost." But 
 he shook his he.x.d, 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. 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 wouldn't come and hear him! Must be a woman with 
 a character that— a Strafford in petticoats 1" 
 
 Robert turned up the street to the city, the tall, slight figure 
 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 Etna on the breast of Enceladus. 
 
 Suddenly, at the corner of a street, a man's 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 
 
f'- 
 
 KOBERT ELSMERE. 58) 
 
 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 atten 
 uated whiteness and sharpness of the well-known 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 un- 
 bearable. 
 
 Newcome, watching him with eagle eye, saw the suddei^ 
 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. 
 
 went tp denounce," he continued, in a strange, tense 
 voice, and the Lord refused it to me. He kept me watching 
 
 j - 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 
 
 I 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 
 notf ' There they were in my ears, written on the walls— the 
 air—'' 
 
 The hand dropped from Robert's arm. A dull look of de- 
 feat, of regret, darkened the gleaming eyes. They were stand- 
 ing in a quiet deserted street, but through a side opening the 
 lights, the noise, the turbulence of the open-air market came 
 drifting to them through the rainy atmosphere which blurred 
 and magnijBed everything. 
 
 Ay, after days and nights in His most blessed sanctuary," 
 Newcome resumed, slowly, came by his commission, bs\ 
 thought, to fight His battle with a traitor! And at the Ip^t 
 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 sunk; 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 soften- 
 mg, radiating. 
 
 Elsmere, take the sign, the message! I thought it was 
 given to me to declare the Lord's wrath. Instead, He sends 
 
582 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 you once more by me, even now— even fresh from this new 
 defiance of his mercy, the tender offer of His grace! He hes 
 at rest to-night, 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 to-night, my friend, 
 my brother, and to-morrow let the risen Lord reclaim His 
 
 ownl" . , I. 
 
 Never had Robert seen any mortal face so persuasively beau- 
 tiful ; never surely did saint or ascetic plead with a more pene- 
 trating gentleness. After the storm of those opening words 
 the change was magical. The tears stood in Elsmere's eyes. 
 But his quick insight, in spite of himself, divined the subtle 
 aatural facts behind the outburst, the strained physical state, 
 the irritable brain— aU the consequences of a long defiance of 
 physical and mental law. The priest repeUed him, the man 
 drew him hke a magnet. , . 
 
 What can I say to you, Newcome?" he cried, despairmgly. 
 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. 
 Y/alk with me a httle. Leave these great things alone. We 
 can not agree. Be content-God knows! TeU me about the 
 old nlace and the people. I long for news of them." 
 
 Assort of shudder passed through his companion. Newcome 
 stood wrestling with himself. It was Hke the slow departure 
 of a possessing force. Then he somberly assented, and tney 
 turned toward the city. But his answers, as Robert questioned 
 him, were sharp and mechanical, and presently it became evi- 
 dent that the demands of the ordinary talk to which Elsmere 
 rigorously held him were more than he could bear. 
 
 As they reached St. Paul's, towering into the watery moon- 
 light of the clouded sky, he stopped abruptly and said good- 
 night. . , 
 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 !" . i a 
 
 The spell of his manner, his presence, prevailed at last. A 
 melancholy, quivering smile dawned on the priest's dehcate lip. 
 
ROBEST ELSMERE. 
 
 58a 
 
 *'God bless you— God restore you I" he said, sadly, and was 
 gone. 
 
 • CHAPTEE XLI. 
 
 A WEEK later Elsmere was startled to find himself detained, 
 after his story-telling, by a trio of workmen, asking, on behalf 
 
 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 gas-fitter 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 whos6 
 spoutings of Hume and Locke, of Reid and Dugald Stewart, 
 delivered in the shrillest of cracked voices, the club had writhed 
 many an impatient haK hour 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 RoSert 
 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 
 favorable exercising ground for their own wits; but he took 
 the risk, gladly accepted the invitation, and fixed Sunday after- 
 noons for a weekly New Testament lecture. 
 
 His first lecture, which he prepared with great care, was 
 delivered to thirty-seven men a fortnight later. It was on the 
 political and social state of Palestine and the East at the time 
 of Christ's 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 ma- 
 terial in connection with the Gospels. Nothing tends so much, 
 he would say, to break down the irrational barrier which men 
 
584 
 
 B9BEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 have raised about this particular tract of historical^pace, noth 
 ing 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 Elsmere's 
 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.— sup- 
 planting in this function the jealous and sensitive Mackay, 
 who, after his original opposition, had now arrived at regard- 
 ing Robert as his own particular property, and the lecturer's 
 quick smile of thanks for services rendered as his own especial 
 right. The bright, quicksilvery, irascible Uttle workman, how- 
 ever, 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 discussions which generally followed the lecture he 
 showed a receptiveness, an inteUigence, which were in reahty a 
 matter not of the mind but of the heart. He loved, therefore 
 he understood. At the club he stood for Elsmere with a quiv- 
 eriftg spasmodic eloquence, as against Andrews and the Secu- 
 larists. One thing only puzzled Robert. Among all the little 
 fellow's sallies and indiscretions, which were not infrequent, no 
 reference to his home life was ever included. Here he kept 
 even Robert absolutely at arm's length. Robert knew that he 
 was married and had children, nothing more. 
 
 The old Scotchman, Macdonald, came out after the first 
 lecture somewhat crest-fallen. 
 
 **Not the sort of stQoff I'd expected!" he said, with a shake 
 of perplexity on the rugged face. He doosn't talk eneuf in 
 the aabstrafct for me." 
 
 But he went again, and the second lecture, on the origin of 
 the Gospels, got hold of him, especially as it supphed him with 
 a whole armory of new arguments in support of Hume's doc- 
 trine of conscience, and in defiance of that blatin' creetur, 
 Reid." The thesis with which Robert, drawing on some of the 
 stores supphed him by the squire's book, began his account— 
 i, e., the gradual growth within the Umits of history of man's 
 capacity for teUing the exact truth— fitted in, to the Scotch- 
 man's thinking, so providentially with his own , favorite ex- 
 perimental doctrines as against the ''intueetion" folks, "who 
 wiU have it that a babby's got as moch mind as Mr. Glad- 
 
nOBUU-t ELSMERE. 
 
 685 
 
 stone, ef it only knew it !" that afterward he never missed a 
 lecture. 
 
 . Lestrange was more difficult. He had the inherited tempera- 
 ment of the Genevese frondeur, which made Geneva th^ head- 
 quarters 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 Mur- 
 ray 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 afterward by the force 
 of personality, and of a single-mindedness 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 disinterested- 
 ness, his brightness and resource, perhaps, too, the signs about 
 him of a Hght and frail physical organization, 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 
 lectures Murray Edwardes became his constant and enthusi- 
 astic hearer on Sunday afternoons, and, catching some of 
 Robert's 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 Elsmere's mind 
 which as yet he hardly dared to cherish ; which came and went, 
 however, weavmg a substance for themselves out of each suc- 
 cessive incident and effort. 
 
 Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in 
 the week besides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms 
 his personal gift had begun to tell no less than in this crowded, 
 squalid east ; and as his aims became kpo wn, other men, finding 
 the thoughts of their own hearts revealed in him, or touched 
 ^th that social compunction which is one of the notes of our 
 iime, came down and became his helpers. Of all the social 
 
projects of which that Elgood Street room became the center. 
 Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. But it 
 was not the^e projects themselves which made this period of his 
 life remarkable. London at the present moment, if it be honey- 
 combed with vice and misery, is also honeycombed with the 
 labor of an ever-expanding charity. Week by week men and 
 ■women of like gifts and energies with Elsmere spend them- , 
 selves, as he did, in the constant effort to serve and to alleviate. 
 What was noticeable, what was remarkable in this work of his, i 
 was the spirit, the religious passion which, radiating from him, 
 began after awhile, 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 begin- 
 nings of a new, absorbing life. There came a time, indeed, j 
 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 among our men, talk to our chil- 
 dren, and satisfy yourself. A httle while ago scores of these 
 men either hated the very name of Christianity or Kere^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 con- 
 stant source of moral effort and spiritual hope. See for your- ! 
 self!" 
 
 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 | 
 plane-trees outside, when the door was thrown op6n and Mr. 
 Wend over" was announced. 
 
 The squire entered; but what a shrunken and aged squire! 
 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 squire's name, was' struck, arrested. 
 He guided his guest to a chair with an almost filial carefulness. 
 
 ''I don't believe, squire," he exclaimed, ''you ought to be 
 doing this— wandering about London by yourself J" 
 
ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 537 
 
 But the squire, as silent and angular as ever when anything 
 personal to himself was concerned, woiiid 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, apropos of the death of a 
 yoiing man of extraordinary promise, What learning has 
 perished with him! How vain seems all toil to acquirer^— and 
 the words, as they passed through his mind, seemed to him to 
 ring another death-knell. 
 
 But after the first painful impression he could not help los- 
 ing 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 aft^ 
 Armitstead?" 
 
 *'Ihad him once to dinner," said the squire, briefly: *'he 
 made a false quantity, and asked me to subscribe to the 
 Church Missionary Society. I haven't seen him since. He and 
 the village have been at loggerheads about the institute, I be- 
 lieve. He wanted to turn out the dissenters. Bateson came 
 to me, and we circumvented him, of course. But the man's 
 an ass. Don't talk of him I" 
 
 Robert sighed a long sigh. Was aU his work undone? It 
 wrung his heart to remember the opening of the institute, the 
 ardor of his boys. He asked a few questions about indi- 
 viduals, but soon gave it up as hopeless. The squire neither 
 knew nor cared. 
 
 ''AndMrs. Darcy?" 
 
 " My sister had tea in her thirtieth summer-house last Sun- 
 day," remarketfthe squire, grimly. **She wished me to com- 
 municate 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 under-current in the squire's sarcasms 
 that effectually deprived them of anything mirthful. 
 And your book?" 
 
 *'Is in abeyance. I shall bequeath you the manuscript m 
 my will, to do what you like with." 
 Squire 1" 
 
688 
 
 BOBERf ELSMEBB!. 
 
 Quite true! If you had stayed, I should have finished it, 
 I suppose. But after a certain age the toil of spinning cob- 
 webs 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 shaU not give it up," he urged. Pub- 
 lish the first part aJone, 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 ma- 
 terials to you. Though I am not sure that when you have got 
 them you will make the best use of them. You and Grey be- 
 tween you call yourselves Liberals, and imagine yourselves 
 retormers, 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 miU in the end." 
 
 ''They don't see it in that light tnemselves," said Eobert, 
 smihng. 
 
 ''No," returned the squire, ''because most men are puzzle- 
 heads. Why," he added, looking darkly at Robert, while the 
 great head fell forward on his breast in the familiar Murewell 
 attitude, " why can't you do your work and let the preaching 
 alone?" 
 
 "Because," said Eobert, "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 chimney- 
 piece, and speaking in alow voice, "is always relative. No 
 one knows it better than you. Life is full of oppositions. But 
 the work takes my whole heart and ail my energies." 
 I The squire looked at him in disapproving silence for awhile. 
 
 "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 y&\ 
 are gone," 
 
BOBERT ELSMERB. 569 
 
 Robert forbore the natural retort. 
 
 The squire went round his Ubrary, making remarks, with all 
 the caustic shrewdness natural to him, on the new volumes that 
 Eobert 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 be- 
 ginning to founder in the sea of their own learning. Some- 
 times 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." 
 
 Then he stayed to luncheon, and Catherine, moved by many 
 feelings— perhaps in subtle striving against her own passionate 
 sense of wrong at this man's 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 ot her, and as he parted 
 with Elsmere in the hall made the remark that Mrs. Elsmere 
 seemed to like London, to which Eobert, busy in an opportune 
 search for his guest's coat, made no reply. 
 
 When are you coming to Mure well?" the squire said to 
 him, abruptly, as he stood at the door muflaed up as though it 
 were December. There are a good many points in that last 
 article you want talking to about. Come next mont^i 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 tlie summer, you say. Let me 
 come to you in tne 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 van after him. 
 
 That evening Robert was disquieted by the receipt of a note 
 from a young telle w of St. Anselm's, an intimate friend and 
 occasional secretary of Grey. Grey, the writer said, had re- 
 ceived Robert's last letter, was deeply interested in lais account 
 ot his work, and begged him to write again. He would have 
 written, but that he was himself in the doctor^s 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. 
 
590 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 **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, EobeH." 
 
 But, alayj I this mood, the tender characteristic mood of the 
 old Catherine, was becoming rarer and rarer with her. As the 
 spring expaynded, as the sun and the»leaves came back, poor 
 Catherine's 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 Eobert's lecture to 
 the club. All the time he was away she had sat brooding by 
 herself in the drawing-room, divining with a bitter clairvoy- 
 ance 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 hus- 
 band, once Christ's 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 constant 
 companions. In proportion as Eobert 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 real- 
 ity Hving 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 
 father's ministrations— his talks with the shepherds on the hills, 
 with the women at their doors, his pale dreamer's face beside 
 some wild death-bed, shining with the Divine message, the 
 ''visions" which to her awe-struck childish sense would often 
 seem to hold him in their silent walks among the misty hills. 
 
 Robert, taught by many small indications, came to recognize 
 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 engage- 
 ments to himself, talking resolutely of other things, she trying 
 to do the sa-me, but with less success, as her nature was less 
 pliant than his. 
 
 Then there would.come moments when the inward preoccu- 
 pation would give way, and that strong need of loving, which 
 was, after all, the basis of Catherine's character, would break 
 hungrily through, an(3 the wife ot their early married days 
 would reappoar, though still only with limitations. A certain 
 nervous physical dread of any approach to a particular range 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRB. 
 
 591 
 
 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 com- 
 
 , mon mundane interests seemed suddenly to broaden for them. 
 
 I Robert did not always make a wise use of these happier times ; 
 
 ' he was incessantly possessed witli 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 sym- 
 pathize 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 else's 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 accessi- 
 ble than usual, it suddenly occurred to him to make an effort 
 to bring them together. Brought face to face, each must recog- 
 nize the nobleness of the other. He felt boyishly confident of 
 it. So he made it a point, tenderly but insistently, that Cath- 
 erine should ask Wardlaw and his wife to come and see them. 
 And Catherine, driven obscurely by a longing to yield in some- 
 thing, which recurred, and often terrified herself, yielded in this. 
 
 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 idealist 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 un- 
 lucky dinner. James Wardlaw, with all his heroisms and vir- 
 tues, 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 neighbor's point of view. Also, 
 he was not a man who made much of women, and he held 
 strong views as to the suboidination of wives. It never oc- 
 curred to him that Robert might have a Dissenter in his own 
 household, and as, in spite of their speculative diff^rQUces, he 
 
592 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 wife's pope. ( 
 
 Moreover, a solitary eccentric life, far from the society of iji 
 his equals, had developed in him a good many crude Jacobin- ^ 
 isms. His experience of London clergymen, for instance, had 
 not been particularly favorable, and he had a store of anecdotes ^ 
 on the subject which Robert Had heard before, but which now, | 
 repeated in Catherine's presence, seemed to have lost every ^ 
 shred of humor 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 
 Httle spectacled wife, dressed in a high, home-made cashmere, ^ 
 sat looking at her husband with a benevolent and smiling ad- 
 miration. She kept all her eloquence for the poor. 
 
 After dinner things grew worse Mrs. Wardla w had recently 
 presented her husband with a third infant, and*the ardent pair 
 had taken advantage of the visit to London of an eminent I 
 French Comtist to have it baptized with full Comtist rites. 
 Wardlaw stood astride on the rug, giving the assembled com- 
 pany 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 i 
 the incident itself. Catherine's 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 irre- 
 pressible being turned to Catherine, and said to her, with smil- 
 ing obtuseness: 
 
 " I don't believe I've seen you at one of your husband's Sun- 
 day addresses yet, Mrs. Elsmere? And it isn't so far from this 
 part of the world either." 
 
 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 Church woman. " 
 
 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 sUence^ reflecting that he had 
 
been a fool. His wife, with a timid flush, drew out her knit- 
 ting, 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 husband's return, 
 Kobert, however, came back to £er, tired, wounded, and out 
 of spirits, feeling that the attempt had been wholly unsuccess- 
 ful, 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 twenty-seven, in spite of its severity, had 
 a subtler finish and attraction than ever, of the restless little 
 movements so unlike herself, which she giade from time to time. 
 But neither spoke except upon indifferent things. Once more 
 the difficult conditions of their lives seemed too obvious, too op- 
 pressive. 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 dehght- 
 ed 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 people's goodness, or cleverness, or super- 
 human achievement. On the other hand, London is kind tc 
 such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were be- 
 coming known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old 
 school found it difficult to be angry with him. His knowl- 
 edge 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 him, and Catherine, smiled upon for his sake, and 
 assumed to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more be- 
 wildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on. 
 
594 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBK. 
 
 For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and 
 these evenings, which supplied Eobert with so much intel- 
 lectual stimulus? With her all the moral nerves were jarring 
 and out of tune. At any time Eichard Leybum's daughter 
 would have found it hard to tolerate a society where every- 
 thing 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 Robert's arms, no certainty of his s^^pathy— 
 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 wishedi; but her youth 
 seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gayety 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 Mme. de Netteville's. For Rob- 
 ert's sake she tried for a time to put aside her first impression 
 and to bear Mme. de Netteville's evenings— little dreaming, 
 poor thing, all the tim« that Mme. de Netteville thought her 
 presence at the famous ^'Fridays " an incubus only to be put 
 up with because the husband was becoming socially an indis- 
 pensable. 
 
 But after two or three Fridays Catherine's endurance failed 
 her. On the last occasion she found herself, late in the even- 
 ing, hemmed in behind Mme. de Netteville and a distinguished 
 African explorer, who was the lion of the evening. Eugenie 
 de Netteville had forgotten her silent neighbor, and presently, 
 with some biting Kttle 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. Mme. 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 Mme. de Netteville, starting, and 
 then coolly recovering herself. I had no idea you were there 
 all alone. I am afraid om* conversation has been disagreeable 
 to you. I am afraid you are a friend of missions !" 
 
 And her glance, turning from Catherine to her companion. 
 
BOBERT ELSMEBE2. 
 
 595 
 
 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 Cath- 
 erine, one hand, which trembled sHghtly, resting on the table 
 beside her, her great gray eyes fixed on Mme. de Netteville. 
 " No Christian has any right to do otherwise." 
 
 Poor, brave, goaded soul ! She had a vague idea of bearing 
 testimony " as her father would have borne it in like circum- 
 stances. 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 inde- 
 scribably 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 f He was amazed; but he was a man of 
 taste, and Mme. de Netteville caught a certain sesthetic appro- 
 bation in his look. 
 
 She arose, 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. Ans- 
 dale, will you come and be introduced to Lady Aubrey?" 
 
 After her guests had gone, Mme. 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 
 can not 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 can't. 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 Eugenie de Netteville stood thinking not, apparently, 
 of the puritanical wife; the dangerous softness which over- 
 spread the face could have had no connection with Catherine. 
 
 Mme. de Netteville's instinct was just. Catherine Elsmere 
 never appeared again in her drawing-room. 
 J But, with a Httle 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 
 
696 
 
 must of necessity, even in outward matters, be more separate 
 than before. Elsmere resisted for a time ; then, lured one even- 
 ing toward the end of February by the prospect conveyed in a 
 note from Mme. de Netteville, wherein Catherine was men- 
 tioned in the most scrupulously civil terms, of meeting one of 
 the most eminent of French critics, he went, and thencefor- 
 ward went often. He had, so far, no particular liking for the 
 hostess; he hated some of her habitues; but there was no doubt 
 that in some ways she made an admirableholder of asalon, 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 leader's role and 
 wear^ of himseK ! 
 
 As to the woman, his social naivete, which was extraordinary, 
 but in a man of his type most natural, made him accept her ex- 
 actly as he found her. If there were two or three people in 
 Paris or London who knew or suspected incidents of Mme. de 
 Netteville's young married days which made her reception at 
 some of the strictest English houses a matter of cynical amuse- 
 ment to them, not the remotest inkling of their knowledge was 
 ever Hkely to reach Elsmere. He was not a man who attracted 
 scandals. Nor was it anybody's interest to spread them. Mme. 
 de Netteville's position in London society was obviously excel- 
 lent. 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 neighbors 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 drawing-room. Mme. 
 de Netteville allowed herself plenty of jests with her intimates 
 as to the young reformer's 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 tne topics in- 
 troduced ; or in conversation with him she would play that most 
 seductive part of the cynic shamed out of cynicism by the 
 neighborhood of the enthusiast. 
 
 Presently she began to claim a practical interest in his El- 
 good Street work. Her offers w^re made with a curious mixt- 
 
EGBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 ^97 
 
 ure 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 con- 
 sult 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 Elsmere's side it was strengthened 
 when, one evening, in a corner of her mner drawing-room, 
 Mme. de Netteville suddenly, but very quietly, told him the 
 story of her life— her English youth, her elderly French hus- 
 band, 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 avoid- 
 ance 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 
 break-up of her French life, and though everything was reticent 
 and measured, deepened the impression of a real f orlornness be- 
 hind all the outward brilliance and social importance. He be- 
 gan 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 gray eyes, in the cordial grasp of the hand with 
 which he said good-bye to her. 
 
 Mme. de Netteville's 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 Eugenie de Nette- 
 ville's life was written, not in her literary studies or her social 
 triumphs, but in various recurrent outbreaks of unbridled im- 
 pulse — the secret, and in one or two cases the shameful land- 
 marks 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 wom- 
 en of all societies. 
 
 Toward the end of May she asked Elsmere to dine ^^en petit 
 comite, a gentlemen's dinner — except for my cousin. Lady Au- 
 brey Willert" — ^to meet an eminent Liberal Cathohc, a friend 
 of Montalembert's youth. 
 
 It was a week or two after the failure of the Wardlaw experi- 
 
698 
 
 KOBEET ELSMERB. 
 
 ment. Do what each would, the sore silence between the hus- 
 band 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, look- 
 ing at her with eyes which had a dumb and yet fiery appeal 
 v/ritten 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 antago- 
 nism. The memory of her Murewell self flashed miserably 
 through him as he knelt there, of her delicate penitence toward 
 him after her first sight of Newcome, of their night walks dur- 
 ing 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 gaye a little shiver, as though bracing herself with a 
 kind of agony to resist. 
 
 ''Let me go, Eobert!" she said, gently, kissing him on the 
 forehead and drawing back. "I hear Mary caUing, and nurse 
 is out." 
 
 The days went on, and the date of Mme. de Netteville's din- 
 ner-party had come round. About seven o'clock that evening 
 Catherine sat with the child in the drawing-room, expecting 
 Eobert. He had gone off early in the afternoon to the East 
 End with Hugh Flaxman to take part in a committee of work- 
 men organized for the establishment of a choral union in E , 
 
 the scheme of which had been Flaxman's chief contribution so 
 far to the Elgood Street undertaking. 
 
 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 impossi- 
 ble all those serenities and sweetnesses of thought in which her 
 nature had always lived of old. The fight into which fate had 
 forced her w^as destroying her. She was drooping Hke a plant 
 cut off from all that nourishes its life. 
 
 And yet she never conceived it possible that she should r^ 
 linquish that fight. Nay, at times there sprung up in her now 
 
KOBERl? ELSMERE. 
 
 599 
 
 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 ascetic's terrible sense of compensation. What, 
 after all, is the Christian life but warfare ? * ' J came not to send 
 peace, but a sword! " 
 
 Yes, in these June days Elsmere's happiness was perhaps 
 nearer wreck than it had ever been. All strong natures grow 
 restless under such a pressure as was now weighing on Cath- 
 erine. 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 Eobert's step, and ap- 
 parently Mr. Flaxman's 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 sprung up. 
 
 Robert, you look so tired! and how late you are!'' Then 
 as she came nearer to liim : And your cosit—torn— blood / " 
 
 There is nothing wrong with me, dear," he said, hastily, 
 taking her hands — nothing! But it has been an awful after- 
 noon. Flaxman will tell you. I must go to this place, I sup- 
 pose, though I hate the thought of it ! Flaxman, will you tell 
 her ail about it?" And, loosing his hold, he went heavily out 
 of the room and upstairs. 
 
 *'Ithas 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 con- 
 sternation, while a nurse came for the child. 
 
 **We had just begun our committee at four o'clock," he said 
 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 brewer's dray standing in the street, and a man 
 
600 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 run over. Your husbsmd 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 
 gas-fitter, 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 husband's 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 sHpped and fell, crossing 
 the street, which was muddy from last night's rain. The dray 
 swimg 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 neigbors were round the door." 
 
 Then he stopped himseK. 
 
 "Shall I tell you the whole story ?" he said, kindly ; "it has 
 been a tPtgedy ! I won't give you details if you had rather not." 
 
 "Oh, no 1" she said, hurriedly; "no— tell me." 
 
 And she forgot to feel any wonder that Flaxman, in his chiv- 
 alry, 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 wife's 
 in there, but ye'll not find her in her senses; she's been at it 
 from eight o'clock this morning. We've took the children 
 away.' I didn't 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 woman's 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 comer. Then we got some brandy and 
 poured it down. The doctoF examined him, looked at his foot, 
 threw something over it. 'Nothing to be done,' he said — * in- 
 ternal injuries— he can't live half an hour.' The next minute 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 601 
 
 the poor fellow opened his eyes. They had pulled away the 
 bed from the wall. Your husband was on the further side, kneel- 
 ing. When he opened his eyes^^learly 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 GodP 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 you 
 husband's face. *She hasn't broke out for two months,' he 
 said, so piteously, *two months— and now— I'm done— I'm 
 done— and she'll just go straight to the devil !' And it comes 
 out, so the neighbors 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 
 dog's life. And now, on his death-bed, 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 diflBlculty. 
 
 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 run- 
 ning down his cheeks, and— and —blessed him. * I cafdd about 
 nothing,' he said, ' when you came. You've been— God— to me 
 —I've seen Him— in you.' Then he asked us to say something. 
 Your husband said verse after verse of the Psalms, of the Gos 
 pels, 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 
 Elsmere's face his look lightened. Toward the last he said 
 something we none of us caught; but your husband thought it 
 was^ line from Emily Bronte's ^Hymn,' which he said to 
 them last Sunday in lecture." 
 
 He looked up at her interrogatively, but there was no re- 
 sponse in her face. 
 
 **I asked him about it," the speaker went on, **as we came 
 home. He said Grey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, 
 and he has had a love for it ever since." 
 
 **Did he die while you were there?" asked Catherine, pres- 
 ently, after a silence. Her voice was dull' and quiet, He 
 thought b^r a strange woman. 
 
602 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 "No," said Flaxman, almost sharply; **but by now it must 
 be over. The last sign of consciousness was a murmur of his 
 children's 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 
 of Elsmere's 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. 
 Good-night, 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 gope 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 leaned 
 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 after- 
 noon, 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 know of Elsmere's 
 work, and that she was as much interested as the normal wife 
 is in her husband's 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 Elsmere's 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 watch-chain. 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 least that she listened with a kind 
 of hunger. He went from stoiy to story, from scene to scene, 
 
nOBERT ELBMES!B, 
 
 603 
 
 without any excitement, in his most ordinary maimer, making 
 his reserves now and then, expressing his own opinion when it 
 occurred to him, and not always favorably. 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 I 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. Good-night !" 
 
 When he was gone she carried the child up to bed; her sup- 
 per was brought to her solitary in the dining-room ; and after- 
 ward in the drawing-iflbm, where a soft twilight was fading 
 into a soft and starlighted night, she mechanically brought 
 out some work for Mary, and sat bending over it by the win- 
 dow. After about an hour she looked up straight before 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 Cath- 
 erine 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 con- 
 vulsed her life at Murewell. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 Egbert, tired and sick at heart, felt himself in no mood this 
 evening for a dinner-party in which conversation would be 
 treated more or less as a fine art. Liberal Catholicism had 
 lost its charm; his sympathetic interest in Montalembert, La- 
 cordaire, Lamennais, had to be quickened, pumped up again as 
 it were, by great efforts, which were constantly relaxed within 
 him as he sped westward by the recurrent memory of that 
 miserable room, the group of men, the bleeding hand, the 
 white dying face. 
 
 In Mme. de Netteville's drawing-room he found a small 
 number of people assembled. M. de Querouelle, a middle 
 sized, round-headed old gentleman of a familiar French type; 
 Lady Aubrey, thinner, more lath-like 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 
 
g04 ROBERT BLSMBRE. 
 
 hands of a beastly set of tenants;" Mr. "^^harncliffe, a young 
 private secretary with a waxed mustache, six feet of height, 
 and a general air of superlativeness v/hich demanded and se- 
 cured attention; a famous journalist, whose smihng self-re 
 pressive look assured you that he carried with him the secrets 
 of several empires; and one Sir John Headlam, a little black- 
 haired Jewish-looking man with a limp— an ex-colonial gov- 
 ernor, who had made himself accepted in London as an amus- 
 ing fellow, but who was at least as much dishked by one half 
 of society as he was popular with the other. 
 
 Purely for talk, you see, not for showl" said Mme. 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 saiJ^ with a little sigh. I 
 have just come from a very different scene." 
 She looked at him with inquiring eyes. 
 
 terrible accident in the East End," he said, briefly. 
 We won't talk of it. I only mention it to propitiate you be- 
 forehand. 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 considera- 
 tion for him at dinner. M. de Querouelle 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 perfec- 
 tion, 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 him- 
 self the god of young romantic Paris ; his talks with Montalem- 
 bert in the days of UAvenir; his memories of Lamennais's 
 sombre figure, of Maurice de Guerin's 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 inevitablenoss" 
 of true art. Robert, at first sUent and distrait, found it impos- 
 sible after awhile not to listen with interest. He admired the 
 skill, too, of Mme. de Netteville's 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 benevo- 
 lence 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. Addle- 
 ^one. who had wou a European reputation for wisdom by ^ 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 605 
 
 great scantiness of speech in society, coupled with the look of 
 Minerva's owl, attached himself to them; while Lady Aubrey, 
 Sir John Headlam, Lord Rupert, and Mr. Wharnclilfe 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 Gwynne's, wasn't 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 seascm, 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 gun- 
 powder and a slow match behind, I was so cross !" 
 
 Ah— ' Reculer pour mieux faire sauterP'' 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 
 'Societe des 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 got 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 dra- 
 matic scandal of the period. I have hved 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 haven't," she said, adjusting her bracelets, while she 
 flashed a rapier-glance 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 gun-boat behind a three-decker. That young man was 
 a delusion. The casual spectator, to borrow a famous Cam- 
 bridge 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 am- 
 bition of a Talleyrand than in Master Frederick WhamcliiTe, 
 
BOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 ■vrho 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 certsiin 
 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 awhile under the genial influ- 
 ence of a good story or the exhilaration of a personal skirmish, 
 the whole scene— the dainty oval room, the hghts, the servants, 
 the exquisite fruit and flowers, the gleaming silver, the tapes- 
 tried 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 self-confidence of these people— did it belong to the 
 same world a,s that humbling, that heavenly self-abandonment 
 which had shone on him that afternoon from Charles Richard's 
 begrimed and blood-stained 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 Mme. de Netteville was pleasant to him. He had never 
 seen her so womanly, never felt more grateful for her deUcate 
 social skiU. 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 toward 
 the further end of the table. 
 
 By Jove !" he said, afterward to Whamcliffe as they walked 
 away from the door together, *'she was mimitable tonight; 
 she has more roles than Desforets 1" Sir John and his hostess 
 were very old friends. 
 
 Upstairs smoking began. Lady Aubrey and Mme. de Nette- 
 ville joining in. M. de Querouelle, having talked the best of 
 his repertoire at dinner, was now inclined for amusement, and 
 had discovered that Lady Aubrey could amuse him, and was, 
 moreover, une belle personne, Mme. de Netteville was obhged 
 to give some time to Lord Rupert. The other men stood chat- 
 ting politics and the latest news, till Robert, conscious of a 
 complete failure of social energy, began to look at his watch. 
 Instantly Mme. de Netteville glided up to him. 
 
 **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 writing-room. And she led him into a 
 
liOBa.ilT ELSMEBE. 
 
 607 
 
 Hny paneled room at the far end of the drawing-room and shut 
 oif from it by a heavy cuilain, which she now left half drawn. 
 
 ''The latest?" said Fred Wharncliiie to Lady Aubrey, raising 
 fiis eyebrows with the sliglitest motion of the head toward the 
 writing-room. 
 
 " I suppose so," she said, indifferently; "she is East-Ending 
 for a change. We all do it nowadays. It is like Dizzy's young 
 man who 'Hked bad wine, he was so bored with good.' " 
 
 Meanwhile Mme. de Netteville was leaning against the open 
 window of the fantastic little room, with Eobert 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 Eichard's story very shortly. It would have 
 been impossible to him to give more than the dry est 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 self-control. 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 didn't see me !" 
 
 "Were you? Ah, I remember a person in black, and veiled, 
 who puzzled me. I don't 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 re- 
 former 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 don't 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 youy 
 
 "Why to me?" he asked, smiling. 
 
 " Oh, because you and your like have your fixed ideas of the 
 upx)er class and the lower. One social' type fills up your hori- 
 zon. You are not interested in any other, and, indeed, you 
 know nothing of any other." 
 
 She looked at him defiantly. Everything about her to-nigtt 
 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. 
 
608 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Perhaps not," he rephed; *'it is enough k)r one life to try 
 and make out where the EngHsh working class is tending to." 
 
 You are quite wrong, utterly wrong. The man who keeps 
 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 ex 
 isting institutions? And the men ol action are to be found 
 with ^^5." 
 
 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 supphes 
 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 cot- 
 tage ; you shall see some of these men and women there, and I 
 will make you confess when you go away that you have pro- 
 fited your workman 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 
 upper-class 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, dryly, his color 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 re- 
 finement and spiritual force, the active frame, the delicate but 
 most characteristic hand. Never had any man so attracted 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 609 
 
 her for years ; never had she found it so diflicult to gain a hold. 
 Eugenie de Netteville, poseuse, schemer, woman of the world 
 that she was, was losing command of herself. 
 
 '^What 4id you really mean by ^ worldliness ' and the 
 ^|world ' in your lecture last Sunday ?" she asked him, suddenly, 
 with a little accent of scorn. thought your diatribes ab- 
 surd. 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 de- 
 fended himself not very seriously. But she threw all her 
 strength into the argument, and he forgot that he had meant 
 to go at once. When she chose she could talk admirably, and 
 she chose now. She had the most aggressive ways of attack- 
 ing, 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 friend- 
 ship 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 Eobert Elsmere felt. 
 Whether in his hours of intimacy with her, twelve months 
 before, young Alfred Evershed had received the same impres- 
 sion may be doubted. In all things Eugenie de Netteville was 
 an artist. 
 
 Suddenly the curtain dividing them from the larger drawing- 
 room was drawn back, and Sir John Headlam stood in the 
 door-way. fie 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 Des- 
 Eorets. They have got her there to-night." 
 
 **Go," she said, waving her hand to him; '^I don't envy 
 you. She is not what she was." 
 
 *^No, there is only one person," he said, bowing with gro- 
 tesque little airs of gallantry, ''for whom time stands still." 
 
 Mme. de Netteville looked at him with smiling, half-con- 
 temptuous serenity. He bowed again, this time with ironical 
 emphasis, and disappeared. 
 
 Perhaps I had better go back and send them olf," she said, 
 rising. But you and I have not had our talk out yet." 
 
610 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 She led the way into the drawing-room. Lady Aubrey waa 
 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 three-cornered duel of wits, while M. de 
 Querouelle 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 ta 
 night, and since James took office I can't with decency absent 
 myself. I had rather be a scullery-maid than a minister's wife. 
 Lord Rupert, I will take you on if you want a lift.'' 
 
 She touched Mme. de Netteville's cheek with her lips, nod- 
 ding to the other men present, and went out, her fair stag-hke 
 head well in the air, chaffing" Lord Rupeii), who obediently 
 followed her, performing marvellous feats of agility in his de- 
 sire to keep out of the way of the superb train sweeping behind 
 her. It always seemed as if Lady Aubrey could have had nc 
 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 over 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 Que- 
 rouelle talked with gusto of four "At homes " still to be grap- 
 pled with. 
 
 As she dismissed Mr. Whamchffe, Robert too held out his 
 hand. 
 
 No," she said, with a quick impetuousness, no; I want my 
 talk out. It is barely haM past ten, and neither of us wants to 
 be racing about London to-night." 
 
 Elsmere had always a certain lack of social decision, and he 
 lingered rather reluctantly— for another ten minutes, as he sup- 
 posed. 
 
 * 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 aU the colors of the tropics, 
 perched now on her knee, now on the back of her chair, touched 
 every now and then by quick, unsteady fingers. 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 611 
 
 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 practi- 
 cally 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 inde- 
 scribable excitement to see what a woman's sympathy and a 
 woman's uniqu,e 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 repul- 
 sion, which his most friendly biographer can only regard with 
 a kind of grim satisfaction. For after all there is an amount 
 of innocence and absent-mindedness 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 terri- 
 ble half hour. When the half-coherent enigmatical sentences, 
 to w[>ich he listened at first with a perplexed surprise, began 
 graa dally to define themselves; when he found a woman roused 
 and tragically beautiful between him and escape ; when no de- 
 termination 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 '4n one minute 
 glad life's 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 ail the arts of fascination he never knew. 
 In memory afterward it was all a ghostly 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 him- 
 self , would have done better. 
 
 But when the softness and the grace were all lost in smart 
 humiliation, when the Mme, de Netteville of ordinary life dis' 
 
612 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 appeared, and something took her place which was Uke a coar&e 
 and malignant underself suddenly brought into the light of day 
 —from that point onward, in after days, he remembered it all. 
 
 . . . I know," cried Eugenie de Netteville at last, stand- 
 ing 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, de- 
 liberate emphasis on each word, "all the world shall see? There 
 —let your wife's 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 feehng 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 can not understand my own blindness and folly—" 
 
 "Must have led to this most undesirable scene," she said, 
 ^th mocking suddenness, throwing herself, however, effectu^ 
 ally 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 Catherine's name coupled with 
 some contemptuous epithet or other, and his self-control failed 
 him. With flashing eyes he went close up to her and took her 
 wrists in a grip of iron. 
 
 "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 self -reproachful love was on his lips. 
 He choked it back. It was a desecration that her name should 
 be mentioned in that room. But he dropped the hand he held, 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 613 
 
 The fierceness died out of his eyes. His companion stood be- 
 side 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 he^ - doubly un- 
 worthy, since it has been possible for any h iman being to 
 suspect for one instant that I was ungsateful for the blessing 
 of her love, that I could ever forgiet and dishonor 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 man- 
 liness of the face which seemed in this half hour to have grown 
 older, at the attitude with its mingled dignity and appeal. In 
 that second she realized 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 dor shut. 
 
 For nearly an hour afterward Elsmere wandered bhndly 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 yaw-ns beneath us 
 all, into which the individual Hfe sinks so easily to ruin and 
 nothingness. At such moments a man realizes 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 self-reproach— 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 capa- 
 ble 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? 
 Ana had this horror been the subtle inevitable Nemesis? 
 
6U 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 All at once, under the trees of the park, Elsmere stopped 
 for a moment in the darkness, and bared his head, with the 
 passionate 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 new-made 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 wife's love ! If she had sUpped away from him, to 
 the injury and moral lessening of both, on his cowardice, on 
 his clumsiness, be the ])lame ! Above all, on liis 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 him- 
 self, humbled, convicted, at her feet. The woman, the scene 
 he has left, is effaced, blotted out by the natural intense reac- 
 tion of remorseful love. 
 
 So he sped homeward s.t 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 re- 
 called to him that other supreme moment of his life at Mure- 
 well! No light in the drawing-room. He went upstairs and 
 softly turned the handle of her room door. 
 
 Inside the room seemed to him nearly dark. But the window 
 was wide open. The free,^ loosely growing branches of the 
 plane-trees made a dark, delicate net-work against the lumi- 
 nous blue of the night. \ 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 toward him without a word. Instinctively Eobert 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. 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 615 
 
 *'Eobert, I have been waiting so long— it was so late! 1 
 thought "—and she choked down a sob — perhaps something 
 has happened to him, we are separated forever, and I shall 
 never be able to tell him. Eobert, Mr. Flaxman talked to me; 
 he opened my eyes; I have been, so cruel to you, so hard! I 
 have broken my vow. I don't deserve it ; but — Robert ! — " 
 
 She had spoken with extraordinary self-command till the last 
 word, which fell into a smothered cry for pardon. Catherine 
 Elsemere had very little of the soft clingingness which makes 
 the 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 husband's arms. 
 
 He bent over her with haif-articulate 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 realize what was in his ovm heart, the penitence and long- 
 ing which had winged his return to her. Without a mention 
 of Mme. de Nettevilie's 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 half jeopardized and wholly re- 
 covered; it was that consciousness in the background of his 
 mind, ignorant of it as Catherine was then and always, which 
 gave the peculiar epoch-making force to this sacred and critical 
 hour of their Kves. But she would hear nothing of his self- 
 blame— nothing. She put her hand across his lips. 
 
 have seen things as they are, Robert," she said, very 
 simply; while I have been sitting here, and down-stairs, 
 after Mr. Flaxman left me. You were right— I would not un- 
 derstand. A'nd, in a sense, I shall never understand. I can 
 not change, " and her voice broke into piteousness. ' * My Lord 
 is my Lord always; but he is yours, too. Oh, I know it, say 
 what 3^ou will ! That is what has been hidden from me ; that is 
 what my trouble has taught me; the powerles5;ness, the worth- 
 lessness, of words. It is the spirit that quicJceneth. 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 down-stairs, 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 
 
616 
 
 BOBEBt ELSMEEE. 
 
 you saying? Wrong— you? Unkind? Your wife knows noth- 
 ing of it. Oh, did you think when you came in just now be- 
 fore dinner that I didn't care, that I had a heart of stone? Did 
 you think I had broken my solemn promise, my vow to you 
 that day at Mure well? So I have, a hundred times over. I 
 made it in ignorance; I had not counted the costr— 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 I take me 
 back into your Hfe ! Hold me there I Remind me always of 
 this night ; convict me out of my own mouth ! But I will learn 
 my lesson ; I w^ill 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." 
 
 Strange ending to a day of torture I 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 hght 
 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 Beatiice and the 
 nearness of those "shining table-lands whereof our God him- 
 self 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 mm raentay 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 inrash of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 The saddest moment in the lives of these two persons whose 
 history we hKsre followed for so long was over and done with. 
 Henceforward to the end El^mere and his wife were lovers as 
 of old. ~ 
 
 But that day and night left even deeper marks on Robert 
 than on Catherine. Afterward she gradually came to feel, 
 running all through his views of life, a note sterner, deeper. 
 
EGBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 61? 
 
 maturer than any present there before. The reasons for it 
 were unknown to her, though sometimes her own, tender, ig- 
 norant remorse supplied them. But they were hidden deep in 
 Elsmere's memory. 
 
 A few days afterward he was casually told that Mme. de 
 Netteville had left England for some time. As a matter of fact' 
 he never set eyes on her again. After awhile the extravagance 
 of his self -blame abated. He sav/ things as they were— without 
 morbidness. But a certain boyish carelessness of mood he 
 never afterward 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 highly strung nature set with exclusive intensity 
 toward certain spiritual ends. 
 
 On the first opportunity after that conversation with Hugh 
 Flaxman which had so deeply affected her, Catherine accom- 
 panied Elsmere to his Sunday lecture. He tried a little, tender- 
 ly, to dissuade her. But she went, shrinking and yet deter- 
 mined. 
 
 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 burned into her mind. The bare Elgood 
 Street room, the dingy outlook on the high walls of a ware- 
 house opposite, the lines of blanched, quick-eyed 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. 
 
 Afterward Wardlaw, with the brusque remark to Elsmere 
 that *'any fool could see he was getting done up," insisted on 
 taking the children's class. Catherine, too, had been im- 
 pressed, as she saw Eobert 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 cod- 
 dled, 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 
 
itOBEtlT KLSMBBB. 
 
 of the June afternoon. A little fresh breeze came off the river ; 
 that, or his wife's 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 gayety, as she had not 
 talked for months. 
 
 Deep in her mystical sense all the time lay the belief in a final 
 restoration, in an all-atoning moment, perhaps at the very end 
 of life, in which the bhnd would see, the doubter be convinced. 
 And, meanwhile, the blessedness of this peace, this surrender! 
 Surely the air this afternoon was pure and life-giving 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. Grey's illness had taken a dan- 
 gerous and alaiming turn. It seemed to be the issue of long 
 ill-health, and the doctors feared that there were no resources 
 of constitution left to carry him through it. Every day some 
 old St. Anselm's friend on the spot wrote to Elsmere, and with 
 each post the news grew more despaiiing. Since Elsmere had 
 left Oxford he could count on the fingers of one hand the oc- 
 casions on which he and Grey had met face to face. But for 
 him, as for many another man of our time, Henry Grey's in- 
 fluence was not primarily an influence of personal contact. His 
 mere life, that he was there, on English soil, within a measur- 
 able distance, had been to Elsmere in his darkest moments one 
 of his thoughts of refuge. At a time when a rehgion which can 
 no longer be believed clashes with a skepticism full of danger 
 to conduct, every such witness as Grey to the power of a new 
 and coming trath 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 
 witness. 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 morningj without J)ain, con- 
 scious almost to the end. He mentioned several friends by 
 
EOBBET ELSMEEE. 
 
 613 
 
 name, you among them, during tlie night. The funeral is to 
 be on Tuesday. You will be here, of course." 
 
 Sad and memorable day ! By an untoward chance it f eU m 
 Commemoration week, and Robert found the famihar streets 
 teeming with life and noise, under a showery uncertain sky, 
 which every now and then would send the bevies of ligntly 
 gowned maidens, with their mothers and attendant squires, 
 skurrying for shelter, and leave the roof^nd pavements 
 glistening. He walked up to St. Anselm's-found as he ex- 
 pected, that the first part of the service was to be m the chapel, 
 therestinthecemeterv, and then mounted the well-known stair- 
 case to Langham's rooms. Langham was apparently m his 
 bedroom. Lunch was on the table-the famihar commons, the 
 familiar toast and water. There, in a recess, were the same 
 splendid wall maps of Greece he had so often consulted alter 
 lecture There was the little case of coins, with the gold Alex- 
 anders he had handled with so much covetous reverence at 
 eighteen. Outside, the irregular quadrangle with its drippMg 
 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. Grey's 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 Langham's to himself, and had 
 a chilling effect upon him. The face, too, was changed. 
 Tint and expression were both dulled; its marble-like sharp- 
 ness and finish had coarsened a little, and the figure, whwh 
 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 mouthf uls. Langham was difficult, talked 
 disconnectedly of trifles, and Robert was soon painfully con- 
 scious that the old sympathetic bond between them no longer 
 existed. Presently, Langham. as though with an effort to re- 
 
620 
 
 KOliKKT ELSMERE. 
 
 member, 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 spasmodic- 
 ally talking, in reahty expectqiit. And at last the sound pres- 
 ent 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 
 
 remember," repUed the other, abruptly. Then, with a 
 half-cynical, half-melancholy scrutiny of his companion, he 
 said, atter a pause : ' ' What a faculty of hero-worship 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 feel- 
 ing 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 can not rehearse our own parts. And the 
 sight of other men's 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." 
 
 Elsmere's 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 somberly, 
 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 ob- 
 ject should be not to feel." 
 
 Then he began to himt 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 grief -laden 
 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 under-graduate faces, the provost's white head, 
 the voice of the chaplain reading, the fuU male unison of the 
 
EOBKET ELSMEEE. 621 
 
 voices replying-liow they carried him back to the day when as 
 a lad from school he had sat on one of the chancel benches be- 
 side his mother, listening for the first time to the subtle Sim- 
 plicity if one may be aUowed the paradox, of the provost's 
 preaching I Just opposite to where he sat now with Langham, 
 Grey had sat that first afternoon ; the freshman's curious eyes 
 had been drawn again and again to the dark, massive head, the 
 face with its look of reposeful force, of righteous strength. 
 During the lesson from Corinthians, Elsmere's thoughts were 
 irrelevantly busy with all sorts of mundane memories of the 
 dead What was especially present to him was a series ot Lib- 
 eral 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 Eobert now 
 with poignant force. Grey had been to him at one time primar- 
 ily 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 
 tiie memory of the citizen, the friend and brother of common 
 man, the thinker who had never shirked action m the name of 
 thought, for whom conduct had been from begmnmg to end 
 
 the first reality. , i,- v 
 
 The procession through the streets afterward, which con- 
 veyed the body of thi*5 great son of modern Oxford to its last 
 resting-place in the citizens' cemetery on the western side of 
 the town, will not soon be forgotten, even in a place which for- 
 gets notoriously soon. AU the university was there, all the 
 town was there. Side by side with men honorably dear to Eng- 
 land who had carried with them into one or other of the great 
 BngUsh careers the memory of the teacher, were men who bad 
 known from day to day the cheery, modest helper m a hun- 
 dred 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 repre- 
 senting the heads of houses and the professors, or mingled with 
 the slowly pacing crowd of masters; while along the route 
 croups of visitors.and merry-makers, young men m 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. , , „ , , 
 
 Eobert, losing sight of Langham as they left the chapel, 
 found his arm grasped by young Cathcart, his correspondent, 
 
622 
 
 ROBERT ELSMEEK. 
 
 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 romething 
 in Ills voice and gi-ip 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 under-graduate 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, Cath- 
 cart told him all he wanted to know. . 
 
 *^The night before the end he was perfectly calm and con- 
 scious. I told you he mentioned your name among the friends 
 to whom he sent his good-bye. He thought for everybody. For 
 all those of his house he left the most minute and tender direc- 
 tions. He forgot nothing. And all with such extraordinary 
 simplicity and quietness, like one arranging for a journey I In 
 the evening an old Quaker aunt of his, a north-country 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. ^ It'll not be for 
 long, Henry,' she said to him once. 'I'm seventy-seven this 
 spring. I shall come to you soon.' He made no reply, and his 
 silence seemed to disturb her. I don't fancy she had known 
 much of his mind of late years. * You'll not be doubting the 
 Lord's 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— 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 Gotthetrunken it 
 ^^s he— and yet not a word beyond what he felt to be trae, 
 beyond what the intellect could grasp I" 
 
 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 butter-cupped river meadows, where the lush hay-grass 
 bent in long lines under the showers. To his left, the provost, 
 his glistening white head bare to the rain, was reading the rest 
 jf the service. 
 
 As the coffin was lowered Elsniere bent over the grave. * ' My 
 friend, my master," cried the yearning, filial heart, *'oh, give 
 
EGBERT ELSMERB, 
 
 623 
 
 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 inwai^ ear there rose, with the solemnity of a 
 iast message, M^ords which years before he had found marked 
 4n a little book of Meditations borrowed from Grey's table- 
 words long treasured and often repeated— 
 
 ^' Amid a world of forgetfulness and decay, in the sight ol 
 his own shortcomings and limitations, or on the edge of the 
 tomb, he alone who has found his soul in losing it, who in sin- 
 gleness of mind has lived in order to love and understand^ will 
 find that the God wiio 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. 
 
 ''Man's hope," he thought, *'has grown humbler than this. 
 It keeps now a more modest mien in the presence of the Eter- 
 nal Mystery; but is it in truth less real, less sustaining ? Let 
 Grey's 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. 
 
 **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. Lang- 
 ham 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 Ime, to face 
 anything certain and irrevocable. I understand. He could 
 not say good-bye to a friend to save his life. There is no shirk- 
 ing that ! One must either do it or leave it !" 
 
 Cathcart shrugged his shoulders, and drew a masterly little 
 picture of Langham's 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 college meeting sometimes, and contributes a 
 sarcasm or two on the crmnming system of the college. He 
 
624 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 takes a constitutional to Summerton every day on the least fre- 
 quented 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 
 Bcout— 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 i3ecoming a complete valetudinarian. 
 Everything must go exactly by rule-his food, his work, 
 the management of his clothes— and any little contretemps 
 toakes 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 attem_pt to influence him for a vote. On 
 these occasions he goes off with automatic regularity to a hotel 
 at West Malvern, and only reappears when the ' Times ' tells 
 him the thing is done with." 
 
 Both laughed. Then Eobert sighed. Weaknesses of Lang- 
 kam's sort may be amusing enough to the contemptuous and 
 unconcerned outsider. Bub 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 prep- 
 arations. Not a sign now, in these crowded, bustling streets, 
 of that melancholy pageant of the afternoon. The heroic mem- 
 ory had flashed for a moment like something vivid and gleam- 
 ing 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 Hfe in England. 
 
 On the platform Eobert found himself nervously accosted by 
 a tall, shabbily dressed man. 
 
 * ' Elsmere, have you forgotten me ?" 
 
 He turned and recognized a man whom he had last seen as 
 a St. Anselm's under-graduate~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, sud^ 
 denly the man's story flashed across him ; he remembered some 
 disgraceful escapade— an expulsion. 
 
 You came for the funeral, of course?" said the other, hisi 
 face flushing consciously. 
 Yes— and you too?" 
 
EOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 625 
 
 The man turned away, and something in his silence led Rob- 
 ert to stroll on beside him to the open end of the platform. 
 
 I have lost my only friend," MacNiell said at last, hoarse- 
 ly. '*He took me up when my own father would have noth- 
 ing 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 remem- 
 ber 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 Httle ceme- 
 tery, which lay just beyond the line. Robert bent forward. 
 Ir. the yellow glow of the evening he could distinguish the 
 grave, the mound of gravel, the planks, and some figures mov- 
 ing 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 
 I 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 Flaxman's cheery, sym- 
 I pathetic temper, and became more attached to him than ever, 
 I and more ready than ever, should the fates deem it so, to wel- 
 come him as a brother-in-law. However, the fates for the mo- 
 ment seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham's book, 
 I and did not apparently know their own minds. It says vol- 
 : umes for Hugh Flaxman's general capacities as a human being 
 I that at this period he should have had any attention to give 
 I to a friend, his position as a lover was so dubious and difficult. 
 
 After the evening at the Workmen's Club, and as a result 
 of further meditation, he had greatly developed the tacticr 
 
g26 EOBEET EL8MEEE. 
 
 first adopted on that occasion. He had beaten a masterly re- 
 treat, 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 enter- 
 taining visitor. During the whole of May he paid one formal 
 call in Lerwick Gardens, and was then entertained tete-a-tete 
 by Mrs Leyburn, to Rose's intense subsequent annoyance, who 
 knew perfectly weU that her mother was incapable of chatter- 
 ing about anything but her daiighters. 
 
 He still sent flowei-s, but they came from his heaJ gardener 
 addressed to Mrs. Leyburn. Agnes put them in water; and 
 Rose never gave them a look. Rose went to Lady Helen s De- 
 cause Lady Helen made her, and was much too engaging a 
 creature to be rebuffed; but, however merry land protracted 
 the teas in those scented rooms might be, Mr. Flaxmans step 
 on the stairs, and Mr. Flaxman's 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 then- Ust of com- 
 mon friends was now considerable; but Agnes, reporting mat- 
 ters to Catherine, could only say that each of these occasions 
 left Rose more irritable, and more inclined to say bitmg things 
 as to the fooUsh ways in which society takes its pleasures. 
 
 Rose certainly ^as irritable, and at times, Agnes thought, 
 depressed. Bu* as usual she was unapproachable about her 
 own affairs, and the state of her mind could only be somewhat 
 dolefuUy gathered from the fact that she was much less un- 
 wiUing to go back to Burwood this summer than had ever been 
 known before. 
 
 MeanwhUe, Mr. Flaxman left certain other people m 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 Ley- 
 bum won't have me for the present, and as for the future I 
 have most salutary qualms." * -r 
 
 "Hugh!" interrupted Lady Charlotte, angrily, as if you 
 hadn't the mothers of London at your feet for years 
 
 Lady Charlotte was in a most variable frame of mmd; one 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 627 
 
 day hoping devoutly that the Langham affair might prove 
 lasting enough in its effects to tire Hugh out; the next, out- 
 raged that a silly girl should waste a thought on such a crea- 
 ture, while Hugh was in her way ; at one time angry that an 
 insignificant chit of a school master's daughter should appar- 
 ently care so little to he the Duke of Sedbergh's niece, and 
 should even dare to allow herself the luxury of snubbing a 
 Flaxman; at another, utterly skeptical as to any lasting ob- 
 duracy on the chit's 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 aunt's we have recorded. 
 
 J' 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 lion-hunter," 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 won't 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 I" 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 
 wliy don't you give me better? It is strange," he added, mus- 
 ing; " women talk to us about love as if we were too gross to 
 anderstand it ; and when they com§ to business, and they're not 
 in it themselves, they show the temper of attorneys." 
 
 **Love!" <3ried 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 
 
628 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 his pockets, that unless things mend I shall go out to Cali- 
 fornia in the autumn and try ranching." 
 
 Lady Charlotte burst into an angry laugh. He stood oppo- 
 site to her, with his orchid in his button-hole, himself the fine 
 flower of civilization. Eanching, 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. 
 
 ''I can do nothing for myself at present," he said; get 
 on her nerves. She was in love with that black-haired enfant 
 du Steele— or rather, she prefers to assume that she was— and I 
 haven't 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. Don't let her go. Make your- 
 selves 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 wrong-doing would 
 be tardy, if wrong-doing there must be. She could but rue- 
 fully 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 vindica- 
 ting 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 quarreling either 
 with her or Lady Helen. 
 
 Toward the middle of June there was a grand ball given by 
 Lady Fauntleroy at Fauntleroy House, to which the two Miss 
 Leyburns, by Lady Helen's machinations, were invited. It was 
 to be one of the events of the season, and when the cards 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 arrived to have the honor of meeting their royal highnesses," 
 ^tc, 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 
 tlose treated the cards with no sort of tenderness. ''If one 
 could but put them up to auction," she said, flippantly, hold 
 ing them up, "how many German opera tickets I should get 
 for nothing ! I don't know what Agnes feels. As for me, I 
 have neither nerve enough for the people, nor money enough 
 tor the toilet." 
 
 However, with eleven o'clock 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 dress-maker, 
 " would ruin you over them, of course. Your maid"— the 
 Ley burns possessed a remarkably clever one— "will make 
 them divinely for twopence-halfpenny. Listen." 
 
 Eose listened ; her eye kindled ; the maid was summoned ; and 
 the invitation accepted in Agnes's neatest hand. Even Cath- 
 erine was roused during the following ten days to a smiling in- 
 dulgent interest in the concerns of the vvork-room. 
 
 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 inge- 
 nuity of the present could do to give fresh life and gayety to the 
 pillared rooms, the carved galleries and stately staircases of the 
 past, had been done. The ball-room, lined with Yandycks and 
 Lelys, glowed softly with electric light; the-picture-gallery had 
 been banked v^ith flowers and carpeted with red, and the beau- 
 tiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it, challenging 
 the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls. 
 
 Rose's 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 
 Helen's devotion, the girl's 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 aitd went away empty. Royalty 
 was introduced, and smiled both upon the beauty and the 
 beauty's delicate and becoming dress; and still Rose, though a 
 good deal more flushed and erect than usual, and though flesh 
 
630 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBB. 
 
 and blood could not resist the contagious pleasure which glis- 
 tened even in the eyes of that sage Agnes, was more than half- 
 inclined to say, with the preacher, that all was vanity. 
 
 Presently, as she stood waiting with her hand on her part- 
 ner's arm before gliding into a waltz, she saw Mr. Flaxman 
 opposite to her, and with him a young debutante 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 school- 
 girl 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 honor, you know. She 
 comes out to-night. What, another cousin? Keally she keeps 
 too much in the family 
 
 **Is Mr. Flaxman a cousin?" 
 
 The young man replied that he was, and then, in the inter- 
 vals 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 Eose a mere famOy 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 Ley bum ! charmed to see you I" cried Lady Charlotte, 
 stopping her; and then, in a loud whisper in her ear, Never 
 saw you look better. Your taste, or Helen's, that dress? The 
 roses — exquisite !" 
 
 Rose dropped her a little mock courtesy and whirled on 
 again. 
 
 ''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, pa- 
 tience 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 Eose, standing flushed by 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 631 
 
 Lady HeleD, saw him coming again toward her, ushering a tall, 
 blue-eyed youth, whom he introduced to her as Lord Wayn- 
 flete." The handsome boy looked at her with a boy's open ad- 
 miration, and beg-uiled 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 in- 
 itiated that mere beauty was receiving a ridiculous amount of 
 attention. 
 
 I wouldn't have given it him, but it is rude— it is bad man- 
 -ners, not even to ask !" the supposed victress was saying to her- 
 self, with quivering lips, her eyes following not the Trinity 
 freshman, who was their latest captive, but an older man's well- 
 knit figure, and a head on which the fair hair was already 
 growing scantily, receding a little from the fine inteUectual 
 brows. 
 
 An hour later she was again standing by Lady Helen, wait- 
 ing for a partner, when she saw two persons crossing the 
 room, which was just beginning to fill again for dancing, to- 
 ward them. One was Mr. Flaxman, the other was a smaU, 
 wrinkled old man, who leaned 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 niece's 
 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 J shall 
 bring an action." 
 
 I' 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 Parley's there to-night, helping to 
 vote away my property and Fauntleroy's." 
 
 * I Some of his own, too, if you please!" said Lady Helen, 
 smilmg. Yes, I suppose he u waiting for the division, or he 
 would be here." 
 
 I wonder why Providence blessed me with such a Eadical 
 crew of relations?" remarked the duke. - Hugh is a regular 
 Communist. I never heard such arguments in my life. And 
 as 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 dehcately 
 
632 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 featured, but now the left eye drooped, and the face had a 
 stroijg look of peevishness and ill-health. 
 
 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 pak of sharp 
 eyes, seemed to cogitate inwardly whether such a name had^ 
 pver 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 /broke I shouldn't mend.'' 
 
 And still grumbling audibly about the floor, he hobbled off 
 toward 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. 
 
 '^That's over," said Lady Helen with relief. ^^My uncle 
 hardly meets any of us now without a spar. He has never for- 
 given 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. She's afraid of him !" 
 Lady Charlotte afraid !" echoed Rose. 
 Odd, isn't 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 door-way, 
 and Ladv 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 debutante's good looks, Hugh Flaxman's apparent sus- 
 ceptibiiity to them, the possibility of results, and the satisfac- 
 tory 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 
 forhcT- 
 
 Then sne floated away into the whirlwind of waltzes. BvA 
 
EOBEET ELSMBEB. g3g 
 
 as she moved round the room on her partner's arm, her deh- 
 cate, half-scornful grace attracting look after look, the soi.l 
 withm was all aflame-aflame against the serried ranks «n.] 
 phalanxes of this unfamiliar, hostile world ! She had iust bPPn 
 reading Trevelyan's " Life of Fox " aloud to her mother who 
 hked occasionally to flavor her knitting with Hterature and shP 
 began 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 wh^ 
 
 2 ttt n ^f^. ^T"^^' '-^^ i'' °ot run so? 
 
 - and that aU outside their own fraternity were un worth v 
 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 inter- 
 course, m some respects singularly delightful.' Such for in 
 stance, as the Duke of Sedburgh was master off 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 
 agam! said the impetuous inner voice. "I have my world 
 —they theirs !" ^ "wi^u 
 
 But why so strong a flood of bitterness against our poor up- 
 per class so well mtentioned for all its occasional lack of lucid- 
 ity, should have arisen in so young a breast it is a little difficult 
 for the most conscientious biographer to explain She ha ,1 
 partners to her heart's desire; young Lord Waynflete used hi^ 
 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 graciouslv 
 pleased to ordain that Lady Helen and h^r two companSns 
 should sup behind the same folding-doors as itself, wMe be- 
 yond these doors surged the inferior crowd of persons who had 
 
 Jr/Jrf ^r!?^ ^'^ ^-^^^ highnesses,- and 
 
 had so far been held worthy neither to dance nor to eat in the 
 same room with them. But in vain. Eose still felt herself 
 for ail her laughmg outward insouciance, a poor, bruised help- 
 less chattel, trodden under the heel of a ;orld wLich was inli 
 erably powerful, rich, and self-satisfied, the odious product of 
 ramily arrangements." 
 
 I^S l^^'''''^" f,* ^^'J""^^ ^* r^y^l as herself. 
 
 Beside him was the thm, tall debutante. " She is like one of 
 the Gainsborough princesses," thought Rose, studying her with 
 
Q34 BOBBBT ELSMERB. 
 
 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 Florence s 
 neighbor were, as it seemed, on herself; or was he merely nod- 
 ding 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 descend- 
 ing the great staircase on their way to their carnage. The 
 morning light was flooding through the chmks of the carefully 
 veiled windows;LadyHelenwasyawningbehindhertmywhite 
 
 hand, her eyes nearly asleep. But the two sisters, who had not 
 W up tiUthree, on fourpreceding nights, ^ike their chaperon, 
 were still almost as fresh as the flowers massed m the ball be- 
 
 " Ah, there is Hugh !" cried Lady Helen. " How I hope he 
 has foand the carriage!" 
 
 At that moment Rose slipped on a spray of gardema which 
 had dropped from the bouquet of some predecessor. To pre^ 
 vent herself from falling down-stairs, 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 kaned 
 Ump and white, against the railing of the stairs. Lad> Helen 
 turned at Agnes's exclamation, but before she could speak, as 
 it seemed, Mr. Flaxraan, who had been standing talking just 
 below them, was on the stairs. , , , • „ t 
 
 "You have hurt your arm? Don't speak-take mine. I-et 
 me eet vou down stairs 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 w^ter 
 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^ 
 
 " Don't 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 f rantK! 
 longing to disobey him, and get off before he returned. Sting- 
 ing S girl's mind was the sense that it might perfectly 
 well seem to him a planned appeal to his pity. 
 
 "Agnes, help me up," she said, with a Ixttl* involuntary, 
 groan; " I shall be better at home," 
 
KOBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 685 
 
 But both Lady Helen and Agnes laughed her to scorn, and 
 she lay back once more overwhelmed by fatigue and f aintness 
 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. Eose 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." 
 
 Eose, leaning on Agnes, walked out into the hall. They 
 found him thore waiting. 
 
 ''The carriage is here," he said, bending toward 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 sister's help is quite enough." 
 
 He followed them with Lady Helen. At the carriage door the 
 sisters hesitated a moment. Eose was helpless without a right 
 hand. A little imperative movement from behind displaced 
 Agnes, and Eose felt herself hoisted in by a strong arm. She 
 sunk into the further 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. Eose 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 bis eyes, his hands thrust into his pockets ; a close observer 
 v^ould have noticed a certain trembling of the lips. It was but 
 a few seconds since her young warm beauty had been for an in- 
 stant in his arms; his whole being was shaken by it, and by 
 that last look of hers. Have I gone too far?" he asked him- 
 self, 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 ivere angi \ tou were I Now, then, how 
 
636 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 to proceed? She is all fire, all character; I rejoice iu it. Sho 
 will give me trouble; so much the better. Poor little hurt 
 thing ! the fight is only beginning ; but I will make her do pen- 
 ance some day for all that loftiness to-night." 
 
 If these reflections betray to the reader a certain masterful 
 note of confidence in Mr. Flaxman's 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, i 
 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 tem- 
 pest shock of reproach and appeal. But some secret instinct 
 restrained him. She was willful, she was capricious; she had 
 a real and powerful distraction in her art. He must be patient • 
 and risk Qothing. ' 
 
 He suspected, too, what was the truth— that Lady Charlotte 
 was doing harm. Rose, indeed, had grown so touchily sensitive 
 that she found offense in almost every word of Lady Charlotte's i 
 about her nephew. Why should the apparently casual remarks " 
 of the aunt bear so constantly on the subject of the nephew's 
 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 anx- 
 ieties and reluctances which the girl's quick sense detected, in 
 sp'ite 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 confi- 
 dence that would not yield. Was it possible that he had 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 obvioufi 
 
 I 
 
KOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 637 
 
 pKght made any further scruples on theix part futile, and what 
 they had they gave him in the way of sympathy. Also Eobert, 
 gathering that he already knew much, and without betraying 
 any confidence of Rose's, gave him a hint or two on the sub- 
 ject of Langham. But more not the friendliest mortal could 
 I do for him, ind 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. 
 
 BOOK VIL—OAIN AND LOSS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL VI. 
 
 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 ab- 
 sorbing he did not know how to go even for a few weeks. There 
 were certain individu'ils in particular who depended on him 
 from day to day . One was Charles Richards's widow. The poor, 
 desperate creature had put herself abjectly into Elsmere's 
 hands. He had sent her to an aslyum, where she had been 
 kindly and skillfully treated, and after six weeks' abstinence 
 she had just returned to her children, and was being watched 
 by himself and a competent woman neighbor, whom he had 
 succeeded in interesting in the case. 
 
 Another was a young ''secret springer," to use the mysteri- 
 ous terms of the trade— Robson by name— whom Elsmere had 
 originally known as a clever workman belonging to the watch- 
 making colony, and a diligent attenda!ft 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 tumor 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 humor and clear- 
 eyed despair. In general outlook he was much akin to the au- 
 thor of the ''City of Dreadful Night," whose poems he read; 
 the loathsome spectacles of London had filled him with a kind 
 of somber energy of revolt against ail that is. And now that 
 he could only work intermittently, he w^ould sit brooding for 
 hours, startling the fellow-workmen who came in to see him 
 
g38 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 with ghastly Heine-like jokes on his own hideous disease, Uv- { 
 ing no one exactly knew how, though it was supposed on sup- 
 plies sent him by a shop-keeper uncle in the country, and con- 
 stantly 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. 
 But from the moment when Elsmere, struck in the lecture-room 
 by the pallid, ugly face and swathed neck, began regularly to 
 eo 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 pitif uUy, silently dependent on his own stock of 
 strength and comfort. . 
 
 His lecturing and teaching work also was becoming more and 
 more the instrument of far-reaching change, and tberefore 
 more and more difficult to leave. The thoughts of God, the 
 image of Jesus, which were active and fruitful in his own mmd, 
 had been gradually passing from one into the many, and Rob- 
 ert 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 trem- 
 bling iov an humble prostration of the soul before the Eternal 
 Truth no words can fitly describe. With an ever-increasing 
 detachment of mind from the objects of self and sense, he felt 
 himself a tool in the Great Workman's hand. "Accomplish 
 rhv ourposes in me," was the cry of his whole heart and Me; 
 "use me to the utmost; spend every faculty I have, oh, Thou 
 whomoldestmen!'" 
 
 . But in the end his work^tself drove hm away. A certain 
 memorable Saturday evening brought it about. It had been 
 his custom of late to spend an occasional evenmg hour after his 
 
 ni^ht-school work in the North R Club, of which he was 
 
 now bv invitation a member. Here, in one of the inner rooms, 
 he would stand against the mantel-piece chatting, smoking 
 often with the men. Everything came up in turn to be dis- 
 cussed; and Robert was at least as ready to learn from the 
 practical workers about him as to teach. But m general these 
 informal talks and debates became the supplement of the bun- 
 day lectures. Here he met Andrews and the Secularist crew 
 face to face; here he grappled in Socratic fashion with objec- 
 tions and diflRcuJfcies, throwing into the task all his charm and 
 
ROBEBT ELSMERE. 
 
 639 
 
 all his knowledge, a man at once of no pretensions and of un- 
 failing 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 sallies of a boyish enthusiasm which were still 
 common enough in him. 
 
 He had already visited the club once during tlie week pre- 
 ceding 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 story-telling, 
 the Sunday-school, and of the way in which the attractions of 
 it had spread into other quartet's of the parish, exciting there, 
 especially among the clergy of St. Wilfrid's, an anxious and 
 critical attention. The conversation on Saturday night, how- 
 ever, took a turn of its own. Robert felt in it a new and curi- 
 ous note of responsibility. The men present were evidently be- 
 ginning 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 begin- 
 ning, but some of them were now actually teaching in the night- 
 school or helping in the variour hranche's of the large and over- 
 flowing boys' club. He listened to them for awhile in his favor- 
 ite attitude, leaning against the mantel-piece, throwing in a 
 word or twomow 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 for- 
 ward as the talk dropped a moment, he asked them, with an 
 accent more emphatic than usual, whether in view of this col- 
 laboration 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 puf- 
 fing away in a corner pecuHarly his own, and dedicated to the 
 glorification—in broad Berwickshire— of the experimental phil- 
 
(540 ROBEET KLSMEUE. 
 
 osophers, laid down his pipe and put on his spectacles, that h» 
 might grasp the situation better. Then Lestrange, m 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-Ues, 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 re- 
 ligion—by faith." •, , V J 
 He went back to his old leaning attitude, his hands behind 
 him The men gazed at him-at the slim figure, the trans- 
 parent, changing face-with a kind of fascination, but were 
 still silent, tiU Macdonald said, slowly, taking off his glasses 
 again and clearing his throat: ,r. 
 
 "You'll be aboot starrtin'a new church, I'm thmkm, Mis- 
 ther Elsmere?" _ _ , . 
 
 " If you like," said Robert, impetuously. i have no fear 
 of the gi-eat words. You can do,nothing by despising the past 
 and its products; you can also dfb nothing by being too much 
 afraid of them, by letting them choke and stifle your own hie 
 Let the new wine have its new bottles if it must, and never nund 
 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 hiskn(«s studying him, the spare, gray hair 
 brushed back tightly from the bony face, on the hps the 
 sUghtest Voltairean smile. Perhaps it was the coolness of his 
 look which insensibly influenced Robert's next words. 
 
 "However, I don't 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 wfll! But always, if I can 
 persuade you, with something in the name, and everything m 
 the body itself, to show that for the members of it life rests 
 stm, as all life worth having has ever- where rested on trust and 
 memory !-trust in the God of experience and history ^ memory 
 
BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 641 
 
 of that God's 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 circumstances, 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 ex- 
 cluding Him more and more from human love. But now, sup- 
 pose 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 organizing 
 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 be- 
 tween the squalid modernness of the scene, with its incongruous 
 sights and sounds, the club-room, painted in various hideous 
 * shades of cinnamon and green, the smoke, the lines and groups 
 of working-men in every sort of working dress, the occasional 
 rumbling of huge wagons 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 fellow-potters 
 as the hartist," because of his long hair, his little affectations 
 of dress, ^nd hi^ aesthetic 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 sweetheart 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 ri^ht hand and shook it 
 with^ a gesture of curious felicity, is this— what Mr. Elsmere 
 starts I'll join; where he goes iii go; what's good enough for 
 bim's good enough for me. He's put a new heart and a new 
 stomach into me, and what I've got he shaU 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 hinj 
 
542 ROBBBT ELSMBHB. 
 
 with it-I don't know as I'm very clear what he's driving at, 
 nor what good I can do'im-but when Tom Wheeler's asked 
 for he'll be there!" 
 
 A deep murmur, rising almost into a shout of assent, ran 
 through the little assembly. Robert bent f orwai-d , his eyes ghs- 
 tening a moved acknowledgment in his look and gesture. But 
 in reality a pang ran through the fiery soul. It was ' ' the per- 
 sonal estimate," after all, that was shaping their future and 
 his and the idealist was up in armsfor his idea, subhmely jeal- 
 ous lest any mere personal fancy should usurp its power and 
 
 A certain amount of desultory debate followed as to the pos- 
 sible outUnes of a possible organization, and as to the observ- 
 ances which might be devised to mark its rehgious character. 
 As it flowed on the atmosphere grew more and more electric. 
 A new passion, though still timid and awe-stmck, seemed to 
 shine from the looks of the men standing or sittmg round the 
 central figure. Even Lestrange lost his smile under the press- 
 ure of that strange, subdued expectancy about him; and when 
 Eobert 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 
 sunk into a chair and fainted. He was probably not uncon- 
 scious very long, but after he had struggled back to his senses, 
 and was lying stretched on the sofa among the books with 
 vsrhich it was Uttered, the solitary candle in the big room 
 throwing weird shadows about him, a moment of black de- 
 pression overtook him. It was desolate and terrible, hke a 
 prescience of death. How was it he had come to feel so ill? 
 Suddenly, as he looked back over the preceding weeks, the 
 phvsical weakness and disturbance which had marked them, 
 and which he had struggled through, paying as Uttle heed as 
 possible, took shape, specter-Uke, in his mind. 
 
 And at the same moment a passionate rebelhon 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 re- 
 solve, " for the work's sake !" - X +1, 
 
 He dragged himself up to bed and said nothing to Catherine 
 tiU 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 
 
EOBBET ELSMESB. 
 
 643 
 
 weeks if she would let him. Shocked by his looks, she gradu- 
 ally 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 compara- 
 tively small share in this ardent life. In spite of his tender- 
 ness 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 prodigaUy as it pleased the 
 quick mind and dehcate 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 an- 
 nounced that he must go off for awhile. 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 h>tle place on the Norman coast, near 
 Fecamp, with wLich he had first made acquaintance years be- 
 fore, 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 morn- 
 ing, between five and six o'clock, Catherine would standby the 
 ^little white-veiled 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 pos- 
 sible, they would sally forth before the glare became imbear- 
 able. The first event of the day was always Mary's batlie, 
 Which gradually became a spectacle for the whole beach, so in- 
 
^44 EOBBET EL8MBEE. 
 
 genious were the blandishments of the father who wooed hei 
 into the warm sandy shallows, and so beguiling the glee and 
 pluck of the two year-old English Mbe. 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 had established themselves, with Mary's nurse and a 
 French bomie to look after them ; would find the green wooden 
 shutters drawn close; the dejeuner waitmg for them in the 
 cool bare room; and the^ scent of the coffee penetratmg from 
 the kitchen, where the two maids kept up a dumb but per- 
 petual warfare. Then afterward Mary, emerging from her sun- 
 bonnet would be tumbled into her white bed upstairs, and 
 lie, a flushed image of sleep, tm the gatter of her Uttle feet on 
 the boards which alone separated one story from the other 
 warned mother and nurse that an imp of mischief was let 
 loose agam. Meanwhile Eobert, in the carpetless salon, would 
 lie back in the rickety arm-chair, which was its only luxury 
 lazily dozing and dreaming, Balzac, perhaps, in his hand, but 
 quite another comMie humaine unrolling itself vaguely mean- 
 while in the contriving optimist mind. • . J , 
 
 Petites Dalles was not fashionable yet, though it aspired to 
 be; but it could boast of a deputy, and a senator, and a pro- 
 fessor of the College de France, as good as any at Etretat, a 
 tired journalist or two, and a sprinkling of Eouen men of 
 business. Eobert soon made friends among them, more suo, 
 by dint of a rough-and-ready French, spoken with the most 
 unblushing accent imagmable, 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 onto 
 the high plateau through which was cleft far below the wooded 
 fissure of the village. Here they seemed to have cUmbed the 
 bean-stalk into the new world. The rich Normandy country 
 lay aU round them-the corn-fields, the hedgeless tracts of 
 white-flowered 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 chff, where the soU be- 
 came too thin and barren even for French cultivation, there 
 was a wild belt, half heather, half tangled grass and flower- 
 growth, which the English pair loved for their own special 
 
KOBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 645 
 
 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 night-jar, 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 win^. 
 
 Catherine raised her hand and laid it on Eobert's. The sud- 
 den tears dropped on to her cheeks. 
 
 ^' Did you hear it, Robert?" 
 
 He drew her to him. These involuntary signs of an abiding 
 pain in her always smote him to the heart. 
 
 '*Iam not unhappy, Eobert," she said at last, raising her 
 head. ' ' No ; if you will only get well and strong. I have sub- 
 mitted. 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 
 flame-colored waves, while he held her hand close and tender- 
 ly. No—she was not unhappy. Something, indeed, had gone 
 forever 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 self-tort-uring 
 of that first endless year was over. Love, and her husband, 
 and the thousand subtle forces of a changing world had con- 
 quered. 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 to-aay 
 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 formulae which is the crucial, the 
 epoch-making fact of our day. ' ' U nbelief , " 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 
 to-morrow. 
 
646 
 
 BOBBBT BLSMBBB. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 Meanwhile the Leyburns were at Burwood again. Rose's 
 summer, indeed, was much varied by visits to country houses 
 -many of them belonging to friends and acquamtances oi 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 gray-walled house. 
 Even the rain which poured down in August, quite unabashed 
 by any consciousness of fine weather elsewhere, was not as m- 
 tolerable 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 
 b"en the consequence of her trouble in the spring, but a painiul 
 ennui she could hardly disguise, a longing for she knew not 
 what She was beginning to take the homage paid to her gut 
 and her beauty with a quiet dignity, which was m no sense 
 false modesty, but impUed a certain clearness of vision, curious 
 and disquieting in so young and dazzhng a creatore. And 
 when she came home from her travels she would develop a 
 taste for long walks, breasting the mountains in rain or sun, 
 penetrating to their austerest solitudes alone, as though haunt- 
 ed by that orofound saying of Obermann, " Man is not made 
 for enjoyment only-to tristesse fait aussipartie de ses vastes 
 
 What, indeed, was it that ailed her? In her lonely mo> 
 ments, especiaHy m those moments among the high fells, be- 
 side some little tarn or streamlet, while the sheets of mist swept 
 by her, or the ?reat clouds dappled the spreading sides of the 
 hills, she thought often of Langham-of that first thrill o. 
 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 stiU roused in her a pity that 
 seemed to strain at her heart-strings. 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 feeUng. She must surely be a poor creat- 
 ure, else how could such a thing have befallen her and have 
 left so little trace behind. , , . j 
 
 And then, her hand dabbhng in the water, her face raised 
 
EOBBBT BLSMEBE. (547 
 
 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 wouJd follow one another. 
 
 " Hoti) kind he was that time ! How amusing this /" 
 Ot,"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 sit- 
 • tmg far up in the bosom of High Fell, "I want a friend badly. 
 Yet my lover deserts me, and I send awav my friend i" 
 
 One afternoon Mrs. Thornburgh, the ^car, and Rose were 
 wandermg round the church-yard together, enjoying a break 
 of sunny weather after days of rain. Mrs. Thomburgh's per- 
 sonal accent, so to speak, had grown perhaps a Httle 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 exceptionaUy, 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 
 mmd gave her an unfair advantage of him. For she would 
 ma,keuseof itto 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 
 rhornburgh, however, since her illness had awoke to that 
 inquisitive affectionate 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 m the little church yard where it seemed toherit 
 would be pleasant to rest. There was one comer in particular 
 wmch 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 i" 
 The vicar took no notice, but went on talking to Eose 
 William !" imperatively. * 
 The vicar turned unwillingly. 
 
ROBERT ELSMBRB. 
 
 " You know, William, if you wouldn't mindlying with your 
 feet that way, there would l>ejust /oom f or ,f J"*' , 
 course, if you will have them the other way- The shoul 
 ders in the old black silk mantle went up, and the gray curls 
 
 ^'Se Sritenance showed plainly that he thought the ] 
 
 ''T^y^SyTjt:::X "I am not thinking of those 
 thmJ nor do I wish to think of them. Everythmg has its 
 time aind place.^ it is close on tea, and Miss Eose says she must 
 
 ^'llrrThomburgh again shook her head, this time with a 
 
 ''Tou^.lfkm,'' she said, severely, ''as^^^^^^^ 
 voung man, instead of being turned sixty-six last birth^day. 
 
 And again she measured the spaces with her eye, checking 
 the results aloud. But the vicar was obdurately deaf. He 
 strolled on with Eose, who was chattering f « b^^^^b^jut a vi^t 
 to Manchester, and the little church gate clicked behind them 
 Hearing it, Mrs. Thomburgh relaxed her measurements. 
 They were only really interesting to her, after all, when the 
 vicar was by. She hurried after them as fast a» her short, 
 squat figure would allow, and stopped midway to make an ex- 
 
 ^^^^ carriage !" she said, shading her eyes with a very phimp 
 hand, " stopping at Greybarns !" 
 
 The one road of the valley was visible from the church-yard 
 winding along the bottom of the shallow green trough for at 
 least two miles. Greybarns was a farm-house just beyond ^ 
 Burwood, about half a mile away. , , , | 
 
 Mrs. Thomburgh moved on, her matronly fa«e aglow witb j 
 
 '""''Siy Jenkinson taken ill !" she said, "Of course, that;s| 
 Doctor Baker ! Well, it's to be hoped it won't be twms thts 
 time But, as I told her last Sunday, ' It's constitutional, my 
 dear 'I knew a woman who had three pairs! Five o clock 
 now. Well, about seven it'll be worth while sending to m- 
 
 *^"when she overtook the vicar and his companion she began 
 to whisper certain particulai-s into the ear that was not on 
 Rose's side. The vicar, who, like Uncle Toby, ^^PJ^^^^f ^.^^ 
 a fine natural modesty, would have preferred that his wife 
 
ROBERT ELSMEJlE. 
 
 64^ 
 
 should refrain ?rom whispering on these topics in Rose's pres- 
 ence. But he submitted lest opposition should provoke her into 
 still more audible improprieties ; and Eose 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 country-house of the neigh- 
 borhood ; an operation which formed the invariable pendant to 
 any of Rose's absences. 
 
 So, with a smiling nod to them both, the girl turned home- 
 ward. As she did so she became aware of a man's figura walk- 
 ing 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 man- 
 ner of matrons, the shortest prof essional visit could not be over 
 in this time. 
 
 She looked again, shading her eyes. She was nearing the 
 gate of Bur wood, 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 color rushed to Rose's cheek. In another minute she and 
 Hugh Flaxman were face to face. 
 
 She could not hide her astonishmeiit. 
 
 ''Why are you not in Scotland?*^ she said, after she had 
 given him her hand. '' Lady Helen told me last week she ex- 
 pected you in Ross-shire." 
 
 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 at- 
 mosphere 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 awhile. So this is Burwood?" 
 
 He had caught her just on the little sweep leading to the 
 gate, and now his eyes swept quickly over the modest old house, 
 with its trim garden, its overgrown porch and open casement 
 
650 
 
 BOBEET ELSMBBB. 
 
 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 dehghted to see her. But must you go in so soon? I 
 left my carriage half a mile below, and have been revehng in 
 the sun and air. I am loth to go in-doors yet awhile. Are. you 
 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 my-^ 
 self 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 sang- 
 froid 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 to-day to get to Ullswater?" 
 cried Rose, incautiously. 
 
 " Certainly. You see my hotel," and he pomted, smiling, to 
 a white farm-house standing just at the bend of the valley, 
 where the road turned toward Whinborough. persuaded 
 the good woman there to give me a bed for the night, took my 
 carriage a little further, 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 worshiper at the 
 shrine of Wordsworth and Nature. Helen and I long ago de- 
 fined a tourist as a being with straps. I defy you to discover a 
 strap about me, and I left my Murray in the railwjay carriage." 
 
 He looked at her, laughing. She laughed, too. The infec- 
 tion 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 any- 
 thing but natural— the child of the moment ! 
 
 " You are neither more practical nor more economical than 
 
nOBKRT ELSMERE. 
 
 6^1 
 
 when I saw you last," she said, demurely. ''When did you 
 leave Norway?" 
 
 They wandered on past the vicarage, talking fast. Mr. Flax- 
 man, 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, laugh- 
 ing and chatting, Eose 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. But 
 when they were through it Rose turned to the right aloB;g 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 al- 
 most constant prisoner on one pretext or another till they were 
 at the top. 
 
 Then she sunk down on a rock out of breath. He stood be- 
 side her, hf ting his brown wideawake from his brow. The air 
 below had been warm and relaxing. Here it played upon them 
 both with a delicious life-giving 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 !" 
 
 '^Nol" 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 1 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 
 
652 
 
 EGBERT ELSMERi!.. 
 
 gray roof "—and he pointed to Burwood among its fcrees^ 
 and this knoll of rocky ground." 
 
 His look traveled back to her, and her eyes sunk 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 to-day?" 
 
 You had never seen the Lakes," she repeated, in a prim 
 voice, her eyes still cast down, the corners of her mouth twitch- 
 ing. *'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. 
 
 Taquiner 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 1" 
 
 It could not be said at that precise moment that he had at- 
 tained it. Rather she seemed bent on hiding that face quite 
 away from him. It seemed to him an age before, drawn by 
 the 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. iTou thought I was pursuing 
 you— pressing you. ^oui* manner said *Go!' and I went. 
 But do you think that for one day, or hour, or moment I have 
 thought of anything eke in those Norway woods but of you 
 and of this blessed moment when I should be at your fleet, as 
 I am now?" 
 
 She trembled. Her hand seemed to leap in his. His gaze 
 melted, enwrapped her. He bent forward. In another mo- 
 ment 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 whi3i 
 was half memory, half shame. She drew back violently^ 
 ^vering her eyes with her hand. 
 
BOBEET ELSMBEB. 
 
 "Oh no no!" she cried, and her other hand struggled to get 
 frpe *^ don't don't talk to me so-I have a-a confession." 
 
 wttehed her, his hps trembhng a little, a stnile of the 
 
 He watcnea f^J J ^ understanding dawning in his 
 'XlhVgoS^^^^^^^^^^^ to him what he knew so well 
 Sdy ? K he conld only force her to say it on his breast. 
 
 But she held him at arm's length. 
 
 "You remember-you remember Mr. Langham? 
 
 " Remember him !" echoed Mr. Flaxman, fervently. 
 
 -CThoight-reading night at Lady Charlotte^, on the 
 way h^e he spoke to me. I said I loved him. I d^d love 
 
 '^S;/flirh"'faded. Hecouldhardlytellwhether 
 she was yieldmg or defiant as the words burst from her. 
 ITTxpiession, half trouble, half compunction, came into 
 
 ^'"fknew,''hesaid, very low; "or rather, I^^^^ 
 for an instant it occurred U> him to unburden hmiself, to ask 
 her p^on for that espionage of his. But no no ; not till he 
 Md hWe. " I g«e£^d, I mean, that there had been some^ 
 thinggravebetweenyou. X saw you were sad. I would have 
 given the world to comfort you." 
 
 was not easy. Then the smile broke once more. ^ 
 
 r^d yS have forgotten him as he f eserved I I were 
 not sure of that I could wish him all the tortures of the In- 
 fern^' As it is, I can not think of him; I can not let you 
 tS of him. Sweet, do you know that ever since I first saw 
 you the one thought of my days, the dream of my ngh s,^he 
 purpose of mv whole Ufe, has been to wm you? There was 
 Sher in the field; I knew it. I st,x>d ^7 ai^ j 
 failed vou-I knew he must in some form or other. Then I 
 wa^haZ and you resented it. Little tyrant, you made your- 
 TeK aS wSh tnany thorns! But, tell me tell me it is all 
 otJr~?o?r p^, my waiting. Make yom^eltsweet to me! un- 
 
 'tn'in?tlSsh?w'avered. His bliss was almost in his gra^- 
 Tht S 'Sung up, and Flazman found himself standmg by 
 her, rebuffed and surprised. 
 
654 
 
 KOBEET BLSMERE. 
 
 " No, no!" She cried, holding uut her hands to him though 
 all the time. " Oh, it is too soon! I suould despise myself I 
 do despise myself. It tortures me that I ci .n change and for- 
 get so easily; it ought to torture you. Ob, don't ask me yet 
 to— to — " 
 
 " To be my wife," he said, calmly, his cheek a little flushed 
 his eye meeting hei-s with a passion in it that strove so hard 
 for self-control it was almost sternness. 
 
 Not yet!" she pleaded, and then, after a moment's hesi- 
 tation, 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 m hand. Write to me, scold me, advise me: I will 
 be your pupU, I will tell you everything. You seem to me so 
 fearfully wise, so much older. Oh, don't be vexed, And-and 
 — in six months—" 
 
 She turned away, rosy as her name. He held her still, so 
 ngidly, that her hands were almost hurt. The shadow of the 
 hat fell over her eyes; the dehcate outlines of the neck and 
 shoulders m the pretty pale dress were defined against the green 
 hiU background. He studied her dehberately, a hundred dif- 
 ferent expressions sweeping across his face, A debate of the 
 most feverish interest was going on within him. Her serious- 
 ness at the moment, the chances of the future, her charac- 
 ter, his own-all these knotty points entered into it, had to be 
 weighed and decided with lightning rapidity. But Huge 
 Maxman was born under a lucky star, and the natal charm 
 held good. 
 
 At last he gave a lon^ 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 warn- 
 ing." 
 
 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 role she had 
 assigned to Mm. The touch o| unexpectedness, in ail she said 
 
ROBERT BLSMERE. 
 
 655 
 
 and did, acted with exhilarating force on his fastidious, ro- 
 mantic 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 up 
 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 Shan- 
 moor path again, and she was not so weakly dependent on his 
 physical aid, her spirits too retured. Pacing along with her 
 hands behind her, she began by degrees to throw into her ac- 
 counts 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 mountain-top abated something of its be- 
 v/ildering force, certain old grievances began to raise very 
 lively heads in her. TTie smart of Lady Fauntleroy's 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." 
 
 Jhave 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 v/ell in air. 
 
 V* 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 Fauntleroy's ball I devoted myself too 
 much to my family, and too little to — " 
 
 " Not at all!" cried Rose, hastily, adding, with charming in- 
 coherence, while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in lier rest 
 less fingers, Some cousins of course are pretty." 
 
 Be paused instant ; then a light Woke over his face, m& 
 
656 
 
 KOBERT ELSMEKE. 
 
 his burst of quiet laughter was infinitely pieasaiit to hear. 
 Rose got redder and redder. She reahzed diuily that she was 
 hardly maintain! ig 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 Sterne's ? 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 license to behave like a 
 bear toward 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 ' 
 —not even those of little cousins of seventeen! I say this, you 
 will ohserve, 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, expres- 
 sive face, were infinitely sweet. By a kind of fascination she 
 never afterward 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 tiU at the 
 drawing-room door she paused with amazing dignity. 
 
 ''Mamma," she said, throwing it open, "here is Mr. Flax- 
 man. He is come from Norway, and is on his way to UUs- 
 water. 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 maybe forgiven if, as he walked home 
 along the valley that night toward the farm-house where be 
 had established himself, he entertained a very comfortable 
 skepticism as to the permanence of that curious contract into 
 which Rose had just forced him. However, hQ was quite mis* 
 
EOBERT ELSMEBE. 
 
 657 
 
 t^ken. Rose's maiden dignity avenged itself abundantly on 
 Hugh Flaxman for the injuries it had received at the hands of 
 Langham. The restraints, the anomalies, the hair-sphttings 
 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 re- 
 sign himself once more to his part. But he achieved it, and 
 being himself a modern of the moderns, a lover of half -shades 
 
 ^nd 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 Agnes's cross-questioning on the mat- 
 ter history sayeth not. Of one thing, however, a conscientious 
 historian may be sure, namely, that Agnes succeeded in know- 
 ing as much as she wanted to know. Mrs. Ley burn was a lit- 
 tle puzzled by the erratic hues of Mr. Flaxman's 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 naively 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. Thorn- 
 
 ' burgh had interfered again; but, as we know, poor Catherine's 
 sorrows had raised a whole odd host of misgivings in the mind 
 of the vicar's wife. She prowled nervously round Mrs. Ley- 
 burn, 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 tht. art of baffiing 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, 
 
658 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 which caused her to forget a new cap, and let fall a plate ot 
 tea cakes, she was obliged to confess crossly to the vicar after- 
 ward 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. Flaxman's stay in the valley he 
 entered the Burwood drive about eleven o'clock, and Eose 
 €ame down the steps to meet him. For a moment he flattered 
 himself that her distm'bed 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. 
 
 Eobert 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 Flaxman's face fell. Certain letters he had received 
 from Elsmere in July had lain heavy on his mind ever since, 
 so pitiful was the half-conscious revelation in them of an in- 
 cessant physical struggle. An accident! Elsmere was in no 
 state for accidents. What miserable ill-luck ! 
 
 Eose read him Catherine's account. It appeared that on a 
 certain stormy day a swimmer had been observed m difficul- 
 ties among the rocks skirting the northern side of the Petites 
 Dalles Bay. The old haigneur of the place, owner of the still 
 primitive etablissement des tains, 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 him 
 self was in peril. He became unaccountably feeble in the 
 water, and the cry rose that he was sinking. Eobert, 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. Eobert succeeded, however, in bringing him in, and then, 
 amid an excited crowd, headed by the haigneur^ s 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 besch in his dripping bathing- 
 clothes, 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 
 
BOBBRT ELSMERE. 
 
 6S0 
 
 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 baigneur's sobbing grandchildren 
 to its mother in the viUage. Then, at last, Catherine got hold 
 of him, and he submitted to be ' -aken home, shivering, and 
 deeply depressed by the failure of . lis efforts. A violent gastric 
 and lung chill declared itself almost immediately, and for throe 
 days he had been anxiously ill. Catherine, miserable, dis- 
 trusting 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 to-morrow, and declares he must go home 
 next week. I have tried to persuade him to &tay here another 
 fortnight, but the thought of his work distresses him so much 
 that I hardly dare urge it. I can not 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. 
 
 shall not go on to Scotland," he said; ''Mrs. Elsmere 
 must not be left. I will go off there at once." 
 
 In Rose's soberly sweet 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 enchantx-ess of the day before, 
 but his wife that was to be. And yet she held him to his bar- 
 gain. All that his lips touched as he said good-bye was the lit- 
 tle bunch of yellow brier roses she gave him from her belt. 
 
 Thirty hours later he was descending the long hill from Sas- 
 setot to Petites DaUes. It was the 1st of September. A chiUy 
 west wind blew up the dust before him and stirred the parched 
 leafage of the valley. He knocked at the door, of which the 
 wood-work was all peeled and bhstered 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 sprung up with his old brightness. 
 
 Well, this is friendship ! What on earth brings you here, 
 
660 
 
 BOBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 old fellow? Why aren't you in the stubbles celebrating 
 Partridge?" 
 
 Hugh Flaxman said what he had to say very shortly, but se- 
 as to make Eobert's eyes gleam, and to bring his thin hand with 
 a sort of caressing touch upon Flaxman 's shoulder. 
 
 I sha'n't try to thank you— Catherine can if she Ukes. How 
 relieved she will be about that bothering journey of ours ! How- 
 ever, I am really ever so much better. It was very sharp while 
 it lasted ; and the doctor no great shakes. Bnt 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 sisters-in-law 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 Lon- 
 don 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 don't 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 fiances, I am to be allowed to write to her. You 
 may imagine how seductive it is to one of the worst and laziest 
 letter- writers 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 a^eement 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 friend's significantly. 
 
 suppose so," said Flaxman, quietly. Not even for RoL 
 ert's benefit was he going to reveal any details of that scene 
 
EOBEBT ELSMEEB. 
 
 on Hiffh Fell " Never mmd, old fellow, I am content. And, 
 tudeelfautede mieux, I should be content with anything that 
 BroSt nie nearer to her, were it but by the thousandth of an 
 
 inch." „ ^. ^ . 
 
 Eobert grasped his hand affectionately. 
 
 "Catherine," he called through the door, "never mmd the 
 supper; let it burn. Flaxman brings news." ^ 
 
 Catherine listened to the story with amazement. Certainly 
 her ways would never laave been as her sister's. 
 
 "Are we supposed to know?" she asked very naturally. ^ 
 
 " She never forbade me to tell," said Flaxman, smihng. ' i 
 think, however, if I were you, I should say nothing about it-- 
 vet I told her it was part of our bargain that she should ex- 
 plain my letters to Mrs. Leyburn. I gave her free leave to in- 
 vent any fairy tale she pleased, but it was to be her invention, 
 
 "°Ndther Eobert 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 . , , . , a 
 
 Next morning the weather had improved. Eobert, his hand 
 on Flaxman's arm, got down to the beach. Flaxman watched 
 him critically, did not like some of his symptoms, but though ; 
 on the whole he must be recovering at the normal rate, consid- 
 ering 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 Eobert estab- 
 lished in a sunny nook, and were strolling on along the sands. 
 
 "I think you must get him home, call in a first-rate doctor, 
 and keep him quiet," said Flaxman. "He will be all right. 
 
 ^""^^Hovf can we keep Wm quiet?" said Catherine, with a mo^ 
 mentary despair in her fine pale face. " All day long and all 
 nigl i 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 
 cahn autumn weather he spent with them before the return 
 ioiu-ney. Eobert 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 heav- 
 ilv into his long chair; and the burden of it all was the reng- 
 iou« future of the working class. He described the scene ic 
 
682 
 
 EOBEET ELSMEBE. 
 
 the club, and brought out the dreams swarming in his mind 
 presenting them for Flaxman's criticism, and dealing witb 
 them himself with that startling mixture of acute common 
 sense and eloquent passion which had always made him so ef 
 fective as an initiator. Flaxman listened dubiously at first as 
 he generaUy listened to Elsmere, and then was carried awky 
 not by the beliefs, but by the man. He found his pleasure iu 
 dal ying with the magni&cent possibility of the Church; doubt 
 ^v-ith him applied to all propositions, whether positive or nega- 
 tive; and he had the dislike of the aristocrat and the cosmo- 
 politan for the provincialisms of reUgious dissent. Political 
 dissent or social reform was another matter. Since the Rev- 
 olution, every generous child of the century has been open to 
 the fascmation of pohtical or social Utopias. But rehgion' 
 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 self-mockery 
 that Robert caught him, had in fact been slowly gaining pos- 
 session 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 m England, and in spite of the Church expansion we hear 
 so much about ; and suppose I beheve with you that things will 
 go badly without religion-what then ? Who can have a re- 
 ligion 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 can't 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 compeUing force in man and 
 m 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 duninution of the self in.man which is to 
 enable the individual to see the world's end clearly, and to care 
 not only for his own but for his neighbor's interest, which is to 
 make the rich devote themselves to the poor, and the poor bear 
 with the rich. If man only v;ould, he could, you say solve aU 
 the problems which oppress him. It is man's will which is 
 wernally defective, eternally inadequate. WeU, the great r& 
 
BOBSRT ELSMERB. 
 
 863 
 
 ligions 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, w© 
 will have another !" 
 
 He rose and began to pace along the sands, now gently glow- 
 ing in the warm September evening, Flaxman beside him. 
 
 A new religion I Of all words, the most tremendous ! Flax- 
 man 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 Eobert said, with a change of tone: I must have 
 that whole block of warehouses, Flaxman." 
 
 Must you?" said Flaxman, relieved by the drop from spec- 
 ulation to the practical. * ' Why?" 
 
 Look here!" And sitting down again on a sand-hill over- 
 grown with wild grasses and mats of sea-thistle the poor pale 
 reformer began to draw out the details of his scheme on its 
 material side. Three floors of rooms brightly furnished, well 
 lighted and warmed; a large hall for the Sunday lectures, con- 
 certs, entertainments, and story-telling; rooms for the boys' 
 club: two rooms for women and girls, reached by a separate 
 entrance; a library and reading-room 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 NaturaHst Club which had been started in May 
 on the Murewell plan; and, if possible, a gymnasium. 
 
 ''Money r he said, drawing up with a laugh in mid-career. 
 " There's the rub, of course. But I shall ihanage it." 
 
 To judge from the past, Flaxman thought it extremely likely 
 that he would. He studied the cabahstic lines Elsmere's 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 afterward 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 moment's 
 pause; ''the work itself will do that." 
 
 Again they strolled on, talking, plunging into details, tiH 
 Flaxman's pulse beat as fast as Eobert's ; so full of infectious 
 hope and energy was the whole being of the man before him. 
 
664 
 
 KOBBRT ELSMERK. 
 
 '' I can take in the women and girls now," Robert said onc^ 
 " Catherine has promised to superintend it all." 
 
 Then suddenly something struck the mobile mind, and h^ 
 stood an instant looking at his companion. It was the first timi 
 he had mentioned Catherine's name in connection with th^ 
 
 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 under- 
 stood each other^ 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 Two days later they were in London again. Robert was a 
 great deal better, and beginning to kick against invalid re- 
 straints. All men have their pet irrationalities. Elsmere's 
 irrationaUty 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 in- 
 dividuals 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 his way, and for a time the stimulus of London and of 
 his work seemed to act favorably upon him. After his first 
 welcome at the club he came home with bright eye and vigor- 
 ous step, declaring that he was another man. 
 
 Flaxman established himself in St. James's Place. Town 
 was deserted ; the partridges at Greenlaws clamored to be shot . 
 the head-keeper wrote letters which would have melted the heart 
 of a stone. Flaxman replied, recklessly, that any decent fellow 
 in the neighborhood was welcome to shoot his birds— a reply 
 which almost brought upon him the resignation of the outraged 
 keeper by return of ^ost. Lady Charlotte wrote and remon- 
 strated with him for neglecting a land-owner's duties, inquiring 
 at the same time^^hat he meant to do with regard to ''that 
 young lady." To which Flaxman repUed, calmly, that he had 
 just come back from the Lakes, where he had done, not indeed 
 all that he meant to do, but stm 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, 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 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 665 
 
 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 prohationy 
 
 Flaxman chuckled as he sent oflE the letter. 
 
 He stayed because he was too restless to be anywhere else, and 
 because he loved the Elsmeres for Rose's sake and his own. 
 He thought, moreover, that a cool-headed 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, Robert's attention was directed to getting 
 possession of the whole block of buildings, in which the existing 
 school and lecture-rooms took up only the lowest floor. This 
 was a matter of some difficulty, for the floors above were em- 
 ployed in warehousing goods belonging to various minor import 
 trades, and were held on tenures of different lengths. How- 
 ever, by dint of some money and much skill, the requisite clear- 
 ances 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 Elsmere's hands. 
 
 Meanwhile, at a meeting held every Sunday after lecture—a 
 meeting composed mainly of artisans of the district, but includ- 
 ing also Robert's helpers from the west, and a small sprinkhng 
 of persons interested in the man and his work from all parts— 
 the 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 ial ways there. It often struck Flax- 
 man afterward that in Robert's attitude toward Edwardes at 
 this time, in his constant desire to bring him forward, to asso- 
 ciate him with himself as much is possible in the government 
 and formation of the infant society, there was a half -conscious 
 pre^ience of a truth that as yet none knew, not even the ten- 
 der wife, the watchful friend. 
 
 ' The meetings were of extraordinary interest. The men, the 
 
666 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 great majority of whom had been disciplined and molded for 
 months by contact with Elsemere's teaching and Elsmere's 
 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 club hall on the night of Rob- 
 ert's address— sour, stohd, brutalized, hostile to all things in 
 heaven and earth ? 
 
 And we go on prating that the age of saints is over, ther61e 
 of the individual lessenmg 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 nm the quick comment of 
 the observer. 
 
 But incessant as was the reciprocity, the interchange and 
 play of feehng 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 raw- 
 ly and clumsily enough, and grew every week more and more 
 absorbing to all concerned, Flaxman was convinced that hard- 
 ly any rule or formula of the new society was ultimately adopted 
 which had not been for long in Robert's 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 mo- 
 ment the jarring charactei-s and ambitions of the men Elsmere 
 had to deal with might have dispersed that delicate atmos- 
 phere of moral sympathy and passion in which the whole new 
 bii"th seemed to have been conceived, and upon the main- 
 tenance of which its fruition and development depended. 
 But as soon as Elsmere appeared, difficulties vanished, enthusi- 
 asm sprung up again. The rules of the new society came sim- 
 ply 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, half-educated analysis of such a man as 
 Lestrange. 
 
 In the same way all personal jars seemed to melt away beside 
 
EOBBBT ELSMEEK. 
 
 667 
 
 him. There were some painful things connected with the new 
 departure. Wardlaw, for instance, a conscientious Gomtist, re- 
 fusing 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 wkom Robert 
 was bent on attaching to the society, had times when the thinga 
 he was half -inclined to worship one day he was much more in- 
 clined to burn the next in the sight of all men, and when the 
 smallest failure of temper on Robert's part might have entailed 
 a disagreeable scene and the possible formation of a harassing 
 left wing. 
 
 Bub Robert's manner to Wardlaw was that of a grateful 
 younger brother. It: was clear that the Gomtist could not 
 formally join the Brotherhood. But all the share and influence 
 that could be secured him in the practical working of it was se- 
 cured him. And what was more, Robert succeeded in infusing 
 vhis own delicacy, his own compunctions on the subject, intothG 
 men and youths who had profited in the past by Wardlav^'js 
 rough self-devotion. 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. Robert's quick temper had 
 been wonderfully disciplined by Hfe since his Oxford days. He 
 had now very little of that stiff-neckedness, so fatal to the aver- 
 age 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 Les- 
 trange, or the critical, hal£-patronizing approval of the young 
 barrister from the west who came down to listen to him, and 
 made a favor of teaching in his night-school, were as precious 
 to him as was the whole-hearted, the self-abandoning venera* 
 tion, which the majority of those about him had begun to show 
 toward the man in whom, as Gharles 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 
 ipe. Robert felt the same Joy in it, in its clean paint, the haK- 
 
668 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 filled shelves in the library, the pictures standing against the 
 walls ready to be hung, the rolls of bright colored matting 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 per- 
 suade him to remember that he was not yet physically him- 
 self. 
 
 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 
 enrollment of names in the book of the Brotherhood took place. 
 
 For two hours a continuous stream of human beings sur« 
 rounded 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 conspicu- 
 ous sign of membership. Men came of all sorts : the intelhgent, 
 well-paid 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 be- 
 cause 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 pupil-teachers, holding themselves 
 with straight, superior shoulders ; children, who came trooping 
 in, grinned up into Robert's face and retreated again with red 
 cheeks, the silver badge tight elapsed in hands which not even 
 much scrubbing could make passable. 
 
 Flaxman stood and watched it from the side. It was an ex- 
 traordinary 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 colored walls: 
 
 •'In Thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust;** 
 This do in remembrance of Me;'* 
 
 —the TBGOTes on either side of the hall lined with white marble, 
 and destaned, the one to hold the names of the living members 
 of the Brotherhood, the other to commemorate those who had 
 passed ^^ay (empty this last save for the one poor name of 
 **Charl^ Richards"); the copies of Giotto's Paduan Virtues 
 —faith, fortitude, charity, and the like — which broke the long 
 waU at intervals. The cynic in the on-looker tried to assert 
 
SOBERT ELSMEES. 
 
 669 
 
 itself against the feeKm^ with which the air seemea overcharged. 
 
 In vain. . i.. 
 
 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 much-loved, much-trusted 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; there is no lasting power for the man except as the slave 
 of the ideal" 
 
 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 Elsmere's 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 religion-making/ I watch it 
 with a fascination you at a distance can not possibly understand, 
 even when my judgment demurs, and my intelligence protests 
 that the thing can not live without Eismere, and that Elsmere's 
 life is a frail one. After the ceremony of enrollment, which I 
 described to you yesterday, the Council of the New Brotherhood 
 was chosen by popular election, and Eismere gave an address. 
 Two-thirds of the council, I should think, are working-men, the 
 rest of the upper class; Eismere, of course, president. 
 
 Since then the first religious service under the new consti- 
 tution hap. been held. The service is extremely simple, and the 
 basis of the whole is ' new bottles for the new wine.' The open- 
 ing 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 im 
 perfect look away from themselves to the knowledge and per- 
 fection of the All-Holy. It is Elsmere's drawing-up, I imag- 
 ine—at any rate it is essentially modem, expressing the modern 
 spirit, answering to modern need, as I imagine the first Chris- 
 tian prayers expressed the spirit and answered to the need of 
 an earlier day. 
 
 **Then follows some passage from the life of Christ. Eis- 
 mere reads it and expounds it, in the first place, as a lecturer 
 
C70 
 
 ROBEUT KLSMERH^ 
 
 might expound a passage of Tacitiis, histoi ically and critically. 
 His explanation of miracle, his etforts to make liis audience 
 realize 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 marvel- 
 ous element in rehgion. 
 
 But then when the critic has done, the poet and the behever 
 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 children's 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 Uttle girl laid her 
 head on the desk before her, and with choking sobs implored 
 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 aus- 
 tere even in the consolations of this new faith. He did but re- 
 mind 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 to-day, at this 
 moment, than we could have been without Jesus. You win 
 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 aU you can do for His sake, just as aU you could 
 do for a mother who died would be to foUow her wishes and 
 sacredly keep her memory.' 
 
 * ' That was about the gist of it. It was a strange little scene, 
 wonderfully su^estive 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 ia 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 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 niunber of psalms. And both psalms and hymns 
 are meant to be recited or sung constantly in the homes of the 
 members, and to become parfc of the every-day 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 Lord's 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 say- 
 ing of Vinet's : ' C est pour la religion que le peuple a le plus 
 de talent; c^est en religion quHl montre les plus d'e^rit^ 
 
 In a later letter he wrote : 
 
 **I have not described to you what is*perhaps the most 
 characteristic, the most binding practice of the New Brother- 
 hood. It is that which has raised most angry comment, cries 
 of 'profanity,' ' wanton insult,' and what not. I came upon 
 it yesterday in an interesting way. I was working with Els- 
 mere at the arrangement of the library, which is now becoming 
 a most fascinating place, under the management of a librarian 
 chosen from the neighborhood, 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 day's work. He thought that as it 
 was the dinner hour, and tlie man worked in the dock close by 
 I might find him at home. I went off to the model lodgingl 
 house 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, a few bloaters, gome potatoes, and bread. Round 
 
gY2 EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 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 httle 
 by his trade. Before him was a plate of bread, and his homy 
 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. j 
 The father lifted his right hand. I 
 * * * 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 P 
 It was the appointed response. As she spoke I recollected 
 the child perfectly at Elsmere's class. T also remembered that 
 she had no mother; that her mother had died of cancer m June, 
 visited and comforted to the end by Elsmere and his mfe. 
 
 " Well, the great question of course remains— is there a 
 eufficient strength of feeling and conviction behind these 
 things ? If so, after all, everything was new once, and Chris- 
 tianity was but modified Judaism." 
 
 ^ ''December 22. 
 
 I believe*'! shall sodn 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 shaU hear very lit 
 tie it seems, of angels and shepherds, and a gi-eat deal of the 
 humble chMhood of a Httle Jewish boy whose genms grown to 
 maturity transformed the Western world. To see Elsmere, with 
 his boys and girls about him, trying to make them feel them« 
 selves the heirs and fellows of the Nazarene child, to make them 
 understand something of the lessons that child must have 
 learned, the sights he must have seen, and the thoughts that 
 must have come to him, is a spectacle of which I will not misa 
 more than I can help. Don't imagine, however, that I am con^ 
 verted exactly !-but only that I am more interested and stim- 
 ulated than I have been forbears. And don^t expect me for 
 Christmas. I shall stay here." 
 
 New-year Vday. 
 
 am writing from the library of the New Brotherhood. 
 The amount of activity, social, educational, rehgiousrof which 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 673 
 
 this great building promises to be the center is already astonish- 
 ing. Everything, of course including the constitution of the 
 infcint society, is as yet purely tentative and experimental. But 
 for a scheme so young, things are falhng into working order 
 with wonderful rapidity. Each department is worked by com- 
 mittees under the central council. Elsmere, of course, is ex- 
 officio chairman of a large proportion ; Wardlaw, Mackay, I, and 
 a X3W other fellows ^run' the rest for the pi^ont. But each 
 committee contains working-pien ; aud it is the object of every- 
 body concerned to make the workman element more and more 
 real and eflScient. What with the ^ tax ' on the members which 
 was fixed by a general meeting, and the contributions from out- 
 side, 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 woi*k in connection with it during the year, but little 
 or much, as he or she is able. And every meeting, every un- 
 dertaking 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 sur- 
 prised—says he always expected it— and that there are thou- 
 sands who only want a rallying-point. 
 
 ' His personal effect, the love that is felt for him,'the passion 
 ar:d energy of the nature— never has our generation seen any- 
 thing to equal it. As you perceive, I am reduced to taking it 
 all seriously, and don't know what to make of him or myself. 
 
 **5A6, poor soul! is now always with him, comes down with 
 
1 
 
 gY4 EOBBET ELSMBBB. 
 
 him day after day, and works away. She no more believes in 
 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 fiUs me with increasmg wonder and reverence." 
 
 CHAPTEE L. 
 
 One cold Sunday afternoon in January, Flaxm'an, descending 
 the steps of the New Brotherhood, was overtaken by a young 
 Dr Edmondson, an able young physician, just set up for him 
 self as a consultant, who had only lately attached himself to 
 Elsmere, and was now helping him with eagerness to organize 
 a dispensary. Young Edmondson and Flaxman exchanged a 
 few words on Elsmere's lecture, and then the doctor said, 
 
 ^^""I'don't like his looks nor his voice. How -long has he been 
 hoarse like that?" „ . u 
 
 ' ' More or less for the last month. He is very much worried 
 by it himself, and talks of clergyman's throat. He had a touch 
 of it, it appears, once in the country." , . . ^„-m 
 
 "Clergyman's throat?" Edmondson shook his head dubi- 
 ously ' ' It may be. I wish he would let me overhaul him. 
 
 "I wish he would!" said Flaxman, devoutly. I wiU see 
 what I can do. I wiU get hold of Mrs. Elsmere^' 
 
 Meanwhile Robert and Catherine had driven home togethe^ 
 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 lum from fall- 
 ing. It was apparently another swoon of exhaustion As she 
 knelt beside him on the floor, having done for him al she could 
 watching his return to consciousness, Catherme's look would 
 have terrified any of those who loved her. There are somena- 
 tures which are never blind, never taken blissfully unawares, 
 and which taste calamity and grief to the very dregs. 
 
 "Robert, to-morrow you ivill see a doctor?" she implored ^ 
 him when at last he was safely in bed-white, but smihng. 
 He nodded. 
 
BOBERT ELSMERB. 
 
 675 
 
 "Send for Edmondson. What I mind most is this hoarse- 
 ness," he said, in a voice that was little more than a tremulous 
 whisper. 
 
 Catherine hardly closed her eyes all night. The room, the 
 bouBe, seemed to her stifling, oppressive, like a grave. And, 
 by 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 
 Eismere any news of him at all. Meanwhile the growth of the 
 New Brotherhood had absorbed its founder, so that the in- 
 quiries 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 de- 
 sires to see you. If you can, come to-morrow." 
 
 ''His mind is clear again /" Horrified by the words and by 
 the images they called up, remorseful also for his own long 
 silence, Robert sprung up from bed, where the letter had been 
 brought to him, and presently appeared down-stairs, where 
 Catherine, believing him safely captive for the morning, was 
 going through some household business. 
 
 I must g#, 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 
 Doctor Edmondson." 
 
 Put him off till the day after to-morrow. Dear little wife, 
 listen ; my voice is ever so much better. Murewell air v/ill 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 sav/ he felt it a call impossible 
 to disobey. A . ilegram was sent to Edmondson, and Robert 
 drove off to Waterloo. 
 
 Out of the fog of London it was a mild, sunny winter's 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 traveled it. 
 He forgot his weakness, the exhausting pressure and pub- 
 licity of his new work. The past possessed him, tiirust out the 
 
676 
 
 ROBERT ELSMBRB. 
 
 present. Surely he had been up to London for the day and 
 was going back to Catherine ! 
 
 At the station he haUed an old friend among the cabmen. 
 
 -Take me to the corner of the Mure well lane, Tom. Then 
 you may drive on my bag to the Hall, and I shaU walk over 
 the common." 
 
 The man urged on his tottei-ing old steed with a will. In the 
 streets of the httle town Robert saw several acquaintances who 
 stopped and stared at the apparition. Were the houses, the 
 •people real, or was it all a haUucination-his flight and his re- 
 turn so unthought of yesterday, so easy and swift to-day? 
 
 By the time they were out on the wild ground between the 
 market town and Murewell, Robert's spirits were as buoyant 
 as thistle-down. He and the driver kept up an mcessant gossip 
 over the neighborhood, and he jumped down from the car- 
 riage 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 imcommon bad," the man muttered to him. 
 self, as his horse shambled off. " Seems as spry as a lark aU 
 
 the same." , , . t , a +i,«» 
 
 Why the gorse was out, positively out in January! and tlie 
 thrushes were singing as though it were March. Robert 
 stopped opposite a bush covered with timid half-opened blooms 
 and thought he had seen nothing so beautiful since he had last 
 trodden that road in spring. Presently he was in the same 
 cart-track 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 earth's bareness everywhere-curling mists 
 -blue points of distant hiU-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. J^f 
 wood-path was ajar. Surely just inside it be sWd find Cath- 
 erine in her garden hat, the white-frocked child dragging be- 
 hind her' And there was the square stone house, the brown 
 corii-field. the red-ferown woods ' Why, what had the man been 
 
EGBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 677 
 
 doing with the study? White blinds showed it was a bedroom 
 now. Vandal I Besides, how could the boys have free access 
 except to that ground-floor room? And all that pretty stretch 
 of grass under the acacia had been cut up into stiff httle 
 lozenge-shaped 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, wliich had been once his own, with a dissatisfied 
 mouth, his undermind filled the while with tempestuous yearn- 
 ing and affection. In that upper room he had lain through 
 that agonized night of crisis; the dawn-twitterings of the sum- 
 mer birds seemed to be still in his ears. And there, in the dis- 
 tance, was the blue wreath of smoke hanging over Mile End. 
 Ah! the new cottages must be warm this winter. The chil- 
 dren did not lie in the wet any longer— thank God ! Yv^as there 
 time just to run down to Irwin's cottage, to have a look at the 
 institute? 
 
 He had been standing on the further side of the road from 
 the rectory that he might not seem to be spying out the land 
 and his successor's ways too closely. Suddenly he found him- 
 self chnging 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 
 thing. When the moment passed, he looked round him bewil- 
 dered, drawing his hand across his eyes. The world had grown 
 black— the sun seemed to be scarcely shining. Were those the 
 sounds of children's 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 
 sunk down, still gasping, among the roots of one of the great 
 cedars near the gate. After awhile 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 duU eyes. All 
 the light was lowered. A veil seemed to lie between him and 
 the familiar things. 
 
 However, by the t|me he reached the door of the Hall will 
 and nature had reasserts themselves, and he knew where he 
 was and what he had to do. 
 
 Vincent flung the dooj- open ^h his old lordly air 
 
678 
 
 EOBEET ELSMERK. 
 
 *'Why, sir! Mr, Elsmere!" 
 
 The butler's 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 dining-room 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 ain't much to be said for your looks 
 neither— seems as if London didn't suit you, sir." 
 
 Elsmere explained feebly that he had been suffering from his 
 throat, and had overtired himself by walking over the common. 
 Then, recognizing from a distorted vision of himself in a Vene- 
 tian mirror hanging by that something of his natural color 
 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, she's 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 V 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 \^ice, 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, I'm 
 sure we're very much obliged to you for meeting the squire's 
 wishes so promptly. You'll find him poorly, Mr. Elsmere, but 
 mending— oh, yes, mending, sir— no doubt of it." 
 
 Elsmere began to perceive a figure by the fire. A bony hand 
 was advanced to him out of the gloom. 
 
 ' ' That'll do, Meyrick. You won't be wanted till the evening." 
 The imperious note in the voice struck Robert with a sudden 
 sense of relief. After all, the squire was ^till capable of tramp- 
 ling 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 squire's Jace gleamed ahnost as 
 whitely as the tortured marble of the Medusa just above their 
 heads * 
 
 '^It's some inflammation in che eye§," the squire explained 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 679 
 
 briefly, " that's made Meyrick set up all this d d business of 
 
 blinds and shutters. I 'don't 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 man's knee. 
 
 have added to my knowledge," said the squire, dryly 
 ''Like Heine, I am qualified to give lectures in heaven on the 
 ignorance of doctors on eatth. And I am not in bed, which 1 
 was last week. For Heaven's sake don't ask questions. II 
 there is a loathsome subject on earth it is the subject of tho 
 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 wouldn't even subscribe to bury you? 
 Have you been working up the Apocrypha^as I recommended 
 you l^fst 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— holiday-making and ' slumming.' " 
 
 "Oh, I remember," interrupted the squire, hastily. "I was 
 low last week, and read the Church papers by way of a counter- 
 irritant. You have been starting a new religion, T see. A new 
 religion! Humph I^'* 
 
 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 a desirer,'^^ 
 
 "Because there are old abuses, is that any reason why you 
 should go and set up a brand-new 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. 
 
 " 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. 
 
ggQ ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Well, I certainly never told you to think anything— mor- 
 ally,"' 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 
 awlnle with an expression which had a spark of mahce in it. 
 It is not unhkely that some gossip of the Lady Aubrey sort had 
 reached him. Elsmere had always seemed to him oppressively 
 good. The idea that Mme. de NelteviUe had tried her arts 
 upon him was not without its piquancy. 
 
 But while Robert was answering a question he was aware of 
 ^subtle change in the squire's attitude-a relaxation of his own 
 eense of tension. After a minute he bent forward, peermg 
 through the darkness. The squire's head had fsJlen b9ck, his 
 mouth was slightly open, and the breath came Ughtly, quiver- 
 ingly through. Tte cynic of a moment ago had dropped sud- 
 denly into a sleep of more than chMish weakness and defense- 
 iessness. 
 
 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 ghm- 
 mered the DonateUo figure, and the divine Hermes, a glorious 
 shape in the dusk, looking scorn on human decrepitude. AU 
 round spread the dim walls of books. The Ufe they had 
 nourished was dropping into the abyss out of ken-they re- 
 mained. 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 
 
 ^'^^A bad sign! a bad sign!" he said, and shook his head 
 
 mournfully. , ■■ i.- u 
 
 After he had made an effort to take some food which \m- 
 cent pressed upon him, Robert, conscious of a stronger physical 
 malaise than had ever yet tormented him, was crossmg 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 mto 
 the room behind her, a curious film, so it seemed to him, dark- 
 ening her small gray eyes. ^ 
 
EOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 681 
 
 ''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 won't let me have the doctor." 
 
 Her voice .sunk into the most pitiful plaintiveness. She 
 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. Eohert stood 
 rooted, looking at the tiny withered figure in the black dress, 
 its snowy hair and diminutive face s vvathed in lace, with a per- 
 plexity into which there slipped an involuntary shiver. Sud- 
 denly he became aware of a woman by the fire, a decent, strong- 
 looking body in gray, who rose as his look turned to her. Their 
 eyes met ; her expression and the little jerk of her head toward 
 Mrs. Darcy, who was now standing by the cage coaxing the 
 mice with the weirdest gestures, were enough. Eobert turned, 
 and went out sick at heart. The careful, exquisite beauty of the 
 great hall struck him as something mocking and anti-human. 
 
 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 an- 
 other key. He insisted on a certain amount of light, and, 
 leaning on Robert's arm, went feebly round the book-shelves. 
 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 vin- 
 dictively, ''and of the other hours I maundered away in serv- 
 ices and self-examination ! Thank Heaven, however, the germ 
 of revolt and sanity was always there. And wlien once I got to 
 it, I learned my lesson pretty quick." 
 
 Eobert 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 it's sim- 
 ple. Go to your grave with your eyes open—th^Vs all. But 
 men don't learn it, somehow. Newman was incapable— so are 
 you. All the religions are nothing but so many vulgar 
 anaesthetics, which only the few have courage to refuse." 
 
 "Do you want me to contradict you ?" said Eobert, 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 
 
682 
 
 EOBEET ELSMEEE. 
 
 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 hving." 
 
 *'It shall be to me a sacred trust," said Elsmere, with emo-, 
 tion. ''Of course if you don't pubhsh it, I shall publish it." 
 
 ''As you please. Well, then, if you have nothing more ra- 
 tional 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. 
 
 Meyrick, who was staying in the house, and who had been 
 coming in and out through the evening, eying 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 carrying-chair. Vincent and a male at- 
 tendant appeared, and he was borne to his room, Meyrick per- 
 emptorily refusing to allow Eobert to lend so much as a finger 
 to the performance. They took him up the library stairs, 
 through the empty book-rooms and that dreary room which 
 had been his father's, and so into his own. By the time they 
 set him down he was quite awake and conscious again. 
 
 "It can't 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 imknown as 
 sweetly as any saint in the calendar." 
 
 Robert was going when the squire called him back. 
 
 " You'U stay tcT-morrow, 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. Out- 
 side, the night was shghtly 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 tartas hangings of the ponderous 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 683 
 
 carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the walls and ceil- 
 ings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the 
 loyal preparations made by some by-gone 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 wa^s, he took from his coat pocket 
 a French Anthologie" which had been Catherine's birthday 
 gift to him, and read a little before he fell asleep. 
 
 Then he slept profoundly— the sleep of exhaustion. Sud- 
 denly 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 gal- 
 leries. 
 
 He flung on his dressing-gown, and ran out in the direction 
 of the squire's room. 
 
 The hideous cries and scufiaing 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 squire's room was empty, but the door into the lumber- 
 room 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 
 bands on the throat of the doctor— horrible ! 
 
 They released poor Meyrick, who staggered, bleeding, into 
 i;he squire's room. Then Robert and Benson got the squire 
 back by main force. The whole face was convulsed, the poor, 
 shrunk^en limbs rigid as iron. Meyrick, who was sitting gasp- 
 ing, by a superhuman effort of will mastered himself enough 
 to give directions for a strong opiate. Benson managed to con^ 
 trol the madman while Robert found it. Then between then? 
 they got it swallowed. 
 
 But nature had been too quick for them. Before the opiate 
 could have had time to work, the squire shrunk together like i 
 puppet of which the threads are loosened, and fell heavily side 
 ways out of his captors' hands on to the bed. They laid him 
 there, tenderly covering him from the January cold. Th^ 
 swollen eyelids fell, leaving just a thread of white visible un- 
 derneath; the clinched hands slowly relaxed; the loud breath 
 ing seemed to be the breathing of death. ^ 
 
684 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Meyrick, whose wound on the head had been hastily bouud 
 up, threw himself beside the bed. The night-light beyond cast 
 a grotesque shadow of him on the wall, emphasizing, 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 hps of an Antigone or a Gloucester. 
 
 *'The last— the last!" he said, choked, the tears falling 
 down his lined cheeks on to the squire's 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 Eobert. 
 
 ''He wouldn't have Benson to-night. 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, bare-footed, 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 ! ' 'l 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 withei:ed 
 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. 
 Elsmere, he suffered. And he's 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 I'll 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 he'd say a word, but he moped. His books didn't seem 
 to please him, nor anything else. I've just broke my heart 
 over him this last year." 
 
 There was silence a moment in the big room, hung round 
 with the shai>es of by -gone Wendovers. The opiate had tak^' 
 
EOBBBT ELSMEEE. 
 
 nfl^^r^t The squire's countenance was no longer convulsed. 
 T^e tea?broTwascalm: a more than common dignity and 
 ihegreat Drow wd, peaked face. Eobert bent over 
 
 SSl^^lbt mXat c^^^^^ -ay: the dying 
 
 scholar and thinker lay before him. 
 
 " Will he rally?" he asked, under his breath. 
 
 Mevrick shook his head. 
 
 "I doubt it. It has exhausted all the strength he had 
 left The heart isfailing rapidly. I think he will sleep away 
 And Mr. Elsmere, you go-go and sleep. Benson and 1 11 
 tatch Oh, my scratch is nothing, sir. I'm used to a rough- 
 rltmble life?^ But you go. If there's a change we'll wake 
 
 ^Elsmere bent down and kissed the squire's forehead tende^^^ 
 ly as a son might have done. By this time he himself could 
 harSy stand. He crept away to Ms own room, his nerves stiU 
 qSing with the terror of that sudden waking, the horror of 
 
 M wa™fmpossible to sleep. The moon was at the full outside^ 
 ie drew back the curtains, made up the fire, and, wrapping 
 himself ila fur coat which Flaxman had lately forced upon 
 S sat where he could see the moonUghted park, and still be 
 
 within the range of the blaze. f^^^H^h weak- 
 
 As the excitement passed away a reaction of ^verish weak 
 nets se^^in The strangest whirlwind of thoughts fied through 
 h m in the darkness, suggested very often by the figures on the 
 seventeenth-century tapestry which '^^^J^^lZ^!.^elnl"s 
 those the trees in the wood-path? Surely t^^Jf^^^^^^^f^' 
 fleure traiUng-and that dome-strange! Was he still walk 
 S Grey's funeral procession, the Oxford buildings looking 
 Sdly down? Death here! Death there! Death ^y^^i 
 vawning under life from the beginning! The veil which hides 
 Tco" mon abyss, in sight of which men could not alw^^^^ 
 hold themselves and live, is rent asunder, and he looks, shud 
 
 Srimage changed, and in its stead, Jh^^old faM^^^^ 
 image of the river of Death took possession of him. stood 
 hTmself on the brink; on the other s de -/^^.G^rey ^d^e 
 sauire But he felt no pang of separation, of pam ; for Jie hun- 
 seS was jit about to cross and join them! And during a 
 ^^nge, brief lull of feeling the mind harbored nnage and ex- 
 pectation alike with perfect calm. 
 
686 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 Then the fever spell broke— the brain cleared— and he was 
 terribly himself again. Whence came it-this fresh, inexora- 
 ble consciousness? He tried to repel it, to forget himself, to 
 cling blindly, without thought, to God's love and Catherine's. 
 But the anguish mounted fast. On the one hand, this fast- 
 growing certainty, urging aud penetrating through every nerve 
 and fiber 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 OodI 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 hoar-frost. Was that a heron, rising for an 
 instant, beyond the bridge, in the unearthly blue? 
 
 And quietly— heavily— like an irrevocable sentence, there 
 ^ ime, 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 hufnan cries : 
 
 " Quittez le long espoir, et les vastes pensees.*' 
 
 He sunken 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 pensees!^^ 
 
 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 Elsmere's return to Murewell, where he left the 
 squire still alive (the telegram announcing the death reached 
 Bedford Square a few hours after Eobert's arrival), Edmondson 
 came up to see him and examine him. He discovered tuber- 
 cular disease of the larynx, which begins with slight hoarseness 
 and weakno.!s, 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 cliill at Petites D^^lles acting upon a constitution 
 never strong, and at that moment peculiarly susceptible to mis- 
 
BOBBBT BLSMEEB. 687 
 
 cMef. And of course the speaking and preaching of the last 
 four months had done enormous harm. _ 
 
 It was with great outward composure that Elsmere received 
 his arrit de mort at the hands of the young doctor, who an- 
 nounced the result of his exammation with a hesitatmg hp and 
 a voice which struggled in vam to preserve its professional 
 calm He knew too much of medicine himself to he deceived 
 by Edmondson's optimist remarks as to the possible effect of a 
 warm climate hke Algiers on his condition. He sat down, rest- 
 ing his head on his hands a moment; then, wringing Edmond- 
 son's hand, he went out feebly to find his wife. 
 
 Cathermehad been waiting in the dining-room, her whole 
 soul one dry tense misery. She stood looking out of ,the win- 
 dow taking curious heed of a Jewish wedding that was gomg 
 on in the square, of the preposterous bouquets of the coachman - 
 and the gaping circle of errand-boys. How pinched the bride 
 looked in the north wind! 
 
 When the door opened and Catherme saw her husband come 
 m-her young husband, to whom she had been married not 
 vet four years-with that indescribable look in the eyes which 
 seemed to divine and confirm all those terror^which had been 
 shaking her during her agonized waiting, there followed a mo- 
 ment between them which words can not render When it 
 ended-that half-articula-te convulsion of love and anguKh- 
 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. -n i 
 
 " Then I wUl," 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 Uve, to make a brave 
 end among them? Ah, no ! no I those two months are hers! 
 
 So without' any outward resistance, he let the necessary 
 prep'arations be made. It wrung his heart to go, but he could 
 Dot wring hers by staying. 
 
 Aft-r his interview with Robert, and his further interview 
 with Catherine, to whom he gave the most minute recom- 
 mendations and directions, with a reverent gentleness which 
 seemed to make the true state of the case more ghastly plam 
 to the wife than ever, Edmondson went off to Flaxman. 
 Flaxman heard his news with horror. 
 
888 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 A fead case, you say— advanced?" 
 
 Lad case !" Edmondson repeated, gloomily. *'He has 
 been fighting against it too long under that absurd delusion of 
 clergyman's throat. If only men would not insist upon being 
 their own doctors! And, of course, that going down to Mure- 
 well the other day was madness. I shall go with him to Al- 
 giers, and probwioJy 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 after- 
 noon, he went like a man going himself to execution. In the 
 haU he met Catherine. 
 
 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 clhnate may do wonders." 
 
 She looked at him with the most heart-rending of smiles. 
 
 ''Will you go in to Eobert? He is in the study." 
 
 He went in trepidation, and found Eobert lying tucked up 
 on the sofa, apparently reading. 
 
 ''Don't— don't, old fellow," he said, affectionately, as Flax- 
 man -almost broke down. "It comes to all of us sooner or 
 later. Whenever it comes we think it too soon. I relieve 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 
 ytni and it? Well, in a sense, I have had my joy, the first- 
 fruits of it at least." 
 
 But as he threw his arms behind his head, leaning back on 
 them, Flaxman saw the eyes darken and the naive boyish 
 mouth contract, and knew that under all these brave words 
 there was a heart which hungered. 
 
 " How strange !" Eobert went on, reflectively; '' yesterday I 
 was travehng, walking like other men, a member of society. 
 To-day 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, to-night is the 
 story-telling. W\M you read to them? I have the book here 
 prepared— some sc^Bnes from 'David Copperdeld.' And you 
 will tell them?" 
 
ROBERT BLSMEEB. ®89 
 
 » 1- ;i iMit Flaxman undertook it. Never did he for- 
 .etth« SonTom" ous rumor had spread, and the New 
 get the scene, boin ij^possible to give the reading. 
 
 of straSed faces listened to Flaxman's 
 
 A hall full messages of cheer and exhor- 
 
 TZ^'Zl^nTJ^^^^^^^^ through the place 
 
 SSet oSe was blocked, Sen looking dismally into each 
 Serl eyeT women weeping, children sobbing for sympathy, 
 Sing themselves at once shelterless and forsaken. When 
 ELmerJheard the news of it he turned on his face, and a«ked 
 
 ^^L^pStti*^^^^^^ Brotherhood 
 
 rjirsoT^^^^^^^^ 
 
 foSS breakdown. Catherine found herself besieged by 
 off^s of help of various kinds. One ofEer Flaxman Persuaded 
 hSracS. ItwastheloanofavmaatElBia^^^^^ 
 above Algiers, belongmg to a connection of his own. A resi 
 denl on tL spot was to take all trouble oif their hands ; they 
 were to find servants ready for them, and every comfort 
 
 Satherine made every arrangement met every kindness 
 with a seM-reliant calm that never failed. But it seemed to 
 Flaxman that her heart was broken-that half of ter, m fef - 
 L was already on the other side of this horror which stared 
 thim ilintheface. Was it his perception of t which stirred ^ 
 Bobert after awhile to a greater hopefulness of speech, a xx)n- 
 stant bright dwelling on the flowery sunshine J^^^^^ ^^^J, 
 were about to exchange the fog and cold_of London? The mo- 
 mentary revival of energy was more pitiful to Flaxman than 
 his first quiet resignation. 
 
 He himself wrote every day to Rose. Strange love lettersi 
 in which the feeling that could not be avowed ran as a fiery 
 under-current through all the sad brotherly record of the in- 
 valid's doings and prospects. There was deep trouble m Long 
 Whindale. Mrs. Leyburn was tearful and hysterical, and 
 wished to rush off to town to see Catherine. Agnes wrote m 
 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; 
 aad after a little consultation it was so arranged, Mrs. Ley 
 
690 
 
 BOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 bum being tenderly persuaded, Robert himself writing, to stay 
 ?vhere she was. 
 
 The morning after the interview with Edmondson, Robert 
 ent for Murray Edwardes. They were closeted together for 
 iearly an hour. Edwardes came out with the look of one who 
 las been lifted into ^'heavenly places." thank God," he 
 iaid to Catherine, with doep emotion, that I ever knew him. 
 I pray that I may be found worthy to carry out my pledges to 
 lim." 
 
 When Catherine went into the study she found Robert gaz- 
 ing 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 Flaxman's!" 
 ; The rest of the time before departure he spent almost en- 
 tirely 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 
 iU had been perforce overthrown. But his struggle against 
 breathlessness and weakness, and all the other symptons of 
 his state during these last days, was heroic. On the last day 
 of all, by his own persistent wish, a certain number of mem- 
 * bers of the Brotherhood came to say good-bye to him. They 
 came in one by one, Macdonald first. The old Scotchman, 
 from the height of his sixty years of tough weather-beaten 
 manhood, looked down on Robert with a fatherly concern. 
 
 *'Eh, Mister Elsmere, but it's a fine place yur gawin' tu, 
 they say. Ye'U do weel there, sir— yell do weeL And as for 
 the wark, sir, we'll keep it oop— we'll not let the deil mak' hay 
 o' it, if we knaws it— the auld leer !" he added, with a phrase- 
 ology which did more honor to the Calvanism of his blood 
 than the philosophy of his training. 
 
 Lestrange came in, with a pale sharp face, and said Kttle 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 toward le grand secret. You, who preached to 
 us that consciousness, and God, and the soul are the only re- 
 alities—are you so sure of it now you are dying, as you were 
 in health? Are your courage, your certainty, what they 
 
BOBEET ELSMEKE. 
 
 w.re«" These were the sort of questions that seemed to under- 
 
 '''ZZl::^^^^^^^^ i-it, Hubert did his best to 
 mt aide his consciousness of it. He thanked him for his help 
 rthe past and implored him to stand by the young society 
 
 ^"'I'lLf Cdly come hack. Lestrange. But what does one 
 man matter? One soldier falls, another presses forward. 
 The walchUaker ro^^^ then paused a moment, a flush pass- 
 
 '"^'We'caS'stand without you 1" he said, abruptly; then, see 
 ing Eobert's look of distress, he seemed to ca^t about for some- 
 hig reassuring to say, but could find nothing. Eobert at 
 last held out his hand with a smile, and he went. He left Els 
 mSesteuggUng with a pang of horrible depressi^^^ tireahty 
 Tere wis no m^an who worked harder at the New Brotherhood 
 during the month that followed than ^f^^^^^'-^l^'^'^^, 
 under perpetual protest from the /rondeur within him, but 
 something stung him on^on-till a habit had been termed 
 wWch premised to be the joy and salvation of his later life^ 
 Was it the haunting memory of that thm flgure-the hand 
 clinging to the chair-the white appealing look? 
 
 ofhefs came and went, tiU Catherine trembled for the conse- 
 quences. She herself took in Mrs. Eichards and her children, 
 comforting the sobbing creatures afterward with a calmness 
 bom of her own despair. Robson, in the last stage himself, 
 sent him a grimly characteristic message. " I shaU 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 guess- 
 ing at. May the blessing of one who never blessed thing or 
 creature before he saw you, go with you!" 
 After it all, Robert sunk on the sofa with a groan. 
 "No more!" he said, hoarsely-" no more! Now for air-- 
 tbe sea? To-morrow, wife, to-morrow! Cras ingens iteraU 
 musmqmr. Ah, me! I leave m?/ new Salamis behind !" 
 
 But on that last evening he insisted on writing letters to 
 Langham and Newcome. 
 
 "I will spare Langham the sight of me," he said, smiling 
 sadly. "And I wiU spare myself the sight of Newcome-I 
 could not bear it, I think. But I must say good-bye— for i 
 love them both." 
 Next day, two hours after the Elsmeres had left for Dover. 
 
692 
 
 BOBEBT ELSMEBE. 
 
 a cab drove up to their house in Bedford Square, and New- 
 come descended from it. *'Gbne, sir, two hours ago," said 
 the house-maid, and the priest turned away with an involun- 
 tary gesture of despair. To his dying day the passionate heart 
 bore the burdens of that "too lat©,'' beUeving 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 im- 
 possible. 
 
 Flaxman went down with them to Dover. Rose, in the 
 midst of all her new and womanly care for her sister and Rob- 
 ert, was very sweet to him. In any other circumstances, he 
 told himself, he could easily have broken down the flimsy bar- 
 rier between them, but in those last twenty-four 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 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 traveler; the villa was luxurious, the weather 
 good. 
 
 ''I have got rooms close by them in the vice-consul's cot- 
 tage," 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 EngUsh June— when an English 
 June behaves itself. Elsmere's 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 marvelous. 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 '— 0 Flaxman! An enchanted 
 
ROBERT ELSMEEE. 
 
 lor,^ air sun warmth, roses, orange-blossom, new potatoes 
 ™nise ve^d Eastern beauties, domed Mosques and 
 ^ \? f MaMir-everything that feeds the outer and the 
 preaching ^aM^^ ^^^^^^ making to the depth 
 
 S'^lTlted ai Terween us and the curve of the bay, for 
 t ;^fpr!t L^ven One's soul seems to escape one, to pour 
 Sote'SousVeofthemo^^^^ I am better-I 
 
 '''"ttr^tSrishes exceedingly. She lives mostly on oranges 
 ividiy iiu hv sixtv nuns who inhabit the convent 
 
 ?lmag^^e t[ she were a trifle older, her mother would hardly 
 vSi STiroceedings of these dear berosaried women with so 
 
 ""tsT£!*s^e writes more letters than Clax-issa and re- 
 ceivt^mofe th'an an editor of the ' Times.' I h^ve the stro^^^ 
 ^cl vtws as vou know, as to the vanity 'of letter-wnting. 
 Sere wi a tfme when you shared them, but there are cir^ 
 SSaTcesand conjunctures alas! J^^'^^^.^^Jl,^^ 
 sure of his friend or his friend's pnnciples. Kmd friend, gooa 
 Mlow lo often to Elgood Street. Tell me everything about 
 everybody iTis posSble, after all. that I may live to come 
 
 '^But: wSLter, alas! the lett.1. fell into a veij different 
 strain The weather had changed, had turned mdeM damp 
 anT?ainy the natives of course declaring that such gloom and 
 Stm S January had never been known before Edmondson 
 wrote in discouragement. Elsmere had had a touch of co d 
 had been confined to bed, and almost speechless. His letter 
 was full of medical detail, from which Flaxman gathered fiat 
 in spite of the raUy of the first ten days, it was c ear that he 
 disease was attacking constantly fresh tissue. He is vei j 
 depressed, too," said Edmondson; " I have never seen him so 
 yel He sits ^nd looks at us in the evening sometimes with 
 eyes that wi'ing one's heart. It is as though, after havmg for 
 a moment alloled himself to hope, he found it a doubly hard 
 task to submit." ^, i, 
 
 Ah, that depression! It was the last eclipse through which 
 a radiant soul was called to pass: but while it lasted^*/^^ 
 black indeed. The implac&ble reality, obscured at first by 
 the emotion and excitement of farewells, and then by a Driei 
 spring of hope and returning vig6r, showed itself now m all its 
 
694 
 
 ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 stem 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 theso 
 dark days he would sit crouching over the wood-fire in the 
 little salon, or He drawn to the window looking out on the rain- 
 storm bowing the ilexes or scattering the meshes of clematis, 
 silent, almost always gentle, but turning sometimes on Cathe^ 
 rine, or on Mary playing at his feet, eyes which, as Edmond 
 son said, wrung the heart." 
 
 But in reality, under the husband's depression, and undei 
 the wife's 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 
 last effort, Robert his last stand. As we know, ever since that 
 passionate submission of the wife which had thrown her mor- 
 ally at her husband's 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 * i him, that Catherine's 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 faU away perforce from a 
 spirit as pure as it was humble, and the eternal light, the Hght 
 of the Crucified, shine through. 
 
 Probably, if there had been no breach in Robert's serenity, 
 Catherine's 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 somberness that 
 as the days went on had its points and crests of feveri^ irrita- 
 tion, her anguished pity came to the help of her creed. Robert 
 felt himself besieged, driven within the citadel, her being urg- 
 
ROBERT ELSMERE. 
 
 ing grappling with his. In little half-articulate words and 
 wfy's in her Attempts to draw him back to some of their old 
 reliious books and prayers, in those kneelmg vigils he often 
 Sund her maintaining at night beside him, he felt a persistent 
 attackfiwhich 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 1 nging to be at one with those who love 
 them, at whatev r cos before the last farewell. And the 
 sunpler Christian faith has still to create around it those 
 venerable associations nd habits which buttress mdmdual 
 feebleness and diminish the individual effort. 
 
 One early Fbruary morning, just before dawn Eobert 
 stretched out his hand for bis wife, and found her kneelmg 
 beside him. The dim, mingled light showed him her face 
 vaguely-her clasped hands, her eyes. He looked at her m 
 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 ariks round him, "if you would but stretch out your hand 
 to the true comfort-the true help-the Lamb of God sacrificed 
 
 for us!" 
 He stroked her hair tenderly. 
 
 "My weakness might yield-my true best self never. 1 
 know Whom I have believed. Oh, my darhng, be content. 
 Your miseiy, yoiu- prayers hold me baok from God-from that 
 truth and that trust which can alone be honestly mine. Sub- 
 mit, my wife! Leave me in God's 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 self- 
 abaseinent. They had had their last struggle, and once more 
 he had conquered. Afterward 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 lite a scrupulous chad that dares not take for granted 
 more than its father has allowed it to know. At the same 
 
690 
 
 ROBERT KLSMERE. 
 
 time, it was plain to those about him that the onl}- reaUties to 
 him in a world of shadows were God— love- the soul. 
 
 One dayjae suddenly caught Catherine's hands, drew her 
 face to him, and studied it with his glowing and hollow eyes, 
 as though he wt>uld draw it into his soul. 
 
 *'He made it," he said, hoarsely, as he let hergo— this love 
 — this yearning. And in life He only makes us yearn that He 
 may satisfy. He can not lead us to the end and disappoint the 
 craving He Himself set in us. No, no— could you— could 1 
 — do it? And He, the source of lov^e, of justice—" 
 
 Flaxman arrived a few days afterward. 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 u]) 
 behind his carridge, climbed the long hill to El Biar, he saw 
 the whole marvelous place in a white light of beauty- -the bay, 
 the city, the mountains, olive-yard and orange-gro'^e, drown in 
 pale tints on luminious 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 Rose's 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 high-walled lane, which was really the old road up 
 the Mil, before the French brought zigzags and civilization. 
 She gave him news of Eqbert^ — better than he had expected. 
 Under the influence of one of the natural reactions that wait 
 on illness, the girl's to^ was cheerful, and Flaxman's spirits 
 rose. They talked of the splendor of the day, the discomforts 
 of the steamer, the picturesqueness of the landing — of any- 
 thing and everything but the hidden something which was 
 responsible for the dancing brightness in his eyes, the occa- 
 sional swift veiling of her own. 
 
 Then, at an angle of the lane, where a little spring ran cool 
 and brown into a moss-grown trough, where the blue broke 
 joyously through the gray cloiid of olive-wood, where not a 
 sight or sound was to be heard of all the busy life which hjdes 
 and nestles along the hill, he stopped, his hands seizing hers. 
 
 '*How long?" he said, flushing, his Hght overcoat falling 
 back from his strong, well-made frame; '-from August to 
 February— how long?" 
 
ROBERT EJLSMERE. 
 
 697 
 
 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 some- 
 times 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 
 'end confess himself, and when Flaxman left him, at once 
 or Catherine and told her. 
 erine, coming out afterward, met Flaxman in the little 
 ed hall. How she had aged and blanched I 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 self-contained and bright, talking much both with him 
 and Rose about the future. 
 
 And one little word of Rose's 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 ^tting on the balustrade 
 talking of Elsmere. In this nearness to death, Rose had lost 
 her mocking ways; but she was shy and diflScult, 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 won't— you won't 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. He 
 was terribly emaciated. They could only talk at rare intervals 
 in the d^y, and it was clear that his nights were often one long 
 
698 
 
 EGBERT BLSMERE. 
 
 struggle for breath. But his spirits were extraordinarily even^ 
 and his days occupied to a point Flaxman could hardly have 
 believed. He would creep dowi^-stairs at eleven, read his 
 English letters (among them always some from Elgood Street), 
 write his answers to them— those diflScult 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 con v^ent garden— 
 a dream of beauty. Overhead an orange canopy— leaf and 
 blov^som and golden fruit all in simultaneous perfection ; under- 
 neath a revel of every imaginable flower — ^narcissus andane 
 ones, geraniums and clematis; and all about, hed 
 monthly roses, dark red and pale alternately, making 
 leaf carpet under their feet. Through the tree-trunks sh^ 
 the white, sun- warmed convent, and far beyond were ghmps 
 of downward-trending 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 thi*ough some new 
 monograph or other, the parched lips opening every now and 
 then to call Flaxman's attention to some fresh light on an ob- 
 scure point— only to rehnquish 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 favorite poets— Wordsworth, Tenny- 
 son, Virgil. Virgil, perhaps, most frequently. Flaxman, 
 would read the -^neid aloud to him, Eobert following the 
 passages he loved best in a whisper, his hand resting the while 
 in Catherine's. And then Mary would be brought in, and he 
 would lie watching her while she played. 
 
 *'Ihave had a letter,'' he said to Flaxman one afternoon, 
 '^from a Broad Church clergyman in the Midlands, who im- 
 agines 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 
 
EOBiERT ELSMERE. 
 
 609 
 
 Church Eeform 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 shary 
 letter; I could not help it. It was borne in on me to tell him 
 that it is ail owing to him and his brethren that we are in the 
 muddle we are in to-day. Miracle is to our time what the law 
 was to early Christians. We must make up our minds about 
 it one Y^aj or the other. And if wepecide to'throw it over ai 
 Paul threw over the law, then we must fight as he did. Ther^i 
 is no help in subterfuge, no help in any thing but a perfect 
 sincerity. We must come out of it. The ground must be 
 cleared ; then may come the rebuilding. Eeligion itself, the 
 peace of generations to come, is at stake. If we could wait 
 indefinitely while the Church widened, well and good. But v^e 
 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— person- 
 ality, or intelligence, or what not ! What meaning can they 
 have as applied to Godf 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 saymg : * Quand 
 on me demande ce que c' est que Dieu, je V ignore; .quand on ne 
 me le demands pas, je le sais tresbienP No, we can not realize 
 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 Mey rick's 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 I 
 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 down- 
 stairs 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 Ufe, 
 
B'OBBRT ELSMERB. 
 
 A thP last They had a good nurse, but 
 
 Catherine was sitting by ™f " ^iTs^rmer sunrises al 
 
 „orldotsu„ "l-^JXk^het^ -»"^^^ 
 
 Petites Dalles, ^to loci's" ™"°f Her We was no longer her 
 
 i.g gaze resting on tbe garden f^^f ^.^.^t^^t she saw 
 nation took possession of her.^^^^^^^ xnisty slope in 
 
 the form of the Son of man P^^J^^^ turned and beckoned, 
 front of her, that the «;^3ef ^^^^^^^^ she cried, 
 
 ^Z^^-ZtXX^f -not, M. life is 
 
 its side. She followed It with a sort o^angmsh,^^^^^^^ 
 to her as though mmd. and body -J^ ^^^^f^^ J.^nly a 
 tuoving-that Bbe would not If ^he ^^^^^^ j^er trance shaken 
 <^ound from behind startled her. bhe tuinea, u« 
 
 °«^"^CrK^»i^^^^^ 
 
 rmSe .an .nt 
 
 forward hstenmg. ^ Mevrich-Catherine- 
 
 '^The child's cry!— thank God! Ufi. Meyii-<^ 
 
 "'she knew that he stood again on the stai^ at Murewell 
 
 in^Jat September night -^^-^ g^-.^^^'J^^Tr 
 that he thanked God because her pam was over. 
 
 An instant's strained looking and, emki°g bac^n 
 arms, he gave two or three gaspmg breaths, and died. 
 
 Five days later Flaxman and Eose brought Catherine Jiome. 
 It wl supposed that she would return ber -th^^^ 
 wood. Instead she settled down again m ^ond^^^ -"^^^^^^^ 
 of those whom Eobert E^re had l<^ved was jor^^^^^^^ ^ 
 
 widow. Every Sunday n^o™^"^' ^'%,,'Lrafternoon saw 
 she worshiped in the old ways; every Sunday attemoon 
 
r 
 
 SOBEET ELSMERE. 
 
 ?01 
 
 her black-veiled figure sitting motionless in a comer 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 u»^i**^=^^ . She lived for one hope only ; 
 and the v '*'"'^P^^^®^ ^ slowly. 
 
 Th^ i^ew Brotherhood still exists and grows. There are 
 .xiany who imagined that as it had been raised out of the earth 
 by Elsmere's 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." 
 
 All who have Head this Book 
 
 SHOULD READ 
 
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