ROBERT ELSMERE

By Mrs. Humphrey Ward

Author of "Miss Bretherton"

BOSTON: DeWOLFE, FISKE & CO. , 365 Washington Street

 Dedicated to the memory Of MY TWO FRIENDS

 SEPARATED, IN MY THOUGHT OF THEM, BY MUCH DIVERSITY OF CIRCUMSTANCE AND OPINION; LINKED, IN MY FAITH ABOUT THEM, TO EACH OTHER, AND TO ALL THE SNINING ONES OF THE PAST, BY THE LOVE OF GOD AND THE SERVICE OF MAN:

 THOMAS HILL GREEN

 (LAYE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)

 Died March 26, 1882

 AND

 LAURA OCTAVIA MARY LYTTELTON

 Died Easter Eve, 1886

[Transcriber's note: In one section, marked by **, two Greek letters, delta and epsilon, are transcribed as de. The allusion is to a poem byBrowning--'A Grammarian's Funeral']

[Italics are indicated by underscores. ]

BOOK I. WESTMORELAND. 

CHAPTER I. 

It was a brilliant afternoon toward the end of May. The spring had beenunusually cold and late, and it was evident from the general aspect ofthe lonely Westmoreland valley of Long Whindale that warmth and sunshinehad only just penetrated to its bare, green recesses, where the fewscattered trees were fast rushing into their full summer dress, while attheir feet, and along the bank of the stream, the flowers of March andApril still lingered, as though they found it impossible to believethat their rough brother, the east wind, had at last deserted them. Thenarrow road, which was the only link between the farm-houses shelteredby the crags at the head of the valley, and those far away regions oftown and civilization suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough onthe southern horizon, was lined with masses of the white heckberry orbird-cherry, and ran, an arrowy line of white through the greenness ofthe sloping pastures. The sides of some of the little books running downinto the main river and, many of the plantations round the farmswere gay with the same tree, so that the farm-houses, gray-roofed andgray-walled, standing in the hollows of the fells, seemed here and thereto have been robbed of all their natural austerity of aspect, and to bemasquerading in a dainty garb of white and green imposed upon them bythe caprice of the spring. 

During the greater part of its course the valley of Long Whindale istame and featureless. The hills at the lower part are low and rounded, and the sheep and cattle pasture over slopes unbroken either by wood orrock. The fields are bare and close shaven by the flocks which feed onthem; the walls run either perpendicularly in many places up the fellsor horizontally along them, so that, save for the wooded course of thetumbling river and the bush-grown hedges of the road, the whole valleylooks like a green map divided by regular lines of grayish black. Butas the walker penetrates further, beyond a certain bend which the streammakes half-way from the head of the dale, the hills grow steeper, thebreadth between them contracts, the enclosure lines are broken anddeflected by rocks and patches of plantation, and the few farms standmore boldly and conspicuously forward, each on its spur of land, lookingup to or away from the great masses of frowning crag which close in thehead of the valley, and which from the moment they come into sight giveit dignity and a wild beauty. 

On one of these solitary houses, the afternoon sun, about to descendbefore very long behind the hills dividing Long Whindale from Shanmoor, was still lingering on this May afternoon we are describing, bringingout the whitewashed porch and the broad bands of white edging thewindows, into relief against the gray stone of the main fabric, the grayroof overhanging it, and the group of sycamores and Scotch firs whichprotected it from the cold east and north. The Western light struck fullon a copper beech, which made a welcome patch of warm color in front ofa long gray line of outhouses standing level with the house, and touchedthe heckberry blossom which marked the upward course of the little laneconnecting the old farm with the road; above it rose the green fell, broken here and there by jutting crags, and below it the ground sankrapidly through a piece of young hazel plantation, at this presentmoment a sheet of bluebells, toward the level of the river. There was adainty and yet sober brightness about the whole picture. Summer in theNorth is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is elsewhere, but there is none of that opulence, that sudden splendor andsuperabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare green valleysthere is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer; the memory ofwinter seems to be still lingering about these wind-swept fells, aboutthe farm-houses, with their rough serviceable walls, of the same stoneas the crags behind them, and the ravines in which the shrunken brookstrickle musically down through the _débris_ of innumerable Decembers. The country is blithe, but soberly blithe. Nature shows herselfdelightful to man, but there is nothing absorbing or intoxicating abouther. Man is still well able to defend himself against her, to live hisown independent life of labor and of will, and to develop that tenacityof hidden feeling, that slowly growing intensity of purpose which is sooften wiled out of him by the spells of the South. 

The distant aspect of Burwood Farm differed in nothing from that ofthe few other farmhouses which dotted the fells or clustered beside theriver between it and the rocky end of the valley. But as one came nearercertain signs of difference became visible. The garden, instead of beingthe old-fashioned medley of phloxes, lavender bushes, monthly roses, gooseberry trees, herbs, and pampas grass, with which the farmers' wivesof Long Whindale loved to fill their little front enclosures, was trimlylaid down in turf dotted with neat flowerbeds, full at the moment weare writing of with orderly patches of scarlet and purple anemones, wallflowers, and pansies. At the side of the house a new bow window, modest enough in dimensions and make, had been thrown out on toanother close-shaven piece of lawn, and by its suggestion of a distantsophisticated order of things disturbed the homely impression leftby the untouched ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wideslate-window sills of the front. And evidently the line of shedsstanding level with the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals, the carts, or the tools which make the small capital of a Westmorelandfarmer. The windows in them were new, the doors fresh painted andclosely shut; curtains of some soft outlandish make showed themselvesin what had once been a stable, and the turf stretched smoothly up to anarrow gravelled path in front of them, unbroken by a single footmark. No, evidently the old farm, for such it undoubtedly was, had been butlately, or comparatively lately, transformed to new and softer uses;that rough patriarchal life of which it had once been a symbol andcentre no longer bustled and clattered through it. It had become theshelter of new ideals, the home of another and a milder race than oncepossessed it. 

In a stranger coming upon the house for the first time, on thisparticular evening, the sense of a changing social order and a vanishingpast produced by the slight but significant modifications it hadundergone, would have been greatly quickened by certain sounds whichwere streaming out on to the evening air from one of the divisions ofthat long one-storied addition to the main dwelling we have alreadydescribed. Some indefatigable musician inside was practising the violinwith surprising energy and vigor, and within the little garden thedistant murmur of the river and the gentle breathing of the West windround the fell were entirely conquered and banished by these triumphantshakes and turns, or by the flourishes and the broad _cantabile_passages of one of Spohr's Andantes. For a while, as the sun sank lowerand 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 possessedby this stream of eddying sound, and no other sign of life broke thegray quiet of the house. But at last, just as the golden ball touchedthe summit of the craggy fell, which makes the western boundary of thedale at its higher end, the house-door opened, and a young girl, shawledand holding some soft burden in her arms, appeared on the threshold, and stood there for a moment, as though trying the quality of the airoutside. Her pause of inspection seemed to satisfy her, for she movedforward, leaving the door open behind her, and, stepping across thelawn, settled herself in a wicker chair under an apple-tree, which hadonly just shed its blossoms on the turf below. She had hardly done sowhen one of the distant doors opening on the gravel path flew open, and another maiden, a slim creature garbed in aesthetic blue, a mass ofreddish brown hair flying back from her face, also stepped out into thegarden. 

'Agnes!' cried the new-comer, who had the strenuous and dishevelled airnatural to one just emerged from a long violin practice. 'Has Catherinecome back yet?'

'Not that I know of. Do come here and look at pussy; did you ever seeanything so comfortable?'

'You and she look about equally lazy. What have you been doing all theafternoon?'

'We look what we are, my dear. Doing? Why, I have been attending tomy domestic duties, arranging the flowers, mending my pink dress forto-morrow night, and helping to keep mamma in good spirits; she isdepressed because she has been finding Elizabeth out in some waste orother, and I have been preaching to her to make Elizabeth uncomfortableif she likes, but not to worrit herself. And after all, pussy and I havecome out for a rest. We've earned it, haven't we, Chattie? And as foryou, Miss Artistic, I should like to know what you've been doing for thegood of your kind since dinner. I suppose you had tea at the vicarage?'

The speaker lifted inquiring eyes to her sister as she spoke, her cheekplunged in the warm fur of a splendid Persian cat, her whole lookand voice expressing the very highest degree of quiet, comfort, andself-possession. Agnes Leyburn was not pretty; the lower part of theface was a little heavy in outline and moulding; the teeth were not asthey should have been, and the nose was unsatisfactory. But the eyesunder their long lashes were shrewdness itself, and there was anindividuality in the voice, a cheery even-temperediness in look andtone, which had a pleasing effect on the bystander. Her dress was neatand dainty; every detail of it bespoke a young woman who respected bothherself and the fashion. 

Her sister, on the other hand, was guiltless of the smallest trace offashion. Her skirts were cut with the most engaging naïveté, she wasmuch adorned with amber beads, and her red brown hair had been torturedand frizzled to look as much like an aureole as possible. But, on theother hand, she was a beauty, though at present you felt her a beauty indisguise, a stage Cinderella as it were, in very becoming rags, waitingfor the fairy godmother. 

'Yes, I had tea at the vicarage, ' said this young person, throwingherself on the grass in spite of a murmured protest from Agnes, who hadan inherent dislike of anything physically rash, 'and I had the greatestdifficulty to get away. Mrs. Thornburgh is in such a flutter aboutthis visit! One would think it was the Bishop and all his Canons, andpromotion depending on it, she has baked so many cakes and put out somany dinner napkins! I don't envy the young man. She will have no witsleft at all to entertain him with. I actually wound up by administeringsome sal-volatile to her. '

'Well, and after the sal-volatile did you get anything coherent out ofher on the subject of the young man?'

'By degrees, ' said the girl, her eyes twinkling; 'if one can onlyremember the thread between whiles one gets at the facts somehow. Inbetween the death of Mr. Elsmere's father and his going to college, wehad, let me see, --the spare room curtains, the making of them and thecleaning of them, Sarah's idiocy in sticking to her black sheep of ayoung man, the price of tea when she married, Mr. Thornburgh's singularpreference of boiled mutton to roast, the poems she had written to herwhen she was eighteen, and I can't tell you what else besides. But Iheld 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 theinteresting stranger. '

'My ideas about him are not many, ' said Agnes, rubbing her cheek gentlyup and down the purring cat, 'and there doesn't seem to be much orderin them. He is very accomplished--a teetotaller--he has been to the HolyLand, and his hair has been out close after a fever. It sounds odd, butI am not curious. I can very well wait till to-morrow evening. '

'Oh, well, as to ideas about a person, one doesn't got that sort ofthing from Mrs. Thornburgh. But I know how old he is, where he wentto college, where his mother lives, a certain number of his mother'speculiarities which seem to be Irish and curious, where his living is, how much 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 itmakes the poor old thing so excited?'

Rose sat up and began to fling the fir-cones lying about her at adistant mark with an energy worthy of her physical perfections and theaesthetic freedom of her attire. 

'Because, my dear, Mrs. Thornburgh at the present moment is alwaysseeing 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 ripplinglaugh of young women perfectly aware of their own value, and in no hurryto force an estimate of it on the male world. 

'Well, ' said Rose deliberately, her delicate cheek flushed with hergymnastics, her eyes sparkling, 'there is no saying. "Propinquitydoes it"--as Mrs. Thornburgh is always reminding us. But where _can_Catherine be? She went out directly after lunch. '

'She has, gone out to see that youth who hurt his back at the Tysons--atleast I heard her talking to mamma about him, and she went out with abasket that looked like beef-tea. '

Rose frowned a little. 

'And I suppose I ought to have been to the school or to see Mrs. Robson instead of fiddling all the afternoon. I dare say I ought--onlyunfortunately I like my fiddle, and I don't like stuffy cottages, and asfor the goody books, I read them so badly that the old women themselvescome down upon me. '

'I seem to have been making the best of both worlds, ' said Agnesplacidly. 'I haven't been doing anything I don't like, but I got holdof that dress she brought home to make for little Emma Payne and nearlyfinished the skirt, so that I feel as good as when one has been twice tochurch on a wet Sunday. Ah, there is Catherine, I heard the gate. '

As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the clump of treeswhich sheltered the little entrance gate, and as Rose sprang to her feeta tall figure in white and gray appeared against the background of thesycamores, and came quickly toward the sisters. 

'Dears, I am so sorry; I am afraid you have been waiting for me. Butpoor Mrs. Tyson wanted me so badly that I could not leave her. She hadno one else to help her or to be with her till that eldest girl of herscame home from work. '

'It doesn't matter, ' said, Rose, as Catherine put her arm round hershoulder; 'mamma has been fidgeting, and as for Agnes, she looks as ifshe never wanted to move again. '

Catherine's clear eyes, which at the moment seemed to be full of inwardlight, kindled in them by some foregoing experience, rested kindly, butonly half consciously, on her younger sister as Agnes softly noddedand smiled to her. Evidently she was a good deal older than the othertwo--she looked about six-and-twenty, a young and vigorous woman in theprime of health and strength. The lines of the form were rather thin andspare, but they were softened by the loose bodice and long full skirt ofher dress, and by the folds of a large, white muslin handkerchief whichwas crossed over her breast. The face, sheltered by the plain shadyhat was also a little spoilt from the point of view of beauty bythe sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a slightprominence of the cheek-bones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish gray, werefine, the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while thecomplexion had caught the freshness and purity of Westmoreland air andWestmoreland streams. About face and figure there was a delicate austerecharm, something which harmonized with the bare stretches and lonelycrags of the fells, something which seemed to make her a true daughterof the mountains, partaker at once of their gentleness and theirseverity. _She_ was in her place here, beside the homely Westmorelandhouse, and under the shelter of the fells. When you first saw the othersisters you wondered what strange chance had brought them into thatremote sparely peopled valley; they were plainly exiles, and consciousexiles, from the movement and exhilarations of a fuller social life. ButCatherine impressed you as only a refined variety of the local type;you could have found many like her, in a sense, among the sweet-facedserious women of the neighboring farms. 

Now, as she and Rose stood together, her hand still resting lightly onthe other's shoulder, a question from Agnes banished the faint smile onher lips, and left, only the look of inward illumination, the expressionof one who had just passed, as it were, through a strenuous and heroicmoment 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 ishopelessly 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 Rose under her breath. 'Does he know?'

'Yes; when I got there the doctor had just gone, and Mrs. Tyson, who wasquite unprepared for anything so dreadful, seemed to have almost losther wits, poor thing! I found her in the front kitchen with herapron over her head, rocking to and fro, and poor Arthur in the innerroom--all alone--waiting in suspense. '

'And who told him? He has been so hopeful. '

'I did, ' said Catherine, gently; 'they made me. He _would_ know, and shecouldn't--she ran out of the room. I never saw anything so pitiful. '

'Oh, Catherine!' exclaimed Rose's moved voice, while Agnes got up, andChattie jumped softly down from her lap unheeded. 

'How did he bear it?'

'Don't ask me, ' said Catherine, while the quiet tears filled her eyesand her voice broke, as the hidden feeling would have its way. 'It wasterrible. I don't know how we got through that half-hour--his motherand I. It was like wrestling with someone in agony. At last he wasexhausted--he let me say the Lord's Prayer; I think it soothed him, butone couldn't tell. He seemed half asleep when I left. Oh!' she cried, laying her hand in a close grasp on Rose's arm, 'if you had seen hiseyes, 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 wasso steady, such a good son!'

A silence fell upon the three. Catherine stood looking out across thevalley toward the sunset. Now that the demand upon her for calmness andfortitude was removed, and that the religious exaltation in which shehad gone through the last three hours was becoming less intense, thepure human pity of the scene she had just witnessed seemed to be gainingupon her. Her lip trembled, and two or three tears silently overflowed. Rose turned and gently kissed her cheek, and Agnes touched her handcaressingly. She smiled at them, for it was not in her nature to let anysign of love pass unheeded, and in a few more seconds she had masteredherself. 

'Dears, we must go in. Is mother in her room? Oh, Rose! in that thindress on the grass; I oughtn't to have kept you out. It is quite cold bynow. '

And, she hurried them in, leaving them to superintend the preparationsfor supper downstairs while she ran up to her mother. 

A quarter of an hour afterward they were all gathered round thesupper-table, the windows open to the garden and the May twilight. AtCatherine's right hand sat Mrs. Leyburn, a tall delicate-looking woman, wrapped in a white shawl, about whom there were only three things to benoticed--an amiable temper, a sufficient amount of weak health to excuseher all the more tiresome duties of life, and an incorrigible tendencyto sing the praises of her daughters at all times and to all people. Thedaughters winced under it: Catherine, because it was a positive painto her to bear herself brought forward and talked about; the others, because youth infinitely prefers to make its own points in its own way. Nothing, however, could mend this defect of Mrs. Leyburn's. Catherine'sstrength of will could keep it in check sometimes, but in general ithad to be borne with. A sharp word would have silenced the mother'swell-meant chatter at any time--for she was a fragile nervous woman, entirely dependent on her surroundings--but none of them were capable ofit, and their mere refractoriness counted for nothing. 

The dining room in which they were gathered had a good deal of homelydignity, and was to the Leyburns full of associations. The oak settlenear the fire, the oak sideboard running along one side of the room, theblack oak table with carved legs at which they sat, were genuine piecesof old Westmoreland work, which had belonged to their grandfather. Theheavy carpet covering the stone floor of what twenty years before hadbeen the kitchen of the farm-house was a survival from a south-countryhome, which had sheltered their lives for eight happy years. Over themantelpiece hung the portrait of the girls' father, a long seriousface, not unlike Wordsworth's face in outline, and bearing a strongresemblance to Catherine; a line of silhouettes adorned the mantelpiece;on the walls were prints of Winchester and Worcester Cathedrals, photographs of Greece, and two old-fashioned engravings of Dante andMilton; while a bookcase, filled apparently with the father's collegebooks and college prizes and the favorite authors--mostly poets, philosophers, and theologians--of his later years, gave a final touchof habitableness to the room. The little meal and its appointments--theeggs, the home-made bread and preserves, the tempting butter andold-fashioned silver gleaming among the flowers which Rose arranged withfanciful skill in Japanese pots of her own providing--suggested the samefamily qualities as the room. Frugality, a dainty personal self-respect, a family consciousness, tenacious of its memories and tenderly carefulof all the little material objects, which were to it the symbols ofthose memories--clearly all these elements entered into the Leyburntradition. 

And of this tradition, with its implied assertions and denials, clearlyCatherine Leyburn, the eldest sister, was, of all the persons gatheredin this little room, the most pronounced embodiment. She sat at the headof the table, the little basket of her own and her mother's keys besideher. 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 oldfor her both in fashion and material, but it gave her a gentle, almostmatronly dignity, which became her. Her long thin hands, full ofcharacter and delicacy, moved nimbly among the cups; all her ways werequiet and yet decided. It was evident that among this little partyshe, and not the plaintive mother, was really in authority. To-night, however, her looks were specially soft. The scene she had gone throughin the afternoon had left her pale, with traces of patient fatigue roundthe eyes and mouth, but all her emotion was gone, and she was devotingherself to the others, responding with quick interest and ready smilesto all they had to say, and contributing the little experiences of herown day in return. 

Rose sat on her left hand in yet another gown of strange tint andarchaic outline. Rose's gowns were legion. They were manufactured bya farmer's daughter across the valley, under her strict and precisesupervision. She was accustomed, as she boldly avowed, to shut herselfup at the beginning of each season of the year for two days' meditationon the subject. And now, thanks to the spring warmth, she was enteringat last with infinite zest on the results of her April vigils. 

Catherine had surveyed her as she entered the room with a smile, but asmile not altogether to Rose's taste. 

'What, another, Röschen?' she had said with the slightest lifting of theeyebrows. 'You never confided that to me. Did you think I was unworthyof anything so artistic?'

'Not at all, ' said Rose calmly, seating herself. 'I thought you werebetter employed. '

But a flush flew over her transparent cheek, and she presently threw anirritated look at Agnes, who had been looking from her to Catherine withamused eyes. 

'I met Mr. Thornburgh and Mr. Elsmere driving from the station, 'Catherine announced presently; 'at least there was a gentleman in aclerical wideawake with a portmanteau behind, so I imagine it must havebeen he. '

'Did he look promising?' inquired Agnes. 

'I don't think I noticed, ' said Catherine simply, but with a momentarychange of expression. The sisters, remembering how she had come inupon them with that look of one 'lifted up, ' understood why she had notnoticed, and refrained from further questions. 

'Well, it is to be hoped the young man is recovered enough to stand LongWhindale festivities, ' said Rose. 'Mrs. Thornburgh means to let themloose on his devoted head to-morrow night. '

'Who are coming?' asked Mrs. Leyburn eagerly. The occasional tea partiesof the neighborhood were an unfailing excitement to her, simply because, by dint of the small adornings, natural to the occasion, they showed herdaughters to her under slightly new aspects. To see Catherine, who nevertook any thought for her appearance, forced to submit to a white dress, a line of pearls round the shapely throat, a flower in the brown hair, put there by Rose's imperious fingers; to sit in a corner well outof draughts, watching the effect of Rose's half-fledged beauty, anddrinking in the compliments of the neighborhood on Rose's playing orAgnes's conversation, or Catherine's practical ability--these were Mrs. Leyburn's passions, and a tea-party always gratified them to the full. 

'Mamma asks as if really she wanted an answer, ' remarked Agnes dryly. 'Dear mother, can't you by now make up a tea-party at the Thornburghsout of your bead?'

'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. Thornburgh is now miserable because she has got her. Herambition is gratified, but she knows that she has spoilt the party. Well, then, Mr. Mayhew, of course, his son, _and_ his flute. '

'You to play his accompaniments?' put in Agnes 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 unknown. '

'Dr. Baker is always pleasant, ' said Mrs. Leyburn, leaning back anddrawing her white shawl languidly round her. 'He told me the otherday, Catherine, that if it weren't for you he should have to retire. Heregards you as his junior partner. "Marvellous nursing gift youreldest daughter has, Mrs. Leyburn, " he said to me the other day. A mostagreeable 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 toavoid having an opinion of some sort about Mrs. Seaton. '

'Oxford dons don't gossip and are never candid, ' remarked Agnesseverely. 

'Then Oxford dons must be very dull, ' cried Rose. 'However, ' and hercountenance brightened, 'if he stays here four weeks we can teach him. '

Catherine, meanwhile, sat watching the two girls with a soft eldersister's indulgence. Was it in connection with their bright attractivelooks that the thought flitted through her head, 'I wonder what theyoung man will be like?'

'Oh, by the way, ' said Rose presently, 'I had nearly forgotten Mrs. Thornburgh's two messages. I informed her, Agnes, that you had given upwater color and meant to try oils, and she told me to implore you notto, because "water color is so _much_ more lady-like than oils. " And asfor you, Catherine, she sent you a most special message. I was to tellyou that she just _loved_ the way you had taken to plaiting your hairlately--that it was exactly like the picture of Jeanie Deans she hasin the drawing-room, and that she would never forgive you if you didn'tplait 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 armto her mother, who looked fondly at her, making some remark in praise ofMrs. Thornburgh's taste. 

'Rose!' cried Agnes indignantly, when the other two had disappeared, 'you and Mrs. Thornburgh have not the sense you were born with. What onearth did you say that to Catherine for?'

Rose stared; then her face fell a little. 

'I suppose it was foolish, ' she admitted. Then she leant her head on onehand and drew meditative patterns on the tablecloth with the other. 'Youknow, Agnes, ' she said presently, looking up, 'there are drawbacks tohaving a St. Elizabeth for a sister. '

Agnes discreetly made no reply, and Rose was left alone. She satdreaming a few minutes, the corners of the red mouth drooping. Then shesprang up with a long sigh. 'A little life!' she said half-aloud, 'Alittle _wickedness!_' and she shook her curly head defiantly. 

A few minutes later, in the little drawing-room on the other side ofthe hall, Catherine and Rose stood together by the open window. For thefirst time in a lingering spring, the air was soft and balmy; a tendergrayness lay over the valley; it was not night, though above the clearoutline's 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 wasshining. As Catherine's eyes caught it there was a quick response in thefine Madonna-like face. 

'Any news for me from the Backhouses this afternoon?' she asked Rose. 

'No, I heard of none. How is she?'

'Dying, ' said Catherine simply, and stood a moment looking out. Rosedid not interrupt her. She knew that the house from which the light wasshining sheltered a tragedy; she guessed with the vagueness of nineteenthat it was a tragedy of passion and sin; but Catherine had not beencommunicative on the subject, and Rose had for some time past set upa dumb resistance to her sister's most characteristic ways of lifeand thought, which prevented her now from asking questions. She wishednervously to give Catherine's extraordinary moral strength no greateradvantage over her than she could help. 

Presently, however, Catherine threw her arm round her with a tenderprotectingness. 

'What did you do with yourself all the afternoon, Röschen?'

'I practised for two hours, ' said the girl shortly, 'and two hours thismorning. My Spohr is nearly perfect. '

'And you didn't look into the school?' asked Catherine, hesitating; 'Iknow Miss Merry expected you. '

'No, I didn't. When one can play the violin and can't teach, any morethan a cuckatoo, what's the good of wasting one's time in teaching?'

Catherine did not reply. A minute after Mrs. Leyburn called her, and shewent to sit on a stool at her mother's feet, her hands resting on theelder woman's lap, the whole attitude of the tall active figure one ofbeautiful and childlike abandonment. Mrs. Leyburn wanted to confide inher about a new cap, and Catherine took up the subject with a zest whichkept her mother happy till bedtime. 

'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 forher mother, Catherine Leyburn was busy in her own room arranging alarge cupboard containing medicines and ordinary medical necessaries, astorehouse whence all the simpler emergencies of their end of the valleywere supplied. She had put on a white flannel dressing-gown and movednoiselessly about in it, the very embodiment of order, of purity, ofquiet energy. The little white-curtained room was bareness and neatnessitself. There were a few book-shelves along the walls, holding the bookswhich her father had given her. Over the bed were two enlarged portraitsof her parents, and a line of queer little faded monstrosities, representing Rose and Agnes in different stages of childhood. On thetable beside the bed was a pile of well-worn books--Keble, JeremyTaylor, the Bible--connected in the mind of the mistress of the roomwith the intensest moments of the spiritual life. There was a strip ofcarpet by the bed, a plain chair or two, a large press; otherwise nofurniture that was not absolutely necessary, and no ornaments. And yet, for all its emptiness, the little room in its order and spotlessness hadthe look and spell of a sanctuary. 

When her task was finished Catherine came forward to the infinitesimaldressing-table, and stood a moment before the common cottagelooking-glass upon it. The candle behind her showed her the outlines ofher head and face in shadow against the white ceiling. Her soft brownhair was plaited high above the broad white brow, giving to it an addedstateliness, while it left unmasked the pure lines of the neck. Mrs. Thornburgh and her mother were quite right. Simple as the newarrangement was, it could hardly have been more effective. 

But the looking-glass got no smile in return for its information. Catherine Leyburn was young; she was alone; she was being very plainlytold that, taken as a whole, she was, or might be at any moment, abeautiful woman. And all her answer was a frown and a quick movementaway from the glass. Putting up her hands she began to undo the plaitswith haste, almost with impatience; she smoothed the whole mass thenset free into the severest order, plaited it closely together, and then, putting out her light, threw herself on her knees beside the window, which was partly open to the starlight and the mountains. The voice ofthe river far away, wafted from the mist-covered depths of the valley, and the faint rustling of the trees just outside, were for long afterthe only sounds which broke the silence. 

When Catherine appeared at breakfast next morning her hair was plainlygathered into a close knot behind, which had been her way of dressing itsince she was thirteen. Agnes threw a quick look at Rose; Mrs. Leyburn, as soon as she had made out through her spectacles what was the matter, broke into warm expostulations. 

'It is more comfortable, dear mother, and takes much less time, ' saidCatherine, reddening. 

'Poor Mrs. Thornburgh!' remarked Agnes dryly. 

'Oh, Rose will make up!' said Catherine, glancing, not without a sparkof mischief in her gray eyes, at Rose's tortured locks; 'and mamma's newcap, which will be superb!'

CHAPTER II. 

About four o'clock on the afternoon of the day which was to be markedin the annals of Long Whindale as that of Mrs. Thornburgh'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 newspaperon her lap. The neighborhood of this last enabled her to make anintermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of herhouse-wifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The vicar'swife was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest. Allher _solid_ preparations for the evening were over, and in her own mindshe 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 lavishand fastidious, breathed into her by her mistress. No better tongue, noplumper chickens, than those which would grace her board to-night wereto be found, so Mrs. Thornburgh was persuaded, in the district. And sowith everything else of a substantial kind. On this head the hostessfelt no anxieties. 

But a 'tea' in the north-country depends for distinction, not on itssolids or its savories, but on its sweets. A rural hostess earns herreputation, not by a discriminating eye for butcher's-meat, but by herinventiveness in cakes and custards. And it was just here, with regardto this 'bubble reputation, ' that the vicar's wife of Long Whindale wasparticularly sensitive. Was she not expecting Mrs. Seaton, the wife ofthe Rector of Whinborough--odious woman--to tea? Was it not incumbenton her to do well, nay to do brilliantly, in the eyes of this localmagnate? And how was it possible to do brilliantly in this matter witha cook whose recipes were hopelessly old-fashioned, and who had anexasperating belief in the sufficiency of buttered 'whigs' and home-mademarmalade for all requirements?

Stung by these thoughts, Mrs. Thornburgh had gone prowling about theneighboring town of Whinborough till the shop window of a certain newlyarrived confectioner had been revealed to her, stored with the most airyand appetizing trifles--of a make and coloring quite metropolitan. Shehad flattened her gray curls against the window for one deliberativemoment; had then rushed in; and as soon as the carrier's cart of LongWhindale, which she was now anxiously awaiting, should have arrived, bearing with it the produce of that adventure, Mrs. Thornburgh wouldbe a proud woman, prepared to meet a legion of rectors' wives withoutflinching. Not, indeed, in all respects a woman at peace with herselfand the world. In the country, where every household should beself-contained, a certain discredit attaches in every well-regulatedmind to 'getting things in. ' Mrs. Thornburgh was also nervous at thethought of the bill. It would have to be met gradually out of the weeklymoney. For 'William' was to know nothing of the matter, except so far asa few magnificent generalities and the testimony of his own dazzled eyesmight inform him. But after all, in this as in everything else, one mustsuffer to be distinguished. 

The carrier, however, lingered. And at last the drowsiness of theafternoon overcame even those pleasing expectations we have described, and Mrs. Thornburgh's newspaper dropped unheeded to her feet. Thevicarage, under the shade of which she was sitting, was a new gray-stonebuilding with wooden gables, occupying the site of what had once beenthe earlier vicarage house of Long Whindale, the primitive dwellinghouse of an incumbent, whose chapelry, after sundry augmentations, amounted to just twenty-seven pounds a year. The modern house, though itonly contained sufficient accommodation for Mr. And Mrs. Thornburgh, oneguest and two maids, would have seemed palatial to those rustic clericsof the past from whose ministrations the lonely valley had drawn itsspiritual sustenance in times gone by. They, indeed, had belonged toanother race--a race sprung from the soil and content to spend the wholeof life in very close contact and very homely intercourse with theirmother earth. Mr. Thornburgh, who had come to the valley only a fewyears before from a parish in one of the large manufacturing towns, andwho had no inherited interest in the Cumbrian folk and their ways, hadonly a very faint idea, and that a distinctly depreciatory one, of whatthese mythical predecessors of his, with their strange social status andunbecoming occupations, might be like. But there were one or two old menstill lingering in the dale who could have told him a great deal aboutthem, whose memory went back to the days when the relative socialimportance of the dale parsons was exactly expressed by thecharacteristic Westmoreland saying: 'Ef ye'll nobbut send us a gudeschulemeaster, a verra' moderate parson 'ull dea!' and whose slow minds, therefore, were filled with a strong inarticulate sense of differenceas they saw him pass along the road, and recalled the incumbent of theirchildhood, dropping in for his 'crack' and his glass of 'yale' at thisor that farm-house on any occasion of local festivity, or driving hissheep to Whinborough market with his own hands like any other peasant ofthe dale. 

Within the last twenty years, however, the few remaining survivors ofthis primitive clerical order in the Westmoreland and Cumberland valleyshave dropped into their quiet, unremembered graves, and new men of otherways and other modes of speech reign in their stead. And as at LongWhindale, so almost everywhere, the change has been emphasized by thedisappearance of the old parsonage houses with their stone floors, their parlors lustrous with oak carving on chest or dresser, and theirencircling farm-buildings and meadows, in favor of an upgrowth ofnew trim mansions designed to meet the needs, not of peasants, but ofgentlefolks. 

And naturally the churches too have shared in the process oftransformation. The ecclesiastical revival of the last half-century hasworried its will even in the remotest corners of the Cambrian country, and soon not a vestige of the homely worshipping-places of an earlierday will remain. Across the road, in front of the Long Whindaleparsonage, for instance, rose a freshly built church, also peaked andgabled, with a spire and two bells and a painted east window, and Heavenknows what novelties besides. The primitive whitewashed structure itreplaced had lasted long, and in the course of many generations time hadclothed its moss-grown walls, its slated porch, and tombstones worn withrain in a certain beauty of congruity and association, linking it withthe purple distances of the fells, and the brawling river bending roundthe gray enclosure. But finally, after a period of quiet and gradualdecay, the ruin of Long Whindale chapel had become a quick and hurryingruin that would not be arrested. When the rotten timbers of the roofcame dropping on the farmers heads, and the oak benches beneathoffered gaps, the geography of which had to be carefully learnt by thesubstantial persons who sat on them, lest they should be overtaken byundignified disaster; when the rain poured in on the Communion Tableand the wind raged through innumerable mortarless chinks, even theslowly-moving folk of the valley came to the conclusion that 'summat'ull hev to be deun. ' And by the help of the Bishop and Queen Anne'sBounty, and what not, aided by just as many half-crowns as the valleyfound itself unable to defend against the encroachments of a new and'moiderin' parson, 'summat' was done, whereof the results--namely, thenew church, vicarage, 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, whosesuccessful efforts to improve the church accommodation in Long Whindalehad moved such deep and lasting astonishment in the mind of a somewhatlethargic bishop, that promotion had been readily found for him. Mr. Thornburgh was neither capable of the sturdy begging which had raisedthe church, nor was he likely on other lines to reach preferment. He andhis wife, who possessed much more salience of character than he, wereaccepted in the dale as belonging to the established order of things. Nobody wished them any harm, and the few people they had speciallybefriended, naturally, thought well of them. 

But the old intimacy of relation which had once subsisted between theclergyman of Long Whindale and his parishioners was wholly gone. Theyhad sunk in the scale; the parson had risen. The old statesmen orpeasant proprietors of the valley had for the most part succumbed tovarious destructive influences, some social, some economical, added to acertain amount of corrosion from within; and their place had been takenby leaseholders, lets drunken perhaps, and better educated, but alsofar less shrewd and individual, and lacking in the rude dignity of theirpredecessors. 

And as the land had lost, the church had gained. The place of thedalesmen knew them no more, but the church and Parsonage had gotthemselves rebuilt, the parson had had his income raised, had let offhis glebe to a neighboring farmer, kept two maids, and drank claretwhen he drank anything. His flock were friendly enough, and paid theircommuted tithes without grumbling. But between them and a perfectlywell-meaning but rather dull man, who stood on his dignity and wore ablack coat all the week, there was no real community. Rejoice in itas we may, in this final passage of Parson Primrose to social regionsbeyond the ken of Farmer Flamborough, there are some elements of loss asthere are in all changes. 

Wheels on the road! Mrs. Thornburgh woke up with a start, and stumblingover newspaper and _couvre-pied_, hurried across the lawn as fast asher short, squat figure would allow, gray curls and cap-strings flyingbehind her. She heard a colloquy in the distance in broad Westmorelanddialect, and as she turned the corner of the house she nearly ran intoher tall cook, Sarah, whose impassive and saturnine countenance boretraces of unusual excitement. 

'Missis, there's naw cakes. They're all left behind on t' counter atRandall's. Mr. Backhouse says as how he told old Jim to go fur 'em, andhe niver went, and Mr. Backbouse he niver found oot till he'd got pastt' bridge, and than it wur too late to go back. '

Mrs. Thornburgh stood transfixed, something of her fresh pinkcolor slowly deserting her face as she realized the enormity of thecatastrophe. And was it possible that there was the faintest twinkle ofgrim satisfaction on the face of that elderly minx, Sarah?

Mrs. Thornburgh, however, did, not stay to explore the recesses ofSarah's mind, but ran with little pattering, undignified steps acrossthe 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, interrupting the flood ofher reproaches, with the comparative _sang-froid_ of one who knew that, after all, he was the only carrier on the road, and that the vicaragewas five miles from the necessaries of life; 'it's a bad job, and I'snot goin' to say it isn't. But; ya jest look 'ere, mum, what's a man todu wi' a daft thingamy like _that_, as caan't teak a plain order, andspiles a poor man's business as caan't help hissel'?'

And Mr. Backhouse pointed with withering scorn to a small, shrunkenold man, who sat dangling his legs on the shaft of the cart, andwhose countenance wore a singular expression of mingled meekness andcomposure, as his partner flourished an indignant finger toward him. 

'Jim, ' cried Mrs. Thornburgh reproachfully, 'I did think you would havetaken more pains about my order!'

'Yis, mum, 'said the old man, placidly, 'ya might 'a' thowt it. I's reetsorry, but ya caan't help these things _sum_times--an' it's naw gudhollerin' ower 'em like a mad bull. Aa tuke yur bit paper to Randall'sand aa laft it wi' 'em to mek up, an' than, aa weel, aa went to a frind, an' ee _may_ hev giv' me a glass of yale, aa doon't say ee _dud_--but eemay, I ween't sweer. Hawsomiver, aa niver thowt naw mair aboot it, normair did John, so _ee_ needn't taak--till we wur jest two mile from'ere. An' ee's a gon' on sence! My! an' a larroping the poor beast likeonything. '

Mrs. Thornburgh stood aghast at the calmness of this audacious recital. As for John, he looked on, surveying his brother's philosophicaldemeanor at first with speechless wrath, and then with an inscrutablemixture of expressions, in which, however, any one accustomed to hisweather-beaten countenance would have probably read a hidden admiration. 

'Weel, aa niver!' he exclaimed, when Jim's explanatory remarks hadcome to an end, swinging himself up on to his seat and gathering up thereins. 'Yur a boald 'un to tell the missus theer to hur feeace as howya wur' tossicatit whan yur owt ta been duing yur larful business. Aa'vedoon wi' yer. Aa aims to please ma coostomers, an' aa caan't abide sekwark. Yur like an oald kneyfe, I can mak' nowt o' ya', nowder back noredge. '

Mrs. Thornburgh wrung her fat short hands in despair, making littleincoherent laments and suggestions as she saw him about to depart, ofwhich John at last gathered the main purport to be that she wished himto go back to Whinborough for her precious parcel. 

He shook his head compassionately over the preposterous state of mindbetrayed by such a demand, and with a fresh burst of abuse of hisbrother, and an assurance to the vicar's wife that he meant to 'gie thatoald man nawtice when he got haum; he wasn't goan to hev his bisnessspiled for nowt by an oald ijiot wi' a hed as full o' yale as ahayrick's full o' mice, ' he raised his whip and the clattering vehiclemoved forward; Jim meanwhile preserving through all his brother's wrathand Mrs. Thornburgh's wailings the same mild and even countenance, themeditative and friendly aspect of the philosopher letting the world go'as e'en it will. '

So Mrs. Thornburgh was left gasping, watching the progress of thelumbering cart along the bit of road leading to the hamlet at the headof the valley, with so limp and crestfallen an aspect that even thegaunt and secretly jubilant Sarah was moved to pity. 

'Why, missis, we'll do very well. I'll hev some scones in t'oven in nawtime, an' theer's finger biscuits, an' wi' buttered toast an' sumo' t'best jams, if they don't hev enuf to eat they ought to. ' Then, dropping her voice, she asked with a hurried change of tone, 'Did ye askun' hoo his daater is?'

Mrs. Thornburgh started. Her pastoral conscience was smitten. She openedthe gate and waved violently after the cart. John pulled his horseup, and with a few quick steps she brought herself within speaking, orrather shouting, distance. 

'How's your daughter to-day, John?'

The old man's face peering round the oilcloth hood of the cart wasdarkened by a sudden cloud as he caught the words. His stern lipsclosed. He muttered something inaudible to Mrs. Thornburgh and whippedup his horse again. The cart started off, and Mrs. Thornburgh was leftstaring into the receding eyes of 'Jim the Noodle, ' who, from hisseat on the near shaft, regarded her with a gaze which had passed frombenevolence into a preternatural solemnity. 

'He's sparin' ov 'is speach, is John Backhouse, ' said Sarah grimly, as her mistress returned to her. 'Maybe ee's aboot reet. It's a badbusiness au' ee'll not mend it wi' taakin. '

Mrs. Thornburgh, however, could not apply herself to the case of MaryBackhouse. At any other moment it would have excited in her breastthe shuddering interest, which, owing to certain peculiar attendantcircumstances, it, awakened in every other woman in Long Whindale. Buther mind--such are the limitations of even clergymen's wives--was nowabsorbed by her own misfortune. Her very cap-strings seemed to hang limpwith depression, as she followed Sarah dejectedly into the kitchen, and gave what attention she could to, those second-best arrangements sodepressing to the idealist temper. 

Poor soul! All the charm and glitter of her little social adventure wasgone. When she once more emerged upon the lawn, and languidly readjustedher spectacles, she was weighed down by the thought that in two hoursMrs. Seaton would be upon her. Nothing of this kind ever happened toMrs. Seaton. The universe obeyed her nod. No carrier conveying goods toher august door ever got drunk or failed to deliver his consignment. Thething was inconceivable. Mrs. Thornburgh was well aware of it. 

Should William be informed? Mrs. Thornburgh had a rooted belief in thebrutality of husbands in all domestic crises, and would have preferrednot to inform him. But she had also a dismal certainty that thesecret would burn a hole in her till it was confessed-bill and all. Besides--frightful thought!--would they have to eat up all those_meringues_ next day?

Her reflections at last became so depressing that, with a naturalepicurean instinct, she tried violently to turn her mind away from them. Luckily she was assisted by a sudden perception of the roof and chimneysof Burwood, the Leyburns' house, peeping above the trees to the left. Atsight of them a smile overspread her plump and gently wrinkled face. Shefell gradually into a train of thought, as feminine as that in which shehad been just indulging, but infinitely more pleasing. 

For, with regard to the Leyburns, at this present moment Mrs. Thornburghfelt herself in the great position of tutelary divinity or guardianangel. At least if divinities and guardian angels do not concernthemselves with the questions to which Mrs. Thornburgh's mind was nowaddressed, it would clearly have been the opinion of the vicar's wifethat they ought to do so. 

'Who else is there to look after these girls, I should like to know, 'Mrs. Thornburgh inquired of herself, 'if I don't do it? As if girlsmarried themselves! People may talk of their independence nowadaysas much as they like--it always has to be done for them, one way oranother. Mrs. Leyburn, poor lackadaisical thing! is no good whatever. No more is Catherine. They both behave as if husbands tumbled into yourmouth for the asking. Catherine's too good for this world--but if shedoesn't do it, I must. Why, that girl Rose is a beauty--if they didn'tlet her wear those ridiculous mustard-colored things, and do her hairfit to frighten the crows! Agnes too--so ladylike and well mannered;she'd do credit to any man. Well, we shall see, we shall see!'

And Mrs. Thornburgh gently shook her gray curls from side to side, while, her eyes, fixed on the open spare room window, shone withmeaning. 

'So eligible, too--private means, no encumbrances, and as good as gold. '

She sat lost a moment in a pleasing dream. 

'Shall I bring oot the tea to you theer, mum?' called Sarah gruffly, from the garden door. 'Master and Mr. Elsmere are just coomin' down t'field by t' stepping-stones. ' Mrs. Thornburgh signalled assent andthe tea-table was brought. Afternoon tea was by no means a regularinstitution at the vicarage of Long Whindale, and Sarah never suppliedit without signs of protest. But when a guest was in the house Mrs. Thornburgh insisted upon it; her obstinacy in the matter, like herdreams of cakes and confections, being part of her determination to movewith the times, in spite the station to which Providence had assignedher. 

A minute afterward the vicar, a thick-set gray-haired man of sixty, accompanied by a tall younger man in clerical dress, emerged upon thelawn. 

'Welcome sight!' cried Mr. Thornburgh; 'Robert and I have been covetingthat tea for the last hour. You guessed very well, Emma, to have it justready for us. '

'Oh, that was Sarah. She saw you coming down to the stepping-stones, 'replied his wife, pleased, however, by any talk of appreciation from hermankind, however small. 'Robert, I hope you haven't been walked off yourlegs?'

'What, in this air, cousin Emma? I could walk from sunrise to sundown. Let no one call me an invalid any more. Henceforth I am a Hercules. '

And he threw himself on the rug which Mrs. Thornburgh's motherlyprovidence had spread on the grass for him, with a smile and a look ofsupreme physical contentment, which did indeed almost efface the signsof recent illness in the ruddy boyish face. 

Mrs. Thornburgh studied him; her eye caught first of all by the stubbleof reddish hair which as he shook off his hat stood up straight andstiff all over his head with an odd wildness and aggressiveness. Sheinvoluntarily thought, basing her inward comment on a complexity ofreasons-'Dear me, what a pity; it spoils his appearance!'

'I apologize, I apologize, cousin Emma, once for all, ' said theyoung, man, surprising her glance, and despairingly smoothing down hisrecalcitrant locks. 'Let us hope that mountain air will quicken the paceof it before it is necessary for me to present a dignified appearance at'Murewell. '

He looked up at her with a merry flash in his gray eyes, and her oldface brightened visibly as she realized afresh that in spite of thegrotesqueness of his cropped hair, her guest was a most attractivecreature. Not that he could boast much in the way of regular good looks:the mouth was large, the nose of no particular outline, and in generalthe cutting of the face, though strong and characteristic, had abluntness and _naïveté_ like a vigorous unfinished sketch. Thisbluntness of line, however, was balanced by a great delicacy oftint--the pink and white complexion of a girl, indeed--enhanced by thebright reddish hair, and quick gray eyes. 

The figure was also a little out of drawing, so to speak; it was talland loosely-jointed. The general impression was one of agility andpower. But if you looked closer you saw that the shoulders were narrow, the arms inordinately long, and the extremities too small for thegeneral height. Robert Elsmere's hand was the hand of a woman, and fewpeople ever exchanged a first greeting with its very tall owner withouta little shock of surprise. 

Mr. Thornburgh and his guest had visited a few houses in the courseof their walk, and the vicar plunged for a minute or two into someconversation about local matters with his wife. But Mrs. Thornburgh, it was soon evident; was giving him but a scatterbrained attention. Hersecret was working in her ample breast. Very soon she could contain itno longer, and breaking in upon her husband's parish news, she tumbledit all out pell-mell with a mixture of discomfiture and defianceinfinitely diverting. She could not keep a secret, but she also couldnot bear to give William an advantage. 

William certainly took his advantage. He did what his wife in herirritation had precisely foreseen that he would do. He first stared, then fell into a guffaw of laughter, and as soon as he had recoveredbreath, into a series of unfeeling comments which drove Mrs. Thornburghto desperation. 

'If you will set your mind, my dear, on things we plain folks can doperfectly well without'--et cetera, et cetera--the husband's point ofview can be imagined. Mrs. Thornburgh could have shaken her good man, especially as there was nothing new to her in his remarks; she had knownto a T beforehand exactly what he would say. She took up her knittingin a great hurry, the needles clicking angrily, her gray curls quiveringunder the energy of her hands and arms, while she launched at herhusband various retorts as to his lack of consideration for her effortsand her inconvenience, which were only very slightly modified by thepresence of a stranger. 

Robert Elsmere meanwhile lay on the grass, his face discreetly turnedaway, an uncontrollable smile twitching the corners of his mouth. Everything was fresh and piquant up here in this remote corner of thenorth country, whether the mountain air or the windblown streams, or themanners and customs of the inhabitants. His cousin's wife, in spite ofher ambitious conventionalities, was really the child of Nature to arefreshing degree. One does not see these types, he said to himself, in the cultivated monotony of Oxford or London. She was like a bit ofa bygone world--Miss Austen's or Miss Ferrier's--unearthed for hisamusement. He could not for the life of him help taking the scenes ofthis remote rural existence, which was quite new to him, as though theywere the scenes of some comedy of manners. 

Presently, however, the vicar became aware that the passage of armsbetween 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 hiscup. 

'Well, my dear, have it as you please. It all comes of yourdetermination to have Mrs. Seaton. Why couldn't you just ask theLeyburns and let us enjoy ourselves?'

With this final shaft he departed to see that Jane, the little maid whomSarah ordered about, had not, in cleaning the study for the evening'sfestivities, put his last sermon into the waste-paper basket. His wifelooked 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, thathe entirely agreed with me that one _must_ be civil to Mrs. Seaton, considering that she can make anybody's life a burden to them about herethat isn't; but it's no use. '

And she fell back on her knitting with redoubled energy, her face fullof a half-tearful intensity of meaning. Robert Elsmere restrained astrong inclination to laugh, and set himself instead to distract andconsole her. He expressed sympathy with her difficulties, he talkedto her about her party, he got from her the names and histories of theguests. How Miss Austenish it sounded; the managing rector's wife, herstill more managing old maid of a sister, the neighboring clergymanwho played the flute, the local doctor, and a pretty daughter justout--'Very pretty' sighed 'Mrs. Thornburgh, who was now depressed allround, 'but all flounces and frills and nothing to say'--and last ofall those three sisters, the Leyburns, who seemed to be on a differentlevel, and whom he had heard mentioned so often since his arrival byboth husband and wife. 

'Tell me about the Miss Leyburns, ' he said presently. 'You and cousinWilliam seem to have a great affection for them. Do they live near?'

'Oh, quite close, ' cried Mrs. Thornburgh brightening at last, and likea great general, leaving one scheme in ruins, only the more ardently totake up another. 'There is the house, ' and she pointed out Burwood amongits trees. Then with her eye eagerly fixed upon him she fell into amore or less incoherent account of her favorites. She laid on hot colorsthickly, and Elsmere at once assumed extravagance. 

'A saint, a beauty, and a wit all to yourselves in these wilds!' he saidlaughing. 'What luck! But what on earth brought them here--a widow andthree daughters--from the south? It was an odd settlement surely, thoughyou have one of the loveliest valleys and the purest airs in England. '

'Oh, as to lovely valleys, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh, sighing, 'I think itvery dull; I always have. When one has to depend for everything on acarrier that gets drunk, too! Why you know they belong here. They'rereal Westmoreland people. '

'What does that mean exactly?'

'Oh, their grandfather was a farmer, just like one of the common farmersabout. Only his land was his own and theirs isn't. '

'He was one of the last of the statesmen, ' interposed Mr. Thornburgh--who, having rescued his sermon from Jane's tender mercies, and put out his modest claret and sherry for the evening, had strolledout again and found himself impelled as usual to put some precision intohis wife's statements--'one of the small freeholders who have almostdisappeared here as elsewhere. The story of the Leyburns always seems tome typical of many things. '

Robert looked inquiry, and the vicar, sitting down--having first pickedup his wife's ball of wool as a peace-offering, which was loftilyaccepted--launched into a narrative which way be here somewhatcondensed. 

The Leyburns' grandfather, it appeared, had been a typical north-countrypeasant--honest, with strong passions both of love and hate, thinkingnothing of knocking down his wife with the poker, and frugal in allthings save drink. Drink, however, was ultimately his ruin, as it wasthe ruin of most of the Cumberland statesmen. 'The people about here'said the vicar, 'say he drank away an acre a year. He had some fiftyacres, and it took about thirty years to beggar him. '

Meanwhile, this brutal, rollicking, strong-natured person had sons anddaughters--plenty of them. Most of them, even the daughters, were brutaland rollicking too. Of one of the daughters, now dead, it was reportedthat, having on one occasion discovered her father, then an old infirmman, sitting calmly by the fire beside the prostrate form of his wifewhom he had just felled with his crutch, she had taken off her woodenshoe and given her father a clout on the head, which left his gray hairstreaming with blood; after which she had calmly put the horse into thecart, and driven off to fetch the doctor to both her parents. But amongthis grim and earthy crew, there was one exception, a 'hop out of kin, 'of whom all the rest made sport. This was the second son, Richard, who showed such a persistent tendency to 'book-larnin', 'and such apersistent idiocy in all matters pertaining to the land, that nothingwas left to the father at last but to send him with many oaths to thegrammar school at Whinborough. From the moment the boy got a footingin the school he hardly cost his father another penny. He got a localbursary which paid his school expenses, he never missed a remove orfailed to gain a prize, and finally won a close scholarship whichcarried him triumphantly to Queen's College. 

His family watched his progress with a gaping, half-contemptuousamazement, till he announced himself as safely installed at Oxford, having borrowed from a Whinborough patron the modest sum necessaryto pay his college valuation--a sum which wild horses could not havedragged out of his father, now sunk over head and ears in debt anddrink. 

From that moment they practically lost sight of him. He sent the classlist which contained his name among the Firsts to his father; in thesame way he communicated the news of his Fellowship at Queen's, hisordination and his appointment to the headmastership of a south-countrygrammar school. None of his communications were ever answered till, in the very last year of his father's life, the eldest son, who hada shrewder eye all round to the main chance than the rest applied to'Dick' for cash wherewith to meet some of the family necessities. Themoney was promptly sent, together with photographs of Dick's wife andchildren. These last were not taken much notice of. These Leyburns werea hard, limited, incurious set, and they no longer regarded Dick as oneof themselves. 

'Then came the old man's death, ' said Mr. Thornburgh. 'It happened theyear after I took the living. Richard Leyburn was sent for and came. Inever saw such a scene in my life as the funeral supper. It was keptup in the old style. Three of Leyburn's sons were there: two of themfarmers like himself, one a clerk, from Manchester, a daughter marriedto a tradesman in Whinborough, a brother of the old man, who was underthe table before supper was half over, and so on. Richard Leyburn wroteto ask me to come, and I went to support his cloth. But I was new to theplace, ' said the vicar, flushing a little, 'and they belonged to a racethat had never been used to pay much respect to parsons. To see that manamong the rest! He was thin and dignified; he looked to me as if hehad all the learning imaginable, and he had large, absent-looking eyes, which, as George, the eldest brother, said, gave you the impression ofsomeone that "had lost somethin' when he was nobbut a lad, and hadgone seekin' it iver sence. " He was formidable to me; but between us wecouldn't keep the rest of the party in order, so when the orgie hadgone on a certain time, we left it and went out into the air. It was anAugust night. I remember Leyburn threw back his head and drank it in. "I haven't breathed this air for five-and-twenty years;" he said. "Ithought 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 thefells in my blood. " He was a curious man, a refined-looking melancholycreature, with a face that reminded you of Wordsworth, and cold donnishways, except to his children and the poor. I always thought his life haddisappointed him somehow. '

'Yet one would think, ' said Robert, opening his eyes, 'that he had madea very considerable success of it!'

'Well, I don't know how it was, ' said the vicar, whose analysis ofcharacter never went very far. 'Anyhow, next day he went peering aboutthe place and the mountains and the lands his father had lost. AndGeorge, the eldest brother, who had inherited the farm, watched himwithout a word, in the way these Westmoreland folk have, and at lastoffered him what remained of the place for a fancy price. I told him itwas a preposterous sum, but he wouldn't bargain. "I shall bring my wifeand children here in the holidays, " he said, "and the money willset George up in California. " So he paid through the nose, and gotpossession of the old house, in which I should think he had passedabout as miserable a childhood as it was possible to pass. There's noaccounting for tastes. '

'And then the next summer they all came down, ' interrupted Mrs. Thornburgh. She disliked a long story as she disliked being read aloudto. 'Catherine was fifteen, not a bit like a child. You used to see hereverywhere with her father. To my mind he was always exciting her braintoo much, but he was a man you could not say a word to. I don't carewhat William says about his being like Wordsworth; he just gave you theblues to look at. '

'It was so strange, ' said the vicar meditatively, 'to see them in thathouse. If you knew the things that used to go on there in old days--thesavages that lived there. And then to see those three delicatelybrought-up children going in and out of the parlor where old Leyburnused to sit smoking and drinking; and Dick Leyburn walking about in awhite tie, and the same men touching their hats to him who had belaboredhim when he was a boy at the village school--it was queer. '

'A curious little bit of social history, ' said Elsmere. 'Well, and thenhe died and the family lived on?'

'Yes, he died the year after he bought the place. And perhaps themost interesting thing of all has been the development of his eldestdaughter. She has watched over her mother, she has brought up hersisters; but much more than that: she has become a sort of Deborah inthese valleys, ' said the vicar smiling. 'I don't count for much, she counts for a great deal. I can't get the people to tell me theirsecrets, she can. There is a sort of natural sympathy between them andher. She nurses them, she scolds them, she preaches to them, and theytake it from her when they won't take it from us. Perhaps it is thefeeling of blood. Perhaps they think it as mysterious a dispensation ofProvidence as I do that that brutal, swearing, whiskey-drinking stockshould have ended in anything so saintly and so beautiful as CatherineLeyburn. '

The quiet, commonplace clergyman spoke with a sudden tremor of feeling. His wife, however, looked at him with a dissatisfied expression. 

'You always talk, ' she said, 'as if there were no one but Catherine. People generally like the other two much better. Catherine is sostand-off. '

'Oh, the other two are very well, ' said the vicar, but in a differenttone. 

Robert sat ruminating. Presently his host and hostess went in, and theyoung man went sauntering up the climbing garden-path to the pointwhere only a railing divided it from the fell-side. From here his eyecommanded the whole of upper end of the valley--a bare desolate recessfilled evening shadow, and walled round by masses of gray and purplecrag, except in one spot, where a green intervening fell marked thecourse of the pass connecting the dale with the Ullswater district. Below him were church and parsonage; beyond, the stone-filled babblingriver, edged by intensely green fields, which melted imperceptiblyinto 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, theheckberry trees along the river and the road, emphasized the golden rayswhich were flooding into the lower valley as into a broad green cup. Close by, in the little vicarage orchard, were fruit-trees in blossom;the air was mild and fragrant, though to the young man from the warmersouth there was still a bracing quality in the soft western breeze whichblew about him. 

He stood there bathed in silent enchantment, an eager nature going outto meet and absorb into itself the beauty and peace of the scene. Linesof Wordsworth were on his lips; the little well-worn volume was in hispocket, but he did not need to bring it out; and his voice had all apoet's intensity of emphasis as he strolled along, reciting under hisbreath--

 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless; with adoration!

Presently his eye was once more caught by the roof of Burwood, lyingbeneath him on its promontory of land, in the quiet shelter of itsprotecting trees. He stopped, and a delicate sense of harmoniousassociation awoke in him. That girl, atoning as it were by her one whitelife for all the crimes and coarseness of her ancestry: the idea of herseemed to steal into the solemn golden evening and give it added poetryand meaning. The young man felt a sudden strong curiosity to see her. 

CHAPTER III. 

The festal tea had begun and Mrs. Thornburgh was presiding. Opposite toher, 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, thatthe first _coup d'æil_ was good. The flowers had been arranged in theafternoon by Rose; Sarah's exertions had made the silver shine again; apleasing odor of good food underlay the scent of the bluebells and fern;and what with the snowy table-linen, and the pretty dresses and brightfaces of the younger people, the room seemed to be full of an incessantplay of crisp and delicate color. 

But just as the vicar's wife was sinking into her seat with a littlesigh of wearied satisfaction, she caught sight suddenly of an eye-glassat the other end of the table slowly revolving in a large and jewelledhand. The judicial eye behind the eye-glass travelled round the table, lingering, as it seemed to Mrs. Thornburgh's excited consciousness, onevery spot where cream or jelly or _meringue_ should have been and wasnot. When it dropped with a harsh little click, the hostess, unable torestrain herself, rushed into desperate conversation with Mr. Mayhew, giving vent to incoherencies in the course of the first act of the mealwhich did but confirm her neighbor--a grim uncommunicative person--inhis own devotion to a policy of silence. Meanwhile the vicar wasgrappling on very unequal terms with Mrs. Seaton. Mrs. Leyburn hadfallen to young Elsmere. Catherine Leyburn was paired off with Mr. Baker, Agnes with Mr. Mayhew's awkward son--a tongue-tied youth, lately an unattached student at Oxford, but now relegated, owing toan invincible antipathy to Greek verbs, to his native air, till someopening into the great world should be discovered for him. 

Rose was on Robert Elsmere's right. Agnes had coaxed her into a whitedress as being the least startling garment she possessed, and she waslike a Stothard picture with her high waist, her blue sash ribbon, her slender neck and brilliant head. She had already cast many curiousglances at the Thornburgh's guest. 'Not a prig, at any rate, ' shethought to herself with satisfaction, 'so Agnes is quite wrong. '

As for the young man, who was, to begin with, in that state which sooften follows on the long confinement of illness, when the light seemsbrighter 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 andmovements was in the first dawn of an exceptional beauty; the plainsister had struck him before supper in the course of twenty minutes'conversation as above the average in point of manners and talk. As toMiss Leyburn, he had so far only exchanged a bow with her, but he waswatching her now, as he sat opposite to her, out of his quick observanteyes. 

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 andperfect moulding of the brow, nose, and upper lip. The hollows in thecheeks struck him, and the way in which the breadth of the foreheadsomewhat overbalanced the delicacy of the mouth and chin. The face, though still quite young and expressing a perfect physical health, hadthe look of having been polished and refined away to its foundations. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it, and not a vestigeof Rose's peach-like bloom. Her profile, as he saw it now, had thefirmness, the clear whiteness of a profile on a Greek gem. 

She was actually making that silent, awkward lad talk! Robert who, out of his four years' experience as an Oxford tutor, had an abundantcompassion for and understanding of such beings as young Mayhew, watchedher with a pleased amusement, wondering how she did it. What? Hadshe got him on carpentering, engineering--discovered his weak point?Water-wheels, investors, steam-engines--and the lumpish lad all in aglow, talking away nineteen to the dozen. What tact, what kindness inher gray-blue eyes!

But he was interrupted by Mrs. Seaton, who was perfectly well aware thatshe had beside her a stranger of some prestige, an Oxford man, and amember, besides, of a well-known Sussex county family. She was a largeand commanding person, clad in black _moiré_ silk. She wore a velvetdiadem, Honiton lace lappets, and a variety of chains, beads, andbangles bestrewn about her that made a tinkling as she moved. Fixingher neighbor with a bland majesty of eye, she inquired of him if he were'any relation of Sir Mowbray Elsmere?' Robert replied that Sir MowbrayElsmere was his 'father's cousin, and the patron of the living to whichhe had just been, appointed. Mrs. Seaton then graciously informed himthat long ago-'when I was a girl in my native Hampshire'--her familyand Sir Mowbray Elsmere had been on intimate terms. Her father had beendevoted to Sir Mowbray. 'And I, ' she added with an evident though loftydesire to please, 'retain an inherited respect, sir, for your name. '

Robert bowed, but it was not clear from his look that the rector'swife had made an impression. His general conception of his relativeand patron Sir Mowbray--who had been for many years the family blacksheep--was, indeed, so far removed from any notions of 'respect, ' thathe had some difficulty in keeping his countenance under the lady's lookand pose. He would have been still more entertained had he known thenature of the intimacy to which she referred. Mrs. Seaton's father, in his capacity of solicitor in a small country town, had acted aselectioneering agent for Sir Mowbray (then plain Mr. ) Elsmere on twooccasions--in 18__, when his client had been triumphantly returned at abye-election; and two years later, when a repetition of the tactics, so successful in the previous contest, led to a petition, and to thedisappearance of the heir to the Elsmere property from parliamentarylife. 

Of these matters, however, he was ignorant, and Mrs. Seaton did notenlighten him. Drawing herself up a little, and proceeding in a moreneutral tone than before, she proceeded to put him through a catechismon Oxford, alternately cross-examining him and expounding to him her ownviews and her husband's on the functions of the Universities. Sheand the Archdeacon conceived that the Oxford authorities were mainlyoccupied in ruining the young men's health by over-examination, andpoisoning their minds by free-thinking opinions. In her belief, if itwent on, the motherly of England would refuse to send their sons tothese ancient but deadly resorts. She looked at him sternly as shespoke, as though defying him to be flippant in return. And he, indeed, did his polite best to be serious. 

But it somewhat disconcerted him in the middle to find Miss Leyburn'seyes upon him. And undeniably there was spark of laughter in them, quenched, as soon as his glance crossed hers, under long lashes. Howthat spark had lit up the grave, pale face! He longed to provoke itagain, to cross over to her and say, 'What amused you? Do you think mevery young and simple? Tell me about these people. '

But, instead, ho made friends with Rose. Mrs. Seaton was soon engagedin giving the vicar advice on his parochial affairs, an experience whichgenerally, ended by the appearance of certain truculent elements in oneof the mildest of men. So Robert was free to turn to his girl neighborand ask her what people meant by calling the Lakes rainy. 

'I understand it is pouring at Oxford. To-day your sky has been withouta cloud, and your rivers are running dry. '

'And you have mastered our climate in twenty-four hours, like thetourists--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 brilliant coloring, her gestures as fresh and untamed as themovements of the leaping river outside, the mixture in her of girlishpertness and ignorance with the promise of a remarkable generalcapacity, made her a most taking, provoking creature. Mrs. Thornburgh--much recovered in mind since Dr. Baker had praised thepancakes by which Sarah had sought to prove to her mistress thesuperfluity of naughtiness involved in her recourse to foreigncooks--watched the young man and maiden with a face which grew more andmore radiant. The conversation in the garden had not pleased her. Whyshould people always talk of Catherine; Mrs. Thornburgh stood in awe ofCatherine and had given her up in despair. It was the other two whosefortunes, as possibly directed by her, filled her maternal heart withsympathetic emotion. 

Suddenly in the midst of her satisfaction she had a rude shock. What onearth was the vicar doing? After they had got through better than anyonecould have hoped, thanks to a discreet silence and Sarah's makeshifts, there was the master of the house pouring the whole tale of his wife'saspirations and disappointment into Mrs. Seaton's ear! If it were everallowable to rush upon your husband at table and stop his mouth with adinner napkin, Mrs. Thornburgh could at this moment have performed sucha feat. She nodded and coughed and fidgeted in vain!

The vicar's confidences were the result of a fit of nervousexasperation. Mrs. Seaton had just embarked upon an account of 'ourcharming time with Lord Fleckwood. ' Now Lord Fleckwood was adistant cousin of Archdeacon Seaton, and the great magnate of theneighborhood--not, however, a very respectable magnate. Mr. Thornburghhad heard accounts of Lupton Castle from Mrs. Seaton on at least halfa dozen different occasions. Privately he believed them all to refer toone visit, an event of immemorial antiquity periodically brought upto 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 theflow of his neighbor's eloquence he could think of no better device, or more suitable rival subject, than to plunge into the story ofthe drunken carrier, and the pastry still reposing on the counter atRandall's. 

He blushed, good man, when he was well in it. His wife's horrifiedcountenance embarrassed him. But anything was better than LordFleckwood. Mrs. Seaton listened to him with the slightest smile on herformidable lip. The story was pleasing to her. 

'At least, my dear sir, ' she said when he paused, nodding her diademedhead with stately emphasis, 'Mrs. Thornburgh's inconvenience may haveone good result. You can now make an example of the carrier. It is ourspecial business, as my husband always says, who are in authority, tobring their low vices home to these people. '

The vicar fidgeted in his chair. What ineptitude had he been guilty ofnow! By way of avoiding Lord Fleckwood he might have started Mrs. Seatonon teetotalism. Now if there was one topic on which this awe-inspiringwoman was more awe-inspiring than another it was on the topic ofteetotalism. The vicar had already felt himself a criminal as he drankhis modest glass of claret under her eye. 

'Oh, the drunkenness about here is pretty bad, ' said Dr. Baker from theother end of the table. 'But there are plenty of worse things in thesevalleys. Besides, what person in his senses would think of trying todisestablish John Backhouse? He and his queer brother are as much afeature of the valley as High Fell. We have too few originals left to beso very particular about trifles. '

'Trifles?' repeated Mrs. Seaton in a deep voice, throwing up her eyes. But she would not venture an argument with Dr. Baker. He had all thecheery self-confidence of the old established local doctor, who knowshimself to be a power, and neither Mrs. Seaton nor her restless, intriguing little husband had ever yet succeeded in putting him down. 

'You must see these two old characters, ' said Dr. Baker to Elsmereacross the table. 'They are relics of Westmoreland which will soon havedisappeared. Old John, who is going on for seventy, is as tough an olddalesman as ever you saw. He doesn't measure his cups, but he wouldscorn to be floored by them. I don't believe he does drink much, but ifhe does there is probably no amount of whiskey that he couldn't carry. Jim, the other brother, is about five years older. He is a kind ofsoftie--all alive on one side of his brain, and a noodle on the other. Asingle glass of rum and water puts him under the table. And as he nevercan refuse this glass, and as the temptation generally seizes him whenthey are on their rounds, he is always getting John into disgrace. John swears at him and slangs him. No use. Jim sits still, looks--well, nohow. I never saw an old creature with a more singular gift of denudinghis face of all expression. John vow's he shall go to the "house;" hehas no legal share in the business; the house and the horse and cartare John's. Next day you see them on the cart again just as usual. Inreality 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. 

'Oh, my dear madam, ' said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders, 'we can'tall be so virtuous. If old Jim is a drunkard, he has got a heart of hisown somewhere, and can nurse a dying niece like a woman. Miss Leyburncan tell us something about that. '

And he turned round to his neighbor with a complete change ofexpression, and a voice that had a new note in it of affectionaterespect. Catherine colored as if she did not like being addressed on thesubject, and just nodded a little with gentle affirmative eyes. 

'A strange case. ' said Dr. Baker again looking at Elsmere. It is afamily that is original and old-world even in its ways of dying. I havebeen a doctor in these parts for five-and-twenty years. I have seen whatyou may call old Westmoreland die out--costume, dialect, superstitions. At least, as to dialect, the people have become bilingual. I sometimesthink they talk it to each other as much as ever, but some of them won'ttalk it to you and me at all. And as to superstitions, the only ghoststory I know that still has some hold on popular belief is the one whichattaches to this mountain here, High Fell, at the end of this valley. '

He paused a moment. A salutary sense has begun to penetrate even modernprovincial 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 afterwardfor each operation. The pull was soon forgotten; the sixpence lived ongratefully in a child's warm memory. 

'Tell it, ' she said; 'we give you leave. We won't interrupt you unlessyou put in too many inventions. '

'You invite me to break the first law of storytelling, Miss Rose, ' saidthe doctor, lifting a finger at her. 'Every man is bound to leave astory 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 sayyou invent. But at any rate there is a ghost, and she walks along theside of High Fell at midnight every Midsummer day. If you see her andshe passes you in silence, why you only got a fright for your pains. Butif she speaks to you, you die within the year. Old John Backhouse is awidower with one daughter. This girl saw the ghost last Midsummer day, and Miss Leyburn and I are now doing our best to keep her alive over thenext; 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; betternot inquire into it. But at the present moment the time of her deathseeing likely to be determined by the strength of her own and otherpeople's belief in the ghost's summons. '

Mrs. Seaton's grim mouth relaxed into an ungenial smile. She put up hereye-glass and looked at Catherine. 'An unpleasant household, I shouldimagine, ' she said shortly, 'for a young lady to visit. '

Doctor Baker looked at the rector's wife, and a kind of flame cameinto his eyes. He and Mrs. Seaton were old enemies, and he was aquick-tempered mercurial sort of Man. 

'I presume that one's guardian angel may have to follow one sometimesinto unpleasant quarters, ' he said hotly. 'If this girl lives, it willbe Miss Leyburn's doing; if she dies, saved and comforted, instead oflost in this world and the next, it will be Miss Leyburn's doing too. Ah, my dear young lady, let me alone! You tie my tongue always, and Iwon't have it. '

And the doctor turned his weather-beaten elderly face upon her with alook which was half defiance and half apology. She, on her side, hadflushed painfully, laying her white fingertips imploringly on his arm. Mrs. Seaton turned away with a little dry cough, so did her spectacledsister at the other end of the table. Mrs. Leyburn, on the other hand, sat in a little ecstasy, looking at Catherine and Dr. Baker, somethingglistening in her eyes. Robert Elsmere alone showed presence of mind. Bending across to Dr. Baker, he asked him a sudden question as to thehistory of a certain strange green mound or barrow that rose out ofa flat field not far from the vicarage windows. Dr. Baker grasped hiswhiskers, threw the young man a queer glance, and replied. Thenceforwardhe and Robert kept up a lively antiquarian talk on the traces of Norsesettlement in the Cumbrian valleys, which lasted till the ladies leftthe dining-room. 

As Catherine Leyburn went out Elsmere stood holding the door open. Shecould not help raising her eyes upon him, eyes full of a half-timidhalf-grateful friendliness. His own returned her look with interest. 

'"A spirit, but a woman too, "' he thought to himself with a new-bornthrill of sympathy, as he went back to his seat. She had not yet said adirect word to him, and yet he was curiously convinced that here was oneof the most interesting persons, and one of the persons most interestingto _him_, that he had ever met. What mingled delicacy and strength inthe hand that had lain beside her on the dinner-table--what potentialdepths of feeling in the full dark fringed eye!

Half-an-hour later, when Elsmere re-entered the drawing room, he foundCatherine Leyburn sitting by an open French window that looked outon 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 sheimagined, by a vast amount, of cheap finery, was sitting beside her, studying her with a timid adoration. The doctor's daughter regardedCatherine Leyburn, who during the last five years had made herselfalmost as distinct a figure in the popular imagination of a fewWestmoreland valleys as Sister Dora among her Walsall miners, as a beingof a totally different Order from herself. She was glued to the side ofher idol, but her shy, and awkward tongue could find hardly anything tosay to her. Catherine, however, talked away, gently stroking the whilethe girl's rough hand which lay on her knee, to the mingled pain andbliss of its owner, who was outraged by the contrast between her ownungainly member and Miss Leyburn's delicate fingers. 

Mrs. Seaton was on the sofa beside Mrs. Thornburgh, amply avengingherself on the vicar's wife for any checks she might have received attea. Miss Barks, her sister, an old maid with a face that seemed to beperpetually peering forward, light colorless hair surmounted by a capadorned with artificial nasturtiums, and white-lashed eyes armed withspectacles, was having her way with Mrs. Leyburn, inquiring into thehousehold arrangements of Burwood with a cross-examining power whichmade the mild widow as pulp before her. 

When the gentlemen entered, Mrs. Thornburgh looked round hastily. Sheherself had opened that door into the garden. A garden on a warm summernight offers opportunities no schemer should neglect. Agnes and Rosewere chattering and laughing on the gravel path just outside it, theirwhite girlish figures showing temptingly against the dusky backgroundof garden and fell. It somewhat disappointed the vicar's wife to seeher tall guest take a chair and draw it beside Catherine--while AdelineBaker awkwardly got up and disappeared into the garden. 

Elsmere felt it an unusually interesting moment, so strong had beenhis sense of attraction at tea; but like the rest of us he could findnothing more telling to start with than a remark about the weather. Catherine in her reply asked him if he were quite recovered from theattack of low fever he was understood 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 got to work. The idling of it isthe worst part of illness. However, in a month from now I must be at myliving, and I can only hope it will give me enough to do. '

Catherine looked up at him with a quick impulse of liking. What an eagerface 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, standingup round the high, open brow, seemed to help the general impression ofalertness and vigor. 

'Your mother, I hear, is already there?' said Catherine. 

'Yes. My poor mother!' and the young man smiled half sadly. 'It isa curious situation for both of us. This living which has just beenbestowed on me is my father's old living. It is in the gift of mycousin, Sir Mowbray Elsmere. My great-uncle'--he drew himself togethersuddenly. 'But I don't know why I should imagine that these thingsinterest other people, ' he said, with a little quick, almost comical, accent of self-rebuke. 

'Please go on, ' cried Catherine hastily. The voice and manner weresingularly pleasant to her; she wished he would not interrupt himselffor nothing. 

'Really? Well then, my great-uncle, old Sir William, wished me to haveit when I grew up. I was against it for a long time; took Orders; but Iwanted something more stirring than a country parish. One has dreams ofmany things. But one's dreams come to nothing. I got ill at Oxford. Thedoctors forbade the town work. The old incumbent who had held the livingsince my father's death died precisely at that moment. I felt myselfbooked, and gave in to various friends; but it is second best. '

She felt a certain soreness and discomfort in his tone, as though histalk represented a good deal of mental struggle in the past. 

'But the country is not idleness, ' she said, smiling at him. Her cheekwas leaning lightly on her hand, her eyes had an unusual animation;and her long white dress, guiltless of any ornament save a smallold-fashioned locket hanging from a thin old chain and a pair ofhair bracelets with engraved gold clasps, gave her the nobleness andsimplicity of a Romney picture. 

'_You_ do not find it so I imagine, ' he replied, bending forward to herwith a charming gesture of homage. He would have liked her to talk tohim of her work and her interests. He, too, mentally compared her toSaint Elizabeth. He could almost have fancied the dark red flowers inher white lap. But his comparison had another basis of feeling thanRose's. 

However, she would not talk to him of herself. The way in which sheturned the conversation brought home to his own expansive, confidingnature a certain austerity and stiffness of fibre in her which for themoment chilled him. But as he got her into talk about the neighborhood, the people and their ways, the impression vanished again, so far atleast, as there was anything repellent about it. Austerity, strength, individuality, all these words indeed he was more and more driven toapply to her. She was like no other woman he had ever seen. It was notat all that she was more remarkable intellectually. Every now and then, indeed, as their talk flowed on, he noticed in what she said anabsence of a good many interests and attainments which in his ordinarysouth-country women friends he would have assumed as a matter of course. 

'I understand French very little, and I never read any, ' she said to himonce, quietly, as he fell to comparing some peasant story she had toldhim with an episode in one of George Sand's Berry novels. It seemed tohim that she knew her Wordsworth by heart. And her own mountain life, her own rich and meditative soul, had taught her judgments and commentson her favorite poet which stirred Elsmere every now and then toenthusiasm--so true they were and pregnant, so full often of a naturalmagic of expression. On the other hand, when he quoted a very well-knownline of Shelley's she asked him where it came from. She seemed to himdeeper and simpler at every moment; her very limitations of sympathyand knowledge, and they were evidently many, began to attract him. Thethought of her ancestry crossed him now and then, rousing in him nowwonder, and now a strange sense of congruity and harmony. Clearly shewas the daughter of a primitive unexhausted race. And yet what purity, what refinement, 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 quadrangles, and a long street, a greatbuilding with a dome, and such beautiful trees!'

'Did your father often go back?'

'No; never toward the later part of his life'--and her clear eyesclouded 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 wasa little difficult. Then his big face and clerical dress seemed somehowto reassure her, and she began again, though reluctantly. 

'He used to say that it was all so changed. The young fellows he sawwhen he went back scorned everything he cared for. Every visit to Oxfordwas like a stab to him. It seemed to him as if the place was full of men'Who only wanted to destroy and break down everything that was sacred tohim. '

Elsmere reflected that Richard Leyburn must have left Oxford about thebeginning of the Liberal reaction, which followed Tractarianism, and intwenty years transformed the University. 

'Ah!' he said, smiling gently. 'He should have lived a little longer. There is another turn of the tide since then. The destructive wave hasspent itself, and at Oxford now many of us feel ourselves on the upwardswell of a religious revival. '

Catherine looked up at him with a sweet sympathetic look. That dimvision of Oxford, with its gray, tree-lined walls, lay very near toher heart for her father's sake. And the keen face above her seemed tosatisfy and respond to her inner feeling. 

'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 slipped out of her, and she checked herself suddenly. Robert saw that she was uncertain as to his opinions, and afraid lestshe might have said something discourteous. 

'It is not only the High Church influence, ' he said quickly, 'it is amixture of influences from all sorts of quarters that has brought aboutthe new state of things. Some of the factors in the change were hardlyChristian at all, by name, but they have all helped to make men think, to stir their hearts, to win them back to the old ways. '

His voice had taken to itself a singular magnetism. Evidently thematters they were discussing were matters in which he felt a deep andloving interest. His young boyish face had grown grave; there was astriking dignity and weight in his look and manner, which suddenlyaroused in Catherine the sense that she was speaking to a man ofdistinction, accustomed to deal on equal terms with the large thingsof life. She raised her eyes to him for a moment, and he saw in them abeautiful, mystical light--responsive, lofty, full of soul. 

The next moment, it apparently struck her sharply that theirconversation was becoming incongruous with its surroundings. Behindthem Mrs. Thornburgh was bustling about with candies and music-stools, preparing for a performance on the flute by Mr. Mayhew, the black-browedvicar of Shanmoor, and the room seemed to be pervaded by Mrs. Seaton'sstrident voice. Her strong natural reserve asserted itself, and her facesettled again into the slight rigidity of expression characteristic ofit. She rose and prepared to move farther into the room. 

'We must listen, ' she said to him, smiling, over her shoulder. 

And she left him, settling herself by the side of Mrs. Leyburn. He had amomentary sense of rebuff. The man, quick, sensitive, sympathetic, feltin the woman the presence of a strength, a self-sufficingness which wasnot all attractive. His vanity, if he had cherished any during theirconversation, was not flattered by its close. But as he leant againstthe window-frame waiting for the music to begin, he could hardly keephis eyes from her. He was a man who, by force of temperament, madefriends readily with women, though except for a passing fancy or two hehad never been in love; and his sense of difficulty with regard tothis stiffly-mannered deep-eyed country girl brought with it an unusualstimulus and excitement. 

Miss Barks seated herself deliberately, after much fiddling withbracelets and gloves, and tied back the ends of her cap behind her. Mr. Mayhew took out his flute and lovingly put it together. He was apowerful swarthy man who said little, and was generally alarming to theladies of the neighborhood. To propitiate him they asked him to bringhis flute, and nervously praised the fierce music he made on it. MissBarks enjoyed a monopoly of his accompaniments, and there were many whoregarded her assiduity as a covert attack upon the widower's nameand position. If so, it was Greek meeting Greek, for with all histaciturnity the vicar of Shanmoor was well able to defend himself. 

'Has it begun?' said a hurried whisper at Elsmere's elbow, and turning, he saw Rose and Agnes on the step of the window, Rose's cheeks flushedby the night breeze, a shawl thrown lightly round her head. 

She was answered by the first notes of the flute, following somepowerful chords in which Miss Barks had tested at once the strength ofher wrists and the vicarage piano. 

The girl made a little _moue_ of disgust, and turned as though tofly down the steps again. But Agnes caught her and held her, andthe mutinous creature had to submit to be drawn inside while Mrs. Thornburgh, in obedience to complaints of draughts from Mrs. Seaton, motioned to have the window shut. Rose established herself againstthe wall, her curly head thrown back, her eyes half shut, her mouthexpressing an angry endurance. Robert watched her with amusement. 

It was certainly a remarkable duet. After an _adagio_ opening in whichflute and piano were at magnificent cross purposes from the beginning, the two instruments plunged into an _allegro_ very long and veryfast, which became ultimately a desperate race between the competingperformers for the final chord. Mr. Mayhew toiled away, taxing theresources of his whole vast frame to keep his small instrument in a linewith the piano, and taxing them in vain. For the shriller and thewilder grew the flute, and the greater the exertion of the dark Herculesperforming on it, the fiercer grew the pace of the piano. Rose stampedher little foot. 

'Two bars ahead last page, ' she murmured, 'three bars this; will no onestop her!'

But the pages flew past, turned assiduously by Agnes, who took asardonic delight in these performances, and every countenance in theroom seemed to take a look of sharpened anxiety as to how the duet wasto end, and who was to be victor. 

Nobody knowing Miss Barks need to have, been in any doubt as to that!Crash came the last chord, and the poor flute, nearly half apage behind, was left shrilly hanging, in mid-air, forsaken andcompanionless, an object of derision to gods and men. 

'Ah! I took it a little fast!' said the lady, triumphantly looking up atthe discomfited clergyman. 

'Mr. Elsmere, ' said Rose, hiding herself in the window-curtain besidehim, that she might have her laugh in safety, 'do they play like that inOxford, or has Long Whindale a monopoly?'

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, rememberingsomething 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 suchcompany. 

Mrs. Thornburgh motioned to him to come and sit by Mrs. Leyburn, asummons which he obeyed with the more alacrity, as it brought him oncemore within reach of Mrs. Leyburn's oldest daughter. 

'Are you fond of music, Mr. Elsmere?' asked Mrs. Leyburn in her littlemincing voice, making room for his chair beside them. 'If you are, I amsure my youngest daughter's playing, will please you. '

Catherine moved abruptly. Robert, while he made some pleasant answer, divined that the reserved and stately daughter must be often troubled bythe mother's expansiveness. 

Meanwhile the room was again settling itself to, listen. Mrs. Seaton wasseverely turning over a photograph book. In her opinion the violin wasan unbecoming instrument for young women. Miss Barks sat upright withthe studiously neutral expression which befits the artist asked tolisten to a rival. Mr. Thornburgh sat pensive, one foot drooped over theother. He was very fond of the Leyburn girls, but music seemed to him, good man, one of the least comprehensible of human pleasures. As forRose, she had at last arranged herself and her accompanist Agnes, afterrouting out from her music a couple of _Fantasie-Stücke_, which she hadwickedly chosen as presenting the most severely classical contrast tothe 'rubbish' played by the preceding performers. She stood with herlithe figure in its old-fashioned dress thrown out against the blackcoats of a group of gentlemen beyond, one slim arched foot advanced, theends of the blue sash dangling, the hand and arm, beautifully formed butstill wanting the roundness of womanhood, raised high for action, the lightly poised head thrown back with an air. Robert thought her abewitching, half-grown thing, overflowing with potentialities of futurebrilliance and empire. 

Her music astonished him. Where had a little provincial maiden learnedto play with this intelligence, this force, this delicate command ofher instrument? He was not a musician, and therefore could not gauge herexactly, but he was more or less familiar with music and its standards, as all people become nowadays who live in a highly cultivated society, and he knew enough at any rate to see that what he was listening to wasremarkable, was out of the common range. Still more evident was this, when from the humorous piece with which the sisters led off--a dance ofclowns, but clowns of Arcady--they slid into a delicate rippling _chantd'amour_, the long-drawn notes of the violin rising and falling onthe piano accompaniment with an exquisite plaintiveness. Where dida _fillette_, unformed, inexperienced, win the secret of so mucheloquence--only from the natural dreams of a girl's heart as to 'thelovers waiting in the hidden years?'

But when the music ceased, Elsmere, after a hearty clap that set theroom applauding likewise, turned not to the musician but the figurebeside Mrs. Leyburn, the sister who had sat listening with animpassiveness, a sort of gentle remoteness of look which had piqued hiscuriosity. The mother meanwhile was drinking in the compliments of Dr. Baker. 

'Excellent!' cried Elsmere. 'How in the name of fortune, Miss Leyburn, if I may ask, has your sister managed to get on so far in this remoteplace?'

'She goes to Manchester every year to some relations we have there, 'said Catherine quietly; 'I believe she has been very well taught. '

'But surely, ' he said warmly, 'it is more than teaching--more even thantalent--there is something like genius in it?'

She did not answer very readily. 

'I don't know, ' she said at last. 'Everyone says it is very good. '

He would have been repelled by her irresponsiveness but that her lastwords had in them a note of lingering, of wistfulness, as thoughthe subject were connected with an inner debate not yet solved whichtroubled her. He was puzzled, but certainly not repelled. 

Twenty minutes later everybody was going. The Seatons went first, andthe other guests lingered awhile afterward to enjoy the sense of freedomleft by their departure. But at last the Mayews, father and son, setoff on foot to walk home over the moonlit mountains; the doctor tuckedhimself and his daughter into his high gig and drove off with a sweepingironical bow to Rose, who had stood on the steps teasing him to thelast; and Robert Elsmere offered to escort the Miss Leyburns and theirmother home. 

Mrs. Thornburgh was left protesting to the vicar's incredulous ears thatnever--never as long as she lived--would she have Mrs. Seaton inside herdoors again. 

'Her manners'--cried the vicar's wife, fuming-'her manners woulddisgrace a Whinborough shop-girl. She has none-positively none!'

Then suddenly her round, comfortable face brightened and broadened outinto a beaming smile--

'But, after all, William, say what you will--and you always do say themost unpleasant things you can think of--it was a great success. Iknow the Leyburns enjoyed it. And as for Robert, I saw him_looking_--_looking_--at that little minx Rose while she was playingas if he couldn't take his eyes off her. What a picture she made, to besure!'

The vicar, who had been standing with his back to fireplace and hishands in his pockets, received his wife's remarks first of all withlifted eyebrows, and then with a low chuckle, half scornful, halfcompassionate, 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, thevicar ventured to take the whip-hand of her like this. Mrs. Thornburghlooked at him in amazement. 

'Do you mean to say, ' he asked, in raised tones, 'that you didn't noticethat 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-andher impulsive contradiction died on her lips. It was now her turn toejaculate--

'Catherine!' she said feebly. 'Catherine! how absurd!'

But she turned and, with quickened breath, looked out of the windowafter the retreating figures. Mrs. Thornburgh went up to bed thatnight an inch taller. She had never felt herself more exquisitelyindispensable, more of a personage. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Before, however, we go on to chronicle the ultimate success or failureof Mrs. Thornburgh as a match-maker, it may be well to inquire a littlemore closely into the antecedents of the man who had suddenly roused somuch activity in her contriving mind. And, indeed, these antecedentsare important to us. For the interest of an uncomplicated story willentirely depend upon the clearness with which the reader may havegrasped the general outlines of a quick soul's development. Andthis 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 thisworld's goods; up to a certain moderate point, indeed, a favorite offortune in all respects. His father belonged to the younger line of anold Sussex family, and owed his pleasant country living to the familyinstincts of his uncle, Sir William Elsmere, in whom Whig doctrines andConservative traditions were pretty evenly mixed, with a result of theusual respectable and inconspicuous kind. His virtues had descendedmostly to his daughters, while all his various weaknesses and fatuitieshad blossomed into vices in the person of his eldest son and heir, theSir Mowbray Elsmere of Mrs. Seaton's early recollections. 

Edward Elsmere, rector of Murewell in Surrey, and father of Robert, haddied before his uncle and patron; and his widow and son had been left toface the world together. Sir William Elsmere and his nephew's wife hadnot much in common, and rarely concerned themselves with each other. Mrs. Elsmere was an Irishwoman by birth, with irregular Irish ways, and a passion for strange garments, which made her the dread of theconventional English squire; and, after she left the vicarage with herson, she and her husband's uncle met no more. But when he died itwas found that the old man's sense of kinship, acting blindly andirrationally, but with a slow inevitableness and certainty, had stirredin him at the last in behalf of his great-nephew. He left him a moneylegacy, the interest of which was to be administered by his mother tillhis majority, and in a letter addressed to his heir he directed that, should the boy on attaining manhood show any disposition to enter theChurch, all possible steps were to be taken to endow him with the familyliving of Murewell, which had been his father's, and which at the timeof the old Baronet's death was occupied by another connection of thefamily, already well stricken in years. 

Mowbray Elsmere had been hardly on speaking terms with his cousinEdward, and was neither amiable nor generous, but his father knew thatthe tenacious Elsmere instinct was to be depended on for the fulfillmentof his wishes. And so it proved. No sooner was his father dead, thanSir Mowbray curtly communicated his instructions to Mrs. Elsmere, thenliving at the town of Harden for the sake of the great public schoolrecently transported there. She was to inform him, when the right momentarrived, if it was the boy's wish, to enter the Church, and meanwhile hereferred her to his lawyers for particulars of such immediate benefitsas were secured to her under the late Baronet's will. 

At the moment when Sir Mowbray's letter reached her, Mrs. Elsmere wasplaying a leading part in the small society to which circumstances hadconsigned her. She was the personal friend of half the masters and theirwives, and of at least a quarter of the school, while in the little townwhich stretched up the hill covered by the new school buildings, shewas the helper, gossip, and confident 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-upskirts, her spectacles, and the dangling parcels in which her souldelighted, were the outward signs of a personality familiar to all. For under those checked shawls which few women passed without an inwardmarvel, there beat one of the warmest hearts that ever animated mortalclay, and the prematurely, wrinkled face, with its small quick eyesand shrewd indulgent mouth, bespoke a nature as responsive as it wasvigorous. 

Their owner was constantly in the public eye. Her house, during thehours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little else than ahalting place between two journeys. Visits to the poor, long watches bythe sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of character gave heralways an important place; discussions with the vicar, arguments withthe curates, a chat with this person and a walk with that--these werethe incidents and occupations which filled her day. Life was delightfulto her; action, energy, influence, were delightful to her; she couldonly breathe freely in the very thick of the stirring, many-coloredtumult of existence. Whether it was a pauper in the workhouse, or boysfrom the school, or a girl caught in the tangle of a love-affair, it wasall the same to Mrs. Elsmere. Everything moved her, everything appealedto her. Her life was a perpetual giving forth, and such was the inherentnobility and soundness of the nature, that in spite of her curious Irishfondness for the vehement romantic sides of experience, she didlittle harm, and much good. Her tongue might be over-ready and herchampionships indiscreet, but her hands were helpful, and her heart wastrue. There was something contagious in her enjoyment of life, and withall her strong religious faith, the thought of death, of any finalpulse and silence in the whirr of the great social machine was to hera thought of greater chill and horror than to many a less brave andspiritual soul. 

Till her boy was twelve years old, however, she had lived for him firstand foremost. She had taught him, played with him, learnt with him, communicating to him through all his lessons her own fire and eagernessto a degree which every now and then taxed the physical powers of thechild. Whenever the signs of strain appeared, however, the mother wouldbe overtaken by a fit of repentant watchfulness, and for days togetherRobert would find her the most fascinating playmate, storyteller, and romp; and forget all his precocious interest in history or vulgarfractions. In after years when Robert looked back upon his childhood, he was often reminded of the stories of Goethe's bringing-up. He couldrecall exactly the same scenes as Goethe describes, --mother and childsitting together in the gloaming, the mother's dark eyes dancing withfun or kindling with dramatic fire, as she carried an imaginary heroor heroine through a series of the raciest adventures; the child alleagerness and sympathy, now clapping his little hands at the fall of thegiant, or the defeat of the sorcerer, and now arguing and suggestingin ways which gave perpetually fresh stimulus to the mother'sinventiveness. He could see her dressing up with him on wet days, reciting King Henry to his Prince Hal, or Prospero to his Ariel, orsimply giving free vent to her own exuberant Irish fun till both he andshe, would sink exhausted into each other's arms, and end the eveningwith a long croon, sitting curled up together in a big armchair in frontof the fire. He could see himself as a child of many crazes, eager forpoetry one week, for natural history the next, now spending all hisspare time in strumming, now in drawing, and now forgetting everythingbut the delights of tree-climbing and bird-nesting. 

And through it all he had the quiet, memory of his mother'scompanionship, he could recall her rueful looks whenever the eagerinaccurate ways, in which he reflected certain ineradicable tendenciesof her own, had lost him a school advantage; he could remember herexhortations, with the dash in them of humorous self-reproach which madethem so stirring to the child's affection; and he could realize theirold far-off life at Murewell, the joys and the worries of it, and seeher now gossiping with the village folk, now wearing herself impetuouslyto death in their service, and now roaming with him over the Surreyheaths in search of all the dirty delectable things in which aboy-naturalist delights. And through it all he was conscious of the samevivid energetic creature, disposing with some difficulty and _fracas_ ofits own excess of nervous life. 

To return, however, to this same critical moment of Mowbray's offer. Robert at the time was a boy of sixteen, doing very well at school, afavorite both with boys and masters. But as to whether his developmentwould lead him in the direction of taking Orders, his mother had not theslightest idea. She was not herself very much tempted by the prospect. There were recollections connected with Murewell, and with the longdeath in life which her husband had passed through there, which weredeeply painful to her; and, moreover, her sympathy with the clergy as aclass was by no means strong. Her experience had not been large, butthe feeling based on it promised to have all the tenacity of a favoriteprejudice. Fortune had handed over the parish of Harden to a ritualistvicar. Mrs. Elsmere's inherited Evangelicalism--she came from an Ulstercounty--rebelled against his doctrine, but the man himself was toolovable to be disliked. Mrs. Elsmere knew a hero when she saw him. Andin his own narrow way, the small-headed emaciated vicar was a hero, andhe and Mrs. Elsmere had soon tasted each other's quality, and formed acurious alliance, founded on true similarity in difference. 

But the criticism thus warded off the vicar expended itself with all themore force on his subordinates. The Harden curates were the chief crookin Mrs. Elsmere's otherwise tolerable lot. Her parish activities broughther across them perpetually, and she could not away with them. Theircassocks, their pretensions, their stupidities, roused the Irish-woman'ssense of humor at every turn. The individuals came and went, butthe type it seemed to her was always the same; and she made theirpeculiarities the basis of a pessimist theory as to the future of theEnglish Church, which was a source of constant amusement to the verybroad-minded young men who filled up the school staff. She, so ready ingeneral to see all the world's good points, was almost blind when it wasa curate's virtues which were in question. So that, in spite of allher persistent church-going, and her love of church performances as anessential part of the busy human spectacle, Mrs. Elsmere had no yearningfor a clerical son. The little accidents of a personal experience hadled to wide generalizations, as is the way with us mortals, and theposition of the young parson in these days of increased parsonicpretensions was, to Mrs. Elsmere, a position in which there was aninherent risk of absurdity. She wished her son to impose upon her whenit came to his taking any serious step in life. She asked for nothingbetter, indeed, than to be able, when the time came, to bow the motherlyknee to him in homage, and she felt a little dread lest, in her flatmoments, a clerical son might sometimes rouse in her that sharp sense ofthe ludicrous which is the enemy of all happy illusions. 

Still, of course, the Elsmere proposal was one to be seriouslyconsidered in its due time and place. Mrs. Elsmere only reflected thatit would certainly be better to Say nothing of it to Robert until heshould be at college. His impressionable temperament, and the powerhe had occasionally shown of absorbing himself in a subject till itproduced in him a fit of intense continuous brooding, unfavorable tohealth and nervous energy, all warned her not to supply him, at a periodof rapid mental and bodily growth, with any fresh stimulus to the senseof responsibility. As a boy he had always shown himself religiouslysusceptible to a certain extent, and his mother's religious likes anddislikes 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 noreluctance or resistance divided his heart from hers. But there hadbeen nothing specially noteworthy or precocious about his religiousdevelopment, and at sixteen or seventeen, in spite of his affectionatecompliance, and his natural reverence for all persons and beliefs inauthority, his mother was perfectly aware that many other things inhis life were more real to him than religion. And on this point, at anyrate, she was certainly not the person to force him. 

He was such a schoolboy as a discerning master delights in--keen abouteverything, bright, docile, popular, excellent at games. He was in thesixth, moreover, as soon as his age allowed; that is to say, as soonas he was sixteen; and his pride in everything connected with the greatbody which he had already a marked and important place was unbounded. Very early in his school career the literary instincts, which had alwaysbeen present in him, and which his mother had largely helped to developby her own restless imaginative ways of approaching life and the worldmade themselves felt with considerable force. Some time before hiscousin's letter arrived, he had been taken with a craze for Englishpoetry, and, but for the corrective influence of a favorite tutor wouldprobably have thrown himself into it with the same exclusive passionas he had shown for subject after subject in his eager a ebullientchildhood. His mother found him at thirteen inditing a letter on thesubject, of 'The Faerie Queene' to a school-friend, in which, with asincerity which made her forgive the pomposity, he remarked--

'I can truly say with Pope, that this great work has afforded meextraordinary pleasure. '

And about the same time, a master who was much interested in the boy'sprospects of getting the school prize for Latin verse, a subject forwhich he had always shown a special aptitude, asked him anxiously, after an Easter holiday, what he had been reading; the boy ran his handsthrough his hair, and still keeping his finger between the leaves, shuta book before him from which he had been learning by heart, and whichwas, alas! neither Ovid nor Virgil. 

'I have just finished Belial! 'he said, with a sigh of satisfaction, 'and am beginning Beelzebub. '

A craze of this kind was naturally followed by a feverish period ofjuvenile authorship, when the house was littered over with stanzas fromthe opening canto of a great poem on Columbus, or with moral essays inthe manner of Pope, castigating the vices of the time with an energywhich sorely tried the gravity of the mother whenever she was calledupon, as she invariably was, to play audience to the young poet. At thesame time the classics absorbed in reality their full share of this fastdeveloping power. Virgil and Aeschylus appealed to the same fibres, thesame susceptibilities, as Milton and Shakspeare, and, the boy's quickimaginative sense appropriated Greek and Latin life with the same easewhich it showed in possessing itself of that bygone English life whencesprung the 'Canterbury Tales, ' or 'As You Like It. ' So that his tutor, who was much attached to him, and who made it one of his main objectsin life to keep the boy's aspiring nose to the grindstone of grammatical_minutiæ_, began about the time of Sir Mowbray's letter to prophesy verysmooth things indeed to his mother as to his future success at college, the possibility of his getting the famous St. Anselm's scholarship, andso on. 

Evidently such a youth, was not likely to depend for the attainment ofa foothold in life on a piece of family privileges. The world was allbefore him where to choose, Mrs. Elsmere thought proudly to herself, as her mother's fancy wandered rashly through the coming years. And formany reasons she secretly allowed herself to hope that he would findfor himself some other post of ministry in a very various world than thevicarage of Murewell. 

So she wrote a civil letter of acknowledgment to Sir Mowbray, informinghim that the intentions of his great-uncle should be communicated to theboy when he should be of fit age to consider them, and that meanwhileshe was obliged to him for pointing out the procedure by which she mightlay hands on the legacy bequeathed to her in trust for her son, theincome of which would now be doubly welcome in view of his collegeexpenses. There the matter rested, and Mrs. Elsmere, during the twoyears which followed, thought little more about it. She became moreand more absorbed in her boy's immediate prospects, in the care of hishealth, which was uneven and tried somewhat by the strain of preparationfor an attempt on the St. Anselm's scholarship, and in the demands whichhis ardent nature, oppressed with the weight of its own aspirations, wasconstantly making upon her support and sympathy. 

At last the moment so long expected arrived. Mrs. Elsmere and her sonleft Harden amid a chorus of good wishes, and settled themselves earlyin November in Oxford lodgings. Robert was to have a few days' completeholiday before the examination, and he and his mother spent it inexploring the beautiful old town, now shrouded in the 'pensive glooms'of still gray autumn weather. There was no sun to light up the mistyreaches of the river; the trees in the Broad Walk were almost bare; theVirginian creeper no longer shone in patches of delicate crimson on thecollege walls; the gardens were damp and forsaken. But to Mrs. Elsmereand Robert the place needed neither sun nor summer 'for beauty'sheightening. ' On both of them it laid its old irresistible spell; thesentiment haunting its quadrangles, its libraries, and its dim melodiouschapels, stole into the lad's heart and alternately soothed andstimulated that keen individual consciousness which naturallyaccompanies the first entrance into manhood. Here, on this soil, steepest in memories, _his_ problems, _his_ struggles, were to be foughtout in their turn, 'Take up thy manhood, ' said the inward voice, 'andshow what is in thee. The hour and the opportunity have come!'

And to this thrill of vague expectation, this young sense of anexpanding world, something of pathos and of sacredness was added bythe dumb influences of the old streets and weather-beaten stones. Howtenacious they were of the past! The dreaming city seemed to be stillbrooding in the autumn calm over the long succession of her sons. Thecontinuity, the complexity of human experience; the unremitting effortof the race; the stream of purpose running through it all; these werethe kind of thoughts which, in more or less inchoate and fragmentaryshape, pervaded the boy's sensitive mind as he rambled with his motherfrom college to college. 

Mrs. Elsmere, too, was fascinated by Oxford. But for all her eagerinterest, the historic beauty of the place aroused in her an under-moodof melancholy, just as it did in Robert. Both had the impressionableCeltic temperament, and both felt that a critical moment was upon them, and that the Oxford air was charged with fate for each of them. Forthe first time in their lives they were to be parted. The mother's longguardianship was coming to an end. Had she loved him enough? Had she sofar fulfilled the trust her dead husband had imposed upon her? Would herboy love her in the new life as he had loved her in the old? And wouldher poor craving heart bear to see him absorbed by fresh interests andpassions, in which her share could be only, at the best, secondary andindirect?

One day--it was on the afternoon preceding the examination--she gavehurried, half-laughing utterance to some of these misgivings of hers. They were walking down the Lime-walk of Trinity Gardens: beneath theirfeet a yellow fresh-strewn carpet of leaves, brown interlacing branchesoverhead, and a red misty sun shining through the trunks. Robertunderstood his mother perfectly, and the way she had of hiding a stormof feeling under these tremulous comedy airs. So that, instead oflaughing too, he took her hand and, there being no spectators anywhereto be seen in the damp November garden, he raised it to his lips with afew broken words of affection and gratitude which very nearly overcamethe self-command of both of them. She crashed wildly into anothersubject, and then suddenly it occurred to her impulsive mind that themoment had come to make him acquainted with those dying intentions ofhis great-uncle which we have already described. The diversion was awelcome one, and the duty seemed clear. So, accordingly, she made himgive her all his attention while she told him the story and the terms ofSir Mowbray's letter, forcing herself the while to keep her own opinionsand predilections as much as possible out of sight. 

Robert listened with interest and astonishment, the sense of a new-foundmanhood waxing once more strong within him, as his mind admitted thestrange picture of himself occupying the place which had been hisfathers; master of the house and the parish he had wandered over withchildish steps, clinging to the finger or the coat of the tall, stoopingfigure which occupied the dim background of his recollections. 'Poormother, ' he said, thoughtfully, when she paused, 'it would be hard upon_you_ to go back to Murewell!'

'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 mana wife. There, put it out of your head, Robert. I thought I had bettertell you, for, after all, the fact may concern your Oxford life. Butyou've got a long time yet before you need begin to worry about it. '

The boy drew himself up to his full height, and tossed his tumblingreddish hair back from his eyes. He was nearly six feet already, witha 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; Idon't feel as if I should ever take Orders. '

Mrs. Elsmere was old enough to know what importance to attach to thetrenchancy of eighteen, but still the words were pleasant to her. 

The next day Robert went up for examination, and after three days ofhard work, and phases of alternate hope and depression, in which motherand son excited one another to no useful purpose, there came the anxiouscrowding round the college gate in the November twilight, and thesudden flight of dispersing messengers bearing the news over Oxford. Thescholarship had been won by a precocious Etonian with an extraordinarytalent for 'stems' and all that appertaineth thereto. But the exhibitionfell to Robert, and mother and son were well content. 

The boy was eager to come into residence at once, though he wouldmatriculate too late to keep the term. The college authorities werewilling, and on the Saturday following the announcement of his successhe was matriculated, saw the Provost, and was informed that roomswould be found for him without delay. His mother and he gayly climbedinnumerable stairs to inspect the garrets of which he was soon to takeproud possession, sallying forth from them only to enjoy an agitateddelightful afternoon among the shops. Expenditure, always charming, becomes under these circumstances a sacred and pontifical act. Never hadMrs. Elsmere bought a teapot for herself with half the fervor which shenow threw into the purchase of Robert's; and the young man, accustomedto a rather bare home, and an Irish lack of the little eleganciesof life, was overwhelmed when his mother actually dragged him intoa printseller's, and added an engraving or two to the enticingmiscellaneous mass of which he was already master. 

They only just left themselves time to rush back to their lodgings anddress for the solemn function of a dinner with the Provost. Thedinner, however, was a great success. The short, shy manner of theirwhite-haired host thawed under the influence of Mrs. Elsmere's racy, unaffected ways, and it was not long before everybody in the room hadmore or less made friends with her, and forgiven her her marvellous drabpoplin, adorned with fresh pink ruchings for the occasion. As for theProvost, Mrs. Elsmere had been told that he was a person of whom shemust inevitably stand in awe. But all her life long she had been likethe youth in the fairy tale who desired to learn how to shiver and couldnot attain unto it. Fate had denied her the capacity of standing in aweof anybody, and she rushed at her host as a new type, delighting in thethrill which she felt creeping over her when she found herself on thearm of one who had been the rallying-point of a hundred struggles, and acentre of influence over thousands of English lives. 

And then followed the proud moment when Robert, in his exhibitioner'sgown, took her to service in the chapel on Sunday. The scores of youngfaces, the full unison of the hymns, and finally the Provost'ssermon, with its strange brusqueries and simplicities of manner andphrase--simplicities suggestive, so full of a rich and yet disciplinedexperience, that they haunted her mind for weeks afterward--completedthe general impression made upon her by the Oxford life. She came out, tremulous and shaken, leaning on her son's arm. She, too, like thegenerations before her, had launched her venture into the deep. Her boywas putting out from her into the ocean; henceforth she could but watchhim from the shore. Brought into contact with this imposing Universityorganization, with all its suggestions of virile energies and functions, the mother suddenly felt herself insignificant and forsaken. He had beenher all, her own, and now on this training-ground of English youth, itseemed to her that the great human society had claimed him from her. 

CHAPTER V. 

In his Oxford life Robert surrendered himself to the best and moststimulating influences of the place, just as he had done at school. Hewas a youth of many friends, by virtue of a natural gift of sympathy, which was no doubt often abused, and by no means invariably profitableto its owner, but wherein, at any rate, his power over his fellows, like the power of half the potent men in the world's history alwayslay rooted. He had his mother's delight in living. He loved thecricket-field, he loved the river; his athletic instincts and hisathletic friends were always fighting in him with his literary instinctsand the friends who appealed primarily to the intellectual and moralside of him. He made many mistakes alike in friends and in pursuits; inthe freshness of a young and roving curiosity he had great difficultyin submitting himself to the intellectual routine of the University, adifficulty 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 tyrannyof conscience, which kept his charm and pliancy from degenerating intoweakness, and made it not only delightful, but profitable to love him. He knew that his mother was bound up in him, and his being was set tosatisfy, so far as he could, all her honorable ambitions. 

His many undergraduate friends, strong as their influence must have beenin the aggregate on a nature so receptive, hardly concern us here. Hisfuture life, so far as we can see, was most noticeably affected by twomen older than himself, and belonging to the dons--both of them fellowsand tutors of St. Anselm's, though on different planes of age. 

The first one, Edward Langham, was Robert's tutor, and about seven yearsolder than himself. He was a man about whom, on entering the college, Robert heard more than the usual crop of stories. The healthy youngEnglish barbarian has an aversion to the intrusion of more manner intolife than is absolutely necessary. Now Langham was overburdened withmanner, though it was manner of the deprecating and not of the arrogantorder. Decisions, it seemed, of all sorts were abominable to him. Tohelp a friend he had once consented to be Pro-proctor. He resigned in amonth, and none of his acquaintances ever afterward dared to alludeto the experience. If you could have got at his inmost mind, it wasaffirmed, the persons most obnoxious there would have been found to bethe scout, who intrusively asked him every morning what he wouldhave for breakfast, and the college cook, who, till such a course wasstrictly forbidden him, mounted to his room at half-past nine to inquirewhether he would "dine in. " Being a scholar of considerable eminence, it pleased him to assume on all questions an exasperating degree ofignorance; and the wags of the college averred that when asked if itrained, or if collections took place on such and such a day, it was painand 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 captivatean ardent, impulsive boy like Elsmere. Edward Langham, however, notwithstanding undergraduate tales, was a very remarkable person. Inthe first place, he was possessed of exceptional personal beauty. Hiscoloring was vividly black and white, closely curling jet-black hairand fine black eyes contrasting with a pale, clear complexion and even, white teeth. So far he had the characteristics which certain Irishmenshare with most Spaniards. But the Celtic or Iberian brilliance wasbalanced by a classical delicacy and precision of feature. He had thebrow, the nose, the upper lip, the finely-molded chin, which belong tothe more severe and spiritual Greek type. Certainly of Greek blithenessand directness there was no trace. The eye was wavering and profoundlymelancholy; all the movements of the tall, finely-built frame werehesitating and doubtful. It was as though the man were suffering fromparalysis of some moral muscle or other; as if some of the normalsprings of action in him had been profoundly and permanently weakened. 

He had a curious history. He was the only child of a doctor in aLincolnshire country town. His old parents had brought him up in strictprovincial ways, ignoring the boy's idiosyncrasies as much as possible. They did not want an exceptional and abnormal son, and they tried to putdown his dreamy, self-conscious habits by forcing him into the common, middle-class Evangelical groove. As soon as he got to college, however, the brooding, gifted nature had a moment of sudden and, as it seemed tothe old people in Gainsborough, most reprehensible expansion. Poems weresent to them, cut out of one or the other of the leading periodicals, with their son's initials appended, and articles of philosophicalart-criticism, published while the boy was still an undergraduate--whichseemed to the stern father everything that was sophistical andsubversive. For they treated Christianity itself as an open question, and showed especially scant respect for the "Protestantism of theProtestant religion. " The father warned him grimly that he was notgoing to spend his hard-earned savings on the support of a free-thinkingscribbler, and the young man wrote no more till just after he had takena double first in Greats. Then the publication of an article in one ofthe leading Reviews on "The Ideals of Modern Culture, " not only broughthim a furious letter from home stopping all supplies, but also lost hima probable fellowship. His college was one of the narrowest and mostbackward in Oxford, and it was made perfectly plain to him before thefellowship examination that he would not be elected. 

He left the college, took pupils for a while, then stood for a vacantfellowship at St. Anselm's, the Liberal headquarters, and got it withflying colors. 

Thenceforward one would have thought that a brilliant and favorablemental development was secured to him. Not at all. The moment of hisquarrel with his father and his college had, in fact, represented amoment of energy, of comparative success, which never recurred. It Wasas though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him, asif some deep-rooted instinct--cold, critical, reflective--had reasserteditself, condemning him and his censors equally. The uselessness ofutterance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal, the practical absurdity of trying to realize any of the mind's inwarddreams: these were the kind of considerations which descended upon him, slowly and fatally, crushing down the newly springing growths ofaction or of passion. It was as though life had demonstrated to him theessential truth of a childish saying of his own which had startled anddispleased 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 thethings I like?"

So he wrote no more, he quarreled no more, he meddled with the greatpassionate things of life and expression no more. On his taking upresidence in St. Anselm's, indeed, and on his being appointed firstlecturer and then tutor, he had a momentary pleasure in the thought ofteaching. His mind was a storehouse of thought and fact, and to theman brought up at a dull provincial day-school and never allowed toassociate freely with his kind, the bright lads fresh from Eton andHarrow about him were singularly attractive. But a few terms were enoughto scatter this illusion too. He could not be simple, he could notbe spontaneous; he was tormented by self-consciousness; and it wasimpossible to him to talk and behave as those talk and behave who havebeen brought up more or less in the big world from the beginning. Sothis dream too faded, for youth asks before all things simplicity andspontaneity in those who would take possession of it. His lectures, which were at first brilliant enough to attract numbers of men fromother colleges, became gradually mere dry, ingenious skeletons, withoutlife or feeling. It was possible to learn a great deal from him; itwas not possible to catch from him any contagion of that _amorintellectualis_ which had flamed at one moment so high within him. He ceased to compose; but as the intellectual faculty must have someemployment, he became a translator, a contributor to dictionaries, amicroscopic student of texts, not in the interest of anything beyond, but simply as a kind of mental stone-breaking. 

The only survival of that moment of glow and color in his life washis love of music and the theatre. Almost every year he disappearedto France to haunt the Paris theatres for a fortnight; to Berlin orBayreuth to drink his fill of music. He talked neither of music nor ofacting; he made no one sharer of his enjoyment, if he did enjoy. It wassimply his way of cheating his creative faculty, which, though ithad grown impotent, was still there, still restless. Altogethera melancholy, pitiable man--at once thorough-going sceptic andthorough-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 man's instincts, at this period of his life at any rate, were habitually kindly and affectionate. He knew nothing of women, andwas not liked by them, but it was not his fault if he made no impressionon the youth about him. It seemed to him that he was always seekingin their eyes and faces for some light of sympathy which was alwaysescaping him, and which he was powerless to compel. He met it for thefirst time in Robert Elsmere. The susceptible, poetical boy was struckat some favorable moment by that romantic side of the ineffectivetutor--his silence, his melancholy, his personal beauty--which no oneelse, with perhaps one or two exceptions among the older men, cared totake into account; or touched perhaps by some note in him, surprised inpassing, by weariness or shrinking, as compared with the contemptuoustone of the college toward him. He showed his liking impetuously, boyishly, as his way was, and thenceforward during his University careerLangham became his slave. He had no ambition for himself; his mottomight have been that dismal one--'The small things of life are odiousto me, and the habit of them enslaves me; the great things of life areeternally attractive to me, and indolence and fear put them by;' butfor the University chances of this lanky, red-haired youth--with hiseagerness, his boundless curiosity, his genius for all sorts of lovablemistakes--he disquieted himself greatly. He tried to discipline theroving mind, to infuse into the boy's literary temper the delicacy, theprecision, the subtlety of his own. His fastidious, critical habits ofwork supplied exactly the antidote which Elsmere's main faults of hasteand carelessness required. He was always holding up before him theinexhaustible patience and labor involved in all true knowledge; and itwas to the germs of critical judgment so planted in him that Elsemereowed many of the later growths of his development--growths with which wehave not yet to concern ourselves. 

And in return, the tutor allowed himself rarely, very rarely, a momentof utterance from the depths of his real self. One evening, in thesummer term following the boy's matriculation, Elsmere brought him anessay after Hall, and they sat on talking afterward. It was a rainy, cheerless evening; the first contest of the Boats week had been rowedin cold wind and sheet; a dreary blast whistled through the college. Suddenly Langham reached out his hand for an open letter. 'I have had anoffer, Elsmere, ' he said, abruptly. 

And he put it into his hand. It was the offer of an important Scotchprofessorship, 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 Oxfordrecommendations, were the basis of the present overture, which, comingfrom one who was himself a classic of the classics, was couched in termsflattering to any young man's vanity. 

Robert looked up with a joyful exclamation when he had finished theletter. 

'I congratulate you, sir. '

'I have refused it, ' said Langham, abruptly. 

His companion sat open-mouthed. Young as he was, he know perfectly wellthat this particular appointment was one of the blue ribbons of Britishscholarship. 

'Do you think--' said the other in a tone of singular vibration, whichhad in it a note of almost contemptuous irritation--'do you think _I_am the man to get and keep a hold on a rampageous class of hundredsof Scotch lads? Do you think _I_ am the man to carry on what Reidbegan--Reid, that old fighter, that preacher of all sorts of jubilantdogmas?'

He looked at Elsmere under his straight, black brows, imperiously. Theyouth felt the nervous tension in the elder man's voice and manner, wasstartled by a confidence never before bestowed upon him, close as thatunequal bond between them had been growing during the six months of hisOxford life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank, young expostulations, which really put into friendly shape all that wasbeing said about Langham in his College and in the University. Why washe so self-distrustful, so absurdly diffident of responsibility, so benton hiding his great gifts under a bushel?

The tutor smiled sadly, and, sitting down, buried his head in his handsand said nothing for a while. Then he looked up and stretched out ahand toward a book which lay on a table near. It was the 'Reveries' ofSenancour. 'My answer is written _here_, ' he said. 'It will seem toyou now, Elsmere, mere Midsummer madness. May it always seem so to you. Forgive me. The pressure of solitude sometimes is too great. '

Elsmere looked up with one of his flashing, affectionate smiles, andtook the book from Langham's hand. He found on the open page a markedpassage:

"Oh swiftly passing seasons of life! There was a time when men seemedto be sincere; when thought was nourished on friendship, kindness, love;when dawn still kept its brilliance, and the night its peace. _I can_, the soul said to itself, and _I will_; I will do all that is right--allthat is natural. But soon resistance, difficulty, unforeseen, coming weknow not whence, arrest us, undeceive us, and the human yoke grows heavyon our necks; Thenceforward we become merely sharers in the common woe. Hemmed in on all sides, we feel our faculties only to realize theirimpotence: we have time and strength to do what we _must_, never what wewill. Men go on repeating the words work, genius, success. Fools! Willall these resounding projects, though they enable us to cheat ourselves, enable us to cheat the icy fate which rules us and our globe, wanderingforsaken through the vast silence of the heavens?"

Robert looked up startled, the book dropping from his hand. The wordssent a chill to the heart of one born to hope, to will, to crave. 

Suddenly Langham dashed the volume from him almost with violence. 

'Forget that drivel, Elsmere. It was a crime to show it to you. It isnot sane; neither perhaps am I. But I am not going to Scotland. Theywould request me to resign in a week. '

Long after Elsmere, who had stayed talking awhile on other things, hadgone, Langham sat on brooding over the empty grate. 

'Corrupter of youth!' he said to himself once, bitterly. And perhapsit was to a certain remorse in the tutor's mind that Elsmere owed anexperience of great importance to his afterlife. 

The name of a certain Mr. Grey had for some time before his entry atOxford been more or less familiar to Robert's ears as that of a personof great influence and consideration at St. Anselm's. His tutor atHarden had spoken of him in the boy's hearing as one of the mostremarkable men of the generation, and had several times impressed uponhis pupil that nothing could be so desirable for him as to secure thefriendship of such a man. It was on the occasion of his first interviewwith the Provost, after the scholarship examination, that Robert wasfirst brought face to face with Mr. Grey. He could remember a short darkman standing beside the Provost, who had been introduced to him by thatname, but the nervousness of the moment had been so great that the boyhad been quite incapable of giving him any special attention. 

During his first term and a half of residence, Robert occasionally metMr. Grey in the quadrangle or in the street, and the tutor, rememberingthe thin, bright-faced youth, would return his salutations kindly, and sometimes stop to speak to him, to ask him if he were comfortablysettled in his rooms, or make a remark about the boats. But theacquaintance did not seem likely to progress, for Mr. Grey was a Greatstutor, and Robert naturally had nothing to do with him as far as workwas concerned. 

However, a day or two after the conversation we have described, Robert, going to Langham's rooms late in the afternoon to return a book whichhad been lent to him, perceived two figures standing talking on thehearth-rug and by the western light beating in recognized the thicksetframe and broad brow of Mr. Grey. 

'Come in, Elsmere, ' said Langham, as he stood hesitating on thethreshold. 'You have met Mr. Grey before, I think?'

'We first met at an anxious moment, ' said Mr. Grey, smiling and shakinghands with the boy. 'A first interview with the Provost is alwaysformidable. I remember it too well myself. You did very well, Iremember, Mr. Elsmere. Well, Langham, I must be off. I shall be late formy meeting as it is. I think we have settled our business. Good night. '

Langham stood a moment after the door closed, eyeing Elsmere. There wasa curious struggle going on in the tutor's mind. 

'Elsmere, ' he said at last, abruptly, 'would you like to go tonight andhear Grey preach?'

'Preach!' exclaimed the lad. 'I thought he was a layman. '

So he is. It will be a lay sermon. It was always the custom here withthe clerical tutors to address their men once a term before CommunionSunday, and some years ago, when Grey first became tutor, hedetermined, though he was a layman, to carry on the practice. It was anextraordinary effort, for he is a man to whom words on such a subjectare the coining of his heart's blood, and he has repeated it veryrarely. It is two years now since his last address. '

Of course I should like to go, ' said Robert, with eagerness. Is itopen?'

'Strictly it is for his Greats pupils, but I can take you in. It ishardly meant for freshmen; but--well, you are far enough on to make itinteresting to you. '

'The lad will take to Grey's influence like a fish to water, ' thoughtthe tutor to himself when he was alone, not without 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 histype in an earlier generation might have applied to the 'earnestness' ofan Arnoldian Rugby. 

At eight o'clock that evening Robert found himself crossing thequadrangle 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 inwas already nearly full, all the working fellows of the college werepresent, and a body of some thirty men besides, most of them alreadyfar 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 thelittle assembly knelt, while Mr. Grey's voice with its broad intonation, in which a strong native homeliness lingered under the gentleness ofaccent, recited the collect 'Lord of all power and might, ' a silentpause following the last words. Then the audience settled itself, andMr. Grey, standing by a small deal table with the gaslight behind him, began his address. 

All the main points of the experience which followed stamped themselveson Robert's mind with extraordinary intensity. Nor did he ever lose thememory of the outward scene. In after-years, memory could always recallto him at will the face and figure of the speaker, the massive head, thedeep eyes sunk under the brows, the Midland accent, the make of limband feature which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rudestrength and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed, was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the generationof spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it overflowedof necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him, kindling andenriching. Robert felt himself seized and penetrated, filled with afervor 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 on the meaningof St. Paul's great conception, 'Death unto sin and a new birth untorighteousness. ' What did the Apostle mean by a death to sin and self?What were the precise ideas attached to the words 'risen with Christ?'Are this, death and this resurrection necessarily dependent upon certainalleged historical events? Or are they not primarily, and were theynot, even in the mind of St. Paul, two aspects of a spiritual processperpetually re-enacted in the soul of man, and constituting theveritable revelation of God? Which is the stable and lasting Witness ofthe Father: the spiritual history of the individual and the world, orthe envelope of miracle to which hitherto mankind has attributed so muchImportance?

Mr. Grey's treatment of these questions was clothed, throughout a largeportion of the lecture in metaphysical language, which no boy fresh fromschool, however intellectually quick, could be expected to follow withany precision. It was not, therefore, the argument, or the logicalstructure of the sermon, which so profoundly affected young Elsmere. It was the speaker himself, and the occasional passages in which, addressing himself to the practical needs of his hearers, he put beforethem the claims and conditions of the higher life with a pregnantsimplicity and rugged beauty of phrase. Conceit selfishness, vice--how, as he spoke of them, they seemed to wither from his presence! How the'pitiful, earthy self' with its passions and its cravings sank intonothingness 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 facesupported in his hands and his gleaming eyes fixed on the speaker, it seemed as if all the poetry and history through which a restlesscuriosity and ideality had carried him so far, took a new meaning fromthis experience. It was by men like this that the moral progress of theworld had been shaped and inspired, he felt brought near to the greatprimal forces breathing through the divine workshop; and in place ofnatural disposition and reverent compliance, there sprang up in himsuddenly an actual burning certainty of belief. 'Axioms are not axioms, 'said poor Keats, 'till they have been proved upon our pulses;' and theold familiar figure of the Divine combat, of the struggle in which manand God are one, was proved once more upon a human pulse on that Maynight, in the hush of that quiet lecture-room. 

As the little moving crowd of men dispersed over the main quadrangle totheir respective staircases, Langham and Robert stood together a momentin the windy darkness, lit by the occasional glimmering of a cloudymoon. 

'Thank you, thank you, sir!' said the lad, eager and yet afraid tospeak, lest he should break the spell of memory. 'I should be sorryindeed to have missed that!'

'Yes, it was fine, extraordinarily fine, the best he has ever given, Ithink. Good night. '

And Langham turned away, his head sunk on his breast, his hands behindhim. 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, orpouring out in a letter to his mother the new hero-worship of which hismind was full. 

A few days later, as it happened, came an invitation to the juniorexhibitioner to spend an evening at Mr. Grey's house. Elsmere went in astate of curious eagerness and trepidation, and came away with a numberof fresh impressions which, when he had put them into order, did butquicken 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 trust and courtesyon the surface, the little touches of austerity which betrayedthemselves here and there in the household ways--all these surroundingsstole into the lad's imagination, touched in him responsive fibres oftaste and feeling. 

But there was some surprise, too, mingled with the charm. He came, stillshaken, as it were, by the power of the sermon, expecting to see in thepreacher of it the outward and visible signs of a leadership which, ashe already knew, was a great force in Oxford life. His mood was that ofthe disciple only eager to be enrolled. And what he found was a quiet, friendly host, surrounded by a group of men talking the ordinarypleasant Oxford chit-chat--the river, the schools, the Union, thefootball matches, and so on. Every now and then, as Elsmere stood at theedge of the circle listening, the rugged face in the centre of itwould break into a smile, or some boyish speaker would elicit the lowspontaneous laugh in which there was such a sound of human fellowship, such a genuine note of self-forgetfulness. Sometimes the conversationstrayed into politics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, wouldthrow back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flashingoccasionally into grim humor which seemed to throw light on the innatestrength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puritan breed from whichhe sprang. Nothing could be more unlike the inspired philosopher, themystic surrounded by an adoring school, whom Robert had been picturingto 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 noticeof the ardent and yet modest exhibitioner, in whose future it wasimpossible not to feel a sympathetic interest. 

'You will always find us on Sunday afternoons, before chapel, ' he saidto him one day as they parted after watching a football match in thedamp mists of the Park, and the boy's flush of pleasure showed how muchhe valued the permission. 

For three years those Sunday half-hours were the great charm of RobertElsmere's life. When he came to look back upon them, he could remembernothing very definite. A few interesting scraps of talk about books; agood deal of talk about politics, showing in the tutor a living interestin the needs and training of that broadening democracy on which thefuture of England rests; a few graphic sayings about individuals; aboveall, a constant readiness on the host's part to listen, to sit quiet, with the slight unconscious look of fatigue which was so eloquent ofa strenuous intellectual life, taking kindly heed of anything thatsincerity, even a stupid awkward sincerity, had got to say--these werethe sort of impressions they had left behind them, reinforced always, indeed, by the one continuous impression of a great soul speaking withdifficulty and labor, but still clearly, still effectually, through anunblemished series of noble acts and efforts. 

Term after term passed away. Mrs. Elsmere became more and more proudof her boy, and more and more assured that her years of intelligentdevotion to him had won her his entire love and confidence, 'so long asthey both should live;' she came up to him once or twice, making Laghamalmost flee the University because she would be grateful to him inpublic, and attending the boat-races in festive attire to which she haddevoted the most anxious attention for Robert's sake, and which madeher, dear, good, impracticable soul, the observed of all observers. Whenshe came, she and Robert talked all day, so far as lectures allowed, andmost of the night, after their own eager, improvident fashion; and shesoon gathered with that solemn, half-tragic sense of change which besetsa mother's heart at such a moment, that there were many new forces atwork in her boy's mind, deep undercurrents of feeling, stirred in himby the Oxford influences, which must before long rise powerfully to thesurface. 

He was passing from a bright, buoyant lad into a man, and a man of ardorand conviction. And the chief instrument in the transformation was Mr. Grey. 

Elsmere got his first in Moderations easily. But the Final schools werea different matter. In the first days of his, return to Oxford, in theOctober of his third year, while he was still making up his lecturelist, and taking a general oversight of the work demanded from him, before plunging definitely into it, he was oppressed with a sense thatthe two years lying before him constituted a problem which would beharder to solve than any which had yet been set him. It seemed to him ina moment which was one of some slackness and reaction, that he had beengrowing too fast. He had been making friends besides in far too manycamps, and the thought, half attractive, half repellent, of all thosemidnight discussions over smouldering fires, which Oxford was preparingfor him, those fascinating moments of intellectual fence with minds aseager and as crude as his own, and of all the delightful dipping intothe very latest literature, which such moments encouraged and involved, seemed to convey a sort of warning to the boy's will that it was notequal to the situation. He was neither dull enough nor great enough fora striking Oxford success. How was he to prevent himself from attemptingimpossibilities and achieving a final mediocrity? He felt a dismalcertainty that he should never be able to control the strayings of willand curiosity, now into this path, now into that; and a still strongerand genuine certainty that it is not by such digression that a man getsup the Ethics or the Annals. 

Langham watched him with a half irritable attention. In spite of theparalysis of all natural ambitious in himself, he was illogically keenthat Elsmere should win the distinctions of the place. He, the mostlaborious, the most disinterested of scholars, turned himself almostinto a crammer for Elsmere's benefit. He abused the lad's multifariousreading, declared it was no better than dram-drinking, and even preachedto him an ingenious variety of mechanical aids to memory and short cutsto knowledge, till Robert would turn round upon him with some triumphantretort drawn from his own utterances at some sincerer and less discreetmoment. In vain. Langham felt a dismal certainty before many weeks wereover that Elsmere would miss his First in Greats. He was too curious, too restless, too passionate about many things. Above all he wasbeginning, in the tutor's opinion, to concern himself disastrouslyearly with that most overwhelming and most brain-confusing of all humaninterests--the interest of religion. Grey had made him 'earnest' with avengeance. 

Elsmere was now attending Grey's philosophical lectures, following themwith enthusiasm, and making use of them, as so often happens, for thedefence and fortification of views quite other than his teacher's. Thewhole basis of Grey's thought was ardently idealist and Hegelian. He hadbroken with the popular Christianity, but for him, God, consciousness, duty, were the only realities. None of the various forms of materialistthought escaped his challenge; no genuine utterance of the spirituallife of man but was sure of his sympathy. It was known that after havingprepared himself for the Christian ministry, he had remained a laymanbecause it had become impossible to him to accept miracle; and itwas evident that the commoner type of Churchmen regarded him as anantagonist all the more dangerous because he was to sympathetic. But thenegative and critical side of him was what in reality told least uponhis pupils. He was reserved, he talked with difficulty, and his respectfor the immaturity of the young lives near him was complete. So thatwhat he sowed others often reaped, or to quote the expression of awell-known rationalist about him: 'The Tories were always carrying offhis honey to their hive. ' Elsmere, for instance, took in all that Greyhad to give, drank in all the ideal fervor, the spiritual enthusiasm ofthe great tutor, and then, as Grey himself would have done some twentyyears earlier, carried his religious passion so stimulated into theservice of the great positive tradition around him. 

And at that particular moment in Oxford history, the passage fromphilosophic idealism to glad acquiescence in the received Christiansystem, was a peculiarly easy one. It was the most natural thing inthe world that a young man of Elsmere's temperament should rally to theChurch. The place was passing through one of those periodical crises ofreaction against an overdriven rationalism, which show themselves withtolerable regularity in any great centre of intellectual activity. It had begun to be recognized with a great burst of enthusiasm andastonishment, that, after all, Mill and Herbert Spencer had not saidthe last word on all things in heaven and earth. And now there wasexaggerated recoil. A fresh wave of religious romanticism was fastgathering strength; the spirit of Newman had reappeared in the placewhich Newman had loved and left; religion was becoming once morepopular among the most trivial souls, and a deep reality among a largeproportion of the nobler ones. 

With this movement of opinion Robert had very soon found himself inclose and sympathetic contact. The meagre impression left upon hisboyhood by the somewhat grotesque succession of the Harden curates, andby his mother's shifts of wit at their expense, was soon driven out ofhim by the stateliness and comely beauty of the Church order as it wasrevealed to him at Oxford. The religious air, the solemn beauty ofthe place itself, its innumerable associations with an organized andvenerable faith, the great public functions and expressions of thatfaith, possessed the boy's imagination more and more. As he sat in theundergraduates' gallery at St. Mary's on the Sundays, when the greatHigh Church preacher of the moment occupied the pulpit, and looked downon the crowded building, full of grave black-gowned figures and framedin one continuous belt of closely packed boyish faces; as he listenedto the preacher's vibrating voice, rising and falling with theorator's instinct for musical effect; or as he stood up with the greatsurrounding body of undergraduates to send the melody of some Latin hymnrolling into the far recesses of the choir, the sight and the experiencetouched his inmost feeling, and satisfied all the poetical and dramaticinstincts of a passionate nature. The system behind the sight tookstronger and stronger hold upon him; he began to wish ardently andcontinuously to become a part of it, to cast in his lot definitely withit. 

One May evening he was wandering by himself along the towing-path whichskirts the upper river, a prey to many thoughts, to forebodings aboutthe schools which were to begin in three weeks, and to speculationsas to how his mother would take the news of the second class, which hehimself felt to be inevitable. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, thereflashed into his mind the little conversation with his mother, whichhad taken place nearly four years before, in the garden at Trinity. Heremembered the antagonism which the idea of a clerical life for himhad raised in both of them, and a smile at his own ignorance and hismother's prejudice passed over his quick young face. He sat down on thegrassy bank, a mass of reeds at his feet, the shadows of the poplarsbehind him lying across the still river; and opposite, the wide greenexpanse of the great town-meadow, dotted with white patches of geeseand herds of grazing horses. There, with a sense of something solemn andcritical passing over him, he began to dream out his future life. 

And when he rose half an hour afterward, and turned his steps homeward, he knew with an inward tremor of heart that the next great step of theway was practically taken. For there by the gliding river, and in viewof 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 theChurch. 

During the three weeks that followed he made some frantic efforts tomake up lost ground. He had not been idle for a single day, but hehad been unwise, an intellectual spendthrift, living in a continuoussuccession of enthusiasms and now at the critical moment his stock ofnerve and energy was at a low ebb. He went in depressed and tired, his friends watching anxiously for the result. On the day of the Logicpaper, as he emerged into the Schools quadrangle, he felt his arm caughtby Mr. Grey. 

'Come with me for a walk, Elsmere; you look as if some air would do yougood. '

Robert acquiesced, and the two men turned into the passageway leadingout on to Radcliffe Square. 

'I have done for myself, sir, ' said the youth, with a sigh, halfimpatience, half depression. 'It seems to me to-day that I had neithermind 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 yourfirst. '

This implied acceptance of his partial defeat, coming from another'slips, struck the excitable Robert like a lash. It was only what he hadbeen saying to himself, but in the most pessimist forecasts we make forourselves, there is always an under-protest of hope. 

'I have been wasting my time here lately, ' he said, hurriedly raisinghis college cap from his brows as if it oppressed them, and pushing hishair back with a weary, restless gesture. 

'No, ' said Mr. Grey, turning his kind, frank eyes upon him. 'As far asgeneral training goes, you have not wasted your time at all. There aremany clever men who don't get a first class, and yet it is good for themto 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 littleover-confident, perhaps, '--the speaker's smile took all the sting outof the words--'but you have grown into a man, you are fit now for man'swork. Don't let yourself be depressed, Elsmere. You will do better inlife than you have done in examination. '

The young man was deeply touched. This tone of personal comment andadmonition was very rare with Mr. Grey. He felt a sudden consciousnessof a shared burden which was infinity soothing, and though he made noanswer, his face lost something of its harassed look, as the two walkedon together down Oriel Street and into Merton Meadows. 

'Have you any immediate plans?' said Mr. Grey, as they turned into theBroad Walk, now in the full leafage of June, and rustling under a briskwestern 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 totake Orders. '

'You have? When?'

'Quite lately. So that fixes me, I suppose, to come back for divinitylectures in the autumn. '

Mr. Grey said nothing for a while, and they strolled in and out of thegreat shadows thrown by the elms across their path. 

'You feel no difficulties in the way?' he asked at last, with a certainquick brusqueness of manner. 

'No, ' said Robert, eagerly. 'I never had any. Perhaps, ' he added witha sudden humility, 'it is because I have never gone deep enough. WhatI believe might have been worth more if I had had more struggle; but ithas all seemed so plain. '

The young voice speaking with hesitation and reserve, and yet with adeep inner, conviction, was pleasant to hear. Mr. Grey turned toward it, and the great eyes under the furrowed brow had a peculiar gentleness ofexpression. 

'You will probably be very happy in the life, ' he said. 'The Churchwants men of your sort. '

But through all the sympathy of the tone Robert was conscious of a veilbetween them. He knew, of course, pretty much what it was, and with asudden impulse he felt that he would have given worlds to break throughit and talk frankly with this man whom he revered beyond all others, wide as was the intellectual difference between them. But the tutor'sreticence 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 absurdthat he should not have made more of them in sight of the public. '_Lecléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi!_' was about the gist of Langham's moodduring the days that followed on the class list. 

Elsmere, however, did not divulge his intention of taking Orders tohim till ten days afterward, when he had carried off Langham to stayat Harden, and he and his old tutor were smoking in his mother's littlegarden one moonlit night. 

When he had finished his statement Langham stood still a moment, watching the wreaths of smoke as they curled and vanished. The curiousinterest in Elsmere's career, which during a certain number of monthshad made him almost practical, almost energetic, had disappeared. He washis own languid, paradoxical self. 

'Well, after all, ' he said at last, very slowly, 'the difficulty liesin preaching anything. One may as well preach a respectable mythology asanything 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 world could not otherwisehave come at have been communicated to man. Christian theology is asystem of ideas indeed, but of ideas realized, made manifest in facts. '

Langham looked at him for a moment, undecided; then that suppressedirritation we have already spoken of broke through. 'How do you knowthey 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 Christianevidences. Or rather Robert held forth, and Langham kept him going byan occasional remark which acted like the prick of a spur. The tutor'spsychological curiosity was soon satisfied. He declared to himself thatthe intellect had precious little to do with Elsmere's Christianity. Hehad got hold of all the stock apologetic arguments, and used them, hiscompanion admitted, with ability and ingenuity. But they were merelythe outworks of the citadel. The inmost fortress was held by somethingwholly distinct from intellectual conviction--by moral passion, by love, by feeling, by that mysticism, in short, which no healthy youth shouldbe without. 

'He imagines he has satisfied his intellect, ' was the inward commentof one of the most melancholy of sceptics, 'and he has never so much asexerted it. What a brute protest!'

And suddenly Langham threw up the sponge. He held out his hand to hiscompanion, a momentary gleam of tenderness in his black eyes, such as onone or two critical occasions before had disarmed the impetuous Elsmere. 

'No use to discuss it further. You have a strong case, of course, andyou have put it well. Only, when you are pegging away at reforming andenlightening the world, don't trample too much on the people who havemore than enough to do to enlighten themselves. '

As to Mrs. Elsmere, in this now turn of her son's fortunes she realizedwith humorous distinctness that for some years past Robert had beeneducating her as well as himself. Her old rebellious sense of somethinginherently absurd in the clerical status had been gradually slain in herby her long contact through him with the finer and more imposing aspectsof church life. She was still on light skirmishing terms with the Hardencurates, and at times she would flame out into the wildest, wittiestthreats and gibes, for the momentary satisfaction of her own essentiallylay instincts; but at bottom she knew perfectly well that, when themoment came, no mother could be more loyal, more easily imposed upon, than she would be. 

'I suppose, then, Robert, we shall be back at Murewell before verylong, ' she said to him one morning abruptly, studying him the while outof her small twinkling eyes. What dignity there was already in the younglightly-built frame! What frankness and character in the irregular, attractive face!

'Mother, ' cried Elsmere, indignantly, 'what do you take line for? Doyou imagine I am going to bury myself in the country at five orsix-and-twenty, take six hundred a year, and nothing to do for it? Thatwould be a deserter's act indeed. '

Mrs. Elsmere shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh, I supposed you would insist onkilling yourself, to begin with. To most people nowadays that seems tobe the necessary preliminary of a useful career. '

Robert laughed and kissed her, but her question had stirred him somuch that he sat down that very evening to write to his cousin MowbrayElsmere. He announced to him that he was about to read for Orders, and that at the same time he relinquished all claim on the living ofMurewell. 'Do what you like with it when it falls vacant, ' he wrote, 'without reference to me. My views are strong that before a clergyman inhealth and strength, and in no immediate want of money, allows himselfthe luxury of a country parish, he is bound, for some years at anyrate, to meet the challenge of evil and poverty where the fight ishardest-among our English town population. '

Sir Mowbray Elsmere replied curtly in a day or two, to the effect thatRobert's letter seemed to him superfluous. He, Sir. Mowbray, had nothingto do with his cousin's views. When the living was vacant--the presentholder, however, was uncommon tough and did not mean dying--he shouldfollow out the instructions of his father's will, and if Robert did notwant the thing he could say so. 

In the autumn Robert and his mother went back to Oxford. The followingspring he redeemed his Oxford reputation completely by winning aFellowship at Merton after a brilliant fight with some of the beat menof his year, and in June he was ordained. 

In the summer term some teaching work was offered him at Merton, andby Mr. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while thatLondon curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorestfor which his soul was pining. 'Stay here a year or two, ' Grey said, bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and youare not one of the natures who can do without books. You will be all thebetter worth having afterward, and there is no lack of work here for aman's moral energies. '

Langham took the same line, and Elsmere submitted. Three happy andfruitful years followed. The young lecturer developed an amazing powerof work. That concentration which he had been unable to achieve forhimself his will was strong enough to maintain when it was a questionof meeting the demands of a college class in which he was deeplyinterested. He became a stimulating and successful teacher, and one ofthe most popular of men. His passionate sense of responsibility towardhis pupils made him load himself with burdens to which he was constantlyphysically unequal, and fill the vacations almost as full as the terms. And as he was comparatively a man of means, his generous, impetuoustemper was able to gratify itself in ways that would have beenimpossible to others. The story of his summer reading parties, forinstances, if one could have unravelled it, would have been found to beone long string of acts of kindness toward men poorer and duller thanhimself. 

At the same time he formed close and eager relations with the heads ofthe religious party in Oxford. His mother's Evangelical training ofhim, and Mr. Grey's influence, together, perhaps, with certain driftsof temperament, prevented him from becoming a High Churchman. Thesacramental, ceremonial view of the Church never took hold upon him. Butto the English Church as a great national institution for the promotionof God's work on earth no one could have been more deeply loyal, andnone coming close to him could mistake the fervor and passion of hisChristian feeling. At the same time he did not know what rancor orbitterness meant, so that men of all shades of Christian belief reckoneda friend in him, and he went through life surrounded by an unusual, perhaps a dangerous, amount of liking and affection. He threw himselfardently into the charitable work of Oxford, now helping a High Churchvicar, and now toiling with Gray and one or two other Liberal fellows, at the maintenance of a coffee-palace and lecture-room just started bythem in one of the suburbs; while in the second year of his lectureshipthe success of some first attempts at preaching fixed the attention ofthe religious leaders upon him as upon a man certain to make his mark. 

So the three years passed--not, perhaps, of great intellectual advance, for other forces in him than those of the intellect were mainly to thefore, but years certainly of continuous growth in character and moralexperience. And at the end of them Mowbray Elsmere made his offer, andit was accepted. 

The secret of it, of course, was overwork. Mrs. Elsmere, from the littlehouse in Morton Street where she had established herself, had watchedher boy's meteoric career through those crowded months with veryfrequent misgivings. No one knew better than she that Robert wasconstitutionally not of the toughest fibre, and she realized long beforehe did that the Oxford life as he was bent on leading it must endfor him in premature breakdown. But, as always happens, neither herremonstrance, nor Mr. Grey's common sense, nor Langham's fidgetyprotests had any effect on the young enthusiast to whom self-slaughtercame so easy. During the latter half of his third year of teaching hewas continually being sent away by the doctors, and coming back onlyto break down again. At last, in the January of his fourth year, thecollapse became so decided, that he consented, bribed by the prospectof the Holy Land, to go away for three months to Egypt and the East, accompanied by his mother and a college friend. 

Just before their departure news reached him of the death of the Rectorof Murewell, followed by a formal offer of the living from Sir Mowbray. At the moment when the letter arrived he was feeling desperately tiredand ill, and in after-life he never forgot the half-superstitious thrilland deep sense of depression with which he received it. For withinhim was a slowly emerging, despairing conviction that he was indeedphysically unequal to the claims of his Oxford work, and if so, stillmore unequal to grappling with the hardest pastoral labor and theworst forms of English poverty. And the coincidence of the Murewellincumbent's death struck his sensitive mind as a Divine leading. 

But it was a painful defeat. He took the letter to Grey, and Greystrongly advised him to accept. 

'You overdrive your scruples, Elsmere, ' said the Liberal tutor, withemphasis. 'No one can say a living with 1, 200 souls, and no curate, isa sinecure. As 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 thetowns. '

Elsmere pointed out vindictively that family livings were a corrupt andindefensible institution. Mr. Grey replied calmly that they probablywere, but that the fact did not affect, so far as he could see, Elsmere's competence to fulfil all the duties of rector of Murewell. 

'After all, my dear fellow, ' he said, a smile breaking over his strong, expressive face, 'it is well even for reformers to be sane. '

Mrs. Elsmere was passive. It seemed to her that she had foreseen it allalong. She was miserable about his health, but she too had a moment ofsuperstition, and would not urge him. Murewell was no name of happy omento her--she had passed the darkest hours of her life there. 

In the end Robert asked for delay, which was grudgingly grantedhim. Then he and his mother and friend fled over seas: he feverishlydetermined to get well and beat the fates. But, after a halcyon timePalestine and Constantinople, a whiff of poisoned air at Cannes, ontheir way home, acting on a low constitutional state, settled matters. Robert was laid up for weeks with malarious fever, and when he struggledout again into the hot Riviera sunshine, it was clear to himself andeverybody else that he must do what he could, and not what he would, inthe Christian vineyard. 

'Mother, ' he said one day, suddenly looking up at her as she sat nearhim working, 'can _you_ be happy at Murewell?'

There was a wistfulness in the long, thin face, and a pathetic accent ofsurrender in the voice, which hurt the mother's heart. 

'I can be happy wherever you are, ' she said, laying her brown nervoushand on his blanched one. 

'Then give me pen and paper and let me write to Mowbray; I wonderwhether the place has changed at all. Heigh ho! How is one to preach topeople who have stuffed you up with gooseberries, or swung you on gates, or lifted you over puddles to save your petticoats? I wonder what hasbecome of that boy whom I hit in the eye with my bow and arrow, orof that other lout who pummelled me into the middle of next weekfor disturbing his bird-trap? By the way, is the Squire-is RogerWendover--living at the Hall now?'

He turned to his mother with a sudden start of interest. 

'So I hear, ' said Mrs. Elsmere, dryly. '_He_ won't be much good to you. '

He sat on meditating while she went for pen and paper. He had forgottenthe Squire of Murewell. But Roger Wendover, the famous and eccentricowner of Murewell Hall, hermit and scholar, possessed of one of the mostmagnificent libraries in England, and author of books which had carrieda revolutionary shock into the heart of English society, was not afigure to be overlooked by any rector of Murewell, least of all by onepossessed of Robert's culture and imagination. 

The young man ransacked his memory on the subject with a sudden accessof interest in his new home that was to be. 

Six weeks later they were in England, and Robert, now convalescent, had accepted an invitation to spend a month in Long Whindale with hismother's cousins, the Thornburghs, who offered him quiet, and bracingair. He was to enter on his duties at Murewell in July, the Bishop, whohad been made aware of his Oxford reputation, welcoming the new recruitto the diocese with marked warmth of manner. 

CHAPTER VI. 

'Agnes, if you want any tea, here it is, ' cried Rose, calling fromoutside through the dining-room window; 'and tell mamma. '

It was the first of June, and the spell of warmth in which RobertElsmere had arrived was still maintaining itself. An intelligentforeigner dropped into the flower-sprinkled valley might have believedthat, after all, England, and even Northern England, had a summer. Earlyin the season as it was, the sun was already drawing the color out ofthe hills; the young green, hardly a week or two old, was darkening. Except the oaks. They were brilliance itself against the luminousgray-blue sky. So were the beeches, their young downy leaves justunpacked, tumbling loosely open to the light. But the larches, and thebirches, and the hawthorns were already sobered by a longer acquaintancewith life and Phœbus. 

Rose sat fanning herself with a portentous hat, which when in its properplace served her, apparently, both as hat and as parasol. She seemed tohave been running races with a fine collie, who lay at her feet panting, but studying her with his bright eyes, and evidently ready to be offagain at the first indication that his playmate had recovered her wind. Chattie was coming lazily over the lawn, stretching each leg behind heras she walked, tail arched, green eyes flaming in the sun, a model oftreacherous beauty. 

'Chattie, you fiend, come here!' cried Rose, holding out a hand to her;'if Miss Barks were ever pretty she must have looked like you at thismoment. '

'I won't have Chattie put upon, ' said Agnes, establishing herself at theother side of the little tea-table; 'she has done you no harm. Come tome, beastie. I won't compare you to disagreeable old maids. '

The cat looked from one sister to the other, blinking; then with asudden magnificent spring leaped on to Agnes's lap and curled herself upthere. 

'Nothing but cupboard love, ' said Rose scornfully, in answer to Agnes'slaugh; 'she knows you will give her bread and butter and I won't, outof a double regard for my skirts and her morals. Oh, dear me! Miss Barkswas quite seraphic last night; she never made a single remark about myclothes, and she didn't even say to me as she generally does, with anair of compassion, that she "quite understands how hard it must be tokeep in tune. "'

'The amusing thing was Mrs. Seaton and Mr. Elsmere, ' said Agnes. 'I justlove, as Mrs. Thornburgh says, to hear her instructing other people intheir 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 herheart, said in a stage whisper, with a dramatic glance round the garden, 'My heart is whole. How is yours?'

'_Intact_, ' said Agnes, calmly, as that French bric-a-brac man in theBrompton Road used to say of his pots. But he is very nice. '

'Oh, charming! But when my destiny arrives'-and Rose, returning to hertea, swept her little hand with a teaspoon in it eloquently round-'hewon't have his hair cut close. I must have luxuriant locks, and I willtake _no_ excuse! _Une chevelure de poète_, the eye of an eagle, themoustache of a hero, the hand of a Rubinstein, and, if it pleases him, the temper of a fiend. He will be odious, insufferable for all the worldbesides, except for me; and for me he will be heaven. '

She threw herself back, a twinkle in her bright eye, but a little flushof something half real on her cheek. 

'No doubt, ' said Agnes, dryly. 'But you can't wonder if under thecircumstances I don't pine for a brother-in-law. To return to thesubject, however, Catherine liked him. She said so. '

'Oh, that doesn't count, ' replied Rose, discontentedly. Catherine likeseverybody--of a certain sort--and everybody likes Catherine. '

'Does that mean, Miss Hasty, ' said her sister, 'that you have made upyour mind Catherine will never marry?'

'Marry!' cried Rose. 'You might as 'well talk of marrying WestminsterAbbey. '

Agnes looked at her attentively. Rose's fun had a decided lack ofsweetness. '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 justmake all the difference. Duty! I hate the word. '

And Rose took up a fir-cone lying near and threw it at the nose of thecollie, who made a jump at it, and then resumed an attitude of blinkingand dignified protest against his mistress's follies. 

Agnes again studied her sister. 'What's the matter with you, Rose?'

'The usual thing, my dear, ' replied Rose, curtly, 'only more so. I hada letter this morning from Carry Ford--the daughter you know, of thosenice people I stayed in Manchester with last year. Well, she wants meto 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'sarguments by heart. Manchester is not Whindale, and papa wished us tolive in Whindale; I am not somebody else and needn't earn my bread; andart is not religion; and--'

'Wheels!' exclaimed Agnes. 'Catherine, I suppose, home fromWhinborough. '

Rose got up and peered through the rhododendron bushes at the top of thewall which shut them off from the road. 

'Catherine and an unknown. Catherine driving at a foot's pace, and theunknown walking beside her. Oh, I see, of course--Mr. Elsmere. He willcome in to tea, so I'll go for a cup. It is his duty to call on usto-day. '

When Rose came back in the wake of her mother, Catherine and RobertElsmere were coming up the drive. Something had given Catherine morecolor than usual, and as Mrs. Leyburn shook hands with the youngclergyman 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; Catherine tookher favorite low seat beside her mother, clasping Mrs. Leyburn's thinmittened hand a while tenderly in her own; Robert and Agnes set up alively gossip on the subject of the Thornburghs' guests, in which Rosejoined, while Catherine looked smiling on. She seemed apart from therest, Robert thought; not, clearly, by her own will, but by virtue of adifference of temperament which could not but make itself felt. Yet onceas Rose passed her Robert saw her stretch out her hand and touch hersister caressingly, with a bright upward look and smile, as thoughshe would say, 'Is all well? have you had a good time this afternoon, Röschen?' Clearly, the strong contemplative nature was not strongenough to dispense with any of the little wants and cravings of humanaffection. Compared to the main impression she was making on him, hersuppliant attitude at her mother's feet and her caress of her sisterwere like flowers breaking through the stern March soil and changing thewhole spirit of the fields. 

Presently he said something of Oxford, and mentioned, Merton. InstantlyMrs. Leyburn fell upon him. Had he ever seen Mr. S--, who had been aFellow there, and Rose's godfather?

'I don't acknowledge him, ' said Rose, pouting. 'Other people'sgodfathers give them mugs and corals. Mine never gave me anything but aConcordance. '

Robert laughed, and proved to their satisfaction that Mr. S-- had beenextinct before his day. But could they ask him any other questions?'Mrs. Leyburn became quite animated, and, diving into her memory, produced a number of fragmentary reminiscences of her husband's Queen'sfriends, asking him information about each and all of them. The youngman disentangled all her questions, racked his brains to answer, andshowed all through a quick friendliness, a charming deference as ofyouth to age, which confirmed the liking of the whole party for him. Then the mention of an associate of Richard Leyburn's youth, who hadbeen one of the Tractarian leaders, led him into talk of Oxford changesand the influences of the present. He drew for them the famous HighChurch preacher of the moment, described the great spectacle of hisBampton Lectures, by which Oxford had been recently thrilled, and gave adramatic account of a sermon on evolution preached by the hermit-veteranPusey, as though by another Elias returning to the world to deliver alast warning message to men. Catherine listened absorbed, her deepeyes fixed upon him. And though all he said was pitched in a vivaciousnarrative key and addressed as much to the others as to her, inwardly itseemed to him that his one object all through was to touch and keep herattention. 

Then, in answer to inquiries about himself, he fell to describing St. Anselm's with enthusiasm, --its growth its Provost, its effectiveness asa great educational machine, the impression it had made on Oxford andthe country. This led him naturally to talk of Mr. Grey, then, next tothe Provost, the most prominent figure in the college; and once embarkedon this theme be became more eloquent and interesting than ever. Thecircle 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 andthought; he seemed to bring the stir and rush of our central Englishsociety into the deep quiet of their valley. Even the bright-hairedRose, idly swinging her pretty foot, with a head full of dreams anddiscontent was beguiled, and for the moment seemed to lose her restlessself in listening. 

He told an exciting story of a bad election riot in Oxford, which hadbeen quelled at considerable personal risk by Mr. Grey, who had gainedhis influence in the town by a devotion of years to the policy ofbreaking down as far as possible the old venomous feud between city anduniversity. 

When he paused Mrs. Leyburn said, vaguely, 'Did you say he was a canonof somewhere?'

'Oh, no, ' said Robert, smiling, 'he is not a clergyman. '

'But you said he preached, ' said Agnes. 

'Yes--but lay sermons--addresses. He is not one of us even, according toyour standard and mine. '

A Nonconformist?' sighed Mrs. Leyburn. 'Oh, I know they have let ineverybody now. '

'Well, if you like, ' said Robert. 'What I meant was that his opinionsare not orthodox. He could not be a clergyman, but he is one of thenoblest of men!'

He spoke with affectionate warmth. Then suddenly Catherine's eyes methis and he felt an involuntary start. A veil had fallen over them; hersweet moved sympathy was gone; she seemed to have shrunk into herself. 

She turned to Mrs. Leyburn. 'Mother, do you know, I have all sorts ofmessages from Aunt Ellen'--and in an under-voice she began to give Mrs. Leyburn the news of her afternoon expedition. 

Rose and Agnes soon plunged young Elsmere into another stream of talk. But he kept his feeling of perplexity. His experience of other womenseemed to give him nothing to go upon with regard to Miss Leyburn. 

Presently Catherine got up and drew her plain little black cape roundher again. 

'My dear!' remonstrated Mrs. Leyburn. 'Where are you off to now?'

'To the Backhouses, mother, ' she said, in a low voice; 'I have not beenthere for two days. I must go this evening. '

Mrs. Leyburn said no more. Catherine's 'musts were never disputed. Shemoved toward Elsmere with out-stretched hand. But he also sprang up. 

'I too must be going, ' he said; 'I have paid you an unconscionablevisit. If you are going past the Vicarage, Miss Leyburn, may I escortyou so far?'

She stood quietly waiting while he made his farewells. Agnes, whose eyefell on her sister during the pause, was struck with a passing senseof something out of the common. She could hardly have defined herimpression, but Catherine seemed more alive to the outer world, morelike 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 retreated to thedrawing-room, Rose laid a quick hand on her sister's arm. 

'You say Catherine likes him? Owl! What is a great deal more certain isthat 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 theVicarage. He thought, uneasily, she was a little more reserved with himthan she had been in those pleasant moments after he had overtaken herin the pony-carriage; but still she was always kind, always courteous. And what a white hand it was, hanging ungloved against her dress! Whata beautiful dignity and freedom, as of mountain winds and mountainstreams, in every movement!

'You are bound for High Ghyll?' he said to her as they neared theVicarage gate. 'Is it not a long way for you? You have been at a meetingalready, your sister said, and teaching this morning!'

He looked down on her with a charming diffidence, as though aware thattheir acquaintance was very young, and yet with a warm eagerness offeeling piercing through. As she paused under his eye the slightestflush rose to Catherine's cheek. Then she looked up with a smile. It wasamusing to be taken care of by this tall stranger!

'It is most unfeminine, I am afraid, ' she said, but I couldn't be tiredif I tried. '

Elsmere grasped her hand. 

'You make me feel myself more than ever a shocking-example, ' he said, letting it go with a little sigh. The smart of his own renunciation wasstill 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 inhis auditor of the afternoon, which had perplexed him. He and the vicarwere sitting smoking in the study after dinner, and the ingenious youngman managed to shift the conversation on to the Leyburns, as he hadmanaged to shift it once or twice before that day, flattering himself, of course, on each occasion that his manœuvres were beyond detection. The vicar, good soul, by virtue of his original discovery, detected themall, and with a sense of appropriation in the matter, not at all unmixedwith a sense of triumph over Mrs. T. , kept the ball rolling merrily. 

'Miss Leyburn seems to have very strong religious views, ' said Robert, _à propos_ of some remark of the vicar's as to the assistance she was tohim in the school. 

'Ah, she is her father's daughter, ' said the vicar, genially. He hadhis oldest coat on, his favorite pipe between his lips, and a bit ofdomestic carpentering on his knee at which he was fiddling away; and, being perfectly happy, was also perfectly amiable. 'Richard Leyburn wasa fanatic--as mild as you please, but immovable. '

'What line?'

'Evangelical, with a dash of Quakerism. He lent me Madame Guyon'sLife once to read. I didn't appreciate it. I told him that for all herreligion she seemed to me to have a deal of the vixen in her. He couldhardly get over it; it nearly broke our friendship. But I suppose he wasvery like her, except that--in my opinion--his nature was sweeter. Hewas a fatalist--saw leadings of Providence in every little thing. Andsuch a dreamer! When he came to live up here just before his death, andall, his active life was taken off him, I believe half his time he wasseeing visions. He used to wander over the fells and meet you with astart, as though you belonged to another world than the one, he waswalking in. '

'And his eldest daughter was much with him?'

'The apple of his eye. She understood him. He could talk his soul out toher. The others, of course, were children; and his wife--well, his wifewas just what you see her now, poor thing. He must have married her whenshe was very young and very pretty. She was a squire's daughtersome where near the school of which he was master--a good family, Ibelieve--she'll tell you so, in a ladylike way. He was always fidgetyabout her health. He loved her, I suppose, or had loved her. But it wasCatherine who had his mind, Catherine who was his friend. She adoredhim. I believe there was always a sort of pity in her heart for him too. But at any rate he made her and trained her. He poured all his ideas andconvictions into her. '

'Which were strong?'

'Uncommonly. For all his gentle ethereal look, you could neither bendnor break him. I don't believe anybody but Richard Leyburn could havegone through Oxford at the height of the Oxford Movement, and, soto speak, have known nothing about it, while living all the time forreligion. He had a great deal in common with the Quakers, as I said; agreat deal in common with the Wesleyans; but he was very loyal to theChurch all the same. He regarded it as the golden mean. George Herbertwas his favorite poet. He used to carry his poems about with him on themountains, and an expurgated "Christian Year"--the only thing he evertook from the High Churchmen--which he had made for himself, and whichhe and Catherine knew by heart. In some ways he was not a bigot at all. He would have had the Church make peace with the Dissenters; he was allfor up setting tests so far as Nonconformity was concerned. But he drewthe most rigid line between belief and unbelief. He would not havedined at the same table with a Unitarian if he could have helped it. I remember a furious article of his in the "Record" against admittingUnitarians to the Universities or allowing them to sit in Parliament. England is a Christian State, he said; they are not Christians--theyhave no right in her except on sufferance. Well, I suppose he wasabout right, ' said the vicar, with a sigh. 'We are all so halfheartednowadays. '

'Not he, ' cried Robert, hotly. 'Who are we that because a man differsfrom us in opinion who are to shut him out from the education ofpolitical and civil duty? But never mind, Cousin William. Go on. '

'There's no more that I remember, except that of course Catherinetook all these ideas from him. He wouldn't let his children know anyunbeliever, however apparently worthy and good. He impressed it uponthem as their special sacred duty, in a time of wicked enmity toreligion, to cherish the faith and the whole faith. He wished his wifeand daughters to live on here after his death, that they might be lessin danger spiritually than in the big world, and that they might havemore opportunity of living the old-fashioned Christian life. There wasalso some mystical idea, I think, of making up through his children forthe godless lives of their forefathers. He used to reproach himselffor having in his prosperous days neglected his family, some of whom hemight have helped to raise. '

'Well, but, ' said Robert, 'all very well for Miss Leyburn, but I don'tsee the father in the two younger girls. '

'Ah, there is Catherine's difficulty, ' said the vicar, shrugging hisshoulders. 'Poor thing! How well I remember her after her father'sdeath! She came down to see me in the dinning-room about somearrangement for the funeral. She was only sixteen, so pale and thin withnursing. 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; "Iloved him so! Oh, Mr. Thornburgh, help me to look after the others!"And that's been her one thought since then--that, next to following thenarrow road. '

The vicar had begun to speak with emotion, as generally happened to himwhenever he was beguiled into much speech about Catherine Leyburn. Theremust have been something great somewhere in the insignificant elderlyman. A meaner soul might so easily have been jealous of this girl withher inconveniently high standards, and her influence, surpassing hisown, in his own domain. 

'I should like to know the secret of the little musician'sindependence, ' said Robert, musing. 'There might be no tie of blood atall between her and the elder, so far as I can see. '

'Oh, I don't know that. There's more than you think, or Catherinewouldn't have kept her hold over her so far as she has. Generally shegets 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, toremember what people in the old days used to think about art. Of coursenowadays we all say very fine things about it; but Richard Leyburn wouldno more have admitted that a girl who hadn't got her own bread or herfamily's to earn by it was justified in spending her time in fiddlingthan he would have approved of her spending it in dancing. I have heardhim take a text out of the "Imitation, " and lecture Rose when she wasquite a baby for pestering any stray person she could get hold of togive her music lessons. "Woe to them"--yes, that was it--"that inquiremany curious things of men, and care little about the way of servingMe. " However, he wasn't consistent. Nobody is. It was actually he thatbrought Rose her first violin from London in a green baize bag. Mrs. Leyburn took me in one night to see her asleep with it on her pillow, and all her pretty curls lying over the strings. I dare say poor man, itwas one of the acts toward his children that tormented his mind in hislast hour. '

'She has certainly had her way about practising it; she plays superbly. '

'Oh, yes, she has had her way. She is a queer mixture, is Rose. I seea touch of the old Leyburn recklessness in her; and then there is thebeauty and refinement of bar mother's side of the family. Lately she hasgot quite out of hand. She went to stay with some relations they havein Manchester, got drawn into a musical set there, took to these funnygowns, and now she and Catherine are, always half at war. Poor Catherinesaid to me the other day, with tears, in her eyes, that she knew Rosethought her as hard as iron. "But I promised papa. " She makes herselfmiserable and it's no use. I wish the little wild thing would getherself well married. She's not meant for this humdrum place and she maykick over the traces. '

'She's pretty enough for anything and anybody, ' said Robert. 

The vicar looked at him sharply, but the young man's critical andmeditative look reassured him. 

The next day, just before early dinner, Rose and Agnes, who had been fora walk, were startled, as they were turning into their own gate, by thefrantic waving of a white handkerchief from the Vicarage garden. It wasMrs. Thornburgh's accepted way of calling the attention of the Burwoodinmates, and the girls walked on. They found the good lady waiting forthem in the drive in a characteristic glow and flutter. 

'My dears, I have been looking out for you all the morning! I shouldhave come over but for the stores coming, and a tiresome man fromRandall's--I've had to bargain with him for a whole hour about takingback those sweets. I was swindled, of course, but we should have died ifwe'd had to eat them up. Well, now, my dears--'

The vicar's wife paused. Her square, short figure was between the twogirls; she had an arm of each, and she looked significantly, from one toanother, her gray curls, flapping across her face as she did so. 

'Go on, Mrs. Thornburgh, ' cried Rose. 'You make us quite nervous. '

'How do ypu 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 ofaffairs which would have given her personally more pleasure. 

'_How--would--you--like_--him for a brother-in-law?' she inquired, beginning in a whisper, with slow emphasis, patting Rose's arm, andbringing out the last words with a rush. 

'Agnes caught the twinkle in Rose's eye, but she answered for them bothdemurely. 

'We have no objection to entertain the idea. But you must explain. '

'Explain!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh. 'I should think it explains itself. Atleast if you'd been in this house for the last twenty-four hours you'dthink so. Since the moment when he first met her, it's been "MissLeyburn, " "Miss Leyburn, " all the time. One might have seen it with halfan eye from the beginning. 

Mrs. Thornburgh had not seen it with two eyes, as we know, till it waspointed out to her; but her imagination worked with equal livelinessbackward or forward. 

'He went to see you yesterday, didn't he--yes, I know he did--and heovertook her in the pony-carriage--the vicar saw them from acrossthe valley--and he brought her back from your house, and then he keptWilliam up till nearly twelve talking of her. And now he wants a picnic. Oh, it's plain as a pikestaff. And, my dears, _nothing_ to be saidagainst him. Fifteen hundred a year if he's a penny. A nice living, onlyhis mother to look after, and as good a young fellow as ever, stepped. '

Mrs. Thornburgh stopped, choked almost by her own eloquence. The girls, who had by this time established her between them on a garden-seat, looked at her with smiling composure. They were accustomed to lettingher have her budget out. 

'And now, of course, ' she resumed, taking breath, and chilled a littleby their silence, 'now, of course, I want to know about Catherine?' Sheregarded them with anxious interrogation. Rose, still smiling, slowlyshook her head. 

'What!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh; then, with charming inconsistency, 'Oh, you can't know anything in two days. '

'That's just it, ' said Agnes, intervening; 'we can't know anything intwo days. No one ever will know anything about Catherine, if she takesto anybody, till the list minute. '

Mrs. Thornburgh's face fell. 'It's very difficult 'when people will beso 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, brighteningagain. 'We can have picnics, you know, and teas, and all that--andwatch. Now listen. '

And the vicar's wife sketched out a programme of festivities for thenext fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive head, which tookthe sisters' breath away. Rose bit her lip to keep in her laughter. Agnes, with vast self-possession, took Mrs. Thornburgh in hand. Shepointed out firmly that nothing would be so likely to make Catherineimpracticable as fuss. 'In vain is the net spread, ' etc. She preachedfrom the text with a worldly wisdom which quickly crushed Mrs. Thornburgh. 

'Well, _what_ am I to do, my dears?' she said at last, helplessly. 'Look at the weather! We must have some picnics, if it's only to amuseRobert. '

Mrs. Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effervescenceand a condition of feeling the world too much for her. Rose and Agnes, having now reduced her to the latter state, proceeded cautiously to giveher her head again. They promised her two or three expeditions and onepicnic at least; they said they would do their best; they promised theywould report what they saw and be very discreet, both feeling the comedyof Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion; and then theydeparted to their early dinner, leaving the vicar's wife decidedly lessself-confident than they found her. 

'The first matrimonial excitement of the family, ' cried Agnes, asthey walked home. 'So far no one can say the Miss Leyburns have beenbesieged!'

'It will be all moonshine, ' Rose replied, decisively. 'Mr. Elsmere maylose his heart; we may aid and abet him; Catherine will live in theclouds for a few weeks, and come down from them at the end with the airof an angel, to give him his _coup de grâce_. As I said before--poorfellow!'

Agnes made no answer. She was never so positive as Rose, and on thewhole did not find herself the worse for it in life. Besides, sheunderstood that there was a soreness at the bottom of Rose's heart thatwas always showing itself in unexpected connections. 

There was no necessity, indeed, for elaborate schemes for assistingProvidence. Mrs. Thornburgh had her picnics and her expeditions, butwithout them Robert Elsmere would have been still man enough to seeCatherine Leyburn every day. He loitered about the roads along which shemust needs pass to do her many offices of charity; he offered the vicarto take a class in the school, and was naïvely exultant that the vicarcuriously happened to fix an hour when he must needs see Miss Leyburngoing or coming on the same errand; he dropped into Burwood on anyconceivable pretext, till Rose and Agnes lost all inconvenient respectfor his cloth and Mrs. Leyburn sent him on errands; and he even insistedthat Catherine and the vicar should make use of him and his pastoralservices in one or two of the cases of sickness or poverty under theircare. Catherine, with a little more reserve than usual, took him oneday to the Tysons', and introduced him to the poor crippled son who waslikely to live on paralyzed for some time, under the weight, moreover, of a black cloud of depression which seldom lifted. Mrs. Tyson Kept hertalking in the room, and she never forgot the scene. It showed her a newaspect of a man whose intellectual life was becoming plain to her, whilehis moral life was still something of a mystery. The look in Elsmere'sface as he sat bending over the maimed young farmer, the strength andtenderness of the man, the diffidence of the few religious things hesaid, and yet the reality and force of them, struck her powerfully. Hehad forgotten her, forgotten everything save the bitter human need, andthe comfort it was his privilege to offer. Catherine stood answeringMrs. Tyson at random, the tears rising in her eyes. She slipped outwhile he was still talking, and went home strangely moved. 

As to the festivities, she did her best to join in them. The sensitivesoul often reproached itself afterward for having juggled in the matter. Was it not her duty to manage a little society and gayety for hersisters sometimes? Her mother could not undertake it, and was alwaysplaintively protesting that Catherine would not be young. So for a shortweek or two Catherine did her best to be young and climbed the mountaingrass, or forded the mountain streams with the energy and the grace ofperfect health, trembling afterward at night as she knelt by her windowto think how much sheer pleasure the day had contained. Her life hadalways had the tension of a bent bow. It seemed to her once or twiceduring this fortnight 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 herperspicacity would have seen so readily in another's case--the littlearts and maneuvers of those about her. It did not strike her that Mrs. Thornburgh was more flighty and more ebullient than ever; that thevicar's wife kissed her at odd times, and with a quite unwontedeffusion; or that Agnes and Rose, when they were in the wild heartof the mountains, or wandering far and wide in search of sticks for apicnic fire, showed a perfect genius for avoiding Mr. Elsmere, whom bothof them liked, and that in consequence his society almost always fellto her. Nor did she ever analyze what would have been the attraction ofthose walks to her without that tall figure at her side, that boundingstep, that picturesque impetuous talk. There are moments when naturethrows a kind of heavenly mist and dazzlement round the soul it wouldfain make happy. The soul gropes blindly on; if it saw its way it mightbe timid and draw back, but kind powers lead it genially onward througha golden darkness. 

Meanwhile if she did not know herself, she and Elsmere learned withwonderful quickness and thoroughness to know each other. The twohouseholds so near together, and so isolated from the world besides, were necessarily in constant communication. And Elsmere made a moststirring element in their common life. Never had he been more keen, morestrenuous. It gave Catherine new lights on modern character altogetherto see how he was preparing himself for this Surrey living--readingup the history, geology, and botany of the Weald and its neighborhood, plunging into reports of agricultural commissions, or spending his quickbrain on village sanitation, with the oddest results sometimes, sofar as his conversation was concerned. And then in the middle of hisdisquisitions, which would keep her breathless with a sense of beingwhirled through space at the tail of an electric kite, the kite wouldcome down with a run, and the preacher and reformer would come hat inhand to the girl beside him, asking her humbly to advise him, to pourout on him some of that practical experience of hers among the poor andsuffering, for the sake of which he would in an instant scornfully flingout of sight all his own magnificent plannings. Never had she told somuch of her own life to anyone; her consciousness of it sometimes filledher 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 haveit. His sympathy, his sweetness, his quick spiritual feeling drew thestories 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-by!

And on her side she felt that she knew almost as much about Murewell ashe did. She could imagine the wild beauty of the Surrey heathland, shecould see the white square rectory with its sloping walled garden, the juniper common just outside the straggling village; she could evenpicture the strange squire, solitary in the great Tudor Hall, the authorof terrible books against the religion of Christ of which she shrankfrom hearing, and share the anxieties of the young rector as to hisfuture relations toward a personality so marked, and so important toevery soul in the little community he was called to rule. Here all wasplain sailing; she understood him perfectly, and her gentle comments, orher occasional sarcasms, were friendliness itself. 

But it was when he turned to larger things--to books, movements, leaders, of the day--that she was often puzzled, sometimes distressed. Why would he seem to exalt and glorify rebellion against the establishedorder 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 initself to be made the subject of moral judgment at all, and as thoughright belief were a blessed privilege and boon rather than a law andan obligation? When his comments on men and things took this tinge, she would turn silent, feeling a kind of painful opposition between hisventuresome speech and his clergyman's dress. 

And yet, as we all know, these ways of speech were not his own. Hewas merely talking the natural Christian language of this generation;whereas she, the child of a mystic--solitary, intense, and deeplyreflective from her earliest Youth--was still thinking and speaking inthe language of her father's generation. 

But although, as often as his unwariness brought him near to thesepoints of jarring, he would hurry away from them, conscious that herewas the one profound difference between them; it was clear to himthat insensibly she had moved further than she knew from her father'sstandpoint. Even among these solitudes, far from men and literature, she had unconsciously felt the breath of her time in some degree. As hepenetrated 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 cloudyevening sky, he came upon the great problem of her life--Rose and Rose'sart. 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 hiscounsel, almost before she knew where their talk was leading. How wasit lawful for the Christian to spend the few short years of the earthlycombat in any pursuit however noble and exquisite, which merely aimedat the gratification of the senses, and implied in the pursuer theemphasizing rather than the surrender of self?

He argued it very much as Kingsley would have argued it, tried to lifther to a more intelligent view of a multifarious work, dwelling onthe function of pure beauty in life, and on the influence of beautyon character, pointing out the value to the race of all individualdevelopment, and pressing home on her the natural religious question:How are the artistic aptitudes to be explained unless the GreatDesigner meant them to have a use and function in His world? She replieddoubtfully 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 musicon the poor. He described to her the efforts of a London society, ofwhich he was a subscribing member, to popularize the best music amongthe lowest class; he dwelt almost with passion on the difference betweenthe joy to be got out of such things and the common brutalizing joys ofthe workman. And you could not have art without artists. In this againhe was only talking the commonplaces of his day. But to her they werenot commonplaces at all. She looked at him from time to time, her greateyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with every fresh thrust ofhis. 

'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 inpatient silence had been loosened a little, if only by the fact ofspeech about it. She was not convinced exactly. She was too strong anature to relinquish a principle without a period of meditative strugglein which conscience should have all its dues. But her tone made hisheart leap. He felt in it a momentary self-surrender that, coming froma creature of so rare a dignity, filled him with an exquisite sense ofpower, 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. Anaunt of the Leyburns living in Whinborough came to see them. She wastheir father's youngest sister, and the wife of a man who had made somemoney as a builder in Whinborough. When Robert came in he found hersitting on the sofa having tea, a large homely-looking woman with grayhair, a high brow, and prominent white teeth. She had unfastened herbonnet strings, and a clean white handkerchief lay spread out on herlap. When Elsmere was introduced to her, she got up, and said with someeffusiveness, and a distinct Westmoreland accent:

'Very pleased indeed to make your acquaintance, sir, ' while she enclosedhis fingers in a capacious hand. 

Mrs. Leyburn, looking fidgety and uncomfortable, was sitting nearher, and Catherine, the only member of the party who showed no sign ofembarrassment when Robert entered was superintending her aunt's tea andtalking busily the while. 

Robert sat down at a little distance beside Agnes and Rose, who werechattering together a little artificially and of set purpose, as itseemed to him. But the aunt was not to be ignored. She talked too loudnot to be overheard, and Agnes inwardly noted that as soon as RobertElsmere appeared she talked louder than before. He gathered presentlythat she was an ardent Wesleyan, and that she was engaged in describingto Catherine and Mrs. Leyburn the evangelistic exploits of her oldestson, who had recently obtained his first circuit as a Wesleyan minister. He was shrewd enough, too, to guess, after a minute or two, that hispresence and probably his obnoxious clerical dress gave additional zestto the recital. 

'Oh, his success at Colesbridge has been somethin' marvellous, ' he heardher say, with uplifted hands and eyes, '"some-thin" marvellous. TheLord has blessed him indeed! It doesn't matter what it is, whether it'smeetin's, or sermons, or parlor work, or just faithful dealin's withsouls one by one. Satan has no cleverer foe than Edward. He never shutshis eyes; as Edward says himself, it's like trackin' for game is huntin'for souls. Why, the other day he was walkin' out from Coventry to aservice. It was the Sabbath, and he saw a man in a bit of grass by theroad-side, mendin' his cart. And he stopped did Edward, and gave him theWord _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 everynail you put in, and hammerin' away, mon, at your own damnation. " Buthere's his letter. ' And while Rose turned away to a far window to hidean almost hysterical inclination to laugh, Mrs. Fleming opened her bag, took out a treasured paper, and read with the emphasis and the unctionpeculiar to a certain type of revivalism:--

'"Poor sinner! He was much put about. I left him, praying the Lord myshaft might rankle in him; ay, might fester and burn in him till hefound no peace but in Jesus. He seemed very dark and destitute--norespect for the Word or its ministers. A bit farther I met a boycarrying a load of turnips. To him, too, I was faithful, and he wenton, taking without knowing it, a precious leaflet with him in his bag. Glorious work! If Wesleyans will but go on claiming even the highwaysfor God, sin will skulk yet. "'

A dead silence. Mrs. Fleming folded up the letter and put it back intoher bag. 

'There's your true minister, ' she said, with a large judicial utteranceas she closed the snap. 'Wherever he goes Edward must have souls!'

And she threw a swift searching look at the young clergyman in thewindow. 

'He must have very hard work with so much walking and preaching, ' saidCatherine, gently. 

Somehow, as soon as she spoke, Elsmere saw the whole odd little scenewith other eyes. 

'His work is just wearin' him out, ' said the mother, fervently; 'buta minister doesn't think of that. Wherever he goes there are sinnerssaved. He stayed last week at a house near Nuneaton. At family prayeralone there were five saved. And at the prayer-meetin's on the Sabbathsuch outpourin's of the Spirit! Edward comes home, his wife tellsme, just ready to drop. Are you acquainted, sir, ' she added, turningsuddenly to Elsmere, and speaking in a certain tone of provocation, 'with the labors of our Wesleyan ministers?'

'No, ' said Robert, with his pleasant smile, 'not personally. But I havethe greatest respect for them as a body of devoted men. '

The look of battle faded from the woman's face. It was not an unpleasantface. He even saw strange reminiscences of Catherine in it at times. 

'You're aboot right there, sir. Not that they dare take any credit tothemselves--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 from me. Ministers aregood things, but God can do without them. '

And she laid her hand on her aunt's knee with a smile in which there wasthe slightest touch of affectionate satire. 

'I was up among the fells the other day'--she went on--'I met an elderlyman cutting wood in a plantation, and I stopped and asked him how hewas. "Ah, miss, " he said, "verra weel, verra weel. And yet it was nobbutFriday morning lasst, I cam oop here, awfu' bad in my sperrits like. Formy wife she's sick an a' dwinnelt away, and I'm gettin' auld, and can'twark 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 satoonder t' wall, wettish and broodin' like. And theer--all ov a soodentthe 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 sense then, miss, aa've jest feltas thoo aa could a' cut an' stackt all t' wood on t' fell in naw timeat a'!" And he waved his hand round the mountain side which was coveredwith plantation. And all the way along the path for ever so long I couldhear him singing, chopping away, and quavering out "Rock of Ages. "'

'She paused; her delicate face, with just a little quiver in the lip, turned to her aunt, her eyes glowing as though a hidden fire had leaptsuddenly outward. And yet the gesture, the attitude, was simplicityand unconsciousness itself. Robert had never heard her say anything sointimate before. Nor had he ever seen her so inspired, so beautiful. Shehad transmuted the conversation at a touch. It had been barbarous prose;she had turned it into purest poetry. Only the noblest souls have suchan alchemy as this at command, thought the watcher on the other side, ofthe room, with a passionate reverence. 

'I wasn't thinkin' of narrowin' the Lord down to ministers; said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. 'We all know He can do without uspuir worms. '

Then, seeing that no one replied, the good woman got up to go. Muchof her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervors of revivalistanecdote, and while she hunted for gloves and reticule--officiouslyhelped by the younger girls--Robert crossed over to Catherine. 

'You lifted us on to your own high places!' he said, bending down toher; 'I shall carry your story with me through the fells. '

She looked up, and as she met his warm, moved look a little glow andtremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted expression. He brokethe spell; she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman. 

'You must see my old man, ' she said, with an effort; 'he is worth alibrary of sermons. I must introduce him to you. '

He could think of nothing else to say just then, but could only standimpatiently wishing for Mrs. Fleming's disappearance, that he mightsomehow appropriate her eldest niece. But alas! when she went, Catherinewent 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 leaningover a gate which led into one of the river-fields, gave himself up tothe mounting tumult within. Gradually, from the half-articulate chaosof hope and memory, there emerged the deliberate voice of his inmostmanhood. 

'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 beautyof 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 feltbefore. It was as though, after a long apprenticeship, he had sprungsuddenly into maturity--entered at last into the full human heritage. But the very intensity and solemnity of his own feeling gave him a rareclear-sightedness. He realized that he had no certainty of success, scarcely even an entirely reasonable hope. But what of that? Were theynot together, alone, practically, in these blessed solitudes? Would theynot meet to-morrow, and next day, and the day after? Were not time andopportunity all his own? How kind her looks are even now! Courage! Andthrough that maidenly kindness his own passion shall send the last, transmuting glow. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The following morning about noon, Rose, who had been coaxed andpersuaded by Catherine, much against her will, into taking a singingclass at the school, closed the school door behind her with a sigh ofrelief, and tripped up the road to Burwood. 

'How abominably they sang this morning!' she said to herself, withcurving lip. 'Talk of the natural north-country gift for music! Whatridiculous fictions people set up! Dear me, what clouds! Perhapswe shan't got our walk to Shanmnoor after all, and if we don't, andif-if--' her cheek flashed with a sudden excitement-'if Mr. Elsmeredoesn't propose, Mrs. Thornburgh will be unmanageable. It is all Agnesand I can do to keep her in bounds as it is, and if something doesn'tcome off to-day, she'll be for reversing the usual proceeding, andasking Catherine her intentions, which would ruin everything. '

Then raising her head she swept her eyes round the sky. The wind wasfreshening, the clouds were coming up fast from the westward; over thesummit of High Fell and the crags on either side, a gray straight-edgedcurtain was already lowering. 

'It will hold up yet a while, ' she thought, 'and if it rains later wecan get a carriage at Shanmoor and come back by the road. '

And she walked on homeward meditating, her thin fingers clasped beforeher, the wind blowing her skirts, the blue ribbons on her hat, thelittle gold curls on her temples, in an artistic many-colored turmoilabout her. When she got to Burwood she shut herself into the room whichwas peculiarly hers, the room which had been a stable. Now it was fullof artistic odds and ends--her fiddle, of course, and piles of music, her violin stand, a few deal tables and cane chairs beautified bya number of _chiffons_, bits of Liberty stuffs with the edges stillragged, or cheap morsels of Syrian embroidery. On the tables stoodphotographs of musicians and friends--the spoils of her visits toManchester, and of two visits to London which gleamed like golden pointsin the girl's memory. The plastered walls were covered with an oddmedley. Here was a round mirror, of which Rose was enormously proud. Shehad extracted it from a farmhouse of the neighborhood, and paid for itwith her own money. There a group of unfinished, headlong sketches ofthe most fiercely-impressionist description--the work and the gift ofa knot of Manchester artists, who had fêted and flattered the beautifullittle Westmoreland girl, when she was staying among them, to herheart's content. Manchester, almost alone among our great towns of thepresent day, has not only a musical, but a pictorial life of its own;its young artists dub themselves 'a school, ' study in Paris, and whenthey come home scout the Academy and its methods, and pine to set up arival art-centre, skilled in all the methods of the Salon, in the murkynorth. Rose's uncle, originally a clerk in a warehouse, and a roughdiamond enough, had more or less moved with the times, like his brotherRichard; at any rate he had grown rich, had married a decent wife, andwas glad enough to befriend his dear brother's children, who wantednothing 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 whichhe touched the culture of the times, like so many business men; but itpleased him also to pose as a patron of local art; so that when Rosewent to stay with her childless uncle and aunt, she found long-hairedartists and fiery musicians about the place, who excited and encouragedher musical gift, who sketched her while she played, and talked to thepretty, clever, unformed creature of London and Paris, and Italy, and set her pining for that golden _vie de Bohême_ which she aloneapparently of all artists was destined never to know. 

For she was an artist--she would be an artist--let Catherine say whatshe would! She came back from Manchester restless for she knew notwhat, thirsty for the joys and emotions of art, determined to be free, reckless, passionate; with Wagner and Brahms in her young blood; andfound Burwood waiting for her, Burwood, the lonely house in the lonelyvalley, of which Catherine was the presiding genius. _Catherine!_ ForRose, what a multitude of associations clustered round the name! To herit meant everything at this moment against which her soul rebelled--themost scrupulous order, the most rigid self-repression, the mostdetermined sacrificing of 'this warm kind world, ' with all itsindefensible delights, to a cold other-world, with its torturing, inadmissible claims. Even in the midst of her stolen joys at Manchesteror London, this mere name, the mere mental image of Catherine movingthrough life, wrapped in a religious peace and certainty as austereas they were beautiful, and asking of all about her the same absolutesurrender to an awful Master she gave so easily herself, was enough tochill the wayward Rose, and fill her with a kind of restless despair. And at home, as the vicar said, the two sisters were always on theverge of conflict. Rose had enough of her father in her to suffer inresisting, but resist she must by the law of her nature. 

Now, as she threw off her walking things, she fell first upon herviolin, and rushed through a Brahms' 'Liebeslied, ' her eyes dancing, herwhole light form thrilling with the joy of it; and then with a suddenrevulsion she stopped playing, and threw herself down listlessly by theopen window. Close by against the wall was a little looking-glass, bywhich she often arranged her ruffled locks; she glanced at it now, itshowed her a brilliant face enough, but drooping lips, and eyes darkenedwith the extravagant melancholy of eighteen. 

'It is come to a pretty pass, ' she said to herself, 'that I should beable to think of nothing but schemes for getting Catherine married andout of my way! Considering what she is and what I am, and how shehas slaved for us all her life, I seem to have descended pretty low. Heigho!'

And with a portentous sigh she dropped her chin on her hand. She washalf 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. Elsmerewill soon be ridiculous. Why, _I_ saw him gather up those violets shethrew away yesterday on Moor Crag. And as for her, I don't believe shehas realized the situation a bit. At least, if she has she is as unlikeother mortals in this as in everything else. But when she does--'

She frowned and meditated, but got no light on the problem. Chattiejumped up on the windowsill, with her usual stealthy _aplomb_, andrubbed herself against the girl's face. 

'Oh, Chattie!' cried Rose, throwing her arms round the cat, 'ifCatherine 'll _only_ marry Mr. Elsmere, nay dear, and be happy everafterward, and set me free to live my own life a bit, I'll be _so_ good, you won't know me, Chattie. And you shall have a new collar, my beauty, and cream till you die of it!'

And springing up she dragged in the cat, and snatching a scarlet anemonefrom a bunch on the table, stood opposite Chattie, who stood slowlywaving her magnificent tail from side to side, and glaring as though itwere 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 Naturegive it such a beggarly few petals? 'If I'd had a daisy it would haveall come right. Come, Chattie, waltz; and let's forgot this wickedworld!'

And, snatching up her violin, the girl broke into a Strauss waltz, dancing to it the while, her cotton skirts flying, her pretty feettwinkling, till her eyes glowed, and her cheeks blazed with a doubleintoxication--the intoxication of movement, and the intoxication ofsound--the cat meanwhile following her with little mincing, perplexedsteps, as though not knowing what to make of her. 

'Rose, you madcap!' cried Agnes, opening the door. 

'Not at all, my dear, ' said Rose calmly, stopping to take breath. 'Excellent practice and uncommonly difficult. Try if you can do it, andsee!'

The weather held up in a gray, grudging, sort of way, and Mrs. Thornburgh especially was all for braving the clouds and going on withthe expedition. It was galling to her that she herself would have to bedriven to Shanmoor behind the fat vicarage pony, while the otherswould be climbing the fells, and all sorts of exciting things might behappening. Still it was infinitely better to be half in it than not init at all, and she started by the side of the vicarage 'man, ' in a mostdelicious flutter. The skies might fall any day now. Elsmere had notconfided in her, though she was unable to count the openings she hadgiven him thereto. For one of the frankest of men he had kept hissecret, so far as words went, with a remarkable tenacity. Probablythe neighborhood of Mrs. Thornburgh was enough to make the veriestchatterbox secretive. But notwithstanding, no one possessing the cluecould live in the same house with him these June days without seeingthat the whole man was absorbed, transformed, and that the crisis mightbe reached at any moment. Even the vicar was eager and watchful, andplaying up to his wife in fine style, and if the situation had so workedon the vicar, Mrs. Thornburgh's state is easier imagined than described. 

The walk to Shanmoor need not be chronicled. The party kept together. Robert fancied sometimes that there was a certain note of purpose in theway in which Catherine clung to the vicar. If so, it did not disquiethim. Never had she been kinder, more gentle. Nay, as the walk went on alovely gayety broke through her tranquil manner, as though she, likethe others, had caught exhilaration from the sharpened breeze and thetowering mountains, restored to all their grandeur by the storm clouds. 

And yet she had started in some little inward trouble. She had promisedto join this walk to Shanmoor, she had promised to go with the others ona picnic the following day, but her conscience was pricking her. Twicethis last fortnight had she been forced to give up a night-school sheheld in a little lonely hamlet among the fells, because even she hadbeen 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 ofa strange inner restlessness as they all stood waiting in the road forthe vicar and Elsmere. Agnes had thought her looking depressed and pale, and even dreamt for a moment of suggesting to her to stay at home. Andthen 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 manlypresence, a keen responsive eye?

Elsmere, indeed, was gayety itself. He kept up an incessant war withRose; he had a number of little jokes going at the vicar's expense, which kept that good man in a half-protesting 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 agility that set thegirls scoffing at the pretence of invalidism under which he had foistedhimself on Whindale. 

'How fine all this black purple is!' he cried, as they topped the ridge, and the Shanmoor valley lay before them, bounded on the other side byline after line of mountain, Wetherlam and the Pikes and Fairfield inthe far distance, piled sombrely under a sombre sky. 'I had grown quitetired of the sun. He had done his best to make you commonplace. '

'Tired of the sun in Westmoreland?' said Catherine, with a littlemocking wonder. 'How wanton how prodigal!'

'Does it deserve a Nemesis?' he said laughing. 'Drowning from now till Idepart? No matter. I can bear a second deluge with an even mind. On thisenchanted soil all things are welcome!'

She looked up, smiling, at his vehemence, taking it all as a tributeto the country, or to his own recovered health. He stood leaning on hisstick, gazing, however, not at the view but at her. The others stood alittle way off, laughing and chattering. As their eyes met, a strangenew pulse leapt up in Catherine. 

'The wind is very boisterous here, ' she said, with a shiver. 'I think weought to be going on. '

And she hurried up to the others, nor did she leave their shelter tillthey were in sight of the little Shanmoor inn, where they were to havetea. The pony carriage was already standing in front of the inn, andMrs. Thornburgh's gray curls shaking at the window. 

'William!' she shouted, 'bring them in. Tea is just ready, and Mr. Ruskin was here last week, and there are ever so many new names in thevisitors' book!'

While the girls went in, Elsmere stood looking a moment at the inn, thebridge, and the village. It was a characteristic Westmoreland scene. Thelow whitewashed inn, with its newly painted signboard, was to his right, the pony at the door lazily flicking off the flies and dropping itsgreedy nose in search of the grains of corn among the cobbles; to hisleft a gray stone bridge over a broad light-filled river; beyond, alittle huddled village backed by and apparently built out of the greatslate quarry which represented the only industry of the neighborhood, and a tiny towered church--the scene on the Sabbath of Mr. Mayhew'sministrations. Beyond the village, shoulders of purple fell, and behindthe inn masses of broken crag rising at the very head of the valley intoa 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 all dark and rich, the white inn gleaming on a green andpurple background. 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 tempting tea spreadin a light-upper room, where Agnes and Rose were already making fun ofthe chromo-lithographs and rummaging the visitors' book. The scrambling, chattering meal passed like a flash. At the beginning of it Mrs. Thornburgh's small gray eyes had travelled restlessly from face toface, as though to say, 'What--_no_ news yet? Nothing happened?' Asfor Elsmere, though it seemed to him at the time one of the brightestmoments of existence, he remembered little afterward but the scene: thepeculiar clean mustiness of the room only just opened for the summerseason, a print of the Princess of Wales on the wall opposite him, astuffed fox over the mantelpiece, Rose's golden head, and heavy ambernecklace, and the figure at the vicar's right, in a gown of a littledark blue check, the broad hat shading the white brow and luminous eyes. 

When tea was over they lounged out onto the bridge. There was to be nolong lingering, however. The clouds were deepening, the rain could notbe far off. But if they started soon they could probably reach homebefore it came down. Elsmere and Rose hung over the gray stone parapet, mottled with the green and gold of innumerable mosses, and looked downthrough a fringe of English maidenhair growing along the coping, intothe clear eddies of the stream. Suddenly he raised himself on one elbow, and, shading his eyes, looked to where the vicar and Catherine werestanding in front of the inn, touched for an instant by a beam of fitfullight slipping between two great rain-clouds. 

'How well that hat and dress become your sister!' he said, the wordsbreaking, as it were, from his lips. 

'Do you think Catherine pretty?' said Rose, with an excellent pretenceof innocence, detaching a little pebble and flinging it harmlessly at awater-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 hergirlish sympathy conquered her; it was very exciting, and she likedElsmere. She turned back to him, her face overspread with a quiteirrepressible smile. He reddened still more, then they stared into eachother's eyes, and without a word more understood each other perfectly. 

Rose held out her hand to him with a little brusque _bon camarade_gesture. He pressed it warmly in his. 

'That was nice of you!' he cried. 'Very nice of you! Friend, then?'

She nodded and drew her hand away just as Agnes and the vicar disturbedthem. 

Meanwhile Catherine was standing by the side of the pony carriage, watching Mrs. Thornburgh's preparations. 

'You're sure you don't mind driving home alone?' said, in a troubledvoice. 'Mayn't I go with you?'

'My dear, certainly not! As if I wasn't accustomed to going about aloneat my time of life! No, no, my dear, you go and have your walk; you'llget home before the rain. Ready, James. '

The old vicarage factotum could not imagine what made his charge soanxious to be off. She actually took the whip out of his hand and gave aflick to the pony, who swerved and started off in a way which would havemade his mistress clamorously nervous under any other circumstances. Catherine stood looking after her. 

'Now, then, right about face and quick march!' exclaimed the vicar. 'We've got to race that cloud over the Pike. It'll be up with us in notime. '

Off they started and were soon climbing the slippery green slopes, orcrushing through the fern of the fell they had descended earlier in theafternoon. Catherine for some little way walked last of the party, thevicar in front of her. Then Elsmere picked a stonecrop, quarrelled overits precise name with Rose, and waited for Catherine, who had a veryclose and familiar knowledge of the botany of the district. 

'You have crushed me, ' he said, laughing, as he put the flower carefullyinto his pocketbook; 'but it is worth while to be crushed by anyonewho can give so much ground for their knowledge. How you do know yourmountains--from their peasants to their plants!'

'I have had more than ten able-bodied years living and scrambling amongthem, ' 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 thewinter. And our winter is often not as hard as yours down south. '

'Do you go on with that night school in Poll Ghyll, for instance?' hesaid, with another note in his voice. 

Catherine looked at him and colored. 'Rose has been telling tales, ' shesaid. 'I wish she would leave my proceedings alone. Poll Ghyll is thefamily bone of contention at present. Yes, I go on with it. I alwaystake a lantern when the night is dark, and I know every inch of theground, and Bob is always with me--aren't you, Bob?'

And she stooped down to pat the collie beside her. Bob looked up at her, blinking with a proudly confidential air, as though to remind her thatthere were a good many such secrets between them. 

'I like to fancy you with your lantern in the dark, ' he cried, thehidden emotion piercing through, 'the night wind blowing about you, theblack mountains to right and left of you, some little stream perhapsrunning beside you for company, your dog guarding you, and all goodAngels going with you. '

She blushed still more deeply; the impetuous words affected herstrangely. 

'Don't fancy it at all, ' she said, laughing. 'It is a very small andvery natural incident of one's life here. Look back, Mr. Elemere; therain has beaten us!'

He looked back and saw the great Pike over Shanmoor village blotted outin a moving deluge of rain. The quarry opposite on the mountain sidegleamed green and livid against the ink-black fell; some clothes hangingout in the field below the church flapped wildly hither and thither inthe sudden gale, the only spot of white in the prevailing blackness;children with their petticoats over their heads ran homeward along theroad the walking party had just quitted; the stream beneath, spreadingbroadly through the fields, shivered and wrinkled under the blast. Up itcame and the rain mists with it. In another minute the storm was beatingin their faces. 

'Caught!' cried Elsmere, in a voice almost of jubilation. 'Let me helpyou into your cloak, Miss Leyburn. '

He flung it around her and struggled into his own Mackintosh. The vicarin front of them turned and waved his hand to them in laughing despair, then hurried after the others, evidently with a view of performing forthem the same office Elsmere had just performed for Catherine. 

Robert and his companion struggled on for a while in a breathlesssilence against the deluge, which seemed to beat on them from all sides. He walked behind her, sheltering her by his tall form, and his bigumbrella, as much as he could. His pulses were all aglow with the joy ofthe storm. It seemed to him that he rejoiced with the thirsty grassover which the rain-streams were running, that his heart filled with theshrunken becks as the flood leapt along them. Let the elements thunderand rave as they pleased. Could he not at a word bring the light of thatface, those eyes, upon him? Was she not his for a moment in the rain andthe solitude, as she had never been in the commonplace sunshine of theirvalley life?

Suddenly he heard an exclamation and saw her run on in front of him. What was the matter? Then he noticed for the first time that Rose farahead was still walking in her cotton dress. The little scatterbrainhad, of course, forgotten her cloak. But, monstrous! There wasCatherine stripping off her own, Rose refusing it. In vain. The sister'sdetermined arms put it round her. Rose is enwrapped, buttoned up beforeshe knows where she is, and Catherine falls back, pursued by same shaftfrom Rose, more sarcastic than grateful to judge by the tone of it. 

'Miss Leyburn, what have you been doing?'

'Rose had forgotten her cloak, ' she said, briefly; 'she has a very thindress 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 youare always to be allowed to go through the world taking thought of otherpeople and allowing no one to take thought of you?'

He held it out to her. 

'No, no! This is absurd, Mr. Elsmere. You are not strong yet. And I haveoften 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 oflaughter. 

'Mr. Elsmere, be sensible!' she said presently, her look changing toone of real distress. 'I should never forgive myself if you got a chillafter 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 underthe circumstances--will be wet through in ten minutes. '

Another silence. Then he overtook her. 

'Please, Miss Leyburn, ' he said, stopping her. 

There was an instant's mute contest between them. The rain splashed onthe umbrellas. She could not help it, she broke down into the merriest, most musical laugh of a child that can hardly stop itself, and hejoined. 

'Mr. Elsmere, you are ridiculous!'

But she submitted. He put the mackintosh round her, thinking, 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 exhilarationhe was conscious of a bar that checked and arrested. Something--what wasit?--drew invisible lines of defence about her. A sort of divine fear ofher mingled with his rising passion. Let him not risk too much too soon. 

They walked on briskly, and were soon on the Whindale side of the pass. To the left of them the great hollow of High Fell unfolded, storm-beatenand 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. 'Howimpossible that it should have been only yesterday afternoon I waslounging up here in the heat, by the pool where the stream rises, watching the white butter-flies on the turf, and reading "Laodamia!"'

'"Laodamia!"' she said, half sighing as she caught the name. 'Is it oneof those you like best?'

'Yes, ' he said, bending forward that he might see her in spite of theumbrella. How superb it is--the roll, the majesty of it; the severe, chastened beauty of the main feeling, the individual lines!'

And he quoted line after line, lingering over the cadences. 

'It was my father's favorite of all, ' she said, in the low vibratingvoice of memory. 'He said the last verse to me the day before he died. '

Robert recalled it--

 'Yet tears to human suffering are due, And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone As fondly we believe. 

Poor Richard Leyburn! Yet where had the defeat lain?

'Was he happy in his school life?' he asked, gently. 'Was teaching whathe liked?'

Oh yes--only--', Catherine paused and then added hurriedly, as thoughdrawn on in spite of herself by the grave sympathy of his look-'I neverknew anybody so good who thought himself of so little account. He alwaysbelieved that he had missed everything, wasted everything, and thatanybody else would have made infinitely more out of his life. He wasalways blaming, scourging himself. And all the time he was the noblest, purest, most devoted--'

She stopped. Her voice had passed beyond her control. Elsmere wasstartled by the feeling she showed. Evidently he had touched one of thefew sore places in this pure heart. It was as though her memory of herfather had in it elements of almost intolerable pathos, as though thechild's brooding love and loyalty were in perpetual protest, even nowafter this lapse of years, against the verdict which an over-scrupulous, despondent soul had pronounced upon itself. Did she feel that he hadgone uncomforted out of life--even by her--even by religion?--was thatthe sting?

'Oh, I can understand!' he said, reverently--'I can understand. I havecome across it once or twice, that fierce self-judgment of the good. It is the most stirring and humbling thing in life. ' Then his voicedropped. --'And after the last conflict--the last "quailing breath, "--thelast onslaughts of doubt or fear--think of the Vision waiting--theEternal Comfort--

 "Oh, my only Light! It cannot be That I am he On whom Thy tempests fell all night!"

The words fell from the softened voice like noble music. 

There was a pause. Then Catherine raised her eye's to his. They swamin tears, and yet the unspoken thanks in them were radiance itself. Itseemed to him as though she came closer to him, like a child to an elderwho has soothed and satisfied an inward smart. 

They walked on in silence. They were just nearing the swollen riverwhich roared below them. On the opposite bank two umbrellas werevanishing through the field gate into the road, but the vicar had turnedand was waiting for them. They could see his becloaked figure leaningon his stick, through the light wreaths of mist that floated above thetumbling stream. The abnormally heavy rain had ceased, but the cloudsseemed to be dragging along the very floor of the valley. 

The stepping-stones came into sight. He leaped on the first and held outhis hand to her. When they started she would have refused his help withscorn. Now, after a moment's hesitation she yielded, and he felt herdear weight on him as he guided her carefully from stone to stone'In reality it is both difficult and risky to be helped overstepping-stones. You had much better manage for yourself; and half waythrough, Catherine had a mind to tell him so. But the words died on herlips, which smiled instead. He could have wished that passage from stoneto stone could have lasted forever. She was wrapped up grotesquely inhis mackintosh; her hat was all bedraggled; her gloves dripped in his;and in spite of all he could have vowed that anything so lovely as thatdelicately cut, gravely smiling face, swaying above the rushing brownwater, was never seen in Westmoreland wilds before. 

'It is clearing, ' he cried, with ready optimism, as they reached thebank. '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 fieldgate. But Robert held her eagerly, imperiously--and it seemed to her, her hold was still dizzy with the water. 

'Promise!' he repeated, his voice dropping. 

She could not stop to think of the absurdity of promising forWestmoreland weather. She could only say faintly 'Yes!' and so releaseher hand. 

'You _are_ pretty wet!' said the vicar, looking from one to the otherwith a curiosity which Robert's quick sense divined at once was directedto something else than the mere condition of their garments. ButCatherine noticed nothing; she walked on wrestling blindly with sheknew not what, till they reached the vicarage gate. There stood Mrs. Thornburgh, the light drizzle into which the rain had declined beatingunheeded on her curls and ample shoulders. She stared at Robert'sdrenched condition, but he gave her no time to make remarks. 

'Don't take it off, ' he said, with a laughing wave of the hand toCatherine; 'I will come for it to-morrow morning. '

And he ran up the drive, conscious at last that it might be prudent toget himself into something less spongelike than his present attire asquickly as possible. 

The vicar followed him. 

'Don't keep Catherine, my dear. There's nothing to tell. Nobody's theworse. '

Mrs. Thornburgh took no heed. Opening the iron gate, she went through iton to the deserted rain-beaten road, laid both her hands on Catherine'sshoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes. The vicar's anxious hintwas useless. She could contain herself no longer. She had watchedthem from the vicarage come down the fell together, had seen cross thestepping stones, lingeringly, hand in hand. 

'My dear Catherine!' she cried, effusively kissing Catherine's glowingcheek under the shelter of the laurustinus that made a bower of thegate. 'My _dear_ Catherine!'

Catherine gazed at her in astonishment Mrs. Thornburgh eyes were allalive, and swarming with questions. If it had been Rose she would havelet them out in one fell flight. But Catherine's personality kept her inawe. And after a second, as the two stood together, a deep flush rose onCatherine's face, and an expression of half-frightened apology dawned inMrs. Thornburgh's. 

Catherine drew herself away. 'Will you please give Mr. EIsmere hismackintosh?' she said, taking it off; 'I shan't want it this littleway. '

And putting it on Mrs. Thornburgh's arm, she turned away, walkingquickly round the bend of the road. 

Mrs. Thornburgh watched her open-mouthed, and moved slowly back to thehouse in a state of complete collapse. 

'I always knew'--she said with a groan-'I always knew it would never goright if it was Catherine! _Why_ was it Catherine?'

And she went in, still hurling at Providence the same vindictive query. 

Meanwhile Catherine, hurrying home, the receding flush leaving a suddenpallor 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 girlsin their own room--Agnes was standing behind, Rose had evidently rushedforward to see Catherine come in, and now retreated as suddenly when shesaw her sister look up. 

Catherine understood it all in an instant. 'They too are on the watch, 'she thought to herself, bitterly. The strong reticent nature wasoutraged by the perception that she had been for days the unconsciousactor in a drama of which her sisters and Mrs. Thornburgh had been thesilent and intelligent spectators. 

She came down presently from her room, very white and quiet; admittedthat she was tired, and said nothing to anybody. Agnes and Rosenoticed the change at once, whispered to each other when they found anopportunity, and foreboded ill. 

After their tea-supper, Catherine, unperceived, slipped out of thelittle lane gate, and climbed the stony path above the house leadingon to the fell. The rain had ceased but the clouds hung low andthreatening, and the close air was saturated with moisture. As shegained the bare fell, sounds of water met her on all sides. The rivercried hoarsely to her from below, the becks in the little ghylls werefull and thunderous; and beside her over the smooth grass slid many anew-born rivulet, the child of the storm, and destined to vanish withthe night. Catherine's soul went out to welcome the gray damp of thehills. 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. Behindher lay the valley, and on its further side the fells she had crossedin the afternoon. Before her spread a long green vale, compared to whichWhindale with its white road, its church, and parsonage, and scatteredhouses, was the great world itself. Marrisdale had no road and not asingle house. As Catherine descended into it she saw not a sign of humanlife. There were sheep grazing in the silence of the long June twilight;the blackish walls ran down and up again, dividing the green hollow withmelancholy uniformity. Here and there was a sheepfold, suggesting thebleakness of winter nights; and here and there a rough stone barn forstoring fodder. And beyond the vale, eastward and northward, Catherinelooked out upon a wild sea of moors wrapped in mists, sullen andstorm-beaten, while to the left the clouds hung deepest and inkiest overthe high points of the Ullswater mountains. 

When she was once below the pass, man and his world were shut out. The girl figure in the blue cloak and hood was absolutely alone. Shedescended till she reached a point where a little stream had been turnedinto a stone trough for cattle. Above it stood a gnarled and solitarythorn. Catherine sank down on a rock at the foot of the tree. It wasa seat she knew well; she had lingered there with her father; she hadthought and prayed there as girl and woman; she had wrestled there oftenwith despondency or grief, or some of those subtle spiritual temptationswhich were all her pure youth had known, till the inner light had dawnedagain, and the humble enraptured soul could almost have traced amid theshadows of that dappled moorland world, between her and the clouds, thewhite stores and 'sleeping wings' of ministering spirits. 

But no wrestle had ever been so hard as this. And with what fiercesuddenness had it come upon her! She looked back over the day withbewilderment. She could see dimly that the Catherine who had started onthat Shanmoor walk had been full of vague misgivings other than thoseconcerned with a few neglected duties. There had been an undefined senseof unrest, of difference, of broken equilibrium. She had shown it in theway in which at first she had tried to keep herself and Robert Elsmereapart. 

And then; beyond the departure from Shanmoor she seemed to lose thethread of her own history. Memory was drowned in a feeling to which theresisting soul as yet would have no name. She laid her head on her kneestrembling. She heard again the sweet imperious tones with which he brokedown her opposition about the cloak; she felt again the grasp of hissteadying hand on hers. 

But it was only for a very few minutes that she drifted thus. Sheraised her head again, scourging herself in shame and self-reproach, recapturing the empire of the soul with a strong effort. She set herselfto a stern analysis of the whole situation. Clearly Mrs. Thornburgh andher sisters had been aware for some indefinite time that Mr. Elsmere hadbeen showing a peculiar interest in her. _Their_ eyes had been open. Sherealized now with hot cheeks how many meetings and _tête-à-têtes_ hadbeen managed for her and Elsmere, and how complacently she had falleninto 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, notwithout 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 sixteen, prematurely oldand thoughtful, she had sat beside her father's deathbed, while herdelicate, hysterical mother in a state of utter collapse was kept awayfrom him by the doctors? She could see the drawn face, the restless, melancholy eyes. 'Catherine, my darling, you are the strong one. Theywill look to you. Support them. ' And she could see in imaginationher own young face pressed against the pillows. 'Yes, father, always--always!' 'Catherine, life is harder, the narrow way narrowerthan ever. I die'--and memory caught still the piteous, long-drawnbreath by which the voice was broken--'in much--much perplexity aboutmany 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 werespoken afresh in her ears. And how has she kept her pledge? She looksback humbly on her life of incessant devotion, on the tie of longdependence which has bound to her her weak and widowed mother, on herrelations to her sisters, the efforts she has made to train them in thespirit of her father's life and beliefs. 

Have those efforts reached their term? Can it be said in any sense thather work is done, her promise kept?

Oh, no--no--she cries to herself, with vehemence. Her mother depends onher every day and hour for protection, comfort, enjoyment. The girls areat the opening of life--Agnes twenty, Rose eighteen, with all experienceto come. And Rose--Ah! at the thought of Rose Catherine's heart sinksdeeper and deeper--she feels a culprit before her father's memory. Whatis it has gone so desperately wrong with her training of the child?Surely she has given love enough, anxious thought enough, and here isRose only fighting to be free from the yoke of her father's wishes, fromthe 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, hermother's and sisters' need?

_His_ claim? Oh, no--no! She admits with soreness and humiliationunspeakable that she has done him wrong. If he loves her she has openedthe way thereto; she confesses in her scrupulous honesty that when theinevitable withdrawal comes she will have given him cause to think ofher hardly, slightingly. She flinches painfully under the thought. Butit does not alter the matter. This girl, brought up in the austerestschool of Christian self-government, knows nothing of the divine rightsof passion. Half modern literature is based upon them, Catherine Leyburnknew 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 verymuch. The time is so short--there is so little in her, comparatively, to attract a man of such resource, such attainments, such access to thebest things of life. 

She cannot--in a kind of terror--she _will_ not, believe in her ownlove-worthiness, in her own power to deal a lasting wound. 

Then her _own_ claim? Has she any claim, has the poor bounding heartthat she cannot silence, do what she will, through all this strenuousdebate, no claim to satisfaction, to joy?

She locks here hands round her knees, conscious, poor soul, that theworst struggle is _here_, the quickest agony _here_. But she does notwaver for an instant. And her weapons are all ready. The inmost soul ofher is a fortress well stored, whence at any moment the mere personalcraving of the natural man can be met, repulsed, slain. 

'_Man approacheth so much the nearer unto God the farther he departethfrom all earthly comfort. _'

'_If thou couldst perfectly annihilate thyself and empty thyself ofall created love, then should I be constrained to flow into thee withgreater abundance of grace. _'

'_When thou lookest unto the creature the sight of the Creator iswithdrawn from thee. _'

'_Learn in all things to overcome thyself for the love of thyCreator... _'

She presses the sentences she has so often meditated in her longsolitary walks about the mountains into her heart. And one fragment ofGeorge Herbert especially rings in her ears, solemnly, funereally:

 '_Thy Saviour sentenced joy!_'

Ah, sentenced it forever--the personal craving, the selfish need, thatmust be filled at any cost. In the silence of the descending nightCatherine quietly, with tears, carried out that sentence, and slew heryoung, new-born joy at the feet of the Master. 

She stayed where she was for a while after this crisis in a kind ofbewilderment and stupor, but maintaining a perfect outward tranquillity. Then there was a curious little epilogue. 

'It is all over, ' she said to herself, tenderly. 'But he has taught meso much--he has been so good to me--he is so good! Let metake to my heart some counsel--some word of his, and obey itsacredly--silently--for these, days' sake. '

Then she fell thinking again, and she remembered their talk about Rose. How often she had pondered it since! In this intense trance of feelingit breaks upon her finally that he is right. May it not be that he, withhis clearer thought, his wider knowledge of life, has laid his fingeron the weak point in her guardianship of her sisters? 'I have triedto stifle her passion, ' she thought; 'to push it out of the way as ahindrance. Ought I not rather to have taught her to make of it a step inthe ladder--to have moved her to bring her gifts to the altar? Oh, letme 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 hadthrown herself at Elsmere's feet, that her cheek was pressed againstthat 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 thelingering northern twilight. The angry clouds had dropped lower onthe moors; a few sheep beside the glimmering stone trough showed dimlywhite; the night wind was sighing through the untenanted valley and thescanty branches of the thorn. White mists lay along the hollow of thedale, they moved weirdly under the breeze. She could have fancied thema troop of wraiths to whom she had flung her warm crushed heart, and whowere bearing it away to burial. 

As she came slowly over the pass and down the Whindale side of thefell, a clear purpose was in her mind. Agnes had talked to her only thatmorning of Rose and Rose's desire, and she had received the news withher habitual silence. 

The house was lit up when she returned. Her mother had gone up-stairs. Catherine went to her, but even Mrs. Leyburn discovered that she lookedworn out, and she was sent off to bed. She went along the passagequickly to Rose's room, listening a moment at the door. Yes, Rose wasinside, crooning some German song, and apparently alone. She knocked andwent in. 

Rose was sitting on the edge of her bed, a white dressing-gown overher shoulders, her hair in a glorious confusion all about her. She wasswaying backward and forward dreamily singing, and she started up whenshe saw Catherine. 

'Röschen, ' said the elder sister, going up to her with a tremor ofheart, and putting her motherly arms round the curly golden hair andthe half-covered shoulders, 'you never told me of that letter fromManchester, but Agnes did. Did you think, Röschen, I would never let youhave your way? Oh, I am not so hard! I may have been wrong--I think Ihave been wrong; you shall do what you will, Röschen. If you want to go, I will ask mother. '

Rose, pushing herself away with one hand, stood staring. She was struckdumb by this sudden breaking down of Catherine's long resistance. Andwhat a strange white Catherine! What did it mean? Catherine withdrew herarms with a little sigh and moved away. 

'I just came to tell you that, Röschen, ' she said, 'but I am very tiredand must not stay. '

Catherine 'very tired!' Rose thought the skies must be falling. 

'Cathie!' she cried, leaping forward just as her sister gained the door. 'Oh, Cathie, you are an angel, and I am a nasty odious little wretch. But oh, tell me, what is the matter?'

And she flung her strong young arms round Catherine with a passionatestrength. 

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 thoughtrying to drive away the mist from them. 

'Good-night! Sleep well. '

And she disappeared, shutting the door noiselessly after her. Rosestood staring a moment, and then swept off her feet by a flood of manyfeelings--remorse, love, fear, sympathy--threw herself face downward onher bed and burst into a passion of tears. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Catherine was much perplexed as to how she was to carry out herresolution; she pondered over it through much of the night. She waspainfully anxious to make Elsmere understand without a scene, without adefinite proposal and a definite rejection. It was no use letting thingsdrift. Something brusque and marked there must be. She quietly made herdispositions. 

It was long after the gray vaporous morning stole on the hills beforeshe fell lightly, restlessly asleep. To her healthful youth a sleeplessnight was almost unknown. She wondered through the long hours of it, whether now, like other women, she had had her story, passed through herone supreme moment, and she thought of one or two worthy old maids sheknew 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 ownspiritual strength. 'It was not mine, ' she would have said with perfectsincerity, 'but God's. ' Still, whatever its source, it had been there atcommand, and the reflection carried with it a sad sense of security. It was as though a soldier after his first skirmish should congratulatehimself on being bullet-proof. 

To be sure, there was an intense trouble and disquiet in the thoughtthat she and Mr. Elsmere must meet again probably many times. The periodof 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 toany conflict, any endurance, and she fell asleep, the hands clasped onher breast expressing a kind of resolute patience, like those of someold sepulchral monument. 

The following morning Elsmere examined the clouds and the barometer withabnormal interest. The day was sunless and lowering, but not raining, and he represented to Mrs. Thornburgh, with a hypocritical assumptionof the practical man, that with rugs and mackintoshes it was possible topicnic 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 differentviews, and all of them more or less mixed up with pettishness, as to thebest place for a picnic on a gray day; and at last she grew so difficultthat Robert suspected something desperately wrong with the household, and withdrew lest male guests might be in the way. T hen she pursued himinto the study and thrust a _Spectator_ into his hands, begging him toconvey it to Burwood. She asked it lugubriously, with many sighs, hercap much askew. Robert could, have kissed her, curls and all, one momentfor suggesting the errand, and the next could almost have signed hercommittal to the county lunatic asylum with a clear conscience. What anextraordinary person it was!

Off he went, however, with his _Spectator_ under his arm, whistling. Mrs. Thornburgh caught the sounds through an open window, and tore theflannel across she was preparing for a mothers' meeting, with a noiselike the rattle of musketry. Whistling! She would like to know whatgrounds he had for it, indeed! She always knew--she always said--and shewould go on saying--that Catherine Leyburn would die an old maid. 

Meanwhile Robert had strolled across to Burwood with the lightest heart. By way of keeping all his anticipations within the bounds of strictreason, he told himself that it was impossible he should see 'her' inthe morning. She was always busy in the morning. 

He approached the house as a Catholic might approach a shrine. That washer window, that upper casement with the little Banksia rose twininground it. One night, when he and the vicar had been out late on thehills, he had seen a light streaming from it across the valley, andhad thought how the mistress of the maiden solitude within shone 'in anaughty world. '

In the drive he met Mrs. Leyburn, who was strolling about the garden. She at once informed him, with much languid plaintiveness, thatCatherine had gone to Whinborough for the day, and would not be able tojoin the picnic. 

Elsmere stood still. 

'_Gone!_' he cried. 'But it was all arranged with her yesterday!' Mrs. Leyburn shrugged her shoulders. She too was evidently much put out. 

'So I told her. But you know, Mr. Elsmere'--and the gentle widow droppedher voice as though communicating a secret--'when Catherine's once madeup her mind, you may as well try to dig away High Fell as move her. Sheasked me to tell Mrs. Thornburgh--will you please?--that she foundit was her day for the orphan asylum, and one or two other pieces ofbusiness, and she must go. '

'_Mrs. Thornburqh!_' And not a word for him, for him to whom she hadgiven her promise? She had gone to Whinborough to avoid him, and she hadgone in the brusquest way, that it might be unmistakable. 

The young man stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his longcoat, hearing with half an ear the remarks that Mrs. Leyburn was makingto him about the picnic. Was the wretched thing to come off after all?

He was too proud and sore to suggest an alternative. But Mrs. Thornburghmanaged that for him. When he got back he told the vicar in the hall ofMiss Leyburn's flight in the fewest possible words, and then his longlegs vanished up the stairs in a twinkling, and the door of his roomshut behind him. A few minutes afterward Mrs. Thornburgh's shrill voicewas 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 itoff. '

To which Elsmere from inside replied with a vigorous assent. The vicarslowly descended to tackle his spouse, who seemed to have establishedherself for the morning in his sanctum, though the parish accounts wereclamoring to be done, and this morning in the week belonged to them byimmemorial usage. 

But Mrs. Thornburgh was unmanageable. She sat opposite to him with onehand on each knee, solemnly demanding of him if _he_ knew what was to bedone with young women nowadays, because _she_ didn't. 

The tormented vicar declined to be drawn into so illimitable a subject, recommended patience, declared that it might all be a mistake, and triedhard to absorb himself in the consideration of _2s. 8d. Plus 2s. 11d. Minus 9d_. 

'And I suppose, William, ' said his wife to hint at last, with witheringsarcasm, 'that you'd sit by and see Catherine break that young man'sheart, and send him back to big mother no better than he came here, inspite of all the beef-tea and jelly Sarah and I have been putting intohim, and never lift a finger; you'd see his life _blasted_ and you'd donothing--nothing, I suppose. '

And she fixed him with a fiercely interrogative eye. 

'Of course, ' cried the vicar, roused; 'I should think so. What gooddid an outsider ever get by meddling in a love affair? Take care ofyourself, Emma. If the girl doesn't care for him, you can't make her. '

The vicar's wife rose the upturned corners of her mouth sayingunutterable things. 

'Doesn't care for him!' she echoed, in a tone which implied that herhusband's headpiece was past praying for. 

'Yes, doesn't care for him!' said the vicar, nettled. 'What else shouldmake her give him a snub like this?'

Mrs. Thornburgh looked at him again with exasperation. Then a curiousexpression stole into her eyes. 

'Oh, the Lord only knows!' she said, with a hasty freedom of speechwhich left the vicar feeling decidedly uncomfortable, as she shut thedoor after her. 

However, if the Higher Powers alone knew, Mrs. Thornburgh was convincedthat she could make a very shrewd guess at the causes of Catherine'sbehavior. In her opinion it was all pure 'cussedness. ' Catherine Leyburnhad always conducted her life on principles entirely different fromthose of other people. Mrs. Thornburgh wholly denied, as she satbridling by herself, that it was a Christian necessity to make yourselfand other people uncomfortable. 'Yet this was what this perverse youngwoman was always doing. Here was a charming young man who had fallenin love with her at first sight, and had done his best to make the factplain to her in the most chivalrous, devoted ways. Catherine encourageshim, walks with him, talks with him, is for a whole three weeks more gayand cheerful and more like other girls than she has ever been knownto be, and then, at the end of it, just when everybody is breathlesslyawaiting the natural _dénouement_, goes off to spend the day thatshould have been the day of her betrothal in pottering about orphanasylums;--leaving everybody, but especially the poor young man, to lookridiculous! No, Mrs. Thornburgh had no patience with her--none at all. It was all because she would not be happy like anybody else, but mustneeds set herself up to be peculiar. Why not live on a pillar, and gointo hair-shirts at once? Then the rest of the world would know what tobe at. 

Meanwhile Rose was in no small excitement. While her mother and Elsmerehad been talking in the garden, she had been discreetly waiting in theback behind the angle of the house, and when she saw Elsmere walk offshe followed him with eager, sympathetic eyes. 

'Poor fellow!' she said to herself, but this time with the little toneof patronage which a girl of eighteen, conscious of graces and goodlooks, never shrinks from assuming toward an elder male, especially amale in love with someone else. 'I wonder whether he thinks he knowsanything about Catherine. '

But her own feeling, to-day was very soft and complex. Yesterday ithad been all hot rebellion. To-day it was all remorse and wonderingcuriosity. What had brought Catherine into her room, with that whiteface, and that bewildering change of policy? What had made her do thisbrusque, discourteous thing to-day? Rose, having been delayed by theloss of one of her goloshes in a bog, had been once near her and Elsmereduring that dripping descent from Shanmoor. They had been so clearlyabsorbed in one another that she had fled on guiltily to Agnes, goloshin hand, without waiting to put it on; confident, however, that neitherElsmere nor Catherine had been aware of her little adventure. And at theShanmoor tea Catherine herself had discussed the picnic, offering, infact, to guide the party to a particular ghyll in High Fell, betterknown to her than anyone else. 

'Oh, of course it's our salvation in this world and the next that'sin the way, ' thought Rose, sitting crouched up in a grassy nook in thegarden, her shoulders up to her ears, her chin in her hands. 'I wishto goodness Catherine wouldn't think so much about mine, at any rate. I hate, ' added this incorrigible young person, 'I hate being the thirdpart of a "moral obstacle" against my will. I declare I don't believe weshould any of us go to perdition even if Catherine did marry. And what awretch I am to think so after last night! Oh, dear, I wish she'd let medo 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 worsestill, and I'd do it and welcome!'

It was getting uncomfortably serious all round, Rose admitted. But therewas 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 oflaughter. 'She takes it as a matter of course that all the worldshould admire us, and she'd scorn to believe that anybody did it frominterested motives. '

Which was perfectly true. Mrs. Leyburn was too devoted to her daughtersto feel any fidgety interest in their marrying. Of course the mosteligible persons would be only too thankful to marry them when themoment came. Meanwhile her devotion was in no need of the confirmingtestimony of lovers. It was sufficient in itself and kept her mindgently occupied from morning till night. If it had occurred to her tonotice that Robert Elsmere had been paying special attention to anyonein the family, she would have suggested with perfect naïveté that itwas herself. For he had been to her the very pink of courtesy andconsideration, and she was of opinion that 'poor Richard's views' ofthe degeneracy of Oxford men would have been modified could he have seenthis particular specimen. 

Later on in the morning Rose had been out giving Bob a run, while Agnesdrove with her mother. On the way home she overtook Elsmere returningfrom an errand for the vicar. 

'It is not so bad, ' she said to him, laughing, pointing to the sky; 'wereally might have gone. '

'Oh, it would have been cheerless, ' he said, simply. His look ofdepression amazed her. She felt a quick movement of sympathy, a wildwish to bid him cheer up and fight it out. If she could just have shownhim Catherine as she looked last night! Why couldn't she talk it outwith him? Absurd conventions! She had half a mind to try. 

But the grave look of the man beside her deterred even her younghalf-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 yesterdayshe could not stand it--she must give him hint how the land lay. 

'I suppose she will spend the afternoon with Aunt Ellen. Elsmere, whatdo you think of Aunt Ellen?'

Elsmere started, and could not help smiling into the young girl'sbeautiful eyes, which were radiant with fun. 

'A most estimable person, ' he said. 'Are you on good terms with her, Miss Rose?'

'Oh dear, no!' she said, with a little face. 'I'm not a Leyburn; I wearaesthetic dresses, and Aunt Ellen has "special leadings of the spirit"to the effect that the violin is a soul-destroying instrument. Oh, dear!'--and the girl's mouth twisted--'it's alarming to think, ifCatherine hadn't been Catherine, how like Aunt Ellen she might, havebeen!'

She flashed a mischievous look at him, and thrilled as she caught thesudden change of expression in his face. 

'Your sister has the Westmoreland strength in her--one can see that, ' hesaid, evidently speaking with some difficulty. 

'Strength! Oh, yes. Catherine has plenty of strength, ' cried Rose, andthen 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 weare all Catherine's creatures. She does exactly what she likes with us. When my father died she was sixteen, Agnes was ten, I was eight. We camehere 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 anyteacher but her since then; she did most of the housekeeping; and youcan see for yourself what she does for the neighbors and poor folk. Sheis never ill, she is never idle, she always knows her own mind. We oweeverything we are, almost everything we have, to her. Her nursing haskept mamma alive through one or two illnesses. Our lawyer says henever knew any business affairs better managed than ours, and Catherinemanages them. The one thing she never takes any care or thought foris herself. What we should do without her I can't imagine; and yetsometimes I think if it goes on much longer none of us three will haveany character of our own left. After all, you know, it may be good forthe weak people to struggle on their own feet, if the strong would onlybelieve 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 eyeswere feverishly bright, and her voice vibrated under a strange mixtureof feelings--sympathy, reverence, and a passionate inner admirationstruggling with rebellion and protest. 

They had reached the gate of the Vicarage. Elsmere stopped and looked athis companion with a singular lightening of expression. He saw perfectlythat the young impetuous creature understood him, that she felt hiscause was not prospering and that she wanted to help him. He saw thatwhat she meant by this picture of their common life was, that no oneneed expect Catherine Leyburn to be an easy prey; that she wanted toimpress on him in her eager way that such lives as her sister's werenot to be gathered at a touch, without difficulty, from the branch thatbears them. She was exhorting him to courage--nay he caught more thanexhortation--a sort of secret message from her bright, excited looksand incoherent speech--that made his heart leap. But pride and delicacyforbade him to put his feelings into words. 

'You don't hope to persuade me that your sister reckons you among theweak persons of the world?' he said, laughing, his hand on the gate. Rose could have blessed him for thus turning the conversation. What onearth could she have said next?

She stood bantering a little longer, and then ran off with Bob. 

Elsmere passed the rest of the morning wandering meditatively over thecloudy fells. After all he was only where he was before the blessedmadness, the upflooding hope, nay, almost certainty, of yesterday. Hisattack had been for the moment repulsed. He gathered from Rose's mannerthat Catherine's action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaningnor accidental, as on second thoughts he had been half-trying topersuade 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 knowa little more clearly how he stood! He spent a noonday hour on a grayrock on the side of the fell, between Whindale and Marrisdale, studyingthe path opposite, the stepping-stones, the bit of white road. Theminutes passed in a kind of trance of memory. Oh, that soft, childlikemovement to him, after his speech about her father! that heavenlyyielding and self-forgetfulness which shone in her every look andmovement as she stood balancing on the stepping-stones! If after all sheshould prove cruel to him, would he not have a legitimate grievance, aheavy charge to fling against her maiden gentleness? He trampled on thenotion. Let her do with him as she would, she would be his saint always, unquestioned, unarraigned. 

But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that any man, leastof all a man of Elsmere's temperament, could be very hopeless. Oh, yes, he had been rash, foolhardy. Do such divine creatures stoop to mortalmen as easily as he had dreamt? He recognizes all the difficulties, heenters into the force of all the ties that bind her--or imagines that hedoes. But he is a man and her lover'; and if she loves him, in theend love will conquer--must conquer. For his more modern sense, deeplyChristianized as it is, assumes almost without argument the sacrednessof passion and its claim--wherein a vast difference between himself andthat solitary wrestler in Marrisdale. 

Meanwhile he kept all his hopes and fears to himself. Mrs. Thornburghwas dying to talk to him; but though his mobile, boyish temperament madeit impossible for him to disguise his change of mood, there was in him acertain natural Dignity which life greatly developed, but which madeit always possible for him to hold his own against curiosity andindiscretion. Mrs. Thornburgh had to hold her peace. As for the vicar, he developed what were for him a surprising number of new topics ofconversation, and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a run up thefells to the nearest fragment of the Roman road which runs, with suchmagnificent disregard of the humors of Mother Earth, over the very topof High Street toward Penrith and Carlisle. 

Next day it looked as though after many waverings, the characteristicWestmoreland weather had descended upon them in good earnest. From earlymorn till late evening the valley was wrapped in damp clouds or movingrain, which swept down from the west through the great basin of thehills, and rolled along the course of the river, wrapping trees andfells and houses in the same misty, cheerless drizzle. Under the outwardpall of rain, indeed, the valley was renewing its summer youth; theriver was swelling with an impetuous music through all its dwindledchannels; the crags flung out white waterfalls again, which the heat hadalmost dried away; and by noon the whole green hollow was vocal with thesounds of water--water flashing and foaming in the river, water leapingdownward from the rocks, water dripping steadily from the larches andsycamores and the slate-eaves of the houses. 

Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system ofSurrey, or pretending to do so. He sat in a corner of the study, wherehe and the vicar protected each other against Mrs. Thornburgh. That goodwoman would open the door once and again in the morning and put her headthrough in search of prey; but on being confronted with two studiousmen instead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she would givevent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality Elsmerewas thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn mightbe doing that morning. Judging a North countrywoman by the pusillanimousSouthern standard, he found himself glorying in the weather. She couldnot wander far from him to-day. 

After the early dinner he escaped, just as the vicar's wife was devisingan excuse on which to convey both him and herself to Burwood, andsallied forth with a mackintosh for a rush down the Whinborough road. Itwas still raining, but the clouds showed a momentary lightening, anda few gleams of watery sunshine brought out every now and then thatsparkle on the trees, that iridescent beauty of distance and atmospherewhich goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petulantabundance of mountain rain. Elsmere passed Burwood with a thrill. Shouldhe or should he not present himself? Let him push on a bit and think. So on he swung, measuring his tall frame against the gusts, spirits andmasculine energy rising higher with every step. At last the passion ofhis mood had wrestled itself out with the weather, and he turned backonce more determined to seek and find her, to face his fortunes like aman. The warm rain beating from the west struck on his uplifted face. Hewelcomed it as a friend. Rain and storm had opened to him the gates of aspiritual citadel. What could ever wholly close it against him any more?He felt so strong, so confident! Patience and courage!

Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming out from thewhite mists surging round it. A shaft of sunlight lay across its upperend, and he caught a marvellous apparition of a sunlit valley hung inair, a pale strip of blue above it, a white thread of steam waveringthrough it, and all around it and below it the rolling rain-clouds. 

Suddenly, between him and that enchanter's vision he saw a dark slimfigure against the mists, walking before him along the road. It wasCatherine--Catherine just emerged from a footpath across the fields, battling with wind and rain, and quite unconscious of any spectator. Oh, what a sudden thrill was that! What a leaping together of joy and dread, which sent the blood to his heart! Alone--they two alone again-inthe wild Westmoreland mists--and half a mile at least of winding roadbetween them and Burwood. He flew after her, dreading, and yet longingfor the moment when he should meet her eyes. Fortune had suddenly giventhis hour into his hands; he felt it open upon him like that mysticvalley in the clouds. 

Catherine heard the hurrying steps behind her and turned. There was anevident start when she caught sight of her pursuer--a quick change ofexpression. She wore a close-fitting waterproof dress and cap. Her hairwas loosened, her cheek freshened by the storm. He came up with her; hetook her hand, his eyes dancing with the joy he could not hide. 

'What are you made of, I wonder?' he said, gayly. 'Nothing, certainly, that minds weather. '

'No Westmoreland native thinks of staying at home for this, ' she said, with her quiet smile, moving on beside him as she spoke. 

He looked down upon her with an indescribable mixture of feelings. Nostiffness, no coldness in her manner--only the even gentleness whichalways marked her out from others. He felt as though yesterday wereblotted out, and would not for worlds have recalled it to her orreproached her with it. Let it be as though they were but carrying onthe scene of the stepping-stones. 

'Look, ' he said, pointing to the west; 'have you been watching thatmagical break in the clouds?'

Her eyes followed his to the delicate picture hung high among the movingmists. 

'Ah, ' she exclaimed, her face kindling, 'that is one of our loveliesteffects, and one of the rarest. You are lucky to have seen it. '

'I am conceited enough, ' he said, joyously, 'to feel as if someenchanter were at work up there drawing pictures on the mists for myspecial benefit. How welcome the rain is! As I am afraid you have heardme say before, what new charm it gives to your valley!'

There was something in the buoyancy and force of his mood that seemed tomake Catherine shrink into herself. She would not pursue the subject ofWestmoreland. She asked with a little stiffness whether he had good newsfrom Mrs. Elsmere. 

'Oh, yes. As usual, she is doing everything for me, ' he said, smiling. 'It is disgraceful that I should be idling here while she is strugglingwith carpenters and paperers, and puzzling out the decorations of thedrawing-room. She writes to me in a fury about the word "artistic. " Shedeclares even the little upholsterer at Churton hurls it at her everyother minute, and that if it weren't for me she would select everythingas frankly, primevally hideous as she could find, just to spite him. Asit is, he has so warped her judgment that she has left the sitting-roompapers till I arrive. For the drawing-room she avows a passionatepreference for one all cabbage-roses and no stalks; but she admits thatit may be exasperation. She wants your sister, clearly, to advise her. By the way, ' and his voice changed, 'the vicar told me last night thatMiss Rose is going to Manchester for the winter to study. He heardit from Miss Agnes, I think. The news interested me greatly after ourconversation. '

He looked at her with the most winning interrogative eyes. His wholemanner implied that everything which touched and concerned her touchedand concerned him; and, moreover, that she had given him in some sort aright to share her thoughts and difficulties. Catherine struggled withherself. 

'I trust it may answer, ' she said, in a low voice. 

But she would say no more, and he felt rebuffed. His buoyancy began todesert him. 

'It must be a great trial to Mrs. Elsmere, ' she said presently with aneffort, once more steering away from herself and her concerns, 'thisgoing back to her old home. '

'It is. My father's long struggle for life in that house is a verypainful memory. I wished her to put it off till I could go with her, butshe declared she would rather get over the first week or two by herself. How I should like you to know my mother, Miss Leyburn!

At this she could not help meeting his glance and smile, and answeringthem, 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 bringyou together. '

The words were simple enough; the tone was full of emotion. He was fastlosing control of himself. She felt it through every nerve, and a sortof wild dread seized her of what he might say next. Oh, she must preventit!

'Your mother was with you most of your Oxford life, was she not?' shesaid, forcing herself to speak in her most everyday tones. 

He controlled himself with a mighty effort. 

'Since I became a Fellow. We have been alone in the world so long. Wehave never been able to do without each other. '

'Isn't it wonderful to you?' said Catherine, after a little electricpause--and her voice was steadier and clearer than it had been since thebeginning of their conversation--'how little the majority of sons anddaughters regard their parents when they come to grow up and want tolive their own lives? The one thought seems to be to get rid of them, tothrow off their claims, to cut them adrift, to escape them--decently, ofcourse, and under many pretexts, but still to escape them. All the longyears of devotion and self-sacrifice go for nothing. '

He looked at her quickly--a troubled, questioning look. 

'It is so, often; but not, I think, where the parents have trulyunderstood their problem. The real difficulty for father and mother isnot childhood, but youth; how to get over that difficult time whenthe child passes into the man or woman, and a relation of governor andgoverned should become the purest and closest of friendships. You and Ihave been lucky. '

'Yes, ' she said, looking straight before her, and still speaking witha distinctness which caught his ear painfully, 'and so are the greaterdebtors! There is no excuse, I think, for any child, least of all forthe child who has had years of understanding love to look back upon, ifit puts its own claim first; if it insists on satisfying itself, whenthere is age and weakness appealing to it on the other side, when it isstill urgently needed to help those older, to shield those younger, than itself. Its business first of all is to pay its debt, whatever thecost. '

The voice was low, but it had the clear, vibrating ring of steel. Robert's face had darkened visibly. 

'But, surely, ' he cried, goaded by a now stinging sense of revolt andpain-'surely the child may make a fatal mistake if it imagines that itsown happiness counts for nothing in the parents' eyes. What parent butmust suffer from the starving of the child's nature? What have motherand father been working for, after all, but the perfecting of thechild's life? Their longing is that it should fulfil itself in alldirections. New ties, new affections, on the child's part mean theenriching of the parent. What a cruel fate for the elder generation, tomake it the jailer and burden of the younger!'

He spoke with heat and anger, with a sense of dashing himself against anobstacle, and a dumb despairing certainty, rising at the heart of him. 

'Ah, that is what we are so ready to say, ' she answered, her breathcoming more quickly, and her eye meeting his with a kind of antagonismin it; 'but it is all sophistry. The only safety lies in following outthe plain duty. The parent wants the child's help and care, the child isbound to give it; that is all it needs to know. If it forms new ties, it belongs to them, not to the old ones; the old ones must come to beforgotten and put aside. '

'So you would make all life a sacrifice to the past?' he cried, quivering under the blow she was dealing him. 

'No, not all life, ' she said, struggling hard to preserve her perfectcalm of manner: he could not know that she was trembling from head tofoot. 'There are many for whom it is easy and right to choose their ownway; their happiness robs no one. There are others on whom a charge hasbeen laid from their childhood a charge perhaps--and her voice falteredat last--'impressed on them by dying lips, which must govern, possesstheir lives; which it would be baseness, treason, to betray. We are nothere only to be happy. '

And she turned to him deadly pale, the faintest, sweetest smile on herlip. He was for the moment incapable of speech. He began phrase afterphrase, and broke them off. A whirlwind of feeling possessed him. The strangeness, the unworldliness of what she had done struck himsingularly. He realized through every nerve that what she had just saidto him she had been bracing herself to say to him ever since their lastparting. 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 inhim rose up against the woman's unlooked-for, unwelcome strength. 

But as the hot words she had dared so much in her simplicity to avertfrom them both were bursting from him, they were checked by a suddenphysical difficulty. A bit of road was under water. A little beck, swollen by the rain, had overflowed, and for a few yards distance thewater stood about eight inches deep from hedge to hedge. Robert hadsplashed through the flood half an hour before, but it had risen rapidlysince then. He had to apply his mind to the practical task of finding away to the other side. 

'You must climb the bank, ' he said, 'and get through into the field. '

She assented mutely. He went first, drew her up the bank, forced his waythrough the loosely growing hedge himself, and holding back some younghazel saplings and breaking others, made an opening for her throughwhich she scrambled with bent head; then, stretching out his hand toher, he made her submit to be helped down the steep bank on the otherside. Her straight young figure was just above him, her breath almost onhis cheek. 

'You talk of baseness and treason, ' he began, passionately, conscious ofa hundred wild impulses, as perforce she leant her light weight upon hisarm. 

'Life is not so simple. It is so easy to sacrifice others with one'sself, to slay all claims in honor of one, instead of knitting the newones to the old. Is life to be allowed no natural expansion? Have youforgotten that, in refusing the new bond for the old bond's sake, thechild may be simply wronging the parents, depriving them of anotheraffection, another support, which ought to have been theirs?'

His tone was harsh, almost violent. It seemed to him that she grewsuddenly white, and he grasped her more firmly still. She reached thelevel of the field, quickly withdrew her hand, and for a moment theireyes met, her pale face raised to his. It seemed an age, so much wassaid in that look. There was appeal on her side, passion on his. Plainlyshe implored him to say no more, to spare her and himself. 

'In some cases, ' she said, and her voice sounded strained and hoarseto both of them, 'one cannot risk the old bond. On dare not trust one'sself--or circumstance. The responsibility is too great; one can butfollow the beaten path, cling to the one thread. But don't let us talkof it anymore. We must make for that gate, Mr. Elsmere. It will bring usout on the road again close by home. '

He was quelled. Speech suddenly became impossible to him. He was struckagain with that sense of a will firmer and more tenacious than his own, which had visited him in a slight passing way on the first evening theyever met, and now filled him with a kind of despair. As they pushedsilently along the edge of the dripping meadow, he noticed with a pangthat the stepping-stones lay just below them. The gleam of sun had diedaway, the aërial valley in the clouds had vanished, and a fresh storm ofrain brought back the color to Catherine's cheek. On their left handwas the roaring of the river, on their right they could already hear thewind moaning and tearing through the trees which sheltered Burwood. The nature which an hour ago had seemed to him so full of stimulus andexhilaration, had taken to itself a note of gloom and mourning; for hewas at the age when Nature is the mere docile responsive mirror of thespirit, when all her forces and powers are made for us, and are onlythere to play chorus to our story. 

They reached the little lane leading to the gate of Burwood. She pausedat 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, yourfriendship, ' it cried, with the usual futility of all good women underthe circumstances. But as he met it for one passionate instant, herecognized fully that there was not a trace of yielding in it. At thebottom of the softness there was the iron of resolution. 

'No, no; not now, ' he said involuntarily; and she never forgot thepainful struggle of the face; 'good-by. ' He touched her hand withoutanother word, and was 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 likea ghost. Come and have some tea at once. '

And she dragged her into the drawing-room. Catherine submitted with allher usual outward calm, faintly smiling at her sister's onslaught. Butshe would not let Agnes put her down on the sofa. She stood with herhand on the back of a chair. 

'The weather is very close and exhausting, ' she said, gently liftingher hand to her hat. But the hand dropped, and she sank heavily into thechair. 

'Cathie, you are faint, ' cried Agnes, running to her. 

Catherine waved her away, and, with an effort of which none but shewould have been capable, mastered the physical weakness. 

'I have been a long way, dear, ' she said, as though in apology, 'andthere is no air. Yes, I will go up-stairs and lie down a minute or two. 'Oh no, don't come, I will be down for tea directly. '

And refusing all help, she guided herself out of the room, her face thecolor of the foam on the beck outside. Agnes stood dumfounded. Never inher life before had she seen Catherine betray any such signs of physicalexhaustion. 

Suddenly Rose ran in, shut the door carefully behind her, and rushing upto 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 up-stairs come to the bottom of the lane. Then herushed on, and I have just met her on the stairs. It's as plain as thenose on your face. '

Agnes sat down bewildered. 

'It is hard on him' she said at last. 

'Yes, it is _very_ hard on him!' cried Rose, pacing the room, her longthin arms clasped behind her, her eyes flashing, 'for she loves him!'

'Rose!'

'She does, my dear, she does, ' cried the girl, frowning. I know it in ahundred ways. '

Agnes ruminated. 

'And it's all because of us?' she said at last reflectively. 

'Of course! I put it to you, Agnes'--and Rose stood still with a tragicair--'I put it to you, whether it isn't too bad that three unoffendingwomen should have such a role as this assigned them against their will!'

The eloquence of eighteen was irresistible. Agnes buried her head in thesofa cushion, and shook with a kind of helpless laughter. Rose meanwhilestood in the window, her thin form drawing up to its full height, angrywith Agnes, and enraged with all the world. 

'It's absurd, it's insulting, ' she exclaimed. 'I should imagine that youand I Agnes, were old enough and sane enough to look after mamma, putout the stores, say our prayers, and prevent each other from runningaway with adventurers! I won't be always in leading-strings. I won'tacknowledge that Catherine is bound to be an old maid to keep me inorder. I hate it! It is sacrifice run mad. '

And Rose turned to her sister, the defiant head thrown back, a passionof manifold protest in the girlish looks. 

'It is very easy, my dear, to be judge in one's own case, ' replied Agnescalmly, recovering herself. 'Suppose you tell Catherine some of thesehome-truths?'

Rose collapsed at once. She sat down despondently, and fell, headdrooping, into a moody silence, Agnes watched her with a kind oftriumph. When it came to the point, she knew perfectly well that therewas not a will among them that could measure itself with any chance ofsuccess against that lofty, but unwavering will of Catherine's. Rose wasviolent, and there was much reason in her violence. But as for her, shepreferred not to dash her head against stone walls. 

'Well, then, if you won't say them to Catherine, say them to mamma, ' shesuggested presently, but half ironically. 

'Mamma is no good, ' cried Rose angrily; 'why do you bring her in?Catherine would talk her round in ten minutes. '

Long after everyone else in Burwood, even the chafing, excited Rose, wasasleep, Catherine in her dimly lighted room, where the stormy northwestwind beat noisily against her window, was sitting in a low chair, herhead leaning against her bed, her little well-worn Testament open on herknee. But she was not reading. Her eyes were shut; one hand hung downbeside her, and tears were raining fast and silently over her cheeks. Itwas the stillest, most restrained weeping. She hardly knew why she wept, she only knew that there was something within her which must have itsway. What did this inner smart and tumult mean, this rebellion of theself against the will which had never yet found its mastery fail it? Itwas as though from her childhood till now she had lived in a moral worldwhereof the aims, the dangers, the joys, were all she knew; and nowthe walls of this world were crumbling round her, and strange lights, strange voices, strange colors were breaking through. All the sayingsof Christ which had lain closest to her heart for years, tonight forthe first time seem to her no longer sayings of comfort or command, butsayings of fire and flame that burn their coercing way through life andthought. 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 thesource and the sanction of the words, flesh and blood recoil. Thisgirl amid her mountains had carried religion as far as religion canbe carried before it meets life in the wrestle appointed it. The calm, simple outlines of things are blurring before her eyes; the great placiddeeps of the soul are breaking up. 

To the purest ascetic temper a struggle of this kind is hardly real. Catherine felt a bitter surprise at her own pain. Yesterday a sort ofmystical exaltation upheld her. What had broken it down?

Simply a pair of reproachful eyes, a pale protesting face. What triflescompared to the awful necessities of an infinite obedience! And yet theyhaunt her, till her heart aches for misery, till she only yearns to becounselled, to be forgiven, to be at least understood. 

'Why, why am I so weak?' she cried in utter abasement of soul, and knewnot that in that weakness, or rather in the founts of character fromwhich it sprang, lay the innermost safeguard of her life. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Robert was very nearly reduced to despair by the scene with Catherinewe have described. He spent a brooding and miserable hour in the vicar'sstudy afterward, making up his mind as to what he should do. One phraseof hers which had passed almost unnoticed in the shock of the moment wasnow ringing in his ears, maddening him by a sense of joy just within hisreach, and yet barred away from him by an obstacle as strong as it wasintangible. '_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 ofher mood. They were now filling Robert Elsmere's mind with a tormenting, torturing bliss. What could they mean? What had her paleness, herevident trouble and weakness meant, but that the inmost self of hers washis, was conquered; and that, but for the shadowy obstacle between them, all would be well?

As for the obstacle in itself, he did not admit its force for a moment. No sane and practical man, least of all when that man happened to beCatherine Leyburn's lover, could regard it as a binding obligationupon her that she should sacrifice her own life and happiness to threepersons, who were in no evident moral straits, no physical or pecuniaryneed, and who, as Rose incoherently put it, might very well be ratherbraced than injured by the withdrawal of her strong support. 

But the obstacle of character--ah, there was a different matter! Herealized with despair the brooding, scrupulous force of moral passion towhich her lonely life, her antecedents, and her father's nature workingin her had given so rare and marked a development. No temper in theworld is so little open to reason as the ascetic temper. How many alover and husband, how many a parent and friend, have realized to theirpain, since history began, the overwhelming attraction which all theprocesses of self-annihilation have for a certain order of minds!Robert's heart sank before the memory of that frail, indomitable look, that aspect of sad yet immovable conviction with which she had bade himfarewell. And yet, surely--surely under the willingness of the spiritthere had been a pitiful, a most womanly weakness of the flesh. Surely, now memory reproduced the scene, she had been white--trembling: her handhad rested on the moss-grown wall beside her for support. Oh, why hadhe been so timid? why had he let that awe of her, which her personalityproduced so readily, stand between them? why had he not boldly caughther to himself and, with all the eloquence of a passionatenature, 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 suddenaccess of hope and energy. And he stood awhile looking out into therainy evening, all the keen, irregular face, and thin, pliant formhardening into the intensity of resolve, which had so often carried theyoung tutor through an Oxford difficulty, breaking, down antagonism andcompelling consent. 

At the high tea which represented the late dinner of the household hewas wary and self-possessed. Mrs. Thornburgh got out of him that he hadbeen for a walk, and had seen Catherine, but for all her ingenuities ofcross-examination she got nothing more. Afterward, when he and thevicar were smoking together, he proposed to Mr. Thornburgh that they twoshould go off for a couple of days on a walking tour to Ullswater. 

'I want to go away, ' he said, with a hand on the vicar's shoulder, '_andI want to come back_. ' The deliberation of the last words was not tobe mistaken. The vicar emitted a contented puff, looked the young manstraight in the eyes, and without another word began to plan a walkto Patterdale viâ High Street, Martindale, and Howtown, and back byHawes-water. 

To Mrs. Thornburgh, Robert announced that he must leave them on thefollowing Saturday, June 24. 

'You have given me a good time, cousin Emma, ' he said to her, with abright friendliness which dumfounded her. A good time, indeed! witheverything begun and nothing finished: with two households thrown intoperturbation for a delusion, and a desirable marriage spoilt, all forwant of a little common sense and plain speaking, which _one_ personat least in the valley could have supplied them with, had she not beenignored and browbeaten on all sides. She contained herself, however, inhis presence, but the vicar suffered proportionately in the privacy ofthe connubial chamber. He had never seen his wife so exasperated. Tothink what might have been--what she might have done for the race, butfor the whims of two stuck-up, superior, impracticable young persons, that would neither manage their own affairs nor allow other people tomanage them for them! The vicar behaved gallantly, kept the secret ofElsmere's remark to himself like a man, and allowed himself certaincounsels against matrimonial meddling which plunged Mrs. Thornburgh intowell-simulated slumber. However, in the morning he was vaguely consciousthat some time in the visions of the night his spouse had demanded ofhim peremptorily, 'When do you get back, William?' To the best of hismemory, the vicar had sleepily murmured, 'Thursday;' and had then heard, echoed through his dreams, a calculating whisper, 'He goes Saturday--oneclear day!'

The 'following morning was gloomy but fine, and after breakfast thevicar and Elsmere started off. Robert turned back at the top of theHigh Fell pass and stood leaning on his alpenstock, sending a passionatefarewell to the gray distant house, the upper window, the copper beechin the garden, the bit of winding road, while the vicar discreetlystepped on northward, his eyes fixed on the wild regions of Martindale. 

Mrs. Thornburgh, left alone, absorbed herself to all appearance inthe school treat which was to come off in a fortnight, in a new set ofcovers for the drawing-room, and in Sarah's love affairs, which werealways passing through some traffic phase or other, and into whichMrs. Thornburgh was allowed a more unencumbered view than she was intoCatherine Leyburn's. Rose and Agnes dropped in now and then andfound her not disposed to talk to them on the great event of theday, Elsmere's absence and approaching departure. They cautiouslycommunicated to her their own suspicions as to the incident of thepreceding afternoon; and Rose gave vent to one fiery onslaught on the'moral obstacle' theory, during which Mrs. Thornburgh sat studying herwith small attentive eyes and curls slowly waving from side to side. Butfor once in her life the vicar's wife was not communicative in return. That the situation should have driven even Mrs. Thornburgh to finessewas a surprising testimony to its gravity. What between her suddentaciturnity and Catherine's pale silence, the girls' sense of expectancywas roused to its highest pitch. 

'They come back to-morrow night, ' said Rose, thoughtfully, 'and he goesSaturday--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 conspiracythey complied. 

It was late on Thursday afternoon when Mrs. Thornburgh, finding theBurwood front door open, made her unchallenged way into the hall, andafter an unanswered knock at the drawing-room door, opened it and peeredin to see who might be there. 

'May I come in?'

Mrs. Leyburn, who was a trifle deaf, was sitting by the window absorbedin the intricacies of a heel which seemed to her more than she couldmanage. Her card was mislaid, the girls were none of them at hand, andshe felt as helpless as she commonly did when left alone. 

'Oh, do come in, please! So glad to see you. Have you been nearly blownaway?'

For, though the rain had stopped, a boisterous northwest wind was stillrushing through the valley, and the trees round Burwood were swaying andgroaning under the force of its onslaught. 

'Well, it is stormy, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh, stepping in and undoing allthe various safety-pins and elastics which had held her dress high abovethe mud. 'Are the girls out?'

'Yes, Catherine and Agnes are at the school; and Rose, I think, ispractising. '

'Ah, well, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh, settling herself in a chair close byher friend, 'I wanted to find you alone. '

Her face, framed in bushy curls and an old garden bonnet, was flushedand serious. Her mittened hands were clasped nervously on her lap, andthere was about her such an air of forcibly restrained excitement, thatMrs. Leyburn's mild eyes gazed at her with some astonishment. The twowomen were a curious contrast: Mrs. Thornburgh short, inclined, as weknow, to be stout, ample and abounding in all things, whether itwere curls or cap-strings or conversation; Mrs. Leyburn tall and wellproportioned, well dressed, with the same graceful ways and languidpretty manners as had first attracted her husband's attention thirtyyears before. She was fond of Mrs. Thornburgh, but there was somethingin the ebullient energies of the vicar's wife which always gave her asense of bustle and fatigue. 

'I am sure you will be sorry to hear, ' began her visitor, that Mr. Elsmere is going. '

'Going?' said Mrs. Leyburn, laying down her knitting. 'Why, I thought hewas going to stay with you another ten days at least. '

'So did I--so did he, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh, nodding, and then pausingwith a most effective air of sudden gravity and 'recollection. '

'Then why--what's the matter?' asked Mrs. Leyburn, wondering. 

Mrs. Thornburgh did not answer for a minute, and Mrs. Leyburn began tofeel a little nervous, her visitor's eyes were fixed upon her with somuch 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 in a stage whisper, drawing back after a pause, to see the effect of her announcement. 

'Oh! with whom?' asked Mrs. Leyburn, her look brightening. She liked alove affair as much as ever. 

Mrs. Thornburgh furtively looked round to see if the door was shut andall safe--she felt herself a criminal, but the sense of guilt had anexhilarating rather than a depressing affect upon her. 

'Have you guessed nothing? have the girls told you anything?'

'No!' said Mrs. Leyburn, her eyes opening wider and wider. She neverguessed anything; there was no need, with three daughters to think forher, and give her the benefit of their young brains. 'No, ' she saidagain. '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 abruptly, layingher hand on Mrs. Leyburn's knee, and watching the effect. 

'With Catherine!' stammered Mrs. Leyburn; '_with Catherine!_'

The idea was amazing to her. She took up her knitting with tremblingfingers, and went on with it mechanically a second or two. Then layingit down--'Are you quite sure? has he told you?'

'No, but one has eyes, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh hastily. 'William and Ihave seen it from the very first day. And we are both certain that onTuesday she made him understand in some way or other that she wouldn'tmarry him, and that is why he went off to Ullswater, and why he made uphis mind to go south before his time is up. '

'Tuesday?' cried Mrs. Leyburn. 'In that walk, do you mean, whenCatherine looked so tired afterward? You think he proposed in thatwalk?'

She was in a maze of bewilderment and excitement. 

'Something like it--but if he did, she said "No;" and what I want toknow 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. 'Catherine's not likemost girls; she would always know what she felt, and would never keep aman in suspense. '

'Well, I don't somehow believe, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh boldly, 'that shedoesn'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 all her meditations, had no very precise idea asto _why_ she was at that moment in the Burwood living-room bombardingMrs. Leyburn in this fashion. All she knew was that she had salliedforth determined somehow to upset the situation, just as one givesa shake purposely to a bundle of spillikins on the chance of morefavorable openings. Mrs. Leyburn's mind was just now playing the part ofspillikins, and the vicar's wife was shaking it viciously, though withoccasional qualms as to the lawfulness of the process. 

'You think Catherine does care for him?' resumed Mrs. Leyburntremulously. 

'Well isn't he just the kind of man one would suppose Catherine wouldlike?' repeated Mrs. Thornburgh, persuasively: 'he is a clergyman, andshe likes serious people; and he's sensible and nice and well-mannered. And then he can talk about books, just like her father used--I'm sureWilliam thinks he knows everything! He isn't as nice-looking as he mightbe just now, but then that's his hair and his fever, poor man. Andthen he isn't hanging about. He's got a living, and there'd be the poorpeople all ready, and everything else Catherine likes. And now I'll justask you--did you ever see Catherine more--more--_lively_--well, I knowthat's not just the word, but you know what I mean--than she has beenthe last fortnight?'

But Mrs. Leyburn only shook her head helplessly. She did not know in theleast what Mrs. Thornburgh meant. She never thought Catherine doleful, and she agreed that certainly 'lively' was not the word. 

'Girls get so frightfully particular nowadays, ' continued the vicar'swife, with reflective candor. 'Why, when William fell in love with me, I just fell in love with him--at once--because he did. And if it hadn'tbeen William, but somebody else, it would have been the same. I don'tbelieve girls have got hearts like pebbles--if the man's nice, ofcourse!'

Mrs. Leyburn listened to this summary of matrimonial philosophy with thesame yielding, flurried attention as she was always disposed to give tothe last speaker. 

'But, ' she said, still in a maze, 'if she did care for him, why shouldshe send him away?'

'_Because she won't have him!_' said Mrs. Thornburgh, energetically, leaning over the arm of her chair that she might bring herself nearer toher companion. 

The fatuity of the answer left Mrs. Leyburn staring. 

'Because she won't have him, my dear Mrs. Leyburn! And--and--I'm surenothing would make me interfere like this if I weren't so fond of youall, and if William 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 personin the world, if you knew, to stand in young people's way!'

'_I!_' cried poor Mrs. Leyburn--'I stand in the way!' She was gettingtremulous and tearful, and Mrs. Thornburgh felt herself a brute. 

'Well, ' she said, plunging on desperately, 'I have been thinking overit night and day. I've been watching him, and I've been talking to thegirls, and I've been putting two and two together, and I'm just aboutsure that there might be a chance for Robert, if only Catherine didn'tfeel that you and the girls couldn't get on without her!'

Mrs. Leyburn took up her knitting again with agitated fingers. Shewas so long in answering, that Mrs. Thornburgh sat and thought withtrepidation of all sorts of unpleasant consequences which might resultfrom this audacious move of hers. 

'I don't know how we _should_ get on, ' cried Mrs. Leyburn at last, witha sort of suppressed sob, while something very like a tear fell on thestocking she held. 

Mrs. Thornburgh was still more frightened, and rushed into a floodof apologetic speech. Very likely she was wrong perhaps it was all amistake, she was afraid she had done harm, and so on. Mrs. Leyburn tookvery little heed, but at last she said, looking up and applying a softhandkerchief gently to her eyes--

'Is his mother nice? Where's his living? Would he want to be marriedsoon?'

The voice was weak and tearful, but there was in it unmistakableeagerness to be informed. Mrs. Thornburgh, overjoyed, let loose upon hera flood of particulars, painted the virtues and talents of Mrs. Elsmere, described Robert's Oxford career, with an admirable sense for effect, and a truly feminine capacity for murdering every university detail, drew pictures of the Murewell living, and rectory, of which Robert hadphotographs with him, threw in adroit information about the young man'sprivate means, and in general showed what may be made of a woman's mindunder the stimulus of one of the occupations most proper to it. Mrs. Leyburn brightened visibly as the flood proceeded. Alas, poor Catherine!How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life ofours!

Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions of a whitesoft morsel in which Catherine's eyes and smile should live again--allthese thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs. Leyburn's mindas she listened to Mrs. Thornburgh. There is so much of the artist inthe maternal mind, of the artist who longs to see the work of his handin fresh combinations and under all points of view. Catherine, in theheat of her own self-surrender, had perhaps forgotten that her mothertoo had a heart!

'Yes, it all sounds very well' said Mrs. Leyburn at last, sighing, 'but, you know, Catherine isn't easy to manage. '

'Could you talk to her--find out a little?'

'Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her. Doesn't it seem to youthat when a girl takes up notions like Catherine's she hasn't time forthinking about the young men? Why, she's as full of business all daylong as an egg's full of meat. Well, it was my poor Richard's doing--itwas his doing, bless him! I am not going to say anything against it butit was different--once. '

'Yes, I know, ' said Mrs. Thornburgh, thoughtfully. 'One had plenty oftime, when you and I were young, to sit at home and think what one wasgoing to wear, and how one would look, and whether he had been payingattention to any one else; and if he had, why; and all that. And now theyoung women are so superior. But the marrying has got to be done somehowall the same. What is she doing to-day?'

'Oh, she'll be busy all to-day and to-morrow; I hardly expect to see hertill 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, anddrawing herself up a little, 'that to-morrow is Midsummer Day, and thatMary Backhouse is as bad as she can be?'

'Mary Backhouse! Why I had forgotten all about her!' cried the vicar'swife, with sudden remorse. And she sat pensively eyeing the carpetawhile. 

Then she got what particulars she could out of Mrs. Leyburn. Catherine, it appeared, was at this moment at High Ghyll, was not to return tilllate and would be with the dying girl through the greater part of thefollowing day, returning for an hour or two's rest in the afternoon, andstaying in the evening till the twilight, in which the ghost always madeher appearances, should have passed into night. 

Mrs. Thornburgh listened to it all, her contriving mind working thewhile at railway speed on the facts presented to her. 

'How do you get her home tomorrow night?' she asked, with suddenanimation. 

'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 all alive againwith 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 ofthe widow's capacities as an ally. 

She and her companion said a few more excited, affectionate, andapologetic things to one another, and then she departed. 

Both mother and knitting were found by Agnes half an hour later in astate of considerable confusion. But Mrs. Leyburn kept her own counsel, having resolved for once, with a timid and yet delicious excitement, toact as the head of the family. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Thornburgh was laying plans on her own account. 

'Ten o'clock-moonlight, ' said that contriving person to herself goinghome--'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 unusualpreoccupation were clear enough in Mrs. Leyburn during this Thursdayevening. Catherine noticed them at once when she got back from HighGhyll about eight o'clock, and wondered first of all what wasthe matter; and then, with more emphasis, why the trouble was notimmediately communicated to her. It had never entered into her head totake her mother into her confidence with regard to Elsmere. Since shecould remember, it had been an axiom in the family to spare the delicatenervous mother all the anxieties and perplexities of life. It was atsystem in which the subject of it had always acquiesced with perfectcontentment, and Catherine had no qualms about it. If there was goodnews, it was presented in its most sugared form to Mrs. Leyburn; but themoment any element of pain and difficulty cropped up in the common life, it was pounced upon and appropriated by Catherine, aided and abetted bythe 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 Perthdyer with regard to her mother's best gray poplin, when one of thegreatest surprises of her life burst upon her. 

She was in Mrs. Leyburn's bedroom that night, helping to put away hermother's things as her custom was. She had just taken off the widow'scap, caressing as she did so the brown hair underneath, which was stillsoft and plentiful, when Mrs. Leyburn turned upon her. 'Catherine!' shesaid in an agitated voice, laying a thin hand on her daughter's arm. 'Oh, Catherine, I want to speak to you!'

Catherine knelt lightly down by her mother's side and put her arms roundher waist. 

'Yes mother darling, ' she said, half smiling. 

'Oh, Catherine! If--if--you like Mr. Elsmere--don't mind--don'tthink--about us, dear. We can manage--we can manage, dear!'

The change that took place in Catherine Leyburn's face is indescribable. She rose instantly, her arms falling behind her, her beautiful browsdrawn together. Mrs. Leyburn, looked up at her with a pathetic mixtureof helplessness, alarm, entreaty. 

'Mother, who hag been talking to you about Mr. Elsmere and me?' demandedCatherine. 

'Oh, never mind, dear, never mind, ' said the widow hastily; 'I shouldhave 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 hermother's hands. 

'I want nothing, ' she said presently in a low voice of intenseemotion--'I want nothing but you and the girls. You are my life--I askfor nothing more. I am abundantly--content. '

Mrs. Leyburn gazed down on her with infinite perplexity. The brown hair, escaped from the cap, had fallen about her still pretty neck, a pinkspot of excitement was on each gently hollowed cheek; she looked almostyounger than her pale daughter. 

'But--he is very nice, ' she said timidly. 'And he has a good living. Catherine, you ought to be a clergyman's wife. '

'I ought to be, and I am your daughter, ' said Catherine smiling, alittle with an unsteady lip, and kissing her hand. 

Mrs. Leyburn sighed and looked straight before her. Perhaps inimagination she saw the vicar's wife. 'I think--I think, ' she said veryseriously, 'I should like it. '

Catherine straightened herself brusquely at that. It was as though shehad felt a blow. 

'Mother!' she cried, with a stifled accent of pain, and yet still tryingto smile, 'do you want to send me away?'

'No-no!' cried Mrs. Leyburn hastily. 'But if a nice man wants you tomarry him, Catherine? Your father would have liked him--oh! I know yourfather would have liked him. And his manners to me are so pretty, Ishouldn't mind being _his_ 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 imaginations--thepallor, the latent storm of Catherine's look--exciting her more andmore. 

Catherine was silent a moment, then she caught her mother's hand again. 

'Dear little mother--dear, kind little mother! You are an angel--youalways are. But I think, if you'll keep me, I'll stay. '

And she once more rested her head clingingly on Mrs. Leyburn's knee. 

But _do_ you--'_do_ you love him, Catherine?'

'I love you, mother, and the girls, and my life here. '

'Oh dear, ' sighed Mrs. Leyburn, as though addressing a third person, the tears, in her mild eyes, 'she won't; and she _would_ like it--and soshould 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 hadnever been!'

'But you would be a great deal to us if you did marry, Catherine!' criedMrs. Leyburn, almost with an accent of pettishness. 'People have to dowithout their daughters. There's Agnes--I often think, as it is, youmight let her do more. And if Rose were troublesome, why, you know itmight be a good thing--a very good thing if there were a man to take herin hand!'

'And you, mother, without me?' cried poor Catherine, choked. 

'Oh, I should come and see you, ' said Mrs. Leyburn, brightening. 'Theysay it _is_ such a nice house, Catherine, and such pretty country, andI'm sure I should like his mother, though she _is_ Irish!'

It was the bitterest moment of Catherine Leyburn's life. In it theheroic dream of years broke down. Nay, the shrivelling ironic touchof circumstance laid upon it made it look even in her own eyes almostridiculous. What had she been living for, praying for, all these years?She threw herself down by the widow's side, her face working with apassion that terrified Mrs. Leyburn. 

'Oh, mother, say you would miss me--say you would miss me if I went!'

Then Mrs. Leyburn herself broke down, and the two women clung to eachother, weeping. Catherine's sore heart was soothed a little by hermother's tears, and by the broken words of endearment that were lavishedon her. But through it all she felt that the excited imaginative desirein Mrs. Leyburn still 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 itemsof news that showed Catherine very plainly who had been at work upon hermother, and one of which startled her. 

'He comes back tonight, my dear--and he goes on Saturday. Oh, and, Catherine, Mrs. Thornburgh says he does care so much. Poor young man!'

And Mrs. Leyburn looked, up at her now standing daughter with eyes aswoe-begone for Elsmere as for herself. 

'Don't talk about it any more, mother, ' Catherine implored. 'Youwon't sleep, and I shall be more wroth with Mrs. Thornbourgh than I amalready. '

Mrs. Leyburn let herself be gradually soothed and coerced, andCatherine, with a last kiss to the delicate emaciated fingers on whichthe worn wedding ring lay slipping forward--in itself a history--lefther at last to sleep. 

'And I don't know much more than when I began!' sighed the perplexedwidow to herself, 'Oh, I wish Richard was here--I do!'

Catherine's night was a night of intense mental struggle. Her strugglewas one with which the modern world has perhaps but scant sympathy. Instinctively we feel such things out of place in our easy indifferentgeneration. We think them more than half unreal. We are so apt to takeit for granted that the world has outgrown the religious thirst forsanctification; for a perfect moral consistency, as it has outgrown somany of the older complications of the sentiment of honor. And meanwhilehalf the tragedy of our time lies in this perpetual clashing of twoestimates of life--the estimate which is the offspring of the scientificspirit, and which is forever making the visible world fairer and moredesirable in mortal eyes; and the estimate of Saint Augustine. 

As a matter of fact, owing to some travelling difficulties, the vicarand Elsmere did not get home till noon on Friday. Catherine knew nothingof either delay or arrival. Mrs. Leyburn watched her with anxioustimidity, but she never mentioned Elsmere's name to any one on theFriday morning, and no one dared speak of him to her. She came home inthe afternoon from the Backhouses' absorbed apparently in the state ofthe dying girl, took a couple of hours rest, and hurried off again. Shepassed the vicarage with bent head, and never looked up. 

'She is gone!' said Rose to Agnes as she stood at the window lookingafter her sister's retreating figure, 'It is all over! They can't meetnow. He will be off by nine to-morrow. '

The girl spoke with a lump in her throat, and flung herself down by thewindow, moodily watching the dark form against the fells. Catherine'scoldness seemed to make all life colder and more chilling--to fling ahard denial in the face of the dearest claims of earth. 

The stormy light of the afternoon was fading toward sunset. Catherinewalked on fast toward the group of houses at the head of the valley, inone of which lived the two old carriers who had worked such havoc withMrs. Thornburgh's housekeeping arrangements. She was tired physically, but she was still more tired mentally. She had the bruised feeling ofone who has been humiliated before the world and before herself. Herself-respect was for the moment crushed, and the breach made in thewholeness of personal dignity had produced a strange slackness of nerve, extending both to body and mind. She had been convicted, it seemedto her, in her own eyes, and in those of her world, of an egregiousover-estimate of her own value. She walked with hung head like oneashamed, the overstrung religious sense deepening her discomfitureat every step. How rich her life had always been in the conviction ofusefulness--nay, indispensableness! Her mother's persuasions had dashedit from her. And religious scruple, for her torment, showed her herpast, transformed, alloyed with all sorts of personal prides andcravings, which stood unmasked now in a white light. 

And he? Still near her for a few short hours! Every pulse in her hadthrilled as she had passed the house which sheltered him. But she willsee him no more. And she is glad. If he had stayed on, he too would havediscovered how cheaply they held her--those dear ones of hers for whomshe had lived till now! And she might have weakly yielded to his pitywhat she had refused to his homage. The strong nature is half tortured, half soothed by the prospect of his going. Perhaps when he is gone shewill recover something of that moral equilibrium which has been, soshaken. At present she is a riddle to herself, invaded by a force shehas no power to cope with, feeling the moral ground of years crumblingbeneath her, and struggling feverishly for self-control. 

As she neared the head of the valley the wind became less tempestuous. The great wall of High Fell, toward which she was walking, seemed toshelter her from its worst violence. But the hurrying clouds, the gleamsof lurid light which every now and then penetrated into the valley fromthe west, across the dip leading to Shanmoor, the voice of the riveranswering the voice of the wind, and the deep unbroken shadow thatcovered the group of houses and trees toward which she was walking, allserved to heighten the nervous depression which had taken hold of her. As she neared the bridge, however, leading to the little hamlet, beyondwhich northward all was stony loneliness and desolation, and saw infront of her the gray stone house, backed by the sombre red of a greatcopper beech, and overhung by crags, she had perforce to take herself byboth hands, try and realize her mission afresh, and the scene which laybefore her. 

CHAPTER X. 

Mary Backhouse, the girl whom Catherine had been visiting withregularity for many weeks, and whose frail life was this evening nearinga terrible and long-expected crisis, was the victim of a fate sordid andcommon enough, yet not without its elements of dark poetry. Some fifteenmonths before this Midsummer Day she had been the mistress of the lonelyold house in which her father and uncle had passed their whole lives, inwhich she had been born, and in which, amid snowdrifts so deep that nodoctor could reach them, her mother had passed away. She had been thenstrong and well favored, possessed of a certain masculine black-browedbeauty, and of a temper which sometimes gave to it an edge and glow suchas an artist of ambition might have been glad to catch. At the bottomof all the outward _sauvagerie_, however, there was a heart, and strongwants, which only affection and companionship could satisfy and tame. Neither were to be found in sufficient measure within her home. Herfather and she were on fairly good terms, and had for each other, up toa certain point, the natural instincts of kinship. On her uncle, whomshe regarded as half-witted, she bestowed alternate tolerance and jeers. She was, indeed, the only person whose remonstrances ever got under thewool with old Jim, and her sharp tongue had sometimes a cowing effect onhis curious nonchalance which nothing else had. For the rest, they hadno neighbors with whom the girl could fraternize, and Whinborough wastoo far off to provide any adequate food for her vague hunger afteremotion and excitement. 

In this dangerous morbid state she fell a victim to the very coarseattractions of a young farmer in the neighboring valley of Shanmoor. Hewas a brute with a handsome face, and a nature in which whatever grainsof heart and conscience might have been interfused with the originalcomposition had been long since swamped. Mary, who had recklesslyflung herself into his power on one or two occasions, from a mixture ofmotives, partly passion, partly jealousy, partly ennui, awoke one day tofind herself ruined, and a grim future hung before her. She had realizedher doom for the first time in its entirety on the Midsummer Daypreceding that we are now describing. On that day, she had walked overto Shanmoor in a fever of dumb rage and despair, to claim from herbetrayer the fulfilment of his promise of marriage. He had laughed ather, and she had fled home in the warm rainy dusk, a prey to all thosetorturing terrors which only a woman _in extremis_ can know. And on herway back she had seen the ghost or 'bogle' of Deep Crag; the ghost hadspoken to her, and she had reached home more dead than alive, havingreceived what she at once recognized as her death sentence. 

What had she seen? An effect of moonlit mist--a shepherd-boy bent on apractical joke--a gleam of white waterfall among the darkening rocks?What had she heard? The evening greeting of a passer by, wafted downto her from some higher path along the fell? distant voices in the farmenclosures beneath her feet? or simply the eerie sounds of the mountain, those weird earth-whispers which haunt the lonely places of nature? Whocan tell? Nerves and brain were strained to their uttermost. The legendof the ghost--of the girl who had thrown her baby and herself into thetarn under the frowning precipitous cliffs which marked the western endof High Fell, and who had since then walked the lonely road to Shanmoorevery Midsummer Night with her moaning child upon her arm--had flashedinto Mary's mind as she left the white-walled village of Shanmoor behindher, and climbed upward with her shame and her secret into the mists. To see the bogle was merely distressing and untoward; to be spoken to bythe phantom voice was death. No one so addressed could hope to survivethe following Midsummer Day. Revolving these things in her mind, alongwith the terrible details of her own story, the exhausted girl had seenher 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 gloomytaciturnity, during which his principal relief was got out of jeeringand girding at his elder brother; the noodle's eyes wandered andglittered more; his shrunken frame seemed more shrunken as he satdangling his spindle less from the shaft of the carrier's cart; hisabsence of mind was for a time more marked, and excused with lessbuoyancy and inventiveness than usual. But otherwise all went on asbefore. John Backhouse took no step, and for nine months nothing washeard of his daughter. 

At last one cheerless March afternoon, Jim, Coming back from theWednesday round with the cart, entered the farm kitchen, while JohnBackhouse was still wrangling at one of the other farmhouses of thehamlet about some disputed payment. The old man came in cold and weary, and the sight of the half-tended kitchen and neglected fire--they paida neighbor to do the housework, as far as the care of her own sevenchildren would let her--suddenly revived in his slippery mind thememory of his niece, who, with all her faults, had had the makings of ahousewife, and for whom, in spite of her flouts and jeers, he had alwayscherished a secret admiration. As he came in he noticed that the door tothe left hand, leading into what Westmoreland folk call the 'house' orsitting-room of the farm, was open. The room had hardly been used sinceMary's flight, and the few pieces of black oak and shining mahoganywhich adorned it had long ago fallen from their pristine polish. Thegeraniums and fuchsias with which she had filled the window all thesummer before, had died into dry blackened stalks; and the dust layheavy on the room, in spite of the well-meant but wholly ineffectiveefforts of the charwoman next door. The two old men had avoided theplace for months past by common consent, and the door into it was hardlyever opened. 

Now, however, it stood ajar, and old Jim going up to shut it, andlooking in, was struck dumb with astonishment. For there on a woodenrocking chair, which had been her mothers favorite seat, sat MaryBackhouse, her feet on the curved brass fender, her eyes staring intothe parlor grate. Her clothes, her face, her attitude of cowering chilland mortal fatigue, produced an impression which struck through the oldman's dull senses, and made him tremble so that his hand dropped fromthe handle of the door. The slight sound roused Mary, and she turnedtoward him. She said nothing for a few seconds, her hollow black eyesfixed upon him; then with a ghastly smile, and a voice so hoarse as tobe scarcely audible, 'Weel, aa've coom back. Ye'd maybe not expect me?'

There was a sound behind on the cobbles outside the kitchen door. 

'Yur feyther!' cried Jim between his teeth. 'Gang up-stairs wi' ye. '

And he pointed to a door in the wall concealing a staircase to the upperstory. 

She sprang up, looked at the door and at him irresolutely, and thenstayed where she was, gaunt, pale, fever-eyed, the wreck and ghost ofher old self. 

The steps neared. There was a rough voice in the kitchen, a surprisedexclamation, and her father had pushed past his brother into the room. 

John Backhouse no sooner saw his daughter than his dull weather-beatenface flamed into violence. With an oath he raised the heavy whip he heldin his hand and flung himself toward her. 

'Naw, ye'll not du'at!' cried Jim, throwing himself with all his feeblestrength on to his brother's arm. John swore and struggled, but the oldman stuck like a limpet. 

'You let 'un aleann' said Mary, drawing her tattered shawl over herbreast. 'If he aims to kill me, aa'll not say naa. But lie needn'tmoider hisself! There's them abuve as ha' taken care o' that!'

She sank again into her chair, as though her limbs could not supporther, and her eyes closed in utter indifference of a fatigue which hadmade even fear impossible. 

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 ofwhich she had already been drinking from the mahogany table, and held itto her lips. She drank a little, and then with a desperate effort raisedherself, and clutching the arm of the chair, faced her father. 

'Ye'll not hev to wait lang. Doan't ye fash yersel. Maybe it ull comfortye to knaw summat! Lasst Midsummer Day aa was on t' Shanmoor road, i' t'gloaming. An' aa saw theer t' bogle, --thee knaws, t' bogle o' BleacliffTarn; an' she turned hersel, an' she spoak to me!'

She uttered the last words with a grim emphasis, dwelling on each, thewhole life of the wasted face concentrated in the terrible black eyes, which gazed past the two figures within their immediate range intoa vacancy peopled with horror. Then a film came over, them, the griprelaxed, and she fell back with a lurch of the rocking-chair in a deadswoon. 

With the help of the neighbor from next door, Jim got her up-stairs intothe room that had been hers. She awoke from her swoon only to fall intothe torpid sleep of exhaustion, which lasted for twelve hours. 

'Keep her oot o' ma way, ' said the father with an oath to Jim, 'or aa'llnot answer nayther for her nor me!'

She needed no telling. She soon crept down-stairs again, and went to thetask of house-cleaning. The two men lived in the kitchen as before; whenthey were at home she ate and sat in the parlor alone. Jim watchedher as far as his dull brain was capable of watching, and he dimlyunderstood that she was dying. Both men, indeed, felt a sort ofsuperstitious awe of her, she was so changed, so unearthly. As for thestory of the ghost, the old popular superstitions are almost dead inthe Cumbrian mountains, and the shrewd north-country peasant is in manyplaces quite as scornfully ready to sacrifice his ghosts to the TimeSpirit as any 'bold bad' haunter of scientific associations could wishhim to be. But in a few of the remoter valleys they still linger, thoughbeneath the surface. Either of the Backhouses, or Mary in her days ofhealth, would have suffered many things rather than allow a strangerto suppose they placed the smallest credence in the story of BleacliffTarn. But, all the same, the story which each had beard in childhood, onstormy nights perhaps, when the mountain side was awful with the soundsof tempest, had grown up with them, had entered deep into the tissue ofconsciousness. In Mary's imagination the ideas and images connected withit had now, under the stimulus of circumstance, become instinct witha living pursuing terror. But they were present, though in a duller, blunter state, in the minds of her father and uncle; and as the weekspassed on, and the days lengthened toward midsummer, a sort of broodinghorror seemed to settle on the house. 

Mary grew weaker and weaker; her cough kept Jim awake at nights; once ortwice when he went to help her with a piece of work which not even herextraordinary will could carry her through, her hand burnt him like ahot cinder. But she kept all other women out of the house by her mad, strange ways; and if her uncle showed any consciousness of her state, she turned upon him with her old temper, which had lost all its formerstormy grace, and had become ghastly by the contrast it brought outbetween the tempestuous, vindictive soul and the shaken weakness offrame. 

A doctor would have discovered at once that what was wrong with her wasphthisis, complicated with insanity; and the insanity, instead of takingthe hopeful optimistic tinge which is characteristic of the insanity ofconsumption, had rather assumed the color of the events from which thedisease itself had started. Cold, exposure, long-continued agony of mindand body--the madness intertwined with an illness which had such rootsas these was naturally a madness of despair. One of its principal signswas the fixed idea as to Midsummer Day. It never occurred to her aspossible that her life should be prolonged beyond that limit. Everynight, as she dragged herself up the steep little staircase to her room, she checked off the day which had just passed from the days she hadstill to live. She had made all her arrangements; she had even sewedwith her own hands, and that without any sense of special horror, butrather in the provident peasant way, the dress in which she was to becarried to her grave. 

At last one day, her father, coming unexpectedly into the yard, saw hercarrying a heavy pail of water from the pump. Something stirred withinhim, and he went up to her and forcibly took it from her. Their looksmet, and her poor mad eyes gazed intensely into his. As he moved forwardtoward the house she crept after him, passing him into the parlor, whereshe sank down breathless on the settle where she had been sleeping forthe last few nights, rather than face climbing the stairs. For the firsttime he followed her, watching her gasping struggle for breath, in spiteof 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 wayback he called and requested to see Catherine Leyburn. He stammeringlyasked her to come and visit his daughter who was ill and lonesome; andwhen she consented gladly, he went on his way feeling a load off hismind. What he had just done had been due to an undefined, but stillvehement prompting of conscience. It did not make it any the lessprobable that the girl would die on or before Midsummer Day; but, supposing her story were true, it absolved him from any charge ofassistance to the designs of those grisly powers in whose clutch shewas. 

When the doctor came next morning a change for the worse had takenplace, and she was too feeble actively to resent his appearance. She laythere on the settle, every now and then making superhuman efforts to getup, which generally ended in a swoon. She refused to take any medicine, she would hardly take any food, and to the doctor's questions shereturned no answer whatever. In the same way, when Catherine came, shewould be absolutely silent, looking at her with glittering, feverisheyes, but taking no notice at all, whether she read or talked, or simplysat quietly beside her. 

After the silent period, as the days went on, and Midsummer Day drewnearer, there supervened a period of intermittent delirium. In theevenings, especially when her temperature rose, she became talkativeand incoherent and Catherine would sometimes tremble as she caught thesentences which, little by little, built up the girl's bidden tragedybefore her eyes. London streets, London lights, London darkness, theagony of an endless wandering, the little clinging puny life, whichcould never be stilled or satisfied, biting cold, intolerable pain, thecheerless workhouse order, and, finally, the arms without a burden, thebreast without a child--these were the sharp fragments of experience, so common so terrible to the end of time, which rose on the troubledsurface of Mary Backhouse's delirium, and smote the tender heart of thelistener. 

Then in the mornings she would lie suspicious and silent, watchingCatherine's face with the long gaze of exhaustion, as though trying tofind out from it whether her secret had escaped her. The doctor, who hadgathered the story of the 'bogle' from Catherine, to whom Jim had toldit, briefly and reluctantly, and with an absolute reservation of his ownviews on the matter, recommended that if possible they should try anddeceive her as to the date of the day and month. Mere nervous excitementmight, he thought, be enough to kill her when the actual day, and hourcame round. But all their attempts were useless. Nothing distracted theintense sleepless attention with which the darkened mind kept always inview that one absorbing expectation. Words fell from her at night, whichseemed to show that she expected a summons--a voice along the fell, calling her spirit into the dark. And then would come the shriek, thestruggle to get loose, the choked waking, the wandering, horror-strickeneyes, subsiding by degrees into the old silent watch. 

On the morning of the 23d, when Robert, sitting at his work, was lookingat Burwood through the window in the flattering belief that Catherinewas the captive of the weather, she had spent an hour or more with MaryBackhouse, and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had moreshare than she knew in determining her own mood that day. The worldseemed such dross, the pretences of personal happiness so hollow anddelusive, after such a sight! The girl lay dying fast, with a look ofextraordinary attentiveness in her face, hearing every noise, everyfootfall, and, as it seemed to Catherine, in a mood of inward joy. She took, moreover, some notice of her visitor. As a rough tomboy offourteen, she had shown Catherine, who had taught her in the schoolsometimes and had especially won her regard on one occasion by a presentof some article of dress, a good many uncouth signs of affection. Onthe morning in question Catherine fancied she saw something of the oldchildish expression once or twice. At any rate, there was no doubt herpresence was soothing, as she read in her low vibrating voice, or satsilently stroking the emaciated hand, raising it every now and then toher lips with a rush of that intense pitifulness which was to her themost natural of all moods. 

The doctor, whom she met there, said that this state of calm was verypossibly only transitory. The night had been passed in a succession ofparoxysms, and they were almost sure to return upon her, especiallyas he could get her to swallow none of the sedatives which might havecarried her in unconsciousness past the fatal moment. She wouldhave none of them; he thought that she was determined to allow of noencroachments on the troubled remnants of intelligence still left toher; so the only thing to be done was to wait and see the result. 'Iwill come tomorrow, ' said Catherine briefly; 'for the day certainly, longer if necessary. ' She had long ago established her claim to betreated seriously as a nurse, and Dr. Baker made no objection. '_If_ shelives so long, ' he said dubiously. 'The Backhouses and Mrs. Irwin (theneighbor) shall be close at hand. I will come in the afternoon and tryto get her to take an opiate; but I can't give it to her by force, andthere is not the smallest chance of her consenting to it. '

All through Catherine's own struggle and pain during these two daysthe image of the dying girl had lain at her heart. It served her as thecrucifix serves the Romanist; as she pressed it into her thought, itrecovered from time to time the failing forces of the will. Need life beempty because self was left unsatisfied? Now, as she neared the hamlet, the quality of her nature reasserted itself. The personal want tuggingat her senses, the personal soreness, the cry of resentful love, weresilenced. What place had they in the presence of this lonely agony ofdeath, this mystery, this opening beyond? The old heroic mood revived inher. Her step grew swifter, her carriage more erect, and as she enteredthe farm kitchen she felt herself once more ready in spirit for what laybefore her. 

From the next room there came a succession of husky sibilant sounds, asthough someone 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 attenuated andhis face more like a pink and white parchment than ever. 'She's beenknacking an' taaking a long while. She woau't know ye. Luke ye, ' hecontinued, dropping his voice as he opened the 'house' door for her; 'efyou want ayder ov oos, you just call oot--sharp! Mrs. Irwin, she'll stayin wi' ye--she's not afeeard!'

The superstitious excitement which the looks and gestures of the oldman expressed, touched Catherine's imagination, and she entered the roomwith an inward shiver. 

Mary Backhouse lay raised high on her pillows, talking to herself orto imaginary other persons, with eyes wide open but vacant, andsenses conscious of nothing but the dream-world in which the mind waswandering. Catherine sat softly down beside her, unnoticed, thankful forthe chances of disease. If this delirium lasted till the ghost-hour--thetime of twilight, that is to say, which would begin about half-pasteight, and the duration of which would depend on the cloudiness of theevening--was over; or, better still, till midnight were past; the strainon the girl's agonized senses might be relieved, and death come at lastin softer, kinder guise. 

'Has she been long like this?' she asked softly of the neighbor who satquietly knitting by the evening light. 

The woman looked up and thought. 

'Ay!' she said. 'Aa came in at tea-time, an' she's been maistly taakin'ivver sence!'

The incoherent whisperings and restless movements, which obligedCatherine constantly to replace the coverings over the poor wasted andfevered body, went on for sometime. Catherine noticed presently, with alittle thrill, that the light was beginning to change. The weather wasgrowing darker and stormier; the wind shook the house in gusts; and thefarther shoulder of High Fell, seen in distorted outline through thecasemented window, was almost hidden by the trailing rain clouds. Themournful western light coming from behind the house struck the riverhere and there; almost everything else was gray and dark. A mountainash, just outside the window, brushed the panes every now and then; andin the silence, every surrounding sound--the rare movements in the nextroom, the voices of quarrelling children round the door of a neighboringhouse, the far-off barking of dogs--made itself distinctly audible. 

Suddenly Catherine, sunk in painful reverie, noticed that the mutteringsfrom the bed had ceased for some little time. She turned her chair, andwas startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself. There was a curious, malign intensity, a curious triumph in them. 

'It must be--eight o'clock'--said the gasping voice--'_eighto'clock_;' and the tone became a whisper, as though the idea thushalf involuntarily revealed had been drawn jealously back into thestrongholds of consciousness. 

'Mary, ' said Catherine, falling on her knees beside the bed, and takingone of the restless hands forcibly into her own--'can't you put thisthought away from you? We are not the playthings of evil spirits--weare the children of God! We are in His hands. No evil thing can harm usagainst His will. '

It was the first time for many days she had spoken openly of the thoughtwhich was in the mind of all, and her whole pleading soul was inher pale, beautiful face. There was no response in the sick girl'scountenance, and again that look of triumph, of sinister exultation. They had tried to cheat her into sleeping, and living, and in spite ofthem, at the supreme moment, every sense was awake and expectant. Towhat was the materialized peasant imagination looking forward? To anactual call, an actual following, to the free mountain-side, the rushof the wind, the phantom figure floating on before her, bearing her intothe heart of the storm? Dread was gone, pain was gone; there was onlyrapt excitement and fierce anticipation. 

'Mary, ' said Catherine again, mistaking her mood for one of tensedefiance and despair, 'Mary, if I were to go out now and leave Mrs. Irwin with you, and if I were to go up all the way to the top ofShanmoss and back again, and if I could tell you there was nothingthere, nothing!--If I were to stay out till the dark has come--it willbe here in half an hour--and you could be quite sure when you saw meagain, that there was nothing near you but the dear old hills, and thepower of God, could you believe me and try and rest and sleep?'

Mary looked at her intently. If Catherine could have seen clearly inthe dim light she would have caught something of the cunning of madnessslipping into the dying woman's expression. While she waited for theanswer, there was a noise in the kitchen outside an opening of the outerdoor, and a voice. Catherine's heart stood still. She had to make asuperhuman effort to keep her attention fixed on Mary. 

'Go!' said the hoarse whisper close beside her, and the girl liftedher wasted hand, and pushed her visitor from her. 'Go!' it repeatedinsistently, with a sort of wild beseeching then, brokenly, the gaspingbreath 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 herchair back; 'God is everywhere, Mary. '

She put on her hat and cloak, said something in Mrs. Irwin's ear, andstooped to kiss the brow which to the shuddering sense under her willseemed already cold and moist with the sweats of death. Mary watched hergo; Mrs. Irwin, with the air of one bewildered, drew her chair nearer tothe settle; and the light of the fire, shooting and dancing through theJune twilight, threw such fantastic shadows over the face on the pillowthat all expression was lost. What was moving in the crazed mind?Satisfaction, perhaps, at having got rid of one witness, one gaoler, one of the various antagonistic forces surrounding her? She had a dim, frenzied notion she should have to fight for her liberty when the callcame, and she lay tense and rigid, waiting--the images of insanitywhirling through her brain, while the light slowly, slowly waned. 

Catherine opened the door to the kitchen. The two carriers were standingthere, and Robert Elsmere also stood with his back to her, talking tothem in an undertone. 

He turned at the sound behind him, and his start brought a sudden rushto Catherine's check. Her face, as the candle-light struck it amid theshadows of the doorways was like an angelic vision to him--the heavenlycalm of it just exquisitely broken by the wonder, the shock, of hispresence. 

'You here?' he cried coming up to her, and taking her hand--what secretinstinct guided him?--close in both of his. 'I never dreamt of it--solate. My cousin sent me over--she wished for news. '

She smiled involuntarily. It seemed to her she had expected this in somesort all along. But her self-possession was complete. 

'The excited state may be over in a short time now, ' she answered himin a quiet whisper; 'but at present it is at its height. It seemedto please her'--and withdrawing her hand she turned to JohnBackhouse--'when I suggested that I should walk up to Shanmoss and back. I said I would come back to her in half an hour or so, when the daylightwas 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 withthe other hand. 

'Miss Leyburn--Miss Catherine! Yur not gawin' oot--not gawin' oop _that_path?' The woman was fond of Catherine, and looked deadly frightened. 

'Yes, I am, Mrs. Irwin--but I shall be back very soon. Don't leaveher; go back. ' And Catherine motioned her back with a little peremptorygesture. 

'Doan't ye let 'ur, sir, ' said the woman excitedly to Robert. 'One'seneuf oneut aa'm thinking. ' And she pointed with a meaning gesture tothe room behind her. 

Robert looked at Catherine, who was moving toward the outer door. 

'I'll go with her, ' he said hastily, his face lighting up. 'There isnothing whatever to be afraid of, only don't leave your patient. '

Catherine trembled as she heard the words, but she made no sign, andthe two men and the women watched their departure with blank uneasywonderment. A second later they were on the fell-side climbing a roughstony path, which in places was almost a watercourse, and which wound upthe fell toward a tract of level swampy moss or heath, beyond which laythe descent to Shanmoor. Daylight was almost gone; the stormy yellowwest was being fast swallowed up in cloud; below them as they climbedlay the dark group of houses, with a light twinkling here and there. Allabout them were black mountain forms; a desolate tempestuous wind drovea gusty rain into their faces; a little beck roared beside them, andin the distance from the black gulf of the valley the swollen riverthundered. 

Elsmere looked down on his companion with an indescribable exultation, a passionate sense of possession which could hardly restrain itself. Hehad come back that morning with a mind clearly made up. Catherine hadbeen blind indeed when she supposed that any plan of his or hers wouldhave been allowed to stand in the way of that last wrestle with her, ofwhich he had planned all the methods, rehearsed all the arguments. But when he reached the Vicarage he was greeted with the news of herabsence. She was inaccessible it appeared for the day. No matter! Thevicar and he settled in the fewest possible words that he should staytill Monday, Mrs. Thornburgh meanwhile looking on, saying what civilitydemanded, and surprisingly little else. Then in the evening Mrs. Thornburgh had asked of him, with a manner of admirable indifference, whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High Ghyll to inquireafter Mary Backhouse. The request fell in excellently with a lover'srestlessness, and Robert assented at once. The vicar saw him go withpuzzled brows and a quick look at his wife, whose head was bent closeover her worsted work. 

It never occurred to Elsmere--or if it did occur, he pooh-poohed thenotion--that he should find Catherine still at her post far from home onthis dark stormy evening. But in the glow of joy which her presence hadbrought him he was still capable of all sorts of delicate perceptionsand reasonings. His quick imagination carried him through the scene fromwhich she had just momentarily escaped. He had understood theexaltation of her look and tone. If love spoke at all, ringed with suchsurroundings, it must be with its most inward and spiritual voice, asthose speak who feel 'the Eternities' about them. 

But the darkness hid her from him so well that he had to feel out thesituation 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 helda gate open for her which led them into a piece of larch plantation onthe mountain-side. 'The ghost is supposed to walk along this bit ofroad above the houses, till it reaches the heath on the top, and thenit turns toward Bleacliff Tarn, which lies higher up to the right, underHigh Fell. '

'Do you imagine your report will have any effect?'

'At any rate, ' she said, sighing, 'it seemed to me that it mightdivert her thoughts a little from the actual horror of her own summons. Anything is better than the torture of that one fixed idea as she liesthere. '

'What is that?' said Robert, startled a little by some ghostly soundsin front of them. The little wood was almost dark, and he could seenothing. 

'Only a horse trotting on in front of us, ' said Catherine; 'our voicesfrightened 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 suddenlylifted a shadowy head from the grass, and clattered down the slope. 

A cluster of white-stemmed birches just ahead of them, caught whateverlight was still left in the atmosphere, their feathery tops bending andswaying against the sky. 

'How easily, with a mind attuned, one could people this whole path withghosts!' said Robert. 'Look at those stems, and that line of streamcoming 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 blastwas tearing its tempestuous way. 

Catherine shivered a little, and the sense of physical exhaustion, which had been banished like everything else--doubt, humiliation, bitterness--by the one fact of his presence, came back on her. 

'There is something, rather awful in this dark and storm, ' she said, andpaused. 

'Would you have faced it alone?' he asked, his voice thrilling her witha hundred different meanings. 'I am glad I prevented it. '

'I have no fear of the mountains, ' she said, trembling 'I know them, andthey me. '

'But you are tired--your voice is tired--and the walk might have beenmore of an effort than you thought it. Do you never think of yourself?'

'Oh dear, yes, ' said Catherine, trying to smile, and could find nothingelse to say. They walked on a few moments in silence, splashes of rainbreaking in their faces. Robert's inward excitement was growing fast. Suddenly Catherine's pulse stood still. She felt her hand lifted, drawnwithin his arm, covered close with his warm, trembling clasp. 

'Catherine, let it stay there. Listen one moment. You gave me a hardlesson yesterday, too hard--I cannot learn it--I am bold--I claim you. Be my wife. Help me through this difficult world. I have loved you fromthe first moment. Come to me. Be kind to me. '

She could hardly see his face, but she could feel the passion in hisvoice and touch. Her Cheek seemed to droop against his arm. He felt hertottering. 

'Let me sit down, ' she said; and after one moment of dizzy silence heguided her to a rock, sinking down himself beside her, longing, butnot daring, to shelter her under his broad Inverness cloak against thestorm. 

'I told you, ' she said, almost whispering, 'that I was bound, tied toothers. '

'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 foryourself and me. Catherine, your mother has no son, she would find onein me. I have no sisters--give me yours. I will cherish them as anybrother could. Come and enrich my life; you shall still fill and sheltertheirs. I dare not think what my future might be without you to guide, to inspire, to bless--dare not--lest with a word you should plunge meinto an outer darkness I cannot face. '

He caught her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips. 

'Is there no sacredness, ' he said, brokenly, 'in the fate that hasbrought 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 awound--like a ray of intense light in the gloom about them. Oh, wherewas this softness bearing her--this emptiness of all will, of allindividual power? She hid her eyes with her other hand, struggling torecall that far away moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused towork. Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of hishand--the tones of his voice. 

He saw her struggle, and pressed on remorselessly. 

'Speak to me--say one little kind word. Oh, you cannot send me awaymiserable and empty!'

She turned to him, and laid her trembling free hand on his arm. Heclasped them both with rapture. 

'Give me a little time. '

'No, no, ' he said, and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling:'time for you to escape me again my wild mountain bird; time for you tothink yourself and me into all sorts of moral mists! No, you shall nothave it. Here--alone with God and the dark--bless me or undo me. Sendme out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful, or send me out yourknight, your possession, pledged--'

But his voice failed him. What a note of youth, of imagination, ofimpulsive eagerness there was through it all! The more slowly moving, inarticulate nature was swept away by it. There was but one object clearto her in the whole world of thought or sense, everything else had sunkout of sight--drowned in a luminous mist. 

He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum, his tallform drawn up to its full height. In the east, across the valley, abovethe farther buttress of High Fell, there was a clearer strip of sky, visible for a moment among the moving storm-clouds, and a dim haloedmoon shone out in it. Far away a white-walled cottage glimmered againstthe fell: the pools at their feet shone in the weird, passing light. 

She lifted her head, and looked at him, still irresolute. Then she toorose, and helplessly, like someone impelled by a will not her own, shesilently 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 whichkept his young passion in awe. But he bent his head again over thoseyielded hands, kissing them with dizzy, unspeakable joy. 

* * * * * * * * * * *

About twenty minutes later Catherine and Robert, having hurried backwith all speed from the top of Shanmoss, reached the farmhouse door. She knocked. No one answered. She tried the lock; it yielded, andthey entered. No one in the kitchen. She looked disturbed andconscience-sticken. 

'Oh!' she cried to him, under her breath; 'have we been too long?' Andhurrying into the inner room she left him waiting. 

Inside was a mournful sight. The two men and Mrs. Irwin stood closeround the settle, but as she came nearer, Catherine saw Mary Backhouselying panting on her pillows, her breath coming in loud gasps, herdress and all the coverings of the bed showing signs of disorder andconfusion, her black hair tossed about her. 

'It's bin awfa' work sence you left, miss, ' whispered Mrs. Irwin toCatherine excitedly, as she joined them. 'She thowt she heerd soombodyfleytin' and callin'--it was t' wind came skirlin' round t' place, an'she aw' but thrown hirsel' oot 'o' t' bed, an' aa shooted for Tim, andthey came, and they and I--it's bin as much as we could a' du to hod'er. '

'Luke! Steady!' exclaimed Jim. 'She'll try it again. '

For the hands were moving restlessly from side to side, and the face wasworking again. There was one more desperate effort to rise, which thetwo men checked--gently enough, but effectually--and then the exhaustionseemed complete. The lids fell, and the struggle for breath was pitiful. 

Catherine flew for some drugs which the doctor had left, and shown herhow to use. After some twenty minutes they seemed to give relief, andthe great haunted eyes opened once more. 

Catherine held barley-water to the parched lips, and Mary drankmechanically, her gaze still intently fixed on her nurse. When Catherineput down the glass the eyes followed her with a question which the lipshad no power to frame. 

'Leave her now a little, ' said Catherine to the others. 'The fewerpeople and the more air the better. And please let the door be open: theroom is too hot. '

They went out silently, and Catherine sank down beside the bed. Herheart went out in unspeakable longing toward the poor human wreck beforeher. For her there was no morrow possible, no dawn of other and softerskies. All was over: life was lived, and all its heavenly capabilitiesmissed forever. Catherine felt her own joy hurt her, and her tears fellfast. 

'Mary, ' she said, laying her face close beside the chill face on thepillow, 'Mary, I went out: I climbed all the path as far as Shanmoss. There was nothing evil there. Oh, I must tell you! Can I make youunderstand? I want you to feel that it is only God and love that arereal. Oh, think of them! He would not let you be hurt and terrified inyour pain, poor Mary. He loves you. He is waiting to comfort you--to setyou free from pain forever: and He has sent you a sign by me. '... Shelifted her head from the pillow, trembling and hesitating. Still thatfeverish, questioning gaze on the face beneath her, as it lay in deepshadow cast by a light on the windowsill some paces away. 

'You sent me out, Mary, to search for something, the thought of whichhas been tormenting and torturing you. You thought God would let a darklost spirit trouble you and take you away from Him--you, His child, whom He made and whom He loves! And listen! While you thought youwere sending me out to face the evil thing, you were really my kindangel--God's messenger--sending me to meet the joy of my whole life!

'There was some one waiting here just now, ' she went on hurriedly, breathing her sobbing words into Mary's ear. 'Some one who has loved me, and whom I love. But I had made him sad, and myself; then when you sentme out he came too, we walked up that path, you remember beyond thelarchwood, up to the top, where the stream goes under the road. Andthere he spoke to me, and I couldn't help it any more. And I promised tolove him and be his wife. And if it hadn't been for you, Mary, it wouldnever have happened. God had put it into your hand, this joy, and Ibless you for it! Oh, and Mary--Mary--it is only for a little littlewhile this life of ours! Nothing matters--not our worst sin andsorrow--but God, and our love to Him. I shall meet you some day--I prayI may--in His sight and all will be well, the pain all forgotten--all!'

She raised herself again and looked down with yearning passionate pityon the shadowed form. Oh, blessed answer of heart to heart! There weretears forming under the heavy lids, the corners of the lips were relaxedand soft. Slowly the feeble hand sought her own. She waited in anintense, expectant silence. 

There was a faint breathing from the lips, she stooped, and caught it. 

'Kiss me!' said the whisper, and she laid her soft fresh lips to theparched mouth of the dying. When she lifted her head again Mary stillheld her hand; Catherine softly stretched out hers for the opiate Dr. Baker had left; it was swallowed without resistance, and a quiet towhich the invalid had been a stranger for days stole little by littleover the wasted frame. The grasp of the fingers relaxed, the laboredbreath came more gently, and in a few more minutes she slept. Twilightwas long over. The ghost-hour was passed, and the moon outside wasslowly gaining a wider empire in the clearing heavens. 

It was a little after ten o'clock that Rose drew aside the curtain atBurwood and looked out. 

'There is the lantern, ' she said to Agnes, 'just by the vicarage. Howthe night has cleared!'

She turned back to her book. Agnes was writing letters. Mrs. Leyburn wassitting by the bit of fire that was generally lit for her benefit in theevenings, her white shawl dropping gracefully about her, a copy of the_Cornhill_ on her lap. But she was not reading, she was meditating, andthe girls thought her out of spirits. The hall door opened. 

'There is some one with Catherine!' cried Rose starting up. Agnessuspended 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. Rose caught a gray dress disappearing up the little stairs behind him. 

Elsmere's look was enough for the two girls. They understood inan instant. Rose flushed all over. The first contact with love isintoxicating to any girl of eighteen, even though the romance be nothers. But Mrs. Leyburn sat bewildered. 

Elsmere went up to her, stooped and took her hand. 

'Will you give her to me, Mrs. Leyburn?' he said, his boyish looksaglow, his voice unsteady. 'Will you let me be a son to you?'

Mrs. Leyburn rose. He still held her hand. She looked up at himhelplessly. 

'Oh, Mr. Elsmere, where is Catherine?'

'I brought her home, ' he said gently, 'She is mine, if you will it. Giveher to me again!'

Mrs. Leyburn's face worked pitifully. The rectory and the wedding dress, which had lingered so regretfully in her thoughts since her last sightof Catherine, sank out of them altogether. 

'She has been everything in the world to us, Mr. Elsmere. '

'I know she has, ' he said simply. 'She shall be everything in the worldto you still. I have had hard work to persuade her. There will be nochance for me if you don't help me. '

Another breathless pause, Then Mrs. Leyburn timidly drew him to her, andhe stooped his tall head and kissed her like a son. 

'Oh, I must go to Catherine!' she said hurrying away, her prettywithered cheeks wet with tears. 

Then the girls threw themselves on Elsmere. The talk was all animationand excitement for the moment, not a tragic touch in it. It was as wellperhaps that Catherine was not there to hear!

'I give you fair warning, ' said Rose, as she bade him good-night, 'thatI don't know how to behave to a brother. And I am equally sure that Mrs. Thornburgh doesn't know how to behave to _fiancé_. '

Robert threw up his hands in mock terror at the name and departed. 

'We are abandoned, ' cried Rose, flitting herself into the chairagain--then with a little flash of half irresolute wickedness--'and weare free! Oh, I hope she will be happy!'

And she caught Agnes wildly round the neck as though she would drown herfirst words in her last. 

'Madcap!' cried Agnes struggling. 'Leave me at least a little breath towish Catherine joy!'

And they both fled up-stairs. 

There was indeed no prouder woman in the three kingdoms than Mrs. Thornburgh that night. After all the agitation down-stairs she couldnot persuade herself to go to bed. She first knocked up Sarah andcommunicated the news; then she sat down before a pier-glass in her ownroom studying the person who had found Catherine Leyburn a husband. 

'My doing from beginning to end, ' she cried with a triumph beyond words. 'William has had _nothing_ to do with it. Robert has had scarcely asmuch. And to think how little I dreamt of it when I began! Well, to besure, no one could have _planned_ marrying those two. There's no one butProvidence could have foreseen it-they're so different. And after allit's _done_. Now then, whom shall I have next year?'

BOOK II. SURREY. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Farewell to the mountains!

The scene in which the next act of this unpretending history is to runits course is of a very different kind. In place of the rugged northernnature--a nature wild and solitary indeed, but still rich, luxuriant, and friendly to the senses of the traveller, even in its loneliestplaces. The heaths and woods of some districts of Surrey are scarcelymore thickly peopled than the fells of Westmoreland; the walker maywander for miles, and still enjoy an untamed primitive earth, guiltlessof boundary or furrow, the undisturbed home of all that grows and flies, where the rabbits, the lizards, and the birds live their life as theyplease, either ignorant of intruding man or strangely little incommodedby his neighborhood. And yet there is nothing forbidding or austere inthese wide solitudes. The patches of graceful birch-wood; the miniaturelakes nestling among them; the brakes of ling--pink, faintly scented, a feast for every sense; the stretches of purple heather, glowing intoscarlet under the touch of the sun; the scattered farmhouses, so mellowin color, so pleasant in outline; the general softness and lavishness ofthe earth and all it bears, make these Surrey commons not a wildernessbut a paradise. Nature, indeed, here is like some spoilt, petulantchild. She will bring forth nothing, or almost nothing, for man'sgrosser needs. Ask her to bear corn or pasture flocks and she willbe miserly and grudging. But ask her only to be beautiful, enticing, capriciously lovely, and she will throw herself into the task with allthe abandonment, all the energy, that heart could wish. 

It is on the borders of one of the wilder districts of a county, whichis throughout a strange mixture of suburbanism and the desert, that wenext meet with Robert and Catherine ELsmere. The rectory of Murewelloccupied the highest point of a gentle swell of ground which slopedthrough cornfields and woods to a plain of boundless heather on thesouth, and climbed away on the north toward the long chalk ridge of theHog's Back. It was a square white house pretending neither to beauty norstate, a little awkwardly and barely placed, with only a small stretchof grass and a low hedge between it and the road. A few tall firsclimbing above the roof gave a little grace and clothing to its southernside, and behind it there was a garden sloping softly down toward thevillage at its foot--a garden chiefly noticeable for its grass walks, the luxuriance of the fruit trees clinging to its old red wars, andthe masses of pink and white phloxes which now in August gave it thefloweriness and the gayety of an Elizabethan song. Below in the hollowand to the right lay the picturesque medley of the village-roofs andgables and chimneys, yellow-gray thatch, shining whitewash, and mellowedbrick, making a bright patchwork among the softening trees, thin wreathsof blue smoke, like airy ribbons, tangled through it all. Rising overthe 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 thesquire of the clay had dismantled it, jealous that so big a house shouldexist in the same parish as the Hall, and the spoils of it had furnishedthe rectory: so that the homely house was fitted inside with mahoganydoors and carved cupboard fronts, in which Robert delighted, and inwhich even Catherine felt a proprietary pleasure. 

Altogether a quiet, English spot. If the house had no beauty, itcommanded a world of loveliness. All around it--north, south, andwest--there spread, as it were, a vast playground of heather and woodand grassy common, in which the few work-a-day patches of hedge andploughed land seemed engulphed and lost. Close under the rectorywindows, however, was a vast sloping cornfield, belonging to the glebe, the largest and fruitfulest of the neighborhood. At the present momentit was just ready for the reaper--the golden ears had clearly but afew more days or hours to ripple in the sun. It was bounded by a darksummer-scorched belt of wood, and beyond, over the distance, rose a bluepointed bill, which seemed to be there only to attract and make a centrefor the sunsets. 

As compared with her Westmoreland life, the first twelve months ofwifehood had been to Catherine Elsmere a time of rapid and changingexperience. A few days out of their honeymoon had been spent at Oxford. It was a week before the opening of the October term, but many of thesenior members of the University were already in residence, and thestagnation of the Long Vacation was over. Langham was up; so was Mr. Grey, and many another old friend of Robert's. The bride and bridegroomwere much fêted in a quiet way. They dined in many common roomsand bursaries; they were invited to many luncheons, where at thesuperabundance of food and the length of time spent upon it made thePuritan Catherine uncomfortable; and Langham, devoted himself to takingthe wife through colleges and gardens, schools and Bodleian, in mostorthodox fashion, indemnifying himself afterward for the sense ofconstraint her presence imposed upon him by a talk and a smoke withRobert. 

He could not understand the Elsmere marriage. That a creature so mobile, so sensitive, so susceptible as Elsmere should have fallen in love withthis stately, silent woman, with her very evident rigidities ofthought and training, was only another illustration of the mysteries ofmatrimony. He could not get on with her, and after a while did not tryto do so. 

There could be no doubt as to Elsmere's devotion. He was absorbed, wrapped up in her. 

'She has affected him, ' thought the tutor, 'at a period of life whenhe is more struck by the difficulty of being morally strong than by thedifficulty of being intellectually clear. The touch of religious geniusin her braces him like the breath of an Alpine wind. One can seehim expanding, growing under it. _Bien!_ sooner he than! To be fair, however, let me remember that she decidedly does not like me--whichmay cut me off from Elsmere. However'--and Langham sighed over hisfire--'what have he and I to do with one another in the future? Byall the laws of character something untoward might come out of thismarriage. But she will mould him, rather than he her. Besides, she willhave children--and that solves most things. '

Meanwhile, if Langham dissected the bride as he dissected most people, Robert, with that keen observation which lay hidden somewhere underhis careless boyish ways, noticed many points of change about his oldfriend. Langham seemed to him less human, more strange than ever; thepoints of contact between him and active life were lessening in numberterm by term. He lectured only so far as was absolutely necessary forthe retention of his post, and he spoke with whole-sale distaste of hispupils. He had set up a book on 'The Schools of Athens, ' but when Robertsaw the piles of disconnected notes already accumulated, he perfectlyunderstood that the book was a mere blind, a screen, behind which adifficult, fastidious nature trifled and procrastinated as it pleased. 

Again, when Elsmere was an undergraduate Langham and Grey had beenintimate. Now, Laugham's tone _à propos_ of Grey's politics and Grey'sdreams of Church Reform was as languidly sarcastic as it was with regardto most of the strenuous things of life. 'Nothing particular is true, 'his manner said, 'and all action is a degrading _pis-aller_. Get throughthe day somehow, with as little harm to yourself and other people asmay be; do your duty if you like it, but, for heaven's sake, don't cantabout it to other people!'

If the affinities of character count for much, Catherine and Henry Greyshould certainly have understood each other. The tutor liked the lookof Elsmere's wife. His kindly brown eyes rested on her with pleasure; hetried in his shy but friendly way to get at her, and there was in bothof them a touch of homeliness, a sheer power of unworldiness that shouldhave drawn them together. And indeed Catherine felt the charm, the spellof this born leader of men. But she watched him with a sort of troubledadmiration, puzzled, evidently, by the halo of moral dignity surroundinghim, which contended with something else in her mind respecting him. Some words of Robert's, uttered very early in their acquaintance, hadset her on her guard. Speaking of religion, Robert said, 'Grey is notone of us;' and Catherine, restrained by a hundred ties of training andtemperament, would not surrender herself, and could not if she would. 

Then had followed their home-coming to the rectory, and the firstinstitution of their common life, never to be forgotten for thetenderness 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 ofcourse already made the acquaintance of her daughter-in-law, for shehad been the Thornburghs' guest for ten days before the marriage inSeptember, and Catherine, moreover, had paid her a short visit in thesummer. But it was now that for the first she realized to the full thecharacter of the woman Robert had married. Catherine's manner to herwas sweetness itself. Parted from her own mother as she was, the youngerwowan's strong filial instincts spent themselves in tending the motherwho had been the guardian and life of Robert's youth. And, Mrs. Elsmerein return was awed by Catherine's moral force and purity of nature, and proud of her personal beauty, which was so real, in spite of theseverity of the type, and to which marriage had given, at any rate forthe moment, a certain added softness and brilliancy. 

But there were difficulties in the way. Catherine was a little too aptto treat Mrs. Elsmere as she would have treated her own mother. But tobe nursed and protected, to be, screened from draughts, and run afterwith shawls and stools was something wholly new and intolerable to Mrs. Elsmere. She could not away with it, and as soon as she had sufficientlylost her first awe of her daughter-in-law she would revenge herself inall sorts of droll ways, and with occasional flashes of petulant Irishwit which would make Catherine color and drawback. Then Mrs. Elsmere, touched with remorse, would catch her by the neck and give her aresounding kiss, which perhaps puzzled Catherine no less than hersarcasm of a minute before. 

Moreover Mrs. Elsmere felt ruefully from the first that her new daughterwas decidedly deficient in the sense of humor. 

'I believe it's that father of hers, ' she would say to herself crossly. 'By what Robert tells me of him he must have been one of the people whoget ill in their minds for want of a good mouth-filling laugh now andthen. The man who can't amuse himself a bit out of the world is sure toget his head addled somehow, poor creature. '

Certainly it needed a faculty of laughter to be always able to takeMrs. Elsmere on the right side. For instance, Catherine was moreoften scandalized than impressed by her mother-in-law's charitableperformances. 

Mrs. Elsmere's little cottage was filled with workhouse orphans sent toher from different London districts. The training of these girls was thechief business of her life, and a very odd training it was, conducted inthe noisiest way and on the most familiar terms. It was undeniable thatthe girls generally did well and they invariably adored Mrs. Elsmere, but Catherine did not much like to think about them. Their householdteaching under Mrs. Elsmere and her old servant Martha--as great anoriginal as herself, was so irregular, their religious training soextraordinary, the clothes in which they were allowed to disportthemselves so scandalous to the sober taste of the rector's wife, thatCatherine involuntarily regarded the little cottage on the hill as aspot 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 handmaidens about her, giving her orders, reading her letters and the newspaper, cutting out her girls' frocks, instructing them in the fashions, or delivering little homilies onquestions suggested by the news of the day to the more intelligent ofthem. The room, the whole house, would seem to Catherine in a detestablelitter. If so, Mrs. Elsmere never apologized for it. On the contrary, asshe saw Catherine sweep a mass of miscellaneous _débris_ off a chairin search of a seat, the small bright eyes would twinkle with somethingthat was certainly nearer amusement than shame. 

And in a hundred other ways Mrs. Elsmere's relations with the poor ofthe parish often made Catherine miserable. She herself had the mostangelic pity and tenderness for sorrows and sinners; but sin was sinto her, and when she saw Mrs. Elsmere more than half attracted by thestronger vices, and in many cases more inclined to laugh with what washuman in them, than to weep over what was vile, Robert's wife would goaway and wrestle with herself, that she might be betrayed into nothingharsh toward Robert's mother. 

But fate allowed their differences, whether they were deep or shallow, no time to develop. A week of bitter cold at the beginning of Januarystruck down Mrs. Elsmere, whose strange ways of living were more theresult of certain longstanding delicacies of health than she had everallowed anyone to imagine. A few days of acute inflammation of thelungs, borne with a patience and heroism which showed the Irishcharacter at its finest a moment of agonized wrestling with that terrorof death which had haunted the keen vivacious soul from its earliestconsciousness, ending in a glow of spiritual victory--Robert foundhimself motherless. He and Catherine had never left her since thebeginning of the illness. In one of the intervals toward the end, whenthere was a faint power of speech, she drew Catherine's cheek down toher and kissed her. 

'God bless you!' the old woman's voice said, with a solemnity in itwhich Robert knew well, but which Catherine had never heard before. 'Begood to him, Catherine--be always good to him!'

And she lay looking from the husband to the wife with a certainwistfulness which pained Catherine, she knew not why. But she answeredwith tears and tender words, and at last the mother's face settled intoa peace which death did but confirm. 

This great and unexpected loss, which had shaken to their depths all thefeelings and affections of his youth, had thrown Elsmere more than everon his wife. To him, made as it seemed for love and for enjoyment, griefwas a novel and difficult burden. He felt with passionate gratitude thathis wife helped him to bear it so that he came out from it not lessenedbut ennobled, that she preserved him from many a lapse of nervousweariness and irritation into which his temperament might easily havebeen betrayed. 

And how his very dependence had endeared him to Catherine! Thatvibrating responsive quality in him, so easily mistaken for mereweakness, which made her so necessary to him--there is nothing perhapswhich wins more deeply upon a woman. For all the while it was balancedin a hundred ways by the illimitable respect which his character and hisdoings compelled from those about him. To be the strength, the inmostjoy, of a man who within the conditions of his life seems to you a heroat every turn--there is no happiness more penetrating for a wife thanthis. 

On this August afternoon the Elsmeres were expecting visitors. Catherinehad sent the pony-carriage to the station to meet Rose and Langham, who was to escort her from Waterloo. For various reasons, allcharacteristic, it was Rose's first visit to Catherine's new home. 

Now she had been for six weeks in London, and had been persuaded to comeon to her sister, at the end of her stay. Catherine was looking forwardto her coming with many tremors. The wild ambitious creature had beennot one atom appeased by Manchester and its opportunities. She had goneback to Whindale in April only to fall into more hopeless discontentthan ever. 'She can hardly be civil to anybody, ' Agnes wrote toCatherine. 'The cry now is all "London" or at least "Berlin, " and shecannot imagine why papa should ever have wished to condemn us to such aprison. '

Catherine grew pale with indignation as she read the words, and thoughtof her father's short-lived joy in the old house and its few greenfields, or of the confidence which had soothed his last moments, that itwould be well there with his wife and children, far from the hubbub ofthe world. 

But Rose and her whims were not facts which could be put aside. Theywould have to be grappled with, probably humored. As Catherine strolledout into the garden, listening alternately for Robert and for thecarriage, she told herself that it would be a difficult visit. And thepresence of Mr. Langham would certainly not diminish its difficulty. Themere thought of him set the wife's young form stiffening. A cold breathseemed to blow from Edward Langham, which chilled Catherine's wholebeing. Why was Robert so fond of him?

But the more Langham cut himself off from the world, the more Robertclung to him in his wistful affectionate way. The more difficult theirintercourse became, the more determined the younger man seemed to be tomaintain it. Catherine imagined that he often scourged himself in secretfor the fact that the gratitude which had once flowed so readily had nowbecome a matter of reflection and resolution. 

'Why should we always expect to get pleasure from our friends?' he hadsaid to her once with vehemence. 'It should be pleasure enough to lovethem. ' And she knew very well of whom he was thinking. 

How late he was this afternoon. He must have been a long round. She hadnews for him of great interest. The lodge-keeper from the Hall had justlooked in to tell the rector that the Squire and his widowed sister wereexpected home in four days. 

But, interesting as the news was, Catherine's looks as she ponderedit were certainly not looks of pleased expectation. Neither of them, indeed, had much cause to rejoice in the Squire's advent. Since theirarrival in the parish the splendid Jacobean Hall had been untenanted. The Squire, who was abroad to With his sister at the time of theircoming, had sent a civil note to the new rector on his settlement inthe parish, naming some common Oxford acquaintances, and desiring him tomake what use of the famous Murewell Library he pleased. 'I hear ofyou as a friend to letters, ' he wrote; 'do my books a service by usingthem. ' The words were graceful enough. Robert had answered them warmly. He had also availed himself largely of the permission they had conveyed. We shall see presently that the Squire, though absent, had already madea deep impression on the young man's imagination. 

But unfortunately he came across the Squire in two capacities. Mr. Wendover was not only the owner of Murewell, he was also the owner ofthe whole land of the parish, where, however, by a curious accident ofinheritance, dating some generations back, and implying some very remoteconnection between the Wendover and Elsmere families, he was not thepatron of the living. Now the more Elsmere studied him under thisaspect, the deeper became his dismay. The estate was entirely in thehands of an agent who had managed it for some fifteen years, and ofwhose character the Rector, before he had been two months in the parish, had formed the very poorest opinion. Robert, entering upon his dutieswith the Order of the modern reformer, armed not only with charity butwith science, found himself confronted by the opposition of a manwho combined the shrewdness of an attorney with the callousness of adrunkard. It seemed incredible that a great landowner should commit hisinterests and the interests of hundreds of human beings to the hands ofsuch a person. 

By-and-by, however, as the Rector penetrated more deeply into thesituation, he found his indignation transferring itself more and morefrom the man to the master. It became clear to him that in some respectsHenslowe suited the Squire admirably. It became also clear to him thatthe Squire had taken pains for years to let it be known that he carednot one rap for any human being on his estate in any other capacity thanas a rent-payer or wage-receiver. What! Live for thirty years in thatgreat house, and never care whether your tenants and laborers lived likepigs or like men, whether the old people died of damp, or the childrenof diphtheria, which you might have prevented! Robert's brow grew darkover it. 

The click of an opening gate. Catherine shook off her dreaminess atonce, and hurried along the path to meet her husband. In another momentElsmere came in sight, swinging along, a holly stick in his hand, hisface aglow with health and exercise and kindling at the sight of hiswife. She hung on his arm, and, with his hand laid tenderly on hers, heasked her how she fared. She answered briefly, but with a little flush, her eyes raised to his. She was within a few weeks of motherhood. 

Then they strolled along talking. He, gave her an account of hisafternoon which, to judge from the worried expression which presentlyeffaced the joy of their meeting, had been spent in some unsuccessfuleffort or other. They paused after awhile and stood looking over theplain before them to a spot beyond the nearer belt of woodland, wherefrom a little hollow about three miles off there rose a cloud of bluishsmoke. 

'He will do nothing!' cried Catherine, incredulous. 

'Nothing! It is the policy of the estate, apparently, to let the oldand bad cottages fall to pieces. He sneers at one for supposing anylandowner has money for "philanthropy" just now. If the people don'tlike the houses they can go. I told him I should appeal to the Squire assoon as he came home. '

'What did he say?'

He smiled, as much as to say, "Do as you like and be a fool for yourpains. " How the Squire can let that man tyrannize over the estate as hedoes, I cannot conceive. Oh, Catherine, I am full of qualms about theSquire!'

'So am I, ' she said, with a little darkening of her clear look. 'OldBenham has just been in to say they are expected on Thursday. '

Robert started. 'Are these our last days of peace?' he saidwistfully--'the last days of our honeymoon, Catherine?'

She smiled at him with a little quiver of passionate feeling under thesmile. 

'Can anything touch that?' she said under her breath. 

'Do you know, ' he said, presently, his voice dropping, 'that it is onlya month to our wedding day? Oh, my wife, have I kept my promise--is thenew life as rich as the old?'

She made no answer, except the dumb sweet answer that love writes oneyes and lips. Then a tremor passed over her. 

'Are we too happy? Can it be well--be right?'

Oh, let us take it like children!' he cried, with a shiver, almostpetulantly. 'There will be dark hours enough. It is so good to behappy. '

She leant her cheek fondly against his shoulder. To her, life alwaysmeant self-restraint, self-repression, self-deadening, if need be. ThePuritan distrust of personal joy as something dangerous and ensnaringwas deep ingrained in her. It had no natural hold on him. 

They stood a moment hand in hand fronting the corn-field and thesun-filled West, while the afternoon breeze blew back the man's curlyreddish hair, long since restored to all its natural abundance. 

Presently Robert broke into a broad smile. 

'What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Rose with on theway, Catherine? I wouldn't miss her remarks to-night on the escort weprovided her for a good deal. '

Catherine said nothing, but her delicate eyebrows went up a little. Robert stooped and lightly kissed her. 

'You never performed a greater art of virtue even in _your_ life Mrs. Elsmere, than when you wrote Langham that nice letter of invitation. '

And then the young Rector sighed, as many a boyish memory came crowdingupon him. 

A sound of wheels! Robert's long legs took him to the gate in atwinkling, and he flung it open just as Rose drove up in fine style, athin dark man beside her. 

Rose lent her bright cheek to Catherine's kiss, and the two sisterswalked up to the door together, while Robert and Langham loitered afterthem talking. 

'Oh, Catherine!' said Rose under her breath, as they got into thedrawing-room, with a little theatrical gesture, 'why on earth did youinflict that man and me on each other for two mortal hours?'

'Sh-sh!' said Catherine's lips, while her face gleamed with laughter. 

Rose sank flushed upon a chair, her eyes glancing up with a littlefurtive anger in them as the two gentlemen entered the room. 

'You found each other easily at Waterloo?' asked Robert. 

'Mr. Langham would never have found me, ' said Rose, dryly, 'but Ipounced on him at last, just, I believe, as he was beginning tocherish 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, ' hesaid, holding up his eye-glass apologetically; 'it was my eyes, not mywill, that were fault. '

Rose's lip curled a little. 'And Robert, ' she cried, bending forward asthough something had just occurred to her, 'do tell, me--I vowed I wouldask--_is_ 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 allone says. '

He turned his handsome olive face toward her, an unwonted spark ofanimation lighting up his black eyes. It was evident that he felthimself persecuted, but it was not so evident whether he enjoyed theprocess or disliked it. 

'Oh dear, no!' said Rose nonchalantly. 'Only I have just come from ahouse where everybody either loathes Mr. Gladstone or would die for himto-morrow. There was a girl of seven and a boy of nine who were alwaysdiscussing "Coercion" in the corners of the schoolroom. So, of course, I have grown political too, and began to catechize Mr. Langham at once, and when he said "he didn't know, " I felt I should like to set thosechildren at him! They would soon put some principles into him!'

'It is not generally lack of principle, Miss Rose, ' said herbrother-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 ashe recalled all those instances in their Oxford past, when he had takena humble share in one of the Herculean efforts on the part of Langham'sfriends, which were always necessary whenever it was a question ofscrewing a vote out of him on any debated University question. 

'How dull it must be to have too much principle!' cried Rose. 'Like amill choked with corn. No bread because the machine can't work!'

'Defend me from my friends!' cried Langham, roused. 'Elsmere, when did Igive you a right to caricature me in this way? If I were interested, ' headded, subsiding into his usual hesitating ineffectiveness, 'I suppose Ishould know my own mind. '

And then seizing the muffins, he stood presenting them to Rose as thoughin deprecation of any further personalities. Inside him there was ahot protest against an unreasonable young beauty whom he had done hismiserable best to entertain for two long hours, and who in return hadmade feel himself more of a fool than he had done for years. Since whenhad young women put on all these airs? In his young days they knew theirplace. 

Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister. The child was morebeautiful than ever, but in other outer respects the Rose of LongWhindale had undergone much transformation. The puffed sleeves, the_æsthetic_ skirts, the naïve adornments of bead and shell, the formlesshat, which it pleased her to imagine 'after Gainsborough, ' had alldisappeared. She was clad in some soft fawn-colored garment, cut verymuch in the fashion; her hair was closely rolled and twisted about herlightly balanced head; everything about her was treat and fresh andtight-fitting. A year ago she had been a damsel from the 'EarthlyParadise;' now, so far as an English girl can achieve it she might havebeen a model for Tissot. In this phase, as in the other, there was atouch of extravagance. The girl was developing fast, but had clearly notyet developed. The restlessness, the self-consciousness of Long Whindalewere still there; but they spoke to the spectator in different ways. 

But in her anxious study of her sister Catherine did not forget herplace of hostess. 'Did our man bring you through the park, Mr. Langham?'she asked him timidly. 

'Yes. What an exquisite old house!' he said, turning to her, andfeeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentlematronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-assertion of theother. 

'Ah, ' said Robert, 'I kept that as a surprise! Did you ever see a moreperfect place?'

'What date?'

'Early Tudor--as to the oldest part. It was built by a relation ofBishop Fisher's; then largely rebuilt under James I. Elizabeth stayedthere twice. There is a trace of a visit of Sidney's. Waller was there, and left a copy of verses in the library. Evelyn laid out a great dealof the garden. Lord Clarendon wrote part of his History in the garden, et cetera, et cetera. The place is steeped in associations, and asbeautiful as a dream to begin with. '

'And the owner of all this is the author of the "Idols of the MarketPlace"?'

Robert nodded. 

'Did you ever meet him at Oxford? I believe he was there once or twiceduring my time, but I never saw him. '

'Yes, ' said Langham, thinking. 'I met him at dinner at theVice-Chancellor's, now I remember. A bizarre and formidable person--verydifficult to talk to, ' he added reflectively. 

Then as he looked up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose Leyburn's lipand understood it in a moment. Incontinently he forgot the Squire andfell to asking himself what had possessed him on that luckless journeydown. He had never seemed to himself more perverse, more unmanageable;and for once his philosophy did not enable him to swallow the certaintythat this slim flashing creature must have thought him a morbid idiotwith as much _sang-froid_ as usual. 

Robert interrupted his reflections by some Oxford question, andpresently Catherine carried off Rose to her room. On their way theypassed a door, beside which Catherine paused hesitating, and then witha 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 forthe life that was to be. Rose looked at it all--at the piles of tinygarments, the cradle, the pictures from Retsch's 'Song of the Bell, 'which had been the companions of their own childhood, on the walls--andsomething stirred in the girl's breast. 

'Catherine, I believe you have everything you want, or you soon willhave!' she cried, almost with a kind of bitterness, laying her hands onher sister's shoulders. 

'Everything but worthiness!' said Catherine softly, a mist rising in hercalm gray eyes. 'And you, 'Röschen, ' she added wistfully--'have you beengetting a little more what you want?'

'What's the good of asking?' said the girl, with a little shrug ofimpatience. 'As if creatures like we ever got what they want! London hasbeen good fun certainly--if one could get enough, of it. Catherine, howlong is that marvelous person going to stay?' and she pointed in thedirection of Langham's room. 

'A week, ' said Catherine, smiling at the girl's disdainful tone. 'I wasafraid you didn't take to him. '

'I never saw such a being before, ' declared Rose--'never! I thought Ishould never get a plain answer from him about anything. He wasn't evenquite certain it was a fine day! I wonder if you set fire to him whetherhe would be sure it hurt! A week, you say? Heigho! what an age!'

'Be kind to him, ' said Catherine, discreetly veiling her own feelings, and caressing the curly golden head as they moved toward the door. 'He'sa poor lone don, and he was so good to Robert!'

'Excellent reason for you, Mrs. Elsmere, ' said Rose pouting; 'but----'

Her further remarks were cut short by the sound of the front-door bell. 

'Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Newcome!' cried Catherine, starting. 'Come downsoon, Rose, and help us through. '

'Who is he?' inquired Rose, sharply. 

'A High Church clergyman near here, whom Robert asked to tea thisafternoon, ' said Catherine, escaping. 

Rose took her hat off very leisurely. The prospect down-stairs did notseem to justify despatch. She lingered and thought, of 'Lohengrin'and Albani, of the crowd of artistic friends that had escorted her toWaterloo, of the way in which she had been applauded the night before, of the joys of playing Brahms with a long-haired pupil of Rubinstein's, who had dropped on one knee and kissed her hand at the end of it, etc. During the last six weeks the colors of 'this thread-bare world' hadbeen freshening before her in marvellous fashion. And now, as she stoodlooking out, the quiet fields opposite, the sight of a cow pushing itshead through the hedge, the infinite sunset sky, the quiet of the house, filled her with a sudden depression. How dull it all seemed--how wantingin the glow of life!

CHAPTER XII. 

Meanwhile downstairs a curious little scene was passing, watched byLangham, who, in his usual anti-social way, had retreated into a cornerof his own as soon as another visitor appeared. Beside Catherine sat aRitualist clergyman in cassock and long cloak--a saint clearly, thoughperhaps, to judge from the slight restlessness of movement that seemedto quiver through him perpetually, an irritable one. But he had thesaint's wasted unearthly look, the ascetic brow, high and narrow, theveins showing through the skin, and a personality as magnetic as it wasstrong. 

Catherine listened to the new-comer, and gave him his tea, withan aloofness of manner which was not lost on Langham. 'She is theThirty-nine Articles in the flesh!' he said to himself. 'For her theremust neither be too much nor too little. How can Elsmere stand it?'

Elsmere apparently was not perfectly happy. He sat balancing his longperson over the arm of a chair listening to the recital of some of theHigh Churchman's parish troubles with a slight half-embarrassed smile. The Vicar of Mottringham was always in trouble. The narrative hewas pouring out took shape in Langham's sarcastic sense as a sortof classical epic, with the High Churchman as a new champion ofChristendom, harassed on all sides by pagan parishioners, crasschurchwardens, and treacherous bishops. Catherine's fine face grew moreand more set, nay disdainful. Mr. Newcome was quite blind to it. Womennever entered into his calculations except as sisters or as penitents. At a certain diocesan conference he had discovered a sympathetic fibrein the young Rector of Murewell, which had been to the imperious, persecuted zealot like water to the thirsty. He had come to-day, drawnby the same quality in Elsmere as had originally attracted Langham tothe St. Anselm's undergraduate, and he sat pouring himself out with asmuch freedom as if all his companions had been as ready as he was todie for an alb, or to spend half their days in piously circumventing abishop. 

But presently the conversation had slid, no one knew how, fromMottringham and its intrigues to London and its teeming East. Robert wasleading, his eye now on the apostalic-looking priest, now on his wife. Mr. Newcome resisted, but Robert had his way. Then it came out thatbehind these battles of kites and crows at Mottringhan, there lay anheroic period when the pale ascetic had wrestled ten years with LondonPoverty, leaving health and youth and nerves behind him in the mêelée. Robert dragged it out at last, that struggle, into open view, but withdifficulty. The Ritualist may glory in the discomfiture of an Erastianbishop--what Christian dare parade ten years of love to God and man? Andpresently round Elsmere's lip there dawned a little smile of triumph. Catherine had shaken off her cold silence, her Puritan aloofness, wasbending forward eagerly--listening. Stroke by stroke, as the words andfacts were beguiled from him, all that was futile and quarrelsome inthe sharp-featured priest sank out of sight; the face glowed withinward light; the stature of the man seemed to rise; the angel in himunsheathed its wings. Suddenly the story of the slums that Mr. Newcomewas telling--a story of the purest Christian heroism told in thesimplest way--came to an end, and Catherine leaned toward him with along quivering breath. 

'Oh, thank you, thank you! That must have been a joy, a privilege!'

Mr. Newcome turned and looked at her with surprise. 

'Yes, it was a privilege, ' he said slowly--the story had been an accountof the rescue of a young country lad from a London den of thieves andprofligates--'you are right; it was just that. '

And then some sensitive inner fibre of the man was set vibrating, and hewould talk no more of himself or his past, do what they would. 

So Robert had hastily to provide another subject, and he fell upon thatof the Squire. 

Mr. Newcome's eyes flashed. 

'He is coming back? I am sorry for you, Elsmere. "Woo is me that I amconstrained to dwell with Mesech, and to have my habitation among thetents of Kedar!"'

And he fell back in his chair, his lips tightening, his thin long handlying along the arm of it, answering to that general impression ofcombat, of the spiritual athlete, that hung about him. 

'I don't know, ' said Robert brightly, as he leant against themantelpiece looking curiously at his visitor. 'The Squire is a man ofstrong-character, of vast learning. His library is one of the finest inEngland, and it is at my service. I am not concerned with his opinions. '

'Ah, I see, ' said Newcome in his driest voice, but sadly. You are one ofthe people who believe in what you call tolerance--I remember. '

'Yes, that is an impeachment to which I plead guilty, ' said Robert, perhaps with equal dryness; 'and you--have your worries driven you tothrow tolerance overboard?'

Newcome bent forward quickly. Strange glow and intensity of thefanatical eyes--strange beauty of the wasted, persecuting lips!

'Tolerance!' he said with irritable vehemence--'tolerance! Simplyanother name for betrayal, cowardice, desertion--nothing else. God, Heaven, Salvation on the one side, the Devil and Hell on the other--andone miserable life, one wretched sin-stained will, to win the battlewith; and in such a state of things _you_--' He dropped his voice, throwing out every word with a scornful, sibilant emphasis--

'_You_ would have us believe as though our friends were our enemies andour enemies our friends, as though eternal misery were a bagatelle, andour faith a mere alternative. _I stand for Christ_, and His foes aremine. '

'By which I suppose you mean, ' said Robert, quietly, that you would shutyour door on the writer of "The Idols of the Market-place"?'

'Certainly. '

And the priest rose, his whole attention concentrated on Robert, asthough some deeper-lying motive were suddenly brought into play than anysuggested by the conversation itself. 

'Certainly. _Judge not_--so long as a man has not judged himself, --onlytill then. As to an open enemy, the Christian's path is clear. We arebut soldiers under orders. What business have we to be truce-making onour own account? The war is not ours, but God's!'

Robert's eyes had kindled. He was about to indulge himself in such aquick passage of arms as all such natures as his delight in, when hislook travelled past the gaunt figure of the Ritualist vicar to his wife. A sudden pang smote, silenced him. She was sitting with her face raisedto Newcome; and her beautiful gray eyes were full of a secret passionof sympathy. It was like the sudden re-emergence of something repressed, the satisfaction of something hungry. Robert moved closer to her, andthe color rushed over all his young boyish face. 

'To me, ' he said in a low voice, his eyes fixed rather on her than onNewcome, 'a clergyman has enough to do with those foes of Christ hecannot choose but recognize. There is no making truce with vice orcruelty. Why should we complicate our task and spend in needlessstruggle the energies we might give to our brother?'

His wife turned to him. There was trouble in her look, then a swiftlovely dawn of something indescribable. Newcome moved away, with agesture that was half bitterness, half weariness. 

'Wait, my friend, ' he said slowly, 'till you have watched that man'sbooks eating the very heart out of a poor creature, as I have. When youhave once seen Christ robbed of a soul that might have been His, by theinfidel of genius, you will loathe all this Laodicean cant of toleranceas I do!'

There was, an awkward pause. Langham, with his eyeglass on, wascarefully examining the make of a carved paper-knife lying near him. The strained, preoccupied mind of the High Churchman had never taken thesmallest account of his presence, of which Robert had been keenly, notto say humorously, conscious throughout. 

But after a minute or so the tutor got up, strolled forward, andaddressed Robert on some Oxford topic of common interest. Newcome, in akind of dream which seemed to have suddenly descended on him, stood nearthem, his priestly cloak falling in long folds about him, his asceticface grave and rapt. Gradually, however, the talk of the two mendissipated the mystical cloud about him. He began to listen, to catchthe savour of Langham's modes of speech, and of his languid, indifferentpersonality. 

'I must go, ' he said abruptly, after a minute or two, breaking in uponthe friends' conversation. 'I shall hardly get home before dark. '

He took a cold, punctilious leave of Catherine, and a still colder andlighter 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 becameenveloping, magnetic. Robert paused and looked down upon him, a quicklight of foresight in his eye. He felt what was coming. 

And down it swept upon him, a hurricane of words hot from Newcome'sinmost being, a protest winged by the gathered passion of years againstcertain 'dangerous tendencies' the elder priest discerned in theyounger, against the worship of intellect and science as such whichappeared in Elsmere's talk, in Elsmere's choice of friends. It was theeternal cry of the mystic of all ages. 

'Scholarship! Learning!' Eyes and lips flashed into a vehement scorn. 'You allow them a value in themselves, apart from the Christian's test. It is the modern canker, the modern curse! Thank God, my years in Londonburnt it out of me! Oh, my friend, what have you and I to do with allthese curious triflings, which lead men oftener to rebellion than toworship? Is this a time for wholesale trust, for a maudlin universalsympathy? Nay, rather a day of suspicion, a day of repression!--a timefor trampling on the lusts of the mind no less than the lusts of thebody, a time when it is better to believe than to know, to pray than tounderstand!'

Robert was silent a moment, and they stood together, Newcome's gaze offiery appeal fixed upon him. 

'We are differently made, you and I' said the young Rector at lastwith difficulty. 'Where you see temptation I see opportunity. I cannotconceive of God as the Arch-plotter against His own creation!'

Newcome dropped his hold abruptly. 

'A groundless optimism, ' he said with harshness. 'On the track of thesoul from birth to death there are two sleuth-hounds--Sin and Satan. Mankind forever flies them, is forever vanquished and devoured. Isee life always as a thread-like path between abysses along which man_creeps_'--and his gesture illustrated the words--'with bleeding handsand feet toward one-narrow-solitary outlet. Woe to him if he turn to theright hand or the left--"I will repay, saith the Lord!"'

Elsmere drew himself up suddenly; the words seemed to him a blasphemy. Then something stayed the vehement answer on his lips. It was a senseof profound, intolerable pity. What a maimed life! what an indomitablesoul! Husbandhood, fatherhood, and all the sacred education that flowsfrom human joy; for ever self-forbidden, and this grind creed forrecompense!

He caught Newcome's hand with a kind filial eagerness. 

'You are a perpetual lesson to me, ' he said, most gently. 'When theworld 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 onehour, 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 fanaticism, an element which makesopposition a torment. He turned abruptly away, and Robert was leftalone. 

It was a still, clear evening, rich in the languid softness and balmwhich mark the first approaches of autumn. Elsmere walked back to thehouse, his head uplifted to the sky which lay beyond the cornfield, hiswhole being wrought into a passionate protest--a passionate invocationof all things beautiful and strong and free, a clinging to life andnature as to something wronged and outraged. 

Suddenly his wife stood beside him. She had come down to warn him thatit was late and that Langham had gone to dress; but she stood lingeringby his side after her message was given, and he made no movement to goin. 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 unlikehim. She clasped both hands on his arm and stood pressing toward himas though to make amends--for she knew not what. Something--some sharp, momentary sense of difference, of antagonism, had hurt that inmost fibrewhich is the conscience of true passion. She did the most generous, the most ample penance for it as she stood there talking to him ofhalf-indifferent things, but with a magic, a significance of eye andvoice which seemed to take all the severity from her beauty and make herwomanhood itself. 

At the evening meal Rose appeared in pale blue, and it seemed toLangham, fresh from the absolute seclusion of college-rooms in vacation, that everything looked flat and stale beside her, beside the flash ofher white arms, the gleam of her hair, the confident grace of everymovement. He thought her much too self-conscious and self-satisfied; andshe certainly did not make herself agreeable to him; but for all that hecould hardly take his eyes off her; and it occurred to him once or twiceto envy Robert the easy childish friendliness she showed to him, andto him alone of the party. The lack of real sympathy between her andCatherine was evident to the stranger at once--what, indeed, could thetwo have in common? He saw that Catherine was constantly on the pointof blaming, and Rose constantly on the point of rebelling. He caught thewrinkling of Catherine's brow as Rose presently, in emulation apparentlyof some acquaintances she had been making in London, let slip the namesof some of her male friends without the 'Mr. , ' or launched into somebolder affectation than usual of a comprehensive knowledge of Londonsociety. The girl, in spite of all her beauty, and her fashion, and thelittle studied details of her dress, was in reality so crude, so muchof a child under it all, that it made her audacities and assumptions themore absurd, and he could see that Robert was vastly amused by them. 

But Langham was not merely amused by her. She was too beautiful and toofull of character. 

It astonished him to find himself afterward edging over to the cornerwhere she sat with the Rectory cat on her knee--an inferior animal, butthe best substitute for Chattie available. So it was, however; and oncein her neighborhood he made another serious effort to get her to talk tohim. The Elsmeres had never seen him so conversational. He dropped hisparadoxical melancholy; he roared as gently as any sucking dove; andRobert, catching from the pessimist of St. Anselm's, as the evening wenton, some hesitating common-places worthy of a bashful undergraduate onthe subject of the boats and Commemoration, had to beat a hasty retreat, so greatly did the situation tickle his sense of humor. 

But the tutor made his various ventures under a discouraging sense offailure. What a capricious, ambiguous creature it was, how fearless, howdisagreeably alive to all his own damaging peculiarities! Never had hebeen so piqued for years, and as he floundered about trying to findsome common ground where he and she might be at ease, he was consciousthroughout of her mocking indifferent eyes, which seemed to be sayingto him all the time, 'You are not interesting, --no, not a bit! You aretiresome, and I see through you, but I must talk to you, I suppose, _faute de mieux_. '

Long before the little party separated for the night, Langham had givenit up, and had betaken himself to Catherine, reminding himself with somesharpness that he had come down to study his friend's life, rather thanthe humors of a provoking girl. How still the summer night was round theisolated rectory; how fresh and spotless were all the appointments ofthe house; what a Quaker neatness and refinement everywhere! He drank inthe scent of air and flowers with which the rooms were filled; for thefirst time his fastidious sense was pleasantly conscious of Catherine'sgrave beauty; and even the mystic ceremonies of family prayer hada certain charm for him, pagan as he was. How much dignity andpersuasiveness it has still he thought to himself, this commonplacecountry life of ours, on its best sides!

Half-past ten arrived. Rose just let him touch her hand; Catherine gavehim a quiet good-night, with various hospitable wishes for his nocturnalcomfort, and the ladies withdrew. He saw Robert open the door for hiswife and catch her thin white fingers as she passed him with all thesecrecy and passion of a lover. 

Then they plunged into the study, he and Robert, and smoked their fill. The study was an astonishing medley. Books, natural history specimens, a half-written sermon, fishing rods, cricket bats, a huge medicinecupboard--all the main elements of Elsmere's new existence wererepresented there. In the drawing-room with his wife and hissister-in-law he had been as much of a boy as ever; here clearly he wasa man, very much in earnest. What about? What did it all come to? Canthe English country clergyman do much with his life and his energies. Langham approached the subject with his usual skepticism. 

Robert for awhile, however, did not help him to solve it. He fell atonce to talking about the Squire, as though it cleared his mind to talkout his difficulties even to so ineffective a counsellor as Langham. Langham, indeed was but faintly interested in the Squire's crimes as alandlord, but there was a certain interest to be got out of the strugglein Elsmere's mind between the attractiveness of the Squire, as one ofthe most difficult and original personalties of English letters, andthat moral condemnation of him as a man of possessions and ordinaryhuman responsibilities with which the young reforming Rector was clearlypenetrated. So that, as long as he could smoke under it, he was contentto let his companion describe to him, Mr. Wendover's connection with theproperty, his accession to it in middle life after a long residence inGermany, 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 hugeplace, ' said Robert with energy. 'He is not unpopular exactly with thepoor down here. When they want to belabor anybody they lay on at theagent, Henslowe. On the whole, I have come to the conclusion the poorlike a mystery. They never see him; when he is here the park is shut up;the common report is that he walks, at night; and he lives alone in thatenormous house with his books. The country folk have all quarrelled withhim, or nearly. It pleases him to get a few of the humbler people about, clergy, professional men, and so on, to dine with him sometimes. And heoften fills the Hall, I am told, with London people for a day or two. But otherwise, he knows no one, and nobody knows him. '

'But you say he has a widowed sister? How does she relish the kind oflife?'

'Oh, by all accounts, ' said the Rector with a shrug, 'she is as littlelike other people as himself. A queer elfish little creature, they say, as fond of solitude down here as the Squire, and full of hobbies. In heryouth she was about the Court. Then she married a Canon of Warham, one of the popular preachers, I believe, of the day. There is a brightlittle cousin of hers, a certain Lady Helen Varley, who lives near here, and tells one stories of her. She must be the most whimsical littlearistocrat imaginable. She liked her husband apparently, but she nevergot 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 thepurest parvenu. The Squire of course makes mock of her, and she has noinfluence with him. However, there is something naïve in the storiesthey tell of her. I feel as if I might get on with her. But the Squire!'

And the Rector, having laid down his pipe, took to studying his bootswith a certain dolefulness. 

Langham, however, who always treated the subjects of conversationpresented to him as an epicure treats food, felt at this point that hehad had enough of the Wendovers, and started something else. 

'So you physic bodies as well as Minds?' he said, pointing to themedicine cupboard. 

'I should think so!' cried Robert, brightening at once. Last winter Icausticked all the diphtheritic throats in the place with my own hand. Our parish doctor is an infirm old noodle, and I just had to do it. Andif the state of part of the parish remains what it is, it's a pleasure Imay promise myself most years. But it shan't remain what it is. '

And the Rector reached out his hand again for his pipe, and gave one ortwo energetic puffs to it as he surveyed his friend stretched before himin the depths of an armchair. 

'I will make myself a public nuisance, but the people shall have theirdrains!'

'It seems to me, ' said Langham, musing, 'that in my youth people talkedabout Ruskin; now they talk about drains. '

'And quite right too. Dirt and drains, Catherine says I have gone madupon them. It's all very well, but they are the foundations of a soundreligion. '

'Dirt, drains, and Darwin, ' said Langham meditatively, taking upDarwin's 'Earthworms, ' which lay on the study table beside him, side byside with a volume of Grant Allen's 'Sketches. ' 'I didn't know you caredfor this sort of thing!'

Robert did not answer for a moment, and a faint flush stole into hisface. 

'Imagine, Langham!' he said presently, 'I had never read even the"Origin of Species" before I came here. We used to take the thing halffor 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 forceone's self to understand the whole hypothesis and the grounds for it, isa very different matter. It is a revelation. '

'Yes, ' said Langham; and could not forbear adding, 'but it is arevelation, my friend, that has not always been held to square withother revelations. '

In general these two kept carefully off the religious ground. The manwho is religious by nature tends to keep his treasure hid from the manwho is critical by nature, and Langham was much more interested in otherthings. But still it had always been understood that each was free tosay what he would. 

'There was a natural panic, ' said Robert, throwing back his head at thechallenge. 'Men shrank and will always shrink, say what you will, fromwhat seems to touch things dearer to them than life. But the panic ispassing. The smoke is clearing away, and we see that the battle-fieldis falling into new lines. But the old truth remains the same. Where andwhen and how you will, but somewhen and somehow, God created the heavensand the earth!'

Langham said nothing. It had seemed to him for long that the clergy werebecoming dangerously ready to throw the Old Testament overboard, and allthat it appeared to him to imply was that men's logical sense is easilybenumbed where their hearts are concerned. 

'Not that everyone need be troubled with the new facts, ' resumed Robertafter a while, going back to his pipe. 'Why should they? We are notsaved by Darwinism. I should never press them on my wife, for instance, with all her clearness and courage of mind. '

His voice altered as he mentioned his wife--grew extraordinarily soft, even reverential. 

'It would distress her?' said Langham interrogatively, and inwardlyconscious of pursuing investigations begun a year before. 

'Yes, it would distress her. She holds the old ideas as she was taughtthem. It is all beautiful to her, what may seem doubtful or grotesque toothers. And why should I or anyone else trouble her? I above all, who amnot fit to tie her shoe-strings. '

The young husband's face seemed to gleam in the dim light which fellupon it. Langham involuntarily put up his hand in silence and touchedhis sleeve. Robert gave him a quiet friendly look, and the two meninstantly plunged into some quite trivial and commonplace subject. 

Langham entered his room that night with a renewed sense of pleasure inthe country quiet, the peaceful flower-scented house. Catherine, whowas an admirable housewife, had put out her best guest-sheets for hisbenefit, and the tutor, accustomed for long years to the second-best ofcollege service, looked at their shining surfaces and frilled edges, atthe freshly matted floor, at the flowers on the dressing-table, atthe spotlessness of everything in the room, with a distinct sense thatmatrimony had its advantages. He had come down to visit the Elsmeres, sustained by a considerable sense of virtue. He still loved Elsmere andcared to see him. It was a much colder love, no doubt, than that whichhe had given to the undergraduate. But the man altogether was a coldercreature, who for years had been drawing in tentacle after tentacle, and becoming more and more content to live without his kind. Robert'sparsonage, however, and Robert's wife had no attractions for him; and itwas with an effort that he had made up his mind to accept the invitationwhich Catherine had made an effort to write. 

And, after all, the experience promised to be pleasant. His fastidiouslove for the quieter, subtler sorts of beauty was touched by theElsmere surroundings. And whatever Miss Leyburn might be, she was notcommonplace. The demon of convention had no large part in _her!_ Langhamlay awake for a time analyzing his impressions of her with some gusto, and meditating, with a whimsical candor which seldom failed him, on themanner in which she had trampled on him, and the reasons why. 

He woke up, however, in a totally different frame of mind. He waspreeminently a person of moods, dependent, probably, as all moods are, on certain obscure physical variations. And his mental temperature hadrun down in the night. The house, the people who had been fresh andinteresting to him twelve hours before, were now the burden he hadmore than half-expected them to be. He lay and thought of the unbrokensolitude of his college rooms, of Senancour's flight from human kind, of the uselessness of all friendship, the absurdity of all effort, andcould hardly persuade himself to get up and face a futile world, whichhad, moreover, the enormous disadvantage for the moment of being a newone. 

Convention, however, is master even of an Obermann. That prototype ofall the disillusioned had to cut himself adrift from the society of theeagles on the Dent du Midi, to go and hang, like any other ridiculousmortal, on the Paris law courts. Langham, whether he liked it or not, had to face the parsonic breakfast and the parsonic day. 

He had just finished dressing when the sound of a girl's voice drew himto the window, which was open. In the garden stood Rose, on the edge ofthe sunk fence dividing the Rectory domain from the cornfield. She wasstooping forward playing with Robert's Dandie Dinmont. In one hand sheheld a mass of poppies, which showed a vivid scarlet against her bluedress; the other was stretched out seductively to the dog leaping roundher. A crystal buckle flashed at her waist; the sunshine caught thecurls of auburn hair, the pink cheek, the white moving hand, the laceruffles at her throat and wrist. The lithe, glittering figure stoodthrown out against the heavy woods behind, the gold of the cornfield, the blues of the distance. All the gayety and color which is as trulyrepresentative of autumn as the gray languor of a September mist hadpassed into it. 

Langham stood and watched, hidden, as he thought, by the curtain, tilla gust of wind shook the casement window beside him, and threatened toblow it in upon him. He put out his hand perforce to save it, and theslight noise caught Rose's ear. She looked up; her smile vanished. 'Godown, Dandie, ' she said severely, and walked quickly into the house withas much dignity as nineteen is capable of. 

At breakfast the Elsmeres found their guest a difficulty. But theyalso, as we know, had expected it. He was languor itself; none of theirconversational efforts succeeded; and Rose, studying him out the cornersof her eyes, felt that it would be of no use even to torment so strangeand impenetrable a being. Why on earth should people come and visittheir friends, if they could not keep up even the ordinary decentpretences of society?

Robert had to go off to some clerical business afterward and Langhamwandered out into the garden by himself. As he thought of his Greektexts and his untenanted Oxford rooms, he had the same sort of cravingthat an opium-eater has cut off from his drugs. How was he to getthrough?

Presently he walked back into the study, secured an armful of volumes, and carried them out. True to himself in the smallest things, he couldnever in his life be content with the companionship of one book. Tocut off the possibility of choice and change in anything whatever wasrepugnant to him. 

He sat himself down in the shade of a great chestnut near the house, andan hour glided pleasantly away. As it happened, however, he did not openone of the books he had brought with him. A thought had struck him ashe sat down, and he went groping in his pockets in search of ayellow-covered brochure, which, when found, proved to be a new play byDumas, just about to be produced by a French company in London. Langham, whose passion for the French theatre supplied him, as we know, with agreat 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 mannerrather more French than usual. The reader shrugged his shoulders a gooddeal as he read on. 'Strange nation!' he muttered to himself after anact or two. 'How they do revel in mud!'

Presently, just as the fifth act was beginning to get hold of him withthat force which, after all, only a French playwright is master of, helooked up and saw the two sisters coming round the corner of the housefrom the great kitchen garden which stretched its grass paths andtangled flower-masses down the further slope of the hill. The transitionwas sharp from Dumas' heated atmosphere of passion and crime to thequiet English rectory, its rural surroundings, and the figures of thetwo Englishwomen advancing toward him. 

Catherine was in a loose white dress with a black lace scarf drapedabout her head and form. Her look hardly suggested youth, and there wascertainly no touch of age in it. Ripeness, maturity, serenity--thesewere the chief ideas which seemed to rise in the mind at sight of her. 

'Are you amusing yourself, Mr. Langham?' she said, stopping besidehim and retaining with slight, imperceptible force Rose's hand, whichthreatened to slip away. 

'Very much. I have been skimming through a play, which I hope to seenext week, by way of preparation. '

Rose turned involuntarily. Not wishing to discuss 'Marianne' witheither Catherine or her sister, Langham had just closed the book and wasreturning it to his pocket. But she had caught sight of it. 

You are reading "Marianne, "' she exclaimed, the slightest possible touchof wonder in her tone. 

'Yes, it is "Marianne, "' said Langham, surprised in his turn. He hadvery old-fashioned notions about the limits of a girl's acquaintancewith the world, knowing nothing, therefore, as may be supposed, aboutthe modern young woman, and he was a trifle scandalized by Rose's accentof knowledge. 

'I read it last week, ' she said carelessly; 'and the Piersons'--turningto her sister--'have promised to take me to see it next winter ifDesforêts comes, again, as everyone expects. '

'Who wrote it?' asked Catherine innocently. The theatre not only gaveher little pleasure, but wounded in her a hundred deep unconquerableinstincts. But she had long ago given up in despair the hope ofprotecting against Rose's dramatic instincts with success. 

'Dumas _fils_' said Langham dryly. He was distinctly a good dealastonished. 

Rose looked at him, and something brought a sudden flame into her cheek. 

'It is one of the best of his, ' she said defiantly. 'I have read a goodmany others. Mr. Pierson lent me a volume. And when I was introduced toMadame Desforêts last week, she agreed with me that "Marianne" is nearlythe best of all. '

All this, of course, with the delicate nose well in air. 

'You were introduced to Madame Desforêts?' cried Langham, surprised thistime quite out of discretion. Catherine looked at him with anxiety. Thereputation of the black-eyed little French actress, who had been for ayear or two the idol of the theatrical public of Paris and London, hadreached even to her, and the tone of Langham's exclamation struck herpainfully. 

'I was, ' said Rose proudly. 'Other people may think it a disgrace. _I_thought it an honor!'

Langham could not help smiling, the girl's naïveté was so evident. Itwas clear that, if she had read "Marianne, " she had never understood it. 

'Rose, you don't know!' exclaimed Catherine, turning to her sister witha sudden trouble in her eyes. 'I don't think Mrs. Pierson ought to havedone that, without consulting mamma especially. '

'Why not?' cried Rose vehemently. Her face was burning, and her heartwas full of something like hatred of Langham but she tried hard to becalm. 

'I think, ' she said, with a desperate attempt at crushing dignity, 'thatthe way in which all sorts of stories are believed against a woman, justbecause she is an actress, is _disgraceful!_ Just because a woman ison the stage, everybody thinks they may throw stones at her. I _know_, because--because she told me, ' cried the speaker, growing, however, halfembarrassed as she spoke, 'that she feels the things that are said ofher deeply! She has been ill, very ill, and one of her friends said tome, "You know it isn't her work, or a cold, or anything else that's madeher ill--it's calumny!" And so it is. '

The speaker flashed an angry glance at Langham. She was sitting on thearm of the cane chair into which Catherine had fallen, one hand graspingthe back of the chair for support, one pointed foot beating the groundrestlessly in front of her, her small full mouth pursed indignantly, thegreenish-gray eyes flashing and brilliant. 

As for Langham, the cynic within him was on the point of uncontrollablelaughter. Madame Desforêts complaining of calumny to this littleWestmoreland maiden! But his eyes involuntarily met Catherine's, and theexpression of both fused into a common wonderment--amused on his side, anxious on hers. 'What a child, what an infant it is!' they seemed, toconfide to one another. Catherine laid her hand softly on Rose's, andwas about to say something soothing, which might secure her an openingfor some sisterly advice later on, when there was a sound of callingfrom the gate. She looked up and saw Robert waving to her. Evidently, hehad just run up from the school to deliver a message. She hurried acrossthe drive to him and afterwards into the house, while he disappeared. 

Rose got up from her perch on the armchair, and would have followed, buta movement of obstinacy or Quixotic wrath, or both, detained her. 

'At any rate, Mr. Langham, ' she said, drawing herself up, and speakingwith the most lofty accent, 'if you don't know anything personally aboutMadame Desforêts, I think it would be much fairer to say nothing--andnot to assume at once that all you hear is true!'

Langham had rarely felt more awkward than he did then, as he sat leaningforward under the tree, this slim, indignant creature standing overhim, and his consciousness about equally divided between a sense of herabsurdity and a sense of her prettiness. 

'You are an advocate worth having, Miss Leyburn, ' he said at last, anenigmatical smile he could not restrain playing about his mouth. 'Icould not argue with you; I had better not try. '

Rose looked at him, at his dark regular face, at the black eyes whichwere much vivider than usual, perhaps because they could not helpreflecting some of the irrepressible memories of Madame Desforêts andher _causes célèbres_ which were coursing through the brain behind them, and with a momentary impression of rawness, defeat, and yet involuntaryattraction, 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, firstthat the dust of an English August is intolerable, and, secondly, thatwomen's society ought only to be ventured on by the men who are madefor it. The views of Catherine and Rose may be deduced from his withtolerable certainty. 

But in the late afternoon, when they thought they had done their duty byhim, and he was again alone in the garden reading, he suddenly heard thesound of music. 

Who was playing, and in that way? He got up and strolled past thedrawing-room window to find out. 

Rose had got hold of an accompanist, the timid, dowdy daughter of alocal solicitor, with some capacity for reading, and was now, in herlavish, impetuous fashion, rushing through a quantity of new music, theaccumulations of her visit to London. She stood up beside the piano, herhair gleaming in the shadow of the drawing-room, her white brow hangingforward over her violin as she peered her way through the music, herwhole soul absorbed in what she was doing, Langham passed unnoticed. 

What astonishing playing! Why had no one warned him of the presenceof such a gift in this dazzling, prickly, unripe creature? He sat downagainst the wall of the house, as close as possible, but out of sight, and listened. All the romance of his spoilt and solitary life had cometo him so far through music, and through such music as this! For shewas playing Wagner, Brahms, and Rubinstein, interpreting all thosepassionate voices of the subtlest moderns, through which the heartof our own day has expressed itself even more freely and exactly thanthrough the voice of literature. Hans Sachs' immortal song, echoes fromthe love duets in 'Tristan und Isolde, ' fragments from a wild and aliendance-music, they rippled over him in a warm, intoxicating stream ofsound, stirring association after association, and rousing from sleep ahundred bygone moods of feeling. 

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, butof a different sort altogether from the conscious reflected product ofthe 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, ardentunknown, --'insufferable, if he pleases, to all the world besides, but to_me_ heaven!' She had caught no breath yet of his coming, but her heartwas ready for him. 

Suddenly, as she put down her violin, the French window opened andLangham stood before her. She looked at him with a quick stiffening ofthe face which a minute before had been all quivering and relaxed, andhis instant perception of it chilled the impulse which had brought himthere. 

He said something _banal_ about his enjoyment, something totallydifferent 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 shutthe piano, and then she went away. 

Langham felt a strange, fierce pang of disappointment. What had he meantto do or say? Idiot! What common ground was there between him and anysuch exquisite youth? What girl would ever see in him anything but thedull remains of what once had been a man!

CHAPTER XIII. 

The next day was Sunday. Langham, who was as depressed and home-sickas ever, with a certain new spice of restlessness, not altogetherintelligible to himself, thrown in, could only brace himself to theprospect by the determination to take the English rural Sunday as thesubject of severe scientific investigation. He would 'do it' thoroughly. 

So he donned a black coat and went to church with the rest. There, inspite of his boredom with the whole proceeding, Robert's old tutor was agood deal more interested by Robert's sermon than he had expected to be. It was on the character of David, and there was a note in it, a noteof historical imagination, a power of sketching in a background ofcircumstance, and of biting into the mind of the listener, as it were, by a detail or an epithet, which struck Langham as something new in hisexperience of Elsmere. He followed it at first as one might watch a gameof skill, enjoying the intellectual form of it, and counting the goodpoints, but by the end he was not a little carried away. The perorationwas undoubtedly very moving, very intimate, very modern, and Langham upto a certain point was extremely susceptible to oratory, as he was tomusic and acting. The critical judgment, however, at the root of himkept coolly repeating as he stood watching the people defile out of thechurch, --'This sort of thing will go down, will make a mark: Elsmere isat the beginning of a career!'

In the afternoon Robert, who was feeling deeply guilty towards his wife, in that he had been forced to leave so much of the entertainment ofLangham to her, asked his old friend to come for him to the school atfour o'clock and take him for a walk between two engagements. Langhamwas punctual, and Robert carried him off first to see the Sundaycricket, which was in full swing. During the past year the young Rectorhad been developing a number of outdoor capacities which were probablyalways dormant in his Elsmere blood, the blood of generations of countrygentlemen, but which had never had full opportunity before. He talked offishing as Kingsley might have talked of it, and, indeed, with constantquotations from Kingsley; and his cricket, which had been good enoughat Oxford to get him into his College eleven, had stood him in speciallygood stead with the Murewell villagers. That his play was not elegantthey were not likely to find out; his bowling they set small storeby; but his batting was of a fine, slashing, superior sort which sooncarried the Murewell Club to a much higher position among the clubs ofthe neighborhood than it had ever yet aspired to occupy. 

The Rector had no time to play on Sundays, however, and, after theyhad hung about the green a little while, he took his friend over to theWorkmen's Institute, which stood at the edge of it. He explainedthat the Institute had been the last achievement of the agent beforeHenslowe, a man who had done his duty to the estate according to hislights, 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. 'Butcatch that man doing anything for us!' exclaimed Robert hotly. 'He willhardly mend the roof now, merely, I believe, to spite me. But come andsee my new Naturalists' Club. '

And he opened the Institute door. Langham followed, in the temper of onegetting up a subject for examination. 

Poor Robert! His labor and his enthusiasm deserved a more appreciativeeye. He was wrapped up in his Club, which had been the great successof his first year, and he dragged Langham through it all, not indeed, sympathetic creature that he was, without occasional qualms. 'But afterall, ' he would say to himself indignantly, 'I must do something withhim. '

Langham, indeed, behaved with resignation. He looked at the collectionsfor the year, and was quite ready to take it for granted that theywere extremely creditable. Into the old-fashioned window-sills glazedcompartments had been fitted, and these were now fairly filled withspecimens, with eggs, butterflies, moths, beetles, fossils, and whatnot. A case of stuffed tropical birds presented by Robert stood in thecentre of the room; another containing the birds of the district wasclose by. On a table further on stood two large opera books, whichserved as records of observations on the part of members of the Club. Inone, which was scrawled over with mysterious hieroglyphs, anyone mightwrite what he would. In the other, only such facts and remarks as hadpassed the gauntlet of a Club meeting were recorded in Robert's neatesthand. On the same table stood jars full of strange creatures--tadpolesand water larvae of all kinds, over which Robert hung now absorbedpoking among them with a straw, while Langham, to whom only thegeneralizations of science were congenial, stood by and mildly scoffed. 

As they came out a great loutish boy, who had evidently been hangingabout waiting for the Rector, came up to him, boorishly touched hiscap, and then, taking a cardboard box out of his pocket, opened it withinfinite caution, something like a tremor of emotion passing over hisgnarled countenance. 

The Rector's eyes glistened. 

'Hullo! I say, Irwin, where in the name of fortune did you get that? Youlucky fellow! Come in, and let's look it out!'

And the two plunged back into the Club together, leaving Langham to thephilosophic and patient contemplation of the village green, its geese, its donkeys, and its surrounding fringe of houses. He felt that quiteindisputably life would have, been better worth living if, like Robert, he could have taken a passionate interest in rare moths or commonplough-boys; but Nature having denied him the possibility, there wassmall use in grumbling. 

Presently the two naturalists came out again, and the boy went off, bearing his treasure with him. 

'Lucky dog!' said Robert, turning his friend into a country road leadingout of the village, 'he's found one of the rarest moths of the district. Such a hero he'll be in the Club to-morrow night. It's extraordinarywhat a rational interest has done for that fellow! I nearly fought himin public last winter. '

And he turned to his friend with a laugh, and yet with a little quicklook of feeling in the gray eyes. 

'"Magnificent, but not war, "' said Langham dryly. 'I wouldn't have givenmuch for your chances against those shoulders. '

'Oh, I don't know. I should have had a little science on my side, whichcounts for a great deal. We turned him out of the Club for brutalitytoward the old grandmother he lives with--turned him out in public. Sucha scene! I shall never forget the boy's face. It was like a corpse, andthe eyes burning out of it. He made for me, but the others closed upround, and we got him put out. '

'Hard lines on the grandmother, ' remarked Langham. 

'She thought so--poor old thing! She left her cottage that night, thinking he would murder her, and went to a friend. At the end of a weekhe came into the friend's house, where she was alone in bed. She coweredunder the bed-clothes, she told me, expecting him to strike her. Insteadof which he threw his wages down beside her and gruffly invited her tocome home. "He wouldn't do her no mischief. " Everybody dissuaded her, but the plucky old thing went. A week or two afterward she sent for meand I found her crying. She was sure the lad was ill, he spoke to nobodyat his work. "Lord, sir!" she said, "it do remind me, when he sitsglowering 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--neverdoes me no 'arm. And it do go to my heart, sir, to see how poorly he dotake his vittles!" So I made tracks for that lad, ' said Robert, hiseyes kindling, his whole frame dilating. 'I found him in the fields onemorning. I have seldom lived through so much in half an hour. In theevening I walked him up to the Club, and we re-admitted him, and sincethen the boy has been like one clothed and in his right mind. If thereis any trouble in the Club I set him on, and he generally puts it right. And when I was laid up with a chill in the spring, and the poor fellowcame trudging up every night after his work to ask for me--well, nevermind! but it gives one a good glow at one's heart to think about it. '

The speaker threw back his head impulsively, as though defying his ownfeeling. Langham looked at him curiously. The pastoral temper was anovelty to him, and the strong development of it in the undergraduate ofhis Oxford recollections had its interest. 

A quarter to six, ' said Robert, as on their return from their walk theywere descending a low wooded hill above the village, and the churchclock rang out. 'I must hurry, or I shall be late for my storytelling. '

'Story-telling!' said Langham, with a half-exasperated shrug. 'Whatnext? You clergy are too inventive by half!'

Robert laughed a trifle bitterly. 

'I can't congratulate you on your epithets, ' he said, thrusting hishands far into his pockets. 'Good Heavens, if we _were_--if we wereinventive as a body, the Church wouldn't be where she is in the ruraldistricts! My story-telling is the simplest thing in the world. I beganit in the winter with the object of somehow or other getting at the_imagination_ of these rustics. Force them for only half an hour to livesomeone else's life--it is the one thing worth doing with them. That's what I have been aiming at. I _told_ my stories all thewinter--Shakespeare, Don Quixote, Dumas--Heaven knows what! And on thewhole it answers best. But now we are reading "The Talisman. " Come andinspect us, unless you're a purist about your Scott. None other of theimmortals have such _longueurs_ as he, and we cut him freely. '

'By all means, ' said Langham; lead on. ' And he followed his companionwithout repugnance. After all, there was something contagious in so muchyouth and hopefulness. 

The story-telling was hold in the Institute. 

A group of men and boys were hanging round the door when they reachedit. The two friends made their way through, greeted in the dumb, friendly English fashion on all sides, and Langham found himself in aroom half-filled with boys and youths, a few grown men, who had just puttheir pipes out, lounging at the back. 

Langham not only endured, but enjoyed the first part of the hourthat followed. Robert was an admirable reader, as most enthusiastic, imaginative people are. He was a master of all those arts of look andgesture which make a spoken story telling and dramatic, and Langhammarvelled with what energy, after his hard day's work and withanother service before him, he was able to throw himself into such ahors-d'œuvre as this. He was reading to night one of the most perfectscenes that even the Wizard of the North has ever conjured: the scene inthe tent of Richard Lion-Heart, when the disguised slave saves the lifeof the king, and Richard first suspects his identity. As he read on, his arms resting on the high desk in front of him, and his eyes, fullof infectious enjoyment, travelling from the book to his audience, surrounded by human beings whose confidence he had won, and whose liveshe was brightening from day to day, he seemed to Langham the very typeand model of a man who had found his _métier_, found his niche in theworld, and the best means of filling it. If to attain to an 'adequateand masterly expression of oneself' be the aim of life, Robert wasachieving it. This parish of twelve hundred souls gave him now all thescope he asked. It was evident that he felt his work to be rather abovethan below his deserts. He was content--more than content to spendability which would have distinguished him in public life, or carriedhim far to the front in literature, on the civilizing a few hundredof England's rural poor. The future might bring him worldlysuccess--Langham thought it must and would. Clergymen of Robert's stampare rare among us. But if so, it would be in response to no consciouseffort of his. Here, in the country living he had so long dreaded andput from him, less it should tax his young energies too lightly, he washappy--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 ofthought by this realization, warm, stimulating, provocative, of anotherman's happiness. 

Outside, the shadows lengthened across the green; groups of distantchildren or animals passed in and out of the golden light spaces; thepatches of heather left here and here glowed as the sunset touched them. Every now and then his eye travelled vaguely past a cottage garden, gaywith the pinks and carmines of the phloxes, into the cool browns andbluish-grays of the raftered room beyond; babies toddled across theroad, with stooping mothers in their train; the whole air and sceneseemed to be suffused with suggestions of the pathetic expansiveness andhelplessness of human existence, which generation after generation, isstill so vulnerable, so confiding, so eager. Life after life flowers outfrom the darkness and sinks back into it again. And in the interval whatagony, what disillusion! All the apparatus of a universe that men mayknow what it is to hope and fail, to win and lose! _Happy!_--inthis world, 'where men sit and hear each other groan. ' His friend'sconfidence only made Langham as melancholy as Job. 

What was it based on? In the first place, on Christianity--'on thepassionate acceptance of an exquisite fairy tale, ' said the dreamyspectator to himself, 'which at the first honest challenge of thecritical sense withers in our grasp! That challenge Elsmere has nevergiven it, and in all probability never will. No! A man sees none thestraighter for having a wife he adores, and a profession that suits him, between him and unpleasant facts!

In the evening, Langham, with the usual reaction of his afternoon selfagainst his morning self, felt that wild horses should not take himto Church again, and, with a longing for something purely mundane, hestayed at home with a volume of Montaigne, while apparently all the restof the household went to evening service. 

After a warm day the evening had turned cold and stormy; the west wasstreaked with jagged strips of angry cloud, the wind was rising in thetrees, and the temperature had suddenly fallen so much that when Langhamhad shut himself up in Robert's study he did what he had been admonishedto do in case of need, set a light to the fire, which blazed out merrilyinto the darkening room. Then he drew the curtains and threw himselfdown into Robert's chair, with a sigh of Sybaritic satisfaction. 'Good! Now for something that takes the world less naïvely, ' he said tohimself; 'this house is too virtuous for anything. '

He opened his Montaigne and read on very happily for half an hour. Thehouse seemed entirely deserted. 

'All the servants gone too!' he said presently, looking up andlistening. 'Anybody who wants the spoons needn't trouble about me. Idon't leave this fire. '

And he plunged back again into his book. At last there was a sound ofthe swing door which separated Robert's passage from the front hall, opening and shutting. Steps came quickly toward the study, the handlewas turned, and there on the threshold stood Rose. 

He turned quickly round in his chair with a look of astonishment. Shealso started as she saw him. 

'I did not know anyone was in, ' she said awkwardly, the color spreadingover her face. 'I came to look for a book. '

She made a delicious picture as she stood framed in the darkness ofthe doorway, her long dress caught up round her in one hand, the otherresting on the handle. A gust of some delicate perfume seemed to enterthe room with her, and a thrill of pleasure passed through Langham'ssenses. 

Can I find anything for you?' he said, springing up. 

She hesitated a moment, then apparently made up her mind that it wouldbe foolish to retreat, and, coming forward, she said, with an accent ascoldly 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 beganrunning her fingers over the books, with slightly knitted brows and amouth severely shut. Langham, still standing, watched her and presentlystepped forward. 

'You can't reach those upper shelves, ' he said; 'please let me. '

He was already beside her, and she gave way. 

'I want "Charles Auchester, "' she said, still forbiddingly. It ought tobe there. '

'Oh, that queer musical novel--I know it quite well. No sign of ithere, ' and he ran over the shelves with the practised eye of oneaccustomed to deal with books. 

'Robert must have lent it, ' said Rose, with a little sigh. 'Never mind, please. It doesn't matter, ' and she was already moving away. 

'Try some other, instead, ' he said, smiling, his arm still upstretched. 'Robert has no lack of choice. ' His manner had an animation and easeusually quite foreign to it. Rose stopped, and her lips relaxed alittle. 

'He is very nearly as bad as the novel-reading bishop, who was reducedat last to stealing the servant's "Family Herald" out of the kitchencupboard, ' she said, a smile dawning. 

Langham laughed. 

'Has he such an episcopal appetite for them? That accounts for the factthat when he and I begin to task novels I am always nowhere. '

'I shouldn't have supposed you ever read them, ' said Rose, obeying anirresistible impulse, and biting her lip the moment afterward. 

'Do you think that we poor people at Oxford are always condemned toworks on the "enclitic de**"?' he asked, his fine eyes lit up withgayety, and his head, of which the Greek outlines were ordinarily somuch disguised by his stoop and hesitating look, thrown back against thebooks behind him. 

Natures like Langham's, in which the nerves are never normal, have theirmoments of felicity, balancing their weeks of timidity and depression. After his melancholy of the last two days, the tide of reaction had beenmounting within him, and the sight of Rose had carried it to its height. 

She gave a little involuntary stare of astonishment. What had happenedto Robert's silent and finicking friend?

'I know nothing of Oxford, ' she said a little primly, in answer to hisquestion. 'I never was there--but I never was anywhere, I have seennothing, ' she added hastily, and, as Langham thought, bitterly. 

'Except London, and the great world, and Madame Desforêts!' he answered, laughing. 'Is that so little?'

She flashed a quick, defiant look at him, as he mentioned MadameDesforêts, but his look was imperturbably kind and gay. She could nothelp softening toward him. What magic had passed over him?

'Do you know, ' said Langham, moving, 'that you are standing in adraught, and that it has turned extremely cold?'

For she had left the passage-door wide open behind her, and as thewindow was partially open the curtains were swaying hither and thither, and her muslin dress was being blown in coils round her feet. 

'So it has, ' said Rose, shivering. 'I don't envy the Church people. Youhaven't found me a book, Mr. Langham!'

'I will find you one in a minute, if you will come and read it by thefire, ' he said, with his hand on the door. 

She glanced at the fire and at him, irresolute. His breath quickened. She too had passed into another phase. Was it the natural effect ofnight, of solitude, of sex? At any rate, she sank softly into thearmchair opposite to that in which he had been sitting. 

'Find me an exciting one, please. '

Langham shut the door securely, and went back to the bookcase, his handtrembling a little as it passed along the books. He found 'Villette' andoffered it to her. She took it, opened it, and appeared deep in it atonce. He took the hint and went back to his Montaigne. 

The fire crackled cheerfully, the wind outside made every now and then asudden gusty onslaught on their silence, dying away again as abruptlyas it had risen. Rose turned the pages of her book, sitting a littlestiffly in her long chair, and Langham gradually began to find Montaigneimpossible to read. He became instead more and more alive to everydetail of the situation into which he had fallen. At last seeing, orimagining, that the fire wanted attending to, he bent forward and thrustthe poker into it. A burning coal fell on the hearth, and Rose hastilywithdrew her foot from the fender and looked up. 

'I am so sorry!' he interjected. 'Coals never do what you want them todo. Are you very much interested in "Villette"?'

'Deeply, ' said Rose, letting the book, however, drop on her lap. Shelaid back her head with a little sigh, which she did her best to check, half way through. What ailed her to-night? She seemed wearied; for themoment there was no fight in her with anybody. Her music, her beauty, her mutinous, mocking gayety--these things had all worked on the manbeside her; but this new softness, this touch of childish fatigue, wasadorable. 

'Charlotte Bronté wrote it out of her Brussels experience, didn't She?'she resumed languidly. 'How sorry she must have been to come back tothat dull home and that awful brother after such a break!'

'There were reasons more than one that must have made her sorry to comeback, ' said Langham, reflectively, 'But how she pined for her wilds allthrough! I am afraid you don't find your wilds as interesting as shefound hers?'

His question and his smile startled her. 

Her first impulse was to take up her book again, as a hint to him thather likings were no concern of his. But something checked it, probablythe new brilliancy of that look of his, which had suddenly grown sopersonal, so manly. Instead, 'Villette' slid a little further from herhand, and her pretty head still lay lightly back against the cushion. 

'No, I don't find my wilds interesting at all, ' she said forlornly. 'Youare not fond of the people, as your sister is?'

'Fond of them?' cried Rose hastily. 'I should think not; and what ismore, 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 doall her work. It is dreadful to have to work after somebody who has agenius for doing just what you do worst. '

The young girl's hands fell across one another with a little impatientgesture. Langham had a movement of the most delightful compassiontoward the petulant, childish creature. It was as though their relativepositions had been in some mysterious way reversed. During their twodays together she had been the superior, and he had felt himself at themercy 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 naturaladvantage, 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 Rose irritably; 'anything that has two legs and isill, that is all Catherine wants to make her happy. '

'And _you_ want something quite different, something more exciting?' heasked, his diplomatic tone showing that he felt he dared something inthus pressing her, but dared it at least with his, wits about him. Rose met his look irresolutely, a little tremor of self-consciousnesscreeping over her. 

'Yes, I want something different, ' she said in a low voice and paused;then, raising herself energetically, she clasped her hands round herknees. 'But it is not idleness I want. I want to work, but at things Iwas born for; I can't have patience with old women, but I could slaveall day and all night to play the violin. '

You want to give yourself up to study then, and live with musicians?' hesaid quietly. 

She shrugged her shoulders by way of answer, and began nervously to playwith her rings. 

That under-self which was the work and the heritage of her father inher, and which, beneath all the wilfulnesses and defiances of the otherself, held its own moral debates in its own way, well out of Catherine'ssight generally, began to emerge, wooed into the light by his friendlygentleness. 

'But it is all so difficult, you see, ' she said despairingly. 'Papathought it wicked to care about anything except religion. If he hadlived, of course I should never have been allowed to study music. It hasbeen all mutiny so far, every bit of it, whatever I have been able todo. '

'He would have changed with the times, ' said Langham. 

'I know he would, ' cried Rose. 'I have told Catherine so a hundredtimes. People--good people--think quite differently about art now, don'tthey, Mr. Langham?

She spoke with perfect _naïveté_. He saw more and more of the child inher, in spite of that one striking development of her art. 

'They call it the handmaid of religion, ' he answered, smiling. 

Rose made a little face. 

'I shouldn't, ' she said, with frank brevity. 'But then there's somethingelse. You know where we live--at the very ends of the earth, seven milesfrom a station, in the very loneliest valley of all Westmoreland. What'sto be done with a fiddle in such a place? Of course, ever since papadied I've just been plotting and planning to get away. But there's thedifficulty, '--and she crossed one white finger over another as she laidout her case. 'That house where we live, has been lived in by Leyburnsever since--the Flood! Horrid set they were, I know, because I can'tever make mamma or even Catherine talk about them. But still, when paparetired, he came back and bought the old place from his brother. Sucha dreadful, dreadful mistake!' cried the child, letting her hands fallover her knee. 

'Had he been so happy there?'

'Happy!--and Rose'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 hewent to school, and after he went to school he never came back for yearsand years and years, till Catherine was fifteen. What _could_ have madehim so fond of it?'

And again looking despondently into the fire, she pondered that far-offperversity of her father's. 

'Blood has strange magnetisms, ' said, Langham, seized as he spoke by thepensive prettiness of the bent head and neck, 'and they show themselvesin the oddest ways. '

'Then I wish they wouldn't, ' she said irritably. 'But that isn't all. Hewent there, not only because he loved that place, but because he hatedother places. I think he must have thought'--and her voice dropped--'hewasn't going to live long--he wasn't well when he gave up theschool--and then we could grow up there safe, without any chance ofgetting into mischief. Catherine says he thought the world was gettingvery wicked, and dangerous, and irreligious, and that it comforted himto 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 hercompanion, '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 cluck to water, and it began toscare him that I loved it so much. He and Catherine only loved religion, and us, and the poor. So he always took it away on Sundays. Then I hatedSundays, and would never be good on them. One Sunday I cried myselfnearly 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 aroundhis neck, and he put me into it, and carried me away right up on to thehills, and he talked to me like an angel. He asked me not to make himsad before God that he had given me that violin; so I never screamedagain-on Sundays!'

Her companion's eyes were not quite as clear as before. 

'Poor little naughty child, ' he said, bending over to her. 'I think yourfather must have been a man to be loved. '

She looked at him, very near to weeping, her face working with a softremorse. 

'Oh, so he was--so he was! If he had been hard and ugly to us, why itwould have been much easier for me, but he was so good! And there wasCatherine just like him, always preaching to us what he wished. You seewhat a chain it's been--what a weight! And as I must struggle--_must_, because I was I--to get back into the world on the other side of themountains, and do what all the dear wicked people there were doing, whyI have been a criminal all my life! And that isn't exhilarating always. '

And she raised her arm and let it fall beside her with the quick, over-tragic emotion of nineteen. 

'I wish your father could have heard you play as I heard you playyesterday, ' he said gently. 

She started. 

'_Did_ you hear me--that Wagner?'

He nodded, smiling. She still looked at him, her lips slightly open. 

'Do you want to know what I thought? I have heard much music, you know. '

He laughed into her eyes, as much as to say 'I am not quite the mummyyou thought me, after all!' And she colored slightly. 

'I have heard every violinist of any fame in Europe play, and playoften; and it seemed to me that with time--and work--you might play aswell as any of them. '

The slight flush became a glow that spread from brow to chin. Then shegave a long breath and turned away, her face resting on her hand. 

'And I can't help thinking, ' he went on, marvelling inwardly at his own_rôle_ of mentor, and his strange enjoyment of it, 'that if your fatherhad lived till now, and had gone with the times a little, as he musthave gone, he would have learnt to take pleasure in your pleasure, andto fit your gift somehow into his scheme of things. '

'Catherine hasn't moved with the times, ' said Rose dolefully. 

Langham was silent. _Gaucherie_ seized him again when it became aquestion of discussing Mrs. Elsmere, his own view was so inconvenientlyemphatic. 

'And you think, ' she went on, 'you _really_ think, without being tooungrateful to papa, and too unkind to the old Leyburn ghosts'--and alittle laugh danced through the vibrating voice--'I might try and getthem to give up Burwood--I might struggle to have my way? I shall, ofcourse I shall! I never was a meek martyr, and never shall be. But onecan't help having qualms, though one doesn't tell them to one's sistersand cousins and aunts. And sometimes'--she turned her chin round on herhand and looked at him with a delicious, shy impulsiveness--'sometimes astranger sees clearer. Do _you_ think me a monster, as Catherine does?'

Even as she spoke her own words startled her--the confidence, theabandonment of them. But she held to them bravely; only her eyelidsquivered. She had absurdly misjudged this man, and there was a warmpenitence in her heart. How kind he had been, how sympathetic!

He rose with her last words, and stood leaning against the mantelpiece, looking down upon her gravely, with the air, as it seemed to her, ofher friend, her confessor. Her white childish brow, the little curls ofbright hair upon her temples, her parted lips, the pretty folds of themuslin dress the little foot on the fender--every detail of the pictureimpressed itself once for all. Langham will carry it with him to hisgrave. 

'Tell me, ' she said again, smiling divinely, as though to encouragehim--'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 windsweeping through the house--voices and steps approaching. Rosesprang up, and for the first time during all the latter part of theirconversation felt a sharp sense of embarrassment. 

'How early you are, Robert!' she exclaimed, as the study door openedand Robert's wind-blown head and tall form wrapped in an Inverness capeappeared on the threshold. 'Is Catherine tired?'

'Rather, ' said Robert, the slightest gleam of surprise betraying itselfon his face. 'She has gone to bed, and told me to ask you to come andsay good-night to her. '

'You got my message about not coming from old Martha?' asked Rose. 'Imet her on the common. '

'Yes, she gave it us at the church door. ' He went out again into thepassage to hang up his greatcoat. She followed, longing to tell him thatit was pure accident that took her to the study, but she could notfind words in which to do it, and could only say good-night a littleabruptly. 

'How tempting, that fire looks!' said Robert, re-entering the study. 'Were you very cold, Langham, before you lit it?

'Very, ' said Langham smiling, his arm behind his head, his eyes fixed onthe blaze; 'but I have been delightfully warm and happy since. '

CHAPTER XIV. 

Catherine stopped beside the drawing-room window with a start, caught bysomething she saw outside. 

It was nothing, however, but the figures of Rose and Langham strollinground the garden. A bystander would have been puzzled by the suddenknitting of Catherine's brows over it. 

Rose held a red parasol, which gleamed against the trees; Dandie leaptabout her, but she was too busy talking to take much notice of him. Talking, chattering, to that cold cynic of a man, for whom onlyyesterday she had scarcely had a civil word! Catherine felt herself aprey 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 eveningtogether in the study. And I don't, know when I have seen Langham sobrilliant or so alive as in our smoking talk just now!'

Catherine had laughed him to scorn; but, all the same, she had been alittle longer going to sleep than usual. She felt herself almost as muchas ever the guardian of her sisters, and the old sensitive nerve was setquivering. And now there could be no question about it--Rose had changedher ground toward Mr. Langham altogether. Her manner at breakfast wasevidence enough of it. 

Catherine's self-torturing mind leapt on for an instant to all sorts ofhorrors. _That_ man!--and she and Robert responsible to her mother andher dead father! Never! Then she scolded herself back to common-sense. Rose and he had discovered a common subject in music and musicians. Thatwould be quite enough to account for the new-born friendship on Rose'spart. And in five more days, the limit of Langham's stay, nothing verydreadful _could_ happen, argued the reserved Catherine. 

But she was uneasy, and after a bit, as that _tête-à-tête_ in the gardenstill went on, she could not, for the life of her, help interfering. Shestrolled out to meet them with some woollen stuff hanging over her arm, and made a plaintive and smiling appeal to Rose to come and help herwith some preparations for a mothers' meeting to be held that afternoon. Rose, who was supposed by the family to be 'taking care' of her sisterat a critical time, had a moment's prick of conscience, and went offwith a good grace. Langham felt vaguely that he owed Mrs. Elsmereanother 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 thedrawing-room table, Rose came in. She held an armful of blue serge, and, going up to a table in the window, she took from it a little work-ease, 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 luncheontime, ' she answered demurely, with a countenance of most Dorcas-likeseriousness--'and if I spoil them I shall have to pay for the stuff!'

He shrugged his shoulders, and looked at her smiling, still master ofhimself and of his words. 

'And no music--none at all? Perhaps you don't know that I too canaccompany?'

'You play!' she exclaimed, incredulous. 

'Try me. '

The light of his fine black eyes seemed to encompass her. She movedbackward a little, shaking her head. 'Not this morning, ' she said. 'Ohdear, no, not this morning! I am afraid you don't know anything abouttacking or fixing, or the abominable time they take. Well, it couldhardly be expected. There is nothing in the world'--and she shook herserge vindictively--'that I hate so much!'

'And not this afternoon, for Robert and I go fishing. But this evening?'he said, detaining her. 

She nodded lightly, dropped her lovely eyes with a sudden embarrassment, and went away with lightning quickness. 

A minute or two later Elsmere laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. 'Come and see the Hall, old fellow. It will be our last chance, for theSquire and his sister come back this afternoon. I must parochialize abit afterward, but you shan'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 silentlyacross the woods and the wide stubbles of the now shaven cornfield, where white lines of reapers were at work, as the morning cleared, making and stacking the sheaves. After a stormy night the garden wasstrewn with _débris_, and here and there noiseless prophetic showers ofleaves were dropping on the lawn. 

Elsmere took his guest along a bit of common, where great black junipersstood up like magnates in council above the motley undergrowth of fernand heather, and then they turned into the park. A great stretch ofdimpled land it was, falling softly toward the south and west, boundedby a shining twisted river, and commanding from all its highest pointsa heathery world of distance, now turned a stormy purple under thedrooping fringes of the rain clouds. They walked downward from themoment of entering it, till at last, when they reached a wooded plateauabout a hundred feet above the river, the house itself came suddenlyinto view. 

That was a house of houses! The large main building, as distinguishedfrom the lower stone portions to the north which represented a fragmentof the older Elizabethan house, had been in its day the crown andboast of Jacobean house-architecture. It was fretted and jewelled withRenaissance terra-cotta work from end to end; each gable had its lacework, each window its carved setting. And yet the lines of the wholewere so noble, genius had hit the general proportions so finely, thatno effect of stateliness or grandeur had been missed through all theaccumulation of ornament. Majestic relic of a vanished England, thehouse rose amid the August woods rich in every beauty that site, andwealth, and centuries could give to it. The river ran about it as thoughit loved it. The cedars which had kept it company for well nigh twocenturies gathered proudly round it; the deer grouped themselves in thepark beneath it, as though they were conscious elements in a great wholeof loveliness. 

The two friends were admitted by a housemaid who happened to be busy inthe hall, and whose red cheeks and general breathlessness bore witnessto the energy of the storm of preparation now sweeping through thehouse. 

The famous hall to which Elsmere at once drew Langham's attention was, however, in no way remarkable for size or height. It told comparativelylittle of seignorial dignity, but it was as though generation aftergeneration had employed upon its perfecting the craft of its mostdelicate fingers, the love of its most fanciful and ingenious spirits. Over-head, the stucco-work ceiling, covered with stags and birds andstrange heraldic creatures unknown to science, had the deep creamy tint, the consistency and surface of antique ivory. From the white and giltfrieze beneath, untouched, so Robert explained, since the Jacobean dayswhen it was first executed, hung Renaissance tapestries which would havemade the heart's delight of any romantic child, so rich they were ingroves of marvellous trees hung with red and golden fruits, in farreaching palaces and rock-built citadels, in flying shepherdesses andpursuing shepherds. Between the tapestries again, there were breadths ofcarved panelling, crowded with all things round and sweet, with fruitsand flowers and strange musical instruments, with flying cherubs, andfair faces in laurel-wreathed medallions; while in the middle of theHall a great oriel window broke the dim, venerable surfaces of wood andtapestry with stretches of jewelled light. Tables crowded with antiques, with Tanagra figures or Greek verses, with Florentine bronzes orspecimens of the wilful, vivacious wood-carving of seventeenth centurySpain, stood scattered on the Persian carpets. And, to complete thewhole, the gardeners had just been at work on the corners of the halland of the great window, so that the hard-won subtleties of man'sbygone handiwork, with which the splendid room was incrusted from topto bottom, were masked and renewed here and there by the careless, easysplendor of flowers, which had but to bloom in order to eclipse themall. 

Robert was at home in the great pile, where for many months he had gonefreely in and out on his way to the library, and the housekeeper onlymet him to make an apology for her working dress, and to hand over tohim the keys of the library bookcases, with the fretful comment thatseemed to have in it the ghostly voice of generations of housemaids, Ohlor', sir, they are a trouble, them books!'

From the drawing-rooms, full of a more modern and less poeticalmagnificence, where Langham turned restless and refractory, Elsmere witha smile took his guest silently back into the hall, and opened a carveddoor behind a curtain. Passing through, they found themselves in a longpassage lighted by small windows on the left-hand side. 

'This passage, please notice, ' said Robert, 'leads to nothing but thewing containing the library, or rather libraries, which is the oldestpart of the house. I always enter it with a kind of pleasing awe!Consider these carpets, which keep out every sound, and look howeverything gets older as we go on. '

For half-way down the passage the ceiling seemed to descend upon theirheads, the flooring became uneven, and woodwork and walls showed thatthey had passed from the Jacobean house into the much older Tudorbuilding. Presently Robert led the way up a few shallow steps, pushedopen a heavy door, also covered by curtains, and bade his companionenter. 

They found themselves in a low, immense room, running at right anglesto the passage they had just quitted. The long diamond-paned window, filling almost half of the opposite wall, faced the door by which theyhad come in; the heavy, carved mantelpiece was to their right; an opendoorway on their left, closed at present by tapestry hangings, seemed tolead into yet other rooms. 

The walls of this one were completely covered from floor to ceilingwith latticed bookcases, enclosed throughout in a frame of oak carvedin light classical relief by what appeared to be a French hand of thesixteenth century. The checkered bindings of the books, in which thecreamy tints of vellum predominated, lined the whole surface of the wallwith a delicate sobriety of color; over the mantelpiece, the picture ofthe founder of the house--a Holbein portrait, glorious in red robes andfur and golden necklace--seemed to gather up and give voice to all thedignity and impressiveness of the room beneath him; while on the windowside the book-lined wall was, as it were, replaced by the wooded faceof a hill, clothed in dark lines of trimmed yews, which rose abruptly, about a hundred yards from the house and overshadowed the whole librarywing. Between the window and the hill, however, was a small old Englishgarden, closely hedged round with yew hedges, and blazing now with everyflower that an English August knows--with sunflowers, tiger lilies, anddahlias, white and red. The window was low, so that the flowers seemedto be actually in the room, challenging the pale tints of the books, thetawny browns and blues of the Persian carpet and the scarlet splendorsof the courtier over the mantelpiece. The room was lit up besides by afew gleaming casts from the antique, by the 'Diane Chasseresse' of theLouvre, by the Hermes of Praxiteles smiling with immortal kindness onthe child enthroned upon his arm, and by a Donatello figure of a womanin marble, its subtle, sweet austerity contrasting with the Greekfrankness and blitheness of its companions. 

Langham was penetrated at once by the spell of this strange andbeautiful place. The fastidious instincts which had been halfrevolted by the costly accumulations, the over-blown splendors of thedrawing-room, were abundantly satisfied here. 

'So it was here, ' he said, looking 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 littlemore charity toward the human race in writing it. The race cannot besaid to have treated him badly on the whole. But now look, Langham, lookat these books--the most precious things are here. '

And he turned the key of a particular section of the wall, which was notonly latticed but glazed. 

'Here is "A Mirror for Magistrates. " Look at the title-page; you willfind Gabriel Harvey's name on it. Here is a first edition of "Astropholand Stella, " another of the Arcadia. They may very well be presentationcopies, for the Wendover of that day is known to have been a wit anda writer. Imagine finding them _in situ_ like this in the same room, perhaps on the same shelves, as at the beginning! The other rooms onthis 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 indeeda storehouse of treasures. Ben Jonson's 'Underwoods' with his owncorrections; a presentation copy of Andrew Marvell's 'Poems, ' withautograph notes; manuscript volumes of letters, containing almostevery famous name known to English literature in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, the literary cream, in fact, of all the vastcollection which filled the muniment room upstairs; books which hadbelonged to Addison, to Sir William Temple, to Swift, to Horace Walpole;the first four folios of Shakespeare, all perfect, and most of thequartos--everything that the heart of the English collector could mostdesire was there. And the charm of it was that only a small proportionof these precious things represented conscious and deliberateacquisition. The great majority of them had, as it were, drifted thitherone by one, carried there by the tide of English letters as to a warmand natural resting-place. 

But Robert grew impatient, and hurried on his guest to other things--tothe shelves of French rarities, ranging from Du Bellay's 'Visions, 'with his autograph, down to the copy of 'Les Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe'presented by Chateaubriand to Madame Récamier, or to a dainty manuscriptvolume in the fine writing of Lamartine. 

'These, ' Robert explained, 'were collected, I believe, by the Squire'sfather. He was not in the least literary, so they say, but it had alwaysbeen a point of honor to carry on the library, and as he had learntFrench well in his youth he bought French things, taking advice, but without knowing much about them, I imagine. It was in the roomoverhead, ' said Robert, laying down the book he held, and speaking in alower key, 'so the old doctor of the house told me a few weeks ago, thatthe same poor soul put an end to himself twenty years ago. '

'What in the name of fortune did he do that for?'

'Mania, ' said Robert quietly. 

'Whew!' said the other, lifting his eyebrows. 'Is that the skeleton inthis very magnificent cupboard?'

'It has been the Wendover scourge from the beginning, so I hear. Everyone about here of course explains this man's eccentricities by thefamily history. But I don't know, ' said Robert, his lip hardening, 'itmay be extremely convenient sometimes to have a tradition of the kind. Aman who knew how to work it might very well enjoy all the advantagesof sanity and the privileges of insanity at the same time. The poor olddoctor I was telling you of--old Meyrick--who has known the Squire sincehis boyhood, and has a dog-like attachment to him, is always hinting atmysterious excuses. Whenever I let out to him, as I do sometimes, asto the state of the property, he talks of "inherited melancholy, " "rashjudgments, " and so forth. I like the good old soul, but I don't believemuch of it. A man who is sane enough to make a great name for himself inletters is sane enough to provide his estate with a decent agent. '

'It doesn't follow, ' said Langham, who was, however, so deep in acollection of Spanish romances and chronicles, that the Squire's mentalhistory did not seem to make much impression upon him. 'Most men ofletters are mad, and I should be inclined, ' he added, with a sudden andfretful emphasis, 'to argue much worse things for the sanity of yourSquire, Elsmere, from the fact that this room is undoubtedly allowedto get damp sometimes, than from any of those absurd parochial tests ofyours. '

And he held up a couple of priceless books, of which the Spanishsheepskin bindings showed traces here and there of moisture. 

'It is no use, I know, expecting you to preserve a moral sense when youget among books, ' said Robert with a shrug. 'I will reserve my remarkson that subject. But you must really tear yourself away from this room, Langham, if you want to see the rest of the Squire's quarters. Here youhave what we may call the ornamental, sensational part of the library, that part of it which would make a stir at Sotheby's; the working partsare all to come. '

Langham reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged away. Robert held backthe hangings over the doorway leading into the rest of the wing, and, passing through, they found themselves in a continuation of the librarytotally different in character from the magnificent room they had justleft. The walls were no longer latticed and carved; they were closelypacked, in the most business-like way, with books which representedthe Squire's own collection, and were in fact a chart of his ownintellectual history. 

'This is how I interpret this room, ' said Robert, looking round it. 'Here are the books he collected at Oxford in the Tractarian movementand 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 verysoon after, ' said Langham reflectively. 

Robert nodded. 'But look at them! There are the Tracts, all the Fathers, all the Councils, and masses, as you see, of Anglican theology. Now lookat the next case, nothing but eighteenth century!'

'I see, --from the Fathers to the Philosophers, from Hooker to Hume. Howhistory repeats itself in the individual!'

'And there again, ' said Robert, pointing to the other side of the room, 'are the results of his life as a German student. '

'Germany--ah, I remember! How long was he there?'

'Ten years, at Berlin and Heidelberg. According to old Meyrick, heburied his last chance of living like other men at Berlin. His yearsof extravagant labor there have left marks upon him physically that cannever be effaced. But that bookcase fascinates me. Half the great namesof modern thought are in those books. '

And so they were. The first Langham opened had a Latin dedication in aquavering old man's hand, 'Amico et discipulo meo, ' signed 'FredericusGulielmus Schelling. ' The next bore the autograph of Alexander vonHumboldt, the next that of Boeckh, the famous classic, and so on. Closeby was Niebuhr's History, in the title-page of which a few lines in thehistorian's handwriting bore witness to much 'pleasant discourse betweenthe writer and Roger Wendover, at Bonn, in the summer of 1847. ' Judgingfrom other shelves further down, he must also have spent some time, perhaps an academic year, at Tubïngen, for here were most of the earlyeditions of the 'Leben Jesu, ' with some corrections from Strauss's hand, and similar records of Baur, Ewald, and other members or opponents ofthe Tubïngen school. And so on, through the whole bookcase. Somethingof everything was there--Philosophy, Theology, History, Philology. The collection was a medley, and made almost a spot of disorder in theexquisite neatness and system of the vast gathering of which it formedpart. Its bond of union was simply that it represented the forces ofan epoch, the thoughts, the men, the occupations which had absorbedthe energies of ten golden years. Every bock seemed to be full of papermarks; almost every title-page was covered with minute writing, which, when examined, proved to contain a record of lectures, or conversationswith the author of the volume, sometimes a string of anecdotes ora short biography, rapidly sketched out of the fulness of personalknowledge, and often seasoned with a subtle causticity and wit. Ahistory of modern thinking Germany, of that 'unextinguished hearth'whence the mind of Europe has been kindled for three generations, mightalmost have been evolved from that bookcase and its contents alone. 

Langham, as he stood peering among the ugly, vilely-printed Germanvolumes, felt suddenly a kind of magnetic influence creeping over him. The room seemed instinct with a harsh, commanding presence. The historyof a mind and soul was written upon the face of it; every shelf, as itwere, was an autobiographical fragment, an 'Apologia pro Vita Mea. 'He drew away from the books at last with the uneasy feeling of one whosurprises a confidence, and looked for Robert. Robert was at the endof the room, a couple of volumes under his arm, another, which he wasreading, in his hand. 

'This is _my_ corner, ' he said, smiling and flushing a little, as hisfriend moved up to him. 'Perhaps you don't know that I too am engagedupon a great work. '

'A great work--you?'

Langham looked at his companion as though to find out whether his remarkwas meant seriously, or whether he might venture to be cynical. Elsmerewriting! Why should everybody write books? It was absurd! The scholarwho knows what toll scholarship takes of life is always apt to resentthe intrusion of the man of action into his domains. It looks to himlike a kind of ridiculous assumption that anyone _d'un cœur léger_ cando what has cost him his heart's blood. 

Robert understood something of the meaning of his tone, and repliedalmost apologetically; he was always singularly modest about himself onthe intellectual side. 

'Well, Grey is responsible. He gave me such a homily before I leftOxford on the absolute necessity of keeping up with books, that I coulddo nothing less than set up a "subject" at once. "Half the day, " he usedto say to me, "you will be king of your world: the other half be theslave of something which will take you out of your world into thegeneral world;" and then he would quote to me that saying he was alwaysbringing into lectures--I forget whose it is--"_The decisive events ofthe world take place in the intellect_. It is the mission of books thatthey help one to remember it. " Altogether it was striking, coming fromone who has always had such a tremendous respect for practical life andwork, and I was much impressed by it. So blame him!'

Langham was silent. Elsmere had noticed that any allusion to Grey foundLangham less and less responsive. 

'Well what is the "great work"?' he said at last, abruptly. 

'Historical. Oh, I should have written something without Grey; I havealways had a turn for it since I was a child. But he was clear thathistory was especially valuable--especially necessary to a clergyman. Ifelt he was right, entirely right. So I took my Final Schools' historyfor a basis, and started on the Empire, especially the decay of theEmpire. Some day I mean to take up one of the episodes in the greatbirth of Europe-the makings of France, I think, most likely. It seems tolead farthest and tell most. I have been at work now nine months. '

'And are just getting into it?'

'Just about. I have got down below the surface, and am beginning to feelthe joys of digging;' and Robert threw back his head with one of hismost brilliant, enthusiastic smiles. 'I have been shy about boring youwith the thing, but the fact is, I am very keen indeed; and this libraryhas been a godsend!'

'So I should think. ' Langham sat down on one of the carved wooden stoolsplaced at intervals along the bookcases and looked at his friend, hispsychological curiosity rising a little. 

'Tell me, ' he said presently--'tell me what interests youspecially--what seizes you--in a subject like the making of France, forinstance?'

'Do you really want to know?' said Robert, incredulously. 

The other nodded. Robert left his place, and began to walk up and down, trying to answer Langham's questions, and at the same time to fix inspeech a number of sentiments and impressions bred in him by the workof the past few months. After a while Langham began to see his way. Evidently the forces at the bottom of this new historical interest wereprecisely the same forces at work in Elsmere's parish plans, inhis sermons, in his dealings with the poor and the young forces ofimagination and sympathy. What was enchaining him to this new study wasnot, to begin with, that patient love of ingenious accumulation whichis the learned temper proper, the temper, in short, of science. It wassimply a passionate sense of the human problems which underlie all thedry and dusty detail of history and give it tone and color, a passionatedesire to rescue something more of human life from the drowning, submerging past, to realize for himself and others the solidarity andcontinuity 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 tothe vivid, many-colored speech getting quicker and quicker, and moreand more telling and original as Robert got more absorbed and excited bywhat he had to say. He was endeavoring to describe to Langham the sortof book be thought might be written on the rise of modern societyin Gaul, dwelling first of all on the outward spectacle of theblood-stained Frankish world as it was, say, in the days of Gregorythe Great, on its savage kings, its fiendish women, its bishops andits saints; and then, on the conflict of ideas going on behind all thefierce incoherence of the Empire's decay, the struggle of Roman orderand of German freedom, of Roman luxury and of German hardness; aboveall, the war of orthodoxy and heresy, with its strange politicalcomplications. And then, discontented still, as though the heart of thematter was still untouched, he went on, restlessly wandering the while, with his long arms linked behind him, throwing out words at an objectin his mind, trying to grasp and analyze that strange sense which hauntsthe student of Rome's decline as it once overshadowed the infancy ofEurope, that sense of a slowly departing majesty, of a great presencejust withdrawn, and still incalculably potent, traceable throughout inthat humbling consciousness of Goth or Frank that they were but 'beggarshutting in a palace--the place had harbored greater men than they!'

'There is one thing, ' Langham said presently, in his slow, nonchalantvoice, when the tide of Robert's ardor ebbed for a moment, 'that doesn'tseem to have touched you yet. But you will come to it. To my mind, itmakes almost the chief interest of history. It is just this. Historydepends on _testimony_. What is the nature and the value of testimony atgiven times? In other words, did the man of the third century understandor report, or interpret facts in the same way as the man of thesixteenth or the nineteenth? And if not, what are the differences, andwhat are the deductions to be made from them, if any?' He fixed his keenlook on Robert, who was now lounging against the books, as though hisharangue had taken it out of him a little. 

'Ah, well, ' said the Rector smiling, 'I am only just coming to that. AsI told you, I am only now beginning to dig for myself. Till now it hasall been work at second hand. I have been getting a general survey ofthe ground as quickly as I could with the help of other men's labors. Now I must go to work inch by inch, and find out what the ground ismade of. I won't forget your point. It is enormously important, Igrant--enormously, ' he repeated reflectively. 

'I should think it is' said Langham to himself as he rose; 'the whole oforthodox Christianity is in it, for instance!'

There was not much more to be seen. A little wooden stair-case led fromthe second library to the upper rooms, curious old rooms, which had beenannexed one by one as the Squire wanted them, and in which there wasnothing at all--neither chair, nor table, nor carpet--but books only. All the doors leading from room to room had been taken off; the oldworm-eaten boards had been roughly stained; a few old French engravingshad been hung here and there where the encroaching books left anopening; but otherwise all was bare. There was a curious charm in thespace and air of these empty rooms, with their latticed windows openingon to the hill, and letting in day by day the summer sun-risings or thewinter dawns, which had shone upon them for more than three centuries. 

'This is my last day of privilege, ' said Robert. 'Everybody is shut outwhen once he appears, from this wing, and this part of the grounds. Thiswas his father's room, ' and the Rector led the way into the last of theseries; 'and through there, ' pointing to a door on the right, 'lies theway to his own sleeping-room, which is of course connected with the moremodern side of the house. '

'So this is where that old man ventured "what Cato did and Addisonapproved, " murmured Langham, standing in the middle of the room andlooking around him. This particular room was now used as a sort oflumber place, a receptacle for the superfluous or useless books, gradually thrown off by the great collection all around. There wereinnumerable volumes in frayed or broken bindings lying on the ground. Amusty smell hung over it all; the gray light from outside, which seemedto give only an added subtlety and charm, to the other portions ofthe ancient building through which they had been moving, seemed here_triste_ and dreary. Or Langham fancied it. 

He passed the threshold again with a little sigh, and saw suddenlybefore him at the end of the suite of rooms, and framed in the doorwaysfacing him, an engraving of a Greuze picture--a girl's face turned overher shoulder, the hair waving about her temples, the lips parted, theteeth gleaming mirth and provocation and tender yielding in every line. Langham started, and the blood rushed to his heart. It was as thoughRose herself stood there and beckoned to him. 

CHAPTER XV. 

'Now, having seen our sight, ' said Robert, as they left the great massof Murewell behind them, 'come and see our scandal. Both run by thesame proprietor, if you please. There is a hamlet down there in thehollow'--and he pointed to a gray speck in the distance--'I whichdeserves a Royal Commission all to itself, which is a _disgrace_'--andhis tone warmed--'to any country, any owner, any agent! It is ownedby Mr. Wendover, and I see the pleasing prospect straight before me ofbeginning my acquaintance with him by a fight over it. You will admitthat it is a little hard on a man who wants to live on good terms withthe possessor of the Murewell library to have to open relations with himby a fierce attack on his drains and his pigsties. '

He turned to his companion with a half-rueful spark of laughter inhis gray, eyes. Langham hardly caught what he said. He was far away inmeditations of his own. 

'An attack, ' he repeated vaguely; 'why an attack?'

Robert plunged again into the great topic of which his quick mind wasevidently full. Langham tried to listen, but was conscious that hisfriend's social enthusiasms bored him a great deal. And side by sidewith the consciousness there slid in a little stinging reflection thatfour 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 toemerge from the distance. 

An angry, red mounted in Robert's cheek. 

'What isn't the matter with it? The houses which were built on aswamp originally, are falling into ruin; the roofs, the drains, theaccommodation per head, are all about equally scandalous. The placeis harried with illness; since I came there has been both fever anddiphtheria there. They are all crippled with rheumatism, but _that_ theythink nothing of; the English laborer takes rheumatism as quite in theday's bargain! And as to _vice_--the vice that comes of mere endlesspersecuting opportunity--I can tell you one's ideas of personalresponsibility get a good deal shaken up by a place like this! And Ican do nothing. I brought over Henslowe to see the place, and he behavedlike a brute. He scoffed at all my complaints, said that no landlordwould be such a fool as to build fresh cottages on such a site, that theold ones must just be allowed to go to ruin; that the people might livein them if they chose, or turn out of them if they chose. Nobody forcedthem to do either; it was their own look-out. '

'That was true, ' said Langham, 'wasn't it?'

 Robert turned upon him fiercely. 

'Ah! you think it so easy for these poor creatures to leave their homestheir working places! Some of them have been there thirty years. Theyare close to the two or three farms that employ them, close to the osierbeds which give them extra earnings in the spring. If they were turnedout, there is nothing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottageto be found there. I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide morecottages than are wanted; but if the labor is wanted, the laborer shouldbe decently housed. He is worthy of his hire, and woe to the man whoneglects or ill-treats him!'

Langham could not help smiling, partly at the vehemence of the speech, partly at the lack of adjustment between his friend's mood and hisown. He braced himself to take the matter more seriously, but meanwhileRobert had caught the smile, and his angry eyes melted at once intolaughter. 

'There I am, ranting as usual, ' he said penitently, 'Took you forHenslowe, I suppose! Ah, well, never mind. I hear the Provost hasanother 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 descentthrough wooded ground, some two miles to the northwest of the park, theyemerged from the trees beneath which they had been walking, and foundthemselves on a bridge, a gray sluggish stream flowing beneath them, andthe hamlet they sought rising among the river flats on the farther side. 

'There, ' said Robert, stopping, 'we are at our journey's end. Now, then--what sort of a place of human habitation do you call _that_?'

The bridge whereon they stood crossed the main channel of the river, which just at that point, however, parted into several branches, andcame meandering slowly down through a little bottom or valley, filledwith osier beds, long since robbed of their year's growth of shoots. Onthe other side of the river, on ground all but level with the osier bedswhich interposed between them and the stream, rose a miserable group ofhouses, huddled together as though their bulging walls and rotten roofscould only maintain themselves at all by the help and support which eachwretched hovel gave to its neighbor. The mud walls were stained withyellow patches of lichen, the palings round the little gardens werebroken and ruinous. Close beside them all was a sort of open drain orwater-course, stagnant and noisome, which dribbled into the river alittle above the bridge. Behind them rose a high gravel bank edged byfirs, and a line of oak trees against the sky. The houses stood in theshadow of the bank looking north, and on this gray, lowering day, thedreariness, the gloom, the squalor of the place were indescribable. 

'Well, that is a God-forsaken hole!' said Langham, studying it, hisinterest roused at last, rather perhaps by the Ruysdael-like melancholyand picturesqueness of the scene than by its human suggestiveness. 'Icould hardly have imagined such a place existed in southern England. Itis more like a bit of Ireland. '

'If it were Ireland it might be to somebody's interest to ferret itout, ' 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 herelast autumn! A young girl of sixteen or seventeen, who would have beenhealthy and happy anywhere else, stricken by the damp and the poison ofthe place, dying in six weeks, of complications due to nothing in theworld but preventable cruelty and neglect? It was a sight thatburnt into my mind, once for all, what is meant by a landlord'sresponsibility. I tried, of course, to move her, but neither she nor herparents--elderly folk--had energy enough for a change. They only prayedto be let alone. I came over the last evening of her life to give herthe communion. "Ah, sir!" said the mother to me--not bitterly--thatis the strange thing, they have so little bitterness! "If Mr. 'Enslowewould just 'a mended that bit o' roof of ours last winter, Bessieneedn't have laid in the wet so many nights as she did, and she coughin'fit to break your heart, for all the things yer could put over'er. "'

Robert paused, his strong young face, so vehemently angry a few minutesbefore, tremulous with feeling, 'Ah, well, ' he said at last with a longbreath, moving away from the parapet of the bridge on which he had beenleaning, 'better be oppressed than oppressor any day! Now, then, I mustdeliver my stores. There's a child here Catherine and I have been doingour best to pull through typhoid. '

They crossed the bridge and turned down the track leading to thehamlet. Some planks carried them across the ditch, the main sewer of thecommunity, as Robert pointed out, and they made their way through thefilth surrounding one of the nearest cottages. 

A feeble, elderly man, whose shaking limbs and sallow, bloodless skinmade him look much older than he actually was, opened the door andinvited them to come in. Robert passed on into an inner room, conductedthither by a woman who had been sitting working over the fire. Langhamstood 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 eviltype which the efforts of the last twenty years have done so much allover England to sweep away: four mud walls, enclosing an oblong spaceabout eight yards long, divided into two unequal portions by a lath andplaster partition, with no upper story, a thatched roof, now entirelyout of repair, and letting in the rain in several places, and a pavedfloor little better than the earth itself, so large and cavernouswere the gaps between the stones. The dismal place had no smalladornings--none of those little superfluities which, however ugly andtrivial, are still so precious in the dwellings of the poor, as showingthe existence of some instinct or passion which is not the creationof the sheerest physical need; and Langham, as he sat down, caught thesickening marsh smell which the Oxford man, accustomed to the odors ofdamp meadows in times of ebbing flood and festering sun, knows so well. As old Milsom began to talk to him in his weak, tremulous voice, thevisitor's attention was irresistibly held by the details about him. Fresh as he was from all the delicate sights, the harmonious colors anddelightful forms of the Squire's house, they made an unusually sharpimpression on his fastidious senses. What does human life become livedon reeking floors and under stifling roofs like these? What strange, abnormal deteriorations, physical and spiritual, must it not inevitablyundergo? Langham felt a sudden inward movement of disgust and repulsion. 'For Heaven's sake, keep your superstitions!' he could have cried to thewhole human race, 'or any other narcotic that a grinding fate has leftyou. What does _anything_ matter to the mass of mankind but a littleease, a little lightening of pressure on this side or on that?'

Meanwhile the old man went maundering on, talking of the weather, and ofhis sick child, and 'Mr. Elsmere, ' with a kind of listless incoherencewhich hardly demanded an answer, though Langham threw in a word or twohere and there. 

Among other things, he began to ask a question or two about Robert'spredecessor, a certain Mr. Preston, who had left behind him a memory ofamiable evangelical indolence. 

'Did you see much of him?' he asked. 

'Oh law, no, sir!' replied the man, surprised into something likeenergy. I 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, sheis, comes from Yorkshire; sometimes she'd used to say to me, "Passon 'eeain't much good, and passon 'ee ain't much harm. 'Ee's no more good normore '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 thehundredth time with his wife's bygone flight of metaphor and his ownexact memory of it. 

As to the Rector's tendance of his child his tone was very cool andguarded. 

'It do seem strange, sir, as nor he nor Doctor Grimes 'ull let her haveanything to put a bit of flesh on her, nothin' but them messy thingsas he brings--milk an' that. An' the beef jelly--lor! such a trouble!Missis Elsmere, he tells my wife, strains all the stuff through a cloth, she do; never seed anythin' like it, nor my wife neither. People isclever nowadays, ' said the speaker dubiously. Langham realized, that inthis quarter of his parish at any rate, his friend's pastoral vanity, ifhe had any, would not find much to feed on. Nothing, to judge fromthis specimen at least, greatly affected an inhabitant of Mile End. Gratitude, responsiveness, imply health and energy, past or present. The only constant defence which the poor have against such physicalconditions as those which prevailed at Mile End is apathy. 

As they came down the dilapidated steps at the cottage door, Robert drewin with avidity a long draught of the outer air. 

'Ugh!' he said, with a sort of groan, 'that bedroom! Nothing givesone such a sense of the toughness of human life as to see a childrecovering, actually recovering, in such a pestilential den! Father, mother, grown up son, girl of thirteen, and grandchild--all huddled in aspace just fourteen feet square. Langham!' and he turned passionately onhis companion, 'what defence can be found for a man who lives in a placelike Murewell Hall, and can take money from human beings for the use ofa sty like that?'

'Gently, my friend. Probably the Squire, being the sort of recluse heis, has never seen the place, or at any rate not for-years, and knowsnothing about it!'

'More shame for him!'

'True in a sense, ' said Langham, a little dryly; 'but as you may wanthereafter to make excuses for your man, and he may give you occasion, Iwouldn't begin by painting him to yourself any blacker than need be. '

Robert laughed, sighed, and acquiesced. 'I am a hot-headed, impatientkind of creature at the best of times, ' he confessed. 'They tell me thatgreat things have been done for the poor round here in the last twentyyears. Something has been done, certainly. But why are the old ways, theold evil neglect and apathy, so long, so terribly long in dying! Thissocial progress of ours we are so proud of is a clumsy limping jade atbest!'

They prowled a little more about the hamlet, every step almost revealingsome new source of poison and disease. Of their various visits, however, Langham remembered nothing afterward but a little scene in a miserablecottage, where they found a whole family partly gathered round themid-day meal. A band of puny black-eyed children were standing orsitting at the table. The wife, confined of twins three weeks before, sat by the fire, deathly pale, a 'bad leg' stretched out before her onsome improvised support, one baby on her lap and another dark-hairedbundle asleep in a cradle beside her. There was a pathetic, pinchedbeauty about the whole family. Even the tiny twins were comparativelyshapely; all the other children had delicate, transparent skins, largeeyes, and small colorless mouths. The father, a picturesque, handsomefellow, looking as though he had gypsy blood in his veins, had openedthe door to their knock. Robert, seeing the meal, would have retreatedat once, in spite of the children's shy inviting looks, but a glancepast them at the mother's face checked the word of refusal and apologyon his lips, and he stepped in. 

In after years Langham was always apt to see him in imagination as hesaw him then, standing beside the bent figure of the mother, his quick, pitiful eyes taking in the pallor and exhaustion of face and frame, his hand resting instinctively on the head of a small creature that hadcrept up beside him, his look all attention and softness as the womanfeebly told him some of the main facts of her state. The young Rectorat the moment might have stood for the modern 'Man of Feeling, ' assensitive, as impressionable, and as free from the burden of self, ashis eighteenth-century prototype. 

On the way home Robert suddenly remarked to his companion, 'Have youheard my sister-in-law play yet, Langham? What did you think of it?'

'Extraordinary!' said Langham briefly. 'The most considerable gift Iever came across in an amateur. '

His olive cheek flushed a little involuntarily. Robert threw a quickobservant 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 notstand it that Elsmere should be so much narrowed and warped by that wifeof 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 muchto prevent it. '

And he was silent a moment, thinking, on his side, very tenderly of allthe antecedents and explanations of that old-world distrust of art andthe artistic life so deeply rooted in his wife, even though in practiceand under his influence she had made concession after concession. 

'The great solution of all, ' he said presently, brightening, would beto get her married. I don't wonder her belongings dislike the notion ofanything so pretty and so flighty, going off to live by itself. And tobreak up the home in Whindale would be to undo everything their fatherdid for them, to defy his most solemn last wishes. '

'To talk of a father's wishes, in a case of this kind, ten years afterhis death, is surely excessive, ' said Langham with dry interrogation;then, suddenly recollecting himself, 'I beg your pardon, Elsmere. I aminterfering. '

'Nonsense, ' said Robert brightly, 'I don't wonder, it seems like adifficulty of our own making. Like so many difficulties, it dependson character, present character, bygone character--' And again he fellmusing on his Westmoreland experiences, and on the intensity of thatPuritan type it had revealed to him. 'However, as I said, marriage wouldbe the 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 afuture, is Miss Rose. She wants somebody in the stream; somebody with astrong hand who will keep her in order and yet give her a wide range; arich man, I think--she hasn't the ways of a poor man's wife; but, at anyrate, someone who will be proud of her, and yet have a full life of hisown in which she may share. '

'Your views are extremely clear, ' said Langham, and his smile had atouch of bitterness in it. 'If hers agree, I prophesy you won't havelong to wait. She has beauty, talent, charm--everything that rich andimportant men like. '

There was the slightest sarcastic note in the voice. Robert winced. Itwas borne in upon one of the least worldly of mortals that he had beentalking like the veriest schemer. What vague, quick impulse had drivenhim on?

By the time they emerged again upon the Murewell Green the rain hadcleared altogether away, and the autumnal morning had broken intosunshine which played mistily on the sleeping woods, on the white frontsof 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'sdress. As they hurried on, afraid of being late for luncheon, they sawthat it was Rose in front of them. 

Langham started as the slander figure suddenly refined itself againstthe road. A tumult within, half rage, half feeling, showed itself onlyin an added rigidity of the finely-cut features. 

Rose turned directly she heard the steps and voices, and over thedreaminess of her face there flashed a sudden brightness. 

'You _have_ been along time!' she exclaimed, saying the first thing thatcame into her head, joyously, rashly, like the child she in reality was. 'How many halt and maimed has Robert taken you to see, Mr. Langham?'

'We went to Murewell first. The library was well worth seeing. Sincethen we have been a parish round, distributing stores. '

Rose's look changed in an instant. The words were spoken by the Langhamof her earliest acquaintance. The man who that morning had asked her toplay to him had gone--vanished away. 

'How exhilarating!' she said scornfully. 'Don't you wonder how anyonecan ever tear themselves away from the country?'

'Rose, don't be abusive, ' said Robert, opening his eyes at her tone. Then, passing his arm through hers he looked banteringly down uponher. 'For the first time since you left the metropolis you have walkedyourself into a color. It's becoming--and it's Murewell--so be civil!'

'Oh, nobody denies you a high place in milkmaids!' she said, with herhead in air--and they went off 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 shockran through her. There was already a look of slovenly age, about hisstooping bookworm's gait. Her companion of the night before--handsome, animated, human--where was he? The girl's heart felt a singularcontraction. Then she turned and rent herself, and Robert found her moremocking and sprightly than ever. 

At the Rectory gate Robert ran on to overtake a farmer on the road. Rosestooped to open the latch; Langham mechanically made a quick movementforward to anticipate her. Their fingers touched; she drew hers hastilyaway and passed in, an erect and dignified figure, in her curving gardenhat. 

Langham went straight up to his room, shut the door and stood beforethe open window, deaf and blind to everything save an inward storm ofsensation. 

'Fool! Idiot!' he said to himself at last, with fierce stifled emphasis, while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circumstance swept throughhim. 

That he, the poor and solitary student whose only sources ofself-respect lay in the deliberate limitations, the reasoned andreasonable renunciations he had imposed upon his life, should haveneeded the reminder of his old pupil not to fall in love with hisbrilliant, ambitious sister! His irritable self-consciousness enormouslymagnified Elsmere's motive and Elsmere's words. That golden vaguenessand softness of temper which had possessed him since his last sight ofher gave place to one of bitter tension. 

With sardonic scorn he pointed out to himself that his imagination wasstill held by, his nerves were still thrilling under, the mentalimage 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 withRobert down to its last stage, his mind had been really absorbed in somepreposterous dream he was now too self-contemptuous to analyze. Prettywell for a philosopher, in four days! What a ridiculous business islife--what a contemptible creature is man, how incapable of dignity, ofconsistency!

At luncheon he talked rather more than usual, especially on literarymatters with Robert. Rose, too, was fully occupied in giving Catherine asarcastic account of a singing lesson she had been administering in theschool that morning. Catherine winced sometimes at the tone of it. 

That afternoon Robert, in high spirits, his rod over his shoulder, hisbasket at his back, carried off his guest for a lounging afternoon alongthe river. Elsmere enjoyed these fishing expeditions like a boy. Theywere his holidays, relished all the more because he kept a jealousaccount of them with his conscience. He sauntered along, now throwing acunning and effectual fly, now resting, smoking, and chattering, as thefancy took him. He found a great deal of the old stimulus and piquancyin Langham's society, but there was an occasional irritability in hiscompanion, especially toward himself personally, which puzzled him. After a while, indeed, he began to feel himself the unreasonablycheerful person which he evidently appeared to his companion. A mereignorant enthusiast, banished for ever from the realm of pure knowledgeby certain original and incorrigible defects--after a few hours' talkwith Langham Robert's quick insight always showed him some image ofhimself resembling this in his friend's mind. 

At last he turned restive. He had been describing to Langham hisacquaintance with the Dissenting minister of the place--a strong, coarse-grained fellow of sensuous, excitable temperament, famous forhis noisy 'conversion meetings, ' and for a gymnastic dexterity in thequoting and combining of texts, unrivalled in Robert's experience. Someremark on the Dissenter's logic, made, perhaps, a little too much inthe tone of the Churchman conscious of University advantages, seemed toirritate Langham. 

'You think your Anglican logic in dealing with the Bible so superior! Onthe contrary, I am all for your Ranter. He is your logical Protestant. Historically, you Anglican parsons are where you are and what youare, because English-men, as a whole, like attempting thecontradictory--like, above all, to eat their cake and have it. Thenation has made you and maintains you for its own purposes. But that isanother matter. '

Robert smoked on a moment in silence. Then he flushed and laid down hispipe. 

'We are all fools in your eyes, I know! _À la bonne heure!_ I havebeen to the University, and talk what he is pleased to call"philosophy"--therefore Mr. Colson denies me faith. You have always, inyour heart of hearts, denied me knowledge. But I cling to both in spiteof you. '

There was a ray of defiance, of emotion, in his look. Langham met it insilence. 

'I deny you nothing, ' he said at last, slowly. 'On the contrary, Ibelieve you to be the possessor of all that is best worth having in lifeand mind. '

His irritation had all died away. His tone was one of indescribabledepression, and his great black eyes were fixed on Robert with amelancholy which startled his companion by a subtle transition Elsmerefelt himself touched with a pang of profound pity for the man who aninstant before had seemed to pose as his scornful superior. He stretchedout his hand, and laid it on his friend's shoulder. 

Rose spent the afternoon in helping Catherine with various parochialoccupations. In the course of them Catherine asked many questions aboutLong Whindale. Her thoughts clung to the hills, to the gray farmhouses, the rough men and women inside them. But Rose gave her smallsatisfaction. 

'Poor old Jim Backhouse!' said Catherine, sighing; Agnes tells me he isquite bedridden now. '

'Well, and a good thing for John, don't you think--' said Rose briskly, covering a parish library book the while in a way which made Catherine'sfingers itch to take it from her--'and for us? It's some use having acarrier now. '

Catherine made no reply. She thought of the 'noodle', fading out of lifein the room where Mary Backhouse died; she actually saw the white hair, the blurred eyes, the palsied hands, the poor emaciated limbs stretchedalong 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 measurelessindifference. 'She had another young Oxford man staying with her inJune--a missionary--and it annoyed her very much that neither Agnes norI would intervene to prevent his resuming his profession. She seemed tothink it was a question of saving him from being eaten, and apparentlyhe would have proposed to either of us. '

Catherine could not help laughing. 'I suppose she still thinks shemarried Robert and me. '

'Of course. So she did. '

Catherine colored a little, but Rose's hard lightness of tone wasunconquerable. 

'Or if she didn't, ' Rose resumed, 'nobody could have the heart to robher of the illusion. Oh, by the way, Sarah has been under warning sinceJune! Mrs. Thornburgh told her desperately that she must either throwover her young man, who was picked up drunk at the Vicarage gate onenight, or vacate the Vicarage kitchen. Sarah cheerfully accepted hermonth's notice, and is still making the Vicarage jams and walkingout with the young man every Sunday. Mr. Thornburgh sees that it willrequire a convulsion of nature to get rid either of Sarah or the youngman, and has succumbed. '

'And the Tysons? And that poor Walker girl?'

'Oh, dear me, Catherine!' said Rose, a strange disproportionate flash ofimpatience breaking through. 'Everyone in Long Whindale is always justwhere and what they were last year. I admit they are born and die, butthey do nothing else of a decisive kind. '

Catherine's hands worked away for a while, then she laid down her bookand said, lifting her clear, large eyes on her sister, --

'Was there never a time when you loved the valley, Rose?'

'Never!' cried Rose. 

Then she pushed away her work, and leaning her elbows on the tableturned her brilliant face to Catherine. There was frank mutiny in it. 

'By the way, Catherine, are you going to prevent mamma from letting mego to Berlin for the winter?'

'And after Berlin, Rose?' said Catherine, presently, her gaze bent uponher work. 

'After Berlin? What next?' said Rose recklessly. 'Well, after Berlin Ishall try to persuade mamma and Agnes, I suppose, to come and back me upin London. We could still be some months of the year at Burwood. '

Now she had said it out. But there was something else surely goading thegirl than mere intolerance of the family tradition. The hesitancy, themoral doubt of her conversation with Langham, seemed to have vanishedwholly in a kind of acrid self-assertion. 

Catherine felt a shock sweep through her, It was as though all thepieties of life, all the sacred assumptions and self-surrenders at theroot 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 it in so manywords. Probably, it seemed to her too strong, too sacred, to be oftenhandled. 

But Rose sprang up, and pacing the little work-room with herwhite wrists locked behind her, she met that argument with all theconcentrated passion which her youth had for years been storing upagainst it. Catherine sat presently overwhelmed, bewildered. Thislanguage of a proud and tameless individuality, this modern gospel ofthe divine right of self-development--her soul loathed it! And yet, since that night in Marrisdale, there had been a new yearning in her tounderstand. 

Suddenly, however, Rose stopped, lost her thread. Two figures werecrossing the lawn, and their shadows were thrown far beyond them by thefast disappearing sun. 

She threw herself down on her chair again with an abrupt--'Do you seethey have come back? We must go and dress. '

And as she spoke she was conscious of a new sensation altogether--thesensation of the wild creature lassoed on the prairie, of the birdexchanging in an instant its glorious freedom of flight for the pitilessmeshes of the net. It was stifling--her whole nature seemed to fightwith it. 

Catherine rose and began to put away the books they had been covering. She had said almost nothing in answer to Rose's tirade. When she wasready she came and stood beside her sister a moment, her lips trembling. At last she stooped and kissed the girl--the kiss of deep, suppressedfeeling--and went away. Rose made no response. 

Unmusical as she was, Catherine pined for her sister's musicthat evening. Robert was busy in his study, and the hours seemedinterminable. After a little difficult talk Langham subsided into a bookand a corner. But the only words of which he was conscious for long werethe words of an inner dialogue. 'I promised to play for her. --Go andoffer then!--Madness! let me keep away from her. If she asks me, ofcourse I will go. --She is much too proud, and already she thinks meguilty of a rudeness. '

Then, with a shrug, he would fall to his book again, abominablyconscious, however, all the while of the white figure between the lampand the open window, and of the delicate head and cheek lit up againstthe 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. 

'Good night, Mr. Langham. You are going in to smoke with Robert, Isuppose?'

Her bright eyes seemed to look him through. Their mocking hostilityseemed to say to him, as plainly as possible: 'Your purgatory isover--go, smoke and be happy!'

'I will go and help him wind up his sermon, ' he said, with an attempt ata laugh, and moved away. 

Rose went upstairs, and it seemed to her that a Greek brow, and a pairof wavering, melancholy eyes went before her in the darkness chasedalong the passages by the light she held. She gained her room, and stoodby the window, seized again by that stifling sense of catastrophe, sostrange, so undefined. Then she shook it off with an angry laugh, andwent to work to see how far her stock of light dresses had suffered byher London dissipations. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The next morning after breakfast the Rectory party were in the garden;the gentlemen smoking, Catherine and her sister scrolling arm in armamong the flowers. Catherine's vague terrors of the morning beforehad 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 walkingabout together. Robert had already made merry over his own alarms, andhers, and she admitted he was in the right. As to her talk with Rose, her deep meditative nature was slowly working upon and digesting it. Meanwhile, she was all tenderness to her sister, and there was even areaction of pity in her heart toward the lonely sceptic who had oncebeen so good to Robert. 

Robert was just bethinking himself that it was time to go off to theschool, when they were all startled by an unexpected visitor--a shortold lady, in a rusty black dress and bonnet, who entered the drive andstood staring at the Rectory party, a tiny hand in a black thread gloveshading the sun from a pair of wrinkled eyes. 

'Mrs. Darcy!' exclaimed Robert to his Wife after a moment's perplexity, and they walked quickly to meet her. 

Rose and Langham exchanged a few commonplaces till the others joinedthem, and then for a while the attention of everybody in the group washeld by the Squire's sister. She was very small, as thin and light asthistledown, ill-dressed, and as communicative as a babbling child. Theface and all the features were extraordinarily minute, and moreover, blanched and etherealized by age. She had the elfish look of a littlewithered fairy godmother. And yet through it all it was clear that shewas a great lady. There were certain poses and gestures about her, whichmade her thread gloves and rusty skirts seem a mere whim and masquerade, adopted, perhaps deliberately, from a high-bred love of congruity, tosuit the country lanes. 

She had come to ask them all to dinner at the Hall on the followingevening, and she either brought or devised on the spot the politestmessages from the Squire to the new Rector, which pleased the sensitiveRobert and silenced for the moment his various misgivings as to Mr. Wendover's advent. Then she stayed chattering, studying Rose every nowand then out of her strange little eyes, restless and glancing as abird's, which took stock also of the garden, of the flower-beds, of Elsmere's lanky frame, and of Elsmere's handsome friend in thebackground. She was most odd when she was grateful, and she was gratefulfor the most unexpected things. She thanked Elsmere effusively forcoming to live there, 'sacrificing yourself so nobly to us countryfolk, ' and she thanked him with an appreciative glance at Langham, for having his clever friends to stay with him. 'The Squire will beso pleased. My brother, you know, is very clever; oh yes, frightfullyclever!'

And then there was a long sigh, at which Elsmere cold hardly keep hiscountenance. 

She thought it particularly considerate of them to have been to see theSquire's books. It would make conversation so easy when they came todinner. 

'Though I don't know anything about his books. He doesn't like womento talk about books. He says they only pretend--even the clever ones. Except, of course, Madame de Staël. He can only say she was ugly, andI don't deny it. But I have about used up Madame de Staël, ' she added, dropping into another sigh as soft and light as a child's. 

Robert was charmed with her, and even Langham smiled. And as Mrs. Darcyadored 'clever men, ' ranking them, as the London of her youth had rankedthem, only second to 'persons of birth, ' she stood among them beaming, becoming more and more whimsical and inconsequent, more and moredeliciously incalculable, as she expanded. At last she fluttered off, only, however, to come hurrying back with little, short, scudding steps, to implore them all to come to tea with her as soon as possible in thegarden that was her special hobby, and in her last new summerhouse. 

'I build two or three every summer, ' she said. 'Now, there aretwenty-one! Roger laughs at me, ' and there was a momentary bitternessin the little eerie face, 'but how can one live without hobbies? That'sone--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 drewherself up slightly--'everybody had albums. Even the dear Queen herself!I remember how she made M. Guizot write in it; something quite stupid, after all. _Those_ hobbies--the garden and the album--are _quite_harmless, aren't they? They hurt nobody, do they?' Her voice dropped, a little, with a pathetic expostulating intonation in it, as of oneaccustomed 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, indeed, it isthe purest of all human pleasures. '

'Oh, but how _delightful!_' cried Mrs. Darcy, clasping her diminutivehands 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 anotherhobby--'

Here, however, she stopped, hung her head and looked depressed. Robert, with a little ripple of laughter, begged her to explain. 

'No, ' she said plaintively, giving a quick uneasy look at him, asthough it occurred to her that it might some day be his pastoral duty toadmonish her. 'No, it's wrong. I know it is--only I can't help it. Nevermind. You'll know soon. '

And again she turned away, when, suddenly, Rose attracted her attention, and she stretched out a thin, white, bird-claw of a hand and caught thegirl's arm. 

'There won't be much to amuse you to-morrow, my dear--and there ought tobe--you're so pretty!' Rose blushed furiously and tried to draw her handaway. 'No, no! don't mind, don't mind. I didn't at your age. Well, we'lldo our best. But your own party is so _charming!_' and she looked roundthe little circle, her gaze stopping specially at Langham before itreturned to Rose. 'After all, you will amuse each other. '

Was there any malice in the tiny withered creature? Rose, unsympatheticand indifferent as youth commonly is when its own affairs absorb it, had stood coldly outside the group which was making much of the Squire'ssister. Was it so the strange little visitor revenged herself?

At any rate Rose was left feeling as if someone had pricked her. WhileCatherine and Elsmere escorted Mrs. Darcy to the gate she turned to goin, her head thrown back staglike, her cheek still burning. Why shouldit be always open to the old to annoy the young with impunity?

Langham watched her mount the first step or two; his eye travelled upthe slim figure so instinct with pride and will--and something in himsuddenly gave way. It was like a man who feels his grip relaxing on someattacking thing he has been heading by the throat. 

He followed her hastily. 

'Must you go in? And none of us have paid our respects yet to thosephloxes in the back garden?'

Oh woman--flighty woman! An instant before, the girl, sore and bruisedin every fibre, she only half knew why, was thirsting that this manmight somehow offer her his neck that she might trample on it. He offersit and the angry instinct wavers, as a man wavers in a wrestling matchwhen his opponent unexpectedly gives ground. She paused, she turned herwhite throat. His eyes upturned met hers. 

'The phloxes did you say?' she asked, coolly redescending the steps. 'Then round here, please. '

She led the way, he followed, conscious of an utter relaxation of nerveand will which for the moment had something intoxicating in it. 

'There are your phloxes, ' she said, stopping before a splendid line ofplants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole again; her spiritsrose at a bound. 'I don't know why you admire them so much. They have noscent and they are only pretty in the lump'--and she broke off a spikeof blossom, studied it a little disdainfully, and threw it away. 

He stood beside her, the southern glow and life of which it wasintermittently capable once more lighting up the strange face. 

'Give me leave to enjoy everything countrified more than usual, ' hesaid. 'After this morning it will be so long before I see the truecountry 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 villagebeyond, 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 downthe broad grass-path which divided the garden into two equal portions. 

'But I am leaving Oxford, at any rate for a year, ' he said quietly. 'Iam going to London. '

Her delicate eyebrows went up. 'To London?' Then, in a tone of mockmeekness and sympathy: 'How you will dislike it!'

'Dislike It-why?'

'Oh! Because--' she hesitated, and then laughed her daring girlishlaugh, 'because there are so many stupid people in London; the cleverpeople are not all picked out like prize apples, as I suppose they arein Oxford. '

'At Oxford?' repeated Langham, with a kind of groan. At Oxford? Youimagine that Oxford is inhabited only by clever people?'

'I can only judge by what I see, ' she said demurely. 'Every Oxford manalways behaves as if he were the cream of the universe. Oh! I don't meanto be rude, ' she cried, losing for a moment her defiant control overherself, as though afraid of having gone too far. 'I am not the leastdisrespectful, really. When you and Robert talk, Catherine and I feelquite as humble as we ought. '

The words wore hardly out before she could have bitten the tongue thatspoke them. He had made her feel her indiscretions of Sunday night asshe deserved to feel them, and now after three minutes' conversation shewas on the verge of fresh ones. Would she never grow up, never behavelike other girls? That word _humble!_ It seemed to burn her memory. 

Before he could possibly answer she barred the way by a question asshort and dry as possible, --

What are you going to London for?'

'For many reasons, ' he said, shrugging his shoulders. 'I have told noone yet--not even Elsmere. And indeed I go back to my rooms for a whilefrom here. But as soon as Term begins, I become a Londoner. '

They had reached the gate at the bottom of the garden, and were leaningagainst it. She was disturbed, conscious, lightly flushed. It struck heras another _gaucherie_ on her part that she should have questioned himas to his plans. What did his life matter to her?

He was looking away from her, studying the half-ruined, degraded ManorHouse spread out below them. Then suddenly he turned, --

If I could imagine for a moment it would interest you to hear my reasonsfor leaving Oxford, I could not flatter myself you would see any sensein them. I _know_ that Robert will think them moonshine; nay, more, thatthey will give him pain. '

He smiled sadly. The tone of gentleness, the sudden breach in the man'smelancholy reserve affected the girl beside him for the second time, precisely as they had affected her the first time. The result oftwenty-four hours' resentful meditation turned out to be precisely_nil_. Her breath came fast, her proud look melted, and his quick sensecaught the change in an instant. 

'Are you tired of Oxford?' the poor child asked him, almost shyly. 

'Mortally!' he said, still smiling. 'And what is more important still, Oxford is tired of me. I have been lecturing there for ten years. Theyhave had more than enough of me. '

'Oh! but Robert said'--began Rose impetuously, then stopped, crimson, remembering many things Robert had said. 

'That I helped him over a few stiles?' returned Langham calmly. 'Yes, there was a time when I was capable of that--there was a time whenI could teach, and teach with pleasure. ' He paused. Rose could havescourged herself for the tremor she felt creeping over her. Why shouldit be to her so new and strange a thing that a _man_, especially a manof these years and this calibre, should confide in her, should speak toher intimately of himself? After all she said to herself angrily, witha terrified sense of importance, she was a child no longer, though hermother and sisters would treat her as one. 'When we were chatting theother night, ' he went on, turning to her again as he stood leaning onthe gate, 'do you know what it was struck me most?'

His tone had in it the most delicate, the most friendly deference. ButRose flushed furiously. 

'That girls are very ready to talk about themselves, I imagine, ' shesaid scornfully. 

'Not at all! Not for a moment! No, but it seemed to me so pathetic, sostrange that anybody should wish for anything so much as you wished forthe musician's life. '

'And you never wish for anything?' she cried. 

'When Elsmere was at college, ' he said, smiling, 'I believe I wishedhe should get a First, Class. This year I have certainly wished to saygood-by to St. Anselm's, and to turn my back for good and all on my men. I can't remember that I have wished for anything else for six years. '

She looked at him perplexed. Was his manner merely languid, or was itfrom him that the emotion she felt invading herself first started? Shetried to shake it off. 

'And _I_ am just a bundle of wants, ' she said, half-mockingly. 'Generally speaking, I am in the condition of being ready to barterall I have for some folly or other--one in the morning another in theafternoon. What have you to say to such people, Mr. Langham?

Her eyes challenged him magnificently, mostly out of sheer nervousness. But the face they rested on seemed suddenly to turn to stone before her. The life died out of it. It grew still and rigid. 

'Nothing, ' he said quietly. 'Between them and me there is a greatgulf fixed. I watch them pass, and I say to myself: "There are _theliving_--that is how they look, how they speak! Realize once for allthat you have nothing to do with them. Life is theirs--belongs to_them_. You are already outside it. Go your way, and be a spectre amongthe active and the happy no longer. "'

He leant his back against the gate. Did he see her? Was he conscious ofher at all in this rare impulse of speech which had suddenly overtakenone of the most withdrawn and silent of human beings? All her airsdropped off her; a kind of fright seized her; and involuntarily she laidher hand on his arm. 

'Don't--don't--Mr. Langham! Oh, don't say such things! Why should you beso unhappy? Why should you talk so? Can no one do anything? Why do youlive so much alone? Is there no one you care about?'

He turned. What a vision! His artistic sense absorbed it in aninstant--the beautiful tremulous lip, the drawn white brow. For a momenthe drank in the pity, the emotion of those eyes. Then a movement of suchself-scorn as even he had never felt swept through him. He gently movedaway; her hand dropped. 

'Miss Leyburn, ' he said, gazing at her, his olive face singularly pale, 'don't waste your pity on me, for Heaven's sake. Some madness made mebehave as I did just now. Years ago the same sort of idiocy betrayed meto your brother; never before or since. I ask your pardon, humbly, ' andhis tone seemed to scorch her, 'that this second fit of ranting shouldhave seized me in your presence. '

But he could not keep it up. The inner upheaval had gone too far. Hestopped and looked at her--piteously, the features quivering. It wasas though the man's whole nature had for the moment broken up, becomedisorganized. She could not bear it. Some ghastly infirmity seemed tohave been laid bare to her. She held out both her hands. Swiftly hecaught them, stooped, kissed them, let them go. It was an extraordinaryscene--to both a kind of lifetime. 

Then he gathered himself together by a mighty effort. 

'That was _adorable_ of you, ' he said with a long breath. 'But I stoleit--I despise myself. Why should you pity me? What is there to pity mefor? My troubles, such as I have, are my own making--every one. '

And he laid a sort of vindictive emphasis on the words. The tears ofexcitement were in her eyes. 

'Won't you let me be your friend?' she said, trembling, with a kind ofreproach. 'I thought--the other night--we were to be friends. Won't youtell me--'

'--more of yourself?' her eyes said, but her voice failed her. Andas for him, as he gazed at her, all the accidents of circumstance, ofindividual character, seemed to drop from her. He forgot the differenceof years; he saw her no longer as she was--a girl hardly out of theschoolroom, vain, ambitious, dangerously responsive, on whose cruderomantic sense he was wantonly playing; she was to him pure beauty, purewoman. For one tumultuous moment the cold, critical instinct whichhad been for years draining his life of all its natural energies waspowerless. It was sweet to yield, to speak, as it had never been sweetbefore. 

So, leaning over the gate, he told her the story of his life, of hiscramped childhood and youth, of his brief moment of happiness andsuccess at college, of his first attempts to make himself a power amongyounger men, of the gradual dismal failure of all his efforts, the dyingdown of desire and ambition. From the general narrative there stoodout little pictures of individual persons or scenes, clear cutand masterly--of his father, the Gainsborough churchwarden; of hisMethodistical mother, who had all her life lamented her own beauty as aspecial snare of Satan, and who since her husband's death had refused tosee her son on the ground that his opinions 'had vexed his father;' ofhis first ardent worship of knowledge, and passion to communicateit; and of the first intuitions in lecture, face to face with anundergraduate, alone in college rooms, sometimes alone on Alpineheights, of something cold, impotent, and baffling in himself, whichwas to stand for ever between him and action, between him and humanaffection; the growth of the critical pessimist sense which laid theaxe to the root of enthusiasm after enthusiasm, friendship afterfriendship--which made other men feel him inhuman, intangible, askeleton at the feast; and the persistence through it all of a kind ofhunger for life and its satisfactions, which the will was more andmore powerless to satisfy: all those Langham put into words with anextraordinary magic and delicacy of phrase. There was something in himwhich found a kind of pleasure in the long analysis, which took painsthat it should be infinitely well done. 

Rose followed him breathlessly. If she had known more of literature shewould have realized that she was witnessing a masterly dissection of oneof those many morbid growths of which our nineteenth-century psychologyis full. But she was anything but literary, and she could not analyzeher excitement. The man's physical charm, his melancholy, the intensityof what he said, affected, unsteadied her as music was apt to affecther. And through it all there was the strange, girlish pride that thisshould have befallen _her_; a first crude intoxicating sense of thepower over human lives which was to be hers, mingled with a desperateanxiety to be equal to the occasion, to play her part well. 

'So you see, ' said Langham at last, with a great effort (to do himjustice) to climb back on to some ordinary level of conversation; 'allthese transcendentalisms apart, I am about the most unfit man inthe world for a college tutor. The undergraduates regard me as ashilly-shallying pedant. On my part, ' he added dryly, 'I am not slowto retaliate. Every term I live I find the young man a less interestinganimal. I regard the whole university system as a wretched sham. Knowledge! It has no more to do with knowledge than my boots. '

And for one curious instant he looked out over the village, hisfastidious scholar's soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation, ofwhich Rose understood absolutely nothing. She stood bewildered, silent, longing childishly to speak, to influence him, but not knowing what cueto take. 

'And then--' he went on presently (but was the strange being speaking toher?)--'so long as I stay there, worrying those about me, and eating myown heart out, I am out off from the only life that might be mine, thatI might find the strength to live. '

The words were low and deliberate. After his moment of passionatespeech, and hers of passionate sympathy, she began to feel strangelyremote 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 spellof her responsiveness, he let the new wave of feeling break in words. Vaguely at first, and then with a growing flame and force he fell todescribing to her what the life of thought may be to the thinker, andthose marvellous moments which belong to that life when the mind whichhas divorced itself from desire and sense sees spread out before it thevast realms of knowledge, and feels itself close to the secret springsand sources of being. And as he spoke, his language took an ampler turn, the element of smallness which attaches to all more personal complaintvanished, his words flowed, became eloquent, inspired--till thebewildered child beside him, warm through and through as she was withyouth and passion, felt for an instant by sheer fascinated sympathy thecold spell, the ineffable prestige, of the thinker's voluntary death inlife. 

But only, for an instant. Then the natural sense of chill smote her tothe heart. 

'You make me shiver, ' she cried, interrupting him. 'Have those strangethings--I don't understand them--made you happy? Can they makeanyone happy? Oh no, no! Happiness is to be got from living, seeing, experiencing, making friends, enjoying nature! Look at the world, Mr. Langham!' she, said with bright cheeks, half smiling at her ownmagniloquence, her hand waving over the view before them. 'What has itdone that you should hate it so? If you can't put up with people youmight love nature. I--I can't be content with nature, because I wantsome life first. Up in Whindale there is too much nature, not enoughlife. But if I had got through life--if it had disappointed me--then Ishould love nature. I keep saying to the mountains at home: "Not _now_, not _now_; I want something else, but afterward if I can't get it, or ifI get too much of it, why then I will love you, live with you. You aremy second string, my reserve. You--and art--and poetry. "'

'But everything depends on feeling, ' he said softly, but lightly, asthough to keep the conversation from slipping back into those vaguedepths it had emerged from; 'and if one has forgotten how to feel--ifwhen one sees or bears something beautiful that used to stir one, onecan only say "I remember it moved me once!"--if feeling dies, like life, like physical force, but prematurely, long before the rest of the man?'

She gave a long quivering sigh of passionate antagonism. 

'Oh, I cannot imagine it!' she cried. 'I shall feel to my last hour. 'Then after a pause, in another tone, 'But, Mr. Langham, you say musicexcites you, Wagner excites you?'

'Yes, a sort of strange second life I can still get out of music, ' headmitted, smiling. 

'Well, then, ' and she looked at him persuasively, 'why not give yourselfup to music? It is so easy--so little trouble to oneself--it just takesyou and carries you away. '

Then, for the first time, Langham became conscious--probably throughthese admonitions of hers--that the situation had absurdity in it. 

'It is not my _métier_, ' he said hastily. 'The self that enjoys musicis an outer self, and can only bear with it for a short time. No, MissLeyburn, I shall leave Oxford, the college will sing a _Te Deum_, Ishall settle down in London, I shall keep a bit book going, and cheatthe years after all, I suppose, as well as most people. '

'And you will know, you will remember, ' she said faltering, reddening, her womanliness forcing the words out of her, 'that you have friends:Robert--my sister--all of us?'

He faced her with a little quick movement. And as their eyes met eachwas struck once more with the personal beauty of the other. His eyesshone--their black depths seemed all tenderness. 

'I will never forget this visit, this garden, this hour, ' he saidslowly, and they stood looking at each other. Rose felt herself sweptoff her feet into a world of tragic mysterious emotion. She all but puther hand into his again, asking him childishly to hope, to be consoled. But the maidenly impulse restrained her, and once more he leant on thegate, burying his face in his hands. 

Suddenly he felt himself utterly tired, relaxed. Strong nervous reactionset in. What had all this scene, this tragedy been about? And then inanother instant was that sense of the ridiculous again clamoring to beheard. He--the man of thirty-five--confessing himself, making a tragicscene, playing Manfred or Cain to this adorable, half-fledged creature, whom he had known five days! Supposing Elsmere had been there tohear--Elsmere with his sane eye, his laugh! As he leant over the gate, he found himself quivering with impatience to be away--by himself--outof reach--the critic in him making the most bitter, remorseless mock ofall these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in. Butfor the life of him he could not find a word to say--a move to make. Hestood hesitating, _gauche_, as usual. 

'Do you know, Mr. Langham, ' said Rose lightly, by his side, 'that thereis no time at all left for _you_ to give _me_ good advice in? That is anobligation still hanging over you. I don't mean to release you fromit, but if I don't go in now, and finish the covering of those librarybooks, the youth of Murewell will be left without any literature tillHeaven knows when!'

He could have blessed her for the tone, for the escape into commonmundanity. 

'Hang literature--hang the parish library!' he said with a laugh as hemoved after her. Yet his real inner feeling toward that parish librarywas one of infinite friendliness. 

'Hear these men of letters!' she said scornfully. But she was happy;there was a glow on her cheek. 

A bramble caught her dress; she stopped and laid her white hand to it, but in vain. He knelt in an instant, and between them they wrenched itaway, but not till those soft slim fingers had several times felt theneighborhood of his brown ones, and till there had flown through andthrough him once more, as she stooped over him, the consciousnessthat she was young, that she was beautiful, that she had pitied him sosweetly, that they were alone. 

'Rose!'

It was Catherine calling--Catherine, who stood at the end of thegrass-path, with eyes all indignation and alarm. 

Langham rose quickly from the ground. 

He felt as though the gods had saved him--or damned him--which?

CHAPTER XVII. 

Murewell Rectory during the next forty-eight hours was the scene of muchthat might have been of interest to a psychologist gifted with the powerof divining his neighbors. 

In the first place Catherine's terrors were all alive again. Roberthad never seen her so moved since those days of storm and stress beforetheir engagement. 

'I cannot bear it!' she said to Robert at night in their room. 'I cannotbear it! I hear it always in my ears: "What hast thou done with thysister?" Oh, Robert, don't mind, dear, though he is your friend. Myfather would have shrunk from him with horror--_An alien from thehousehold of faith! An enemy to the Cross of Christ!_'

She flung out the words with low intense emphasis and frowning brow, standing rigid by the window, her hands locked behind her. Robert stoodby her much perplexed, feeling himself a good deal of a culprit, butinwardly conscious that he knew a great deal more about Langham than shedid. 

'My dear wife, ' he said to her, 'I am certain Langham has no intentionof marrying. '

'Then more shame for him, ' cried Catherine flushing, 'They could nothave looked more conscious, Robert, when I found them together, if hehad just proposed. '

'What, in five days?' said Robert, more than half inclined to banterhis wife. Then he fell into meditation as Catherine made no answer. 'Ibelieve with men of that sort, ' he said at last, 'relations to womenare never more than half-real--always more or less literature--acting. Langham is tasting experience, to be bottled up for future use. '

It need hardly be said, however, that Catherine got small consolationout of this point of view. It seemed to her Robert did not take thematter quite rightly. 

'After all, darling, ' he said at last, kissing her, 'you can act dragonsplendidly; you have already--so can I. And you really cannot make mebelieve in anything very tragic in a week. '

But Catherine was conscious that she had already played the dragon hard, to very little purpose. In the forty hours that intervened between thescene in the garden and the Squire's dinner party, Robert was alwayswanting to carry off Langham, Catherine was always asking Rose's helpin some household business or other. In vain. Langham said to himselfcalmly, this time, that Elsmere and his wife were making a foolishmistake in supposing that his friendship with Miss Leyburn was anythingto be alarmed about, that they would soon be amply convinced of itthemselves, and meanwhile he should take his own way. And as for Rose, they had no sooner turned back all three from the house to the garden, than she had divined everything in Catherine's mind, and set herselfagainst her sister with a wilful force in which many a past irritationfound expression. 

How Catherine hated the music of that week! It seemed to her she neveropened the drawing-room door but she saw Langham at the piano, his headwith its crown of glossy, curling black hair, and his eyes lit withunwonted gleams of laughter and sympathy, turned toward Rose, who waseither chatting wildly to him, mimicking the airs of some professional, or taking off the ways of some famous teacher; or else, which was worse, playing with all her soul, flooding the house with sound--now as softand delicate as first love, now as full and grand as storm waves on anangry coast. And the sister going with compressed lip to her work-tablewould recognize sorely that never had the girl looked so handsome, andnever had the lightnings of a wayward genius played so finely about her. 

As to Langham, it may well be believed that after the scene in thegarden he had rated, satirized, examined himself in the most approvedintrospective style. One half of him declared that scene to have beenthe height of melodramatic absurdity; the other thought of it with athrill of tender gratitude toward the young pitiful creature who hadevoked it. After all, why, because he was alone in the world and mustremain so, should he feel bound to refuse this one gift of the gods, thedelicate, passing gift of a girl's--a child's friendship? As for her, the man's very real, though wholly morbid, modesty scouted the notion oflove on her side. _He_ was a likely person for a beauty on the thresholdof life and success to fall in love with; but she meant to be kind tohim, and he smiled a little inward indulgent smile over her very evidentcompassion, her very evident intention of reforming him, reconciling himto life. And, finally, he was incapable of any further resistance. Hehad gone too far with her. Let her do what she would with him, dearchild, with the sharp tongue and the soft heart, and the touch of geniusand brilliancy which made her future so interesting! He called his ageand his disillusions to the rescue; he posed to himself as stooping toher in some sort of elder-brotherly fashion: and if every now and thensome disturbing memory of that strange scene between them would cometo make his present _rôle_ less plausible, or some whim of hers made itdifficult to play, why then at bottom there was always the consciousnessthat sixty hours, or thereabouts, would see him safely settled in thatmorning train to London. Throughout it is probable that that morningtrain occupied the saving background of his thoughts. 

The two days passed by, and the Squire's dinner-party arrived. Aboutseven on the Thursday evening a party of four might have been seenhurrying across the park--Langham and Catherine in front, Elsmere andRose behind. Catherine had arranged it so, and Langham, who understoodperfectly that his friendship with her young sister was not at all toMrs. Elsmere's taste, and who had by now taken as much of a dislike toher as his nature was capable of, was certainly doing nothing to makehis walk with her otherwise than difficult. And every now and then somelanguid epigram would bring Catherine's eyes on him with a fiery gleamin their gray depths. Oh, fourteen more hours and she would have shutthe Rectory gate on this most unwelcome of intruders! She had never, felt so vindictively anxious to see the last of anyone in her life. There was in her a vehemence of antagonism to the man's manner, hispessimism, his infidelity, his very ways of speaking and looking, whichastonished even herself. 

Robert's eager soul meanwhile, for once irresponsive to Catherine's, wasfull of nothing but the Squire. At last the moment was come, and thatdumb spiritual friendship he had formed through these long months withthe philosopher and the _savant_ was to be tested by sight and speech ofthe man. He bade himself a hundred times pitch his expectations low. Butcuriosity and hope were keen, in spite of everything. 

Ah, those parish worries! Robert caught the smoke of Mile End inthe distance, curling above the twilight woods, and laid about himvigorously with his stick on the Squire's shrubs, as he thought of thosepoisonous hovels, those ruined lives! But, after all, it might be mereignorance, and that wretch Henslowe might have been merely trading onhis master's morbid love of solitude. 

And then--all men have their natural conceits. Robert Elsmere would nothave been the very human creature he was if, half-consciously, he hadnot counted a good deal on his own powers of influence. Life had been tohim so far one long social success of the best kind. Very likely, as hewalked on to the great house over whose threshold lay the answer to theenigma of months, his mind gradually filled with some naïve youngdream of winning the Squire, playing him with all sorts of honest arts, beguiling him back to life--to his kind. 

Those friendly messages of his through Mrs. Darcy had been verypleasant. 

'I wonder whether my Oxford friends have been doing me a good turnwith the Squire, ' he said to Rose, laughing. 'He knows the Provost, ofcourse. If they talked me over it is to be hoped my scholarship didn'tcome up. Precious little the Provost used to think of my abilities forGreek prose!'

Rose yawned a little behind her gloved hand. Robert had already talked agood deal about the Squire, and he was certainly the only person inthe group who was thinking of him. Even Catherine, absorbed in otheranxieties, had forgotten to feel any thrill at their approachingintroduction to the man who must of necessity mean so much to herselfand Robert. 

'Mr. And Mrs. Robert Elsmere, ' said the butler, throwing open the carvedand gilded doors. 

Catherine following her husband, her fine grave head and beautiful neckheld a little more erect than usual--was at first conscious of nothingbut the dazzle of western light which flooded the room, striking thestands of Japanese lilies, and the white figure of a clown in the famousWatteau opposite the window. 

Then she found herself greeted by Mrs. Darcy, whose odd habit of holdingher lace handkerchief in her right hand on festive occasions only lefther two fingers for her guests. The mistress of the Hall--as diminutiveand elf-like as ever in spite of the added dignity of her sweepingsilk and the draperies of black lace with which her tiny head wasadorned--kept tight hold of Catherine, and called a gentleman standingin a group just behind her. 

'Roger, here are Mr. And Mrs. Robert Elsmere. Mr. Elsmere, the Squireremembers you in petticoats, and I'm not sure that I don't, too. '

Robert, smiling, looked beyond her to the advancing figure of theSquire, but if Mr. Wendover heard his sister's remark he took no noticeof it. He held out his hand stiffly to Robert, bowed to Catherineand Rose before extending to them the same formal greeting, and justrecognized Langham as having met him at Oxford. 

Having done so he turned back to the knot of people with whom he hadbeen engaged on their entrance. His manner had been reserve itself. The_hauteur_ of the grandee on his own ground was clearly marked in it, andRobert could not help fancying that toward himself there had evenbeen something more. And not one of those phrases which, under thecircumstances, would have been so easy and so gracious, as to Robert'schildish connection with the place, or as to the Squire's remembranceof his father, even though Mrs. Darcy had given him a special opening ofthe kind. 

The young Rector instinctively drew himself together, like one who hadreceived a blow, as he moved across to the other side of the fireplaceto shake hands with the worthy family doctor, old Meyrick, who wasalready well known to him. Catherine, in some discomfort, for she toohad felt their reception at the Squire's hands to be a chilling one, satdown to talk to Mrs. Darcy, disagreeably conscious the while that Roseand Langham, left to themselves, were practically téte-à-téte, and that, moreover, a large stand of flowers formed a partial screen between herand them. She could see, however, the gleam of Rose's upstretched neck, as Langham, who was leaning on the piano beside her, bent down totalk to her; and when she looked next she caught a smiling motion ofLangham's head and eyes toward the Romney portrait of Mr. Wendover'sgrandmother, and was certain when he stopped afterward to say somethingto his companion, that he was commenting on a certain surface likenessthere was between her and the young 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 of the Squire--atall, imperious, loud-voiced woman, famous in London society for herrelationships, her audacity, and the salon which in one way or anothershe managed to collect round her; her dark, thin, irritable-lookinghusband; two neighboring clerics--the first, by name Longstaffe, asomewhat inferior specimen of the cloth, whom Robert cordially disliked;and the other, Mr. Bickerton, a gentle Evangelical, one of those men whohelp to ease the harshness of a cross-grained world, and to reconcilethe cleverer or more impatient folk in it to the worries of living. 

Lady Charlotte was already known by name to the Elsmeres as the auntof one of their chief friends of the neighborhood--the wife of aneighboring squire whose property joined that of Murewell Hall, one LadyHelen Varley, of whom more presently. Lady Charlotte was the sister ofthe Duke of Sedbergh, one of the greatest of Dukes, and the sister alsoof Lady Helen's mother, lady Wanless. Lady Wanless had died prematurely, and her two younger children, Helen and Hugh Flaxman, creatures both ofthem of unusually fine and fiery quality, had owed a good deal totheir aunt. There were family alliances between the Sedberghs andthe Wendovers, and Lady Charlotte made a point of keeping up with theSquire. She adored cynics and people who said piquant things, and itamused her to make her large tyrannous hand felt by the Squire's timid, crackbrained, ridiculous little sister. 

As to Dr. Meyrick, he was tall and gaunt as Don Quixote. His grayhair made a ragged fringe round his straight-backed head; he wore anold-fashioned neck-cloth; his long body had a perpetual stoop, as thoughof deference, and his spectacled look of mild attentiveness had nothingin common with that medical self-assurance with which we are allnowadays so familiar. Robert noticed presently that when he addressedMrs. Darcy he said 'Ma'am, ' making no bones at all about it; and hismanner generally was the manner of one to whom class distinctions werethe profoundest reality, and no burden at all on a naturally humbletemper. Dr. Baker, of Whindale, accustomed to trouncing Mrs. Seaton, would have thought him a poor creature. 

When dinner was announced, Robert found himself assigned to Mrs. Darcy;the Squire took Lady Charlotte. Catherine fell to Mr. Bickerton, Roseto Mr. Wynnstay, and the rest found their way in as best they could. Catherine seeing the distribution was happy for a moment, till she foundthat if Rose was covered on her right she was exposed to the full fireof the enemy on her left, in other words that Langham was placed betweenher and Dr. Meyrick. 

'Are your spirits damped at all by this magnificence?' Langham saidto his neighbor as they sat down. The table was entirely covered withJapanese lilies, save for the splendid silver candelabra from which thelight flashed, first on to the faces of the guests, and then on to thoseof the family portraits hung thickly round the room. A roof embossedwith gilded Tudor roses on a ground of black oak hung above them; arose-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 guestsilver soup-plates which had been the gift of Sarah Duchess ofMarlborough, in some moment of generosity or calculation, to theWendover of her day. 

'Oh dear no!' said Rose carelessly. 'I don't know how it is, I think Imust have been born for a palace. '

Langham looked at her, at the daring harmony of color made by thereddish gold of her hair, the warm whiteness of her skin, and thebrown-pink tints of her dress, at the crystals playing the part ofdiamonds on her beautiful neck, and remembered Robert's remarks to him. The same irony mingled with the same bitterness returned to him, and theelder brother's attitude became once more temporarily difficult. 'Who isyour neighbor?' he inquired of her presently. 

'Lady Charlotte's husband, ' she answered mischievously, under herbreath. 'One needn't know much more about him, I imagine!'

'And that man opposite?'

'Robert's pet aversion, ' she said calmly, without a change ofcountenance, so that Mr. Longstaffe opposite, who was studying her as healways studied pretty young women, stared at her through her remark insublime ignorance of its bearing. 

'And your sister's neighbor?'

'I can't hit him off in a sentence, he's too good!' said Rose laughing;'all I can say is that Mrs. Bickerton has too many children, and thechildren have too many ailments for her ever to dine out. '

'That will do; I see the existence, ' said Langham with a shrug. 'But hehas the look of an apostle, though a rather hunted one. Probably nobodyhere, except Robert, is fit to tie his shoes. '

The Squire could hardly be called _empressé_, ' said Rose, after asecond, with a curl of her red lips. Mr. Wynnstay was still safelyengaged with Mrs. Darcy, and there was a buzz of talk largely sustainedby Lady Charlotte. 

'No, ' Langham admitted; 'the manners I thought were not quite equal tothe house. '

'What possible reason could he have for treating Robert with thoseairs?' said Rose indignantly, ready enough, in girl fashion, to defendher belongings against the outer world. 'He ought to be only too glad tohave the opportunity of knowing him and making friends with him. '

'You are a sister worth having;' and Langham smiled at her as she leantback in her chair, her white arms and wrists lying on her lap, and herslightly flushed face turned toward him. They had been on these pleasantterms of _camaraderie_ all day, and the intimacy between them had beenstill making strides. 

'Do you imagine I don't appreciate Robert because I make bad jokes aboutthe choir and the clothing club?' she asked him, with a little quickrepentance passing like a shadow through her eyes. 'I always feel I playan odious part here. I can't like it--I can't--their life. I should hateit! And yet--'

She sighed remorsefully and Langham, who five minutes before could havewished her to be always smiling, could now have almost asked to fixher as she was: the eyes veiled, the soft lips relaxed in this passinginstant of gravity. 

'Ah! I forgot--' and she looked up again with light, bewitchingappeal--'there is still that question, my poor little question of Sundaynight, when I was in that fine moral frame of mind and you were neargiving me, I believe, the only good advice you ever gave in yourlife;--how shamefully you have treated it!'

One brilliant look, which Catherine for her torment caught from theother side of the table, and then in an instant the quick face changedand stiffened. Mr. Wynnstay was speaking to her, and Langham was leftto the intermittent mercies of Dr. Meyrick, who though glad to talk, wasalso quite content, apparently, to judge from the radiant placidity ofhis look, to examine his wine, study his _menu_, and enjoy the _entrées_in silence, undisturbed by the uncertain pleasures of conversation. 

Robert, meanwhile, during the first few minutes, in which Mr. Wynnstayhad been engaged in some family talk with Mrs. Darcy, had been allowinghimself a little deliberate study of Mr. Wendover across what seemedthe safe distance of a long table. The Squire was talking shortly andabruptly yet with occasional flashes of shrill, ungainly laughter, toLady Charlotte, who seemed to have no sort of fear of him and tofind him good company, and every now and then Robert saw him turn toCatherine on the other side of him and with an obvious change of manneraddress 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 thinand shrunken look. But the shoulders, which had the scholar's stoop, and the head were massive and squarely outlined. The head was speciallyremarkable for its great breadth and comparative flatness above theeyes, and for the way in which the head itself dwarfed the face, which, as contrasted with the large angularity of the skull, had a pinchedand drawn look. The hair was reddish-gray, the eyes small, but deep-setunder fine brows, and the thin-lipped wrinkled mouth and long chin had alook of hard, sarcastic strength. 

Generally the countenance was that of an old man, the furrows were deep, the skin brown and shrivelled. But the alertness and force of the man'swhole expression showed that, if the body was beginning to fail, themind was as fresh and masterful as ever. His hair, worn rather longerthan usual, his loosely-fitting dress and slouching carriage gave himan un-English look. In general he impressed Robert as a sort of curiouscombination of the foreign _savant_ with the English grandee, for whilehis manner showed a considerable consciousness of birth and socialimportance, the gulf between him and the ordinary English countrygentleman could hardly have been greater, whether in points ofappearance or, as Robert very well knew, in points of social conduct. And as Robert watched him, his thoughts flew back again to the library, to this man's past, to all that those eyes had seen and those handshad touched. He felt already a mysterious, almost a yearning, senseof acquaintance with the being who had just received him with suchchilling, such unexpected indifference. 

The Squire's manners; no doubt, were notorious, but even so, hisreception of the new Rector of the parish, the son of a man intimatelyconnected for years with the place, and with his father, and to whom hehad himself shown what was for him considerable civility by letter andmessage, was sufficiently startling. 

Robert, however, had no time to speculate on the causes of it, for Mrs. Darcy, released from Mr. Wynnstay, threw herself with glee on to herlonged-for prey, the young and interesting-looking Rector. First of allshe cross-examined him as to his literary employments, and when by dintof much questioning she had forced particulars from him, Robert's mouthtwitched as he watched her scuttling away from the subject, seizedevidently with internal terrors lest she should have precipitatedherself beyond hope of rescue into the jaws of the sixth century. Thenwith a view to regaining the lead and opening another and more promisingvein, she asked him his opinion of Lady Selden's last novel, 'Love ina Marsh;' and when he confessed ignorance she paused a moment, forkin hand, her small wrinkled face looking almost as bewildered as when, three minutes before, her rashness had well-nigh brought her face toface with Gregory of Tours as a topic of conversation. 

But she was not daunted long. With little air and bridlings infinitelydiverting, she exchanged inquiry for the most beguiling confidence. Shecould appreciate 'clever men, ' she said, for she--she too--was literary. Did Mr. Elsmere know--this in a hurried whisper, with sidelong glancesto see that Mr. Wynnstay was safely occupied with Rose, and the Squirewith Lady Charlotte--that she had once _written a novel_?

Robert, who had been posted up in many things concerning theneighborhood 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 Iwas Maid of Honor, you know. No Maid of Honor had ever written a novelbefore. It was quite an event. Dear Prince Albert borrowed a copy ofme one night to read in bed--I have it still, with the page turned downwhere 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 blusheswhich made her more weird than ever, consented. 

Then there was a pause, filled by an acid altercation between LadyCharlotte and her husband, who had not found Rose as grateful for hisattentions as, in his opinion, a pink and white nobody, at a countrydinner-party ought to be, and was glad of the diversion afforded him bysome aggressive remark of his wife. He and she differed on three mainpoints: politics; the decoration of their London house, Sir. Wynnstaybeing a lover of Louis Quinze, and Lady Charlotte a preacher of Morris;and the composition of their dinner-parties. Lady Charlotte in thepursuit of amusement and notoriety, was fond of flooding the domestichearth with all the people possessed of any sort of a name for any sortof a reason in London. Mr. Wynnstay loathed such promiscuity; and thecompany in which his wife compelled him to drink his wine had seriouslysoured a small irritable Conservative with more family pride than eithernerves or digestion. 

During the whole passage of arms, Mrs. Darcy watched Elsmere, cat-and-mouse fashion, with a further confidence burning within her, andas soon as there was once more a general burst of talk, she pounced uponhim afresh. Would he like to know that after thirty years she had justfinished her _second_ novel, unbeknown to her brother--as she mentionedhim the little face darkened, took a strange bitterness--and it was justabout to be entrusted to the post and a publisher?

Robert was all interest, of course, and inquired the subject. Mrs. Darcyexpanded still more--could, in fact, have hugged him. But, just asshe was launching into the plot a thought, apparently a scruple ofconscience, struck her. 

'Do you remember, ' she began, looking at him a little darkly, askance, 'what I said about my hobbies the other day? Now, Mr. Elsmere, will youtell me--don't mind me--don't be polite--have you ever heard peopletell stories of me? Have you ever, for instance, heard them call mea--a--tuft-hunter?'

'Never! 'said Robert heartily. 

'They might, ' she said sighing. 'I am a tuft-hunter. I can't help it. And yet we _are_ a good family, you know. I suppose it was that yearat Court, and that horrid Warham afterward. Twenty years in a cathedraltown--and a very _little_ cathedral town, after Windsor, and BuckinghamPalace, and dear Lord Melbourne! Every year I came up to town to staywith my father for a month in the season, and if it hadn't been forthat I should have died--my husband knew I should. It was the world, theflesh, and the devil, of course, but it couldn't be helped. But now, 'and she looked plaintively at her companion, as though challenging himto a candid reply: 'You _would_ be more interesting, wouldn't you, totell the truth, if you had a handle to your name?'

'Immeasurably, ' cried Robert, stifling his laughter with immensedifficulty, as he saw she had no inclination to laugh. 

'Well, yes, you know. But it isn't right;' and again she sighed. 'And soI have been writing this novel just for that. It is called--what doyou think?--"Mr. Jones. " Mr. Jones is my hero--it's so good for me, youknow, to think about a Mr. Jones. '

She looked beamingly at him. 'It must be indeed! Have you endowed himwith every virtue?'

'Oh yes, and in the end, you know--' and she bent forward eagerly--'itall comes right. His father didn't die in Brazil without children afterall, and the title--'

'What, ' cried Robert, 'so he _wasn't_ Mr. Jones?'

Mrs. Darcy looked a little conscious. 

'Well, no, ' she said guiltily, 'not just at the end. But it reallydoesn't matter--not to the story. '

Robert shook his head, with a look of protest as admonitory as he couldmake it, which evoked in her an answering expression of anxiety. Butjust at that moment a loud wave of conversation and of laughter seemedto sweep down upon them from the other end of the table, and theirlittle private eddy was effaced. The Squire had been telling ananecdote, and his clerical neighbors had been laughing at it. 

'Ah!' cried Mr. Longstaffe, throwing himself back in his chair with achuckle, 'that was an Archbishop worth having!'

'A curious story, ' said Mr. Bickerton, benevolently, the point of it, however, to tell the truth, not being altogether clear to him. It seemedto Robert that the Squire's keen eye, as he sat looking down the table, with his large nervous hands clasped before him, was specially fixedupon himself. 

'May we hear the story?' he said, bending forward. Catherine, faintlysmiling in her corner beside the host, was looking a little flushed andmoved out of her ordinary quiet. 

'It is a story of Archbishop Manners Sutton, ' said Mr. Wendover, inhis dry, nasal voice. 'You probably know it, Mr. Elsmere. After BishopHeber's consecration to the see of Calcutta, it fell to the Archbishopto make a valedictory speech, in the course of the luncheon at Lambethwhich followed the ceremony. "I have very little advice to give youas to your future career, " he said to the young Bishop, "but all thatexperience has given me I hand on to you. Place before your eyestwo precepts, and two only. One is--Preach the Gospel; and the otheris--_Put down enthusiasm!_"'

There was a sudden gleam of steely animation in the Squire's look as hetold his story, his eye all the while fixed on Robert. Robert divinedin a moment that the story had been retold for his special benefit, andthat in some unexplained way, the relations between him and the Squirewere already biased. He smiled a little with faint politeness, andfalling back into his place made no comment on the Squire's anecdote. Lady Charlotte's eyeglass, having adjusted itself for a moment to thedistant figure of the Rector, with regard to whom she had been askingDr. Meyrick for particulars quite unmindful of Catherine's neighborhood, turned back again toward the Squire. 

'An unblushing old worldling, I should call your Archbishop, ' she saidbriskly, 'and a very good thing for him that he lived when he did. Ourmodern good people would have dusted his apron for him. '

Lady Charlotte prided herself on these vigorous forms of speech, and theSquire's neighborhood generally called out an unusual crop of them. TheSquire was still sitting with his hands on the table, his great browsbent, surveying his guests. 

'Oh, of course all the sensible men are dead!' he said indifferently. 'But that is a pet saying of mine--the Church of England in a nutshell. '

Robert flushed, and after a moment's hesitation bent forward. 

'What do you suppose, ' he asked quietly, your Archbishop meant, Mr. Wendover, by enthusiasm? Nonconformity, I imagine. '

'Oh, very possibly!' and again Robert found the hawk-like glanceconcentrated on himself. 'But I like to give his remark a much widerextension. One may make it a maxim of general experience, and take it asfitting all the fools with a mission who have teased our generation--allyour Kingsleys, and Maurices, and Ruskins--everyone bent on making anysort of aimless commotion, which may serve him both as an investment forthe next world and an advertisement for this. '

'Upon my word, Squire, ' said Lady Charlotte, 'I hope you don't expectMr. Elsmere to agree with you?'

Mr. Wendover made her a little bow. 

'I have very little sanguineness of any sort in my composition, ' he saiddryly. 

'I should like to know, ' said Robert, taking no notice of this by-play;'I should like to know, Mr. Wendover, leaving the Archbishop out ofcount, what _you_ understand by this word enthusiasm in this maxim ofyours?'

'An excellent manner, ' thought Lady Charlotte, who with all hernoisiness, was an extremely shrewd woman, 'an excellent manner and anunprovoked attack. '

Catherine's trained eye, however, had detected signs in Robert's lookand bearing which were lost on Lady Charlotte, and which made herlook nervously on. As to the rest of the table, they had all fallen towatching the 'break' between the new Rector and their host with a gooddeal of curiosity. 

The Squire paused a moment before replying. 

'It is not easy to put it tersely, ' he said at last; 'but I may defineit, perhaps, as the mania for mending the roof of your right-handneighbor with straw torn off the roof of your left-hand neighbor; thecustom, in short, of robbing Peter to propitiate Paul. '

'Precisely, ' said Mr. Wynnstay, warmly; 'all the ridiculous Radicalnostrums of the last fifty years--you have hit them off exactly. Sometimes you rob more and propitiate less; sometimes you rob less andpropitiate more. But the principle is always the same. ' And mindful ofall those intolerable evenings, when these same Radical nostrums hadbeen forced down his throat at his own table he threw a pugnacious lookat his wife, who smiled back serenely in reply. There is small redressindeed for these things, when out of the common household stock the wifepossesses most of the money, and a vast proportion of the brains. 

'And the cynic takes pleasure in observing, ' interrupted the Squire, 'that the man who effects the change of balance does it in the loftiestmanner, and profits in the vulgarest way. Other trades may fail. Theagitator is always sure of his market. '

He spoke with a harsh contemptuous insistence which was graduallysetting every nerve in Robert's body tingling. He bent forward again, his long, thin frame and boyish, bright complexioned face making aneffective contrast to the Squire's bronzed and wrinkled squareness. 

'Oh, if you and Mr. Wynnstay are prepared to draw an indictment againstyour generation and all its works I have no more to say, ' he said, smiling still, though his voice had risen a little in spite of himself. 'I should be content to withdraw with my Burke into the majority. Iimagined your attack on enthusiasm had a narrower scope, but if it isto be made synonymous with social progress I give up. The subject is toobig. Only----'

He hesitated. Mr. Wynnstay was studying him with somewhat insolentcoolness; Lady Charlotte's eyeglass never wavered from his face, andhe felt through every fibre the tender, timid admonitions of his wife'seyes. 

'However, ' he went on after an instant, 'I imagine that we shouldfind it difficult anyhow to discover common ground. I regard yourArchbishop's maxim, Mr. Wendover, ' and his tone quickened and grewlouder, 'as first of all a contradiction in terms; and in the nextplace, to me, almost all enthusiasms are respectable!'

'You are one of those people, I see, ' returned Mr. Wendover, after apause, with the same nasal emphasis and the same hauteur, 'whoimagine we owe civilization to the heart; that mankind has _felt_ itsway--literally. The school of the majority, of course--I admit it amply. I, on the other hand, am with the benighted minority who believe thatthe world, so far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by thehead, ' and he flung, the noun at Robert scornfully. 'But I am quiteaware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all thekicks, and the philanthropists, to give them their own label, all thehalfpence. '

The impassive tone had gradually warmed to a heat which wasunmistakable. Lady Charlotte looked on with interesting relish. To herall society was a comedy played for her entertainment, and she detectedsomething more dramatic than usual in the juxtaposition of these twomen. That young Rector might be worth looking after. The dinners inMartin Street were alarming in want of fresh blood. As for poor Mr. Bickerton, he had begun to talk hastily to Catherine, with a sense ofsomething tumbling about his ears, while Mr. Longstaffe, eyeglassin hand, surveyed the table with a distinct sense of pleasurableentertainment. He had not seen much of Elsmere yet, but it was as clearas daylight that the man was a firebrand, and should be kept in order. 

Meanwhile there was a pause between the two main disputants; thestorm-clouds were deepening outside, and rain had begun to patter on thewindows. Mrs. Darcy was just calling attention to the weather, when theSquire unexpectedly returned to the charge. 

'The one necessary thing in life, ' he said, turning to Lady Charlotte, a slight irritating smile playing round his strong mouth, 'is--not to beduped. Put too much faith in these things the altruists talk of, andyou arrive one day at the condition of Louis XIV. After the battle ofRamillies: "Dieu a donc oublié tout ce que j'ai fait pour lui?" Readyour Renan; remind yourself at every turn that it is quite possibleafter all the egotist may turn out to be in the right of it, and youwill find at any rate that the world gets on excellently well withoutyour blundering efforts to set it straight. And so we get back to theArchbishop's maxim--adapted, no doubt, to English requirements, ' andhe shrugged his great shoulders expressively: '_Pace_ Mr. Elsmere, ofcourse, and the rest of our clerical friends!'

Again he looked down the table, and the strident voice sounded harsherthan ever as it rose above the sudden noise of the storm outside. Robert's bright eyes were fixed on the Squire, and before Mr. Wendoverstopped, Catherine could see the words of reply trembling on his lips. 

'I am well content, ' he said, with a curious dry intensity of tone. 'Igive you your Renan. Only leave us poor dupes our illusions. We will notquarrel with the division. With you all the cynics of History; with usall the "scorners of the ground" from the world's beginning until now!'

The Squire made a quick, impatient movement. Mr. Wynnstay lookedsignificantly at his wife, who dropped her eyeglass with a littleirrepressible smile. 

As for Robert, leaning forward with hastened breath, it seemed to himthat his eyes and the Squire's crossed like swords. In Robert's mindthere had arisen a sudden passion of antagonism. Before his eyes therewas a vision of a child in a stifling room, struggling with mortaldisease, imposed upon her, as he hotly reminded himself, by this man'sculpable neglect. The dinner-party, the splendor of the room, theconversation, excited a kind of disgust in him. If it were not forCatherine's pale face opposite, he could hardly have maintained hisself-control. 

Mrs. Darcy, a little bewildered, and feeling that things were not goingparticularly well, thought it best to interfere. 

'Roger, ' she said, plaintively, 'you must not be so philosophical. It'stoo 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 inParis. They never minded a bit--they used to laugh: "Monsieur votrefrère, madame, c'est un homme qui a trop lu, " they would say to me whenI 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 toLady Charlotte, and Rose to Langham. 

'Why didn't you support Robert?' she said to him, impulsively, with adissatisfied 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 gateagain--the touch of his lips on her hand. She turned from him hastily tostoop for her fan which had slipped away. It was only Catherine who, forher annoyance, saw the scarlet flush leap into the fair face. An instantlater Mrs. Darcy had given the signal. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

After dinner, Lady Charlotte fixed herself at first on Catherine, whose quiet dignity during the somewhat trying ordeal of the dinner hadimpressed her, but a few minutes' talk produced in her the convictionthat without a good deal of pains--and why should a Londoner, accustomedto the cream of things, take pains with a country clergyman's wife?--shewas not likely to get much out of her. Her appearance, promised more, Lady Charlotte thought, than her conversation justified, and she lookedabout for easier game. 

'Are you. Mr. Elsmere's sister?' said a loud voice over Rose's head; andRose, who had been turning over an illustrated book, with a mindwholly detached from it, looked up to see Lady Charlotte's massive formstanding over her. 

'No, his sister-in-law, ' said Rose, flushing in spite of herself, forLady Charlotte was distinctly formidable. 

'Hum, ' said her questioner, depositing herself beside her. 'I neversaw two sisters more unlike. You have got a very argumentativebrother-in-law. '

Rose said nothing, partly from awkwardness, partly from risingantagonism. 

'Did you agree with him?' asked Lady Charlotte, putting up her glass andremorselessly 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 rightside'. It is the fashion nowadays to have enthusiasms. I suppose youmuddle about among the poor like other people?'

'I know nothing about the poor, ' said Rose. 

'Oh, then, I suppose you feel yourself effective enough in some otherline?' said the other, coolly. 'What is it--lawn tennis, or privatetheatricals, or--h'em--prettiness?' And again the eyeglass went up. 

'Whichever you like, ' said Rose, calmly, the scarlet on her cheekdeepening, while she resolutely reopened her book. The manner of theother had quite effaced in her all that sense of obligation, as from theyoung to the old, which she had been very carefully brought up in. Neverhad she beheld such an extraordinary woman. 

'Don't read, ' said Lady Charlotte complacently. 'Look at me. It'syour duty to talk to me, you know; and I won't make myself any moredisagreeable than I can help. I generally make myself disagreeable, andyet, after all, there are a great many people who like me. '

Rose turned a countenance rippling with suppressed laughter on hercompanion. Lady Charlotte had a large fair face, with a great deal ofnose and chin, and an erection of lace and feathers on her head thatseemed in excellent keeping with the masterful emphasis of thosefeatures. Her eyes stared frankly and unblushingly at the world, onlysoftened at intervals by the glasses which were so used as to makethem a most effective adjunct to her conversation. Socially she wasabsolutely devoid of weakness or of shame. She found society extremelyinteresting, and she always struck straight for the desirable thingin it, making short work of all those delicate tentative processes ofacquaintanceship by which men and women ordinarily sort themselves. Roses brilliant, vivacious beauty had caught her eye at dinner; sheadored beauty as she adored anything effective, and she always took aqueer pleasure in bullying her way into a girl's liking. It is agreat thing to be persuaded that at bottom you have a good heart. Lady Charlotte was so persuaded, and allowed herself many things inconsequence. 

'What shall we talk about?' said Rose demurely. 'What a magnificent oldhouse this is!'

'Stuff and nonsense! I don't want to talk about the house. I am sickto death of it. And if your people live in the parish you are, too. Ireturn to my question. Come, tell me, what is your particular line inlife? I am sure you have one, by your face. You had better tell me; itwill do you no harm. '

Lady Charlotte settled herself comfortably on the sofa, and Rose, seeingthat there was no chance of escaping her tormentor, felt her spiritsrise to an encounter. 

'Really--Lady Charlotte--' and she looked down, and then up, with afeigned bashfulness--'I--I--play a little. '

'Humph!' said her questioner again, rather disconcerted by the obviousmissishness of the answer. 'You do, do you? More's the pity. No womanwho respects herself ought to play the piano nowadays. A professionaltold me the other day that until nineteen-twentieths of the professionwere strung up, there would be no chance for the rest, and, as foramateurs, there is simply _no_ room for them whatever. I don't conceiveanything more passé than amateur pianoforte playing!'

'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 month twitching. 

'Mrs. Darcy, ' said her neighbor raising her voice. 'This young ladytells me she plays something; what is it?'

Mrs. Darcy looked in a rather helpless way at Catherine. She wasdreadfully afraid of Lady Charlotte. 

Catherine, with a curious reluctance, gave the required information, andthen Lady Charlotte insisted that the violin should be sent for, as ithad 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 creaturewho came with you? I should not have imagined him capable of anythingsociable. Letitia, shall I send my maid to the Rectory, or can you sparea man?'

Mrs. Darcy hurriedly gave orders, and Rose, inwardly furious, wasobliged to submit. Then Lady Charlotte, having gained her point, andsecured a certain amount of diversion for the evening, lay back on thesofa, used her fan, and yawned till the gentlemen appeared. 

When they came in, the precious violin which Rose never trusted to anyother hands but her own without trepidation had just arrived, and itsowner, more erect than usual, because more nervous, was trying to propup a dilapidated music-stand which Mrs. Darcy had unearthed for her. AsLangham came in, she looked up and beckoned to him. 

'Do you see?' she said to him impatiently, 'They have made me play. Willyou accompany me? I am very sorry, but there is no one else. '

If there was one thing Langham loathed on his own account, it wasany sort of performance in public. But the half-plaintive look whichaccompanied her last words showed that she knew it, and he did his bestto be amiable. 

'I am altogether at your service, ' he said, sitting down withresignation. 

'It is all that tiresome woman, Lady Charlotte Wynnstay, ' she whisperedto him behind the music-stand. I never saw such a person in my life. '

'Macaulay's Lady, Holland without the brains, ' suggested Langham withlanguid vindictiveness as he gave her the note. 

Meanwhile Mr. Wynnstay and the Squire sauntered in together. 

'A village Norman-Néruda?' whispered the guest to the host. The Squireshrugged his shoulders. 

'Hush!' said Lady Charlotte, looking severely at her husband. Mr. Wynnstay's smile instantly disappeared; he leant against the doorwayand stared sulkily at the ceiling. Then the musicians began, on someHungarian melodies put together by a younger rival of Brahms. They hadnot played twenty bars before the attention of everyone in the room wasmore or less seized--unless we except Mr. Bickerton, whose children, good soul, were all down with some infantile ailment or other, and whowas employed in furtively watching the clock all the time to see whenit would be decent to order round the pony-carriage which would take himback to his pale overweighted spouse. 

First came wild snatches of march music, primitive, savage, non-European; then a waltz of the lightest, maddest rhythm, brokenhere and there by strange barbaric clashes; then a song, plaintiveand clinging, rich in the subtlest shades and melancholies of modernfeeling. 

'Ah, but _excellent!_' said Lady Charlotte once, under her breath, at apause; 'and what _entrain_--what beauty!'

For Rose's figure was standing thrown out against the dusky blue ofthe tapestried walls, and from that delicate relief every curve, everygrace, each tint--hair and cheek and gleaming arm gained an enchantingpicturelike distinctness. There was jessamine at her waist and amongthe gold of her hair; the crystals on her neck, and on the little shoethrown forward beyond her dress, caught the lamplight. 

'How can that man play with her and not fall in love with her?' thoughtLady Charlotte to herself, with a sigh perhaps for her own youth. 'Helooks 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. Whenthe sounds ceased there was silence for a moment. Mrs. Darcy, who hada piano in her sitting-room whereon she strummed every morning with hertiny rheumatic fingers, and who had, as we know, strange little veins ofsentiment running all about her, stared at Rose with open mouth. So didCatherine. Perhaps it was then for the first time that, touched by thispublicity this contagion of other people's feelings, Catherine realizedfully against what a depth of stream she had been building her uselessbarriers. 

'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 delightedwith his little sister-in-law's success, went smiling to talk of itto Mrs. Darcy, while Catherine with a gentle coldness answered Mr. Longstaffe's questions on the same theme. 

'Shall we?' said Rose, panting a little, but radiant--looking down onher companion. 

'Command me!' he said, his grave lips slightly smiling, his eyes takingin the same vision that had charmed Lady Charlotte's. What a 'child ofgrace and genius!'

'But do you like it?' she persisted. 

'Like it--like accompanying your playing?'

'Oh no, '--impatiently; 'showing off, I mean. I am quite ready to stop. '

'Go on; go on!' he said, laying his finger on the A. 'You have drivenall my _mauvaise honte_ away. I have not heard you play so splendidlyyet. '

She flushed all over. 'Then we will go on, ' she said briefly. 

So they plunged again into an Andante and Scherzo of Beethoven. How thegirl threw herself into it, bringing out the wailing love-song of theAndante, the dainty tripping mirth of the Scherzo, in a way whichset every nerve in Langham vibrating! Yet the art of it was whollyunconscious. The music was the mere natural voice of her inmost self. A comparison full of excitement was going on in that self between herfirst impressions of the man beside her, and her consciousness of him, as he seemed to-night human, sympathetic, kind. A blissful sense of amission filled the young silly soul. Like David, she was pitting herselfand her gift against those dark powers which may invade and paralyze alife. 

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, mighthave been heard laying down the law to Catherine as to how her sister'sremarkable musical powers might be best perfected, Langham turned to hiscompanion, --

'Do you know that for years I have enjoyed nothing so much as the musicof the last two days?'

His black eyes shone upon her, transfused with something infinitely softand friendly. She smiled. 'How little I imagined that first evening thatyou cared for music!'

'Or about anything else worth caring for?' he asked her, laughing, butwith always that little melancholy note in the laugh. 

'Oh, if you like, ' she said, with a shrug of her white shoulders. 'Ibelieve you talked to Catherine the whole of the first evening, whenyou weren't reading "Hamlet" in the corner, about the arrangements forwomen's education at Oxford. '

'Could I have found a more respectable subject?' he inquired of her. 

'The adjective is excellent, ' she said with a little face, as she puther violin into its case. 'If I remember right, Catherine and I felt itpersonal. None of us were ever educated, except in arithmetic, sewing, English history, the Catechism, and "Paradise Lost. "--I taught myselfFrench at seventeen, because one Molière wrote plays in it, and Germanbecause of Wagner. But they are _my_ French and _my_ German. I wouldn'tadvise 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 Beethovenagain?'

'To-morrow morning if you have a conscience, ' she said dryly; 'wemurdered one or two passages in fine style. '

He looked at her, startled. 'But I go by the morning train!' There wasan instant 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 meetingin London I must get to to-morrow afternoon. '

'Then we shan't finish these Hungarian duets, ' she said slowly, turningaway from him to collect some music on the piano. 

Suddenly a sense of the difference between the week behind him, with allits ups and downs, its quarrels, its _ennuis_, its moments of delightfulintimity, of artistic freedom and pleasure, and those threadbare, monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow, awoke inhim a mad inconsequent sting of disgust, of self-pity. 

'No, we shall finish nothing, ' he said in a voice which only she couldhear, his hands lying on the keys; 'there are some whose destiny it isnever to finish--never to have enough--to leave the feast on the tablesand all the edges of life ragged!'

Her lips trembled. They were far away, in the vast room, from the groupLady Charlotte was lecturing. Her nerves were all unsteady with musicand feeling, and the face looking down on him had grown pale. 

'We make our own destiny, ' she said impatiently. '_We_ choose. It is allour own doing. Perhaps destiny begins things--friendship, for instance;but afterward it is absurd to talk of anything but ourselves. We keepour friends, our chances, our--our joys, ' she went on hurriedly, tryingdesperately to generalize, 'or we throw them away wilfully, because wechoose. '

Their eyes were riveted on each other. 

'Not wilfully, ' he said under his breath. 'But--no matter. May I takeyou at your word, Miss Leyburn? Wretched shirker that I am, whom evenRobert's charity despairs of: have I made a friend? Can I keep her?'

Extraordinary spell of the dark effeminate face--of its rare smile! Thegirl forgot all pride, all discretion. 'Try, ' she whispered, and as hishand, stretching along the keyboard, instinctively felt for hers, forone instant--and another, and another--she gave it to him. 

'Albert, come here!' exclaimed Lady Charlotte, beckoning to her husband;and Albert, though with a bad grace, 'obeyed. 'Just go and ask that girlto come and talk with me, will you? Why on earth didn't you make friendswith her at dinner?'

The husband made some irritable answer, and the wife laughed. 

'Just like you!' she said, with a good humor which seemed to him solelycaused by the fact of his non-success with the beauty at table. 'Youalways expect to kill at the first stroke. I mean to take her in tow. Goand bring her here. '

Mr. Wynnstay sauntered off with as much dignity as his stature wascapable of. He found Rose tying up her music at one end of the piano, while Langham was preparing to shut up the keyboard. 

There was something appeasing in the girl's handsomeness. Mr. Wynnstaylaid down his airs, paid her various compliments, and led her off toLady Charlotte. 

Langham stood by the piano, lost in a kind of miserable dream. Mrs. Darcy fluttered up to him. 

'Oh, Mr. Langham, you play so _beautifully!_ Do Play a solo!'

He subsided onto the music-bench obediently. On any ordinary occasiontortures could not have induced him to perform in a room full ofstrangers. He had far too lively and fastidious a sense of the futilityof the amateur. 

But he played-what, he knew not. Nobody listened but Mrs. Darcy, who satlost in an armchair a little way off, her tiny foot beating time. Rosestopped talking, started, tried to listen. But Lady Charlotte had hadenough music, and so had Mr. Longstaffe, who was endeavoring to jokehimself into the good graces of the Duke of Sedbergh's sister. The dinof conversation rose at the challenge of the piano, and Langham was soonovercrowded. 

Musically, it was perhaps as well, for the player's inward tumult was sogreat, that what his hands did he hardly knew or cared. He felt himselfthe greatest criminal unhung. Saddenly, through all that wilful mist ofepicurean feeling, which had been enwrapping him, there had pierced asharp illumining beam from a girl's eyes aglow with joy, with hope, withtenderness. In the name of Heaven, what had this growing degeneracy ofevery moral muscle led him to now? What! smile and talk, and smile--andbe a villain all the time? What! encroach on a young life, likesome creeping parasitic growth, taking all, able to give nothing inreturn--not even one genuine spark of genuine passion? Go philanderingon till a child of nineteen shows you her warm impulsive heart, play onher imagination, on her pity, safe all the while in the reflection thatby the next day you will be far away, and her task and yours will bealike to forget! He shrinks from himself as one shrinks from a mancapable of injuring anything weak and helpless. To despise the world'ssocial code, and then to fall conspicuously below its simplest articles;to aim at being pure intelligence, pure open-eyed rationality, and noteven to succeed in being a gentleman, as the poor commonplace worldunderstands it! Oh, to fall at her pardon before parting for ever!But no--no more posing; no more dramatizing. How can he get away mostquietly--make least sign? The thought of that walk home in the darknessfills him with a passion of irritable impatience. 

'Look at that Romney, Mr. Elsmere; just look at it!' cried Dr. Meyrickexcitedly; 'did you ever see anything finer? There was one of thoseLondon dealer fellows down here last summer offered the Squire fourthousand pounds down on the nail for it. '

In this way Meyrick had been taking Robert round the drawing-room, doingthe honors of every stick and stone in it, his eyeglass in his eye, histhin old face shining with pride over the Wendover possessions. And sothe two gradually neared the oriel where the Squire and Mr. Bickertonwere standing. 

Robert was in twenty minds as to any further conversation with theSquire. After the ladies had gone, while every nerve in him was stilltingling with anger, he had done his best to keep up indifferent talk onlocal matters with Mr. Bickerton. Inwardly he was asking himself whetherhe could ever sit at the Squire's table and eat his bread again. Itseemed to him that they had had a brush which would be difficult toforget. And as he sat there before the Squire's wine, hot with righteousheat, all his grievances against the man and the landlord crowdedupon him. A fig for intellectual eminence if it make a man oppress hisinferiors and bully his equals!

But as the minutes passed on, the Rector had cooled down. The sweet, placable, scrupulous nature began to blame itself. 'What, play yourcards so badly, give up the game so rashly, the very first round?Nonsense! Patience and try again. There must be some cause in thebackground. No need to be white-livered, but every need, in the case ofsuch a man as the Squire, to take no hasty, needless offence. '

So he had cooled and cooled, and now here were Meyrick and he close tothe Squire and his companion. The two men, as the Rector approached, were discussing some cases of common enclosure that had just takenplace in the neighborhood. Robert listened a moment, then struck in. Presently, when the chat dropped, he began to express to the Squire hispleasure in the use of the library. His manner was excellent, courtesyitself, but without any trace of effusion. 

'I believe, ' he said at last, smiling, 'my father used to be allowed thesame privileges. If so, it quite accounts for the way in which he clungto Murewell. '

'I had never the honor of Mr. Edward Elsmere's acquaintance, ' said theSquire frigidly. 'During the time of his occupation of the Rectory I wasnot in England. '

'I know. Do you still go much to Germany? Do you keep up your relationswith Berlin?'

'I have not seen Berlin for fifteen years, ' said the Squire briefly, hiseyes in their wrinkled sockets fixed sharply on the man who ventured toquestion him about himself, uninvited. There was an awkward pause. Thenthe Squire turned again to Mr. Bickerton. 

'Bickerton, have you noticed how many trees that storm of last Februaryhas brought down at the northeast corner of the park?'

Robert was inexpressibly galled by the movement, by the wordsthemselves. The Squire had not yet addressed a single remark of anykind about Murewell to him. There was a deliberate intention to excludeimplied in this appeal to the man who was not the man of the place, onsuch a local point, which struck Robert very forcibly. 

He walked away to where his wife was sitting. 

'What time is it?' whispered Catherine, looking up at him. 

'Time to go, ' he returned, smiling, but she caught the discomposure inhis 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, ' said she. 'Where is Rose?'

A minute later there was a general leave-taking. Oddly enough it foundthe Squire in the midst of a conversation with Langham. As though toshow more clearly that it was the Rector personally who was in his blackbooks, Mr. Wendover had already devoted some cold attention to Catherineboth at and after dinner, and he had no sooner routed Robert than hemoved in his slouching way across from Mr. Bickerton to Langham. Andnow, another man altogether, he was talking and laughing--describingapparently a reception at the French Academy--the epigrams flying, theharsh face all lit up, the thin bony fingers gesticulating freely. 

The husband and wife exchanged glances as they stood waiting, while ladyCharlotte, in her loudest voice, was commanding Rose to come and seeher in London any Thursday after the first of November. Robert was verysore. Catherine passionately 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, ' Wynnstayexclaimed to his wife as the Elsmere party left the room, the Squireconducting Catherine with a chill politeness. 'And now, I suppose, youwill be having her up in town, and making some young fellow who oughtto know better fall in love with her. I am told the father was agrammar-school headmaster. Why can't you leave people where theybelong?'

'I have already pointed out to you, ' Lady Charlotte observed calmly, 'that the world has moved on since you were launched into it. I can'tkeep up class-distinctions to please you; otherwise, no doubt, beingthe devoted wife I am, I might try. However, my dear, we both have ourfancies. You collect Sèvres china with or without a pedigree, ' and shecoughed dryly; 'I collect promising young women. On the whole, I thinkmy hobby is more beneficial to you than yours is profitable to me. '

Mr. Wynnstay was furious. Only a week before he had been childishly, shamefully taken in by a Jew curiosity dealer from Vienna, to his wife'shuge amusement. If looks could have crushed her, Lady Charlotte wouldhave been crushed. But she was far too substantial as she lay back inher chair, one large foot crossed over the other, and, as her husbandvery well knew, the better man of the two. He walked away, murmuringunder his mustache words that would hardly have borne publicity, whileLady Charlotte, through her glasses, made a minute study of a littleFrench portrait hanging some two yards from her. 

Meanwhile the Elsmere party were stepping out into the warm damp of thenight. The storm had died away, but a soft Scotch mist of rain filledthe air. Everything was dark, save for a few ghostly glimmerings throughthe trees of the avenue; and there was a strong sweet smell of wet earthand grass. Rose had drawn the hood of her waterproof over her head, and her face gleamed an indistinct whiteness from its shelter. Oh thisleaping pulse--this bright glow of expectation! How had she made thatstupid blunder about his going? Oh, it was Catherine's mistake, ofcourse, at the beginning. But what matter? Here, they were in the dark, side by side, friends now, friends always. Catherine should not spoiltheir last walk together. She felt a passionate trust that he would notallow it. 

'Wifie!' exclaimed Robert, drawing her a little apart, 'do you knowit has just occurred to me that, as I was going through the park thisafternoon by the lower footpath, I crossed Henslowe coming away fromthe house. Of course this is what has happened! _He_ has told his storyfirst. No doubt just before I met him he had been giving the Squire afull and particular account--_à la_ Henslowe--of my proceedings since Icame. Henslowe lays it on thick--paints with a will. The Squire receivesme afterward as the meddlesome, pragmatical priest he understands me tobe; puts his foot down to begin with; and, _hinc illæ lacrymæ_. It's asclear as daylight! I thought that man had an odd twist of the lip as hepassed me. '

'Then a disagreeable evening will be the worst of it, ' said Catherineproudly. 'I imagine, Robert, you can defend yourself against that badman?'

'He has got the start; he has no scruples; and it remains to be seenwhether the Squire has a heart to appeal to, ' replied the young Rectorwith 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, unmanageable, inexplicable being!'

Elsmere sighed aloud. Like all quick imaginative natures he was easilydepressed, and the Squire's sombre figure had for the moment darkenedhis whole horizon. Catherine laid her check against his arm in thedarkness, consoling, remonstrating, every other thought lost in hersympathy with Robert's worries. Langham and Rose slipped out of herhead; Elsmere's step had quickened as it always did when he was excited, and she kept up without thinking. 

When Langham found the others had shot ahead in the darkness, and heand his neighbor were _tête-à-tête_, despair seized him. But for oncehe showed a sort of dreary presence of mind. Suddenly, while the girlbeside him was floating in a golden dream of feeling he plunged with astiff deliberation born of his inner conflict into a discussion of theGerman system of musical training. Rose, startled, made some vague andflippant reply. Langham pursued the matter. He had some informationabout it, it appeared, garnered up in his mind, which might perhaps someday prove useful to her. A St. Anselm's undergraduate, one Dashwood, anold pupil of his, had been lately at Berlin for six months, studyingat the Conservatorium. Not long ago, being anxious to become aschoolmaster, he had written to Langham for a testimonial. His letterhad contained a full account of his musical life. Langham proceeded torecapitulate it. 

His careful and precise report of hours, fees, masters, and methodslasted till they reached the park gate. He had the smallest powers ofsocial acting, and his _rôle_ was dismally overdone. The girl beside himcould not know that he was really defending her from himself. His coldaltered manner merely seemed to her a sudden and marked withdrawal ofhis petition for her friendship. No doubt she had received that petitiontoo effusively--and he wished there should be no mistake. 

What a young smarting soul went through in that half mile of listeningis better guessed than analyzed. There are certain moments of shame, which only women know, and which seem to sting and burn out of youth allits natural sweet self-love. A woman may outlive them, but never forgetthem. If she pass through one at nineteen her cheek will grow hot overit at seventy. Her companion's measured tone, the flow of deliberatespeech which came from him, the nervous aloofness of his attitude--everydetail in that walk seemed to Rose's excited sense an insult. 

As the park gate swung behind them she felt a sick longing forCatherine's shelter. Then all the pride in her rushed to the rescue andheld that swooning dismay at the heart of her in check. And forthwithshe capped Langham's minute account of the scale-method of a famousBerlin pianist by some witty stories of the latest London prodigy, achild-violinist, incredibly gifted, dirty, and greedy, whom she had madefriends with in town. The girl's voice ran out sharp and hard under thetrees. Where, in fortune's name, were the lights of the Rectory? Wouldthis nightmare never come to an end?

At the Rectory gate was Catherine waiting for them, her whole soul onerepentant alarm. 

'Mr. Langham, Robert has gone to the study; will you go and smoke withhim?'

'By all means. Good-night, then, Mrs. Elsmere. '

Catherine gave him her hand. Rose was trying hard to fit the lock of thegate into the hasp, and had no hand free. Besides, he did not approachher. 

'Good-night!' she said to him over her shoulder. 

'Oh, and Mr. Langham!' Catherine called after him as he strode away, 'will you settle with Robert about the carriage?'

He turned, made a sound of assent, and went on. 

'When?' asked Rose lightly. 

'For the nine-o'clock train. '

'There should be a law against interfering with people's breakfasthour, ' said Rose; 'though, to, be sure, a guest may as well get himselfgone early and be done with it. How you and Robert raced, Cathie! We didour best to catch you up, but the pace was too good. '

Was there a wild taunt, a spice of malice in the girl's reckless voice?Catherine could not see her in the darkness, but the sister felt asudden trouble invade her. 

'Rose darling, you are not tired?'

'Oh dear no! Good-night, sleep well. What a goose Mrs. Darcy is!'

And, barely submitting to be kissed, Rose ran up the steps and upstairs. 

Langham and Robert smoked till midnight. Langham for the first time gaveElsmere an outline of his plans for the future, and Robert, filled withdismay at this final breach with Oxford and human society, and theonly form of practical life possible to such a man, threw himself intoprotests more and more vigorous and affectionate. Langham listenedto them at first with sombre silence, then with an impatience whichgradually reduced Robert to a sore puffing at his pipe. There was along space during which they sat together, the ashes of the little fireRobert 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 sprangup 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 saton, his face in his hands, staring dolefully at the fire. It seemed tohim the world was going crookedly. A day on which a man of singularlyopen and responsive temper makes a new enemy, and comes nearer thanever before to losing an old friend, shows very blackly to him in thecalendar, and by way of aggravation, a Robert Elsmere says to himselfat once, that somehow or other there must be fault of his own in thematter. 

Rose!--pshaw! Catherine little knows what stuff that cold, intangiblesoul is made of. 

Meanwhile, Langham was standing heavily, looking out into the night. Thedifferent elements in the mountain of discomfort that weighed upon himwere so many that the weary mind made no attempt to analyze them. He hada sense of disgrace, of having stabbed something gentle that had leantupon him, mingled with a strong intermittent feeling of unutterablerelief. Perhaps his keenest regret was that, after all it had not beenlove! He had offered himself up to a girl's just contempt, but he had norecompense in the shape of a great addition to knowledge, to experience. Save for a few doubtful moments at the beginning, when he had all butsurprised himself in something more poignant, what he had been consciousof had been nothing more than a suave and delicate charm of sentiment, asubtle surrender to one exquisite æsthetic impression after another. Andthese things in other relations, the world had yielded him before. 

'Am I sane?' he muttered to himself. 'Have I ever been sane? Probablynot. The disproportion between my motives and other men's is too greatto be normal. Well at least I am sane enough to shut myself up. Longafter that beautiful child has forgotten she ever saw me I shall stillbe doing penance in the desert. '

He threw himself down beside the open window with a groan. An hour laterhe lifted a face blanched and lined, and stretched out his band withavidity toward a book on the table. It was an obscure and difficultGreek text, and he spent the greater part of the night over it, rekindling in himself with feverish haste the embers of his one lastingpassion. 

Meanwhile, in a room overhead, another last scene in this most futileof dramas was passing. Rose, when she came in, had locked the door, tornoff her dress and her ornaments, and flung herself on the edge of herbed, her hands on her knees, her shoulders drooping, a fierce red spoton either cheek. There for an indefinite time she went through a tortureof self-scorn. The incidents of the week passed before her one by one;her sallies, her defiances, her impulsive friendliness, the élan, thehappiness 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 behaving like aforward child--had gone too far and must be admonished--made to feelaccordingly! The poisoned arrow pierced deeper and deeper into thegirl's shrinking pride. The very foundations of self-respect seemedoverthrown. 

Suddenly her eye caught a dim and ghostly reflection of her own figure, as she sat with locked hands on the edge of the bed, in a long glassnear, the only one of the kind which the Rectory household possessed. Rose sprang up, snatched at the candle, which was flickering in the airof the open window, and stood erect before the glass, holding the candleabove her heart. 

What the light showed her was a slim form in a white dressing-gown, thatfell loosely about it; a rounded arm up-stretched; a head, still crownedwith its jessamine wreath, from which the bright hair fell heavilyover shoulders and bosom; eyes, under frowning brows, flashing a proudchallenge at what they saw; two lips, 'indifferent red' just open to letthe quick breath come through--all thrown into the wildest chiaroscuroby the wavering candle flame. 

Her challenge was answered. The fault was not there. Her arm dropped. She put down the light. 

'I _am_ handsome, ' she said to herself, her mouth quivering childishly. 'I am. I may say it to myself. '

Then, standing by the window, she stared into the night. Her room, on the opposite side of the house from Langham's, looked over thecornfields and the distance. The stubbles gleamed faintly; the darkwoods, the clouds teased by the rising wind, sent a moaning voice togreet her. 

'I hate him! I hate him!' she cried to the darkness, clenching her coldlittle hand. 

Then presently she slipped on to her knees, and buried her head inthe bed-clothes. She was crying--angry stifled tears which had the hotimpatience of youth in them. It all seemed to her so untoward. This wasnot the man she had dreamed of--the unknown of her inmost heart. _He_had been young, ardent, impetuous like herself. Hand in hand, eyeflashing into eye, pulse answering to pulse, they would have flung asidethe veil hanging over life and plundered the golden mysteries behind it. 

She rebels; she tries to see the cold alien nature which has laid thisparalyzing spell upon her as it is, to reason herself back to peace--toindifference. The poor child flies from her own half-understood trouble;will none of it; murmurs again wildly, --

'I hate him! I hate him! Cold-blooded--ungrateful--unkind!'

In vain. A pair of melancholy eyes haunt, inthrall her inmost soul. Thecharm of the denied, the inaccessible is on her, womanlike. 

That old sense of capture, of helplessness, as of some lassoed, struggling creature, descended upon her. She lay sobbing, there, tryingto recall what she had been a week before; the whirl of her Londonvisit, the ambitions with which it had filled her; the bewildering, many-colored lights it had thrown upon life, the intoxicating sense ofartistic power. In vain. 

 The stream will not flow, and the hills will not rise; And the colors have all passed away from her eyes. 

She felt herself bereft, despoiled. And yet through it all, as she layweeping, there came flooding a strange contradictory sense of growth, of enrichment. In such moments of pain does a woman first begin to live?Ah! why should it hurt so--this long-awaited birth of the soul?

BOOK III. THE SQUIRE. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The evening of the Murewell Hall dinner-party proved to be a date ofsome importance in the lives of two or three persons. Rose was notlikely to forget it; Langham carried about with him the picture ofthe great drawing-room, its stately light and shade, and its scatteredfigures, through many a dismal subsequent hour: and to Robert it was thebeginning of a period of practical difficulties such as his fortunateyouth 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 aslight nuance of contempt provoked in Mr. Wendover's mind by all formsof the clerical calling, had been completely transformed in the courseof the afternoon before the dinner-party, and transformed by the reportof his agent. Henslowe who knew certain sides of the Squire's characterby heart, had taken Time by the forelock. For fourteen years beforeRobert entered the parish he had been king of it. Mr. Preston, Robert'spredecessor, had never given him a moment's trouble. The agent haddeveloped a habit of drinking, had favored his friends and spited hisenemies, and he allowed certain distant portions of the estate to gofinely to ruin, quite undisturbed by any sentimental meddling of thepriestly sort. Then the old Rector had been gathered to the majority, and this long-legged busybody had taken his place, a man, according tothe agent, as full of communistical notions as an egg is full of meat, and always ready to poke his nose into other people's business. And asall men like mastery, but especially Scotchmen, and as during eventhe first few months of the new Rector's tenure of office it becametolerably evident to Henslowe that young Elsmere would soon become theruling force of the neighborhood unless measures were taken to preventit, the agent, over his nocturnal drams, had taken sharp and cunningcounsel with himself concerning the young man. 

The state of Mile End had been originally the result of indolence andcaprice on his part rather than of any set purpose of neglect. As soon, however, as it was brought to his notice by Elsmere, who did it to beginwith, in the friendliest way, it became a point of honor with the agentto let the place go to the devil, nay, to hurry it there. For sometime notwithstanding, he avoided an open breach with the Rector. He metElsmere's remonstrances by a more or less civil show of argument, beliedevery now and then by the sarcasm of his coarse blue eye, and so far thetwo men had kept outwardly on terms. Elsmere had reason to know that onone or two occasions of difficulty in the parish Henslowe had tried todo him a mischief. The attempts, however, had not greatly succeeded, and their ill-success had probably excited in Elsmere a confidence ofultimate victory which had tended to keep him cool in the presence ofHenslowe's hostility. But Henslowe had been all along merely waiting forthe Squire. He had served the owner of the Murewell estate for fourteenyears, and if he did not know that owner's peculiarities by this time, might he obtain certain warm corners in the next life to which he wasfond of consigning other people! It was not easy to cheat the Squireout of money, but it was quite easy to play upon him ignorance of thedetails of English land management--ignorance guaranteed by the learnedhabits of a lifetime--on his complete lack of popular sympathy, and onthe contempt felt by the disciple of Bismarck and Mommsen for allforms of altruistic sentiment. The Squire despised priests. He hatedphilanthropic cants. Above all things be respected his own leisure, andwas abnormally, irritably sensitive as to any possible inroads upon it. 

All these things Henslowe knew, and all these things be utilized. Hesaw the Squire within forty-eight hours of his arrival at Murewell. Hisfancy picture of Robert and his doings was introduced with adroitness, and colored with great skill, and he left the Squire walking up and downhis library, chafing alternately at the monstrous fate which had plantedthis sentimental agitator at his gates, and at the memory of hisown misplaced civilities toward the intruder. In the evening thosecivilities were abundantly avenged, as we have seen. 

Robert was much perplexed as to his next step. His heart was very sore. The condition of Mile End--those gaunt-eyed women and wasted children, all the sordid details of their unjust, avoidable suffering weighed uponhis nerves perpetually. But he was conscious that this state offeeling was one of tension, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it wasimpossible he should let the matter alone, he was anxious to do nothingrashly. 

However, two days after the dinner-party he met Henslowe on the hillleading up to the Rectory. Robert would have passed the man with astiffening of his tall figure and the slightest possible salutation. Butthe agent just returned from a round wherein the bars of various localinns had played a conspicuous part, was in a truculent mood and stoppedto speak. He took up the line of insolent condolence with the Rector onthe impossibility of carrying his wishes with regard to Mile End intoeffect. They had been laid before the Squire of course, but the Squirehad his own ideas and wasn't just easy to manage. 

'Seen him yet, sir?' Henslowe wound up jauntily, every line of hisflushed countenance, the full lips under the fair beard, and the lightprominent eyes, expressing a triumph he hardly cared to conceal. 

'I have seen him, but I have not talked to him on this particularmatter, ' said the Rector quietly, though the red mounted in his cheek. 'You may, however, be very sure, Mr. Henslowe, that everything I knowabout Mile End, the Squire shall know before long. '

'Oh, lor' bless me, air!' cried Henslowe with a guffaw, 'it's all one tome. 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 brutebefore him with a few home truths delivered with a rapier-like forcewhich for the moment staggered Henslowe, who turned from red to purple. The Rector, with some of those pitiful memories of the hamlet, of whichwe had glimpses in his talk with Langham, burning at his heart felt theman no better than a murderer, and as good as told him so. Then, withoutgiving him time to reply, Robert strode off, leaving Henslowe plantedin the pathway. But he was hardly up the hill before the agent, havingrecovered himself by dint of copious expletives, was looking after himwith a grim chuckle. He knew his master, and he knew himself, and hethought between them they would about manage to keep that young spark inorder. 

Robert meanwhile went straight home into his study, and there fell uponink and paper. What was the good of protracting the matter any longer?Something must and should be done for these people, if not one way, thenanother. 

So he wrote to the Squire, showing the letter to Catherine when it wasdone, lest there should be anything over-fierce in it. It was thesimple record of twelve months' experience told with dignity and strongfeeling. Henslowe was barely mentioned in it, and the chief burdenof the letter was to implore the Squire to come and inspect certainportions of his property with his own eyes. The Rector would be at hisservice 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 waitednervously through the day for an answer. In the evening, while he andCatherine were in the footpath after dinner, watching a chilly autumnalmoonrise over the stubble of the cornfield, the answer came. 

'Hm, ' said Robert dubiously as he opened it, holding it up to themoonlight: 'can't be said to be lengthy. '

He and Catherine hurried into the house. Robert read the letter, andhanded it to her without a word. 

After some curt references to one or two miscellaneous points raisedin the latter part of the Rector's letter, the Squire wound up asfollows:--

"As for the bulk of your communication, I am at a loss to understandthe vehemence of your remarks on the subject of my Mile End property. My agent informed me shortly after my return home that you had beenconcerning yourself greatly, and, as he conceived, unnecessarily, aboutthe 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 havespent months in it, and whose authority on points connected with thebusiness management of my estate naturally carries more weight with me, if you will permit me to say so, than your own. 

 "I am, sir, your obedient servant, "ROGER WENDOVER"

Catherine returned the letter to her husband with a look of dismay. Hewas standing with his back to the chimney-piece, his hands thrust farinto his pockets, his upper lip quivering. In his happy, expansive lifethis was the sharpest personal rebuff that had ever happened to him. Hecould not but smart under it. 

'Not a word, ' he said, tossing his hair bank impetuously, as Catherinestood opposite watching him--'not one single word about the miserablepeople themselves! What kind of stuff can the man be made of?'

'Does he believe you?' asked Catherine, bewildered. 

'If not, one must try and make him, ' he said energetically, after amoments pause. 'To-morrow, Catherine, I go down to the Hall and seehim. '

She quietly acquiesced, and the following afternoon, first thing afterluncheon, she watched him go, her tender inspiring look dwelling withhim as he crossed the park, which was lying delicately wrapped in one ofthe whitest of autumnal mists, the sun just playing through it with paleinvading shafts. 

The butler looked at him with some doubtfulness. It was never safe toadmit visitors for the Squire without orders. But he and Robert hadspecial relations. As the possessor of a bass voice worthy of his girth, Vincent, under Robert's rule, had become the pillar of the choir, and itwas not easy for him to refuse the Rector. 

So Robert was led in, through the hall, and down the long passage to thecurtained door, which he knew so well. 

'Mr. Elsmere, Sir!'

There was a sudden, hasty movement. Robert passed a magnificentlacquered screen newly placed round the door, and found himself in theSquire's presence. 

The Squire had half risen from his seat in a capacious chair, with alitter of books round it, and confronted his visitor with a look ofsurprised annoyance. The figure of the Rector, tall, thin, and youthful, stood out against the delicate browns and whites of the book-linedwalls. The great room, so impressively bare when Robert and Langhamhad last seen it, was now full of the signs of a busy man's constanthabitation. An odor of smoke pervaded it; the table in the window waspiled with books just unpacked, and the half-emptied case from whichthey had been taken lay on the ground beside the Squire's chair. 

'I persuaded Vincent to admit me, Mr. Wendover, ' said Robert, advancinghat in hand, while the Squire hastily put down the German professor'spipe he had just been enjoying, and coldly accepted his profferedgreeting. 'I should have preferred not to disturb you without anappointment, but after your letter it seemed to me some prompt personalexplanation was necessary. '

The Squire stiffly motioned toward a chair, which Robert took, and thenslipped back into his own, his wrinkled eyes fixed on the intruder. 

Robert, conscious of almost intolerable embarrassment, but maintainingin spite of it an excellent degree of self-control, plunged at once intobusiness. He took the letter he had just received from the Squire as atext, made a good-humored defence of his own proceedings, described hisattempt to move Henslowe, and the reluctance of his appeal from the manto the master. The few things he allowed himself to say about Henslowewere in perfect temper, though by no means without an edge. 

Then having disposed of the more personal aspects of the matter, hepaused, and looked hesitatingly at the face opposite him, more likea bronzed mask at this moment than a human countenance. The Squire, however, gave him no help. He had received his remarks so far in perfectsilence, and seeing that there were more to come, he waited for themwith the same rigidity of look and attitude. 

So, after a moment or two, Robert went on to describe in detail some ofthose individual cases of hardship and disease at Mile End, duringthe preceding year, which could be most clearly laid to the sanitarycondition of the place. Filth, damp, leaking roofs, foul floors, poisoned water--he traced to each some ghastly human ill, telling hisstories with a nervous brevity, a suppressed fire, which would haveburnt them into the sense of almost any other listener. Not one of thesewoes but he and Catherine had tended with sickening pity and labor ofbody and mind. That side of it he kept rigidly out of sight. But allthat he could hurl against the Squire's feeling, as it were, he gatheredup, strangely conscious through it all of his own young persistentyearning to right himself with this man, whose mental history, as it laychronicled in these rooms, had been to him, at a time of intellectualhunger, so stimulating, so enriching. 

But passion, and reticence, and bidden sympathy were alike lost upon theSquire. Before he paused Mr. Wendover had already risen restlesslyfrom his chair, and from the rug was glowering down on his, unwelcomevisitor. 

Good heavens! had he come home to be lectured in his own library by thisfanatical slip of a parson? As for his stories, the Squire barely tookthe trouble to listen to them. 

Every popularity-hunting fool, with a passion for putting his handinto other people's pockets, can tell pathetic stories; but it wasintolerable that his scholar's privacy should be at the mercy of one ofthe tribe. 

'Mr. Elsmere, ' he broke out at last with contemptuous emphasis, 'Iimagine it would have been better--infinitely better--to have sparedboth yourself and me the disagreeables of this interview. However, I amnot sorry we should understand each other. I have lived a life which isat 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 beenmaster in my own estate, and intend to remain so. As for the new-fangledideas of a landowner's duty, with which your mind seems to be full'--thescornful irritation of the tone was unmistakable--' I have never dabbledin them, nor do I intend to begin now. I am like the rest of my kind;I have no money to chuck away in building schemes, in order thatthe Rector of the parish may pose as the apostle of the agriculturallaborer. That, however, is neither here nor there. What is to thepurpose is, that my business affairs are in the hands of a business man, deliberately chosen and approved by me, and that I have nothing to dowith them. Nothing at all!' he repeated with emphasis. 'It may seemto you very shocking. You may reward it as the object in life of theEnglish landowner to inspect the pigstyes and amend the habits of theEnglish laborer. I don't quarrel with the conception, I only ask you notto expect me to live up to it. I am a student first and foremost, anddesire to be left to my books. Mr. Henslowe is there on purpose toprotect my literary freedom. What he thinks desirable is good enough forme, as I have already informed you. I am sorry for it if his methods donot commend themselves to you. But I have yet to learn that the Rectorof the parish has an ex-officio right to interfere between a landlordand his tenants. '

Robert kept his temper with some difficulty. After a pause he said, feeling desperately, however, that the suggestion was not likely toimprove matters, --

'If I were to take all the trouble and all the expense off your hands, Mr. Wendover would it be impossible for you to authorize me to make oneor two alterations most urgently necessary for the improvement of theMile End cottages?'

The Squire burst into an angry laugh. 

'I have never yet been in the habit, Mr. Elsmere, of doing my repairs bypublic subscription. You ask a little too much from an old man's powersof adaptation. '

Robert rose from his seat, his hand trembling as it rested on hiswalking-stick. 

'Mr. Wendover, ' he said, speaking at last with a flash of answeringscorn in his young vibrating voice, 'what I think you cannot understand, is that at any moment a human creature may sicken and die, poisonedby the state of your property, for which you--and nobody else--areultimately responsible. '

The Squire shrugged his shoulders. 

So you say, Mr. Elsmere. If true, every person in such a condition has aremedy in his own hands. I force no one to remain on my property. '

'The people who live there, ' exclaimed Robert, 'have neither home norsubsistence if they are driven out. Murewell is full--times bad--most ofthe people old. '

'And eviction "a sentence of death, " I suppose, ' interrupted theSquire, studying him with sarcastic eyes. 'Well, I have no belief in aGladstonian Ireland, still less in a Radical England. Supply and demand, cause and effect, are enough for me. The Mile End cottages are outof repair, Mr. Elsmere, so Mr. Henslowe tells me, because the site isunsuitable, the type of cottage out of date. People live in them attheir peril; I don't pull them down, or rather'--correcting himself withexasperating consistency--'Mr. Henslowe doesn't pull them down, because, like other men, I suppose, he dislikes an outcry. But if the populationstays, it stays at its own risk. Now have I made myself plain?'

The two men eyed one another. 

'Perfectly plain, ' said Robert quietly. 'Allow me to remind you, Mr. Wendover, that there are other matters than eviction capable ofprovoking an outcry. '

'As you please, ' said the other indifferently. 'I have no doubt I shallfind myself in the newspapers before long. If so, I dare say I shallmanage to put up with it. Society, is fanatics and the creatures theyhunt. If I am to be hunted, I shall be in good company. '

Robert stood, hat in hand, tormented with a dozen cross-currentsof feeling. He was forcibly struck with the blind and comparativelymotiveless pugnacity of the Squire's conduct. There was an extravagancein it which for the first time recalled to him old Meyrick'slucubrations. 

'I have done no good, I see, Mr. Wendover, ' he said at last, slowly. 'Iwish I could have induced you to do an act of justice and mercy. I wishI could have made you think more kindly of myself. I have failed inboth. It is useless to keep you any longer. Good morning. '

He bowed. The Squire also bent forward. At that moment Robert caughtsight beside his shoulder of an antique, standing on the mantel piece, which was a new addition to the room. It was a head of Medusa, andthe frightful stony calm of it struck on Elsmere's ruffled nerves withextraordinary force. It flashed across him that here was an apt symbolof that absorbing and overgrown life of the intellect which blightsthe heart and chills the senses. And to that spiritual Medusa, the manbefore him was not the first victim he had known. 

Possessed with the fancy, the young man made his way into the hall. Arrived there, he looked round with a kind of passionate regret: 'ShallI ever see this again?' he asked himself. During the past twelve monthshis pleasure in the great house had been much more than sensuous. Withinthose walls his mind had grown, had reached to a fuller stature thanbefore, and a man loves, or should love, all that is associated with thematuring of his best self. 

He closed the ponderous doors behind him sadly. The magnificent pile, grander than ever in the sunny autumnal mist which unwrapped it, seemedto look after him as he walked away, mutely wondering that he shouldhave allowed anything so trivial as a peasant's grievance to comebetween him and its perfections. 

In the wooded lane outside the Rectory gate he overtook Catherine. Hegave her his report, and they walked on together arm-in-arm, a verydepressed 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 amtolerably certain Henslowe will turn out the people. '

He would not dare, Robert thought. At any rate, the law existed for suchcases, 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 firstserious practical trouble his own way. She saw that he felt himselfdistressingly young and inexperienced, and would not for the world haveharassed him by over-advice. 

So she let him alone, and presently Robert threw the matter from himwith a sigh. 

'Let it be awhile, ' he said with a shake of his long frame. 'I shall getmorbid over it if I don't mind. I am a selfish wretch too. I know youhave worries of your own, wifie. '

And he took her hand under the trees and kissed it with a boyishtenderness. 

'Yes, ' said Catherine, sighing, and then paused. 'Robert, ' she burstout 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 mymind, is simply a changed creature. '

'_I_ don't see it, ' said Robert doubtfully. 

Catherine looked at him with a little angel scorn in her gray eyes. Thatmen should make their seeing in such matters the measure of the visible!

'You have been studying the Squire, sir--I have been studying Rose. '

Then she poured out her heart to him, describing the little signs ofchange and suffering her anxious sense had noted, in spite of Rose'sproud effort to keep all the world, but especially Catherine, at arm'slength. And at the end her feeling swept her into a denunciation ofLangham, which was to Robert like a breath from the past, from thosestern hills wherein he met her first. The happiness of their marriedlife had so softened or masked all her ruggedness of character, thatthere was a certain joy in seeing those strong forces in her which hadstruck him first reappear. 

'Of course I feel myself to blame, ' he said when she stopped, 'but howcould one foresee, with such an inveterate hermit and recluse? And Iowed him--I owe him--so much. '

'I know, ' said Catherine, but frowning still. It probably seemed to herthat that old debt had been more than effaced. 

'You will have to send her to Berlin, ' said Elsmere after a pause. 'Youmust play off her music against this unlucky feeling. If it exists it isyour only chance. '

'Yes, she must go to Berlin, ' said Catherine slowly. 

Then presently she looked up, a flash of exquisite feeling breaking upthe delicate resolution of the face. 

'I am not sad about that, Robert. Oh, how you have widened my world forme!'

Suddenly that hour in Marrisdale came back to her. They were in thewoodpath. She crept inside her husband's arm and put up her face to him, swept away by an overmastering impulse of self-humiliating love. 

The next day Robert walked over to the little market town of Churton, saw the discreet and long-established solicitor of the place, and gotfrom him a complete account of the present state of the rural sanitarylaw. The first step clearly was to move the sanitary inspector; if thatfailed for any reason, then any _bonâ fide_ inhabitant had an appeal tothe local sanitary authority, viz. The board of guardians. Robert walkedhome pondering his information, and totally ignorant that Henslowe, whowas always at Churton on market-days, had been in the market-place atthe moment when the Rector's tall figure had disappeared within Mr. Dunstan's office-door. That door was unpleasantly known to the agent inconnection with some energetic measures for raising money he had beenlately under the necessity of employing, and it had a way of attractinghis eyes by means of the fascination that often attaches to disagreeableobjects. 

In the evening Rose was sitting listlessly in the drawing-room. Catherine was not there, so her novel was on her lap and her eyes werestaring intently into a world whereof they only had the key. Suddenlythere was a ring at the bell. The servant came, and there were severalvoices and a sound of much shoe-scraping. Then the swing-door leadingto the study opened and Elsmere and Catherine came out. Elsmere stoppedwith an exclamation. 

His visitors were two men from Mile End. One was old Milsom, more sallowand palsied than ever. As he stood bent almost double, his old knottedhand resting for support on the table beside him, everything in thelittle hall seemed to shake with him. The other was Sharland, thehandsome father of the twins, whose wife had been fed by Catherine withevery imaginable delicacy since Robert's last visit to the hamlet. Evenhis strong youth had begun to show signs of premature decay. The rollinggypsy eyes were growing sunken, the limbs dragged a little. 

They had come to implore the Rector to let Mile End alone. Henslowe hadbeen over there in the afternoon, and had given them all very plainly tounderstand that if Mr. Elsmere meddled any more they would be all turnedout at a week's notice to shift as they could, 'And if you don't findThurston Common nice lying this weather, with the winter coming on, you'll know who to thank for it, ' the agent had flung behind him as herode off. 

Robert turned white. Rose, watching the little scene with listless eyes, saw him towering over the group like an embodiment of wrath and pity. 

'If they turn us out, sir, ' said old Milsom, wistfully looking up atElsmere with blear eyes, 'there'll be nothing left but the House forus old 'uns. Why, lor' bless you, sir, it's not so bad but we can makeshift. '

'You, Milsom!' cried Robert; 'and you've just all but lost yourgrandchild! And you know your wife'll never be the same woman since thatbout of fever in the spring. And----'

His quick eyes ran over the old man's broken frame with a world ofindignant meaning in them. 

'Aye, aye, sir, ' said Milsom, unmoved. 'But if it isn't fevers, it'ssummat else. I can make a shilling or two where I be, speshally in thefirst part of the year, in the basket work, and my wife she goes charingup at Mr. Carter's farm, and Mr. Dodson, him at the further farm, hedo give us a bit sometimes. Ef you git us turned away it will be a badday'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 thosechilder! I can't walk three miles further to my work, Mr. Elsmere, Ican't nohow. I haven't got the legs for it. Let un be, Sir. We'll rubalong. '

Robert tried to argue the matter. 

If they would but stand by him he would fight the matter through, andthey should not suffer, if he had to get up a public subscription, orsupport them out of his own pocket all the winter. A bold front, and Mr. Henslowe must give way. The law was on their side, and every laborer inSurrey would be the better off for their refusal to be housed like pigsand poisoned like vermin. 

In vain. There is an inexhaustible store of cautious endurance in thepoor against which the keenest reformer constantly throws himself invain. Elsmere was beaten. The two men got his word, and shuffled offback to their pestilential hovels, a pathetic content beaming on eachface. 

Catherine and Robert went back into the study. Rose heard herbrother-in-law's passionate sigh as the door swung behind them. 

'Defeated!' she said to herself with a curious accent. 'Well, everybodymust have his turn. Robert has been too successful in his life, Ithink. --You wretch!' she added, after a minute, laying her bright headdown on the book before her. 

Next morning his wife found Elsmere after breakfast busily packing acase of books in the study. They were books from the Hall library, whichso far had been for months the inseparable companion of his historicalwork. 

Catherine stood and watched him sadly. 

'Must You, Robert?'

'I won't be beholden to that man for anything an hour longer than I canhelp, ' he answered her. 

When the packing was nearly finished he came up to where she stood inthe open window. 

'Things won't be as easy for us in the future, darling, ' he said toher. 'A rector with both Squire and agent against him is rather heavilyhandicapped. 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 holdour own. 'But I wish--oh, I wish'--and he laid his hand on his wife'sshoulder--'I could have made friends with the Squire. '

Catherine looked less responsive. 

'As Squire, Robert, or as Mr. Wendover?'

'As both, of course, but specialty as Mr. Wendover. '

'We can do without his friendship, ' she said with energy. 

Robert gave a great stretch, as though to work off his regrets. 

'Ah, but--, 'he said, half to himself, as his arms dropped, 'if you arejust filled with the hunger to _know_, the people who know as much asthe Squire become very interesting to you!'

Catherine did not answer. But probably her heart went out once more inprotest against a knowledge that was to her but a form of revolt againstthe awful powers of man's destiny. 

'However, here go his books, ' said Robert. 

Two days later Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes made their appearance, Mrs. Leyburn all in a flutter concerning the event over which, in herown opinion, she had come to preside. In her gentle fluid mind allimpressions were short-lived. She had forgotten how she had brought upher own babies, but Mrs. Thornburgh, who had never had any, had filledher full of nursery lore. She sat retailing a host of second-hand hintsand instructions to Catherine, who would every now and then lay her handsmiling on her mother's knee, well pleased to see the flush of pleasureon the pretty old face, and ready in her patient filial way, to letherself be experimented on to the utmost, if it did but make the poor, foolish thing happy. 

Then came a night where every soul in the quiet Rectory, even hot, smarting Rose, was possessed by one thought though many terrible hours, and one only--the thought of Catherine's safety. It was strange andunexpected, but Catherine, the most normal and healthy of women, had ahard struggle for her own life and her child's, and it was not till thegray autumn morning, after a day and night which left a permanentmark on Robert that he was summoned at last, and with the sense of oneemerging from black gulfs of terror, received from his wife's languidhand the tiny fingers of his firstborn. 

The days that followed were full of emotion for these two people, whowere perhaps always ever-serious, oversensitive. They had no idea ofminimizing the great common experiences of life. Both of them werereally simple, brought up in old-fashioned simple ways, easily touched, responsive to all that high spiritual education which flows fromthe familiar incidents of the human story, approached poetically andpassionately. As the young husband sat in the quiet of his wife's room, the occasional restless movements of the small brown head against herbreast causing the only sound perceptible in the country silence, hefelt all the deep familiar currents of human feeling sweeping throughhim--love, reverence, thanksgiving--and all the walls of the soul, as itwere, expanding and enlarging as they passed. 

Responsive creature that he was, the experience of these days was hardlyhappiness. It went too deep; it brought him too poignantly near to allthat is most real and therefore most tragic in life. 

Catherine's recovery also was slower than might have been expected, considering her constitutional soundness, and for the first week, afterthat faint moment of joy when her child was laid upon her arm andshe saw her husband's quivering face above her, there was a kind ofdepression hovering over her. Robert felt it, and felt too that all hisdevotion could not soothe it away. At last she said to him one evening, in the encroaching September twilight, speaking with a sudden hurryingvehemence, wholly unlike herself, as though a barrier of reserve hadgiven way, --

'Robert, I cannot put it out of my head. I cannot forget it, _the painof the world!_'

He shut the book he was reading, her hand in his, and bent over her withquestioning eyes. 

'It seems' she went on with that difficulty which a strong nature alwaysfeels in self-revelation, 'to take the joy even out of our love--and thechild. I feel ashamed almost that mere physical pain should have laidsuch hold on me--and yet I 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 know now for the first time what physical pain may mean--andI never knew before! I lie thinking, Robert, about all creatures inpain--workmen crushed by machinery, or soldiers--or poor things inhospitals--above all of women! Oh, when I get well, how I will take careof the women here! What women must suffer even here in out-of-the-waycottages--no doctor, no kind nursing, all blind agony and struggle!And women in London in dens like those Mr. Newcome got into, degraded, forsaken, ill-treated, the thought of the child only an extra horror andburden! And the pain all the time so merciless, so cruel--no escape! Oh, to give all one is, or ever can be, to comforting! And yet the greatsea of it one can never touch! It is a nightmare--I am weak still, Isuppose; I don't know myself; but I can see nothing but jarred, torturedcreatures everywhere. All my own joys and comforts seem to lift meselfishly above the common lot. '

She stopped, her large gray-blue eyes dim with tears, trying once morefor that habitual self-restraint which physical weakness had shaken. 

'You _are_ weak, ' he said, caressing her, 'and that destroys for a timethe normal balance of things. It is true, darling, but we are not meantto see it always so clearly. God knows we could not bear it if we did. '

And to think, ' she said, shuddering a little, 'that there are men andwomen who in the face of it can still refuse Christ and the Cross, canstill say this life is all! How can they live--how dare they live?'

Then he saw that not only man's pain but man's defiance, had beenhaunting her, and he guessed what persons and memories had been flittingthrough her mind. But he dared not talk lest she should exhaust herself. Presently, seeing a volume of Augustine's 'Confessions', her favoritebook, lying beside her, he took it up, turning over the pages, andweaving passages together as they caught his eye. 

'_Speak to me, for Thy compassion's sake, O Lord my God, and tell mewhat art Thou to me! Say unto my soul, "I am thy salvation. " Speak itthat I may hear. Behold the ears of my heart, O Lord; open them and sayinto my soul, "I am thy salvation!" I will follow after this voice ofThine, I will lay hold on Thee. The temple of my soul, wherein Thoushouldest enter, is narrow, do Thou enlarge it. It falleth intoruins--do Thou rebuild it!... Woe to that bold soul which hopeth, ifit do but let Thee go, to find something better than Thee! It turnethhither and thither, on this side and on that, and all things are hardand bitter unto it. For Thou only art rest!... Whithersoever the soul ofman turneth it findeth sorrow, except only in Thee. Fix there, then, thyresting-place, mm soul! Lay up in Him whatever thou hast received fromHim. Commend to the keeping of the Truth whatever the Truth hath giventhee, and thou shalt lose nothing. And thy dead things shall revive andthy weak things shall be made whole!_'

She listened, appropriating and clinging to every word, till the nervousclasp of the long delicate fingers relaxed, her head dropped a little, gently, against the head of the child, and tired with much feeling sheslept. 

Robert slipped away and strolled out into the garden in thefast-gathering darkness. His mind was full of that intense spirituallife of Catherine's which in its wonderful self-contentedness andstrength was always a marvel, sometimes a reproach to him. Beside her, he seemed to himself a light creature, drawn hither and thither by thisinterest and by that, tangled in the fleeting shows of things--the toyand plaything of circumstance. He thought ruefully and humbly, as hewondered on through the dusk, of his own lack of inwardness: 'Everythingdivides 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 Iso passionate for this and that, for all these sections and fragments ofThee? Oh, for the One, the All! Fix, there thy resting-place, my soul!'

And presently, after this cry of self-reproach, he turned to muse onthat intuition of the world's pain which had been troubling Catherine, shrinking from it even more than she had shrunk from it, in proportionas his nature was more imaginative than hers. And Christ the only clew, the only remedy--no other anywhere in this vast Universe, where allmen are under sentences of death, where the whole creation groaneth andtravaileth in pain together until now!

And yet what countless generations of men had borne their pain, knowingnothing of the one Healer. He thought of Buddhist patience and Buddhistcharity; of the long centuries during which Chaldean or Persian orEgyptian lived, suffered, and died, trusting the gods they knew. And howmany other generations, nominally children of the Great Hope, had usedit as a mere instrument of passion or of hate, cursing in the name oflove, destroying in the name of pity! For how much of the world's painwas not Christianity itself responsible? His thoughts recurred with akind of anguished perplexity to some of the problems stirred in him oflate by his historical reading. The strifes and feuds and violencesof the early Church returned to weigh upon him--the hair-splittingsuperstition, the selfish passion for power. He recalled Gibbon'slamentation over the age of the Antonines, and Mommsen's grave doubtwhether, taken as a whole, the area once covered by the Roman Empire canbe said to be substantially happier now than in the days of Severus. 

_O corruptio optimi!_ That men should have been so little affected bythat shining ideal of the New Jerusalem, 'descended out of Heaven fromGod, ' into their very midst--that the print of the 'blessed feet' alongthe world's highway should have been so often buried in the sands ofcruelty and fraud!

The September wind blew about him as he strolled through the darkeningcommon, set thick with great bushes of sombre juniper among theyellowing fern, which stretched away on the left-hand side of theroad leading to the Hall. He stood and watched the masses of restlessdiscordant cloud which the sunset had left behind it, thinking the whileof Mr. Grey, of his assertions and his denials. Certain phrases of hiswhich Robert had heard drop from him on one or two rare occasions duringthe later stages of his Oxford life ran through his head. 

'_The fairy-tale of Christianity_'--'_The origins of ChristianMythology_. ' He could recall, as the words rose in his memory, thesimplicity of the rugged face, and the melancholy mingled with firewhich had always marked the great tutor's sayings about religion. 

'_Fairy Tale!_' Could any reasonable man watch a life like Catherine'sand believe that nothing but a delusion lay at the heart of it? Andas he asked the question, he seemed to hear Mr. Grey's answer: 'Allreligions 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; itis but the letter, the fashion, the imagery, that are relative andchanging. '

He turned and walked homeward, struggling with a host of tempestuousideas as swift and varying as the autumn clouds hurrying overhead. Andthen, through a break in a line of trees, he caught sight of the towerand chancel window of the little church. In an instant he had a visionof early summer mornings--dewy, perfumed, silent, save for the birds andall the soft stir of rural birth and growth, of a chancel fragrantwith many flowers, of a distant church with scattered figures, of thekneeling form of his wife close beside him, himself bending overher, the sacrament of the Lord's death in his hand. The emotion, theintensity, the absolute self-surrender of innumerable such momentsin the past--moments of a common faith, a common self-abasement--cameflooding back upon him. With a movement of joy and penitence he threwhimself at the feet of Catherine's Master and his own: '_Fix there thyresting-place, my soul!_'

CHAPTER XX. 

Catherine's later convalescence dwelt in her mind in after years as atime of peculiar softness and peace. Her baby-girl throve; Robert haddriven the Squire and Henslowe out of his mind, and was all eagernessas to certain negotiations with a famous naturalist for a lecture atthe village club. At Mile End, as though to put the Rector in the wrong, serious illness had for the time disappeared; and Mrs. Leyburn's mildchatter, as she gently poked about the house and garden, went out inCatherine's pony-carriage, inspected Catherine's stores, and hoveredover Catherine's babe, had a constantly cheering effect on the stilllanguid mother. Like all theorists, especially those at secondhand, Mrs. Leyburn's maxims had been very much routed by the event. The babe hadailments she did not understand, or it developed likes and dislikes shehad forgotten existed in babies, and Mrs. Leyburn was nonplussed. Shewould sit with it on her lap, anxiously studying its peculiarities. Shewas sure it squinted, that its back was weaker than other babies, thatit cried more than hers had ever done. She loved to be plaintive; itwould have seemed to her unladylike to be too cheerful, even over afirst grandchild. 

Agnes meanwhile made herself practically useful, as was her way, andshe did almost more than anybody to beguile Catherine's recovery by herhours of Long Whindale chat. She had no passionate feeling about theplace and the people as Catherine had, but she was easily content, andshe had a good wholesome feminine curiosity as to the courtings andweddings and buryings of the human beings about her. So she would sitand chat, working the while with the quickest, neatest of fingers, till Catherine knew as much about Jenny Tyson's Whinborough lover, andFarmer Tredall's troubles with his son, and the way in which that odiouswoman Molly Redgold bullied her little consumptive husband, as Agnesknew, which was saying a good deal. 

About themselves Agnes was frankness itself. 

'Since you went, ' she would say with a shrug, 'I keep the coach steady, perhaps, but Rose drives, and we shall have to go where she takes us. Bythe way, Cathie, what have you been doing to her here? She is not a bitlike herself. I don't generally mind being snubbed. It amuses her anddoesn't hurt me; and, of course, I know I am meant to be her foil. Butreally, sometimes she is too bad even for me. '

Catherine sighed, but held her peace. Like all strong persons, she keptthings very much to herself. It only made vexation more real to talkabout them. But she and Agnes discussed the winter and Berlin. 

'You had better let her go, ' said Agnes, significantly; 'she will goanyhow. '

A few days afterward Catherine, opening the drawing-room doorunexpectedly, came upon Rose sitting idly at the piano, her handsresting on the keys, and her great gray eyes straining out of her whiteface with an expression which sent the sister's heart into her shoes. 

'How you steal about, Catherine!' cried the player, getting up andshutting the piano. 'I declare you are just like Millais's Gray Lady inthat 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 cameand threw her arms round the girl. 

'Rose dear, I have settled it all with mamma. The money can be managed, and you shall go to Berlin for the winter when you like. '

She drew herself back a little, still with her arms round Rose's waist, and looked at her smiling, to see how she took it. 

Rose had a strange movement of irritation. She drew herself out ofCatherine's grasp. 

'I don't know that I had settled on Berlin, ' she said coldly, 'Verypossibly Leipsic would be better. '

Catherine's face fell. 

'Whichever you like, dear. I have been thinking about it ever since thatday you spoke of it--you remember--and now I have talked it over withmamma. If she can't manage, all the expense we will help. Oh Rose, ' andshe came nearer again, timidly, her eyes melting, 'I know we haven'tunderstood each other. I have been ignorant, I think, and narrow. But Imeant it for the best, dear--I did--'

Her voice failed her, but in her look there seemed to be written thehistory of all the prayers and yearnings of her youth over the prettywayward child who had been her joy and torment. Rose could not but meetthat look--its nobleness, its humble surrender. 

Suddenly two large tears rolled down her cheeks. She dashed them awayimpatiently. 

'I am not a bit well, ' she said, as though in irritable excuse bothto herself and Catherine. 'I believe I have had a headache for afortnight. '

And then she put her arms down on a table near and hid her face uponthem. She was one bundle of jarring nerves; sore, poor passionate child, that she was betraying herself; sorer still that, as she told herself, Catherine was sending her to Berlin as a consolation. When girlshave love-troubles the first thing their elders do is to look for adiversion. She felt sick and humiliated. Catherine had been talking herover with the family, she supposed. 

Meanwhile Catherine stood by her tenderly, stroking her hair and sayingsoothing things. 

'I am sure you will be happy at Berlin, Rose. And you mustn't leave meout of your life, dear, though I am so stupid and unmusical. You mustwrite to me about all you do. We must be in a new time. Oh, I feel soguilty sometimes, ' she went on, falling into a low intensity of voicethat startled Rose, and made her look hurriedly up. 'I fought againstyour music, I suppose, because I thought it was devouring you--leavingno room for--for religion--for God. I was jealous of it for Christ'ssake. And all the time I was blundering! Oh, Rose, ' and she sank on herknees beside the chair, resting her head against the girl's shoulder, 'papa charged me to make you love God, and I torture myself withthinking that, instead, it has been my doing, my foolish, clumsy doing, that you have come to think religion dull and hard. Oh, my darling, ifI could make amends--if I could got you not to love your art less butto love it in God! Christ is the first reality; all things else arereal 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, Ihave never tried to make you feel what it was kept _me_ at His feet! Oh, Rose darling, you think the world real, and pleasure and enjoyment real. But if I could have made you see and know the things I have seen upin 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 onlytruly exist in Him. I should have been more open--more faithful--morehumble. '

She paused with a long quivering sigh. Rose suddenly lifted herself, andthey fell into each others' arms. 

Rose, shaken and excited, thought, of course, of that night at Burwood, when she had won leave to go to Manchester. This scene was the sequel tothat--the next stage in one and the same process. Her feeling was muchthe same as that of the naturalist who comes close to any of the hiddenoperations of life. She had come near to Catherine's spirit in thegrowing. Beside that sweet expansion, how poor and feverish andearth-stained the poor child felt herself!

But there were many currents in Rose--many things striving for themastery. She kissed Catherine once or twice, then she drew herself backsuddenly, looking into the other's face. A great wave of feeling rushedup and broke. 

'Catherine, could you ever have married a man that did not believe inChrist?'

She flung the question out--a kind of morbid curiosity, a wild wish tofind an outlet of some sort for things pent up in her, driving her on. 

Catherine started. But she met Rose's half-frowning eyes steadily. 

'Never, Rose! To me it would not be marriage. ' The child's face lost itssoftness. She drew one hand away. 

'What have we to do with it?' She cried. 'Each one for himself. '

'But marriage makes two one, ' said Catherine, pale, but with a firmclearness. 'And if husband and wife are only one in body and estate, notone 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, herattitude, her look was still tenderness, still yearning itself. 

'Religion does not fill up the soul, ' said Rose slowly. Then she addedcarelessly, a passionate red flying into her cheek, against her will, 'However, I cannot imagine any question that interests me personallyless. I was curious what you would say. '

And she too got up, drawing her hand lightly along the keyboard of thepiano. Her pose had a kind of defiance in it; her knit brows forbadeCatherine to ask questions. Catherine stood irresolute. Should she throwherself on her sister, imploring her to speak, opening her own heart onthe subject of this wild, unhappy fancy for a man who would never thinkagain of the child he had played with?

But the North-country dread of words, of speech that only defines andmagnifies, 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 theinquiries she had been making, the arrangements that would be wanted forthis musical winter. Rose was almost listless at first. A stranger wouldhave thought she was being persuaded into something against her will. But she could not keep it up. The natural instinct reasserted itself, and she was soon planning and deciding as sharply, and with as muchyoung omniscience, as usual. 

By the evening it was settled. Mrs. Leyburn, much bewildered, askedCatherine doubtfully, the last thing at night, whether she wanted Roseto be a professional. Catherine exclaimed. 

'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 addedhalf severely: 'I don't believe her father would have liked it; I 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 distance, with a long breathof satisfaction. 'She's 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 allhis love, had the gentle puzzle-headed woman found her unearthly husbandoften very hard to live with?

Rose 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 bemuch joy in the getting, but that was the way of things, one wastold. She knew she should hate the Germans--great, bouncing, over-fed, sentimental creatures!

Then her thoughts ran into the future. After six months--yes, byApril--she would be home, and Agnes and her mother could meet her inLondon. 

_London_. Ah, it was London she was thinking of all the time, notBerlin! She could not stay in the present; or rather the Rose of thepresent went straining to the Rose of the future, asking to be righted, to be avenged. 

'I will learn--I will learn fast, many things besides music!' she saidto herself feverishly. 'By April I shall be _much_ cleverer. Oh, _then_I won't be a fool so easily. We shall be sure to meet, of course. Buthe shall find out that it was only a _child_, only a silly, softheartedbaby he played with down here. I shan't care for him in the least, ofcourse not, not after six months. I don't _mean_ to. And I will make himknow it--oh, I will, though he is so wise, and so much older, and mountson such stilts when he pleases!'

So once more Rose flung her defiance at fate. But when Catherine camealong 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 camecloser, all but went in, thought better of it, and moved away. If thereis any truth in brain waves, Langham should have slept restlessly thatnight. 

Ten days later an escort had been found, all preparations had been made, and Rose was gone. 

Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes lingered a while, and then they too departedunder an engagement to come back after Christmas for a long stay, thatMrs. Leyburn might cheat the Northern spring a little. 

So husband and wife were alone again. How they relished their solitude!Catherine took up many threads of work which her months of comparativeweakness had forced her to let drop. She taught vigorously in theschool; in the afternoons, so far as her child would let her, shecarried her tender presence and her practical knowledge of nursing tothe sick and feeble; and on two evenings in the week she and Robertthrew open a little room there was on the ground-floor between the studyand the dining-room to the women and girls of the village, as a sort ofdrawing-room. Hard-worked mothers would come, who had put their fretfulbabes to sleep, and given their lords to eat, and had just energy left, while the eldest daughter watched, and the men were at the club or the'Blue Boar, ' to put on a clean apron and climb the short hill to therectory. Once there, there was nothing to think of for an hour butthe bright room, Catherine's kind face, the Rector's jokes, and theillustrated papers or the photographs that were spread out for themto look at if they would. The girls learned to come, because Catherinecould teach them a simple dressmaking, and was clever in catching straypersons to set them singing; and because Mr. Elsmere read excitingstories, and because nothing any one of them ever told Mrs. Elsmere wasforgotten by her, or failed to interest her. Any of her social equals ofthe neighborhood would have hardly recognized the reserved and statelyCatherine 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 womanhad found it very difficult to suit herself to a new shade of localcharacter. But she was learning from Robert every day; she watched himamong the poor, recognizing all his gifts with a humble intensity ofadmiring love, which said little but treasured everything, and forherself her inward happiness and peace shone through her quiet ways, making her the mother and the friend of all about her. 

As for Robert, he, of course, was living at high pressure all round. Outside his sermons and his school, his Natural History Club had perhapsmost of his heart, and the passion for science, little continuous workas he was able to give it, grew on him more and more. He kept up as besthe could, working with one hand, so to speak, when he could not sparetwo, and in his long rambles over moor and hill, gathering in with hisquick eye a harvest of local fact wherewith to feed their knowledge andhis own. 

The mornings he always spent at work among his books, the afternoonsin endless tramps over the parish, sometimes alone, sometimes withCatherine; and in the evenings, if Catherine was 'at home' twice a weekto womankind, he had his nights when his study became the haunt and preyof half the boys in the place, who were free of everything, as soon ashe 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 insome outlying hamlet; or others again, when with Catherine beside him hewould sit trying to think some of that religious passion which burnedin both their hearts, into clear words or striking illustrations for hissermons. 

Then his choir was much upon his mind. He knew nothing about music, nordid Catherine; their efforts made Rose laugh irreverently when she gottheir letters at Berlin. But Robert believed in a choir chiefly as anexcellent social and centralizing instrument. There had been none inMr. Preston's day. He was determined to have one, and a good one, andby sheer energy he succeeded, delighting in his boyish way over theopposition some of his novelties excited among the older and morestiff-backed inhabitants. 

'Let them talk, ' he would say brightly to Catherine. 'They will comeround; and talk is good. Anything to make them think, to stir the pool!'

Of course that old problem of the agricultural laborer weighed uponhim--his grievances, his wants. He went about pondering the English landsystem, more than half inclined one day to sink part of his capital ina peasant-proprietor experiment, and engulfed the next in all the moraland economical objections to the French system. Land for allotments, at any rate, he had set his heart on. But in this direction, as in manyothers, the way was barred. All the land in the parish was the Squire's, and not an inch of the Squire's land would Henslowe let young Elsmerehave anything to do with if he knew it. He would neither repair, norenlarge the Workmen's Institute; and he had a way of forgetting theSquire's customary subscriptions to parochial objects, always paidthrough him, which gave him much food for chuckling whenever he passedElsmere in the country lanes. The man's coarse insolence and mean hatredmade themselves felt at every turn, besmirching and embittering. 

Still it was very true that neither Henslowe nor the Squire could doRobert much harm. His hold on the parish was visibly strengthening; hissermons were not only filling the church with his own parishioners, butattracting hearers from the districts round Murewell, so that even onthese winter Sundays there was almost always a sprinkling of strangefaces among the congregation; and his position in the county and diocesewas becoming every month more honorable and important. The gentry aboutshowed them much kindness, and would have shown them much hospitalityif they had been allowed. But though Robert had nothing of theascetic about him, and liked the society of his equals as much as mostgood-tempered and vivacious people do, he and Catherine decided thatfor the present they had no time to spare for visits and county society. Still, of course, there were many occasions on which the routine oftheir life brought them across their neighbors, and it began to bepretty widely recognized that Elsmere was a young fellow of unusualpromise and intelligence, that his wife too was remarkable, and thatbetween them they were likely to raise the standard of clerical effortconsiderably in their part of Surrey. 

All the factors of this life--his work, his influence, his recoveredhealth, the lavish beauty of the country, Elsmere enjoyed with all hisheart. But at the root of all there lay what gave value and savor toeverything else--that exquisite home-life of theirs, that tender, triplebond of husband, wife, and child. 

Catherine coming home tired from teaching or visiting, would find herstep quickening as she reached the gate of the rectory, and the sense ofdelicious possession waking up in her, which is one of the first fruitsof motherhood. There, at the window, between the lamplight behind andthe winter dusk outside, would be the child in its nurse's arms, littlewondering, motiveless smiles passing over the tiny puckered facethat was so oddly like Robert already. And afterward, in the fire-litnursery, with the bath in front of the high fender, and all thenecessaries of baby life beside it, she would go through those functionswhich mothers love and linger over, let the kicking, dimpled creatureprincipally concerned protest as it may against the over-refinements ofcivilization. Then, when the little restless voice was stilled, andthe cradle left silent in the darkened room, there would come the shortwatching for Robert, his voice, his kiss, their simple meal together, amoment of rest, of laughter and chat, before some fresh effort claimedthem. Every now and then--white-letter days--there would drop on them along evening together. Then out would come one of the few books--Danteor Virgil or Milton--which had entered into the fibre of Catherine'sstrong nature. The two heads would draw close over them, or Robert wouldtake some thought of hers as a text, and spout away from the hearthrug, watching all the while for her smile, her look of assent. Sometimes, late at night, when there was a sermon on his mind, he would dive intohis pocket for his Greek Testament and make her read, partly forthe sake of teaching her--for she knew some Greek and longed to knowmore--but mostly that he might get from her some of that garnered wealthof spiritual experience which he adored in her. They would go from verseto verse, from thought to thought, till suddenly perhaps the tide offeeling would rise, and while the windswept round the house, and theowls hooted in the elms, they would sit hand in hand, lost in love andfait--Christ near them--Eternity, warm with God, enwrapping them. 

So much for the man of action, the husband, the philanthropist. Inreality, great as was the moral energy of this period of Elsmere's life, the dominant distinguishing note of it was not moral but intellectual. 

In matters of conduct he was but developing habits and tendenciesalready strongly present in him; in matters of his thinking, with everymonth of this winter he was becoming conscious of fresh forces, freshhunger, fresh horizons. 

'_One half of your day be the king of your world_, ' Mr. Grey had said tohim; '_the other half be the slave of something which will take you outof your world_, into the general life, the life of thought, of man as awhole, of the universe. '

The counsel, as we have seen, had struck root and flowered into action. So many men of Elsmere's type give themselves up once and for allas they become mature to the life of doing and feeling, practicallyexcluding the life of thought. It was Henry Grey's influence in allprobability, perhaps, too, the training of an earlier Langham, thatsaved for Elsmere the life of thought. 

The form taken by this training of his own mind he had been thusencouraged not to abandon, was, as we know, the study of history. He hadwell mapped out before him that book on the origins of France whichhe had described to Langham. It was to take him years, of course, andmeanwhile, in his first enthusiasm, he was like a child, revelling inthe treasure of work that lay before him. As he had told Langham, he hadjust got below the surface of a great subject and was beginning to diginto the roots of it. Hitherto he had been under the guidance of menof his own day, of the nineteenth century historian, who refashions thepast on the lines of his own mind, who gives it rationality, coherence, and, as it were, modernness, so that the main impression he produces onus, so long as we look at that past through him only, is on the whole animpression of continuity of _resemblance_. 

Whereas, on the contrary, the first impression left on a man by theattempt to plunge into the materials of history for himself isalmost always an extraordinarily sharp impression of _difference_, of_contrast_. Ultimately, of course, he sees that those men and womenwhose letters and biographies, whose creeds and general conceptions heis investigating, are in truth his ancestors, bone of his bone, flesh ofhis flesh. But at first the student who goes back, say, in the historyof Europe, behind the Renaissance or behind the Crusades into the actualdeposits of the past, is often struck with a kind of _vertige_. The menand women whom he has dragged forth into the light of his own mindare to him like some strange puppet-show. They are called by names heknows--kings, bishops, judges, poets, priests, men of letters--but whata gulf between him and them! What motives, what beliefs, what embryonicprocesses of thought and morals, what bizarre combinations of ignoranceand knowledge, of the highest sanctity with the lowest credulity orfalsehood; what extraordinary prepossessions, born with a man andtainting his whole ways of seeing and thinking from childhood to thegrave! Amid all the intellectual dislocation of the spectacle, indeed, he perceives certain Greeks and certain Latins who represent a forwardstrain, who belong as it seems to a world of their own, a world aheadof 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 andArtemis, _you_ are really my kindred!' But intellectually they standalone. Around them, after them, for long ages the world 'spake as achild, felt as a child, understood as a child. '

Then he sees what it is makes the difference, digs the gulf. '_Science_, ' the mind cries, '_ordered knowledge_. ' And so for the firsttime the modern recognizes what the accumulations of his forefathershave done for him. He takes the torch which man has been so long andpatiently fashioning to his hand, and turns it on the past, and at everystep the sight grows stranger, and yet more moving, more pathetic. The darkness into which he penetrates does but make him grasp hisown guiding light the more closely. And yet, bit by bit, it has beenprepared for him by these groping, half-conscious generations, and thescrutiny which began in repulsion and laughter ends in a marvellinggratitude. 

But the repulsion and the laughter come first, and during this winter ofwork Elsmere felt them both very strongly. He would sit in themorning buried among the records of decaying Rome and emerging France, surrounded by Chronicles, by Church Councils, by lives of the Saints, byprimitive systems of law, pushing his imaginative, impetuous way throughthem. Sometimes Catherine would be there, and he would pour out on hersomething of what was in his own mind. 

One day he was deep in the life of a certain saint. The saint had beenbishop of a diocese in Southern France. His biographer was his successorin the see, a man of high political importance in the Burgundian state, renowned besides for sanctity and learning. Only some twenty yearsseparated the biography, at the latest, from the death of its subject. It contained some curious material for social history, and Robert wasreading it with avidity. But it was, of course, a tissue of marvels. Theyoung bishop had practised every virtue known to the time, and wroughtevery conceivable miracle, and the miracles were better told than usual, with more ingenuity, more imagination. Perhaps on that account theystruck the reader's sense more sharply. 

'And the saint said to the sorcerers and to the practisers of unholyarts, that they should do those evil things no more, for he had boundthe spirits of whom they were wont to inquire, and they would get nofurther answers to their incantations. Then those stiff-necked sons ofthe Devil fell upon the man of God, scourged him sore, and threatenedhim with death, if he would not instantly loose those spirits hehad bound. And seeing he could prevail nothing, and being moreover, admonished by God so to do, he permitted them to work their owndamnation. For he called for a parchment and wrote upon it, "_Ambroseunto Satan--Enter!_" Then was the spell loosed, the spirits returned, the sorcerers inquired as they were accustomed, and received answers. But in a short space of time every one of them perished miserably andwas delivered unto his natural lord Satanas, whereunto he belonged. '

Robert made a hasty exclamation, and turning to Catherine, who wasworking beside him, read the passage to her, with a few words as to thebook and its author. 

Catherine's work dropped a moment on to her knee. 

'What extraordinary superstition!' she said, startled. 'A bishop, Robert, and an educated man?'

Robert nodded. 

'But it is the whole habit of mind, ' he said half to himself, staringinto the fire, 'that is so astounding. No one escapes it. The whole agereally is non-sane. '

'I suppose the devout Catholic would believe that?'

'I am not sure, ' said Robert dreamily, and remained sunk in thoughtfor long after, while Catherine worked, and pondered a Christmasentertainment for her girls. 

Perhaps it was his scientific work, fragmentary as it was that wasreally quickening and sharpening these historical impressions of his. Evolution--once a mere germ in the mind--was beginning to press, toencroach, to intermeddle with the mind's other furniture. 

And the comparative instinct--that tool, _par excellence_, of modernscience was at last fully awake, was growing fast, taking hold, nowhere, now there. 

'It is tolerably clear to me, ' he said to himself suddenly one winterafternoon, as he was trudging home alone from Mile End, 'that some dayor other I must set to work to bring a little order into one's notionsof the Old Testament. At present they are just a chaos!'

He walked on awhile, struggling with the rainstorm which had overtakenhim, till again the mind's quick life took voice. 

'But what matter? God in the beginning--God in the prophets--in Israel'sbest life--God in Christ! How are any theories about the Pentateuch totouch that?'

And into the clear eyes, the young face aglow with wind and rain, thereleapt a light, a softness indescribable. 

But the vivider and the keener grew this new mental life of Elsmere's, the more constant became his sense of soreness as to that foolish andmotiveless quarrel which divided him from the Squire. Naturally he wasfor ever being harassed and pulled up in his work by the mere loss ofthe Murewell library. To have such a collection so close, and to becut off from it, was a state of things no student could help feelingseverely. But it was much more than that: it was the man he hankeredafter; the man who was a master where he was a beginner; the man who hadgiven his life to learning, and was carrying all his vast accumulationssombrely to the grave, unused, untransmitted. 

'He might have given me his knowledge, ' thought Elsmere sadly, 'andI--I--would have been a son to him. Why is life so perverse?'

Meanwhile he was as much cut off from the great house and its master asthough both had been surrounded by the thorn hedge of fairy tale. TheHall had its visitors during these winter months, but the Elsmeres sawnothing of them. Robert gulped down a natural sigh when one Saturdayevening, as he passed the Hall gates, he saw driving through them thechief of English science side by side with the most accomplished ofEnglish critics. 

"'There are good times in the world and I ain't in 'em!'" he saidto himself with a laugh and a shrug as he turned up the lane tothe rectory, and then, boylike, was ashamed of himself, and greetedCatherine, with all the tenderer greeting. 

Only on two occasions during three months could he be sure of havingseen the Squire. Both were in the twilight, when, as the neighborhooddeclared, Mr. Wendover always walked, and both made a sharp impressionon the Rector's nerves. In the heart of one of the loneliest commonsof the parish Robert, swinging along one November evening through thescattered furze bushes growing ghostly in the darkness, was suddenlyconscious of a cloaked figure with slouching shoulders and head bentforward coming toward him. It passed without recognition of any kind, and for an instant Robert caught the long, sharpened features andhaughty eyes of the Squire. 

At another time Robert was walking, far from home, along a bit of levelroad. The pools in the ruts were just filmed with frost, and gleamedunder the sunset; the winter dusk was clear and chill. A horseman turnedinto the road from a side lane. It was the Squire again, alone. Thesharp sound of the approaching hoofs stirred Robert's pulse, and as theypassed each other the Rector raised his hat. He thought his greeting wasacknowledged, but could not be quite sure. From the shelter of a groupof trees he stood a moment and looked after the retreating figure. Itand the horse showed dark against a wide sky barred by stormy reds andpurples. The wind whistled through the withered oaks; the long roadwith its lines of glimmering pools seemed to stretch endlessly into thesunset; and with every minute the night strode on. Age and lonelinesscould have found no fitter setting. A shiver ran through Elsmere as hestepped forward. 

Undoubtedly the quarrel, helped by his work, and the perpetual presenceof that beautiful house commanding the whole country round it from itsplateau above the river, kept Elsmere specially in mind of the Squire. As before their first meeting, and in spite of it, he became more andmore imaginatively preoccupied with him. One of the signs of it was astrong desire to read the Squire's two famous books: one, 'The Idols ofthe Market Place, ' an attack on English beliefs; the other, 'Essays onEnglish Culture, ' an attack on English ideals of education. He had nevercome across them as it happened, and perhaps Newcome's denunciation hadsome effect in inducing him for a time to refrain from reading them. Butin December he ordered them and waited their coming with impatience. Hesaid nothing of the order to Catherine; somehow there were by now two orthree portions of his work, two or three branches of his thought, which had fallen out of their common discussion. After all she wasnot 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 atightening of the heart, did Robert always remember that day in afteryears!) 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 foundCatherine tired, sent her to bed, and went himself into his study to puttogether some notes for a cottage lecture he was to give the followingday. The packet of books, unopened, lay on his writing-table. He tookoff the wrapper, and in his eager way fell to reading the first hetouched. 

It was the first volume of the 'Idols of the Market Place. '

Ten or twelve years before, Mr. Wendover had launched this book intoa startled and protesting England. It had been the fruit of his firstrenewal of contact with English life and English ideas after his returnfrom Berlin. Fresh from the speculative ferment of Germany and the farprofaner scepticism of France, he had returned to a society where thefirst chapter of Genesis and the theory of verbal inspiration were stillregarded as valid and important counters on the board of thought. Theresult had been this book. In it each stronghold of English popularreligion had been assailed in turn, at a time when English orthodoxy wasa far more formidable thing than it is now. 

The Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Gospels, St. Paul, Tradition, theFathers, Protestantism and Justification by Faith, the EighteenthCentury, the Broad Church Movement, Anglican Theology--the Squire hadhis say about them all. And while the coolness and frankness of themethod sent a shook of indignation and horror through the religiouspublic, the subtle and caustic style, and the epigrams with which thebook was strewn, forced both the religious and irreligious public toread, whether they would or no. A storm of controversy rose round thevolumes, and some of the keenest observers of English life had said atthe time, and maintained since, that the publication of the book hadmade or marked an epoch. 

Robert had lit on those pages in the Essay on the Gospels where theSquire fell to analyzing the evidence for the Resurrection, following uphis analysis by an attempt at reconstructing the conditions out of whichthe belief in 'the legend' arose. Robert began to read vaguely at first, then to hurry on through page after page, still standing, seized atonce by the bizarre power of the style, the audacity and range of thetreatment. 

Not a sound in the house. Outside, the tossing, moaning December night;inside, the faintly crackling fire, the standing figure. Suddenly itwas to Robert as though a cruel torturing hand were laid upon his inmostbeing. His breath failed him; the book slipped out of his grasp; hesank down upon his chair, his head in his hands. Oh, what a desolate, intolerable moment! Over the young idealist soul there swept adry destroying whirlwind of thought. Elements Gathered from allsources--from his own historical work, from the Squire's book, from thesecret, half-conscious recesses of the mind--entered into it, and as itpassed it seemed to scorch the heart. 

He stayed bowed there a while, then he roused himself with a half-groan, and hastily extinguishing his lamp; he groped his way upstairs to hiswife's room. Catherine lay asleep. The child, lost among its whitecoverings, slept too; there was a dim light over the bed, the books, thepictures. Beside his wife's pillow was a table on which there lay openher little Testament and the 'Imitation' her father had given her. Elsmere sank down beside her, appalled by the contrast between this softreligious peace and that black agony of doubt which still overshadowedhim. He knelt there, restraining his breath lest it should wake her, wrestling piteously with himself, crying for pardon, for faith, feelinghimself utterly unworthy to touch even the dear hand that lay sonear him. But gradually the traditional forces of his life reassertedthemselves. The horror lifted. Prayer brought comfort and a passionate, healing self-abasement. 'Master, forgive--defend--purify--' cried theaching heart. '_There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God!_'

He did not open the book again. Next morning he put it back intohis shelves. If there were any Christian who could affront such anantagonist with a light heart, he felt with a shudder of memory it wasnot he. 

'I have neither learning nor experience enough--yet, ' he said to himselfslowly as he moved away. 'Of course it can be met, but I must grow, mustthink--first. '

And of that night's wrestle he said not a word to any living soul. Hedid penance for it in the tenderest, most secret ways, but he shrank inmisery from the thought of revealing it even to Catherine. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Meanwhile the poor poisoned folk at Mile End lived and apparentlythrove, in defiance of all the laws of the universe. Robert, as soon ashe found that radical measures were for the time hopeless, had appliedhimself with redoubled energy to making the people use such palliativesas were within their reach, and had preached boiled water and theremoval of filth till, as he declared to Catherine, his dreams were onelong sanitary nightmare. But he was not confiding enough to believe thatthe people paid much heed, and he hoped more from a dry hard winter thanfrom 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 everyoutbreak of illness there had followed upon unusual damp. But the rainspassed leaving behind them no worse result than the usual winter crop oflung ailments and rheumatism, and he breathed again. 

Christmas came and went, and with the end of December the wet weatherreturned. Day after day rolling masses of southwest cloud came up fromthe Atlantic and wrapped the whole country in rain, which remindedCatherine of her Westmoreland rain more than any she had yet seen in theSouth. Robert accused her of liking it for that reason, but she shookher head with a sigh, declaring that it was 'nothing without the peaks. '

One afternoon she was shutting the door of the school behind her, and stepping out on the road skirting the green--the bedabbled wintrygreen--when she saw Robert emerging from the Mile End lane. She crossedover to him, wondering, as she neared him, that he seemed to take nonotice of her. He was striding along, his wideawake over his eyes, andso absorbed that she had almost touched him before he saw her. 

'Darling, is that you? Don't stop me, I am going to take thepony-carriage in for Meyrick. I have just come back from that accursedplace; three cases of diphtheria in one house, Sharland's wife--and twoothers down with fever. '

She made a horrified exclamation. 

'It will spread, ' he said gloomily, 'I know it will. I never saw thechildren look such a ghastly crew before. Well, I must go for Meyrickand a nurse, and we must isolate and make a fight for it. '

In a few days the diphtheria epidemic reached terrible proportion's. There had been one death, others were expected, and soon Robert in hisbrief hours at home could find no relief in anything, so heavy was theoppression of the day's memories. At first Catherine for the child'ssake kept away; but the little Mary was weaned, had a good Scotch nurse, was in every way thriving, and after a day or two Catherine's craving tohelp, 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 thediphtheritic children. So she bethought herself of Mrs. Elsmere'sservant, old Martha, who was still inhabiting Mrs. Elsmere's cottagetill a tenant could be found for it, and doing good service meanwhileas an occasional parish nurse. The baby and its nurse went over to thecottage. Catherine carried the child there, wrapped close in maternalarms, 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 theepidemic. At the climax of it, there were about twenty children downwith it in different stages, and seven cases of fever. They had twohospital nurses; one of the better cottages, turned into a sanatorium, accommodated the worst cases under the nurses, and Robert and Catherine, directed by them and the doctors, took the responsibility of the rest, he helping to nurse the boys and she the girls. Of the fever casesSharland's wife was the worst. A feeble creature at all times, it seemedalmost 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 mother and five or six younger children, was alsodesperately ill. Robert hardly ever had him out of his thoughts, andthe boy's doglike affection for the Rector, struggling with hisdeathly weakness, was like a perpetual exemplification of Ahriman andOrmuzd--the power of life struggling with the power of death. 

It was a fierce fight. Presently it seemed to the husband and wife asthough the few daily hours spent at the rectory were mere halts betweensuccessive acts of battle with the plague-fiend--a more real and grimGrendel of the Marshes--for the lives of children. Catherine couldalways sleep in these intervals, quietly and dreamlessly; Robert verysoon 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 in himof a certain lack of constitutional hardness which his mother knew verywell, but which his wife was only just beginning to recognize. However, he laughed to scorn any attempt to restrain his constant goings andcomings, or those hours of night-nursing, in which, as the hospitalnurses 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 wornand spiritual look of the man, and the knowledge warm at each heart ofthose before him of how the Rector not only talked but lived, carriedevery word home. 

This strain upon all the moral and physical forces, however, strangelyenough, came to Robert as a kind of relief. It broke through a tensionof brain which of late had become an oppression. And for both him andCatherine these dark times had moments of intensest joy, points of whitelight illuminating heaven and earth. 

There were cloudy nights--wet, stormy January nights--when sometimesit happened to them to come back both together from the hamlet, Robertcarrying a lantern, Catherine clothed in waterproof from head to foot, walking beside him, the rays flashing now on her face, now on the woodedsides of the lane, while the wind howled through the dark vault ofbranches overhead. And then, as they talked or were silent, suddenlya sense of the intense blessedness of this comradeship of theirs wouldrise like a flood in the man's heart, and he would fling his free armround her, forcing her to stand a moment in the January night and stormwhile he said to her words of passionate gratitude, of faith in animmortal union reaching beyond change or deaths lost in a kiss which wasa sacrament. Then there were the moments when they saw their child, heldhigh in Martha's arms at the window, and leaping toward her mother; themoments when one pallid, sickly being after another was pronounced outof danger; and by the help of them the weeks passed away. 

Nor were they left without help from outside. Lady Helen Varley nosooner heard the news than she hurried over. Robert on his way onemorning from one cottage to another saw her pony-carriage in the lane. He hastened up to her before she could dismount. 

'No, Lady Helen, you mustn't come here, ' he said to her peremptorily, asshe held out her hand. 

'Oh, Mr. Elsmere, let me. My boy is in town with his grandmother. Let mejust go through, at any rate, and see what I can send you. '

Robert shook his head, smiling. A common friend of theirs and hers hadonce described this little lady to Elsmere by a French sentence whichoriginally applied to the Duchesse de Choiseul. 'Une charmante petitefée sortie d'un œuf enchanté!'--so it ran. Certainly, as Elsmere lookeddown upon her now, fresh from those squalid death-stricken hovels behindhim, he was brought more abruptly than ever upon the contrasts of life. Lady Helen wore a green velvet and fur mantle, in the production ofwhich even Worth had felt some pride; a little green velvet bonnetperched on her fair hair; one tiny hand, ungloved, seemed ablazewith diamonds; there were opals and diamonds somewhere at her throat, gleaming among her sables. But she wore her jewels as carelessly as shewore her high birth, her quaint, irregular prettiness, or the one or twobrilliant gifts which made her sought after wherever she went. She lovedher opals as she loved all bright things; if it pleased her to wear themin the morning she wore them; and in five minutes she was capable ofmaking the sourest Puritan forget to frown on her and them. To Robertshe always seemed the quintessence of breeding, of aristocracy at theirbest. All her freaks, her sallies, her absurdities even, were graceful. At her freest and gayest there were things in her--restraints, reticences, perceptions--which implied behind her generations of rich, happy, important people, with ample leisure to cultivate all the moredelicate niceties of social feeling and relation. Robert was oftenstruck by the curious differences between her and Rose. Rose was farthe handsome; she was at least as clever; and she had a strongimperious will where Lady Helen had only impulses and sympathies and_engouements_. But Rose belonged to the class which struggles, whereeach individual depends on himself and knows it. Lady Helen had neverstruggled for anything--all the best things of the world were hers soeasily that she hardly gave them a thought; or rather, what she hadgathered without pain she held so lightly, she dispensed so lavishly, that men's eyes followed her, fluttering through life, with much thesame feeling as was struck from Clough's radical hero by the peerlessLady Maria:--

 Live, be lovely, forget us, be beautiful, even to proudness, Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you; Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous; only be lovely!

'Uncaring, ' however, little Lady Helen never was. If she was a fairy, she was a fairy all heart, all frank, foolish smiles and tears. 

'No, Lady Helen--no, ' Robert said again. 'This is no place for you, andwe are getting on capitally. '

She pouted a little. 

'I believe you and Mrs. Elsmere are just killing yourselves all in acorner, with no one to see, ' she said indignantly. 'If you won't letme see, I shall send Sir Harry. But who'--and her brown fawn's eyesran startled over the cottages before her--'who, Mr. Elsmere, does this_dreadful_ place belong to?'

'Mr. Wendover, ' said Robert shortly. 

'Impossible!' she cried incredulously. 'Why, I wouldn't ask one of mydogs to sleep there, ' and she pointed to the nearest hovel, whereof thewalls were tottering outward, the thatch was falling to pieces, and thewindows were mended with anything that came handy--rags, paper, or thecrown of an old hat. 

'No, you would be ill-advised' said Robert, looking with a bitter littlesmile at the sleek dachshund that sat blinking beside its mistress. 

'But what is the agent about?'

Then Robert told her the story, not mincing his words. Since theepidemic had begun, all that sense of imaginative attraction which hadbeen reviving in him toward the Squire had been simply blotted out bya fierce heat of indignation. When he thought of Mr. Wendover now, hethought of him as the man to whom in strict truth it was owing thathelpless children died in choking torture. All that agony, of wrath andpity he had gone through in the last ten days sprang to his lips now ashe talked to Lady Helen, and poured itself into his words. 

'Old Meyrick and I have taken things into our own hands now, ' he saidat last briefly. 'We have already made two cottages fairly habitable. To-morrow the inspector comes. I told the people yesterday I wouldn't bebound by my promise a day longer. He must put the screw on Henslowe, andif Henslowe dawdles, why we shall just drain and repair and sink for awell, ourselves. I can find the money somehow. At present we get all ourwater from one of the farms on the brow. '

'Money!' said Lady Helen impulsively, her looks warm with sympathy forthe pale, harassed young rector. 'Sir Harry shall send you as much asyou want. And anything else--blankets--coals?'

Out came her notebooks and Robert was drawn into a list. Then, fullof joyfulness at being allowed to help, she gathered up her reins, shenodded her pretty little head at him, and was just starting off herponies at full speed, equally eager 'to tell Harry' and to ransackChurton for the stores required, when it occurred to her to pull upagain. 

'Oh, Mr. Elsmere, my aunt, Lady Charlotte, does nothing but talk aboutyour sister-in-law. _Why_ did you keep her all to yourself? Is it kind, is it neighborly, to have such a wonder to stay with you and let nobodyshare?'

'A wonder?' said Robert, amused. 'Rose plays the violin very well, but--'

'As if relations ever saw one in proper perspective!' exclaimed LadyHelen. 'My aunt wants to be allowed to have her in town next seasonif you will all let her. I think she would find it fun. Aunt Charlotteknows all the world and his wife. And if I'm there, and Miss Leyburnwill let me make friends with her, why, you know, _I_ can just protecther a little from Aunt Charlotte?'

The little laughing face bent forward again; Robert, smiling, raised hishat, and the ponies whirled her off. In anybody else Elsmere would havethought all this effusion insincere or patronizing. But Lady Helen wasthe most spontaneous of mortals, and the only highborn woman he had evermet who was really, and not only apparently, free from the 'nonsense ofrank. ' Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlotte's social tolerance to bea mere varnish. But this little person, and her favorite brother Hugh, to judge from the accounts of him, must always have found life tooromantic, too wildly and delightfully interesting from top to bottom, tobe measured by any but romantic standards. 

Next day Sir Harry Varley, a great burly country squire, who adoredhis wife, kept the hounds, owned a model estate, and thanked God everymorning that he was an Englishman, rode over to Mile End. Robert, whohad 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 off with a discharge of stronglanguage, at which Robert, clergyman as he was, only grimly smiled. 

A few days later Mr. Wendover's crimes as a landowner, his agent'sbrutality, young Elsmere's devotion, and the horrors of the Mile Endoutbreak, were in everybody's mouth. The county was roused. The Radicalnewspaper came out on the Saturday with a flaming article; Robert, muchto his annoyance, found himself the local hero; and money began to comein to him freely. 

On the Monday morning Henslowe appeared on the scene with an army ofworkmen. A racy communication from the inspector had reached him twodays before, so had a copy of the 'Churton Advertiser. ' He had spentSunday in a drinking bout turning over all possible plans of vengeanceand evasion. Toward the evening, however, his wife, a gaunt cleverScotchwoman, who saw ruin before them, and had on occasion an evensharper tongue than her husband, managed to capture the supplies ofbrandy in the house and effectually conceal them. Then she waited forthe moment of collapse which came on toward morning, and with her handson her hips she poured into him a volley of home-truths which not evenSir Harry Varley could have bettered. Henslowe's nerve gave way. He wentout at daybreak, white and sullen, to look for workmen. 

Robert, standing on the step of a cottage, watched him give his orders, and took vigilant note of their substance. They embodied the inspector'sdirections, and the Rector was satisfied. Henslowe was obliged to passhim on his way to another group of houses. At first he affected notto see the Rector, then suddenly Elsmere was conscious that the man'sbloodshot eyes were on him. Such a look! If hate could have killed, Elsmere would have fallen where he stood. Yet the man's handmechanically moved to his hat, as though the spell of his wife'sharangue were still potent over his shaking muscles. 

Robert took no notice whatever of the salutation. He stood calmlywatching till Henslowe disappeared into the last house. Then he calledone of the agent's train, heard what was to be done, gave a sharp nodof assent, and turned on his heel. So far so good: the servant had beenmade to feel, but he wished it had been the master. Oh, those threelittle emaciated creatures whose eyes he had closed, whose clammy handshe had held to the last!--what reckoning should be asked for theirundeserved torments when the Great Account came to be made up?

Meanwhile not a sound apparently of all this reached the Squire in thesublime solitude of Murewell. A fortnight had passed. Henslowe had beenconquered, the county had rushed to Elsmere's help, and neither henor Mrs. Darcy had made a sign. Their life was so abnormal that it wasperfectly 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 epidemicbroke out, and Robert, feeling it a comfort to be rid of him, had thrownthe whole business into the hands of Meyrick and his son. This son wasnominally his father's junior partner, but as he was, besides, a youngand brilliant M. D. Fresh from a great hospital, and his father was justa poor old general practitioner, with the barest qualification and onlyforty years' experience to recommend him, it will easily be imaginedthat the subordination was purely nominal. Indeed young Meyrick was fastousting his father in all directions, and the neighborhood, which hadso far found itself unable either to enter or to quit this mortal scenewithout old Meyrick's assistance, was beginning to send notes to thehouse in Charton High Street, whereon the superscription 'Dr. _Edward_Meyrick' was underlined with ungrateful emphasis. The father tookhis deposition very quietly. Only on Murewell Hall would he allow notrespassing, and so long as his son left him undisturbed there, he tookhis effacement in other quarters with perfect meekness. 

Young Elsmere's behavior to him, however, at a time when all the restof the Churton world was beginning to hold him cheap and let him see it, had touched the old man's heart, and he was the Rector's slave in thisMile End business. Edward Meyrick would come whirling in and out of thehamlet once a day. Robert was seldom sorry to see the back of him. His attainments, of course, were useful, but his cocksureness wasirritating, and his manner to his father, abominable. The father, on theother hand, came over in the shabby pony-cart he had driven for the lastforty years, and having himself no press of business, would spend hourswith the Rector over the cases, giving them an infinity of patientwatching, and amusing Robert by the cautious hostility he would allowhimself every now and then toward his souls newfangled devices. 

At first Meyrick showed himself fidgety as to the Squire. Had he beenseen, been heard from? He received Robert's sharp negatives with longsighs, but Robert clearly saw that, like the rest of the world, he wastoo much afraid of Mr. Wendover to go and beard him. Some months before, as it happened, Elsmere had told him the story of his encounter with theSquire, and had been a good deal moved and surprised by the old man'sconcern. 

One day, about three weeks from the beginning of the outbreak, when thestate of things in the hamlet was beginning decidedly to mend, Meyrickarrived for his morning round, much preoccupied. He hurried his work alittle, and after it was done asked Robert to walk up the road with him. 

'I have seen the Squire, sir, ' he said, turning on his companion with acertain excitement. 

Robert flushed. 

'Have you?' he replied with his hands behind him, and a world ofexpression in his sarcastic voice. 

'You misjudge him! You misjudge him, Mr. Elsmere!' the old man saidtremulously. 'I told you he could know of this business--and he didn't!He has been in town part of the time, and down here, how is he to knowanything? 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 you can say your mind of the master. '

Old Meyrick sighed. 

'Well, ' said Robert, after a moment, his lip drawn and quivering, 'youtold him the story, I suppose? Seven deaths, is it, by now? Well, what sort of impression did these unfortunate accidents'--and hesmiled--'produce?'

'He talked of sending money, ' said Meyrick doubtfully; he said he wouldhave Henslowe up and inquire. He seemed put about and annoyed. Oh, Mr. Elsmere, you think too hardly of the Squire, that you do!'

They strolled on together in silence. Robert was not inclined to discussthe matter. But old Meyrick seemed to be laboring under some suppressedemotion, and presently he began upon his own experiences as a doctor ofthe Wendover family. He had already broached the subject more orless vaguely with Robert. Now, however, he threw his medical reserve, generally his strongest characteristic, to the winds. He insisted ontelling his companion, who listened reluctantly, the whole miserableand ghastly story of the old Squire's suicide. He described the heir'ssummons, his arrival just in time for the last scene with all itshorrors, and that mysterious condition of the Squire for some monthsafterward, when no one, not even Mrs. Darcy, had been admitted to theHall, and old Meyrick, directed at intervals by a great London doctor, had been the only spectator of Roger Wendover's physical and mentalbreakdown, the only witness of that dark consciousness of inheritedfatality which at that period of his life not even the Squire's ironwill had been able wholly to conceal. 

Robert, whose attention was inevitably roused after a while, foundhimself with some curiosity realizing the Squire from another man'stotally different point of view. Evidently Meyrick had seen him at suchmoments 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 feelinga certain soothing influence in the _naïveté_ and simplicity of the oldman's sympathy, had allowed himself at times, in the years succeedingthat illness of his, an amount of unbending in Meyrick's presence, suchas probably no other mortal had ever witnessed in him since his earliestyouth. 

And yet how childish the old man's whole mental image of the Squire wasafter all! What small account it made of the subtleties, the gnarledintricacies and contradictions of such a character! Horror at hisfather's end, and dread of a like fate for himself! Robert did notknow very much of the Squire, but he knew enough to feel sure that thisconfiding, indulgent theory of Meyrick's was ludicrously far from themark as an adequate explanation of Mr. Wendover's later life. 

Presently Meyrick became aware of the sort of tacit resistance whichhis companion's mind was opposing to his own. He dropped the wanderingnarrative he was busy upon with a sigh. 

'Ah well, I dare say it's hard, it's hard, ' he said with patientacquiescence in his voice, 'to believe a man can't help himself. I daresay we doctors get to muddle up right and wrong. But if ever there was aman sick in mind--for all his book learning they talk about--and sick insoul, that man is the Squire. '

Robert looked at him with a softer expression. There was a new dignityabout the simple old man. The old-fashioned deference, which had neverlet him forget in speaking to Robert that he was speaking to a man offamily, and which showed itself in all sorts of antiquated locutionswhich were a torment to his son, had given way to something still moredeeply ingrained. His gaunt figure, with the stoop, and the spectacles, and the long straight hair--like the figure of a superannuatedschoolmaster--assumed, as he turned again to his younger companion, something of authority, something almost of stateliness. 

'Ah, Mr. Elsmere, ' he said, laying his shrunk hand on the younger man'ssleeve and speaking with emotion, 'you're very good to the poor. We'reall proud of you--you and your good lady. But when you were coming, andI heard tell all about you, I thought of my poor Squire, and I saidto myself, "That young man'll be good to _him_. The Squire will makefriends with him, and Mr. Elsmere will have a good wife--andthere'll be children born to him--and the Squire will take aninterest--and--and--maybe----"

The old man paused. Robert grasped his hand silently. 

'And there was something in the way between you, ' the speaker went on, starting. '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 nowit's missed--it's missed. Ah! It's no good talking; he has a heart--hehas! Many's the kind thing he's done in old days for me and mine--I'llnever forget them! But all these last few years--oh, I know, I know. Youcan't go and shut your heart up, and fly in the face of all the dutiesthe Lord laid on you, without losing yourself and setting the Lordagainst you. But it is pitiful, Mr. Elsmere, it's pitiful!'

It seemed to Robert suddenly as though there was a Divine breath passingthrough the wintry, lane and through the shaking voice of the old man. Beside the spirit looking out of those wrinkled eyes, his own hot youth, its justest resentments, its most righteous angers, seemed crude, harsh, inexcusable. 

'Thank you, Meyrick, thank you, and God bless you! Don't imagine I willforget a word you have said to me. '

The Rector shook the hand he held warmly twice over, a gentle smilepassed over Meyrick's aging face, and they parted. 

That night it fell to Robert to sit up after midnight with John Allwood, the youth of twenty whose case had been a severer tax on the powers ofthe little nursing staff than perhaps any other. Mother and neighborswere worn out, and it was difficult to spare a hospital nurse for longtogether from the diphtheria cases. Robert, therefore, had insistedduring the preceding week on taking alternate nights with one of thenurses. During the first hours before midnight he slept soundly on abed made up in the ground-floor room of the little sanatorium. Then attwelve the nurse called him, and he went out, his eyes still heavy withsleep, into a still, frosty winter's night. 

After so much rain, so much restlessness of wind and cloud, the silenceand the starry calm of it were infinitely welcome. The sharp cold aircleared his brain and braced his nerves, and by the time he reached thecottage whither he was bound, he was broad awake. He opened the doorsoftly, passed through the lower room, crowded with sleeping children, climbed the narrow stairs as noiselessly as possible, and found himselfin a garret, faintly lit, a bed in one corner, and a woman sittingbeside it. The woman glided away, the Rector looked carefully at thetable of instructions hanging over the bed, assured himself that wineand milk and beef essence and medicines were ready to his hand, putout his watch on the wooden table near the bed, and sat him down to histask. The boy was sleeping the sleep of weakness. Food was to be givenevery half hour, and in this perpetual impulse to the system lay hisonly chance. 

The Rector had his Greek Testament with him, and could just read it bythe help of the dim light. But after a while, as the still hours passedon, it dropped on to his knee, and he sat thinking--endlessly thinking. The young laborer lay motionless beside him, the lines of the longemaciated frame showing through the bedclothes. The night-lightflickered on the broken, discolored ceiling; every now and then a mousescratched in the plaster; the mother's heavy breathing came from thenext room; sometimes a dog barked or an owl cried outside. Otherwisedeep silence, such silence as drives the soul back upon itself. 

Elsmere was conscious of a strange sense of moral expansion. The sternjudgments, the passionate condemnations which his nature housed sopainfully, seemed lifted from it. The soul breathed an 'ampler æther, a diviner air. ' Oh! the mysteries of life and character, the subtle, inexhaustible claims of pity! The problems which hang upon our beinghere; its mixture of elements; the pressure of its inexorable physicalenvironment; the relations of mind to body, of man's poor will to thistangled tyrannous life--it was along these old, old lines his thoughtwent painfully groping and always at intervals it came back to theSquire, pondering, seeking to understand, a new soberness, a newhumility 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 spiritof love, of infinite forbearance in which the simpler, duller nature haddeclared itself that had appealed to him, nay, reproached him. 

Then these thoughts led him on further and further from man to God, fromhuman defect to the Eternal Perfectness. Never once during those hoursdid Elsmere's hand fail to perform its needed service to the faintsleeper beside him, and yet that night was one long dream andstrangeness to him, nothing real anywhere but consciousness, and God itssource; the soul attacked every now and then by phantom stabs of doubt, of bitter, brief misgiving, as the barriers of sense between it and theeternal enigma grew more and more transparent, wrestling a while, andthen prevailing. And each golden moment of certainty, of conqueringfaith, seemed to Robert in some sort a gift from Catherine's hand. Itwas she who led him through the shades; it was her voice murmuring inhis ear. 

When the first gray dawn began to creep in slowly perceptible waves intothe room, Elsmere felt as though not hours but fears of experience laybetween him and the beginnings of his watch. 

'It is by these moments we should date our lives' he murmured to himselfas he rose: 'they are the only real landmarks. '

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 hadbeen maintained, the pulse was firmer, the temperature lower. The boy, throwing off his drowsiness, lay watching the Rector's face as he talkedin an undertone to the nurse, his haggard eyes full of a dumb, friendlywistfulness. When Robert bent over him to say good-by, this expressionbrightened into something more positive, and Robert left him, feeling atlast that there was a promise of life in his look and touch. 

In, another moment he had stepped out into the January morning. It wasclear and still as the night had been. In the east there was a palepromise of sun; the reddish-brown trunks of the fir woods had justcaught it and rose faintly in glowing in endless vistas and colonnadesone behind the other. The flooded river itself rushed through the bridgeas full and turbid as before, but all the other water surfaces hadgleaming films of ice. The whole ruinous place had a clean, almost afestal air under the touch of the frost, while on the side of the hillleading to Murewell, tree rose above tree, the delicate network of theirwintry twigs and branches set against stretches of frost-whitened grass, till finally they climbed into the pale all-completing blue. In a copseclose at hand there were woodcutters at work, and piles of gleaminglaths shining through the underwood. Robins hopped along the frostyroad, and as he walked on through the houses toward the bridge, Robert'squick ear distinguished that most wintry of all sounds--the cry of aflock of field-fares 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 againstthe 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 someone coming, turned, and saw theRector. 

'I am glad to see you here, Mr. Wendover, ' said Robert, stopping andholding out his hand. 'I meant to have come to talk to you about thisplace this morning. I ought to have come before. '

He spoke gently, and quite simply, almost as if they had parted the daybefore. The Squire touched his hand for an instant. 

'You may not, perhaps, be aware, Mr. Elsmere, ' he said, endeavoring tospeak with all his old hauteur, while his heavy lips twitched nervously, 'that, for one reason and another, I knew nothing of the epidemic heretill yesterday, when Meyrick told me. '

'I heard from Mr. Meyrick that it was so. As you are here now, Mr. Wendover, and I am in no great hurry to get home, may I take you throughand show you the people?'

The Squire at last looked at him straight--at the face worn and pale, yet still so extraordinarily youthful, in which something of thesolemnity 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 fevercases. It's hard work for the nurses and the relations sometimes, without help. '

The Squire moved on mechanically toward the village, and Robert movedbeside him. 

'And Mrs. Elsmere?'

'Mrs. Elsmere was here most of yesterday. She used to stay the nightwhen the diphtheria was at its worst; but there are only four anxiouscases left, the rest all convalescent. '

The Squire said no more, and they turned into the lane, where the icelay thick in the deep ruts, and on either hand curls of smoke roseinto the clear cold sky. The Squire looked about him with eyes whichno detail escaped. Robert, without a word of comment, pointed out thisfeature and that, showed where Henslowe had begun repairs, where thenew well was to be, what the water-supply had been till now, drew theSquire's attention to the roofs, the pigstyes, the drainage, or rathercomplete absence of drainage, and all in the dry voice of someone goingthrough a catalogue. Word had already fled like wildfire through thehamlet that the Squire was there. Children and adults, a pale emaciatedcrew, poured out into the wintry air to look. The Squire knit his browswith annoyance as the little crowd in the lane grew. Robert took nonotice. 

Presently he pushed open the door of the house where he had spent thenight. In the kitchen a girl of sixteen was clearing away the variousnondescript heaps on which the family had slept, and was preparingbreakfast. The Squire looked at the floor, --

'I thought I understood from Henslowe, ' he muttered, as though tohimself, 'that there were no mud floors left on the estate--'

'There are only three houses in Mile End without them; said Robert, catching what he said. 

They went upstairs, and the mother stood open-eyed while the Squire'srestless look gathered in the details of the room, the youth's faceas he lay back on his pillows, whiter than they, exhausted and yetrefreshed by the sponging with vinegar and water which the mother hadjust been administering to him; the bed, the gaps in the worm-eatenboards, the holes in the roof where the plaster bulged inward, as thougha shake would bring it down; the coarse china shepherdesses on themantelshelf, and the flowers which Catherine had put there the daybefore. He asked a few questions, said an abrupt word or two to themother, and they tramped downstairs again and into the street. ThenRobert took him across to the little improvised hospital, saying to himon the threshold, with a moment's hesitation, --

'As you know, for adults there is not much risk, but there is alwayssome risk--'

A peremptory movement of the Squire's hand stopped him, and they wentin. In the downstairs room were half-a-dozen convalescents, pale, shadowy creatures, four of them under ten, sitting up in their littlecots, each of them with a red flannel jacket drawn from Lady Helen'sstores, and enjoying the breakfast which a nurse in white cap and apronhad just brought them. Upstairs in a room from which a lath-and-plasterpartition had been removed, and which had been adapted, warmed andventilated by various contrivances to which Robert and Meyrick haddevoted their practical minds, were the 'four anxious cases. ' One ofthem, a little creature of six, one of Sharland's black-eyed children, was sitting up, supported by the nurse, and coughing, its little lifeaway. As soon as he saw it, Robert's step quickened. He forgot theSquire altogether. He came and stood by the bedside, rigidly still, for he could do nothing, but his whole soul absorbed in that horriblestruggle for air. How often he had seen it now, and never without thesame wild sense of revolt and protest! At last the hideous membrane wasloosened, the child got relief and lay back white and corpselike, butwith a pitiful momentary relaxation of the drawn lines on its littlebrow. Robert stooped and kissed the damp tiny hand. The child's eyesremained shut, but the fingers made a feeble effort to close on his. 

'Mr. Elsmere, ' said the nurse, a motherly body, looking at him withfriendly admonition, 'if you don't go home and rest you'll be ill too, and I'd like to know who'll be the better for that?'

'How many deaths?' asked the Squire abruptly, touching Elsmere's arm, and so reminding Robert of his existence. 'Meyrick spoke of deaths. '

He stood near the door, but his eyes were fixed on the little bed, onthe half-swooning child. 

'Seven, ' said Robert, turning upon him. 'Five of diphtheria, two offever. That little one will go, too. '

'Horrible!' said the Squire under his breath, and then moved to thedoor. 

The two men went downstairs in perfect silence. Below, in theconvalescent room, the children were capable of smiles, and of quick, coquettish beckonings to the Rector to come and make game with them asusual. But he could only kiss his hand to them and escape, for there wasmore to do. 

He took the Squire through all the remaining fever cases, and intoseveral of the worst cottages--Milsom's among them--and when it was allover they emerged into the lane again, near the bridge. There was stilla crowd of children and women hanging about, watching eagerly for theSquire, whom many of them had never seen at all, and about whom variousmyths had gradually formed themselves in the country-side. The Squirewalked away from them hurriedly, followed by Robert, and again theyhalted on the centre of the bridge. A horse led by a groom was beingwalked up and down on a flat piece of road just beyond. 

It was an awkward moment. Robert never forgot the thrill of it, or theassociation of wintry sunshine streaming down upon a sparkling world ofice and delicate woodland and foam-flecked river. 

The squire turned toward him irresolutely; his sharply-cut wrinkled lipsopening and closing again. Then he held out his hand: 'Mr. Elsmere, Idid 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 isplainly irreparable; I will think what can be done for the future. As for my relation to you, it rests with you to say whether it can beamended. I recognize that you have just cause of complaint. '

What invincible pride there was in the man's very surrender! But Elsmerewas not repelled by it. He knew that in their hour together the Squirehad _felt_. His soul had lost its bitterness. The dead and their wrongwere with God. 

He took the Squire's outstretched hand, grasping it cordially, a pure, unworldly dignity in his whole look and bearing. 

'Let us be friends, Mr. Wendover. It will be a great comfort to us--mywife and me. Will you remember us both very kindly to Mrs. Darcy?'

Commonplace words, but words that made an epoch in the life of both. Inanother minute the Squire, on horse-back, was trotting along the sideroad leading to the Hall, and Robert was speeding home to Catherine asfast as his long legs could carry him. 

She was waiting for him on the steps, shading her eyes against theunwonted sun. He kissed her with the spirits of a boy and told her all, his news. 

Catherine listened bewildered, not knowing what to say or how allat once to forgive, to join Robert in forgetting. But that strangespiritual glow about him was not to be withstood. She threw her armsabout him at last with a half sob, --

'Oh, Robert--yes! Dear Robert--thank God!'

'Never think any more, ' he said at last, leading her in from the littlehall, 'of What has been, only of what shall be! Oh, Catherine, give mesome tea; and never did I see anything so tempting as that armchair. '

'He sank down into it, and when she put his breakfast beside him she sawwith a start that he was fast asleep. The wife stood and watched him, the signs of fatigue round eyes and mouth, the placid expression, andher face was soft with tenderness and joy. Of course--of course, eventhat hard man must love him. Who could help it? My Robert!'

And so now in this disguise, now in that, the supreme hour ofCatherine's life stole on and on toward her. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

As may be imagined, the 'Churton Advertiser' did not find its way toMurewell. It was certainly no pressure of social disapproval that madethe Squire go down to Mile End in that winter's dawn. The county mighttalk, or the local press might harangue, till Doomsday, and Mr. Wendoverwould either know nothing or care less. 

Still his interview with Meyrick in the park after his return from aweek in town, whither he had gone to see some old Berlin friends, hadbeen a shock to him. A man may play the intelligent recluse, may refuseto fit his life to his neighbors' notions as much as you please, andstill 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 probablythat fortune need not have been so eager to put him in the wrong. Torelieve his mind he sent for Henslowe, and in an interview, the memoryof which sent a shiver through the agent to the end of his days, he letit be seen that though it did not for the moment suit him to dismiss theman who had brought this upon him, that man's reign in any true sensewas over. 

But afterward the Squire was still restless. What was astir in him wasnot so much pity or remorse as certain instincts of race which stillsurvived under the strange super-structure of manners he had built uponthem. It may be the part of a gentlemen and a scholar to let the agentwhom you have interposed between yourself and a boorish peasantry have afree hand; but, after all, the estate is yours, and to expose the rectorof the parish to all sorts of avoidable risks in the pursuit of hisofficial duty by reason of the gratuitous filth of your property, is anact of doubtful breeding. The Squire in his most rough-and-tumble daysat Berlin had always felt himself the grandee as well as the student. He abhorred sentimentalism, but neither did he choose to cut an unseemlyfigure in his own eyes. 

After a night, therefore, less tranquil or less meditative than usual, he rose early and sallied forth at one of those unusual hours hegenerally chose for walking. The thing must be put right somehow, and atonce, with as little waste of time and energy as possible, and Henslowehad 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 seenfor 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 wantto make friends with him. No doubt his devotion had served his ownpurposes. Still Mr. Wendover was one of the subtlest living judgesof character when he pleased, and his enforced progress through thesehovels with Elsmere had not exactly softened him, but had filled himwith a curious contempt for his own hastiness of judgment. 

'History would be inexplicable after all without the honest fanatic, ' hesaid to himself on the way home. 'I suppose I had forgotten it. Thereis nothing like a dread of being bored for blunting your psychologicalinstinct. '

In the course of the day he sent off a letter to the Rector intimatingin the very briefest, dryest way that the cottages should be rebuilton a different site as soon as possible, and enclosing a liberalcontribution toward the expenses incurred in fighting the epidemic. Whenthe letter was gone he drew his books toward him with a sound which waspartly disgust, partly relief. This annoying business had wretchedlyinterrupted him, and his concessions left him mainly conscious of astrong nervous distaste for the idea of any fresh interview with youngElsmere. He had got his money and his apology; let him be content. 

However, next morning after breakfast, Mr. Wendover once more saw hisstudy door open to admit the tall figure of the Rector. The noteand check had reached Robert late the night before, and, true to hisnew-born determination to make the best of the Squire, he had caughtup his wideawake at the first opportunity and walked off to the Hall toacknowledge the gift in person. The interview opened as awkwardly as itwas possible, and with their former conversation on the same spot freshin their minds both men spent a sufficiently difficult ten minutes. TheSquire was asking himself, indeed, impatiently, all the time, whether hecould possibly be forced in the future to put up with such an experienceagain, and Robert found his host, if less sarcastic than before, certainly as impenetrable as ever. 

At last, however, the Mile End matter was exhausted, and then Robert, asgood luck would have it, turned his longing eyes on the Squire'sbooks, especially on the latest volumes of a magnificent German_Weltgeschichte_ lying near his elbow, which he had coveted for monthswithout being able to conquer his conscience sufficiently to become thepossessor of it. He took it up with an exclamation of delight, and aquiet critical remark that exactly hit the value and scope of the book. The Squire's eyebrows went up, and the corners of his mouth slackenedvisibly. Half an hour later the two men, to the amazement of Mrs. Darcy, who was watching them from the drawing-room window, walked back to thepark gates together, and what Robert's nobility and beauty of characterwould never have won him, though he had worn himself to death in theservice of the poor and the tormented under the Squire's eyes, a chancecoincidence of intellectual interest had won him almost in a moment. 

The Squire walked back to the house under a threatening sky, hismackintosh cloak wrapped about him, his arms folded, his mind full of anunwonted excitement. 

The sentiment of long-past days--days in Berlin, in Paris, whereconversations such as that he had just passed through were the dailyrelief and reward of labor, was stirring in him. Occasionally he hadendeavored to import the materials for them from the Continent, fromLondon. But as a matter of fact, it was years since he had had anysuch talk as this with an Englishman on English ground, and he suddenlyrealized that he had been unwholesomely solitary, and that forthe scholar there is no nerve stimulus like that of an occasionalinterchange of ideas with some one acquainted with his _Fach_. 

'Who would ever have thought of discovering instincts and aptitudesof such a kind in this long-legged optimist?' The Squire shrugged hisshoulders as he thought of the attempt involved in such a personalityto combine both worlds, the world of action and the world of thought. Absurd! Of course, ultimately one or other must go to the wall. 

Meanwhile, what a ludicrous waste of time and opportunity that he andthis man should have been at cross-purposes like this! 'Why the deucecouldn't he have given some rational account of himself to begin with!'thought the Squire irritably, forgetting, of course, who it was that hadwholly denied him the opportunity. 'And then the sending back of thosebooks: what a piece of idiocy!'

Granted an historical taste in this young parson, it was a curiouschance, Mr. Wendover reflected, that in his choice of a subject heshould just have fallen on the period of the later Empire--of thepassage 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 hisremarks, of the stage he seemed to have reached, and then to cogitatingas 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 anunwonted glow and interest all the while. He sent for a case, and madea youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them. And still as hewent back to his own work new names would occur to him, and full of thescholar's avaricious sense of the shortness of time, he would shake hishead and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had alreadypassed, grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the spread ofMonasticism in Gaul, and Heaven knows what besides, half a mile from theman and the library which could have supplied him with the best help tobe got in England, unbenefited by either! Mile End was obliterated, andthe annoyance, of the morning forgotten. 

The next day was Sunday, a wet January Sunday, raw and sleety, the frostbreaking up on all sides and flooding the roads with mire. 

Robert, rising in his place to begin morning service, and wondering tosee the congregation so good on such a day, was suddenly startled, ashis eye travelled mechanically over to the Hall pew, usually tenantedby Mrs. Darcy in solitary state, to see the characteristic figure ofthe Squire. His amazement was so great that he almost stumbled in theexhortation, and his feeling was evidently shared by the congregation, which throughout the service showed a restlessness, an excited tendencyto peer round corners and pillars, that was not favorable to devotion. 

'Has he come to spy out the land?' the Rector thought to himself, andcould not help a momentary tremor at the idea of preaching beforeso formidable an auditor. Then he pulled himself together by a greateffort, and fixing his eyes on a shockheaded urchin half way down thechurch, read the service to him. Catherine meanwhile in her seat on thenorthern side of the nave, her soul lulled in Sunday peace, knew nothingof Mr. Wendover's appearance. 

Robert preached on the first sermon of Jesus, on the first appearance ofthe 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 themystery and poetry of that long national expectation, on the pathos ofJewish disillusion, on the sureness and beauty of Christian insight asfaith gradually transferred trait after trait of the Messiah of prophecyto the Christ of Nazareth. At first there was a certain amount ofhesitation, a slight wavering hither and thither--a difficult choice ofwords--and then the soul freed itself from man, and the preacher forgotall but his Master and his people. '

At the door as he came out stood Mr. Wendover and Catherine, slightlyflushed and much puzzled for conversation, beside him. The Hall carriagewas 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 offlighty inquiries and suggestions on her brother, to which he paid nomore heed than to the patter of the rain. 

When Robert appeared the Squire addressed him ceremoniously, --

'With your leave, Mr. Elsmere, I will walk with you to the rectory. 'Then, in another voice, 'Go home, Lætitia, and don't send anything oranybody. '

He made a signal to the coachman, and the carriage started, Mrs. Darcy'sprotesting head remaining out of window as long as anything could beseen of the group at the church door. The odd little creature had paidone or two hurried and recent visits to Catherine during the quarrel, visits so filled, however, with vague railing against her brother andby a queer incoherent melancholy, that Catherine felt them extremelyuncomfortable, and took care not to invite them. Clearly she wasmortally afraid of 'Roger, ' and yet ashamed of being afraid. Catherinecould see that all the poor thing's foolish whims and affectations weretrampled on; that she suffered, rebelled, found herself no more able toaffect Mr. Wendover than if she had been a fly buzzing round him, andbecame all the more foolish and whimsical in consequence. 

The Squire and the Elsmeres crossed the common to the rectory, followedat a discreet interval by groups of villagers curious to get a look atthe Squire. Robert was conscious of a good deal of embarrassment, butdid his best to hide it. Catherine felt all through as if the skies hadfallen. The Squire alone was at his ease, or as much at his ease as heever was. He commented on the congregation, even condescended to saysomething of the singing, and passed over the staring of the choristerswith a magnanimity of silence which did him credit. 

They reached the rectory door, and it was evidently the Squire's purposeto come in, so Robert invited him in. Catherine threw open her littledrawing-room door, and then was seized with shyness as the Squire passedin, and she saw over his shoulder her baby, lying kicking and crowingon the hearthrug, in anticipation of her arrival, the nurse watching it. The Squire in his great cloak stopped, and looked down at the baby as ifit had been some curious kind of reptile. The nurse blushed, courtesied, and caught up the gurgling creature in a twinkling. 

Robert made a laughing remark on the tyranny and ubiquity of babies. TheSquire smiled grimly. He supposed it was necessary that the humanrace should be carried on. Catherine meanwhile slipped out and orderedanother place to be laid at the dinner-table, devoutly hoping that itmight not be used. 

It was used. The Squire stayed till it was necessary to invite him, thenaccepted the invitation, and Catherine found herself dispensing boiledmutton 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 havein the house, and watched the nervousness of their little parlor-maidwith a fellow-feeling which made it difficult for him during the earlypart of the meal to keep a perfectly straight countenance. After awhile, however, both he and Catherine were ready to admit thatthe Squire was making himself agreeable. He talked of Paris, of aconversation he had had with M. Renan, whose name luckily was quiteunknown to Catherine, as to the state of things in the French Chamber. 

'A set of chemists and quill-drivers, ' he said contemptuously; 'but asRenan remarked to me, there is one thing to be said for a government ofthat sort, "Ils ne font pas la guerre. " And so long as they don't runFrance into adventures, and a man can keep a roof over his head and ason in his pocket, the men of letters at any rate can rub along. The really interesting thing in France just now is not Frenchpolitics--Heaven save the mark!--but French scholarship. There never wasso little original genius going in Paris, and there never was so muchgood work being done. '

Robert thought the point of view eminently characteristic. 

'Catholicism, I suppose, ' he said, 'as a force to be reckoned with, isdwindling more and more?'

'Absolutely dead, ' said the Squire emphatically, 'as an intellectualforce. They haven't got a writer, scarcely a preacher. Not one decentbook has been produced on that side for years. '

'And the Protestants, too, ' said Robert, 'have lost all their bestmen of late, ' and he mentioned one or two well-known French Protestantnames. 

'Oh, as to French Protestantism '--and the Squire's shrug wassuperb--'Teutonic Protestantism is in the order of things, so to speak, but _Latin_ Protestantism! There is no more sterile hybrid in theworld!'. 

Then, becoming suddenly aware that he might have said somethinginconsistent 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 himselfagreeable. He ate his boiled mutton and drank his _ordinaire_ like aman, and when the meal was over, and he and Robert had withdrawn intothe study, he gave an emphatic word of praise to the coffee whichCatherine's house-wifely care sent after them, and accepting a cigar, hesank 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 months. Robert, sitting opposite to him and watching his guest's eyes travel round theroom, with its medicine shelves, its rods and nets, and preparations ofuncanny beasts, its parish litter, and its teeming bookcases, felt thatthe Mile End matter was turning out oddly indeed. 

'I have packed you a case of books, Mr. Elsmere, ' said the Squire, aftera puff or two at his cigar. 'How have you got on without that collectionof Councils?'

He smiled a little awkwardly. It was one of the books Robert had sentback. Robert flushed. He did not want the Squire to regard him as whollydependent on Murewell. 

'I bought it, ' he said, rather shortly. 'I have ruined myself in bookslately, and the London Library too supplies me really wonderfully well. '

'Are these your books?' The Squire got up to look at them. 'Hum, not atall bad for a beginning. I have sent you so and so, ' and he named one ortwo 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 mostwelcome. '

'And now, how much _time_, ' said the other, settling himself again tohis cigar, his thin legs crossed over each other, and his great headsunk into his shoulders, 'how much time do you give to this work?'

'Generally the mornings--not always. A man with twelve hundred souls tolook after, you know, Mr. Wendover, ' said Elsmere, with a bright, half defiant accent, 'can't make grubbing among the Franks his mainbusiness. '

The Squire said nothing, and smoked on. Robert gathered that hiscompanion thought his chances of doing anything worth mentioning verysmall. 

'Oh no, ' he said, following out his own, thought with a shake of hiscurly hair; 'of course I shall never do very much. But if I don't, itwon't be for want of knowing what the scholar's ideal is. ' And he liftedhis hand with a smile toward the Squire's book on 'English Culture, 'which stood in the book-case just above him. The Squire, following thegesture, smiled too. It was a faint, slight illumining, but it changedthe face agreeably. 

Robert began to ask questions about the book, about the picturescontained in it of foreign life and foreign universities. The Squireconsented to be drawn out, and presently was talking at his very best. 

Racy stories of Mommsen or Von Ranke were followed by a descriptionof an evening of mad carouse with Heine--a talk at Nohant with GeorgeSand--scenes in the Duchesse de Broglie's salon--a contemptuous sketchof Guizot--a caustic sketch of Renan. Robert presently even laid asidehis pipe, and stood in his favorite attitude, lounging againstthe mantel-piece, looking down, absorbed, on his visitor. All thatintellectual passion which his struggle at Mile End had for the momentchecked in him revived. Nay, after his weeks of exclusive contact withthe most hideous forms of bodily ill, this interruption, these greatnames, this talk of great movements and great causes, had a specialsavour and relish. All the horizons of the mind expanded, the currentsof the blood ran quicker. 

Suddenly, however, he sprang up. 

'I beg your pardon, Mr. Wendover, it is too bad to interrupt you--I haveenjoyed it immensely--but the fact is I have only two minutes to get toSunday School in!'

Mr. Wendover rose also, and resumed his ordinary manner. 

'It is I who should apologize, ' he said with stiff politeness 'forhaving encroached in this way on your busy day, Mr. Elsmere. '

Robert helped him on with his coat, and then suddenly the Squire turnedto him. 

'You were preaching this morning on one of the Isaiah quotations in St. Matthew. It would interest you, I imagine, to see a recent Jewish bookon the subject of the prophecies quoted in the Gospels which reached meyesterday. There is nothing particularly new in it, but it looked to mewell done. '

'Thank you, ' said Robert, not, however, with any great heartiness, andthe Squire moved away. They parted at the gate, Robert running down thehill to the village as fast as his long legs could carry him. 

Sunday School--pshaw!' cried the Squire, as He tramped homeward in theopposite direction. 

Next morning a huge packing-case arrived from the Hall, and Robert couldnot forbear a little gloating over the treasures in it before he torehimself away to pay his morning visit to Mile End. There everything wasimproving; the poor Sharland child indeed had slipped away on the nightafter the Squire's visit, but the other bad cases in the diphtheria wardwere mending fast. John Allwood was gaining strength daily, and poorMary Sharland was feebly struggling back to a life which seemed hardlyworth so much effort to keep. Robert felt, with a welcome sense ofslackening strain, that the daily and hourly superintendence which heand Catherine had been giving to the place might lawfully be relaxed, that the nurses on the spot were now more than equal to their task, andafter having made his round he raced home again in order to secure anhour with his books before luncheon. 

The following day a note arrived, while they were at luncheon in theSquire's angular precise handwriting. It contained a request that, unless otherwise engaged, the Rector would walk with Mr. Wendover thatafternoon. 

Robert flung it across to Catherine. 

'Let me see, ' he said, deliberating, 'have I any engagement I mustkeep?'

There was a sort of jealousy for his work within him contending withthis new fascination of the Squire's company. But, honestly, there wasnothing in the way, and he went. 

That walk was the first of many. The Squire had no sooner convincedhimself that young Elsmere's society did in reality provide him witha stimulus and recreation he had been too long without, than in hisimperious wilful way he began to possess himself of it as much aspossible. He never alluded to the trivial matters which had firstseparated and then united them. He worked the better, he thought themore clearly, for these talks and walks with Elsmere, and thereforethese talks and walks became an object with him. They supplied along-stifled want, the scholar's want of disciples, of some formof investment for all that heaped-up capital of thought he had beenaccumulating during a life-time. 

As for Robert, he soon felt himself so much under the spell of theSquire's strange and powerful personality that he was forced to make afight for it, lest this new claim should encroach upon the old one. He would walk when the Squire liked, but three times out of four thesewalks must be parish rounds, interrupted by descents into cottages andchats in farmhouse parlors. The Squire submitted. The neighborhood beganto wonder over the strange spectacle of Mr. Wendover waiting grimlyin the winter dusk outside one of his own farmhouses while Elsmere wasinside, or patrolling a bit of lane till Elsmere should have inquiredafter an invalid or beaten up a recruit for his confirmation class, dogged the while by stealthy children, with fingers in their mouths, whoran away in terror directly he turned. 

Rumors of this new friendship spread. One day, on the bit of roadbetween the Hall and the Rectory, Lady Helen behind her ponies whirledpast the two men, and her arch look at Elsmere said as plain as words, 'Oh, you young wonder! what hook has served you with this leviathan?

On another occasion, close to Churton, a man in a cassock and cloak cametoward them. The Squire put up his eye-glass. 

'Humph!' he remarked; 'do you know this merryandrew, Elsmere?'

It was Newcome. As they passed, Robert with slightly, heightened colorgave him an affectionate nod and smile. Newcome's quick eye ran over thecompanions, he responded stiffly, and his step grew more rapid. A weekor two later Robert noticed with a little prick of remorse that he hadseen nothing of Newcome for an age. If Newcome would not come to him, hemust go to Mottringham. He planned an expedition, but something happenedto prevent it. 

And Catherine? Naturally this new and most unexpected relation ofRobert's to the man who had begun by insulting him was of considerableimportance to the wife. In the first place it broke up to some extentthe exquisite _tête-à-tête_ of their home life; it encroached often upontime that had always been hers; it filled Robert's mind more and morewith matters in which she had no concern. All these things many wivesmight have resented. Catherine Elsmere resented none of them. It isprobable, of course, that she had her natural moments of regret andcomparison when love said to itself a little sorely and hungrily, 'Itis hard to be even a fraction less to him then I once was?' But ifso, these moments never betrayed themselves in word or act. Her tendercommon sense, her sweet humility, made her recognize at once Robert'sneed of intellectual comradeship, isolated as he was in this remoterural district. She knew perfectly that a clergyman's life of perpetualgiving forth becomes morbid and unhealthy if there is not somecorresponding taking in. 

If only it had not been Mr. Wendover! She marvelled over the fascinationRobert found in his dry cynical talk. She wondered that a Christianpastor could ever forget Mr. Wendover's antecedents; that the man whohad nursed those sick children could forgive Mile End. All in all asthey were to each other, she felt for the first time that she oftenunderstood her husband imperfectly. His mobility, his eagerness, weresometimes now a perplexity, even a pain to her. 

It must not be imagined, however, that Robert let himself drift intothis intellectual intimacy with one of the most distinguished ofanti-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. Wendover, and he did not mean to attempt it. 

One morning the Squire unexpectedly plunged into an account of aGerman monograph he had just received on the subject of the Johannineauthorship of the fourth Gospel. It was almost the first occasion onwhich he had touched what may strictly be called the _matériel_ oforthodoxy in their discussions--at any rate directly. But the book wasa striking one, and in the interest of it he had clearly forgotten hisground a little. Suddenly the man who was walking beside him interruptedhim. 

'I think we ought to understand one another perhaps, Mr. Wendover, 'Robert said, speaking under a quick sense of oppression, but with hisusual dignity and bright courtesy. 'I know your opinions, of course, from your book; you know what mine, as an honest man, must be, from theposition I hold. My conscience does not forbid me to discuss anything, only--I am no match for you on points of scholarship, and I shouldjust like to say once for all, that to me, whatever else is true, thereligion of Christ is true. I am a Christian and a Christian minister. Therefore, whenever we come to discuss what may be called Christianevidence, I do it with reserves, which you would not have. I believein an Incarnation, a Resurrection, a Revelation. If there are literarydifficulties, I must want to smooth them away--you may want to make muchof them. We come to the matter from different points of view. You willnot quarrel with me for wanting to make it clear. It isn't as if wediffered slightly. We differ fundamentally--is it not so?'

The Squire was walking beside him with bent shoulders, the lower lippushed forward, as was usual with him when he was considering a matterwith 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 thanever, perhaps because he had achieved a necessary but disagreeable thingand got done with it. 

In reality he had but been doing as the child does when it sets up itssand-barrier against the tide. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

It, was the beginning of April. The gorse was fast extending its goldenempire over the commons. On the sunny slopes of the copses primroseswere breaking through the hazel roots and beginning to gleam along theedges of the river. On the grass commons between Murewell and Mile Endthe birches rose like green clouds against the browns and purples of thestill leafless oaks and beeches. The birds were twittering and building. Every day Robert was on the lookout for the swallows, or listening forthe first notes of the nightingale amid the bare spring coverts. 

But the spring was less perfectly delightful to him than it might havebeen, for Catherine was away. Mrs. Leyburn, who was to have come southto them in February, was attacked by bronchitis instead at Burwoodand forbidden to move, even to a warmer climate. In March, Catherine, feeling restless and anxious about her mother, and thinking it hard thatAgnes should have all the nursing and responsibility tore herselffrom her man and her baby, and went north to Whindale for a fortnight, leaving Robert forlorn. 

Now, however, she was in London, whither she had gone for a few days onher way home, to meet Rose and to shop. Robert's opinion was that allwomen, even St. Elizabeths, have somewhere rooted in them an inordinatepartiality for shopping; otherwise why should that operation take fouror five mortal days? Surely with a little energy, one might buy up thewhole of London in twelve hours! However, Catherine lingered, and asher purchases were made, Robert crossly supposed it must all be Rose'sfault. He believed 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 playing, she supposedmagnificently. At any rate, the letters which followed her in shoalsfrom Berlin flattered her to the skies, and during the three monthspreceding her return, Joachim himself had taken her as a pupil and givenher unusual attention. 

'And now, of course, ' wrote Catherine, 'she is desperately disappointedthat mamma and Agnes cannot join her in town, as she had hoped. She doesher best, I know, poor child, to conceal it and to feel as she oughtabout mamma, but I can see that the idea of an indefinite time atBurwood is intolerable to her. As to Berlin, I think she has enjoyed it, but she talks very scornfully of German _Schwärmerei_ and German women, and she tells the oddest stories of her professors. With one or two ofthem she seems to have been in a state of war from the beginning; butsome of them, my dear Robert, I am persuaded were just simply in lovewith her!

'I don't--no, I never _shall_ believe, that independent, excitingstudent's life is good for a girl. But I never say so to Rose. When sheforgets to be irritable and to feel that the world is going againsther, she is often very sweet to me, and I can't bear there should be anyconflict. '

His next day's letter contained the following:--

'Are you properly amused, sir, at your wife's performances in town? Ourthree concerts you have heard all about. I still can't get over them. I go about haunted by the _seriousness_, the life and death interestpeople throw into music. It is astonishing! And outside, as we got intoour hansom, such sights and sounds!--such starved, fierce-looking men, such ghastly women!

'But since then Rose has been taking me into society. Yesterdayafternoon, after I wrote to you, we went to see Rose's artisticfriends--the Piersons--with whom she was staying last summer, and to-daywe have even called on Lady Charlotte Wynnstay. 

'As to Mrs. Pierson, I never saw such an odd bundle of ribbons and ragsand queer embroideries as she looked when we called. However, Rose saysthat, for "an æsthete"--she despises them now herself--Mrs. Piersonhas wonderful taste, and that her wall-papers and her gowns, if I onlyunderstood them, are not the least like those of other æsthetic persons, but very _recherché_--which may be. She talked to Rose of nothing butacting, especially of Madame Desforêts. No one, according to her, hasanything to do with an actress' private life, or ought to take it intoaccount. But, Robert dear, an actress is a woman, and has a soul!'

'Then, Lady Charlotte:--you would have laughed at our _entrée_. '

'We found she was in town, and went on her "day, " as she had asked Roseto do. The room was rather dark--none of these London rooms seem to meto have any light and air in them. The butler got our names wrong and Imarched in first, more shy than I ever have been before in my life. LadyCharlotte had two gentlemen with her. She evidently did not know me inthe least; she stood staring at me with her eyeglass on, and her capso crooked I could think of nothing but a wish to put it straight. ThenRose followed, and in a few minutes it seemed to me as though it wereRose who were hostess, talking to the two gentlemen and being kindto Lady Charlotte. I am sure everybody in the room was amused by herself-possession, Lady Charlotte included. The gentlemen stared at hera great deal, and Lady Charlotte paid her one or two compliments on herlooks, which _I_ thought she would not have ventured to say to anyone inher own circle. '

'We stayed about half an hour. One of the gentlemen was, I believe, amember of the Government, an under-secretary for something, but heand Rose and Lady Charlotte talked again of nothing but musicians andactors. It is strange that politicians should have time to know so muchof these things. The other gentleman reminded me of Hotspur's popinjay. I think now I made out that he wrote for the newspapers, but at themoment I should have felt it insulting to accuse him of anything sohumdrum as an occupation in life. He discovered somehow that I had aninterest in the Church, and he asked me, leaning back in his chair andlisping, whether I really thought "the Church could still totter ona while in the rural districts. " He was informed her condition was so"vewy dethperate. "

'Then I laughed outright, and found my tongue. Perhaps his next articleon the Church will have a few facts in it. I did my best to put someinto him. Rose at last looked round at me, astonished. But he did notdislike me, I think. I was not impertinent to him, husband mine. If Imight 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 withher. Rose explained why she couldn't, and Lady Charlotte pitied herdreadfully for having a family, and the under-secretary said that itwas one's first duty in life to trample on one's relations, and that hehoped nothing would prevent his hearing her play sometime later in theyear. Rose said very decidedly she should be in town for the winter. Lady Charlotte said she would have an evening specially for her, and asI 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 theNational Gallery on our way to her dressmaker. We were standing beforeRaphael's "Vigil of the Knight, " when suddenly I saw Rose, who waslooking away toward the door into the long gallery, turn perfectlywhite. I followed her eyes, and there, in the doorway, disappearing--Iam almost certain--was Mr. Langham! One cannot mistake his walk or hisprofile. Before I could say a word Rose had walked away to another wallof pictures, and when we joined again we did not speak of it. Did he seeus, I wonder, and purposely avoid us? Something made me think so. '

'Oh, I wish I could believe she had forgotten him! I am certain shewould laugh me to angry scorn if I mentioned him; but there she sits bythe fire now, while I am writing, quite drooping and pale, because shethinks I am not noticing. If she did but love me a little more! It mustbe my fault, I know. '

'Yes, as you say, Burwood may as well be shut up or let. My dear, dearfather!'

Robert could imagine the sigh with which Catherine had laid clown herpen. Dear tender soul, with all its old-world fidelities and pietiespure and unimpaired! He raised the signature to his lips. 

Next day Catherine came back to him. Robert had no words too opprobriousfor the widowed condition from which her return had rescued him. Itseemed to Catherine, however, that life had been very full and keen withhim since her departure! He lingered with her after supper, vowing thathis club boys might make what hay in the study they pleased; he wasgoing to tell her the news, whatever happened. 

'I told you of my two dinners at the Hall? The first was just_tête-à-tête_ with the Squire; oh, and Mrs. Darcy, of course. I amalways forgetting her, poor little thing, which is most ungrateful ofme. A pathetic life that, Catherine. She seems to me, in her odd way, perpetually hungering for affections for praise. No doubt, if she gotthem she wouldn't know what to do with them. She would just touch andleave them as she does everything. Her talk and she are both as lightand wandering as thistledown. But still, meanwhile, she hungers, and isnever satisfied. There seems to be something peculiarly antipathetic inher to the Squire. I can't make it out. He is sometimes quite brutal toher when she is more inconsequent than usual. I often wonder she goes onliving with him. '

Catherine made some indignant comment. 

'Yes, ' said Robert, musing. 'Yes, it is bad. '

But Catherine thought his tone might have been more unqualified, andmarvelled again at the curious lenity of judgment he had always shownof late toward Mr. Wendover. And all his judgments of himself and otherswere generally so quick, so uncompromising!

'On the second occasion we had Freake and Dashwood, ' naming twowell-known English antiquarians. 'Very learned, very jealous, and verysnuffy; altogether "too genuine, " as poor mother used to say of thoseold chairs we got for the dining-room. But afterward when we were allsmoking in the library, the Squire came out of his shell and talked. Inever heard him more brilliant!'

He paused a moment, his bright eyes looking far away from her, as thoughfixed on the scene he was describing. 

'Such a mind!' he said at last with a long breath, 'such a memory!Catherine, my book has been making great strides since you left. WithMr. Wendover to go to, all the problems are simplified. One is saved allfalse starts, all beating about the bush. What a piece of luck it wasthat put one down beside such a guide, such a living storehouse ofknowledge!'

He spoke in a glow of energy and enthusiasm. Catherine sat looking athim wistfully, her gray eyes crossed by many varying shades of memoryand 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, Madonnamine?' he said, throwing himself down beside her. 'I have been fullof qualms myself. The Squire excites one so, makes one feel as thoughintellect--accumulation--were the whole of life. But I struggle againstit--I do. I go on, for instance, trying to make the Squire do his socialduties--behave like "a human. "'

Catherine could not help smiling at his tone. 

'Well?' she inquired. 

He shook his head ruefully. 

'The Squire is a tough customer--most men of sixty-seven with strongwills are, I suppose. At any rate, he is like one of the Thurstontrout--sees through all my manœuvres. But one piece of news willastonish you, Catherine!' And he sprang up to deliver it with effect. 'Henslowe is dismissed. '

'Henslowe dismissed!' Catherine sat properly amazed, while Robert toldthe story. 

The dismissal of Henslowe indeed represented the price which Mr. Wendover had been so far willing to pay for Elsmere's society. Some_quid pro quo_ there must be--that he was prepared to admit--consideringtheir relative positions as Squire and parson. But, as Robert shrewdlysuspected, not one of his wiles so far had imposed on the master ofMurewell. He had his own sarcastic smiles over them, and over Elsmere'spastoral _naïveté_ in general. The evidences of the young Rector's powerand popularity were, however, on the whole, pleasant to Mr. Wendover. IfElsmere had his will with all the rest of the world, Mr. Wendover knewperfectly well who it was that at the present moment had his will withElsmere. He had found a great piquancy in this shaping of a mind moreintellectually eager and pliant than any he had yet come acrossamong younger men; perpetual food too, for his sense of irony, in theintellectual contradictions, wherein Elsmere's developing ideas andinformation were now, according to the Squire, involving him at everyturn. 

'His religious foundations are gone already, if he did but know it, 'Mr. Wendover grimly remarked to himself one day about this time, 'buthe will take so long finding it out that the results are not worthspeculating on. '

Cynically assured, therefore, at bottom, of his own power with thisebullient nature, the Squire was quite prepared to make externalconcessions, or, as we have said, to pay his price. It annoyed him thatwhen Elsmere would press for allotment land, or a new institute, or abetter supply of water for the village, it was not open to him merelyto give _carte blanche_, and refer his petitioner to Henslowe. Robert'sopinion of Henslowe, and Henslowe's now more cautious but stillincessant hostility to the Rector, were patent at last even to theSquire. 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, andthat it would be a kindness if Mr. Elsmere would do him the favor oflooking through some applications for the vacant post just received. 

Elsmere, much taken by surprise, felt at first as it was natural for anover-sensitive, over-scrupulous man to feel. His enemy, had been giveninto his hand, and instead of victory he could only realize that he hadbrought a man to ruin. 

'He has a wife and children, ' he said quickly, looking at the Squire. 

'Of course I have pensioned him, ' replied the Squire impatiently;'otherwise I imagine he would be hanging round our necks to the end ofthe chapter. '

There was something in the careless indifference of the tone which senta shiver through Elsmere. After all, this man had served the Squire forfifteen years, and it was not Mr. Wendover who had much to complain of. 

No one with a conscience could have held out a finger to keep Henslowein his post. But though Elsmere took the letters and promised togive them his best attention, as soon as he got home he made himselfirrationally miserable over the matter. It was not his fault that, from the moment of his arrival in the parish, Henslowe had made him thetarget of a vulgar and embittered hostility, and so far as he hadstruck out in return it had been for the protection of persecuted anddefenseless creatures. But all the same, he could not get the thought ofthe man's collapse and humiliation out of his mind. How at his age washe to find other work, and how was he to endure life at Murewell withouthis comfortable house, his smart gig, his easy command of spirits, andthe cringing of the farmers?

Tormented by the sordid misery of the situation almost as though it hadbeen his own, Elsmere ran down impulsively in the evening to the agent'shouse. Could nothing be done to assure the man that he was not reallyhis enemy, and that anything the parson's influence and the parson'smoney could do to help him to a more decent life, and work which offeredfewer temptations and less power over human beings, should be done?

It need hardly be said that the visit was a complete failure. Henslowe, who was drinking hard, no sooner heard Elsmere's voice in the littlehall than he dashed open the door which separated them, and, in aparoxysm of drunken rage, hurled at Elsmere all the venomous stuff hehad been garnering up for months against some such occasion. The vilestabuse, the foulest charges--there was nothing that the maddened sot, nowfairly unmasked, denied himself. Elsmere, pale and erect, tried to makehimself heard. In vain. Henslowe was physically incapable of taking in aword. 

At last the agent, beside himself, made a rush, his three untidychildren, who had been hanging open-mouthed in the background, set upa howl of terror, and his Scotch wife, more pinched and sour than ever, who had been so far a gloomy spectator of the scene, interposed. 

'Have doon wi' ye, ' she said sullenly, putting out a long bony arm infront of her husband, 'or I'll just lock oop that brandy where ye'll nawfind it if ye pull the house doon. Now, sir, ' turning to Elsmere, 'wouldye jest be going? Ye mean it weel, I daur say, but ye've doon yer wark, and ye maun leave it. '

And she motioned him out, not without a sombre dignity. Elsmerewent home crestfallen. The enthusiast is a good deal too apt tounder-estimate the stubbornness of moral fact, and these rebuffs havetheir stern uses for character. 

'They intend to go on living here, I am told, ' Elsmere said, as he woundup the story, 'and as Henslowe is still churchwarden, he may do usa world of mischief yet. However, I think that wife will keep him inorder. No doubt vengeance would be sweet to her as to him, but she hasa shrewd eye, poor soul, to the Squire's remittances. It is a wretchedbusiness, and I don't take a man's hate easily, Catherine!--though itmay be a folly to say so. '

Catherine was irresponsive. The Old Testament element in her founda lawful satisfaction in Henslowe's fall, and a wicked man's hatred, according to her, mattered only to himself. The Squire's conduct, on theother hand, made her uneasily proud. To her, naturally, it simply meantthat he was falling under Robert's spell. So much the better for him, but--

CHAPTER XXIV. 

That same afternoon Robert started on a walk to a distant farm, whereone of his Sunday-school boys lay recovering from rheumatic fever. Therector had his pocket full of articles--a story book in one, a puzzlemap in the other--destined for Master Carter's amusement. On the way hewas to pick up Mr. Wendover at the park gates. It was a delicious Aprilmorning. 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 inevery vein a life, an ebullience akin to that of nature. As he nearedthe place of meeting it occurred to him that the Squire had beenunusually busy lately, unusually silent and absent too on their walks. What _was_ he always at work on? Robert had often inquired of him as tothe nature of those piles of proof and manuscript with which his tablewas littered. The Squire had never given any but the most generalanswer, and had always changed the subject. There was an invincible_personal_ reserve about him which, through all his walks and talks withElsmere, had never as yet broken down. He would talk of other men andother men's' labors by the hour, but not of his own. Elsmere reflectedon the fact, mingling with the reflection a certain humorous scorn ofhis own constant openness and readiness to take counsel with the world. 

'However, _his_ book isn't a mere excuse, as Langham's is, ' Elsmereinwardly remarked. 'Langham, in a certain sense, plays even withlearning; Mr. Wendover plays at nothing. '

By the way, he had a letter from Langham in his pocket much morecheerful and human than usual. Let him look through it again. 

Not a word, of course, of that National Gallery experience!--acircumstance, however, which threw no light on it either way. 

'I find myself a good deal reconciled to life by this migration ofMine, ' wrote Langham, 'Now that my enforced duties to them are alldone with, my fellow-creatures seem to me much more decent fellows thanbefore. The great stir of London, in which, unless I please, I have nopart whatever, attracts me more than I could have thought possible. Noone in these noisy streets has any rightful claim upon me. I havecut away at one stroke lectures, and Boards of Studies, and tutors'meetings, and all the rest of the wearisome Oxford make-believe, andthe creature left behind feels lighter and nimbler than he has feltfor years. I go to concerts and theatres; I look at the people inthe streets; I even begin to take an outsider's interest in socialquestions, in the puny dikes, which well-meaning people are trying toraise all round us against the encroaching, devastating labor-troublesof the future. By dint of running away from life, I may end by cuttinga much more passable figure in it than before. Be consoled, my dearElsmere; reconsider your remonstrances. '

There, under the great cedar by the gate, stood Mr. Wendover. Illuminedas he was by the spring sunshine, he struck Elsmere as looking unusuallyshrunken and old. And yet under the look of physical exhaustion therewas a now serenity, almost a peacefulness of expression, which gave thewhole man a different aspect. 

'Don't take me far, ' he said abruptly, as they started. 'I have not gotthe energy for it. I have been over-working and must go away. '

'I have been sure of it for some time, ' said Elsmere warmly. 'You oughtto have a long rest. But mayn't I know, Mr. Wendover, before you takeit, what this great task is you have been toiling at? Remember, you havenever told me a word of it. '

And Elsmere's smile had in it a touch of most friendly reproach. Fatiguehad left the scholar relaxed, comparatively defenseless. His sunkand wrinkled eyes lit up with a smile, faint indeed, but of unwontedsoftness. 

'A task indeed, ' he said with a sigh, 'the task of a life-time. To-dayI finished the second third of it. Probably before the last section isbegun some interloping German will have stepped down before me; it isthe way of the race! But for the moment there is the satisfaction ofhaving 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 atBerlin. It struck me then as the great want of modern scholarship. Itis a History of Evidence, or rather, more strictly, "A History of_Testimony_. "'

Robert started. The library flashed into his mind, and Langham's figurein the long gray coat sitting on the stool. 

'A great subject, ' he said slowly, 'a magnificent subject. How have youconceived it I wonder?'

'Simply from the standpoint of evolution, of development. Thephilosophical value of the subject is enormous. You must have consideredit, of course; every historian must. But few people have any idea indetail of the amount of light which the history of human witness inthe world, systematically carried through, throws on the history of thehuman mind; that is to say, on the history of ideas. '

The Squire paused, his keen scrutinizing look dwelling on the facebeside him, as though to judge whether he were understood. 

'Oh, true!' cried Elsmere; 'most true. Now I know what vague want it isthat has been haunting me for months----'

He stopped short, his look, aglow with all the young thinker's ardorfixed on the Squire. 

The Squire received the outburst in silence--a somewhat ambiguoussilence. 

'But go on, ' said Elsmere; 'please go on. '

'Well, you remember, ' said the Squire slowly, 'that when Tractarianismbegan I was for a time one of Newman's victims. Then, when Newmandeparted, I went over body and bones to the Liberal reaction whichfollowed his going. In the first ardor of what seemed to me a releasefrom slavery I migrated to Berlin, in search of knowledge which therewas no getting in England, and there, with the taste of a dozen aimlesstheological controversies still in my mouth, this idea first took holdof me. It was simply this:--Could one through an exhaustive examinationof human records, helped by modern physiological and mental science, get at the conditions, physical and mental, which govern the greater orlesser correspondence between human witness and the fact it reports?'

'A giant's task!' cried Robert; 'hardly conceivable!'

The Squire smiled slightly--the smile of a man who looks back withindulgent, half-melancholy satire on the rash ambitions of his youth. 

'Naturally, ' he resumed, 'I soon saw I must restrict myself to Europeantestimony, and that only up to the Renaissance. To do that, of course, Ihad to dig into the East, to learn several Oriental languages--Sanscritamong 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 yearsago I finished the section dealing with classical antiquity--withIndia, Persia, Egypt, and Judæa. To-day I have put the last strokes toa History of Testimony from the Christian era down to the sixthcentury--from Livy to Gregory of Tours, from Augustus to Justinian. '

Elsmere turned to him with wonder, with a movement of irrepressiblehomage. Thirty years of unbroken solitary labor for one end, one cause!In our hurried, fragmentary life, a purpose of this tenacity, this powerof realizing itself, strikes the imagination. 

'And your two books?'

'Were a mere interlude, ' replied the Squire briefly. 'After thecompletion of the first part of my work, there were certain depositsleft in me which it was a relief to get rid of, especially in connectionwith my renewed impressions of England, ' he added dryly. 

Elsmere was silent, thinking this then was the explanation of theSquire's minute and exhaustive knowledge of the early Christiancenturies, a knowledge into which--apart from certain forbiddentopics-he had himself dipped so freely. Suddenly, as he mused, thereawoke in the young man a new hunger, a new unmanageable impulse towardfrankness of speech. All his nascent intellectual powers were alive andclamorous. For the moment his past reticences and timidities looked tohim absurd. The mind rebelled against the barriers it had been rearingagainst itself. It rushed on to sweep them away, crying out that allthis shrinking from free discussion had been at bottom 'a mere treasonto faith. '

'Naturally, Mr. Wendover, ' he said at last, and his tone had ahalf-defiant, half-nervous energy, 'you have given your best attentionall these years to the Christian problems. '

'Naturally, ' said the Squire dryly. Then, as his companion still seemedto wait, keenly expectant, he resumed, with something cynical in thesmile which accompanied the words, --

'But I have no wish to infringe our convention. '

'A convention was it?' replied Elsmere flushing. 'I think I only wantedto make my own position clear and prevent misunderstanding. But it isimpossible 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 toconsider. His tired eyes, fixed on the spring lane before them, saw inreality only the long retrospects of the past. Then a light broke inthem--a light of battle. He turned to the man beside him, and his sharplook 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 thesubject be. But Mr. Wendover, in spite of his philosophy, had never beenproof all his life against an anti-clerical instinct worthy almost of aParis municipal councillor. In spite of his fatigue there woke in hima kind of cruel whimsical pleasure at the notion of speaking, oncefor all, what he conceived to be the whole bare truth to this clever, attractive dreamer, to the young fellow who thought he could condescendto science from the standpoint of the Christian miracles!

'Results?' he said interrogatively. 'Well, as you will understand, it istolerably difficult to summarize such a mass at a moment's notice. ButI can give you the lines of my last volumes, if it would interest you tohear them. 

That walk prolonged itself far beyond Mr. Wendover's original intention. There was something in the situation, in Elsmere's comments, orarguments, or silences which after a while banished the scholar's senseof exhaustion and made him oblivious of the country distances. No manfeels another's soul quivering and struggling in his grasp withoutexcitement, let his nerve and his self-restraint be what they may. 

As for Elsmere, that hour and a half, little as he realized it at thetime, represented the turning-point of life. He listened, he suggested, he put in an acute remark here, an argument there, such as the Squirehad often difficulty in meeting. Every now and then the inner protest ofan attacked faith would break through in words so full of poignancy, inimagery so dramatic, that the Squire's closely-knit sentences would befor the moment wholly disarranged. On the whole, he proved himself nomean guardian of all that was most sacred to himself and to Catherine, and the Squire's intellectual respect for him rose considerably. 

All the same, by the end of their conversation that first periodof happy unclouded youth we have been considering was over for poorElsmere. In obedience to certain inevitable laws and instincts of themind, he had been for months tempting his fate, inviting catastrophe. None the less did the first sure approaches of that catastrophe fill himwith a restless resistance which was in itself anguish. 

As to the Squire's talk, it was simply the outporing of one of therichest, most sceptical, and most highly trained of minds on the subjectof Christian origins. At no previous period of his life would it havegreatly affected Elsmere. But now at every step the ideas, impressionsarguments bred in him by his months of historical work and ordinaryconverse 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 fromthe long wrestle of the two men, for the sake of indicating the mainlines of a bitter after-struggle. 

'Testimony like every other human product has _developed_. Man's powerof apprehending and recording what he sees and hears has grown from lessto more, from weaker to stronger, like any other of his faculties, justas the reasoning powers of the cave-dweller have developed into thereasoning 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 themind as to what is meant in history and literature by "the criticalmethod, " which in history may be defined as the "science of what iscredible, " and in literature as "the science of what is rational, " isto invite fiasco. The theologian in such a state sees no obstacle toaccepting an arbitrary list of documents with all the strange stuff theymay contain, and declaring them to be sound historical material, whilehe applies to all the strange stuff of a similar kind surroundingthem the most rigorous principles of modern science. Or he has to makebelieve that the reasoning processes exhibited in the speeches ofthe Acts, in certain passages of St. Paul's Epistles, or in the OldTestament quotations in the Gospels, have a validity for the mind of thenineteenth century, when in truth they are the imperfect, half-childishproducts of the mind of the first century of quite insignificant orindirect value to the historian of fact, of enormous value to thehistorian of _testimony_ and its varieties. '

'Suppose, for instance, before I begin to deal with the Christian story, and the earliest Christian development, I try to make out beforehandwhat are the moulds, the channels into which the testimony of the timemust run. I look for these moulds, of course, in the dominant ideas, theintellectual preconceptions and preoccupations existing when the periodbegins. 

'In the first place, I shall find present in the age which saw the birthof Christianity, as in so many other ages, a universal preconception infavor of miracle--that is to say, of deviations from the common norm ofexperience, governing the work of _all_ men of _all_ schools. Very well, allow for it then. Read the testimony of the period in the light of it. Be prepared for the inevitable differences between it and the testimonyof your own day. The witness of the time is not true, nor, in the strictsense, false. It is merely incompetent, half-trained, pre-scientific, but all through perfectly natural. The wonder would have been to havehad a life of Christ without miracles. The air teems with them. The Eastis full of Messiahs. Even a Tacitus is superstitious. Even a Vespasianworks miracles. Even a Nero cannot die, but fifty years after his deathis still looked for as the inaugurator of a millennium of horror. The Resurrection is partly invented, partly imagined, partly ideallytrue--in any case wholly intelligible and natural, as a product of theage, when once you have the key of that age. '

'In the next place, look for the preconceptions that have a definitehistorical origin; those, for instance, flowing from the pre-Christian, apocalyptic literature of the Jews, taking the Maccabean legend ofDaniel as the centre of inquiry--those flowing from Alexandrian Judaismand the school of Philo--those flowing from the Palestinian schools ofexegesis. Examine your synoptic gospels, your Gospel of St. John, your Apocalypse, in the light of these. You have no other chance ofunderstanding them. But so examined, they fall into place, becomeexplicable and rational; such material as science can make full useof. The doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, Christian eschatology, andChristian views of prophecy will also have found _their_ place in asound historical scheme!'

'It is discreditable now for the man of intelligence to refuse to readhis Livy in the light of his Mommsen. My object has been to help inmaking it discreditable to him to refuse to read his Christian documentsin the light of a trained scientific criticism. We shall have made somepositive advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly capableof dealing sanely with legend in one connection, and, in another, willinsist on confounding it with history proper, cannot do so any longerwithout losing caste, without falling _ipso facto_ out of court with menof education. It is enough for a man of letters if he has helped everso little in the final staking out of the boundaries between reason andunreason!'

And so on. These are mere ragged gleanings from an ample store. Thediscussion in reality ranged over the whole field of history, plungedinto philosophy, and into the subtlest problems of mind. At the end ofit, after he had been conscious for many bitter moments of that sameconstriction of heart which had overtaken him once before at Mr. Wendover's hands, the religious passion in Elsmere once more rose withsudden 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 experienceof the last two years has made it necessary to re-examine some of theseintellectual foundations of faith. But as to the faith itself, that isits own witness. It does not depend, after all, upon anything external, but upon the living voice of the Eternal in the soul of man!'

Involuntarily his pace quickened. The whole man was gathered into onegreat, useless, pitiful defiance, and the outer world was forgotten. The Squire kept up with difficulty awhile, a faint glimmer of sarcasmplaying now and then round the straight thin-lipped mouth. Then suddenlyhe stopped. 

'No, let it be. Forget me and my book, Elsmere. Everything can be gotout of in this world. By the way, we seem to have reached the ends ofthe earth. Those are the new Mile End cottages, I believe. With yourleave, I'll sit down in one of them, and send to the Hall for thecarriage. '

Elsmere's repentant attention was drawn at once to his companion. 

'I am a selfish idiot, ' he said hotly, 'to have led you intoover-walking and over-talking like this. '

The Squire made some short reply and instantly turned the matter off. The momentary softness which had marked his meeting with Elsmere hadentirely vanished, leaving only the Mr. Wendover of every day, whowas merely made awkward and unapproachable by the slightest touch ofpersonal sympathy. No living being, certainly not his foolish littlesister, had any right to take care of the Squire. And as the signs ofage became more apparent, this one fact had often worked powerfully onthe sympathies of Elsmere's chivalrous youth, though as yet he hadbeen no more capable than any one else of breaking through the Squire'shaughty reserve. 

As they turned down the newly-worn track to the cottages, whereof theweekly progress had been for some time the delight of Elsmere's heart, they met old Meyrick in his pony-carriage. He stopped his shamblingsteed at sight of the pair. The bleared, spectacled eyes lit up, theprim mouth broke into a smile which matched the April sun. 

'Well Squire; well, Mr. Elsmere, are you going to have a look atthose places? Never saw such palaces. I only hope I may end my days inanything so good. Will you give me a lease, Squire?'

Mr. Wendover's deep eyes took a momentary survey, half indulgent, half contemptuous, of the naïve, awkward-looking old creature in thepony-carriage. Then without troubling to find an answer he went his way. 

Robert stayed chatting a moment or two, knowing perfectly well whatMeyrick's gay garrulity meant. A sharp and bitter sense of the ironiesof life swept across him. The Squire humanized, influenced by him--heknew that was the image in Meyrick's mind, he remembered with a quietscorn its presence in his own. And never, never had he felt his ownweakness and the strength of that grim personality so much as at thatinstant. 

That evening Catherine noticed an unusual silence and depression inRobert. She did her best to cheer it away, to get at the cause of it. In vain. At last, with her usual wise tenderness, she left him alone, conscious herself, as she closed the study door behind her, of amomentary dreariness of soul, coming she knew not whence, and onlydispersed by the instinctive upward leap of prayer. 

Robert was no sooner alone than he put down his pipe and sat broodingover the fire. All the long debate of the afternoon began to fightitself out in the shrinking mind. Suddenly, in his restless pain, a thought occurred to him. He had been much struck in the Squire'sconversation by certain allusions to arguments drawn from the Bookof Daniel. It was not a subject with which Robert had any greatfamiliarity. Here remembered his Pusey dimly--certain Divinitylectures--an article of Westcott's. 

He raised his hand quickly and took down the monograph on 'The Use ofthe Old Testament in the New, ' which the Squire had sent him in theearliest days of their acquaintance. A secret dread and repugnance hadheld 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 downand turned to the section on Daniel. 

It was a change of conviction on the subject of the date and authorshipof this strange product of Jewish patriotism in the second centurybefore Christ that drove M. Renan out of the Church of Rome. 'For theCatholic Church to confess, ' he says in his 'Souvenirs, ' 'that Danielis an apocryphal book of the time of the Maccabees, would be to confessthat she had made a mistake; if she had made this mistake, she may havemade 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 againstthe supposed authorship of the book by modern criticism. Robert foundall these ways enumerated in the brilliant and vigorous pages of thebook before him. 

In the first place, like the orthodox Saint-Sulpicien, the Protestantmeets the critic with a flat _non possumus_. 'Your arguments are uselessand irrelevant, ' he says in effect. 'However plausible may be yourobjections the Book of Daniel _is_ what it professes to be, _because_our Lord quoted it in such a manner as to distinctly recognize itsauthority. All-True and All-Knowing cannot have made a mistake, nor canHe have expressly led His disciples to reward 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 senseis inferior to his sense of literary probabilities--proceeds quitedifferently. 

'Your arguments are perfectly just, ' he says to the critic; 'the bookis a patriotic fraud, of no value except to the historian of literature. But bow do you know that our Lord quoted it as _true_ in the strictestsense? In fact He quoted it as literature, as a Greek might have quotedHomer, as an Englishman might quote Shakespeare. '

And many a harassed Churchman takes refuge forthwith in the newexplanation. It is very difficult, no doubt, to make the passages in theGospels agree with it, but at the bottom of his mind there is a savingsilent scorn for the old theories of inspiration. He admits to himselfthat probably Christ was not correctly reported in the matter. 

Then appears the critic, having no interests to serve, no _parti pris_to defend, and states the matter calmly, dispassionately, as it appearsto him. 'No reasonable man, ' says the ablest German exponent of theBook of Daniel, 'can doubt that this most interesting piece of writingbelongs to the year 169 or 170 B. C. It was written to stir up thecourage and patriotism of the Jews, weighed down by the persecutionsof Antiochus Epiphanes. It had enormous vogue. It inaugurated a newApocalyptic literature. And clearly the youth of Jesus of Nazareth wasvitally influenced by it. It entered into his thought, it helped toshape his career. '

But Elsmere did not trouble himself much with the critic, as at any ratehe was reported by the author of the book before him. Long before thecritical case was reached, he had flung the book heavily from him. Themind accomplished its further task without help from outside. In thestillness of the night there rose up weirdly before him a whole newmental picture--effacing, pushing out, innumerable older images ofthought. It was the image of a purely human Christ--purely human, explicable, yet always wonderful Christianity. It broke his heart butthe spell of it was like some dream-country wherein we see all thefamiliar objects of life in new relations and perspectives. He gazedupon it fascinated the wailing underneath checked a while by the strangebeauty and order of the emerging spectacle. Only a little while! Thenwith a groan Elsmere looked up, his eyes worn, his lips white and set. 

'I must face it--I must face it through! God help me!'

A slight sound overhead in Catherine's room sent a sudden spasm offeeling through the young face. He threw himself down, hiding from hisown 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. Theywere marked by anguished mental struggle, by a consciousness of painfulseparation from the soul nearest to his own, and by a constantlyincreasing sense of oppression, of closing avenues and narrowingalternatives, which for weeks together seemed to hold the mind in a gripwhence there was no escape. 

That struggle was not hurried and embittered by the bodily presenceof the Squire. Mr. Wendover went off to Italy a few days after theconversation we have described. But though he was not present inthe flesh, the great book of his life was in Elsmere's hands, he hadformally invited Elsmere's remarks upon it; and the air of Murewellseemed still echoing with his sentences, still astir with his thoughts. That curious instinct of pursuit, that avid, imperious wish to crushan irritating resistance, which his last walk with Elsmere had firstawakened in him with any strength, persisted. He wrote to Robert fromabroad, and the proud, fastidious scholar had never taken more painswith anything than with those letters. 

Robert might have stopped them, have cast the whole matter from him withone resolute effort. In other relations he had will enough and to spare. 

Was it an unexpected weakness of fibre that made it impossible?--thathad placed him in this way at the Squire's disposal? Half the worldwould answer yes. Might not the other half plead that in everygeneration there is a minority of these mobile, impressionable, defenseless natures, who are ultimately at the mercy of experience, atthe mercy of thought, at the mercy (shall we say?) of truth; and that, in fact, it is from this minority that all human advance comes?

During these three miserable months it cannot be said--poorElsmere!--that he attempted any systematic study of Christian evidence. His mind was too much torn, his heart too sore. He pounced feverishlyon one test point after another, on the Pentateuch, the Prophets, therelation of the New Testament to the thoughts and beliefs of itstime, the Gospel of St. John, the evidence as to the Resurrection, the intellectual and moral conditions surrounding the formation ofthe Canon. His mind swayed hither and thither, driven from eachresting-place in turn by the pressure of some new difficulty. And--letit be said again--all through, the only constant element in the wholedismal process was his trained historical sense. If he had gone throughthis conflict at Oxford, for instance, he would have come out of itunscathed; for he would simply have remained throughout it ignorantof the true problems at issue. As it was the keen instrument he hadsharpened so laboriously on indifferent material, now ploughed itsagonizing way, bit by bit, into the most intimate recesses of thoughtand faith. 

Much of the actual struggle he was able to keep from Catherine'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 thegolden alleys of Mayfair; and Elsmere was left once more in undisturbedpossession of the Murewell library. There for a while 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 shallowestconcealments. Catherine had already had one or two alarms. Once, inRobert's study, among a tumbled mass of books he had pulled out insearch of something missing, and which she was putting in order, she hadcome across that very book on the Prophecies which at a critical momenthad so deeply affected Elsmere. It lay open and Catherine was caught bythe heading of a section: 'The Messianic Idea. '

She began to read, mechanically at first and read about a page. Thatpage so shocked a mind accustomed to a purely traditional and mysticalinterpretation of the Bible that the book dropped abruptly from herhand, and she stood a moment by her husband's table, her fine face paleand frowning. 

She noticed, with bitterness, Mr. Wendover's name on the title-page. Wasit right for Robert to have such books? Was it wise, was it prudent, forthe Christian to measure himself against such antagonism as this? Shewrestled painfully with the question. 'Oh, but I can't understand, ' shesaid to herself with an almost agonized energy. 'It is I who am timid, faithless! He _must_--he _must_--know what they say; he must have gonethrough the dark places if he is to carry others through them. '

So she stilled and trampled on the inward protest. She yearned to speakof it to Robert, but something withheld her. In her passionate wifelytrust she could not bear to seem to question the use he made of his timeand thought; and a delicate moral scruple warned her she mighteasily allow her dislike of the Wendover friendship to lead her intoexaggeration and injustice. 

But the stab of that moment recurred--dealt now by one slightincident--now by another. And after the Squire's departure Catherinesuddenly realized that the whole atmosphere of their home-life waschanged. 

Robert was giving himself to his people with a more scrupulous energythan ever. Never had she seen him so pitiful, so full of heart for everyhuman creature. His sermons, with their constant imaginative dwelling onthe earthly life of Jesus, affected her now with a poignancy, a pathos, which were almost unbearable. And his tenderness to her was beyondwords. But with that tenderness there was constantly mixed a note ofremorse, a painful self-depreciation which she could hardly notice inspeech, but which every now and then wrung her heart. And in his parishwork he often showed a depression, an irritability, entirely new to her. He who had always the happiest power of forgetting to-morrow all therubs of to-day, seemed now quite incapable of saving himself and hischeerfulness in the old ways, nay, had developed a capacity for sheerworry she had never seen in him before. And meanwhile all the oldgossips of the place spoke their mind freely to Catherine on thesubject of the Rector's looks, coupling their remarks with a variety ofprescriptions out of which Robert did sometimes manage to get one ofhis old laughs. His sleeplessness, too, which had always been aconstitutional tendency, had become now so constant and wearing thatCatherine began to feel a nervous hatred of his book-work, and of thoselong mornings at the Hall; a passionate wish to put an end to it, andcarry him away for a holiday. 

But he would not bear of the holiday, and he could hardly bear any talkof himself. And Catherine had been brought up in a school of feelingwhich bade love be very scrupulous, very delicate, and which recognizedin 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 himby impatience. 

He would tell her soon--when it was right--she cried pitifully toherself. Meantime both suffered, she not knowing why, clinging to eachother the while more passionately than ever. 

One night, however, coming down in her dressing-gown into the study insearch of a _Christian Year_ she had left behind her, she found Robertwith papers strewn before him, his arms on the table and his head laiddown upon them. He looked up as she came in, and the expression of hiseyes drew her to him irresistibly. 

'Were you asleep, Robert? Do come to bed!'

He sat up, and with a pathetic gesture held out his arm to her. She cameon to his knee, putting her white arms round his neck, while he leanthis head against her breast. 

'Are you tired with all your walking to-day?' she said presently, a pangat her heart. 

'I am tired, ' he said, 'but not with walking. '

'Does your book worry you? You shouldn't work so hard, Robert--youshouldn't!'

He started. 

'Don't talk, of it. Don't let us talk or think at all, only feel!'

And he tightened his arms round her, happy once more for a mordent inthis 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 pressedagainst her, 'of High Fell, and the moonlight, and the house where MaryBackhouse died. Oh! Catherine, I see you still, and shall always seeyou, as I saw you then, my angel of healing and of grace!'

'I too have been thinking of her tonight, ' said Catherine softly, 'andof the walk to Shanmoor. This evening in the garden it seemed to me asthough there were Westmoreland scents in the air! I was haunted by avision of bracken, and rocks, and sheep browsing up the fell slopes. '

'Oh for a breath of the wind on High Fell!' cried Robert, --it was so newto her, the dear voice with his accent in it, of yearning depression!'I want more of the spirit of the mountains, their serenity, theirstrength. Say me that Duddon sonnet you used to say to me there, as yousaid it to me that last Sunday before our wedding, when we walked upthe Shanmoor road to say good-by to that blessed spot. Oh! how I sit andthink of it sometimes, when life seems to be going crookedly, that rockon the fell-side where I found you, and caught you, and snared you, mydove, for ever. '

And Catherine, whose mere voice was as balm to this man of manyimpulses, repeated to him, softly in the midnight silence, those noblelines in which Wordsworth has expressed, with the reserve and yet thestrength of the great poet, the loftiest yearning of the purest hearts--

 Enough, if something from our hand have power To live and move, and serve the future hour, And if, as towards the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know. 

'He has divined it all, ' said Robert, drawing a long breath when shestopped, which seem to relax the fibres of the inner man, 'the feverand the fret of human thought, the sense of littleness, of impotence, ofevanescence-and he has soothed it all!'

'Oh, not all, not all!' cried Catherine, her look kindling, and her rarepassion breaking through; 'how little in comparison!'

For her thoughts were with him of whom it was said--'_He needed notthat anyone should bear witness concerning man, for he knew what was inman_. ' But Robert's only response was silence and a kind of quiveringsigh. 

'Robert!' she cried, pressing her cheek against his temple, 'tell memy dear, dear husband, what it is troubles you. Something does--I amcertain--certain!'

'Catherine, --wife--beloved!' he said to her, after another pause, in atone of strange tension she never forgot; 'generations of men and womenhave known what it is to be led spiritually into the desert, into thatouter wilderness where even the Lord was "tempted. " What am I that Ishould claim to escape it? And you cannot come through it with me, mydarling--no not even you! It is loneliness--it is solitariness itself--'and he shuddered. 'But pray for me--pray that _He_ may be with me, andthat at the end there may be light!'

He pressed her to him convulsively, then gently released her. His solemneyes, fixed upon her as she stood there beside him, seemed to forbidher to say a word more. She stooped; she laid her lips to his; it was ameeting of soul with soul; then she went softly out, breaking the quietof the house by a stifled sob as she passed upstairs. 

Oh! But at last she thought she understood him. She had not passed hergirlhood, side by side with a man of delicate fibre, of melancholy andscrupulous temperament, and within hearing of all the natural interestsof 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 notalmost every Christian of illustrious excellence been tried and humbledby them? Catherine, looking back upon her own youth, could remembercertain crises of religious melancholy, during which she had oftendropped off to sleep at night on a pillow wet with tears. They hadpassed away quickly, and for ever. But she went back to them now, straining her eyes through the darkness of her own past, recalling herfather's days of spiritual depression, and the few difficult wordsshe had sometimes heard from him as to those bitter times of religiousdryness and hopelessness, by which God chastens from time to time Hismost faithful and heroic souls. A half-contempt awoke in her for theunclouded serenity and confidence of her own inner life. If herown spiritual experience had gone deeper, she told herself with thestrangest self-blame, she would have been able now to understand Robertbetter--to help him more. 

She thought as she lay awake after those painful moments in the study, the fears welling up slowly in the darkness, of many things that hadpuzzled her in the past. She remembered the book she had seen on histable; her thoughts travelled over his months of intercourse with theSquire; and the memory of Mr. Newcome's attitude toward the man whomhe conceived to be his Lord's adversary, as contrasted with Robert's, filled her with a shrinking pain she dare not analyze. 

Still all through, her feeling toward her husband was in the main akinto that of the English civilian at home toward English soldiers abroad, suffering and dying that England may be great. _She_ had shelteredherself all her life from those deadly forces of unbelief which exist inEnglish society, by a steady refusal to know what, however, any educateduniversity man must perforce know. But such a course of action wasimpossible for Robert. He had been forced into the open, into the falltide of the Lord's battle. The chances of that battle are many; and themore courage the more risk of wounds and pain. But the great Captainknows--the great Captain does not forget His own!

For never, never had she smallest doubt as to the issue of this suddencrisis in her husband's consciousness, even when she came nearest toapprehending its nature. As well might she doubt the return of daylight, as dream of any permanent eclipse descending upon the faith which hadshown through every detail of Robert's ardent impulsive life, with allits struggles, all its failings, all its beauty, since she had knownhim first. The dread did not even occur to her. In her agony of pityand reverence she thought of him as passing through a trial, which isspecially the believer's trial--the chastening by which God proves thesoul He loves. Let her only love and trust in patience. 

So that day by day as Robert's depression still continued, Catherinesurrounded him with the tenderest and wisest affection. Her quietcommon-sense made itself heard, forbidding her to make too much of thechange in him, which might after all, she thought, be partly explainedby the mere physical results of his long strain of body and mind duringthe Mile End epidemic. And for the rest she would not argue; she wouldnot inquire. She only prayed that she might so lead the Christian lifebeside him, that the Lord's tenderness, the Lord's consolation, mightshine upon him through her. It had never been her wont to speak to himmuch about his own influence, his own effect, in the parish. To theausterer Christian, considerations of this kind are forbidden: 'It isnot I, but Christ that worketh in me. ' But now, whenever she came acrossany striking trace of his power over the weak or the impure, the sick orthe sad, she would in some way make it known to him, offering it to himin her delicate tenderness, as though it were a gift that the Father hadlaid in her hand for him: a token that the Master was still indeed withHis servant, and that all was fundamentally well!

And so much, perhaps, the contact with his wife's faith, the power ofher love, wrought in Robert, that during these weeks and months he alsonever lost his own certainty of emergence from the shadow which hadovertaken him. And, indeed, driven on from day to day, as he was by animperious intellectual thirst, which would be satisfied, the religionof the heart, the imaginative emotional habit of years, that incessantdrama which the soul enacts with the Divine Powers to which it feelsitself committed, lived and persisted through it all. Feeling wasuntouched. The heart was still passionately on the side of all its oldloves and adorations, still blindly trustful that in the end, by somecompromise as yet unseen, they would be restored to it intact. 

Some time toward the end of July Robert was coming home from the Hallbefore lunch, tired and worn, as the morning always left him, andmeditating some fresh sheets of the Squire's proofs which had been inhis hands that morning. On the road crossing that to the rectory hesuddenly saw Reginald Newcome, thinner and whiter than ever, stridingalong as fast as cassock and cloak would let him, his eyes on theground, and his wideawake drawn over them. He and Elsmere had scarcelymet for months, and Robert had lately made up his mind that Newcome wasdistinctly less friendly, and wished to show it. 

Elsmere had touched his arm before Newcome had perceived any one nearhim. Then he drew back with a start--

'Elsmere you here! I had an idea you were away for a holiday!'

'Oh, dear, no!' said Robert, smiling. 'I may get away in September, perhaps--not till then. '

'Mr. Wendover at home?' said the other, his eyes turning to the Hall, ofwhich 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 eager, look returning to Elsmere; 'I hear of you as alwaystogether. '

'We have made friends, and we walk a great deal when the Squire ishere, ' said Robert, meeting Newcome's harshness of tone with a brightdignity. 'Mr. Wendover has even been doing something for us in thevillage. You should come and see the new Institute. The roof is on, andwe shall open it in August or September. The best building of the kindin the country by far, and Mr. Wendover's gift. '

'I suppose you use the library a great deal?' said Newcome, paying noattention to these remarks, and still eyeing his companion closely. 

'A great deal. '

Robert had at that moment under his arm a German treatise on the historyof the Logos doctrine, which afterward, looking back on the littlescene, he thought it probable Newcome recognized. They turned towardthe rectory together, Newcome still asking abrupt questions as to theSquire, the length of time he was to be away, Elsmere's work, parochialand literary, during the past six months, the number of his Sundaycongregation, of his communicants, &c. Elsmere bore his catechism withperfect temper, though Newcome's manner had in it a strange and almostjudicial imperativeness. 

'Elsmere, '--said his questioner presently, after a pause, 'I am goingto have a retreat for priests at the Clergy House next month. FatherH----, ' mentioning a famous High Churchman, 'will conduct it. You woulddo me a special favor--' and suddenly the face softened, and shone withall its old magnetism on Elsmere--'if you would come. I believe youwould find nothing to dislike in it, or in our rule, which is a mostsimple one. '

Robert smiled, and laid his big 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 painful anxietyvisible in the stern eyes. 

'Will you tell me what that means?'

'It means, ' said Robert, clasping his hands tightly behind him, his paceslackening a little to meet that of Newcome--'it means that if you willgive me your prayers, Newcome, your companionship sometimes, your pityalways, I will thank you from the bottom of my heart. But I am in astate just now, when I must fight my battles for myself, and in God'ssight only!'

It was the first burst of confidence which had passed his lips to anyone but Catherine. 

Newcome stood still, a tremor of strong emotion running through theemaciated face. 

'You are in trouble, Elsmere; I felt it, I knew it, when I first sawyou!'

'Yes, I am in trouble, ' said Robert quietly. 

'Opinions?'

'Opinions, I suppose--or facts, ' said Robert, his arms dropping wearilybeside him. 'Have you ever known what it is to be troubled in mind, Iwonder, Newcome?'

And he looked at his companion with a sudden pitiful curiosity. 

A kind of flash passed over Mr. Newcome's face. 

'_Have I ever known?_' he repeated vaguely, and then he drew his thinhand, the hand of the ascetic and the mystic, hastily across his eyes, and was silent--his lips moving, his gaze on the ground, his wholeaspect that of a man wrought out of himself by a sudden passion ofmemory. 

Robert watched him with surprise, and was just speaking, when Mr. Newcome looked up, every drawn attenuated feature working painfully. 

'Did you never ask yourself, Elsmere, ' he said slowly, 'what it wasdrove me from the bar and journalism to the East End? Do you think Idon't know, ' and his voice rose, his eyes flamed, 'what black devilit is that is gnawing at your heart now? Why, man, I have been throughdarker gulfs of hell than you have ever sounded! Many a night I havefelt myself _mad_--_mad of doubt_--a castaway on a shoreless sea;doubting not only God or Christ, but myself, the soul, the veryexistence of good. I found only one way out of it, and you will findonly one way. '

The lithe hand caught Robert's arm impetuously--the voice with itsaccent 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 shoulddefy the Most High, that we should set our wretched faculties againstHis Omnipotence? Submit--submit--humble yourself, my brother! Fling awaythe freedom which is your ruin. There is no freedom for man. Either aslave to Christ, or a slave to his own lusts--there is no other choice. Go away; exchange your work here for a time for work in London. You havetoo much leisure here: Satan has too much opportunity. I foresaw it--Iforesaw it when you and I first met. I felt I had a message for you, andhere I deliver it. In the Lord's Name, I bid you fly; I bid you yield intime. Better to be the Lord's captive than _the Lord's betrayer!_'

The wasted form was drawn up to its full height, the arm wasoutstretched, the long cloak fell back from it in long folds--voice andeye were majesty itself. Robert had a tremor of responsive passion. Howeasy it sounded, how tempting--to cut the knot, to mutilate and starvethe rebellious intellect which would assert itself against the soul'spurest instincts! Newcome had done it--why not he?

And then, suddenly, as he stood gazing at his companion, the spring sun, and murmur all about them--another face, another life another message, flashed on his inmost sense, the face and life of Henry Grey. Wordstorn from their context, but full for him of intensest meaning, passedrapidly through his mind: '_God is not wisely trusted when declaredunintelligible. ' 'Such honor rooted in dishonor stands; such unfaithfulmakes us falsely true. ' 'God is for ever reason: and His communication, His revelation, is reason_. '

He turned away with a slight, sad shake of the head. The spell wasbroken. Mr. Newcome's arm dropped, and he moved sombrely on besideRobert--the hand, which held a little book of Hours against his cloak, trembling slightly. 

At the rectory gate he stopped. 

'Good-by--I must go home. '

'You won't come in?--No, no, Newcome; believe me, I am no rash carelessegotist, risking wantonly the most precious things in life! But the callis on me, and I must follow it. All life is God's, and all thought--notonly a fraction of it. He cannot let me wander very far!'

But the cold fingers he held so warmly dropped from his, and Newcometurned away. 

A week afterward, or thereabout, Robert had in some sense followedNewcome's counsel. Admonished perhaps by sheer physical weakness, asmuch as by anything else, he had for the moment laid down his arms; hehad yielded to an invading feebleness of the will, which refused, asit were, to carry on the struggle any longer, at such a life-destroyingpitch of intensity. The intellectual oppression of itself brought aboutwild reaction and recoil, and a passionate appeal to that inward witnessof the soul which holds its own long after the reason has practicallyceased to struggle. 

It came about in this way. One morning he stood reading in the window ofthe library the last of the Squire's letters. It contained a short butmasterly analysis of the mental habits and idiosyncrasies of St. Paul, _à propos_ of St. Paul's witness to the Resurrection. Every now andthen, as Elsmere turned the pages, the orthodox protest would assertitself, the orthodox arguments make themselves felt as though inmechanical involuntary protest. But their force and vitality were gone. Between the Paul of Anglican theology and the fiery, fallible man ofgenius--so weak logically, so strong in poetry, in rhetoric, in moralpassion, whose portrait has been drawn for us by a free and temperatecriticism--the Rector knew, in a sort of dull way, that his choice wasmade. The one picture carried reason and imagination with it; the othercontented neither. 

But as he put down the letter something seemed to snap within him. Somechord of physical endurance gave way. For five months he had been livingintellectually at a speed no man maintains with impunity, and thisletter of the Squire's, with its imperious demands upon the tiredirritable bran, was the last straw. 

He sank down on the oriel seat, the letter dropping from his hands. Outside, the little garden, now a mass of red and pink roses, the hilland 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 polished boards and lower ranges ofbooks. 

The simplest religious thoughts began to flow over him--the simplest, childish words of prayer were on his lips. He felt himself delivered, heknew not how or why. 

He rose deliberately, laid the Squire's letter among his other papers, and tied them up carefully; then he took up the books which lay piledon the Squire's writing-table: all those volumes of German, French, andEnglish criticism, liberal or apologetic, which he had been accumulatinground him day, by day with a feverish toilsome impartiality, andbegan rapidly and methodically to put them back in their places on theshelves. 

'I have done too much thinking, too much reading, ' he was sayingto himself as he went through his task. 'Now let it be the turn ofsomething else!'

And still as he handled the books, it was as though Catherine's figureglided backward and forward beside him, across the smooth floor, asthough her hand were on his arm, her eyes shining into his. Ah--he knewwell what it was had made the sharpest sting of this wrestle throughwhich he had been passing! It was not merely religious dread, religiousshame; that terror of disloyalty to the Divine Images which have filledthe soul's inmost shrine since its first entry into consciousness, suchas 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 ofCatherine's misery, that every advance in knowledge and intellectualpower had brought him nearer. It was from that certainty, that he now, and for the last time, recoiled. It was too much. It could not be borne. 

He walked home, counting up the engagements of the next few weeks--theschool-treat, two club field-days, a sermon in the county town, theprobable opening of the new Workmen's Institute, and so on. Oh! to bethrough them all and away, away amid Alpine scents and silences. Hestood a moment beside the gray, slowly-moving river, half bidden beneaththe rank flower-growth, the tensy and willow-herb, the luxuriant elderand trailing brambles of its August banks--and thought with hungrypassion of the clean-swept Alpine pasture, the fir-woods, and thetameless mountain streams. In three weeks or less he and Catherineshould be climbing the Jaman or the Dent du Midi. And till then he wouldwant 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, sayingnothing. But that night, for the first time for weeks, Elsmere's wifeslept in peace and woke without dread of the day before her. 

BOOK IV. CRISIS. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

The next fortnight was a time of truce. Elsmere neither read norreasoned. He spent his days in the school, in the village, potteringabout the Mile End cottages, or the new institute--sometimes fishing, sometimes passing long summer hours on the commons with his club boys, hunting the ponds for caddises, newts, and water-beetles, peering intothe furze-bushes for second broods, or watching the sand-martins in thegravel-pits, and trudging home at night in the midst of an escort ofenthusiasts, all of them with pockets as full and, miry as his own, todeposit the treasures of the day in the club-room. Once more the Rector, though physically perhaps less ardent than of yore, was the life ofthe party, and a certain awe and strangeness which had developed in hisboys' minds toward him, during the last few weeks, passed away. 

It was curious that in these days he would neither sit nor walk aloneif he could help it. Catherine or a stray parishioner was almost alwayswith him. All the while, vaguely, in the depth of consciousness, therewas the knowledge that behind this piece of quiet water on which hislife was now sailing, there lay storm and darkness, and that in frontloomed fresh possibilities of tempest. He knew, in a way, that it wasa treacherous peace which had overtaken him. And yet it was peace. Thepressure exerted by the will had temporarily given way, and the deepestforces of the man's being had reasserted themselves. He could feel andlove and pray again; and Catherine, seeing the old glow in the eyes, theold spring in the step, made the whole of life one thank-offering. 

On the evening following that moment of reaction in the Murewell libraryRobert had written to the Squire. His letter had been practically awithdrawal from the correspondence. 

'I find, ' he wrote, 'that I have been spending too much time and energylately on these critical matters. It seems to me that my work as aclergyman has suffered. Nor can I deny that your book and your lettershave been to me a source of great trouble of mind. '

'My heart is where it was, but my head is often confused. Letcontroversy rest awhile. My wife says I want a holiday; I think somyself, and we are off in three weeks: not however, I hope, before wehave welcomed you home again, and got you to open the new Institute, which is already dazzling the eyes of the village by its size andsplendor, and the white paint that Harris the builder has been lavishingupon it. '

Ten days later, rather earlier than was expected, the Squire and Mrs. Darcy were at home again. Robert re-entered the great house themorning after their arrival with a strange reluctance. Its glory andmagnificence, the warm perfumed air of the hall, brought back a senseof old oppressions, and he walked down the passage to the library with asinking heart. There he found the Squire busy as usual with one of thosefresh cargoes of books which always accompanied him on any homewardjourney. He was more brown, more wrinkled, more shrunken; more full offorce, of harsh epigram, of grim anecdote than ever. Robert sat on theedge of the table laughing over his stories of French Orientalists, or Roman cardinals or modern Greek professors, enjoying the impartialsarcasm which one of the greatest of savants was always ready to pourout 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 Elsmere suspectedin him a good deal of suppressed irritability; and, as after a while heabruptly ceased to talk, the visit grew difficult. 

The Rector walked home feeling restless and depressed. The mind hadbegun to work again. It was only by a great effort that he could turnhis thoughts from the Squire, and all that the Squire had meant to himduring 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 tohis work with a gesture of impatience. 

'Once a priest, always a priest. What a fool I was to forget it! Youthink you make an impression on the mystic, and at the bottom there isalways something which defies you and common-sense. "Two and two do not, and shall not, make four, "' he said to himself, in a mincing voiceof angry sarcasm. '"It would give me too much pain that they should. "'Well, and so I suppose what might have been a rational friendshipwill go by the board like everything else. What can make the manshilly-shally in this way! He is convinced already, as he knows--thoselater letters were conclusive! His living, perhaps, and hid work! Notfor the money's sake, there never was a more incredibly disinterestedperson born. But his work? Well, who is to hinder his work? Will he bethe first parson in the Church of England who looks after the poor andholds his tongue? If you can't speak your mind, it is something atany rate to possess one--nine-tenths of the clergy being without theappendage. But Elsmere--pshaw! he will go muddling on to the end of thechapter!'

The Squire, indeed, was like a hunter whose prey escapes him at thevery moment of capture, and there grew on him a mocking, aggressive moodwhich Elsmere often found hard to bear. 

One natural symptom of it was his renewed churlishness as to all localmatters. Elsmere one afternoon spent an hour in trying to persuade himto open the new Institute. 

'What on earth do you want me for?' inquired Mr. Wendover, standingbefore the fire in the library, the Medusa head peering over hisshoulder. 'You know perfectly well that all the gentry about here--Isuppose you will have some of them--regard me as an old reprobate, andthe poor people, I imagine, as a kind of ogre. To me it doesn't mattera two-penny damn--I apologize; it was the Duke of Wellington's favoritestandard of value--but I can't, see what good it can do either you orthe village, under the circumstances, that I should stand on my head forthe 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 ruminatingin front of the fire. His frowning eyes wandered round the great roombefore him. For the first time he was conscious that now, as soon as thecharm of Elsmere's presence was withdrawn, his working hours weredoubly solitary; that his loneliness weighed upon him more; and that itmattered to him appreciably whether that young man went or stayed. Thestirring of a new sensation, however-unparalleled since the brief dayswhen even Roger Wendover had his friends and his attractions like othermen--was soon lost in renewed chafing at Elsmere's absurdities. TheSquire had been at first perfectly content--so he told himself--to limitthe field of their intercourse, and would have been content to go ondoing so. But Elsmere himself had invited freedom of speech betweenthem. 

'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 beginwith for all the good I get out of him, or he out of me. Clearly nothingbut cowardice! He cannot face the intellectual change, and he must, Isuppose, dread lest it should affect his work. Good God, what nonsense!As if any one inquired what an English parson believed nowadays, so longas he performs all the usual antics decently!'

And, meanwhile, it never occurred to the Squire that Elsmere had a wife, and a pious one. Catherine had been dropped out of his calculation as toElsmere's future, at a very early stage. 

The following afternoon Robert, coming home from a round, foundCatherine out, and a note awaiting him from the Hall. 

'Can you and Mrs. Elsmere come in to tea?' wrote the Squire. 'Madame deNetteville is here, and one or two others. '

Robert grumbled a good deal, looked for Catherine to devise an excusefor him, could not find her, and at last reluctantly set out againalone. 

He was tired and his mood was heavy. As he trudged through the park henever once noticed the soft, sun-flooded distance, the shining loops ofthe river, the feeding dear, or any of those natural witcheries to whicheye and sense were generally so responsive. The laborers going home, thechildren--with aprons full of crab-apples, and lips dyed by the firstblackberries--who passed him, got but an absent smile or salute from theRector. The interval of exaltation and recoil was over. The ship of themind was once more laboring in alien and dreary seas. 

He roused himself to remember that he had been curious to see Madamede Netteville. She was an old friend of the Squire's, the holder ofa London salon, much more exquisite and select than anything LadyCharlotte could show. 

'She had the same thing in Paris before the war, ' the Squire explained. 'Renan gave me a card to her. An extraordinary woman. No particularoriginality; but one of the best persons "to consult about ideas, "like Joubert's Madame de Beaumont, I ever saw. Receptiveness itself. A beauty, too, or was one, and a bit of a sphinx, which adds tothe attraction. Mystery becomes a woman vastly. One suspects her ofadventures 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 thetop of the yew-clothed hill on which the library looked out. Evelynhimself had planned it. Along its upper side ran one of the mostbeautiful of old walls, broken by niches and statues, tapestried withroses and honey-suckle, and opening in the centre to reveal Evelyn'sdarling conceit of all--a semicircular space, holding a fountain, andleading to a grotto. The grotto had been scooped out of the hill; it waspeopled with dim figures of fauns and nymphs who showed white amid itsmoist greenery; and in front a marble Silence drooped over the fountain, which held gold and silver fish in a singularly clear water. Outside ranthe long stretch of level turf, edged with a jewelled rim of flowers;and as the hill fell steeply underneath, the terrace was like a highgreen platform raised into air, in order that a Wendover might see hisdomain, which from thence lay for miles spread out before him. 

Here, beside the fountain, were gathered the Squire, Mrs. Darcy, Madamede Netteville, and two unknown men. One of them was introduced toElsmere as Mr. Spooner, and recognized by him as a Fellow of the RoyalSociety, a famous mathematician, sceptic, _bon vivant_, and sayer ofgood things. The other was a young Liberal Catholic, the author ofa remarkable collection of essays on mediaeval subjects in which theSquire, treating the man's opinions of course as of no account, hadinstantly recognized the note of the true scholar. A pale, small, hecticcreature, possessed of that restless energy, of mind which often goeswith the heightened temperature of consumption. 

Robert took a seat by Madame de Netteville, whose appearance waspicturesqueness itself. Her dress, a skilful mixture of black and creamyyellow, laid about her in folds, as soft, as carelessly effective asher 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-lightbrought admirably out the rich dark smoothness of the tints, the blacklustre of the eyes. A delicate blue-veined hand lay, upon her knee, andRobert was conscious after ten minutes or so that all her movements, which seemed at first merely slow and languid, were in realitysingularly full of decision and purpose. 

She was not easy to talk to on a first acquaintance. Robert felt thatshe was studying him, and was not so much at his ease as usual, partlyowing to fatigue and mental worry. 

She asked him little abrupt questions about the neighborhood, hisparish, his work in a soft tone which had, however, a distinctloftiness, even _hauteur_. His answers, on the other hand, were oftena trifle reckless and offhand. He was in a mood to be impatient with a_mondaine's_ languid inquiries into clerical work, and it seemed to himthe Squire's description had been overdone. 

'So you try to civilize your peasants, ' she said at last. 'Does itsucceed--is it worth while?'

'That depends on your general ideas of what is worth while, ' he answeredsmiling. 

'Oh, everything is worth while that passes the time, ' she saidhurriedly. 'The clergy of the old regime went through life half asleep. That was their way of passing it. Your way, being a modern, is to bustleand try experiments. '

Her eyes, half closed but none the less provocative, ran over Elsmere'skeen face and pliant frame. An atmosphere of intellectual and socialassumption entrapped her, which annoyed Robert in much the same wayas Langham's philosophical airs were wont to do. He was drawn withoutknowing it into a match of wits, wherein his strokes, if they lacked thefinish and subtlety of hers, showed certainly no lack of sharpness ormental resource. Madame de Netteville's tone insensibly changed, hermanner quickened; her great eyes gradually unclosed. 

Suddenly, as they were in the middle of a skirmish as to the reality ofinfluence, Madame de Netteville paradoxically maintaining that no humanbeing had ever really converted, transformed or convinced another--thevoice of young Wishart, shrill and tremulous, rose above the generallevel of talk. 

'I am quite ready; I am not the least afraid of a definition. Theologyis organized knowledge in the field of religion, a science like anyother science!'

'Certainly, my dear sir, certainly, ' said Mr. Spooner, leaning forward, with his hands round his knees, and speaking with the most elegantand good-humored _sang-froid_ imaginable, 'the science of the world'sghosts! I cannot imagine any more fascinating. '

'Well, ' said Madame de Netteville to Robert, with a deep breath;'_that_ was a remark to have hurled at you all at once out of doors ona summer's afternoon! Oh, Mr. Spooner!' she said, raising her voice. 'Don't play the heretic here! There is no fun in it; there are too manywith you. '

'I did not begin it, my dear madam, and your reproach is unjust. On oneside of me Archbishop Manning's _fidus Achates_, ' and the speaker tookoff his large straw hat and gracefully, waved it--first to the right andthen to the left. 'On the other, the Rector of the parish. "Cannonto right of me, cannon to left of me. " I submit my courage isunimpeachable!'

He spoke with a smiling courtesy as excessive as his silky moustache, his long straw-colored beard, and his Panama hat. Madame de Nettevillesurveyed him with cool, critical eyes. Robert smiled slightly, acknowledged the bow, but did not speak. 

Mr. Wishart evidently took no heed of anything but his own thoughts. Hesat bolt upright with shining excited eyes. 

'Ah, I remember that article of yours in the _Fortnightly!_ How yousceptics miss the point!'

And out came a stream of argument and denunciation which had probablylain lava-hot at the heart of the young convert for years, waiting forsuch a moment as this, when he had before him at close quarters two ofthe most famous antagonists of his faith. The outburst was striking, butcertainly unpardonably ill-timed. Madame de Netteville retreated intoherself with a shrug. Robert, in whom a sore nerve had been set jarring, did his utmost to begin his talk with her again. 

In vain!--for the Squire struck in. He had been sitting huddledtogether--his cynical eyes wandering from Wishart to Elsmere--whensuddenly some extravagant remark of the young Catholic, and Robert'seffort to edge away from the conversation, caught his attention at thesame moment. His face hardened, and in his nasal voice he dealt a swiftepigram at Mr. Wishart, which for the moment left the young disputantfloundering. 

But only for the moment. In another minute or two the argument, begun socasually, had developed into a serious trial of strength, in which theSquire and young Wishart took the chief parts, while Mr. Spooner threwin a laugh and a sarcasm here and there. 

And as long as Mr. Wendover talked Madame de Netteville listened. Robert's restless repulsion to the whole incident; his passionate wishto escape from these phrases, and illustrations, and turns of argumentwhich were all so wearisomely stale and familiar to him, found nosupport in her. Mrs. Darcy dared not second his attempts at chat, forMr. Wendover, on the rare occasions when he held forth, was accustomedto be listened to; and Elsmere was of too sensitive a social fibreto break up the party by an abrupt exit, which could only have beeninterpreted in one way. 

So he stayed, and perforce listened, but in complete silence. None ofMr. Wendover's side-hits touched him. Only as the talk went on, theRector in the background got paler and paler; his eyes, as they passedfrom the mobile face of the Catholic convert, already, for those whoknew, marked with the signs of death, to the bronzed visage of theSquire, grew duller--more instinct with a slowly dawning despair. 

Half an hour later he was once more on the road leading to the parkgate. He had a vague memory that at parting the Squire had shown himthe cordiality of one suddenly anxious to apologize by manner, if notby word. Otherwise everything was forgotten. He was only anxious, halfdazed as he was, to make out wherein lay the vital difference betweenhis present self and the Elsmere who had passed along that road an hourbefore. 

He had heard a conversation on religious topics, wherein nothing was newto him, nothing affected him intellectually at all. What was there inthat to break the spring of life like this? He stood still, heavilytrying to understand himself. 

Then gradually it became clear to him. A month ago, every word of thathectic young pleader for Christ and the Christian certainties wouldhave roused in him a leaping passionate sympathy, --the heart's yearningassent, even when the intellect was most perplexed. Now that inmoststrand had given way. Suddenly, the disintegrating force he had been sopitifully, so blindly, holding at bay, had penetrated once for all intothe sanctuary! What had happened to him had been the first real failureof feeling, the first treachery of the Heart. Wishart's hopes andhatreds, and sublime defiances of man's petty faculties, had aroused inhim no echo, no response. His soul had been dead within him. 

As he gained the shelter of the wooded lane beyond the gate, itseemed to Robert that he was going through, once more, that old fiercetemptation of Bunyan's, --

'For after the Lord had in this manner thus graciously delivered me, and had set me down so sweetly in the faith of His Holy Gospel, andhad given me such strong consolation and blessed evidence from heaven, touching my interest in His love through Christ, the tempter came uponme again, and that with a more grievous and dreadful temptation thanbefore. And that was, "To sell and part with this most blessed Christ;to exchange Him for the things of life, for anything!" The temptationlay upon me for the space of a year, and did follow me so continuallythat I was not rid of it one day in a month: no, not sometimes one hourin many days together, for it did always, in almost whatever I thought, intermix itself therewith, in such sort that I could neither eat myfood, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine eyes to look on thisor that, but still the temptation would come: "Sell Christ for this, orsell Christ for that, sell Him, sell Him!"'

Was this what lay before the minister of God now in this _selva oscura_of life? The selling of the Master, of 'the love so sweet, the unctionspiritual, ' for an intellectual satisfaction, the ravaging of all thefair places of the heart by an intellectual need!

And still through all the despair, all the revolt, all the pain, whichmade the summer air a darkness, and closed every sense in him to theevening beauty, he felt the irresistible march and pressure of the newinstincts, the new forces, which life and thought had been calling intobeing. The words of St. Augustine which he had read to Catherine takenin a strange new sense, came back to him--'Commend to the keeping of theTruth whatever the Truth hath given thee, and thou shalt lose nothing!'

Was it the summons of Truth which was rending the whole nature in thisway?

Robert stood still, and with his hands locked behind him, and his faceturned like the face of a blind man toward a world of which it sawnothing, went through a desperate catechism of himself. 

'_Do I believe in God?_ Surely, surely! "Though He slay me yet willI trust in Him!" _Do I believe in Christ?_ Yes, --in the teacher, themartyr, the symbol to us Westerns of all things heavenly and abiding, the image and pledge of the invisible life of the spirit--with all mysoul and all my mind!'

'_But in the Man-God_, the Word from Eternity, --in a wonder-workingChrist, in a risen and ascended Jesus, in the living Intercessor andMediator for the lives of His doomed brethren?'

He waited, conscious that it was the crisis of his history, and thererose in him, as though articulated one by one by an audible voice, wordsof irrevocable meaning. 

'Every human soul in which the voice of God makes itself felt, enjoys, equally with Jesus of Nazareth, the divine sonship, and "_miracles donot happen!_"'

It was done. He felt for the moment as Bunyan did after his lesserdefeat. 

'Now was the battle won, and down fell I as a bird that is shot from thetop of a tree into great guilt and fearful despair. Thus getting out ofmy bed I went moping in the field; but God knows with as heavy an heartas mortal man I think could bear, where for the space of two hours I waslike a man bereft of life. '

All these years of happy spiritual certainty, of rejoicing oneness withChrist, to end in this wreck and loss! Was not this indeed '_il granrifiuto?_' the greatest of which human daring is capable?

The lane darkened round him. Not a soul was in sight. The only soundswere the sounds of a gently breathing nature, sounds of birds andswaying branches and intermittent gusts of air rustling through thegorse and the drifts of last year's leaves in the wood beside him. Hemoved mechanically onward, and presently, after the first flutter ofdesolate terror had passed away, with a new inrushing sense which seemedto him a sense of liberty--of infinite expansion. 

Suddenly the trees before him thinned, the ground sloped away, and thereto the left on the westernmost edge of the hill lay the square-stonerectory, its windows open to the evening coolness, a white flutter ofpigeons round the dovecote on the side lawn, the gold of the Augustwheat in the great cornfield showing against the heavy girdle ofoak-wood. 

Robert stood gazing at it, --the home consecrated by love, by effort, byfaith. The high alterations of intellectual and spiritual debate, thestrange emerging sense of deliverance, gave way to a most bitter humanpang of misery. 

'Oh God! My wife--my work!'

... There was a sound of voice calling--Catherine's voice calling forhim. He leant against the gate of the wood-path, struggling sternly withhimself. This was no simple matter of his own intellectual consistencyor happiness. Another's whole life was concerned. Any precipitatespeech, or hasty action, would be a crime. A man is bound above allthings to protect those who depend on him from his own immature orrevocable impulses. Not a word yet--till this sense of convulsion andupheaval had passed away, and the mind was once more its own master. 

He opened the gate and went toward her. She was strolling along the pathlooking out for him, one delicate hand gathering up her long eveningdress--that very same black brocade she had worn in the old days atBurwood--the other playing with their Dandie Dinmont puppy who wasleaping beside her. As she caught sight of him, there was the flashingsmile--the hurrying step. And he felt he could but just drag himself tomeet her. 

'Robert, how long you have been! I thought you mast have stayed todinner after all! And how tired you seem!'

'I had a long walk, ' he said, catching her hand, as it slipped itselfunder his arm, and clinging to it as though to a support. 'And I amtired. There is no use whatever in denying it. '

His voice was light, but if it had not been so dark, she must have beenstartled by his face. As they went on toward the house, however, shescolding him for over-walking, he won his battle with himself. He wentthrough the evening so that even Catherine's jealous eyes saw nothingbut extra fatigue. In the most desperate straits of life, love is stillthe fountain of all endurance, and if ever a man loved it was RobertElsmere. 

But that night, as he lay sleepless in their quiet room, with the windowopen to the stars and to the rising gusts of wind, which blow the petalsof the cluster-rose outside in drifts of 'fair weather snow' on to thewindow-sill, he went through an agony which no words can adequatelydescribe. 

He must, of course, give up his living and his Orders. His standards andjudgments had always been simple and plain in these respects. In othermen it might be right and possible that they should live on in theministry of the Church, doing the humane and charitable work ofthe Church, while refusing assent to the intellectual and dogmaticframe-work on which the Church system rests; but for himself it wouldbe neither right nor wrong, but simply impossible. He did not argueor reason about it. There was a favorite axiom of Mr. Grey's whichhad become part of his pupil's spiritual endowment, and which wasperpetually present to him at this crisis of his life, in the spirit, ifnot in the letter--'Conviction is the Conscience of the Mind. ' And withthis intellectual conscience he was no more capable of trifling thanwith the moral conscience. 

The night passed away. How the rare intermittent sounds impressedthemselves upon him!--the stir of the child's waking soon after midnightin the room overhead; the cry of the owls in the oak-wood; the purringof the night-jars on the common; the morning chatter of the swallowsround the eaves. 

With the first invasion of the dawn Robert raised himself and looked atCatherine. She was sleeping with that light sound sleep which belongsto health of body and mind, one hand under her face, the other stretchedout in soft relaxation beside her. Her husband hung over her in abewilderment of feeling. Before him passed all sorts of incoherentpictures of the future; the mind was caught by all manner of incongruousdetails in that saddest uprooting which lay before him. How her sleep, her ignorance, reproached him! He thought of the wreck of all her pureambitions--for him, for their common work, for the people she had cometo love; the ruin of her life of charity and tender usefulness, thedarkening of all her hopes, the shaking of all her trust. Two years ofdevotion, of exquisite self-surrender, had brought her to this! It wasfor this he had lured her from the shelter of her hills, for this shehad opened to him all her sweet stores of faith, all the deepest springsof her womanhood. Oh, how she must suffer! The thought of it and his ownhelplessness wrung his heart. 

Oh, could he keep her love through it all? There was an unspeakabledread mingled with his grief--his remorse. It had been there for months. In her eyes would not only pain but sin divide them? Could he possiblyprevent her whole relation to him from altering and dwindling?

It was to be the problem of his remaining life. With a great cry of thesoul to that God it yearned and felt for through all the darkness andruin which encompassed it, he laid his hand on hers with the timidestpassing touch. 

'Catherine, I will make amends! My wife, I will make amends!'

CHAPTER XXVII. 

The next morning Catherine, finding that Robert still slept on, aftertheir usual waking time, and remembering his exhaustion of the nightbefore, left him softly, and kept the house quiet that he might notbe disturbed. She was in charge of the now toddling Mary in thedinning-room, when the door opened and Robert appeared. 

At sight of him she sprang up with a half-cry; the face seemed to havelost all its fresh color, its look of sure and air: the eyes were sunk;the lips and chin lined and drawn. It was like a face from which theyouth had suddenly been struck out. 

'Robert!----' but her question died on her lips. 

'A bad night, darling, and a bad headache, ' he said, groping his way, as it seemed to her, to the table, his hand leaning on her arm. 'Give mesome breakfast. '

She restrained herself at once, put him into an arm-chair by the window, and cared for him in her tender, noiseless way. But she had grown almostas 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 smallcontrol over them. 

'Can you walk so far? You did overdo it yesterday, you know. You havenever got over Mile End, Robert. '

But her voice had a note in it which in his weakness he could hardlybear. He thirsted to be alone again, to be able to think over quietlywhat was best for her--for them both. There must be a next step, and inher neighborhood, he was too feeble, too tortured, to decide upon it. 

'No more, dear--no more, ' he said, impatiently, as she tried to feedhim; then he added as he rose: 'Don't make arrangements for our goingnext week, Catherine; it can't be so soon. '

Catherine looked at him with eyes of utter dismay. The sustaining hopeof all these difficult weeks, which had slipped with such terribleunexpectedness into their happy life, was swept away from her. 

'Robert, you _ought_ to go. '

'I have too many things to arrange, ' he said, sharply, almost irritably. Then his tone changed. 'Don't urge it, Catherine. '

His eyes in their weariness seemed to entreat her not to argue. Shestooped 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 somesandwiches? I shall only lounge there and take it easy. '

She did everything for him that wifely hands could do. Then when hisfishing basket was strapped on, and his lunch was slipped into thecapacious pocket of the well-worn shooting coat, she threw her armsround him. 

'Robert, you will come away _soon_. '

He roused himself and kissed her. 

'I will, ' he said simply, withdrawing, however, from her grasp, asthough he could not bear those close, pleading eyes. 'Good-by! I shallbe back some time in the afternoon. 

From her post beside the study window she watched him take the short cutacross the cornfield. She was miserable, and all at sea. A week ago hehad been so like himself again, and now--! Never had she seen him inanything like this state of physical and mental collapse. 

'Oh, Robert, ' she cried under her breath, with an abandonment like achild's, strong soul that she was, 'why won't you tell me, dear? Why_won't_ you let me share? I might help you through--I might. '

She supposed he must be again in trouble of mind. A weaker woman wouldhave implored, tormented, till she knew all. Catherine's very strengthand delicacy of nature, and that respect which was inbred in her forthe _sacra_ of the inner life, stood in her way. She could not catechisehim, and force his confidence on this subject of all others. It must begiven freely. And oh! it was so long in coming!

Surely, surely, it must be mainly physical, the result ofover-strain--expressing itself in characteristic mental worry, just asdaily life reproduces itself in dreams. The worldly man suffers at suchtimes through worldly things, the religious man through his religion. Comforting herself a little with thoughts of this kind, and with certainmore or less vague preparations for departure, Catherine got through themorning as best she might. 

Meanwhile, Robert was trudging along to Thurston under a sky which, after a few threatening showers, promised once more to be a sky ofintense heat. He had with him all the tackle necessary for spooningpike, a sport the novelty and success of which had hugely commendedit the year before to, those Esau-like instincts Murewell had so muchdeveloped in him. 

And now, oh the weariness of the August warmth, and the long stretchesof sandy road! By the time he reached the ponds he was tired out; butinstead of stopping at the largest of the three, where a picturesquegroup of old brier cottages brought a remainder of man and his worldinto the prairie solitude of the common, he pushed on to a smaller pooljust beyond, now hidden in a green cloud of birch-wood. Here, afterpushing his way through the closely set trees, he made some futileattempts at fishing, only to put up his rod long before the morning wasover, and lay it beside him on the bank. And there he sat for hours, vaguely watching the reflection of the clouds, the gambols and quarrelof the water-fowl, the ways of the birds, the alternations of sun andshadow on the softly moving trees--the real self of him passing allthe while through an interminable inward drama, starting from the past, stretching to the future, steeped in passion, in pity, in regret. 

He thought of the feelings with which he had taken Orders, of Oxfordscenes and Oxford persons, of the efforts, the pains, the successes ofhis first year at Murewell. What a ghastly mistake it had all been!He felt a kind of sore contempt for himself, for his own lack ofprescience, of self-knowledge. His life looked to him so shallow andworthless. How does a man ever retrieve such a false step? He groanedaloud as he thought of Catherine linked to one born to defeat herhopes, and all that natural pride that a woman feels in the strengthand consistency of the man she loves. As he sat there by the water hetouched the depths of self-humiliation. 

As to religious belief, everything was a chaos. What might be to himthe ultimate forms and condition of thought, the tired mind was quiteincapable of divining. To every stage in the process of destruction itwas feverishly alive. But its formative energy was for the moment gone. The foundations were swept away, and everything must be built up afresh. Only the _habit_ of faith held the close instinctive clinging to a Powerbeyond sense--a Goodness, a Will, not man's. The soul had been strippedof its old defences, but at his worst there was never a moment whenElsmere felt himself _utterly_ forsaken. 

But his people--his work! Every now and then into the fragmentarydebate still going on within him, there would flash little pictures ofMurewell. The green, with the sun on the house-fronts, the awningover the village shop, the vane on the old 'Manor-house, ' the familiarfigures at the doors; his church, with every figure in the Sundaycongregation as clear to him as though he were that moment in thepulpit; the children he had taught, the sick he had nursed, this or thatweather-beaten or brutalized peasant whose history he knew, whose tragicsecrets he had learnt--all these memories and images clung about himas though with ghostly hands, asking--'Why will you desert us? You areours--stay with us!'

Then his thoughts would run over the future, dwelling, with a tense, realistic sharpness, on every detail which lay before him---thearrangements with his _locum tenens_, the interview with the Bishop, theparting with the rectory. It even occurred to him to wonder what must bedone with Martha and his mother's cottage. 

His mother? As he thought of her a wave of unutterable longing roseand broke. The difficult tears stood in his eyes. He had a strangeconviction that at this crisis of his life, she of all human beingswould 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 impatience--triumph in the newrecruit, impatience with the Quixotic folly which could lead a manto look upon orthodox dogma as a thing real enough to be publiclyrenounced, or clerical pledges as more than form of words. So henceforthhe was on the same side with the Squire, held by an indiscriminatingworld as bound to the same negations, the same hostilities! The thoughtroused in him a sudden fierceness of moral repugnance. The Squire andEdward Langham--they were the only sceptics of whom he had ever hadclose and personal experience. And with all his old affection forLangham, all his frank sense of pliancy in the Squire's hands, --yet inthis strait of life how he shrinks from them both!--souls at war withlife and man, without holiness, without perfume!

Is it the law of things? 'Once loosen a man's _religio_, once fling awaythe old binding elements, the old traditional restraints which have madehim what he is, and moral deterioration is certain. ' How often he hasheard it said! How often he has endorsed it! Is it true? His heart growscold within him. What good man can ever contemplate with patience theloss--not of friends or happiness, but of his best self? What shall itprofit a man, indeed, if he gain the whole world--the whole world ofknowledge, and speculation, --and _lose his own soul_?

And then, for his endless comfort, there rose on the inward eye thevision of an Oxford lecture room, of a short, sturdy figure, of a greatbrow over honest eyes, of words alive with moral passion, of thoughtinstinct with the beauty of holiness. Thank God for the saint in HenryGrey! Thinking of it, Robert felt his own self-respect re-born. 

Oh! to see Grey in the flesh, to get his advice, his approval! Eventhough it was the depth of vacation, Grey was so closely connected withthe town, as distinguished from the university, life of Oxford, it mightbe quite possible to find him at home. Elsmere suddenly determined tofind out at once if he could be seen. 

And if so, he would go over to Oxford at once. _This_ should be thenext step, and he would say nothing to Catherine till afterward. He felthimself so dull, so weary, so resourceless. Grey should help and counselhim, should send him back with a clearer brain--a quicker ingenuity oflove, better furnished against her pain and his own. 

Then everything else was forgotten; and he thought of nothing but thatgrisly moment of waiting in the empty room, when still believing itnight, he had put out his hand for his wife, and with a superstitiouspang had found himself alone. His heart torn with a hundred inarticulatecries of memory and grief, he sat on beside the water, unconsciousof the passing of time, his gray eyes staring sightlessly at thewood-pigeons as they flew past him, at the occasional flash of akingfisher, at the moving panorama of summer clouds above the treesopposite. 

At last he was startled back to consciousness by the fall of a few heavydrops 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 sawbeyond the birchwood on the open stretch of common, a boy's figure, which, after a start or two, he recognized as Ned Irwin. 

'You here, Ned?' he said, stopping, the pastoral temper in himreasserting itself at once. 'Why aren't you harvesting?'

'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 fromWitley, he hev, and they won't let him have it till Thursday, so I'vebeen out after things for the club. '

And opening the tin box strapped on his back, he showed the day'scapture of butterflies, and some belated birds' eggs, the plunder ofa bit of common where the turf for the winter's burning was just beingcut. 

Goatsucker, linnet, stonechat, ' said the Rector, fingering them. 'Welldone for August, Ned. If you haven't got anything better to do withthem, give them to that small boy of Mr. Carter's that's been ill solong. He'd thank you for them, I know. '

The lad nodded with a guttural sound of assent. Then his new-bornscientific ardor seemed to struggle with his rustic costiveness ofspeech. 

'I've been just watching a queer creetur, ' he said at last hurriedly; 'Ib'leeve he's that un. '

And he pulled out a well-thumbed handbook, and pointed to a cut of thegrasshopper warbler. 

'Whereabouts?' asked Robert, wondering the while at his own start ofinterest. 

'In that bit of common t'other side the big pond, ' said Ned pointing, his brick-red countenance kindling into suppressed excitement. 

'Come and show me!' said the Rector, and the two went off together. Andsure enough, after a little beating about, they heard the note whichhad roused the lad's curiosity, the loud whirr of a creature that shouldhave been a grasshopper, and was not. 

They stalked the bird a few yards, stooping and crouching, Robert'seager hand on the boy's arm, whenever the clumsy rustic movements madetoo much noise among the underwood. They watched it uttering its jarringimitative note on bush after bush, just dropping to the ground as theycame near, and flitting a yard or two farther, but otherwise showingno sign of alarm at their presence. Then suddenly the impulse which hadbeen leading him on died in the Rector. He stood upright, with a longsigh. 

'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, theunder-keeper. I be going there for my tea. '

'Come along then, we can go together. '

They trudged along in silence; presently Robert turned on his companion. 

'Ned, this natural history has been a fine thing for you, my lad; mindyou stick to it. That and good work will make a man of you. When I goaway----'

The boy started and stopped dead, his dumb animal eyes fixed on hiscompanion. 

'You know I shall soon be going off on my holiday, ' said Robert smilingfaintly; adding hurriedly as the boy's face resumed its ordinaryexpression, 'but some day, Ned, I shall go for good. I don't knowwhether you've been depending on me--you and some of the others. I thinkperhaps you have. If so, don't depend on me, Ned, any more! It must allcome to an end--everything must--_everything!_--except the struggle tobe a man in the world, and not a beast--to make one's heart clean andsoft, and not hard and vile. That is the one thing that matters, andlasts. Ah, never forget that, Ned! Never forget it!'

He stood still, towering over the slouching thickset form beside him, his pale intensity of look giving a rare dignity and beauty to the facewhich owed so little of its attractiveness to comeliness of feature. Hehad the makings of a true shepherd of men, and his mind as he spoke wascrossed by a hundred different currents of feeling, --bitterness, pain, and yearning unspeakable. No man could feel the wrench that lay beforehim more than he. 

Ned Irwin said not a word. His heavy lids were dropped over his deep-seteyes; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling with his butterflynet--awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irresponsiveness, in his wholeattitude. 

Robert gathered himself together. 

'Well, good night, my lad, ' he said with a change of tone. 'Good luck toyou; be off to your tea!'

And he turned away, striding swiftly over the short burnt August grass, in the direction of the Murewell woods, which rose in a blue haze ofheat against the slumberous afternoon sky. He had not gone a hundredyards, before he heard a clattering after him. He stopped and Ned cameup with him. 

'They're heavy, them things, ' said the boy, desperately blurting itout, and pointing, with heaving chest and panting breath, to the rod andbasket. '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 androd, and put them into the begrimed hands held out for them. 'Bring themwhen you like; I don't know when I shall want them again. Thank you, andGod 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, ' said Robertsadly to himself, moving on, a little moisture in the clear gray eye. 

About three o'clock next day Robert was in Oxford. The night before, hehad telegraphed to ask if Grey was at home. The reply had been--'Herefor a week on way north; come by all means. ' Oh! that look ofCatherine's when he had told her of his plan, trying in vain to make itlook merely casual and ordinary. 

'It is more than a year since I have set eyes on Grey, Catherine. Andthe day's change would be a boon. I could stay at night at Morton, andget home early next day. '

But as he turned a pleading look to her, he had been startled by thesudden rigidity of face and form. Her silence had in it an intense, almost a haughty, reproach, which she was too keenly hurt to put intowords. 

He caught her by the arm, and drew her forcibly to him. There hemade her look into the eyes which were full of nothing but the mostpassionate, imploring affection. 

'Have patience a little more, Catherine!' he just murmured. 'Oh, how Ihave blessed you for silence! Only till I come back!'

'Till you come back, ' she repeated slowly. 'I cannot bear it any longer, Robert, that you should give others your confidence, and not me. '

He groaned and let her go. No--there should be but one day more ofsilence, and that day was interposed for her sake. If Grey from hiscalmer standpoint bade him wait and test himself, before taking anyirrevocable step, he would obey him. And if so, the worst pang of allneed not yet be inflicted on Catherine, though as to his state of mindhe would be perfectly open with her. 

A few hours later his cab deposited him at the well-known door. Itseemed to him that he and the scorched plane-trees lining the sides ofthe road were the only living things in the wide sun-beaten street. 

Every house was shut up. Only the Greys' open windows, amid theirshuttered 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 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 strained, nervous emotion of the manbefore him. 

'Come and sit down, Elsmere--there, in the window, where we can talk. One has to live on this east side of the house this weather. '

'In the first place, ' said Mr. Grey, scrutinizing him, as he returned tohis own book-littered corner of the window-seat. 'In the first place, mydear fellow, I can't congratulate you on your appearance. I never saw aman look in worse condition--to be up and about. '

'That's nothing!' said Robert almost impatiently. 'I want a holiday, Ibelieve. Grey!' and he looked nervously out over garden and apple trees, 'I have come very selfishly, to ask your advice; to throw a trouble uponyou, to claim all your friendship can give me. '

He stopped. Mr. Grey was silent--his expression changing instantly--thebright eyes profoundly, anxiously attentive. 

'I have just come to the conclusion, ' said Robert, after a moment, with quick abruptness, 'that I ought, now--at this moment--to leave theChurch, and give up my living, for reasons which I shall describe toyou. But before I act on the conclusion, I wanted the light of your mindupon 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 ahalf-frowning expression. How often Robert had seen some rash exuberantyouth quelled by that momentary frown! Essentially conservative as wasthe inmost nature of the man, for all his radicalism, there were fewthings for which Henry Grey felt more instinctive, distaste than forunsteadiness of will and purpose, however glorified by fine names. Robert knew it, and, strangely enough, felt for a moment in the presenceof the heretical tutor as a culprit before a judge. 

'It is, of course, a matter of opinions, ' he said, with an effort. 'Do you remember, before I took Orders, asking whether I had ever haddifficulties, and I told you that I had probably never gone deepenough. It was profoundly true, though I didn't really mean it. But thisyear--No, no, I have not been merely vain and hasty! I may be a shallowcreature, but it has been natural growth, not wantonness. '

And at last his eyes met Mr. Grey's firmly, almost with solemnity. Itwas as if in the last few moments he had been instinctively testing thequality of his own conduct and motives, by the touchstone of the rarepersonality beside him, and they had stood the trial. There was suchpain, such sincerity, above all such freedom from littleness of soulimplied in words and look, that Mr. Grey quickly held out his hand. Robert grasped it, and felt that the way was clear before him. 

'Will you give me an account of it?' said Mr. Grey, and his tonewas grave sympathy itself. 'Or would you rather confine yourself togeneralities and accomplished facts?'

'I will try and give you an account of it, ' said Robert; and sittingthere with his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on the yellowingafternoon sky, and the intricacies of the garden walls between them andthe new Museum, he went through the history of the last two years. Hedescribed the beginnings of his historical work, the gradual enlargementof the mind's horizons, and the intrusions within them of question afterquestion, and subject after subject. Then he mentioned the Squire'sname. 

'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 oldcynic!'

He spoke with the strong, dislike of the idealist, devoted in practiceto an every-day ministry to human need, for the intellectual egotist. Robert caught and relished the old pugnacious flash in the eye, theMidland strength of accent. 

'Cynic he is, not altogether inhuman, I think. I fought him about hisdrains and his cottages, however, '--and he smiled sadly--'before I beganto read his books. But the man's genius is incontestable, his learningenormous. He found me in a susceptible state, and I recognize that hisinfluence immensely accelerated a process already begun. '

Mr. Grey was struck with the simplicity and fulness of the avowal. Alesser man would hardly have made it in the same way. Rising to pace upand down the room--the familiar action recalling vividly to Robert theSunday afternoons of bygone years--he began to put questions witha clearness and decision that made them so many guides to the mananswering, through the tangle of his own recollections. 

'I see, ' said the tutor at last, his hands in the pockets of his shortgray coat, his brow bent and thoughtful. 'Well, the process in you hasbeen the typical process of the present day. Abstract thought has hadlittle or nothing to say to it. It has been all a question ofliterary and historical evidence. _I_ am old-fashioned enough'--and hesmiled--'to stick to the _à priori_ impossibility of miracles, but thenI am a philosopher! You have come to see how miracle is manufactured, to recognize in it merely a natural, inevitable outgrowth of humantestimony, in its pre-scientific stages. It has been all experimental, inductive. I imagine'--he looked up--'you didn't get much help out ofthe orthodox apologists?'

Robert shrugged his shoulders. 

'It often seems to me, ' he said drearily, 'I might have got through, butfor 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 all the other religious phenomena ofthe world, and then argues upon its details. You might as well isolateEnglish jurisprudence, and discuss its details without any reference toTeutonic custom or Roman law! You may be as logical or as learned as youlike within the limits chosen, but the whole result is false! You treatChristian witness and Biblical literature as you would treat no otherwitness, and no other literature in the world. And you cannot show causeenough. For your reasons depend on the very witness under dispute. Andso you go on arguing in a circle, _ad infinitum_. '

But his voice dropped. The momentary eagerness died away as quickly asit had risen, leaving nothing but depression behind it. 

Mr. Grey meditated. At last he said, with a delicate change of tone, --

'And now--if I may ask it, Elsmere--how far has this destructive processgone?'

'I can't tell you, ' said Robert, turning away almost with a groan--'Ionly know that the things I loved once I love still, and that--that--ifI had the heart to think at all, I should see more of God in the worldthan I ever saw before!'

The tutor's eye flashed. Robert had gone back to the window, and wasmiserably looking out. After all, he had told only half his story. 

'And so you feel you must give up your living?'

'What else is there for me to do?' cried Robert, turning upon him, startled by the slow, deliberate tone. 

'Well, of course, you know that there are many men, men with whomboth you and I are acquainted, who hold very much what I imagine youropinions now are, or will settle into, who are still in the Church ofEngland, doing admirable work there!'

'I know, ' said Elsmere quickly; I know! I cannot conceive it, nor couldyou. Imagine standing up Sunday after Sunday to say the things you do_not_ believe, --using words as a convention which those who hear youreceive as literal truth, --and trusting the maintenance of your positioneither 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 preachanother Easter Day sermon to a congregation that have both a moral anda legal right to demand from me an implicit belief in the materialmiracle!'

'Yes, --said the other gravely--'Yes, I believe you are right. It can'tbe said the Broad Church movement has helped us much! How greatly itpromised!--how little it has performed!--For the private person, theworshipper, it is different--or I think so. No man pries into ourprayers; and to out ourselves off from common worship is to lose thatfellowship which is in itself a witness and vehicle of God. '

But his tone had grown hesitating, and touched with melancholy. 

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 undergraduate, 'let me not be rash! If youthink this change has been too rapid to last--if you, knowing me betterthan at this moment I can know myself--if you bid me wait awhile, beforeI take any overt step, I will wait--oh, God knows I will wait!--mywife--' 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 indismay, rapidly turning over the impressions of Catherine left on himby his last year's sight of her. That pale distinguished woman with herlook of strength and character, --he remembered Langham's analysis ofher, and of the silent religious intensity she had brought with her fromher training among the northern hills. 

Was there a bitterly human tragedy preparing under all thisthought-drama he had been listening to?

Deeply moved, he went up to Robert, and laid his rugged hand almosttimidly upon him. 

'Elsmere, it won't break her heart! You are a good man. She is a goodwoman. ' What an infinity of meaning there was in the simple words! 'Takecourage. Tell her at once--tell her everything--and let _her_ decidewhether there shall be any waiting. I cannot help you there; she can;she will probably understand you better than you understand yourself. '

He tightened his grasp, and gently pushed his guest into a chair besidehim. Robert was deadly pale, his face quivering painfully. The longphysical strain of the past months had weakened for the moment all thecontrolling forces of the will. Mr. Grey stood over him--the whole mandilating, expanding, under a tyrannous stress of feeling. 

'It is hard, it is bitter, ' he said slowly, with a wonderful manlytenderness. 'I know it, I have gone through it. So has many and many apoor soul that you and I have known! But there need be no sting in thewound unless we ourselves envenom it. I know--oh! I know very well--theman of the world scoffs, but to him who has once been a Christian ofthe old sort, the parting with the Christian mythology is the rendingasunder of bones and marrow. It means parting with half the confidence, half the joy, of life! But take heart'--and the tone grew still moresolemn, still more penetrating. 'It is the education of God! Do notimagine it will put you farther from him! He is in criticism, inscience, in doubt, so long as the doubt is a pure and honest doubt, asyours is. He is in all life, --in all thought. The thought of man, asit has shaped itself in institutions, in philosophies, in science, inpatient critical work, or in the life of charity, is the one continuousrevelation of God! Look for him in it all; see how, little by little, the Divine indwelling force, using as its tools, --but _merely_ as itstools!--man's physical appetites and conditions, has built up conscienceand the moral life:--think how every faculty of the mind has beentrained in turn to take its part in the great work of faith upon thevisible world! Love and imagination built up religion, --shall reasondestroy it? No! reason is God's like the rest! Trust it, --trust Him. The leading strings of the past are dropping from you; they are droppingfrom the world, not wantonly, or by chance, but in the providence ofGod. Learn the lesson of your own pain, --learn to seek God, not in anysingle event of past history, but in your own soul, --in the constantverifications of experience, in the life of Christian love. Spirituallyyou have gone through the last wrench, I promise it you! You being whatyou are, nothing can out this ground from under your feet. Whatever mayhave been the forms of human belief--_faith_, the faith which saves, hasalways been rooted here! All things change, --creeds and philosophies andoutward systems, --but God remains!'

 "'Life, that in me has rest, As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!'"

The lines dropped with low vibrating force from lips unaccustomed indeedto such an outburst. The speaker stood a moment longer in silence besidethe figure in the chair, and it seemed to Robert, gazing at him withfixed eyes, that the man's whole presence, at once so homely and somajestic, was charged with benediction. It was as though invisiblehands of healing and consecration had been laid upon him. The fiery soulbeside him had kindled anew the drooping life of his own. So the torchof God passes on its way, hand reaching out to hand. 

He bent forward, stammering incoherent words of assent and gratitude, heknew not what. Mr. Grey, who had sunk into his chair, gave him timeto recover himself. The intensity of the tutor's own mood relaxed; andpresently he began to talk to his guest, in a wholly different tone, ofthe practical detail of the step before him, supposing it to be takenimmediately, discussing the probable attitude of Robert's bishop, theleast conspicuous mode of withdrawing from the living, and so on--allwith gentleness and sympathy indeed, but with an indefinable change ofmanner, which showed that he felt it well both for himself and Elsmereto repress any further expression of emotion. There was something, avein of stoicism perhaps, in Mr. Grey's temper of mind, which, whileit gave a special force and sacredness to his rare moments of ferventspeech, was wont in general to make men more self-controlled than usualin his presence. Robert felt now the bracing force of it. 

'Will you stay with us to dinner?' Mr. Grey asked when at last Elsmeregot up to go. 'There are one or two lone Fellows coming, asked beforeyour telegram came, of course. Do exactly as you like. '

'I think not, ' said Robert, after a pause. 'I longed to see you, but Iam--not fit for general society. '

Mr. Grey did not press him. He rose and went with his visitor to thedoor. 

'Good-by, good-by! Let me always know what I can do for you. And yourwife--poor thing, poor thing! Go and tell her, Elsmere: don't lose amoment you can help. God help her and you!'

They grasped each other's hands. Mr. Grey followed him down the stairsand along the narrow hall. He opened the hall door, and smiled a lastsmile of encouragement and sympathy into the eyes that expressed such ayoung moved gratitude. The door closed. Little did Elsmere realize thatnever, in this life, would he see that smile or hear that voice again!

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

In half an hour from the time Mr. Grey's door closed upon him, Elsmerehad caught a convenient cross-country train, and had left the Oxfordtowers and spires, the shrunken summer Isis, and the flat, hot, rivermeadows far behind him. He had meant to stay at Merton, as we know, for the night. Now, his one thought was to get back to Catherine. Theurgency of Mr. Grey's words was upon him, and love had a miserable pangthat it should have needed to be urged. 

By eight o'clock he was again at Churton. There were no carriageswaiting at the little station, but the thought of the walk across thedarkening common through the August moonrise, had been a refreshmentto him in the heat and crowd of the train. He hurried through the smalltown, where the streets were full of simmer idlers, and the lamps weretwinkling in the still balmy air, along a dusty stretch of road, leavingman and his dwellings, farther and farther to the rear of him, till atlast he emerged on a boundless tract of common, and struck to the rightinto a cart-track leading to Murewell. 

He was on the top of a high sandy ridge, looking west and north, overa wide evening world of heather, and wood and hill. To the right, farahead, across the misty lower grounds into 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 stretchingdownward from where he stood, rose suddenly toward a height crowned witha group of gaunt and jagged firs--land-marks for all the plain--ofwhich every ghostly bough and crest was now sharply outlined against aluminous sky. For the wide heaven in front of him was still delicatelyglowing 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 withthe finest network of pearl-white cloud, suffused at the moment with asilver radiance so intense, that a spectator might almost have dreamedthe moon had forgotten its familiar place of rising, and was aboutto mount into a startled expectant west. Not a light in all the wideexpanse, and for a while not a sound of human life, save the beat ofRobert's step, or the occasional tap of his stick against the pebbles ofthe road. 

Presently he reached the edge of the ridge, whence the rough track hewas following sank sharply to the lower levels. Here was a marvellouspoint of view, and the Rector stood a moment, beside a bareweather-blasted fir, a ghostly shadow thrown behind him. All around thegorse and heather seemed still radiating light, as though the air hadbeen so drenched in sunshine that even long after the sun had vanishedthe invading darkness found itself still unable to win firm possessionof earth and sky. Every little stone in the sandy road was still weirdlyvisible: the color of the heather, now in lavish bloom, could be feltthough hardly seen. 

Before him melted line after line of woodland, broken by hollow afterhollow, filled with vaporous wreaths of mist. About him were thesounds of a wild nature. The air was resonant with the purring of thenight-jars, and every now and then he caught the loud clap of theirwings as they swayed unsteadily through the furze and bracken. Overheada trio of wild ducks flew across, from pond to pond, their hoarse crydescending through the darkness. The partridges on the hill called toeach other, and certain sharp sounds betrayed to the solitary listenerthe presence of a flock of swans on a neighboring pool. 

The Rector felt himself alone on a wide earth. It was almost with a sortof pleasure that he caught at last the barking of dogs on a few distantfarms, or the dim thunderous rush of a train through the wide woodedlandscape beyond the heath. Behind that frowning, mass of wood lay therectory. The lights must be lit in the little drawing-room; Catherinemust be sitting by the lamp, her fine head bent over book or work, grieving for him perhaps, her anxious expectant heart going out to himthrough the dark. He thinks of the village lying wrapped in the peaceof the August night, the lamp rays from shop-front or casement streamingout on to the green; he thinks of his child, of his dead mother feelingheavy and bitter within him all the time the message of separation andexile. 

But his mood was no longer one of mere dread, of helpless pain, ofmiserable self-scorn. Contact with Henry Grey had brought him thatrekindling of the flame of conscience, that medicinal stirring of thesoul's waters, which is the most precious boon that man can give to man. In that sense which attaches to every successive resurrection of ourbest life from the shades of despair or selfishness, he had that day, almost that hour, been born again. He was no longer filled mainlywith the sense of personal failure, with scorn for his own blundering, impetuous temper, so lacking in prescience and in balance; or, inrespect to his wife, with such an anguished impotent remorse. He wasnerved and braced; whatever oscillations the mind might go through inits search for another equilibrium, 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!' he had said to Mr. Grey. And in this healing darkness it was as if the old loves, the oldfamiliar images of thought, returned to him new-clad, re-entering thedesolate heart in a white-winged procession of consolation. On the heathbeside him Christ stood once more, and as the disciple felt the sacredpresence, he could bear for the first time to let the chafing, pent-upcurrent of love flow into the new channels, so painfully prepared forit by the toil of thought. '_Either God or an impostor_. ' What scornthe heart, the intellect, threw on the alternative! Not in the dress ofspeculations which represent the product of long past, long supersededlooms of human thought, but in the guise of common manhood, ladenlike his fellows with the pathetic weight of human weakness and humanignorance, the Master moves toward him--

'_Like you, my son, I struggled and I prayed. Like you, I had my daysof doubt and nights of wrestling. I had my dreams, my delusions, withmy fellows. I was weak; I suffered; I died. But God was in me, and thecourage, the patience, the love He gave to me; the scenes of the poorhuman life He inspired; have become by His will the world's eternallesson--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 toyour 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;love, instead of weakening or forgetting, if it be but faithful, shallfind ever fresh power of realizing and renewing itself. _'

So said the vision; and carrying the passion of it deep in his heart theRector went his way, down the long stony hill, past the solitary farmamid the trees at the foot of it, across the grassy common beyond, withits sentinel clumps of beeches, past an ethereal string of tiny lakesjust touched by the moonrise, beside some of the first cottages ofMurewell, up the hill, with pulse beating and step quickening, and roundinto 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--thelamp-light, the open windows, the white muslin curtains swaying a littlein 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 startledher. He saw her rise quickly from her low chair, put some work downbeside her, and move in haste to the window. 

'Robert!' she cried in amazement. 

'Yes, ' he answered, still some yards from her, his voice comingstrangely to her out of the moonlit darkness. 'I did my errand early; Ifound I could get back; and here, I am. '

She flew to the door, opened it, and felt herself caught in his arms. 

'Robert, you are quite damp!' she said, fluttering and shrinking, forall her sweet habitual gravity of manner--was it the passion of thatyearning embrace? 'Have you walked?'

'Yes. It is the dew on the common I suppose. The grass was drenched. '

'Will you have some food? They can bring back the supper directly. '

'I don't want any food now, ' he said banging up his hat; I got somelunch in town, and a cup of soup at Reading coming back. Perhaps youwill give me some tea soon--not yet. '

He came up to her, pushing back the thick disordered locks of hair fromhis eyes with one hand, the other held out to her. As he came under thelight of the hall lamp she was so startled by the gray pallor of theface that she caught hold of his outstretched hand with both hers. Whatshe said he never knew--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 analmost iron self-control of manner. He shut the door behind them. 

'Robert! dear Robert, ' she said, clinging to him--'there is badnews, --tell me--there is something to tell me! Oh! what is it--what isit?'

It was almost like a child's wail. His brow contracted still morepainfully. 

'My darling, ' he said; 'my darling--my dear, dear wife!' and he bent hishead down to her as she lay against his breast, kissing her hair witha passion of pity, of remorse, of tenderness, which seemed to rend hiswhole nature. 

'Tell me--tell me--Robert!'

He guided her gently across the room, past the sofa over which her worklay scattered, past the flower-table, now a many-colored mass of roses, which was her especial pride, past the remains of a brick castle whichhad delighted Mary's wondering eyes and mischievous fingers an houror two before, to a low chair by the open window looking on the widemoonlit expanse of cornfield. He put her into it, walked to the windowon the other side of the room, shut it, and drew down the blind. Then hewent back to her, and sank down beside her, kneeling, her hands in his--

'My dear wife--you have loved me--you do love me?'

She could not answer, she could only press his hands with her coldfingers, with a look and gesture that implored him to speak. 

'Catherine'--he said, still kneeling before her--'you remember thatnight you came down to me in the study, the night I told you I was introuble and you could not help me. Did you guess from what I said whatthe trouble was?'

'Yes, ' she answered trembling, 'yes, I did, Robert; I thought you weredepressed--troubled--about religion. '

'And I know, '--he said with an outburst of feeling, kissing her handsas they lay in his--'I know very well that you went up stairs and prayedfor me, my white-souled angel! But Catherine, the trouble grew--it gotblacker and blacker. You were there beside me, and you could not helpme. I dared not tell you about it; I could only struggle on alone, soterribly alone, sometimes; and now I am beaten, beaten. And I come toyou to ask you to help me in the only thing that remains to me. Help me, Catherine, to be an honest man--to follow conscience--to say and do thetruth!'

'Robert, ' she said piteously, deadly pale; 'I don't understand. '

'Oh, my poor darling!' he cried, with a kind of moan of pity and misery. Then still holding her, he said, with strong deliberate emphasis, looking into the gray-blue eyes--the quivering face so full of austerityand delicacy, --

'For six or seven months, Catherine--really for much longer, thoughI never knew it--I have been fighting with _doubt_--doubt of orthodoxChristianity--doubt of what the Church teaches--of what I have to sayand preach every Sunday. First it crept on me I knew not how. Then theweight grew heavier, and I began to struggle with it. I felt I muststruggle with it. Many men, I suppose, in my position would havetrampled 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 thoughtof questioning the most sacred beliefs that you and I--' and his voicefaltered 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 fromthe rest of me, than I could go on living with a secret between myselfand 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 Godand man!'

Catherine looked at him stupefied. The world seemed to be turning roundher. Infinitely more terrible than his actual words was theaccent running through words and tone and gesture--the accent ofirreparableness, as of something dismally _done_ and _finished_. Whatdid it all mean? For what had he brought her there? She sat stunned, realizing with awful force the feebleness, the inadequacy, of her ownfears. 

He, meanwhile, had paused a moment, meeting her gaze with thoseyearning, sunken eyes. Then he went on, his voice changing a little. 

'But if I had wished it ever so much, I could not have helped myself. The process, so to speak, had gone too far by the time I knew whereI 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 lastwinter. '

She shivered. He stooped and kissed her hands again passionately. 'AmI poisoning even the memory of our past for you?' he cried. Then, restraining himself at once, he hurried on again--'After Mile End youremember I began to see much of the Squire. Oh, my wife, don't lookat me so! It was not his doing in any true sense. I am not such a weakshuttlecock as that! But being where I was before our intimacy began, his influence hastened everything. I don't wish to minimize it. I wasnot made to stand alone!'

And again that bitter, perplexed, half-scornful sense of his own pliancyat the hands of circumstance as compared with the rigidity of other men, descended upon him. Catherine made a faint movement as though to drawher hands away. 

'Was it well, ' she said, in a voice which sounded like a harsh echo ofher own, 'was it right for a clergyman to discuss sacred things--withsuch a man?'

He let her hands go, guided for the moment by a delicate imperiousinstinct which bade him appeal to something else than love. Rising, hesat down opposite to her on the low window seat, while she sank backinto her chair, her fingers clinging to the arm of it, the lamp-lightfar behind deepening all the shadows of the face, the hollows in thecheeks, the line of experience and will about the mouth. The stuporin which she had just listened to him was beginning to break up. Wildforces of condemnation and resistance were rising in her; and he knewit. He knew, too, that as yet she only half realized the situation, andthat blow after blow still remained to him to deal. 

'Was it right that I should discuss religious matters with the Squire?'he repeated, his face resting on his hands. 'What are religious matters, Catherine, and what are not?'

Then still controlling himself rigidly, his eyes fixed on the shadowyface of his wife, his ear catching her quick uneven breath, he went oncemore through the dismal history of the last few months, dwelling on hisstate of thought before the intimacy with Mr. Wendover began, on hisfirst attempts to escape the Squire's influence, on his gradual pitifulsurrender. Then he told the story of the last memorable walk beforethe Squire's journey, of the moment in the study afterward, and of themonths of feverish reading and wrestling which had followed. Half-waythrough it a new despair seized him. What was the good of all he wassaying? He was speaking a language she did not really understand. Whatwere all these critical and literary considerations to her?

The rigidity of her silence showed him that her sympathy was not withhim, that in comparison with the vibrating protest of her own passionatefaith which must be now ringing through her, whatever he could urgemust seem to her the merest culpable trifling with the soul's awfuldestinies. In an instant of tumultuous speech he could not convey toher the temper and results of his own complex training, and on thattraining, as he very well knew, depended the piercing, convincing forceof all that he was saying. There were gulfs between them--gulfs which asit seemed to him in a miserable insight, could never be bridged again. Oh! the frightful separateness of experience!

Still he struggled on. He brought the story down to the conversationat the Hall, described--in broken words of fire and pain--the moment ofspiritual wreck which had come upon him in the August lane, his night ofstruggle, his resolve to go to Mr. Grey. And all through he was not somuch 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, thepale varying face, were really pleading, through all the long story ofintellectual change. 

At the mention of Mr. Grey, Catherine grew restless, she sat upsuddenly, with a cry of bitterness. 

'Robert, why did you go away from me? It was cruel. I should have knownfirst. He had no right--no right!'

She clasped her hands round her knees, her beautiful mouth set andstern. The moon had been sailing westward all this time, and asCatherine bent forward the yellow light caught her face, and brought outthe haggard change in it. He held out his hands to her with a low groan, helpless against her reproach, her jealousy. He dared not speak of whatMr. Grey had done for him, of the tenderness of his counsel toward herspecially. He felt that everything he could say would but torture thewounded heart still more. 

But she did not notice the outstretched hands. She covered her face insilence a moment as though trying to see her way more clearly throughthe maze of disaster; and he waited. At last she looked up. 

'I cannot follow all you have been saying, ' she said, almost harshly. 'I know so little of books, I cannot give them the place you do. You sayyou have convinced yourself the Gospels are like other books, full ofmistakes, and credulous, like the people of the time; and therefore youcan't take what they say as you used to take it. But what does it allquite mean? Oh, I am not clever--I cannot see my way clear from thing tothing as you do. If there are mistakes, does it matter so--so--terriblyto you?' and she faltered. 'Do you think _nothing_ is true becausesomething may be false? Did not--did not--Jesus still live, and die, andrise again?--_can_ you doubt--_do_ you doubt--that He rose--that He isGod--that He is in heaven--that we shall see Him?'

She threw an intensity into every word, which made the short, breathlessquestions thrill through him, through the nature saturated and steepedas hers was in Christian association, with a bitter accusing force. Buthe did not flinch from them. 

'I can believe no longer in an incarnation and resurrection, ' he saidslowly, but with a resolute plainness. 'Christ is risen in our hearts, in the Christian life of charity. Miracle is a natural product of humanfeeling and imagination and God was in Jesus--pre-eminently, as He is inall great souls, but not otherwise--not otherwise in kind than He is inme or you. '

His voice dropped to a whisper. She grow paler and paler. 

'So to you, ' she said presently in the same strange altered voice, 'myfather--when I saw that light on his face before he died, when I heardhim cry, "Master, _I come!_" was dying--deceived--deluded. Perhapseven, ' and she trembled, 'you think it ends here--our life--our love?'

It was agony to him to see her driving herself through this piteouscatechism. The lantern of memory flashed a moment on to the immortalpicture of Faust and Margaret. Was it not only that winter they had readthe scene together?

Forcibly he possessed himself once more of those closely locked hands, pressing their coldness on his own burning eyes and forehead in hopelesssilence. 

'Do you, Robert?' she repeated insistently. 

'I know nothing, ' he said, his eyes still hidden. 'I know nothing! But Itrust God with all that is clearest to me, with our love, with the soulthat is His breath, His work in us!'

The pressure of her despair seemed to be wringing his own faith out ofhim, forcing into definiteness things and thoughts that had been lyingin 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, theindefinable change of accent. It drove him into a harsh abruptness ofreply--

'The end of it--so far--must be, if I remain an honest man, that I mustgive up my living, that I must cease to be a minister of the Church ofEngland. What the course of our life after that shall be, is in yourhands--absolutely. '

She caught her breath painfully. His heart was breaking for her, andyet there was something in her manner now which kept down caresses andrepressed all words. 

Suddenly, however, as he sat there mutely watching her, he found her athis knees, her dear arms around him, her face against his breast. 

'Robert, my husband, my darling, it _cannot_ be! It is a madness--adelusion. God is trying you, and me! You cannot be planning so to desertHim, so to deny Christ--you cannot, my husband. Come away with me, awayfrom books and work, into some quiet place where He can make Himselfheard. You are overdone, overdriven. Do nothing now--say nothing--exceptto me. Be patient a little and He will give you back himself! What canbooks 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 exquisitetenderness. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. They were wet onhis own. Another moment and Robert would have lost the only clew whichremained to him through the mists of this bewildering world. He wouldhave yielded again as he had many times yielded before, for infinitelyless reason, to the urgent pressure of another's individuality, andhaving jeopardized love for truth, he would now have murdered--or triedto murder--in himself, the sense of truth, for love. 

But he did neither. 

Holding her close pressed against him, he said in breaks of intensespeech: 'If you wish, Catherine, I will wait--I will wait till you bidme speak--but I warn you--there is something dead in me--something goneand broken. It can never live again--except in forms which now it wouldonly pain you more to think of. It is not that I think differently ofthis point or that point--but of life and religion altogether. --I seeGod's purposes in quite other proportions as it were. --Christianityseems to me something small and local. --Behind it, around it--includingit--I see the great drama of the world, sweeping on--led by God--fromchange 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 orsystem!'

She heard, but through her exhaustion, through the bitter sinking ofhope, she only half understood. Only she realized that she and he werealike helpless--both struggling in the grip of some force outside ofthemselves, inexorable, ineluctable. 

Robert felt her arms relaxing, felt the dead weight of her form againsthim. He raised her to her feet, he half carried her to the door, and onto the stairs. She was nearly fainting, but her will held her at bay. He threw open the door of their room, led her in, liftedher--unresisting--on to the bed. Then her head fell to one side, and herlips grew ashen. In an instant or two he had done for her all that hismedical knowledge could suggest with rapid, decided hands. She was notquite unconscious; she drew up round her, as though with a strong vaguesense of chill the shawl he laid over her, and gradually the slightestshade of color came back to her lips. But as soon as she opened her eyesand met those of Robert fixed upon her, the heavy lids dropped again. 

'Would you rather be alone?' he said to her, kneeling beside her. 

She made a faint affirmative movement of the head and the cold hand hehad been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, andstood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

He shut the door softly, and went downstairs again. It was between tenand eleven. The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished;everyone else in the house had gone to bed. Mechanically he stoopedand put away the child's bricks, he pushed the chairs back into theirplaces, and then he paused awhile before the open window. But therewas not a tremor on the set face. He felt himself capable of no moreemotion. The fount of feeling, of pain, was for the moment dried up. What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gustsof night wind on the moonlit cornfield; the silver ripples they sentthrough it; the shadows thrown by some great trees in the westerncorners of the field; the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensityof 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 upand down the wood-path or sat on the bench there for some time, thinkingindeed, but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness. Wheneverhe felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again, he would make asharp effort at repression. Physically he could not bear much more, andhe knew it. A part remained for him to play, which must be played withtact, with prudence, and with firmness. Strength and nerves had beensufficiently weakened already. For his wife's sake, his people's sake, his honorable reputation's sake, he must guard himself from a collapsewhich might mean far more than physical failure. 

So in the most patient, methodical way he began to plan out theimmediate future. As to waiting, the matter was still in Catherine'shands; but he knew that finely tempered soul; he knew that when she hadmastered her poor woman's self, as she had always mastered it from herchildhood, she would not bid him wait. He hardly took the possibilityinto consideration. The proposal had had some reality in his eyes whenhe went to see Mr. Grey; now it had none, though he could hardly haveexplained why. 

He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to takehis duty during his absence on the Continent. It had been originallysuggested that this Mr. Armitstead should come to Murewell on the Mondayfollowing the Sunday they were now approaching, spend a few days withthem before their departure, and be left to his own devices in the houseand parish, about the Thursday or Friday. An intense desire now seizedRobert to get hold of the man at once, before the next Sunday. It wasstrange how the interview with his wife seemed to have crystallized, precipitated everything. How infinitely more real the whole matterlooked to him since the afternoon! It had passed--at any rate for thetime--out of the region of thought, into the hurrying evolution ofaction, and as soon as action began it was characteristic of Robert'srapid energetic nature to feel this thirst to make it as prompt, ascomplete, as possible. The fiery soul yearned for a fresh consistency, though it were a consistency of loss and renunciation. 

To-morrow he must write to the Bishop. The Bishop's residence was onlyeight or ten miles from Murewell; he supposed his interview with himwould take place about Monday or Tuesday. He could see the tall stoopingfigure of the kindly old man rising to meet him--he knew exactly thesort of arguments that would be brought to bear upon him. Oh, thatit were done with--this wearisome dialectical necessity! His life formonths had been one long argument. If he were but left free to feel andlive again. 

The practical matter which weighed most heavily upon him was thefunction connected with the opening of the new Institute, which had beenfixed for the Saturday-the next day but one. How was he--but much morehow was Catherine--to get through it? His lips would be sealed as to anypossible withdrawal from the living, for he could not by then have seenthe Bishop. He looked forward to the gathering, the crowds, the localenthusiasm, the signs of his own popularity, with a sickening distaste. The one thing real to him through it all would be Catherine's whiteface, and their bitter joint consciousness. 

And then he said to himself, sharply, that his own feelings counted fornothing. 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 whomhe had planned to spend the best energies of life, and from whom his ownact was about to part him in this lame, impotent fashion. 

Midnight! The sounds rolled silverly out, effacing the soft murmurs ofthe night. So the long interminable day was over, and a new morning hadbegun. He rose, listening to the echoes of the bell, and--as the tide offeeling surged back upon him--passionately commending the new-born dayto God. 

Then he turned toward the house, put the light out in the drawing-room, and went upstairs, stepping cautiously. He opened the door ofCatherine's room. The moonlight was streaming in through the whiteblinds. Catherine, who had undressed, was lying now with her face hiddenin 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 itscoverings had it not been for the mother's hand, which lay lightly onthe tiny shoulder, keeping one thin blanket in its place. 

'Catherine, ' he whispered, standing beside her. 

She turned, and by the light of the candle he held shaded from her, hesaw the austere remoteness of her look, as of one who had been goingthrough deep waters of misery, alone with God. His heart sank. For thefirst time that look seemed to exclude him from her inmost life. 

He sank down beside her, took the hand lying on the child, and laiddown his head upon it, mutely kissing it. But he said nothing. Of whatfurther avail could words be just then to either of them? Only he feltthrough every fibre the coldness, the irresponsiveness of those fingerslying in his. 

'Would it prevent your sleeping, ' he asked her presently, 'if I came toread here, as I used to when you were ill? I could shade the light fromyou, of course. '

She raised her head suddenly. 

'But you--you ought to sleep. '

Her tone was anxious, but strangely quiet and aloof. 

'Impossible!' he said, pressing his hand over his eyes as he rose. 'Atany 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. Sheturned away with a long sobbing breath which seemed to go throughher from head to foot. He stood a moment beside her, fighting strongimpulses of remorse and passion, and ultimately maintaining silence andself-control. 

In another minute or two he was sitting beside her feet, in a low chairdrawn to the edge of the bed, the light arranged so as to reach his bookwithout touching either mother or child. He had run over the book-shelfin his own room, shrinking painfully from any of his common religiousfavorites 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, everynow and then, a stifled sob would make itself just faintly heard. It wasa sound to wring the heart for what it meant was that not even CatherineElsmere's extraordinary powers of self-suppression could avail to chockthe outward expression of an inward torture. Each time it came and went, it seemed to Elsmere that a fraction of his youth went with it. 

At last exhaustion brought her a restless sleep. As soon as Elsmerecaught the light breathing which told him she was not conscious of hergrief, or of him, his book slipped on to his knee. 

 Open the temple gates unto my love, Open them wide that she may enter in, And all the posts adorn as doth behove, And all the pillars deck with garlands trim, For to receive this saint with honor due That cometh in to you. With trembling steps and humble reverence, She cometh in before the Almighty's view. 

The leaves fell over as the book dropped, and these lines, which hadbeen 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 churchpenetrated everywhere by the roar of a swollen river; outside, aroad filled with empty farmers' carts, and shouting children carryingbranches of mountain-ash--winding on and up into the heart of wild hillsdyed with reddening fern, the sun-gleams stealing from crag to crag, andshoulder to shoulder; inside, row after row of intent faces, all turnedtoward the central passage, and, moving toward him, a figure 'clad allin white, that seems a virgin best, ' whose every step brings nearer tohim the heaven of his heart's desire. Everything is plain to him--Mrs. Thornburgh's round checks and marvellous curls and jubilant airs, --Mrs. Leyburn's mild and tearful pleasure, the Vicar's solid satisfaction. With what confiding joy had those who loved her given her to him! And heknows well that out of all griefs, the grief he has brought upon her intwo short years is the one which will seem to her hardest to bear. Veryfew women of the present day could feel this particular calamity asCatherine Elsmere must feel it. 

'Was it a crime to love and win you, my darling?' he cited to her in hisheart. 'Ought I to have had more self-knowledge, could I have guessedwhere I was taking you? Oh how could I know--how could I know!'

But it was impossible to him to sink himself wholly in the past. Inevitably such a nature as Elsmere's turns very quickly from despairto hope; from the sense of failure to the passionate planning ofnew effort. In time will he not be able to comfort her, and, after amiserable moment of transition, to repair her trust in him and maketheir common life once more rich toward God and man? There must bepainful readjustment and friction no doubt. He tries to see the factsas they truly are, fighting against his own optimist tendencies, andrealizing as best he can all the changes which his great change mustintroduce into their most intimate relations. But after all can love, and honesty, and a clear conscience do nothing to bridge over, nay, toefface, such differences as theirs will be?

Oh to bring her to understand him! At this moment he shrinks painfullyfrom the thought of touching her faith--his own sense of loss is tooheavy, too terrible. But if she will only be still open with him--stillgive him her deepest heart, any lasting difference between them willsurely be impossible. Each will complete the other, and love knit, upthe ravelled strands again into a stronger unity. 

Gradually he lost himself in half-articulate prayer, in the solemngirding of the will to this future task of a re-creating love. And bythe time the morning light had well established itself sleep had fallenon him. When he became sensible of the longed-for drowsiness, he merelystretched out a tired hand and drew over him a shawl hanging at the footof 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 thetiny Mary on the edge of the bed, the rounded apple cheeks and wild-birdeyes 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 sattriumphantly, with one diminutive leg and rosy foot doubled under her, and her father's thick hair at the mercy of her invading fingers, which, however, were as yet touching him half timidly, as though something inhis sleep had awed the baby sense. 

But Catherine was gone. 

He sprang up with a start. Mary was frightened by the abrupt movement, perhaps disappointed by the escape of her prey, and raised a suddenwail. 

He carried her to her nurse, even forgetting to kiss the little wetcheek, ascertained that Catherine was not in the house, and then cameback, miserable, with the bewilderment of sleep still upon him. Asense of wrong rose high within him. How _could_ she have left him thuswithout a word?

It had been her way sometimes, during the summer, to go out early to oneor other of the sick folk who were under her especial charge. Possiblyshe had gone to a woman just confined, on the further side of thevillage, who yesterday had been in danger. 

But, whatever explanation he could make for himself, he was none theless irrationally wretched. He bathed, dressed, and sat down to hissolitary meal in a state of tension and agitation indescribable. All theexaltation, the courage of the night, was gone. 

Nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and no sign of Catherine. 

'Your mistress must have been detained somewhere, ' he said as quietlyand carelessly as he could to Susan, the parlor-maid, who had been withthem since their marriage. 'Leave breakfast things for one. '

'Mistress took a cup of milk when she went out, cook says, ' observedthe little maid with a consoling intention, wondering the while at theRector's haggard mien and restless movements. 

'Nursing other people, indeed!' she observed severely downstairs, glad, as we all are at times, to pick holes in excellence which isinconveniently high. 'Missis had a deal better stay at home and nurse_him!_'

The day was excessively hot. Not a leaf moved in the garden; over thecornfield the air danced in long vibrations of heat; the woods and hillsbeyond were indistinct and colorless. Their dog Dandy, lay sleeping inthe sun, waking up every now and then to avenge himself on the flies. Onthe far edge of the cornfield reaping was beginning. Robert stood on theedge of the sunk fence, his blind eyes resting on the line of men, hisear catching the shouts of the farmer directing operations from his grayhorse. He could do nothing. The night before in the wood-path, he hadclearly mapped out the day's work. A mass of business was waiting, clamoring to be done. He tried to begin on this or that, and gaveup everything with a groan, wandering out again to the gate on thewood-path to sweep the distances of road or field with hungry, strainingeyes. 

The wildest fears had taken possession of him. Running in his head was apassage from _The Confessions_, describing Monica's horror of her son'sheretical opinions. 'Shrinking from and detesting the blasphemies of hiserror, she began to doubt whether it was right in her to allow her sonto live in her house and to eat at the same table with her;' and themother's heart, he remembered, could only be convinced of the lawfulnessof its own yearning by a prophetic vision of the youth's conversion. He recalled, with a shiver, how, in the Life of Madame Guyon, afterdescribing the painful and agonizing death of a kind but comparativelyirreligious husband, she quietly adds, 'As soon as I heard that myhusband had just expired, I said to Thee, O my God, Thou hast broken mybonds, and I will offer to Thee a sacrifice of praise!' He thought ofJohn Henry Newman, disowning all the ties of kinship with his youngerbrother because of divergent views on the question of baptismalregeneration; of the long tragedy of Blanco White's life, caused by theslow dropping-off of friend after friend, on the ground of hereticalbelief. What right had he, or any one in such a strait as his, to assumethat the faith of the present is no longer capable of the same sternself-destructive consistency as the faith of the past? He knew that tosuch Christian purity, such Christian inwardness as Catherine's, theultimate sanction and legitimacy of marriage rest, both in theory andpractice, on a common acceptance of the definite commands and promisesof a miraculous revelation. He had had a proof of it in Catherine'spassionate repugnance to the idea of Rose's marriage with EdwardLangham. 

Eleven o'clock striking from the distant tower. He walked desperatelyalong the wood-path, meaning to go through the copse at the end of ittoward the park, and look there. He had just passed into the copse, athick interwoven mass of young trees, when he heard the sound of thegate which on the further side of it led on to the road. He hurried on;the trees closed behind him; the grassy path broadened; and there, underan arch of young oak and hazel, stood Catherine, arrested by the soundof 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. ThenCatherine sprang forward with a sob and threw herself on his breast. 

They clung to each other, she in a passion of tears--tears of suchself-abandonment as neither Robert nor any other living soul had everseen Catherine Elsmere shed before. As for him he was trembling fromhead to foot, his arms scarcely strong enough to hold her, his youngworn face bent down over her. 

'Oh, Robert!' she sobbed at last, putting up her hand and touching hishair, '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 awaybecause when I woke up it all seemed to me, suddenly, too ghastly tobe believed; I could not stay still and bear it. But, Robert, Robert, Ikissed you as I passed! I was so thankful you could sleep a little andforget. I hardly know where I have been most of the time--I think I havebeen sitting in a corner of the park, where no one ever comes. I beganto think of all you said to me last night--to put it together--to tryand understand it, and it seemed to me more and more horrible! I thoughtof what it would be like to have to hide my prayers from you--my faithin Christ--my hope of heaven. I thought of bringing up the child--howall that was vital to me would be a superstition to you, which you wouldbear with for my sake. I thought of death, ' and she shuddered--'yourdeath, or my death, and how this change in you would cleave a gulfof misery between us. And then I thought of losing my own faith, of, denying Christ. It was a nightmare--I saw myself on a long road, escaping with Mary in my arms, escaping from you! Oh, Robert! it wasn'tonly 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 childwere _Christ's_. Could I risk what was His? Other men and women haddied, had given up all for His sake. Is there no one now strong enoughto suffer torment, to kill even love itself rather than deny Him--ratherthan crucify Him afresh?'

She paused, struggling for breath. The terrible excitement of thatbygone moment had seized upon her again and communicated itself to him. 

'And then--and then, ' she said sobbing, 'I don't know how it was. Onemoment I was sitting up looking straight before me, without a tear, thinking of what was the least I must do, even--even--if you andI stayed together--of all the hard compacts and conditions I mustmake--judging you all the while from a long, long distance, and feelingas though I had buried the old self--sacrificed the old heart--for ever!And the next I was lying on the ground crying for you, Robert, cryingfor you! Your face had come back to me as you lay there in the earlymorning light. I thought how I had kissed you--how pale and gray andthin you looked. Oh, how I loathed myself! That I should think it couldbe 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. Icould think of nothing as I lay there--again and again'--but "_Littlechildren, love one another; Little children, love one another. _" Oh, my beloved'--and she looked up with the solemnest, tenderest 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 cannotlose yourself so. No, no! His grace is stronger than our wills. ButI will not preach to you--I will not persecute you--I will only livebeside you--in your heart--and love you always. Oh how could I--howcould I have such thoughts!'

And again she broke off, weeping, as if to the tender, torn heart theonly crime that could not be forgiven was its own offence against love. As for him he was beyond speech. If he had ever lost his vision of God, his wife's love would that moment have given it back to him. 

'Robert, ' she said presently, urged on by the sacred yearning to heal, to atone, 'I will not complain--I will not ask you to wait. I take yourword for it that it is best not, that it would do no good. The only hopeis in time--and prayer. I must suffer, dear, I must be weak sometimes;but oh, I am so sorry for you! Kiss me, forgive me, Robert; I will beyour faithful wife unto our lives' end. '

He kissed her, and in that kiss, so sad, so pitiful, so clinging, theirnew life was born. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

But the problems of these two lives was not solved by a burstof feeling. Without that determining impulse of love and pity inCatherine's heart the salvation of an exquisite bond might indeed havebeen impossible. But in spite of it the laws of character had still towork themselves inexorably out on either side. 

The whole gist of the matter for Elsmere lay really in thisquestion--Hidden in Catherine's nature, was there, or was there not, thetrue stuff of fanaticism? Madame Guyon left her infant children to themercies of chance, while she followed the voice of God to the holywar with heresy. Under similar conditions Catherine Elsmere might haveplanned the same. Could she ever have carried it out?

And yet the question is still ill-stated. For the influences of ourmodern time on religious action are so blunting and dulling, because intruth the religious motive itself is being constantly modified, whetherthe religious person knows it or not. Is it possible now for a goodwoman with a heart, in Catherine Elsmere's position, to maintain herselfagainst love, and all those subtle forces to which such a change asElsmere's opens the house doors, without either hardening, or greatlyyielding? Let Catherine's further story give some sort of an answer. 

Poor soul! As they sat together in the study, after he had brought herhome, Robert, with averted eyes, went through the plans he had alreadythought into shape. Catherine listened, saying almost nothing. Butnever, never had she loved this life of theirs so well as now that shewas called on, at barely a week's notice, to give it up for ever! ForRobert's scheme, in which her reason fully acquiesced, was to keep totheir plan of going to Switzerland, he having first, of course, settledall things with the Bishop, and having placed his living in the hands ofMowbray 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, thatCatherine should leave it for good. 

'Everybody, had better suppose, ' he said choking, 'that we are comingback. Of course we need say nothing. Armitstead will be here for nextweek certainly. Then afterward I can come down and manage everything. I shall get it over in a day if I can, and see nobody. I cannot saygood-by, nor can you. '

'And next Sunday, Robert?' she asked him, after a pause. 

'I shall write to Armitstead this afternoon and ask him, if he possiblycan, to come to-morrow afternoon, instead of Monday, and take theservice. '

Catherine's hands clasped each other still more closely. So then she hadheard her husband's voice for the last time in the public ministry ofthe Church, in prayer, in exhortation, in benediction! One of the mostsacred traditions of her life was struck from her at a blow. 

It was long before either of them spoke again. Then she ventured anotherquestion. 

'And have you any idea of what we shall do next, Robert--of--of ourfuture?'

'Shall we try London for a little?' he answered in a queer, strainedvoice, leaning against the window, and looking out, that he might notsee her. 'I should find work among the poor--so would you--and I couldgo on with my book. And your mother and sister will probably be therepart of the winter. '

She acquiesced silently. How mean and shrunken a future it seemed tothem both, beside the wide and honorable range of his clergyman's lifeas he and she had developed it. But she did not dwell long on that. Herthoughts were suddenly invaded by the memory of a cottage tragedyin which she had recently taken a prominent part. A girl, a child offifteen, from one of the crowded Mile End hovels, had gone at Christmasto a distant farm as servant, and come back a month ago ruined, thevictim of an outrage over which Elsmere had ground his teeth in fierceand helpless anger. Catherine had found her a shelter, and was to seeher through her 'trouble;' the girl, a frail, half-witted creature, whocould find no words even to bewail herself, clinging to her the whilewith the dumbest, pitifulest tenacity. 

How _could_ she leave that girl? It was as if all the fibres of lifewere being violently wrenched from all their natural connections. 

'Robert!' she cried at last with a start. 'Had you forgotten theInstitute to-morrow?'

'No--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 throughit?'

'But there are all those flags and wreaths, ' she said, getting up inpained bewilderment. 'I must go and look after them. '

He caught her in his arms. 

'Oh my wife, my wife, forgive me!' It was a groan of misery. She put upher hands and pressed his hair back from his temples. 

'I love you, Robert, ' she said simply, her face colorless but perfectlycalm. 

Half an hour later, after he had worked through some letters, he wentinto the workroom and found her surrounded with flags, and a vast litterof paper roses and evergreens, which she and the new agent's daughterswho had come up to help her were putting together for the decorations ofthe morrow. Mary was tottering from chair to chair in high glee, a bigpink rose stuck in the belt of her pinafore. His pale wife, trying tosmile and talk as usual, her lap full of ever-greens, and her politenessexercised by the chatter of the two Miss Batesons, seemed to Robert oneof the most pitiful spectacles he had ever seen. He fled from it outinto the village, driven by a restless longing for change and movement. 

Here he found a large gathering round the new Institute. There werecarpenters at work on a triumphal arch in front, and close by, anadmiring circle of children and old men, huddling in the shade of agreat chestnut. 

Elsmere spent an hour in the building, helping and superintending, stabbed every now and then by the unsuspecting friendliness of thoseabout him, or worried by their blunt comments on his looks. He couldnot bear more than a glance into the new rooms apportioned to theNaturalists' Club. There against the wall stood the new glass cases hehad wrung out of the Squire, with various new collections lying near, ready to be arranged and unpacked when time allowed. The old collectionsstood out bravely in the added space and light; the walls were hung hereand there with a wonderful set of geographical pictures he had carriedoff from a London exhibition, and fed his boys on for weeks; the floorswere freshly matted; the new pine fittings gave out their pleasantcleanly scent; the white paint of doors and windows shone in theAugust sun. The building had been given by the Squire. The fittings andfurniture had been mainly of his providing. What uses he had planned forit all!--only to see the fruits of two years' effort out of doors, andpersonal frugality at home, handed over to some possibly unsympatheticstranger. The heart beat painfully against the iron bars of fate, rebelling against the power of a mental process so to affect a man'swhole practical and social life!

He went out at last by the back of the Institute, where a little bit ofgarden, spoilt with building materials, led down to a lane. 

At the end of the garden, beside the untidy gap in the hedge made by thebuilders' carts, he saw a man standing, who turned away down the lane, however, as soon as the Rector's figure emerged into view. 

Robert had recognized the slouching gait and unwieldy form of Henslowe. There were at this moment all kinds of gruesome stories afloat in thevillage about the ex-agent. It was said that he was breaking up fast; itwas known that he was extensively in debt; and the village shopkeepershad already held an agitated meeting or two, to decide upon the bestmode of getting their money out of him, and upon a joint plan ofcautious action toward his custom in future. The man, indeed, wassinking deeper and deeper into a pit of sordid misery, maintaining allthe while a snarling, exasperating front to the world, which was rapidlyconverting the careless half-malicious pity wherewith the village hadtill now surveyed his fall, into that more active species of baitingwhich the human animal is never very loath to try upon the limpingspecimens of his race. 

Henslowe stopped and turned as he heard the steps behind him. Sixmonths' self-murdering had left ghastly traces. He was many degreesnearer the brute than he had been even when Robert made his ineffectualvisit. But at this actual moment Roberts practised eye--for everyEnglish parish clergyman becomes dismally expert in the pathology ofdrunkenness--saw that there was no fight in him. He was in one of thedrunkard's periods of collapse--shivering, flabby, starting at everysound, a misery to himself and a spectacle to others. 

'Mr. Henslowe!' cried Robert, still pursuing him, 'may I speak to you amoment?'

The ex-agent turned, his prominent bloodshot eyes glowering at thespeaker. But he had to catch at his stick for support, or at the nervousshock of Robert's summons his legs would have given way under him. 

Robert came up with him and stood a second, fronting the evil silence ofthe other, his boyish face deeply flushed. Perhaps the grotesquenessof that former scene was in his mind. Moreover the vestry meetings hadfurnished Henslowe with periodical opportunities for venting his gall onthe Rector, and they had never been neglected. But he plunged on boldly. 

'I am going away next week, Mr. Henslowe; I shall be away someconsiderable time. Before I go I should like to ask you whether you donot think the feud between us had better cease. Why will you persist inmaking an enemy of me? If I did you an injury it was neither wittinglynor willingly. I know you have been ill, and I gather that--that--youare in trouble. If I could stand between you and further mischief Iwould--most gladly. If help--or--or money--' He paused. He shrewdlysuspected, indeed, from the reports that reached him, that Henslowe wason the brink of bankruptcy. 

The Rector had spoken with the utmost diffidence and delicacy, butHenslowe found energy in return for an outburst of quavering animosity, from which, however, physical weakness had extracted all its sting. 

'I'll thank you to make your canting offers to some one else, Mr. Elsmere. When I want your advice I'll ask it. Good day to you. ' And heturned away with as much of an attempt at dignity as his shaking limbswould allow of. 

'Listen, Mr. Henslowe, ' said Robert firmly, walking beside him: 'youknow--I know--that if this goes on, in a year's time you will be in yourgrave, and your poor wife and children struggling to keep themselvesfrom the workhouse. You may think that I have no right to preach toyou--that you are the older man--that it is an intrusion. But what isthe 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 ourlast meeting. Who knows? the chances of life are many. Lay down yourgrudge against me, and let me speak to you as one struggling human beingto 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 dutyforms, if you will--to help you if I can. Let me send a good doctor tosee you. Let me implore you as a last chance to put yourself intohis hands, and to obey him, and your wife; and let me--the Rectorhesitated--'let me make things pecuniarily easier for Mrs. Henslowe, till you have pulled yourself out of the bole in which, by common reportat least, you are now. '

Henslowe stared at him, divided between anger caused by the sorestirring of his old self-importance, and a tumultuous flood ofself-pity, roused irresistibly in him by Robert's piercing frankness andaided by his own more or less maudlin condition. The latter sensationquickly undermined the former; he turned his back on the Rector andleant over the railings of the lane, shaken by something it is hardlyworth while to dignify by the name of emotion. Robert stood by, a paleembodiment of mingled judgment and compassion. He gave the man a fewmoments 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 themoral force radiating from his look, the other took it with a kind ofhelpless sullenness. 

Then, seizing at once on the slight concession, with that complete lackof inconvenient self-consciousness, or hindering indecision, which wasone of the chief causes of his effect on men and women, Robert beganto sound the broken repulsive creature as to his affairs. Bit by bit, compelled by a will and nervous strength far superior to his own, Henslowe was led into abrupt and blurted confidences which surprised noone so much as himself. Robert's quick sense possessed itself of pointafter point, seeing presently ways of escape and relief which thebesotted brain beside him had been quite incapable of devising foritself. They walked on into the open country, and what with thediscipline of the Rector's presence, the sobering effect wrought bythe shock to pride and habit, and the unwonted brain exercise ofthe conversation, the demon in Henslowe had been for the moment moststrangely tamed after half an hour's talk. Actually some reminiscencesof his old ways of speech and thoughts the ways of the once prosperousand self-reliant man of business had reappeared in him before the endof it, called out by the subtle influence of a manner which alwaysattracted to the surface whatever decent element there might be left ina man, and then instantly gave it a recognition which was more redeemingthan either counsel or denunciation. 

By the time they parted Robert had arranged with his old enemy thathe should become his surety with a rich cousin in Churton, who, alwayssupposing there were no risk in the matter, and that benevolence ran onall-fours with security of investment, was prepared to shield the creditof the family by the advance of a sufficient sum of money to rescue theex-agent from his most pressing difficulties. He had also wrung from himthe promise to see a specialist in London--Robert writing that eveningto make the appointment. 

How had it been done? Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever quite knew. Henslowe walked home in a bewilderment which for once had nothing to dowith brandy, but was simply the result of a moral shook acting on whatwas still human in the man's debased consciousness, just as electricityacts on the bodily frame. 

Robert, on the other hand, saw him depart with a singular lightening ofmood. What he seemed to have achieved might turn out to be the merestmoonshine. At any rate, the incident had appeased in him a kind ofspiritual hunger--the hunger to escape a while from that incessantprocess of destructive analysis with which the mind was still beset, into some use of energy, more positive, human, and beneficent. 

The following day was one long trial of endurance for Elsmere and forCatherine. She pleaded to go, promising quietly to keep out of his sightand they started together--a miserable pair. 

Crowds, heat, decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuousamong them the Squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by sidewith a white and radiant Lady Helen--the outer success, the inner revoltand pain--and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face thathid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the onething sharply present to him--these were the sort of impressions thatremained with Elsmere afterward of this last meeting with his people. 

He had made a speech, of which he never could remember a word. As hesat down, there had been a slight flutter of surprise in the sympatheticlooks of those about him, as though the tone of it had been somewhatunexpected and disproportionate to the occasion. Had he betrayed himselfin 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 wonderedwith quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been talking. 

Then a neighboring clergyman, who had been his warm supporter andadmirer from the beginning, sprang up and made a rambling panegyric onhim and on his work, which Elsmere writhed under. His work! Absurdity!What could be done in two years? He saw it all as the merest nothing, aragged beginning which might do more harm than good. 

But the cheering was incessant, the popular feeling intense. There wasold Milsom waving a feeble arm; John Allwood gaunt, but radiant; MarySharland, white still as the ribbons on her bonnet, egging on herflushed and cheering husband; and the club boys grinning and shouting, partly for love of Elsmere, mostly because to the young human animalmere noise is heaven. In front was an old hedger and ditcher, whocame round the parish periodically, and never failed to take Elsmere'sopinion as to 'a bit of prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancientas himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likelyto go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed theireyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vastentertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted oldtramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gonethrough 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 hisqueer innocuous wit. Robert had had many a gay argumentative walk withhim, and he and his companion had tramped miles to see the function, torattle their sticks on the floor in Elsmere's honor, and satiate theircurious gaze on the Squire. 

When all was over, Elsmere, with his wife on his arm, mounted the hillto the rectory, leaving the green behind them still crowded with folk. Once inside the shelter of their own trees, husband and wife turnedinstinctively and caught each other's hands. A low groan broke fromElsmere's lips; Catherine looked at him one moment, then fell weeping onhis breast. The first chapter of their common life was closed. 

One thing more, however, of a private nature, remained for Elsmere todo. Late in the afternoon he walked over to the Hall. 

He found the Squire in the inner library, among his German books, hispipe in his mouth, his old smoking coat and slippers bearing witness tothe rapidity and joy with which he had shut the world out again afterthe futilities of the morning. His mood was more accessible than Elsmerehad yet found it since his return. 

'Well, have you done with all those tomfooleries, Elsmere? Preciouseloquent speech you made! When I see you and people like you throwingyourselves at the heads of the people, I always think of Scaliger'sremark about the Basques: "They say they understand one another--_Idon't believe a word of it!_" All that the lower class wants tounderstand, at any rate, is the shortest way to the pockets of you andme; all that you and I need understand, according to me, is how tokeep 'em off! There you have the sum and substance of my politicalphilosophy. '

'You remind me, ' said Robert dryly, sitting down on one of the librarystools, 'of some of those sentiments you expressed so forcibly on thefirst evening of our acquaintance. '

The Squire received the shaft with equanimity. 

'I was not amiable, I remember, on that occasion, ' he said coolly, histhin, 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 werenot particularly adroit. But of course you won't acknowledge it. Whoever yet got a parson to confess himself!'

'Strangely enough, Mr. Wendover, ' said Robert, fixing him with a pairof deliberate feverish eyes, 'I am here at this moment for that verypurpose. '

'Go on, ' said the Squire, turning, however, to meet the Rector's look, his gold spectacles falling forward over his long hooked nose, hisattitude one of sudden attention. 'Go on. '

All his grievances against Elsmere returned to him. He stoodaggressively waiting. 

Robert paused a moment and then said abruptly:

'Perhaps even you will agree, Mr. Wendover, that I had some reason forsentiment this morning. Unless I read the lessons to-morrow, which ispossible, to-day has been my last public appearance as rector of thisparish!'

The Squire looked at him dumfounded. 

'And your reasons?' he said, with quick imperativeness. 

Robert gave them. He admitted, as plainly and bluntly as he had doneto Grey, the Squire's own part in the matter; but here, a note ofantagonism, almost of defiance, crept even into his confession of wideand illimitable defeat. He was there, so to speak, to hand over hissword. But to the Squire, his surrender had all the pride of victory. 

'Why should you give up your living?' asked the Squire after severalminutes' complete silence. 

He too had sat down, and was now bending forward, his sharp small eyespeering at his companion. 

'Simply because I prefer to feel myself an honest man. However, Ihave not acted without advice. Grey of St. Anselm's--you know him ofcourse--was a very close personal friend of mine at Oxford. I have beento see him, and we agreed it was the only thing to do. '

'Oh, Grey, ' exclaimed the Squire, with a movement of impatience. 'Greyof course wanted you to set up a church of your own, or to join his!He is like all idealists, he has the usual foolish contempt for thecompromise of institutions. '

'Not at all, ' said Robert calmly, 'you are mistaken; he has the mostsacred respect for institutions. He only thinks it well, and I agreewith him, that with regard to a man's public profession and practice heshould 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 thenotion of taking popular beliefs seriously, whether for protest orfor sympathy. But he was too weary to argue. The Squire, however, rose hastily and began to walk up and down in a gathering storm ofirritation. The triumph gained for his own side, the tribute to hislife's work, were at the moment absolutely indifferent to him. They wereeffaced by something else much harder to analyze. Whatever it was, it drove him to throw himself upon Robert's position with a perversebewildering bitterness. 

'Why should you break up your life in this wanton way? Who, in God'sname is injured if you keep your living? It is the business of thethinker and the scholar to clear his mind of cobwebs. Granted. You havedone it. But it is also the business of the practical man to live! IfI had your altruist, emotional temperament, I should not hesitate fora moment. I should regard the historical expressions of an eternaltendency in men as wholly indifferent to me. If I understand you aright, you have flung away the sanctions of orthodoxy. There is no other inthe way. Treat words as they deserve. _You_'--and the speaker laid anemphasis on the pronoun which for the life of him he could not helpmaking sarcastic--'_you_ will always have Gospel enough to preach. '

'I cannot, ' Robert repeated quietly, unmoved by the taunt, if it wasone. 'I am in a different state, I imagine, from you. Words--that is tosay, the specific Christian formulæ--may be indifferent to you, thougha month or two ago I should hardly have guessed it; they are just nowanything but indifferent to me. '

The Squire's brow grew darker. He took up the argument again, morepugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibeand flout a wandering sheep, back into the fold. Robert's resentment wasroused at last. The Squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. Hegot up to take his leave. 

'What you are about to do, Elsmere, ' the Squire wound up with saturnineemphasis, 'is apiece of cowardice! You will live bitterly to regret thehaste and the unreason of it. '

'There has been no haste, ' exclaimed Robert in the low tone ofpassionate emotion; 'I have not rooted up the most sacred growths oflife as a careless child devastates its garden. There are some thingswhich a man only does because he _must_. '

There was a pause. Robert held out his hand. The Squire could hardlytouch it. Outwardly his mood was one of the strangest eccentricity andanger; and as to what was beneath it, Elsmere's quick divination wasdulled by worry and fatigue. It only served him so far that at the doorhe turned back, hat in hand, and said, looking lingeringly the whileat the solitary sombre figure, at the great library, with all itssuggestive and exquisite detail: 'If Monday is fine, Squire, will youwalk?'

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, ' saidRobert, with a sigh, 'let me explain the details of this dismal businessto you on Monday. I have hardly the courage for it now. '

The curtain dropped behind him. Mr. Wendover stood a minute lookingafter him; then, with some vehement expletive or other, walked up to hiswriting-table, drew some folios that were laying on it toward him, withhasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the floor, and plunged doggedly into work. 

He and Mrs. Darcy dined alone. After dinner the Squire leant againstthe mantelpiece, sipping his coffee, more gloomily silent than even hissister had seen him for weeks. And, as always happened when he becamemore difficult and morose, she became more childish. She was nowwholly absorbed with a little electric toy she had just bought for MaryElsmere, a number of infinitesimal little figures dancing fantasticallyunder the stimulus of an electric current, generated by the simplestmeans. She hung over it absorbed, calling to her brother every now andthen, as though by sheer perversity, to come and look whenever the pinkor the blue _danseuse_ executed a more surprising somersault than usual. 

He took not the smallest spoken notice of her, though his eyes followedher contemptuously as she moved from window to window with her toy inpursuit of the fading light. 

'Oh, Roger, ' she called presently, still throwing herself to this sideand that, to catch new views of her pith puppets, 'I have got somethingto show you. You must admire them--you shall! I have been drawing themall day, and they are nearly done. You remember what I told you onceabout my "imps?" I have seen them all my life, since I was a child inFrance with papa, and I have never been able to draw them till the lastfew weeks. They are such dears--such darlings; every one will know themwhen 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 theflipperty-flopperty creature that flies out at you when you open adrawer; there is the twisty-twirly person that sits jeering on the edgeof your hat when it blows away from you; and'--her voice dropped--'that_ugly, ugly_ thing I always see waiting for me on the top of a gate. They have teased nee all my life, and now at last I have drawn them. If they were to take offence to-morrow I should have them--thebeauties--all safe. '

She came toward him, her _bizarre_ little figure swaying from side toside, her eyes glittering, her restless hands pulling at the lace roundher blanched head and face. The Squire, his hands behind him, lookedat her frowning, an involuntary horror dawning on his dark countenance, turned abruptly, and left the room. 

Mr. Wendover worked till midnight; then, tired out, he turned to thebit of fire to which, in spite of the oppressiveness of the weather, thechilliness of age and nervous strain had led him to set a light. He satthere for long, sunk in the blackest reverie. He was the only livingcreature in the great library wing which spread around and abovehim--the only waking creature in the whole vast pile of Murewell. Thesilver lamps shone with a steady melancholy light on the chequered wallsof books. The silence was a silence that could be felt; and the gleamingArtemis, the tortured frowning Medusa, were hardly stiller in theirfrozen calm than the crouching figure of the Squire. 

So Elsmere was going! In a few weeks the rectory would be once moretenanted by one of those nonentities the Squire had either patronizedor scorned all his life. The park, the lanes, the room in which he sits, will know that spare young figure, that animated voice, no more. Theoutlet which had brought so much relief and stimulus to his own mentalpowers is closed; the friendship on which he had unconsciously come todepend so much is broken before it had well begun. 

All sorts of strange thwarted instincts make themselves felt in theSquire. The wife he had once thought to marry, the children he mighthave had, come to sit like ghosts with him beside the fire. He hadnever, like Augustine, 'loved to love;' he had only loved to know. Butnone of us escapes to the last the yearnings which make us men. TheSquire becomes conscious that certain fibres he had thought long sincedead in him had been all the while twining themselves silently round thedisciple who had shown him in many respects such a filial considerationand confidence. That young man might have become to him the son of hisold age, the one human being from whom, as weakness of mind and bodybreak him down, even his indomitable spirit might have accepted thesweetness of human pity, the comfort of human help. 

And it is his own hand which has done most to break the nascent, slowlyforming tie. He has bereft himself. 

With what incredible recklessness had he been acting all these months!

It was the _levity_ of his own proceeding which stared him in the face. His rough hand had closed on the delicate wings of a soul as a boycrushes the butterfly he pursues. As Elsmere had stood looking back athim from the library door, the suffering which spoke in every lineof that changed face had stirred a sudden troubled remorse in RogerWendover. It was mere justice that one result of that suffering shouldbe to leave himself forlorn. 

He had been thinking and writing of religion, of the history of ideas, all his life. Had he ever yet grasped the meaning of religion _to thereligious man_? _God_ and _faith_--what have these venerable ideas evermattered to him personally, except as the subjects of the most ingeniousanalysis, the most delicate historical inductions? Not only sceptical tothe core, but constitutionally indifferent, the Squire had always foundenough to make life amply worth living in the mere dissection of othermen's beliefs. 

But to-night! The unexpected shock of feeling, mingled with the terriblesense, periodically alive in him, of physical doom, seems to havestripped from the thorny soul its outer defences of mental habit. Hesees once more the hideous spectacle of his father's death, his ownblack half-remembered moments of warning, the teasing horror of hissister's increasing weakness of brain. Life has been on the whole aburden, though there has been a certain joy no doubt in the fierceintellectual struggle of it. And to-night it seems so nearly over!A cold prescience of death creeps over the Squire as he sits in thelamplit silence. His eye seems to be actually penetrating the eternalvastness which lies about our life. He feels himself old, feeble, alone. The awe, the terror which are at the root of all religions have falleneven upon him at last. 

The fire burns lower, the night wears on; outside an airless, mistymoonlight hangs over park and field. Hark! was that a sound upstairs, inone of those silent empty rooms?

The Squire half rises, one hand on his chair, his blanched facestrained, listening. Again! Is it a footstep or simply a delusion of theear? He rises, pushes aside the curtains into the inner library, wherethe lamps have almost burnt away, creeps up the wooden stair, and intothe deserted upper story. 

Why was that door into the end room--his father's room--open? He hadseen it closed that afternoon. No one had been there since. Hestepped nearer. Was that simply a gleam of moonlight on the polishedfloor--confused lines of shadow thrown by the vine outside? And was thatsound nothing but the stirring of the rising wind of dawn against theopen casement window? Or--

'_My God!_'

The Squire fled downstairs. He gained his chair again. He sat upright aninstant, impressing on himself, with sardonic vindictive force, someof those truisms as to the action of mind on body, of brain-process onsensation, which it had been part of his life's work to illustrate. Thephilosopher had time to realize a shuddering fellowship of weakness withhis kind, to see himself as a helpless instance of an inexorablelaw, before he fell back in his chair; a swoon, born of pitiful humanterror--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. Theatmosphere was such as only a Londoner can breathe with equanimity, andthe gloom was indescribable. 

Meanwhile, in defiance of the Inferno outside, festal preparations werebeing made in a little house on Campden Hill. Lamps were lit; in thedrawing-room chairs were pushed back; the piano was open, and a violinstand towered beside it; chrysanthemums were everywhere; an invalid ladyin a 'beat cap' occupied the sofa; and two girls were flittingabout, clearly making the last arrangements necessary for a 'musicalafternoon. '

The invalid was Mrs. Leyburn, the girls, of course, Rose and Agnes. Roseat last was safely settled in her longed-for London, and an artisticcompany, of the sort her soul loved, was coming to tea with her. 

Of Rose's summer at Burwood very little need be said. She was consciousthat she had not borne it very well. She had been off-hand with Mrs. Thornburgh, and had enjoyed one or two open skirmishes with Mrs. Seaton. Her whole temper had been irritating and irritable--she was perfectlyaware of it. Toward her sick mother, indeed, she had controlled herself;nor, for such a restless creature, had she made a bad nurse. But Agneshad endured much, and found it all the harder because she was so totallyin the dark as to the whys and wherefores of her sister's moods. 

Rose herself would have scornfully denied that any ways andwherefores--beyond her rooted dislike of Whindale--existed. Since herreturn from Berlin, and especially since that moment when, as she wascertain, Mr. Langham had avoided her and Catherine at the NationalGallery, she had been calmly certain of her own heart-wholeness. Berlinhad developed her precisely as she had desired that it might. Thenecessities of the Bohemian student's life had trained her to a newindependence and shrewdness, and in her own opinion she was now a womanof the world judging all things by pure reason. 

Oh, of course, she understood him perfectly. In the first place, at thetime of their first meeting she had been a mere bread-and-butter miss, the easiest of preys for anyone who might wish to get a few hoursamusement and distraction out of her temper and caprices. In the nextplace, even supposing he had been ever inclined to fall in love withher, which her new sardonic fairness of mind obliged her to regard asentirely doubtful, he was a man to whom marriage was impossible. Howcould anyone expect such a superfine dreamer to turn bread-winner for awife and household? Imagine Mr. Langham interviewed by a rate-collectoror troubled about coals! As to her--simply--she had misunderstood thelaws of the game. It was a little bitter to have to confess it; a littlebitter that he should have seen it, and have felt reluctantly compelledto recall the facts to her. But, after all most girls have some youngfollies 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 theostentatious worldly wisdom of it. Then a sudden inward restlessnesswould break through, and she would spend a passionate hour pacing up anddown, and hungering for the moment when she might avenge upon herselfand him the week of silly friendship he had found it necessary as herelder and monitor to out short!

In September came the news of Robert's resignation of his living. Motherand daughters sat looking at each other over the letter, stupefied. Thatthis calamity, of all others, should have fallen on Catherine, of allwomen! Rose said very little, and presently jumped up with shining, excited eyes, and ran out for a walk with Bob, leaving Agnes to consoletheir tearful and agitated mother. When she came in she went singingabout the house as usual. Agnes, who was moved by the news out of allher ordinary _sang-froid_, was outraged by what seemed to her Rose'scallousness. She wrote a letter to Catherine, which Catherine put amongher treasures, so strangely unlike it was to the quiet indifferent Agnesof every day. Rose spent a morning over an attempt at a letter, whichwhen it reached its destination only wounded Catherine by its constraintand convention. 

And yet that same night when the child was alone, suddenly some phraseof Catherine's letter recurred to her. She saw, as only imaginativepeople see, with every detail visualized, her sister's suffering, hersister's struggle that was to be. She jumped into bed, and, stifling allsounds under the clothes, cried herself to sleep, which did not preventher next morning from harboring somewhere at the bottom of her, a wickedand furtive satisfaction that Catherine might now learn there were moreopinions in the world than one. 

As for the rest of the valley, Mrs. Leyburn soon passed from a bewailingto a plaintive indignation with Robert, which was a relief to herdaughters. It seemed to her a reflection on 'Richard' that Robert shouldhave behaved so. Church opinions had been good enough for 'Richard. ''The young men seem to think, my dears, their fathers were all fools!'

The Vicar, good man, was sincerely distressed, but sincerely confident, also, that in time Elsmere would find his way back into the fold. InMrs. Thornburgh's dismay there was a secret superstitious pang. Perhapsshe had better not have meddled. Perhaps it was never well to meddle. One event bears many readings, and the tragedy of Catherine Elsmere'slife took shape in the uneasy consciousness of the Vicar's spouse as amore or less sharp admonition against wilfulness in match-making. 

Of course Rose had her way as to wintering in London. They came up inthe middle of October while the Elsmeres were still abroad, and settledinto a small house in Lerwick Gardens, Campden Hill, which Catherine hadsecured for them on her way through town to the Continent. 

As soon as Mrs. Leyburn had been made comfortable, Rose set to work tolook up her friends. She owed her acquaintance in London hitherto mainlyto Mr. And Mrs. Pierson, the young barrister and his æsthetic wife whomshe had originally met and made friends with in a railway-carriage. Mr. Pierson was bustling and shrewd; not made of the finest clay, yet not atall a bad fellow. His wife, the daughter of a famous Mrs. Leo Hunter ofa bygone generation, was small, untidy, and in all matters of religiousor political opinion 'emancipated' to an extreme. She had also a strongvein of inherited social ambition, and she and her husband welcomed Rosewith greater effusion than ever, in proportion as she was more beautifuland more indisputably gifted than ever. They placed themselves and theirhouse at the girl's service, partly out of genuine admiration and goodnature, partly also because they divined in her a profitable socialappendage. 

For the Piersons, socially, were still climbing, and had by no meansattained. Their world, so far, consisted too much of the odds andends of most other worlds. They were not satisfied with it, and thefriendship of the girl-violinist, whose vivacious beauty and artisticgift made a stir wherever she went, was a very welcome addition totheir resources. They fêted her in their own house; they took her to thehouses of other people; society smiled on Miss Leyburn's protectorsmore than it had ever smiled on Mr. And Mrs. Pierson taken alone; andmeanwhile Rose, flushed, excited, and totally unsuspicious, thought theworld a fairy-tale, and lived from morning till night in a perpetual dinof music, compliments, and bravos, which seemed to her life indeed--lifeat last!

With the beginning of November the Elsmeres returned, and about the sametime Rose began to project tea-parties of her own, to which Mrs. Leyburngave a flurried assent. When the invitations were written, Rose satstaring at them a little, pen in hand. 

'I wonder what Catherine will say to some of these people!' she remarkedin a dubious voice to Agnes. 'Some of them are queer, I admit; but, after all, those two superior persons will have to get used to myfriends some time, and they may as well begin. ' 'You cannot expect poorCathie to come, ' said Agnes with sudden energy. 

Rose's eyebrows went up. Agnes resented her ironical expression, andwith a word or two of quite unusual sharpness got up and went. 

Rose, left alone, sprang up suddenly, and clasped her white fingersabove her head, with a long breath. 

'Where my heart used to be, there is now just--a black--cold--cinder, 'she remarked with sarcastic emphasis. 'I am sure I used to be a nicegirl once, but it is so long ago I can't remember it!'

She stayed so a minute or more; then two tears suddenly broke and fell. She dashed them angrily away, and sat down again to her note-writing. 

Among the cards she had still to fill up, was one of which the envelopewas addressed to the Hon. Hugh Flaxman, 90 St. Jame's Place. LadyCharlotte, though she had afterward again left town, had been in MartinStreet at the end of October. The Leyburns had lunched there, and hadbeen introduced by her to her nephew, and Lady Helen's brother, Mr. Flaxman. The girls had found him agreeable; he had called the weekafterward when they were not at home; and Rose now carelessly sent hima card, with the inward reflection that he was much too great a manto come, and was probably enjoying himself at country houses, as everyaristocrat should in November. 

The following day the two girls made their way over to Bedford Square, where the Elsmeres had taken a house in order to be near the BritishMuseum. They pushed their way upstairs through a medley of packing-casesand a sickening smell of paint. There was a sound of an opening door, and a gentleman stepped out of a back room, which was to be Elsmere'sstudy, on to the landing. 

It was Edward Langham. He and Rose stood and stared at each other amoment. Then Rose in the coolest lightest voice introduced him to Agnes. Agnes, with one curious glance, took in her sister's defiant, smilingease and the stranger's embarrassment; then she went on to findCatherine. The two left behind exchanged a few banal questions andanswers, Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling, faceand eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterward he stood making a studyof the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her voice--simply the soft callow soundsof first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelvemonths--how formidably, consciously brilliant in look and dress andmanner!

Yes, he was still in town--settled there, indeed, for some time. Andshe--was there any special day on which Mrs. Leyburn received visitors?He asked the question, of course, with various hesitations andcircumlocutions. 

'Oh dear, yes! Will you come next Wednesday, for instance, and inspecta musical menagerie? The animals will go through their performances fromfour till seven. And I can answer for it that some of the specimens willbe entirely new to you. '

The prospect offered could hardly have been more repellent to him, buthe got out an acceptance somehow. She nodded lightly to him and passedon, and he went downstairs, his head in a whirl. Where had the crudepretty child of yesteryear departed to--impulsive, conceited, readilyoffended, easily touched, sensitive as to what all the world might thinkof her and her performances? The girl he had just left had counted allher resources, tried the edge of all her weapons, and knew her ownplace too well to ask for anybody else's appraisement. What beauty--goodheavens!--what _aplomb!_ The rich husband Elsmere talked of would hardlytake much waiting for. 

So cogitating, Langham took his way westward to his Beaumont Streetrooms. They were on the second floor, small, dingy, choked with books. Ordinarily he shut the door behind him with a sigh of content. Thisevening they seemed to him intolerably confined and stuffy. He thoughtof going out to his club and a concert, but did nothing, after all, butsit brooding over the fire till midnight, alternately hugging and hatinghis solitude. 

And so we return to the Wednesday following this unexpected meeting. 

The drawing-room at No. 27 was beginning to fill. Rose stood at the doorreceiving the guests as they flowed in, while Agnes in the backgrounddispensed tea. She was discussing with herself the probability ofLangham's appearance. 'Whom shall I introduce him to first?' shepondered, while she shook hands. 'The poet? I see Mamma is nowstruggling with him. The 'cellist with the hair--or the lady in Greekdress--or the esoteric Buddhist? What a fascinating selection! I hadreally no notion we should be quite so curious!'

'Mees Rose, they wait for you, ' said a charming golden-bearded youngGerman, viola in hand, bowing before her. He and his kind were most ofthem in love with her already, and all the more so because she knew sowell how to keep them at a distance. 

She went off, beckoning to Agnes to take her place, and the quartetbegan. The young German aforesaid played the viola, while the 'cello wasdivinely played by a Hungarian, of whose outer man it need only be saidthat in wild profusion of much-tortured hair, in Hebraism of feature, and swarthy smoothness of cheek, he belonged to that type which Naturewould seem to have already used to excess in the production of thecontinental musician. Rose herself was violinist, and the instrumentsdashed into the opening allegro with a precision and an _entrain_ thattook the room by storm. 

In the middle of it, Langham pushed his way into the crowd round thedrawing-room door. Through the heads about him he could see her standinga little in advance of the others, her head turned to one side, reallyin the natural attitude of violin-playing, but, as it seemed to him, ina kind of ravishment of listening--cheeks flushed, eyes shining, and theright arm and high-curved wrist managing the bow with a grace born ofknowledge and fine training. 

'Very much improved, eh?' said an English professional to a Germanneighbor, lifting his eyebrows interrogatively. 

The other nodded with the business-like air of one who knows. 'Joachim, they say, war darüber entzückt, and did his best vid her, and now D----has got her--'naming a famous violinist--'she vill make fast brogress. He vill schtamp upon her treecks!'

'But will she ever be more than a very clever amateur? Too pretty, eh?'And the questioner nudged his companion, dropping his voice. 

Langham would have given worlds to get on into the room, over theprostrate body of the speaker by preference, but the laws of mass andweight had him at their mercy, and he was rooted to the spot. 

The other shrugged his shoulders. 'Vell, vid a brettywoman--_überhaupt_--it _doesn't_ mean business! It's zoziety--the dukesand the duchesses--that ruins all the young talents!'

This whispered conversation went on during the andante. With the scherzothe two hirsute faces broke into broad smiles. The artist behind eachwoke up, and Langham heard no more, except guttural sounds of delightand quick notes of technical criticism. 

How that Scherzo danced and coquetted, and how the Presto flew as thoughall the winds were behind it, chasing it, chasing its mad eddiesof notes through listening space! At the end, amid a wild storm ofapplause, she laid down her violin, and, proudly smiling, her breaststill heaving with excitement and exertion, received the praises ofthose crowding round her. The group round the door was precipitatedforward, and Langham with it. She saw him in a moment. Her white browcontracted, and she gave him a quick but hardly smiling glance ofrecognition through the crowd. He thought there was no chance of gettingat 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 withmalice in her heart--malice born of smart, and long smouldering pain;but as she caught his look, the look of the nervous, short-sightedscholar and recluse, as her glance swept over the delicate refinementof the face, a sudden softness quivered in her own. The game was sodefenceless!

'You will find nobody here you know, ' she said abruptly, a little underher breath. 'I am morally certain you never saw a single person in theroom before! Shall I introduce you?'

'Delighted, of course. But don't disturb yourself about me, MissLeyburn. I come out of my hole so seldom, everything amuses me--butespecially looking and listening. '

'Which means, ' she said, with frank audacity, 'that you dislike newpeople!'

His eye kindled at once. 'Say rather that it means a preference for thepeople that are not new! There is such a thing as concentrating one'sattention. I came to hear you play, Miss Leyburn!'

'Well?'

She glanced at him from under her long lashes, one hand playing with therings on the other. He thought, suddenly, with a sting of regret, of theconfiding child who had flushed under his praise that Sunday evening atMurewell. 

'Superb!' he said, but half mechanically. 'I had no notion a winter'swork would have done so much for you. Was Berlin as stimulating as youexpected? 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 saidscornfully. Her manner was by no means simple. He did not feel himselfat all at ease with her. His very embarrassment, however, drove him intorashness, as often happens. 

'I thought I had enough to go upon!' he said in another tone; and hisblack eyes, sparkling as though a film had dropped from then, suppliedthe reference his words forbore. 

She turned away from him with a perceptible drawing up of the wholefigure. 

'Will you come and be introduced?' she asked him coldly. He bowed ascoldly and followed her. Wholesome resentment of her manner was deniedhim. He had asked for her friendship, and had then gone away andforgotten her. Clearly what she meant him to see now was that they werestrangers again. Well, she was amply in her right. He suspected thathis allusion to their first talk over the fire had not been unwelcome toher, as an opportunity. 

And he had actually debated whether he should come, lest in spite ofhimself she might beguile him once more into those old lapses of willand common-sense! Coxcomb!

He made a few spasmodic efforts at conversation with the lady to whomshe had introduced him, then awkwardly disengaged himself and went tostand in a corner and study his neighbors. 

Close to him, he found, was the poet of the party, got up in the mostcorrect professional costume--long hair, velvet coat, eye-glass and all. His extravagance, however, was of the most conventional type. Only hisvanity had a touch of the sublime. Langham, who possessed a sortof fine-ear gift for catching conversation, heard him saying to anopen-eyed _ingénue_ beside him, --

'Oh, my literary baggage is small as yet. I have only done, perhaps, three things that will live. '

'Oh, Mr. Wood!' said the maiden, mildly protesting against so muchmodesty. 

He smiled, thrusting his hand into the breast of the velvet coat. 'Butthen, ' he said in a tone of the purest candor, 'at my age I don't thinkShelley 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 theneighborhood of the bard, who looked round him, disturbed and slightlyfrowning. 

At last he discovered a point of view in the back room whence he couldwatch the humors of the crowd without coming too closely in contact withthem. What a miscellaneous collection it was! He began to be irritablyjealous for Rose's place in the world. She ought to be more adequatelysurrounded than this. What was Mrs. Leyburn--what were the Elsmeresabout? He rebelled against the thought of her living perpetuallyamong her inferiors, the centre of a vulgar publicity, queen of thesecond-rate. 

It provoked him that she should be amusing herself so well. Herlaughter, every now and then, came ringing into the back room. Andpresently there was a general hubbub. Langham craned his neck forward, and saw a struggle going on over a roll of music, between Rose and thelong-haired, long-nosed violoncellist. Evidently, she did not want toplay some particular piece, and wished to put it out of sight. Whereuponthe Hungarian, who had been clamoring for it, rushed to its rescue andthere was a mock fight over it. At last, amid the applause of the room, Rose was beaten, and her conqueror, flourishing the music on high, executed a kind of _pas seul_ of triumph. 

'_Victoria!_' he cried. 'Now denn for de conditions of peace. Mees Rose, vill you kindly tune up? You are as moch beaten as the French at Sedan. '

'Not a stone of my fortresses, not an inch of my territory!' said Rose, with fine emphasis, crossing her white wrists before her. 

The Hungarian looked at her, the wild poetic strain in him, which wasthe strain of race, asserting itself. 

'But if de victor bows, ' he said, dropping on one knee before her. 'Ifforce lay down his spoils at de feet of beauty?'

The circle round them applauded hotly, the touch of theatricalityfinding immediate response. Langham was remorselessly conscious of theman's absurd _chevelure_ and ill-fitting clothes. But Rose herself hadevidently nothing but relish for the score. Proudly smiling, she heldout her hand for her property, and as soon as she had it safe, shewhisked it into the open drawer of a cabinet standing near, and drawingout the key, held it up a moment in her taper fingers, and then, depositing it in a little velvet bag hanging at her girdle, she closedthe snap upon it with a little vindictive wave of triumph. Everymovement was graceful, rapid, effective. 

Half a dozen German throats broke into guttural protest. Amid the stormof laughter and remonstrance, the door suddenly opened. The flutteredparlor-maid mumbled a long name, with a port of soldierly uprightness, there advanced behind her a large fair-haired woman, followed by agentleman, and in the distance by another figure. 

Rose drew back a moment astounded, one hand on the piano, her dresssweeping round her. An awkward silence fell on the chattering circle ofmusicians. 

'Good heavens!' said Langham to himself, 'Lady Charlotte Wynnstay!'

How do you do, Miss Leyburn?' said one of the most piercing of voices. 'Are you surprised to see me? You didn't ask me--perhaps you don't wantme. But I have come, you see, partly because my nephew was coming, 'and she pointed to the gentleman behind her, 'partly because I meant topunish you for not having come to see me last Thursday. Why didn't you?'

'Because we thought you were still away, ' said Rose, who had by thistime recovered her self-possession. 'But if you meant to punish me, Lady Charlotte, you have done it badly. I am delighted to see you. MayI introduce my sister? Agnes, will you find Lady Charlotte Wynnstay achair by mamma?'

'Oh, you wish, I see, to dispose of me at once, ' said the otherimperturbably. 'What is happening? Is it music?'

'Aunt Charlotte, that is most disingenuous on your part. I gave youample warning. '

Rose, turned a smiling face toward the speaker. It was Mr. Flaxman, LadyCharlotte's companion. 

'You need not have drawn the picture too black, Mr. Flaxman. There is anescape. If Lady Charlotte will only let my sister take her into the nextroom, she will find herself well out of the clutches of the music. Oh, Robert! Here you are at last! Lady Charlotte, you remember mybrother-in-law? Robert, will you get Lady Charlotte some tea?'

'_I_ am not going to be banished, ' said Mr. Flaxman, looking downupon her, his well-bred, slightly worn face aglow with animation andpleasure. 

'Then you will be deafened, ' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped fromhim a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, builtafter the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voicewhich 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 across the room. 

'Does that imply praise or blame on your part, Lady Charlotte?' askedRobert, smiling. 

'Neither at present. I don't know Miss Leyburn well enough. I merelystate a fact. No tea, Mr. Elsmere. I have had three teas already, and Iam not like the American woman who could always worry down another cup. '

She was introduced to Mrs. Leyburn; but the plaintive invalid wasimmediately seized with terror of her voice and appearance, and wasinfinitely grateful to Robert for removing her as promptly as possibleto a chair on the border of the two rooms where she could talk or listenas she pleased. For a few moments she listened to Fraülein Adelmann'sveiled unmanageable contralto; then she turned magisterially to Robertstanding behind her--

'The art of singing has gone out, ' she declared 'since the Germans havebeen allowed to meddle in it. By the way, Mr. Elsmere how do you manageto be here? Are you taking a holiday?'

Robert looked at her with a start. 

'I have left Murewell, Lady Charlotte. '

'Left Murewell!' she said in astonishment, turning round to look at him, her eyeglass at her eye. 'Why has Helen told me nothing about it? Haveyou got another living?'

'No. My wife and I are settling in London. We only told Lady Helen ofour intentions a few weeks ago. '

To which it may be added that Lady Helen, touched and dismayed byElsmere's letter to her, had not been very eager to hand over the woesof her friends to her aunt's cool and irresponsible comments. 

Lady Charlotte deliberately looked at him a minute longer through herglass. Then she let it fall. 

'You don't mean to tell me any more, I can see, Mr. Elsmere. But youwill allow me to be astonished?'

'Certainly, ' he said, smiling sadly, and immediately afterward relapsinginto silence. 

'Have you heard of the Squire, lately?' he asked her after a pause. 

'Not from him. We are excellent friends when we meet, but he doesn'tconsider me worth writing to. His sister--little idiot--writes to meevery now and then. But she has not vouchsafed me a letter since thesummer. I should say from the last accounts that he was breaking. '

'He had a mysterious attack of illness just before I left' said Robertgravely. 'It made one anxious. '

'Oh, it is the old story. All the Wendovers have died of weak heartsor queer brains--generally of both together. I imagine you had someexperience of the Squire's queerness at one time, Mr. Elsmere. I can'tsay you and he seemed to be on particularly good terms on the onlyoccasion I ever had the pleasure of meeting you at Murewell. '

She looked up at him, smiling grimly. She had a curiously exact memoryfor the unpleasant scenes of life. 

'Oh, you remember that unlucky evening!' said Robert, reddening alittle--'We soon got over that. We became great friends. '

Again, however, Lady Charlotte was struck by the quiet melancholy of histone. How strangely the look of youth--which had been so attractive inhim the year before--had ebbed from the man's face--from complexion, eyes, expression! She stared at him, full of a brusque, tormentingcuriosity as to the how and why. 

'I hope there is some one among you strong enough to manage Miss Rose, 'she said presently, with an abrupt change of subject. 'That littlesister-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 waslast year; I am told she plays twice as well. She had always the sort ofmanner that provoked people one moment and charmed them the next. And, to judge by my few words with her just now, I should say she haddeveloped it finely. Well, now, Mr. Elsmere, who is going to take careof 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 LadyCharlotte coolly. 'She is a girl certain--absolutely certain--to haveadventures, and you may as well be prepared for them. '

'I can only trust she will disappoint your expectations, LadyCharlotte, ' said Robert, with a slightly sarcastic emphasis. 

'Elsmere, who is that man talking to Miss Leyburn?' asked Langham as thetwo friends stood side by side, a little later, watching the spectacle. 

'A certain Mr. Flaxman, brother to a pretty little neighbor of ours inSurrey--Lady Helen Varley--and nephew to Lady Charlotte. I have not seenhim here before; but I think the girls like him. '

'Is he the Flaxman who got the mathematical prize at Berlin last year?'

'Yes, I believe so. A striking person altogether. He is enormously rich, Lady Helen tells me, in spite of an elder brother. All the money in hismother's family has come to him, and he is the heir to Lord Daniel'sgreat Derbyshire property. Twelve years ago I used to hear him talkedabout incessantly by the Cambridge men one met. "Citizen Flaxman" theycalled him, for his opinion's sake. He would ask his scout to dinner, and insist on dining with his own servants, and shaking hands with hisfriends' butlers. The scouts and the butlers put an end to that, andaltogether, I imagine, the world disappointed him. He has a story, poorfellow, too--a young wife who died with her first baby ten years ago. The world supposes him never to have got over it, which makes him allthe more interesting. A distinguished face, don't you think?--the goodtype of English aristocrat. '

Langham assented. But his attention was fixed on the group in whichRose's bright hair was conspicuous; and when Robert left him and wentto amuse Mrs. Leyburn, he still stood rooted to the same spot watching. Rose was leaning against the piano, one hand behind her, her wholeattitude full of a young, easy, self-confident grace. Mr. Flaxmanwas standing beside her, and they were deep in talk--serious talkapparently, to judge by her quiet manner and the charmed, attentiveinterest of his look. Occasionally, however, there was a sally on herpart, and an answering flash of laughter on his; but the stream ofconversation closed immediately over the interruption, and flowed on asevenly as before. 

Unconsciously Langham retreated further and further into the comparativedarkness of the inner room. He felt himself singularly insignificant andout of place, and he made no more efforts to talk. Rose played a violinsolo, and played it with astonishing delicacy and fire. When it was overLangham saw her turn from the applauding circle crowding in upon her andthrow a smiling interrogative look over her shoulder at Mr. Flaxman. Mr. Flaxman bent over her, and as he spoke Langham caught her flush, and theexcited sparkle of her eyes. Was this the 'someone in the stream?' Nodoubt!--no doubt!

When the party broke up Langham found himself borne toward the outerroom, and before he knew where he was going he was standing beside her. 

'Are _you_ still here?' she said to him, startled, as he held out hishand. He replied by some comments on the music, a little lumberingand infelicitous, as all his small-talk was. She hardly listened, butpresently she looked up nervously, compelled as it were by the greatmelancholy eves above her. 

We are not always in this turmoil Mr. Langham. Perhaps some other dayyou will come and make friends with my mother?'

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Naturally, it was during their two months of autumn travel that Elsmereand Catherine first realized in detail what Elsmere's act was to meanto them, as husband and wife, in the future. Each left England with themost tender and heroic resolves. And no one who knows anything of lifewill need to be told that even for these two finely natured people suchresolves were infinitely easier to make than to carry out. 

'I will not preach to you--I will not persecute you!' Catherine had saidto her husband at the moment of her first shock and anguish. And she didher utmost, poor thing! to keep her word. All through the innumerablebitternesses which accompanied Elsmere's withdrawal from Murewell--theletters which followed them, the remonstrances of public and privatefriends, the paragraphs which found their way, do what they would, intothe newspapers--the pain of deserting, as it seemed to her, certain poorand 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 tosoften Robert's grief; she never once reproached him with her own. 

But at the same time the inevitable separation of their inmost hopes andbeliefs had thrown her back on herself, had immensely strengthened thatPuritan independent fibre in her which her youth had developed, andwhich her happy marriage had only temporarily masked, not weakened. Never had Catherine believed so strongly and intensely as now, when thehusband who had been the guide and inspirer of her religious life, hadgiven up the old faith and practices. By virtue of a kind of nervousinstinctive dread, his relaxations bred increased rigidity in her. Oftenwhen she was alone--or at night--she was seized with a lonely, an awfulsense of responsibility. Oh! let her guard her faith, not only for herown sake, her child's, her Lord's, but for his that it might be given toher patience at last to lead him back. 

And the only way in which it seemed to her possible to guard it was toset up certain barriers of silence. She feared that fiery persuasivequality in Robert she had so often seen at work on other people. Withhim conviction was life--it was the man himself, to an extraordinarydegree. How was she to resist the pressure of those now ardors withwhich his mind was filling--she who loved him!--except by building, at any rate for the time, an inclosure of silence round her Christianbeliefs? It was in some ways a pathetic repetition of the situationbetween Robert and the Squire in the early days of their friendship, but in Catherine's mind there was no trembling presence of new knowledgeconspiring from within with the forces without. At this moment ofher life, she was more passionately convinced than ever that the onlyknowledge truly worth having in this world was: the knowledge of God'smercies in Christ. 

So, gradually, with a gentle persistency she withdrew certain parts ofherself from Robert's ken; she avoided certain subjects, or anythingthat might lead to them; she ignored the religious and philosophicalbooks he was constantly reading; she prayed and thought alone--alwaysfor him, of him--but still resolutely alone. It was impossible, however, that so great a change in their life could be effected without aperpetual sense of breaking links, a perpetual series of dumb woundsand griefs on both sides. There came a moment, when, as he sat alone oneevening in a pine wood above the Lake of Geneva, Elsmere suddenly awoketo the conviction that in spite of all his efforts and illusions, theirrelation to each other was altering, dwindling, impoverishing; theterror 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 ofspeculative thought. All his life, reserve to those nearest to him hadbeen pain and grief to him. He was one of those people, as we know, whothrow off readily; to whom sympathy, expansion, are indispensable; whosuffer physically and mentally from anything cold and rigid beside them. And now, at every turn in their talk, their reading, in many of thesmallest details of their common existence, Elsmere began to feel thepresence of this cold and rigid something. He was ever conscious ofself-defence on her side, of pained drawing back on his. And with everysucceeding effort of his at self-repression, it seemed to him as thoughfresh nails were driven into the coffin of that old free habit ofperfect confidence which had made the heaven of their life since theyhad been man and wife. 

He sat on for long, through the September evening, pondering, wrestling. Was it simply inevitable, the natural result of his own act, and of herantecedents, to which he must submit himself, as to any mutilation orloss of power in the body? The young lover and husband rebelled--thebeliever rebelled--against the admission. Probably if his change hadleft him anchorless and forsaken, as it leaves many men, he would havebeen ready enough to submit, in terror lest his own forlornness shouldbring about hers. But in spite of the intellectual confusion whichinevitably attends any wholesale reconstruction of a man's platform ofaction, he had never been more sure of God, or the Divine aims of theworld, than now; never more open than now, amid this exquisite Alpineworld, to those passionate moments of religious trust which are man'seternal defiance to the iron silences about him. Originally, as we know, he had shrunk from the thought of change in her corresponding to hisown; now that his own foothold was strengthening, his longing for a newunion was overpowering that old dread. The proselytizing instinct maybe never quite morally defensible, even as between husband and wife. Nevertheless, in all strong, convinced, and ardent souls it exists, andmust be reckoned with. 

At last one evening he was overcome by a sudden impulse whichneutralized for the moment his nervous dread of hurting her. Some littleincident of their day together was rankling, and it was borne inupon him that almost any violent protest on her part would have beenpreferable 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 hugenewly-built hotels which during the last twenty years have invaded allthe high places of Switzerland. The August, which had been so hot inEngland, had been rainy and broken in Switzerland. But it had beenfollowed by a warm and mellow September, and the favorite hotels below acertain height were still full. When the Elsmeres arrived at Les Avantsthis scantily furnished garret out of which some servants had beenhurried to make room for them, was all that could be found. They, however, liked it for its space and its view. They looked sideways fromtheir windows on to the upper end of the lake, three thousand feetbelow them. Opposite, across the blue water, rose a grandiose rampart ofmountains, the stage on which from morn till night the sun went througha long transformation scene of beauty. The water was marked every nowand then by passing boats and steamers--tiny specks which served tomeasure the vastness of all around them. To right and left, spurs ofgreen mountains shut out alike the lower lake and the icy splendors ofthe 'Valais depths profound. ' What made the charm of the narrow prospectwas, first, the sense it produced in the spectator of hanging dizzilyabove the lake, with infinite air below him, and, then, the magicaleffects of dawn and evening, when wreaths of mist would blot out thevalley and the lake, and leave the eye of the watcher face to faceacross the fathomless abyss with the majestic mountain mass, and itsattendant retinue of clouds, as though they and he were alone in theuniverse. 

It was a peaceful September night. From the open window beside him, Robert could see a world of high moonlight, limited and invaded on allsides by sharp black masses of shade. A few rare lights glimmered on thespreading alp below, and every now and then a breath of music came tothem wafted from a military band playing a mile or two away. They hadbeen climbing most of the afternoon, and Catherine was lying down, herbrown hair loose about her, the thin oval of her face and clear line ofbrow just visible in the dim candle-light. 

Suddenly he stretched out his hand for his Greek Testament, which wasalways near him, though there had been no common reading since thatbitter day of his confession to her. The mark still lay in the well-wornvolume at the point reached in their last reading at Murewell. He openedupon it, and began the eleventh chapter of St. John. 

Catherine trembled when she saw him take up the book. He began withoutpreface, treating the passage before him in his usual way, --that is tosay, taking verse after verse in the Greek, translating and commenting. She never spoke all through, and at last he closed the little Testament, and bent toward her, his look full of feeling. 

'Catherine! can't you let me--will you never let me tell you, now, howthat 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 havingthrown it all away. Would it not comfort you sometimes, if you knewthat although much of the Gospels, this very raising of Lazarus, forinstance, seems to me no longer true in the historical sense, still theyare always full to me of an ideal, a poetical truth? Lazarus may nothave died and come to life, may never have existed; but still to me, nowas always, love for Jesus of Nazareth is "resurrection" and "life?"'

He spoke with the most painful diffidence, the most wistful tenderness. 

There was a pause. Then Catherine said, in a rigid, constrained voice, --

'If the Gospels are not true in fact, as history, as reality, I cannotsee how they are true at all, or of any value. '

The next minute she rose, and, going to the little woodendressing-table, she began to brush out and plat for the night herstraight silky veil of hair. As she passed him Robert saw her face paleand set. 

He sat quiet another moment or two, and then he went toward her and tookher in his arms. 

'Catherine, ' he said to her, his lips trembling, 'am I never to speak mymind to you anymore? Do you mean always to hold me at arm's length--torefuse always to hear what I have to say in defence of the change whichhas cost us both so much?'

She hesitated, trying hard to restrain herself. But it was of no use. She broke into tears--quiet but most bitter tears. 

'Robert, I cannot! Oh! you must see I cannot. It is not because I amhard, but because I am weak. How can I stand up against you? I darenot--I dare not. If you were not yourself--not my husband--'

Her voice dropped. Robert guessed that at the bottom of her resistancethere was an intolerable fear of what love might do with her if she oncegave it an opening. He felt himself cruel, brutal, and yet an urgentsense of all that was at stake drove him on. 

'I would not press or worry you, God knows!' he said, almost piteously, kissing her forehead as she lay against him. 'But remember, Catherine, Icannot put these things aside. I once thought I could--that I could fallback on my historical work, and leave religious matters alone as far ascriticism was concerned. But I cannot. They fill my mind more andmore. I feel more and more impelled to search them out, and to put myconclusions about them into shape. And all the time this is going on, are you and I to remain strangers to one another, and all that concernsour truest life--are we, Catherine?'

He spoke in a low voice of intense feeling. She turned her face andpressed her lips to his hand. Both had the scene in the wood-pathafter her flight and return in their minds, and both were filled with adespairing sense of the difficulty of living, not through great crises, but through the detail of every day. 

'Could you not work at other things?' she whispered. 

He was silent, looking straight before him into the moon-lit shimmer andwhite spectral hazes of the valley, his arms still round her. 

'No!' he burst out at last; 'not till I have satisfied myself. I feel itburning within me, like a command from God, to work out the problem, tomake it clearer to myself--and to others, ' he added deliberately. 

Her heart sank within her. The last words called up before her a dismalfuture of controversy and publicity, in which at every stop she would becondemning her husband. 

'And all this time, all these years, perhaps, ' he went on--before, inher perplexity, she could find words--'is my wife never going to let mespeak freely to her? Am I to act, think, judge, without her knowledge?Is she to know less of me than a friend, less even than the public forwhom I write or speak?'

It seemed intolerable to him, all the more that every moment they stoodthere together it was being impressed upon him that in fact this waswhat she meant, what she had contemplated from the beginning. 

'Robert, I cannot defend myself against you, ' she cried, again clingingto him. 'Oh, think for me! You know what I feel; that I dare not riskwhat is not mine!'

He kissed her again and then moved away from her to the window. It beganto be plain to him that his effort was merely futile, and had better nothave been made. But his heart was very sore. 

'Do you ever ask yourself--' he said presently, looking steadilyinto the night--'no, I don't think you can, Catherine--what part thereasoning faculty, that faculty which marks us out from the animal, was meant to play in life? Did God give it to us simply that you mighttrample upon it and ignore it both in yourself and me?'

She had dropped into a chair, and sat with clasped hands, her hairfalling about her white dressing-gown, and framing the nobly-featuredface blanched by the moonlight. She did not attempt a reply, but themelancholy of an invincibly resolution, which was, so to speak, nother own doing, but rather was like a necessity imposed upon her fromoutside, breathed through her silence. 

He turned and looked at her. She raised her arms, and the gesturereminded him for a moment of the Donatello figure in the Murewelllibrary--the same delicate austere beauty, the same tenderness, the sameunderlying reserve. He took her outstretched hands and held them againsthis breast. His hotly-beating heart told him that he was perfectlyright, and that to accept the barriers she was setting up wouldimpoverish all their future life together. But he could not strugglewith the woman on whom he had already inflicted so severe a practicaltrial. Moreover, he felt strangely as he stood there the danger ofrousing in her those illimitable possibilities of the religious temper, the dread of which had once before risen spectre-like in his heart. 

So once more he yielded. She rewarded him with all the charm, all thedelightfulness, of which under the circumstances she was mistress. They wandered up the Rhone valley, through the St. Gothard, and spent afortnight between Como and Lugano. During these days her one thought wasto revive and refresh him, and he let her tend him, and lent himselfto the various heroic futilities by which she would try as part of hernursing mission--to make the future look less empty and their distressless real. Of course under all this delicate give and take bothsuffered; both felt that the promise of their marriage had failed them, and that they had come dismally down to a second best. But after allthey were young, and the autumn was beautiful--and though they hurteach other, they were alone together, and constantly, passionately, interested in each other. Italy, too, softened all things--evenCatherine's English tone and temper. As long as the delicious luxuryof the Italian autumn, with all its primitive pagan suggestiveness, wasstill round them, as long as they were still among the cities of theLombard plain--that battleground and highway of nations, which rousedall Robert's historical enthusiasm, and set him reading, discussing, thinking--in his old impetuous way--about something else than minuteproblems of Christian evidence, the newborn friction between them wasnecessarily reduced to a minimum. 

But with their return home, with their plunge into London life, thedifficulties of the situation began to define themselves more sharply. In after years, one of Catherine's dreariest memories was the memory oftheir first instalment in the Bedford Square house. Robert's anxiety tomake it pleasant and homelike was pitiful to watch. He had none of themodern passion for upholstery, and probably the vaguest notions of whatwas æsthetically correct. But during their furnishing days, he was nevertired of wandering about in search of pretty things--a rug, a screen, anengraving which might brighten the rooms in which Catherine was to live. He would put everything in its place with a restless eagerness, and thenCatherine would be called in, and would play her part bravely. She wouldsmile and ask questions, and admire, and then when Robert had gone, shewould move slowly to the window and look out at the great mass of theBritish Museum frowning beyond the little dingy strip of garden, with asick longing in her heart for the Murewell cornfield, the wood-path, thevillage, the free air-bathed spaces of heath and common. Oh! this hugeLondon, with its unfathomable poverty and its heartless wealth--how itoppressed and bewildered her! Its mere grime and squalor, its murky, poisoned atmosphere were a perpetual trial to the country-womanbrought up amid the dash of mountain streams and the scents of mountainpastures. She drooped physically for a time, as did the child. 

But morally? With Catherine everything really depended on the moralstate. She could have followed Robert to a London living with a joy andhope which would have completely deadened all these repulsions ofthe senses, now so active in her. But without this inner glow, in thepresence of the profound spiritual difference circumstance had developedbetween her and the man she loved, everything was a burden. Even herreligion, though she clung to it with an ever-increasing tenacity, failed at this period to bring her much comfort. Every night it seemedto her that the day had been one long and dreary struggle to makesomething out of nothing; and in the morning the night, too, seemed tohave been alive with conflict--_All Thy waves and Thy storms have goneover me!_

Robert guessed it all, and whatever remorseful love could do to softensuch a strain and burden he tried to do. He encouraged her to find workamong the poor; he tried in the tenderest ways to interest her in thegreat spectacle of London life which was already, in spite of yearningand regret, beginning to fascinate and absorb himself. But theirstandards were now so different that she was constantly shrinking fromwhat attracted him, or painfully judging what was to him merelycurious and interesting. He was really more and more oppressed by herintellectual limitations, though never consciously would he have allowedhimself to admit them, and she was more and more bewildered by whatconstantly seemed to her a breaking up of principles, a relaxation ofmoral fibre. 

And the work among the poor was difficult. Robert instinctively feltthat for him to offer his services in charitable work to the narrowEvangelical whose church Catherine had joined, would have been merely toinvite rebuff. So that even in the love and care of the unfortunate theywere separated. For he had not yet found a sphere of work, and if hehad, Catherine's invincible impulse in these matters was always toattach herself to the authorities and powers that be. He could onlyacquiesce when she suggested applying to Mr. Clarendon for somecharitable occupation for herself. 

After her letter to him, Catherine had an interview with the Vicar athis home. She was puzzled by the start and sudden pause for recollectionwith which he received her name, the tone of compassion which crept intohis talk with her, the pitying look and grasp of the hand with which hedismissed her. Then, as she walked home, it flashed upon her that shehad seen a copy, some weeks old, of the _Record_ lying on the good man'stable, the very copy which contained Robert's name among the list of menwho during the last ten years had thrown up the Anglican ministry. Thedelicate face flushed miserably from brow to chin. Pitied for beingRobert's wife! Oh, monstrous!--incredible!

Meanwhile Robert, man-like, in spite of all the griefs and sorenesses ofthe position, had immeasurably the best of it. In the first place suchincessant activity of mind as his is in itself both tonic and narcotic. It was constantly generating in him fresh purposes and hopes, constantlydeadening regret, and pushing the old things out of sight. He was fullof many projects literary and social, but they were all in truth thefruits of one long experimental process, the passionate attempt of thereason to justify to itself the God in whom the heart believed. Abstractthought, as Mr. Grey saw, had had comparatively little to do withElsmere's relinquishment of the Church of England. But as soon as theChristian bases of faith were overthrown, that faith had naturally tofind for itself other supports and attachments. For faith itself--in Godand a spiritual order--had been so wrought into the nature by years ofreverent and adoring living, that nothing could destroy it. With Elsmereas with all men of religious temperament, belief in Christianity andfaith in God had not at the outset been a matter of reasoning at all, but of sympathy, feeling, association, daily experience. Then theintellect had broken in, and destroyed or transformed the belief inChristianity. But after the crash, _faith_ emerged as strong as ever, only craving and eager to make a fresh peace, a fresh compact with thereason. 

Elsmere had heard Grey say long ago in one of the few moments of realintimacy he had enjoyed with him at Oxford, 'My interest in philosophysprings solely from the chance it offers me of knowing something moreof God!' Driven by the same thirst he too threw himself into thesame quest, pushing his way laboriously through the philosophicalborder-lands of science, through the ethical speculation of the day, through the history of man's moral and religious past. And while on theone hand the intellect was able to contribute an ever stronger supportto the faith which was the man; on the other, the sphere in him of apatient ignorance, which abstains from all attempts at knowing what mancannot know, and substitutes trust for either knowledge or despair, was perpetually widening. 'I take my stand on conscience and the morallife!' was the upshot of it all. 'In them I find my God! As for allthese various problems, ethical and scientific, which you press upon me, my pessimist friend, I, too, am bewildered; I, too, have no explanationsto offer. But I trust and wait. In spite of them--beyond them--I haveabundantly enough for faith--for hope--for action!'

We may quote a passage or two from some letters of his written at thistime to that young Armitstead who had taken his place at Murewelland was still there till Mowbray Elsmere should appoint a new man. Armitstead had been a college friend of Elsmere's. He was a HighChurchman of a singularly gentle and delicate type, and the mannerin which he had received Elsmere's story on the day of his arrival atMurewell had permanently endeared him to the teller of it. At the sametime the defection from Christianity of a man who at Oxford had been tohim the object of much hero-worship, and, since Oxford, an example ofpastoral efficiency, had painfully affected young Armitstead, and hebegan a correspondence with Robert which was in many ways a reliefto both. In Switzerland and Italy, when his wife's gentle inexorablesilence became too oppressive to him, Robert would pour himself out inletters to Armitstead, and the correspondence did not altogether ceasewith his return to London. To the Squire during the same period Elsmerealso wrote frequently, but rarely or never on religious matters. 

On one occasion Armitstead had been pressing the favorite Christiandilemma--Christianity or nothing. Inside Christianity, light andcertainly; outside it, chaos. 'If it were not for the Gospels andthe Church I should be a Positivist to-morrow. Your Theism is a merearbitrary hypothesis, at the mercy of any rival philosophical theory. How, regarding our position as precarious, you should come to regardyour own as stable, is to me incomprehensible!'

'What I conceive to be the vital difference between Theism andChristianity, ' wrote Elsmere in reply, 'is that as an explanation ofthings _Theism can never be disproved_. At the worst it must alwaysremain in the position of an alternative hypothesis, which the hostileman of science cannot destroy, though he is under no obligation to adoptit. Broadly speaking, it is not the facts which are in dispute, but theinference to be drawn from them. '

'Now, considering the enormous complication of the facts, the Theisticinference will, to put it at the lowest, always have its place, alwayscommand respect. The man of science may not adopt it, but by no advanceof science that I, at any rate, can foresee, can it be driven out of thefield. 

'Christianity is in a totally different position. Its grounds are notphilosophical but literary and historical. It rests not upon all fact, but upon a special group of facts. It is and will always remain, agreat literary and historical problem, a _question of documents andtestimony_. Hence, the Christian explanation is vulnerable in a way inwhich the Theistic explanation can never be vulnerable. The contentionat any rate, of persons in my position is: That to the man who has hadthe special training required, and in whom this training has not beenneutralized by any overwhelming bias of temperament, it can be asclearly demonstrated that the miraculous Christian story rests ona tissue of mistake, as it can be demonstrated that the IsidorianDecretals were a forgery, or the correspondence of Paul and Seneca apious fraud, or that the mediæval belief in witchcraft was the productof physical ignorance and superstition. '

'You say, ' he wrote again, in another connection, to Armitstead fromMilan, 'you say you think my later letters have been far too aggressiveand positive. I, too, am astonished at myself. I do not know my ownmood, it is so clear, so sharp, so combative. Is it the spectacleof Italy, I wonder--of a country practically without religion--thespectacle in fact of Latin Europe as a whole, ad the practical Atheismin which it is engulfed? My dear friend, the problem of the world atthis moment is--_how to find a religion?_--some great conceptionwhich shall be once more capable, as the old was capable, of weldingsocieties, and keeping man's brutish elements in check. SurelyChristianity of the traditional sort is failing everywhere--lessobviously with us, and in Teutonic Europe generally, but notoriously, in all the Catholic countries. We talk complacently of the decline ofBuddhism. But what have we to say of the decline of Christianity? Andyet this last is infinitely more striking and more tragic, inasmuch asit affects a more important section of mankind. I, at any rate, am notone of those who would seek to minimize the results of this declinefor human life, nor can I bring myself to believe that Positivism or"evolutional morality" will ever satisfy the race. '

'In the period of social struggle which undeniably lies before us, bothin the old and the new world, are we then to witness a war of classes, unsoftened by the ideal hopes, the ideal law, of faith? It looks likeit. What does the artisan class, what does the town democracy throughoutEurope, care any longer for Christian checks or Christian sanctions asthey have been taught to understand them? Superstition, in certain partsof rural Europe, there is in plenty, but wherever you get intelligenceand therefore movement, you got at once either indifference to, or apassionate break with Christianity. And consider what it means, whatit will mean, this Atheism of the great democracies which are to beour masters! The world has never seen anything like it; such spiritualanarchy and poverty combined with such material power and resource. Every society--Christian and non-Christian--has always till now had itsideal, of greater or less ethical value, its appeal to something beyondman. Has Christianity brought us to this: that the Christian nations areto be the first in the world's history to try the experiment of a lifewithout faith--that life which you and I, at any rate, are agreed inthinking a life worthy only of the brute?

'Oh forgive me! These things must hurt you--they would have hurt me inold days--but they burn within me, and you bid me speak out. What if itbe 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 callinfidelity, of criticism and science on the one hand, this gradual deathof the old traditions on the other? _Sin_, you answer, _the enmity ofthe human mind against God, the momentary triumph of Satan_. And so youacquiesce, heavy-hearted, in God's present defeat, looking for vengeanceand requital here-after. I am not so ready to believe in man's capacityto rebel against his Maker! Where you see ruin and sin, I see the urgentprocess of Divine education, God's steady ineluctable command "to putaway childish things, " the pressure of His spirit on ours toward newways of worship and new forms of love!'

And after a while it was with these 'new ways of worship and now formsof love' that the mind began to be perpetually occupied. The break withthe old things was no sooner complete, than the eager soul, incapablethen, as always, of resting in negation or oppositions pressedpassionately forward to a new synthesis, not only speculative, butpractical. Before it rose perpetually the haunting vision of anotherpalace of faith--another church or company of the faithful, which was tobecome the shelter of human aspiration amid the desolation and anarchycaused by the crashing of the old! How many men and women must have gonethrough the same strait as itself--how many must be watching with itthrough the darkness for the rising of a new City of God!

One afternoon, close upon Christmas, he found himself in ParliamentSquare, on his way toward Westminster Bridge and the Embankment. Thebeauty of a sunset sky behind the Abbey arrested him, and he stoodleaning over the railings beside the Peel statue to look. 

The day before, he had passed the same spot with a German friend. Hiscompanion--a man of influence and mark in his own country, who had beenbrought up however in England and knew it well--had stopped before theAbbey and had said to him with emphasis: 'I never find myself in thisparticular spot of London without a sense of emotion and reverence. Other people feel that in treading the Forum of Rome they are at thecentre of human things. I am more thrilled by Westminster than Rome;your venerable Abbey is to me the symbol of a nationality to which themodern world owes obligations it can never repay. You are rooted deepin the past; you have also a future of infinite expansiveness stretchingbefore you. Among European nations at this moment you alone have freedomin the true sense, you alone have religion. I would give a year of lifeto know what you will have made of your freedom and your religion twohundred years hence!'

As Robert recalled the words, the Abbey lay before him, wrapped in thebluish haze of the winter afternoon. Only the towers rose out of themist, gray and black against the red bands of cloud. A pair of pigeonscircled round them, as careless and free in flight as though they werealone with the towers and the sunset. Below, the streets were full ofpeople; the omnibuses rolled to and fro; the lamps were just lit; linesof straggling figures, dark in the half light, were crossing the streethere and there. And to all the human rush and swirl below, the quiet ofthe Abbey and the infinite red distances of sky gave a peculiar pathosand significance. 

Robert filled his eye and sense, and then walked quickly away toward theEmbankment. 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 otherside of St. Paul's, the London of the democracy, of the nineteenthcentury, and of the future. He was wrestling with himself, a prey to oneof those critical moments of life, when circumstance seems once more torestore to us the power of choice, of distributing a Yes or a No amongthe great solicitations which meet the human spirit on its path fromsilence to silence. The thought of his friend's reverence, and of hisown personal debt toward the country to whose long travail of centurieshe owed all his own joys and faculties, was hot within him. 

 Here and here did England help me--how can I help England, --say!

Ah! that vast chaotic London south and east of the great church! Healready knew something of it. A Liberal clergyman there, settled in thevery blackest, busiest heart of it, had already made him welcome on Mr. Grey's introduction. He had gone with this good man on several occasionsthrough some little fraction of that teeming world, now so hidden andpeaceful between the murky river mists and the cleaner light-filled raysof the sky. He had heard much, and pondered a good deal, the quick mindcaught at once by the differences, some tragic, some merely curious andstimulating, between the monotonous life of his own rural folk, andthe mad rush, the voracious hurry, the bewildering appearances anddisappearances, the sudden engulfments, of working London. 

Moreover, he had spent a Sunday or two wandering among the East Endchurches. There, rather than among the streets and courts outside, asit had seemed to him, lay the tragedy of the city. Such emptiness, suchdesertion, such a hopeless breach between the great craving need outsideand the boon offered it within! Here and there, indeed, a patch ofbright colored success, as it claimed to be, where the primitivetendency of man toward the organized excitement of religious ritual, visible in all nations and civilizations, had been appealed to with moreenergy and more results than usual. But in general, blank failure, orrather obvious want of success--as the devoted men now beating thevoid there were themselves the first to admit, with pain, and patientsubmission to the inscrutable Will of God. 

But is it not time we assured ourselves, he was always asking, whetherGod is still in truth behind the offer man is perpetually making to hisbrother man on His behalf? He was behind it once, and it had efficacy, had power. But now--What if all these processes of so-called destructionand decay were but the mere workings of that divine plastic force whichis forever moulding human society? What if these beautiful venerablethings which had fallen from him, as from thousands of his follows, represented, in the present stage of the world's history, not the props, but the hinderances, of man?

And if all these large things were true, as he believed, what should bethe individual's part in this transition England? Surely, at the least, a part of plain sincerity of act and speech--a correspondence as perfectas 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 dreadof possible self-delusion, 'that it is in you to play any great, anycommanding part. Shun the thought of it, if it were possible! But letme do what is given me to do! Here in this human wilderness, may Ispend whatever of time or energy or faculty may be mine, in the faithfulattempt to help forward the new House of Faith that is to be, though myutmost efforts should but succeed in laying some obscure stone in stillunseen 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 nowsustaining my own heart. Can any do more? Is not every man who feels anycertainty in him, whatever, bound to do as much? What matter if thewise folk scoff, if even at times, and in a certain sense, one seem tooneself ridiculous--absurdly lonely and powerless! All great changes arepreceded by numbers of sporadic, and as the bystander thinks, impotentefforts. But while the individual effort sinks, drowned perhaps inmockery, the general movement quickens, gathers force we know not how, and--'

 'While the tired wave vainly breaking, Seems here no painful Inch to gain, Far back through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in the main!'

Darkness sank over the river; all the gray and purple distance with itsdim edge of spires and domes against the sky, all the vague interveningblackness of street, or bridge or railway station were starred andpatterned with lights. The vastness, the beauty of the city filled himwith a sense of mysterious attraction, and as he walked on with his faceuplifted to it, it was as though he took his life in his hand and flungit afresh into the human gulf. 

'What does it matter if one's work be raw and uncomely! All that liesoutside the great organized traditions of an age must always look so. Let me bear my witness bravely, not spending life in speech, but notundervaluing speech--above all, not being ashamed or afraid of it, because other wise people may prefer a policy of silence. A man has butthe one pure life, the one tiny spark of faith. Better be venturesomewith both for God's sake, than over-cautious, over-thrifty. And--to hisown Master he standeth or falleth!'

Plans of work of all kinds, literary and practical, thoughts ofpreaching in some bare bidden room to men and women orphaned andstrangled like himself, began to crowd upon him. The old clericalinstinct in him winced at some of them. Robert had nothing of thesectary about him by nature; he was always too deeply and easilyaffected by the great historic existences about him. But when the Oxfordman or the ex-official of one of the most venerable and decorous ofsocieties protested, the believer, or, if you will, the enthusiast, putthe protest by. 

And so the dream gathered substance and stayed with him, till at lasthe found himself at his own door. As he closed it behind him, Catherinecame out into the pretty old hall from the dining-room. 

'Robert, have you walked all the way?'

'Yes. I came along the Embankment. Such a beautiful evening!'

He slipped his arm inside hers, and they mounted the stairs together. She glanced at him wistfully. She was perfectly aware that these monthswere to him months of incessant travail of spirit, and she caught atthis moment the old strenuous look of eye and brow she knew so well. A year ago, and every thought of his mind had been open to her--andnow--she herself had shut them out--but her heart sank within her. 

She turned and kissed him. He bent his head fondly over her. Butinwardly all the ardor of his mood collapsed at the touch of her. For the protest of a world in arms can be withstood with joy, but theprotest that steals into your heart, that takes love's garb and useslove's ways--_there_ is the difficulty!

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

But Robert was some time in finding his opening, in realizing anyfraction of his dream. At first he tried work under the BroadChurch Vicar to whom Grey had introduced him. He undertook somerent-collecting, and some evening lectures on elementary science toboys and men. But after a while he began to feel his position false andunsatisfactory. In truth, his opinions were in the main identical withthose of the Vicar under whom he was acting. But Mr. Vernon was aBroad Churchman, belonged to the Church Reform movement, and thought itabsolutely necessary to 'keep things going, ' and by a policy of prudentsilence and gradual expansion from within, to save the great 'plant'of the Establishment from falling wholesale into the hands of the HighChurchmen. In consequence, he was involved, as Robert held, in endlesscontradictions and practical falsities of speech and action. His largechurch was attended by a handful of some fifty to a hundred persons. Vernon could not preach what he did believe, and would not preach, morethan what was absolutely necessary, what he did not believe. He washard-working and kind-hearted, but the perpetual divorce between thoughtand action, which his position made inevitable, was constantly bluntingand weakening all he did. His whole life, indeed, was one long waste ofpower, simply for lack of an elementary frankness. 

But if these became Robert's views as to Vernon, Vernon's feeling towardElsmere after six weeks' acquaintance was not less decided. He wasconstitutionally timid, and he probably divined in his new helper a manof no ordinary calibre, whose influence might very well turn out someday to be of the 'incalculably diffusive' kind. He grew uncomfortable, begged Elsmere to beware of any 'direct religious teaching, ' talked inwarm praise of a 'policy of omissions, ' and in equally warm denunciationof 'anything like a policy of attack. ' In short, it became plain thattwo men so much alike and yet so different, could not long co-operate. 

However, just as the fact was being brought home to Elsmere, a friendlychance 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 atLady Charlotte's, now at the Leyburns', had led both men far on the wayto a friendship. Of Hugh Flaxman himself more hereafter. At present allthat need be recorded is that it was at Mr. Flaxman's house, overlookingSt. James's Park, Robert first met a man who was to give him the openingfor which he was looking. 

Mr. Flaxman was fond of breakfast parties à la Rogers, and on the firstoccasion 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, ayoung slip of a fellow, whose sallies of fun and invincible good humorattracted him greatly. 

Sparkling brown eyes, full lips rich in humor and pugnacity, 'lockëscrull as they were layde in presse, ' the same look of 'wonderly'activity too, in spite of his short stature and dainty make, as Chaucerlends his Squire--the type was so fresh ad pleasing that Robert was moreand more held by it, especially when he discovered to his bewildermentthat the supposed stripling must be from his talk a man quite as old ashimself, an official besides, filling what was clearly some importantplace in the world. He took his full share in the politics andliterature started at the table, and presently, when conversation fellon the proposed municipality for London, said things to which the wholeparty listened. Robert's curiosity was aroused, and after breakfasthe questioned his host and was promptly introduced to 'Mr. MurrayEdwardes. '

Whereupon it turned out that this baby-faced sage was filling a post, inthe work of which perhaps few people in London could have taken so muchinterest as Robert Elsmere. 

Fifty years before, a wealthy merchant who had been one of the chiefpillars of London Unitarianism had made his will and died. His greatwarehouses lay in one of the Eastern riverside districts of the city, and in his will he endeavored to do something according to his lightsfor the place in which he had amassed his money. He left a fairlylarge bequest wherewith to build and endow a Unitarian chapel and foundcertain Unitarian charities, in the heart of what was even then one ofthe densest and most poverty-stricken of London parishes. For a longtime, however, chapel and charities seemed likely to rank as one of theidle freaks of religious wealth and nothing more. Unitarianism of theold sort is perhaps the most illogical creed that exists, and certainlyit has never been the creed of the poor. In old days it required thepresence of a certain arid stratum of the middle classes to live andthrive at all. This stratum was not to be found in R----, which rejoicedinstead in the most squalid types of poverty and crime, types wherewiththe mild shrivelled Unitarian minister had about as much power ofgrappling as a Poet Laureate with a Trafalgar Square Socialist. 

Soon after the erection of the chapel, there arose that shaking of thedry bones of religious England which we call the Tractarian movement. For many years the new force left R---- quite undisturbed. The parishchurch droned away, the Unitarian minister preached decorously to emptybenches, knowing nothing of the agitations outside. At last however, toward the end of the old minister's life, a powerful church of thenew type, staffed by friends and pupils of Pussy, rose in the centre ofR----, and the little Unitarian chapel was for a time more snuffed outthan ever, a fate which this time it shared dismally with the parishchurch. As generally happened, however, in those days, the proceedingsat this now and splendid St. Wilfrid's were not long in stirring up theProtestantism of the British rough, --the said Protestantism being alwaysone of the finest excuses for brickbats of which the modern cockney ismaster. The parish lapsed into a state of private war--hectic clergyheading exasperated processions or intoning defiant Litanies on the oneside, --mobs, rotten eggs, dead cats, and blatant Protestant orators onthe other. 

The war went on practically for years, and while it was still raging, the minister of the Unitarian chapel died, and the authorities concernedchose in his place a young fellow, the son of a Bristol minister, a Cambridge man besides, as chance would have it, of brilliantattainments, and unusually commended from many quarters, even includingsome Church ones of the Liberal kind. This curly-haired youth, as he wasthen in reality, and as to his own quaint vexation he went on seeming tobe up to quite middle age, had the wit to perceive at the moment of hisentry on the troubled scene that behind all the mere brutal oppositionto the new church, and in contrast with the sheer indifference ofthree-fourths of the district, there was a small party consisting of anaristocracy of the artisans, whose protest against the Puseyite doingswas of a much quieter, sterner sort, and among whom the uproar hadmainly roused a certain crude power of thinking. He threw himself uponthis element, which he rather divined than discovered, and it responded. He preached a simple creed, drove it home by pure and generous living;he lectured, taught, brought down workers from the West End, and beforehe had been five years in the harness had not only made himself a powerin R----, but was beginning to be heard of and watched with no smallinterest by many outsiders. 

This was the man on whom Robert had now stumbled. Before they had talkedtwenty minutes each was fascinated by the other. They said good-by totheir host, and wandered out together into St. James's Park, where thetrees were white with frost and an orange sun was struggling through thefog. Here Murray Edwardes poured out the whole story of his ministry toattentive ears. Robert listened eagerly. Unitarianism was not afamiliar subject of thought to him. He had never dreamt of joining theUnitarians, and was indeed long ago convinced that in the beliefs ofa Channing no one once fairly started on the critical road couldrationally stop. That common thinness and aridity too of the Unitariantemper had weighed with him. But here, in the person of Murray Edwardes, it was as though he saw something old and threadbare revivified. Theyoung man's creed, as he presented it, had grace, persuasiveness evenunction: and there was something in his tone of mind which was like afresh wind blowing over the fevered places of the other's heart. 

They talked long and earnestly, Edwardes describing his own work, andthe changes creeping over the modern Unitarian body, Elsmere sayinglittle, asking much. 

At last the young man looked at Elsmere with eyes of bright decision. 

'You cannot work with the Church!' he said--'it is impossible. Youwill only wear yourself out in efforts to restrain what you could doinfinitely more good, as things stand now, by pouring out. Come tous!--I will put you in the way. You shall be hampered by no pledges ofany sort. Come and take the direction of some of my workers. We have allgot our hands more than full. Your knowledge, your experience, would beinvaluable. There is no other opening like it in England just now formen of your way of thinking and mine. Come! Who knows what we may beputting our Hands to--what fruit may grow from the smallest seed?'

The two men stopped beside the lightly frozen water. Robert gatheredthat in this soul, too, there had risen the same large intoxicatingdream of a recognized Christendom, a new wide-spreading, shelter offaith for discouraged, brow-beaten man, as in his own. 'I will!' he saidbriefly, after a pause, his own look kindling--'it is the opening Ihave been pining for. I will give you all I can, and bless you for thechance. '

That evening Robert got home late after a busy day full of variousengagements. Mary, after some waiting up for 'Fader, ' had just beencarried protesting, red lips pouting, and fat legs kicking, off tobed. Catherine was straightening the room, which had been thrown intoconfusion by the child's romps. 

It was with an effort--for he knew it would be a shock to her--that hebegan to talk to her about the breakfast-party at Mr. Flaxman's, andhis talk with Murray Edwardes. But he had made it a rule with himself totell her everything that he was doing or meant to do. She would not lethim tell her what he was thinking. But as much openness as there couldbe between them, there should be. 

Catherine listened--still moving about the while--the thin beautifullips becoming more and more compressed. Yes, it was hard to her, very hard; the people among whom she had been brought up, her fatherespecially, would have held out the hand of fellowship to any body ofChristian people, but not to the Unitarian. No real barrier of feelingdivided them from any orthodox Dissenter, but the gulf between themand the Unitarian had been dug very deep by various forces--forces ofthought originally, of strong habit and prejudice in the course of time. 

'He is going to work with them now, ' she thought bitterly; 'soon he willbe one of them--perhaps a Unitarian minister himself. '

And for the life of her, as he told his tale, she could find nothingbut embarrassed monosyllables, and still more embarrassed silences, wherewith to answer him. Till at last he too fell silent, feeling oncemore the sting of a now habitual discomfort. 

Presently, however, Catherine came to sit down beside him. She laid herhead against his knee, saying nothing; but gathering his hand closely inboth her own. 

Poor woman's heart! One moment in rebellion, the next a suppliant. Hebent down quickly and kissed her. 

'Would you like, ' he said presently, after both had sat silent awhilein the firelight, 'would you care to go to Madame de Netteville'sto-night?'

'By all means' said Catherine, with a sort of eagerness. It _was_ Fridayshe asked us for, wasn't it? We will be quick over dinner, and I will goand dress. '

In that last ten minutes which Robert had spent with the Squire in hisbedroom, on the Monday afternoon, when they were to have walked, Mr. Wendover had dryly recommended Elsmere to cultivate Madame deNetteville. He sat propped up in his chair, white, gaunt, and cynical, and this remark of his was almost the only reference he would allow tothe Elsmere move. 

'You had better go there, ' he said huskily, 'it will do you good. Shegets the first-rate people and she makes them talk, which Lady Charlottecan't. Too many fools at Lady Charlotte's; she waters the wine toomuch. '

And he had persisted with the subject--using it as Elsmere thought, asa means of warding off other conversation. He would not ask Elsmere'splans, and he would not allow a word about himself. 

There had been a heart attack, old Meyrick thought, coupled withsigns of nervous strain and excitement. It was the last ailment whichevidently troubled the doctor most. But behind the physical breakdown, there was to Robert's sense something else, a spiritual something, infinitely forlorn and piteous, which revealed itself wholly against theelder man's will, and filled the younger with a dumb helpless rush ofsympathy. Since his departure Robert had made the keeping up of hiscorrespondence with the Squire a binding obligation, and he was to-nightchiefly anxious to go to Madame de Netteville's that he might write anaccount of it to Murewell. 

Still the Squire's talk, and his own glimpse of her at Murewell, hadmade him curious to see more of the woman herself. The Squire's waysof describing her were always half approving, half sarcastic. Robertsometimes imagined that he himself had been at one time more under herspell than he cared to confess. If so, it must have been when she wasstill in Paris, the young English widow of a man of old French family, rich, fascinating, distinguished, and the centre of a small _salon_, admission to which was one of the social blue ribbons of Paris. 

Since the war of 1870 Madame de Netteville had fixed her headquarters inLondon, and it was to her house in Hans Place that the Squire wrote toher about the Elsmeres. She owed Roger Wendover debts of various kinds, and she had an encouraging memory of the young clergyman on theterrace at Murewell. So she promptly left her cards, together with theintimation that she was at home always on Friday evenings. 

'I have never seen the wife, ' she meditated, as her delicate jewelledhand drew up the window of the brougham in front of Elsmere's lodgings. 'But if she is the ordinary country clergyman's spouse, the Squire ofcourse will have given the young man a hint. '

But whether from oblivion, or from some instinct of grim humor towardCatherine, whom he had always vaguely disliked, the Squire said not oneword about his wife to Robert, in the course of their talk of Madame deNetteville. 

Catherine took pains with her dress, sorely wishing to do Robert credit. She put on one of the gowns she had taken to Murewell when she married. It was black, simply made, and had been a favorite with both of them inthe old surroundings. 

So they drove off to Madame de Netteville's. Catherine's heart wasbeating faster than usual as she mounted the twisting stairs of theluxurious little house. All these new social experiences were a trial toher. But she had the vaguest, most unsuspicious ideas of what she was tosee in this particular house. 

A long low room was thrown open to them. Unlike most English rooms, itwas barely though richly furnished. A Persian carpet of self-coloredgrayish blue, threw the gilt French chairs and the various figuressitting upon them into delicate relief. The walls were painted white, and had a few French mirrors and girandoles upon them, half a dozen fineFrench portraits, too, here and there, let into the wall in oval frames. The subdued light came from the white sides of the room, and seemedto be there solely for social purposes. You could hardly have read orwritten in the room, but you could see a beautiful woman in a beautifuldress there, and you could talk there, either _tête-à-tête_ or to theassembled company, to perfection, so cunningly was it all devised. 

When the Elsmeres entered, there were about a dozen people present--tengentleman and two ladies. One of the ladies, Madame de Netteville, waslying back in the corner of a velvet divan placed against the wall, ascreen between her and a splendid fire that threw its blaze out into theroom. The other, a slim woman with closely curled fair hair, and a neckabnormally long and white, sat near her, and the circle of men weretalking indiscriminately to both. 

As the footman announced Mr. And Mrs. Elsmere, there was a general stirof surprise. The men looked round; Madame de Netteville half rose witha puzzled look. It was more than a month since she had dropped herinvitation. Then a flash, not altogether of pleasure, passed over herface, and she said a few hasty words to the woman near her, advancingthe moment afterward to give her hand to Catherine. 

'This is very kind of you, Mrs. Elsmere, to remember me so soon. I hadimagined you were hardly settled enough yet to give me the pleasure ofseeing you. '

But the eyes fixed on Catherine, eyes which took in everything, were notcordial for all their smile. 

Catherine, looking up at her, was overpowered by her excessive manner, and by the woman's look of conscious sarcastic strength, strugglingthrough all the outer softness of beauty and exquisite dress. 

'Mr. Elsmere, you will find this room almost as hot, I am afraid, asthat afternoon on which we met last. Let me introduce you to CountWielandt--Mr. Elsmere. Mrs. Elsmere, will you come over here, besideLady Aubrey Willert?'

Robert found himself bowing to a young diplomatist, who seemed to him tolook at him very much as he himself might have scrutinized an inhabitantof New Guinea. Lady Aubrey made an imperceptible movement of the headas Catherine was presented to her, and Madame de Netteville, smiling andbiting her lip a little, fell back into her seat. 

There was a faint odor of smoke in the room. As Catherine sat down, ayoung exquisite a few yards from her threw the end of a cigarette intothe fire with a little sharp decided gesture. Lady Aubrey also pushedaway a cigarette case which lay beside her hand. 

Everybody there had the air more or less of an _habitué_ of the house;and when the conversation began again, the Elsmeres found it veryhard, in spite of certain perfunctory efforts on the part of Madame deNetteville, to take any share in it. 

'Well, I believe the story about Desforêts is true, ' said thefair-haired young Apollo, who had thrown away his cigarette, lollingback in his chair. 

Catherine started, the little scene with Rose and Langham in the Englishrectory garden flashing incongruously back upon her. 

'If you got it from _The Ferret_, my dear Evershed, ' said the ex-Toryminister, Lord Rupert, 'you may put it down as a safe lie. As for me, Ibelieve she has a much shrewder eye to the main chance. '

'What do you mean?' said the other, raising astonished eyebrows. 

'Well, it doesn't _pay_, you know, to write yourself down a fiend--notquite. '

'What--you think it will affect her audiences? Well, that is a goodjoke!' and the young man laughed immoderately joined by several of theother guests. 

'I don't imagine it will make any difference to you, my good friend, 'returned Lord Rupert imperturbably; 'but the British public haven't gotyour nerve. They may take it awkwardly--I don't say they will--when awoman who has turned her own young sister out of doors at night, in St. Petersburg, so that ultimately as a consequence the girl dies--comes toask them to clap her touching impersonations of injured virtue. '

'What has one to do with an actress' private life, my dear Lord Rupert?'asked Madame de Netteville, her voice slipping with a smooth clearnessinto the conversation, her eyes darting light from under straight blackbrows. 

'What indeed!' said the young man who had begun the conversation, witha disagreeable enigmatical smile, stretching his hand for anothercigarette, and drawing it back out with a look under his droopedeyelids--a look of cold impertinent scrutiny--at Catherine Elsmere. 

'Ah! well--I don't want to be obtrusively moral--Heaven Forbid! Butthere is such a thing as destroying the illusion to such an extent thatyou injure your pocket. Desforêts is doing it--doing it actually inParis too. '

There was a ripple of laughter. 

'Paris and illusions--_O mon Dieu!_' groaned young, Evershed, when hehad done laughing, laying meditative hands on his knees and gazing intothe fire. 

'I tell you I have seen it, ' said Lord Rupert, waxing combative, andslapping the leg he was nursing with emphasis. 'The last time I wentto see Desforêts in Paris the theatre was crammed, and thehouse--theatrically speaking--_ice_. They received her in dead, silence--they gave her not one single recall--and they only gave hera clap, that I can remember, at those two or three points in the playwhere clap they positively must or burst. They go to see her--but theyloathe her--and they let her know it. '

'Bah!' said his opponent, 'it is only because they are tired of her. Hervagaries don't amuse them any longer--they know them by heart. And--by George! she has some pretty rivals too, now!' he addedreflectively, --'not to speak of the Bernhardt. '

'Well, the Parisians _can_ be shocked, ' said Count Wielandt in excellentEnglish, bending forward so as to get a good view of his hostess. 'Theyare just now especially shocked by the condition of English morals!'

The twinkle in his eye was irresistible. The men, understanding hisreference to the avidity with which certain English aristocraticscandals had been lately seized upon by the French papers, laughedout--so did Lady Aubrey. Madame de Netteville contented herself with asmile. 

'They profess to be shocked, too, by Renan's last book, ' said the editorfrom the other side of the room. 

'Dear me!' said Lady Aubrey, with meditative scorn, fanning herselflightly the while, her thin but extraordinarily graceful head and neckthrown out against the golden brocade of the cushion behind her. 

'Oh! what so many of them feel in Renan's case, of course' said Madamede Netteville, 'is that every book he writes now gives a fresh openingto the enemy to blaspheme. Your eminent freethinker can't affordjust yet, in the present state of the world, to make himself sociallyridiculous. The cause suffers. '

'Just my feeling, ' said young Evershed calmly. 'Though I mayn't carea rap about him personally, I prefer that a man on my own front benchshouldn't make a public ass of himself if he can help it--not for hissake, of course, but for mine!'

Robert looked at Catherine. She sat upright by the side of Lady Aubrey;her face, of which the beauty tonight seemed lost in rigidity, paleand stiff. With a contraction of heart he plunged himself into theconversation. On his road home that evening he had found an importantforeign telegram posted up at the small literary club to which he hadbelonged since Oxford days. He made a remark about it now to CountWielandt; and the diplomatist, turning rather unwillingly to face hisquestioner, recognized that the remark was a shrewd one. 

Presently the young man's frank intelligence had told. On his way to andfrom the Holy Land three years before, Robert had seen something of theEast, and it so happened that he remembered the name of Count Wielandtas one of the foreign secretaries of legation present at an officialparty given by the English Ambassador at Constantinople, which he andhis mother had attended on their return journey, in virtue of a familyconnection with the Ambassador. All that he could glean from memory hemade quick use of now, urged at first by the remorseful wish to makethis new world into which he had brought Catherine less difficult thanhe knew it must have been during the last quarter of an hour. 

But after a while he found himself leading the talk of a section of theroom, and getting excitement and pleasure out of the talk itself. Eversince that Eastern journey he had kept an eye on the subjects which hadinterested him then, reading in his rapid voracious way all that cameacross him at Murewell, especially in the Squire's foreign newspapersand reviews, and storing it when read in a remarkable memory. 

Catherine, after the failure of some conversational attempts between herand Madame de Netteville, fell to watching her husband with a start ofstrangeness and surprise. She had scarcely seen him at Oxford amonghis equals; and she had very rarely been present at his talks withthe Squire. In some ways, and owing to the instinctive reserves set upbetween them for so long, her intellectual knowledge of him was veryimperfect. His ease, his resource among these men of the world, forwhom--independent of all else--she felt a country-woman's dislike, filled her with a kind of bewilderment. 

'Are you new to London?' Lady Aubrey asked her presently, in that toneof absolute detachment from the person addressed which certain womenmanage to perfection. She, too, had been watching the husband, and thesight had impressed her with a momentary curiosity to know what thestiff, handsome, dowdily-dressed wife was made of. 

'We have been two months here, ' said Catherine, her large gray eyestaking in her companion's very bare shoulders, the costly fantasticdress, and the diamonds flashing against the white skin. 

'In what part?'

'In Bedford Square. '

Lady Aubrey was silent. She had no ideas on the subject of BedfordSquare at command. 

'We are very central, ' said Catherine, feeling desperately that she wasdoing Robert no credit at all, and anxious to talk if only somethingcould be found to talk about. 

'Oh, yes, you are near the theatres, ' said the other indifferently. 

This was hardly an aspect of the matter which had yet occurred toCatherine. A flash of bitterness ran through her. Had they left theirMurewell life to be near the theatres, and kept at arm's length bysupercilious great ladies?

'We are very far from the Park, ' she answered with an effort. 'I wish weweren't for my little girl's sake. '

'Oh, you have a little girl! How old?'

'Sixteen months. '

'Too young to be a nuisance yet. Mine are just old enough to be ineverybody's way. Children are out of place in London. I always want toleave mine in the country, but my husband objects, ' said Lady Aubreycoolly. There was a certain piquancy in saying frank things to thisstiff, Madonna-faced woman. 

Madame de Netteville, meanwhile, was keeping up a conversation in anundertone with young Evershed, who had come to sit on a stool besideher, and was gazing up at her with eyes of which the expressionwas perfectly understood by several persons present. The handsome, dissipated, ill-conditioned youth had been her slave and shadow forthe last two years. His devotion now no longer mused her, and shewas endeavoring to, get rid of it and of him. But the process was adifficult one, and took both time and _finesse_. 

She kept her eye, notwithstanding, on the newcomers where the Squire'sintroduction had brought to her that night. When the Elsmeres rose togo, she said good-by to Catherine with an excessive politeness, underwhich her poor guest, conscious of her own _gaucherie_ during theevening, felt the touch of satire she was perhaps meant to feel. Butwhen Catherine was well ahead Madame de Netteville gave Robert one ofher most brilliant smiles. 

'Friday evening, Mr. Elsmere; always Fridays. You will remember?'

The _naïveté_ of Robert's social view, and the mobility of his temper, made him easily responsive. He had just enjoyed half an hour's brillianttalk with two or three of the keenest and most accomplished men inEurope. Catherine had slipped out of his sight meanwhile, and theimpression of their _entreé_ had been effaced. He made Madame deNetteville, therefore, a cordial smiling reply, before his tall slenderform disappeared after that of his wife. 

'Agreeable--rather an acquisition!' said Madame de Netteville to LadyAubrey, with a light motion of the head toward Robert's retreatingfigure. 'But the wife! Good heavens! I owe Roger Wendover a grudge. Ithink he might have made it plain to those good people that I don't wantstrange women at my Friday evenings. '

Lady Aubrey laughed. 'No doubt she is a genius, or a saint, in mufti. She might be handsome too if some one would dress her. '

Madame de Netteville shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh! life is not longenough 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 byRobert's enjoyment. The Puritan in her blood was all aflame. As she satlooking into the motley lamp-lit night she could have 'testified' likeany prophetess of old. 

Robert meanwhile, his hand slipped into hers, was thinking of Wielandt'stalk, and of some racy stories of Berlin celebrities told by a young_attaché_ who had joined their group. His lips were lightly smiling, hisbrow serene. 

But as he helped her down from the cab, and they stood in the halltogether, he noticed the pale discomposure of her looks. Instantly thefamiliar dread and pain returned upon him. 

'Did you like it, Catherine?' he asked her, with something liketimidity, as they stood together by their bedroom fire. 

She sank into a low chair and sat a moment staring at the blaze. Hewas startled by her look of suffering, and, kneeling, he put his armstenderly round her. 

'Oh, Robert, Robert!' she cried, falling on his neck. 

'What is it?' he asked, kissing her hair. 

'I seem all at sea, ' she said in a choked voice, her face hidden, --'theold landmarks swallowed up! I am always judging and condemning, --alwaysprotesting. What am I that I should judge? But how, --how, --can I helpit?'

She drew herself away from him, once more looking into the fire withdrawn brows. 

'Darling, the world is full of difference. Men and women take life indifferent ways. Don't be so sure yours is the only right one. '

He spoke with a moved gentleness, taking her hand the while. 

'"_This_ is the way, walk ye in it!"' she said presently, with strong, almost stern emphasis. 'Oh those women, and that talk! Hateful!'

He rose and looked down on her from the mantelpiece. Within him was amovement of impatience, repressed almost at once by the thought of thatlong night at Murewell, when he had vowed to himself to 'make amends!'

And if that memory had not intervened she would still have disarmed himwholly. 

'Listen!' she said to him suddenly, her eyes kindling with a strangechildish pleasure. 'Do you hear the wind, the west wind? Do you rememberhow it used to shake the house, how it used to come sweeping through thetrees in the wood-path? It must be trying the study window now, blowingthe vine against it. '

A yearning passion breathed through every feature. It seemed to him shesaw 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. Hetried to soothe her with the tenderest words remorseful love couldfind. But the conflict of feeling--grief, rebellion, doubt, self-judgment--would not be soothed, and long after she had made himleave her and he had fallen asleep, she knelt on, a white and rigidfigure in the dying firelight, the wind shaking the old house, theeternal murmur of London booming outside. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Meanwhile, as if to complete the circle of pain with which poorCatherine's life was compassed, it began to be plain to her that, inspite of the hard and mocking tone Rose generally adopted with regard tohim, Edward Langham was constantly at the house in Lerwick Gardens, andthat it was impossible he should be there so much unless in some way orother Rose encouraged it. 

The idea of such a marriage--nay, of such a friendship--was naturally asrepugnant as ever to her. It had been one of the bitterest moments of abitter 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 showedher what was in his mind, and had then passed on to chat and smoke withRobert in the study, leaving her behind to realize the gulf that laybetween the present and that visit of his to Murewell, when Robert andshe 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 matterdifferently, 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 hewould have given her as strong a support as ever, if she had asked forit. But she held her peace, and he, absorbed in other things, took nonotice. Besides, he knew Langham too well. He had never been able totake Catherine's alarms seriously. 

An attentive onlooker, however, would have admitted that this time, atany rate, they had their justification. Why Langham was so much in theLeyburns' drawing-room during these winter months, was a question thatseveral people asked--himself not least. He had not only pretended toforget Rose Leyburn during the eighteen months which had passed sincetheir first acquaintance at Murewell--he had for all practical purposesforgotten her. It is only a small proportion of men and women who arecapable of passion on the great scale at all; and certainly, as we havetried to show, Langham was not among them. He had had a passing momentof excitement at Murewell, soon put down, and followed by a week ofextremely pleasant sensations, which, like most of his pleasures, hadended in reaction and self-abhorrence. He had left Murewell remorseful, melancholy, and ill-at-ease, but conscious, certainly, of a great reliefthat he and Rose Leyburn were not likely to meet again for long. 

Then his settlement in London had absorbed him, as all such mattersabsorb men who have become the slaves of their own solitary habits, andin the joy of his new freedom, and the fresh zest for learning it hadaroused in him, the beautiful unmanageable child who had disturbed hispeace at Murewell was not likely to be more, but less remembered. When he stumbled across her unexpectedly in the National Gallery, hisdetermining impulse had been merely one of flight. 

However, as he had written to Robert toward the beginning of his Londonresidence, there was no doubt that his migration had made him for thetime much more human, observant, and accessible. Oxford had become tohim an oppression and a nightmare and as soon as he had turned his backon it, his mental lungs seemed once more to fill with air. He took hismodest part in the life of the capital; happy in the obscurity affordedhim by the crowd; rejoicing in the thought that his life and his affairswere once more his own, and the academical yoke had been slipped forever. 

It was in this mood of greater cheerfulness and energy that his freshsight of Rose found him. For the moment, he was perhaps more susceptiblethan he ever could have been before to her young perfections, herbeauty, her brilliancy, her provoking, stimulating ways. Certainly, fromthat first afternoon onward he became more and more restless to watchher, to be near her, to see what she made of herself and her gifts. Ingeneral, though it was certainly owing to her that he came so much, shetook small notice of him. He regarded, or chose to regard, himself asa mere 'item'--something systematically overlooked and forgotten in thebustle 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, thattheir first week together had left a deep impression of resentment andhostility in her mind. And all the same he came; and she asked him!And sometimes, after an hour when she had been more difficult or moresatirical than usual, ending notwithstanding with a little change oftone, a careless 'You will find us next Wednesday as usual; So-and-sois coming to play, ' Langham would walk home in a state of feeling he didnot care to analyze, but which certainly quickened the pace of life agood deal. She would not let him try his luck at friendship again, butin the strangest slightest ways did she not make him suspect every nowand then that he _was_ in some sort important to her, that he sometimespreoccupied her against her will; that her will, indeed, sometimesescaped her, and failed to control her manner to him?

It was not only his relations to the beauty, however, his interestin her career, or his perpetual consciousness of Mrs. Elsmere's colddislike and disapproval of his presence in her mother's drawing-room, that accounted for Langham's heightened mental temperature this winter. The existence and the proceedings of Mr. Hugh Flaxman had a veryconsiderable 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 oldfriend?'

'Of Robert's, ' replied Agnes, her cheerful impenetrable look fixed uponthe speaker. 'My sister met him once for a week in the country at theElsmeres'. 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 histone about Elsmere. I was remarking on the evident physical andmental strain your brother-in-law had gone through, and he said with a_nonchalance_ I cannot convey: "Yes, it is astonishing Elsmere shouldhave ventured it. I confess I often wonder whether it was worth while. ""Why?" said I, perhaps a little hotly. Well, he didn't know--wouldn'tsay. But I gathered that according to him, Elsmere is still swathed insuch an unconscionable amount of religion that the few rags and patcheshe has got rid of are hardly worth the discomfort of the change. Itseemed to me the tone of the very cool spectator, rather than thefriend. However--does your sister like him?'

'I don't know, ' said Agnes, looking her questioner full in 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, ' heremarked 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 ingeneral look half-asleep. '

Hugh Flaxman departed more puzzled than ever as to the reason for theconstant attendance of this uncomfortable anti-social person at theLeyburns' house. Being himself a man of very subtle and fastidioustastes, he could imagine that so original a suitor, with such eyes, suchan intellectual reputation so well sustained by scantiness of speech andthe most picturesque capacity for silence, _might_ have attractions fora romantic and wilful girl. But where were the signs of it? Rose rarelytalked to him, and was always ready to make him the target of a sub-acidraillery. Agnes was clearly indifferent to him, and Mrs. Leyburn equallyclearly afraid of him. Mrs. Elsmere, too, seemed to dislike him, and yetthere he was, week after week. Flaxman could not make it out. 

Then he tried to explore the man himself. He started various topicswith him--University reform, politics, music. In vain. In his mostcharacteristic Oxford days Langham had never assumed a more wholesaleignorance of all subjects in heaven and earth, and never stuck morepertinaciously to the flattest forms of commonplace. Flaxman walkedaway at last boiling over. The man of parts masquerading as the fool isperhaps at least as exasperating as the fool playing at wisdom. 

However, he was not the only person irritated. After one of thesefragments of conversation, Langham also walked rapidly home in a stateof most irrational petulance, his hands thrust with energy into thepockets of his overcoat. 

'No, my successful aristocrat, you shall not have everything your ownway so easily with me or with _her!_ You may break me, but you shall notplay upon me. And as for her, I will see it out--I will see it out!'

And he stiffened himself as he walked, feeling life electric all abouthim and a strange new force tingling in every vein. 

Meanwhile, however, Mr. Flaxman was certainly having a good deal of hisown way. Since the moment when his aunt, Lady Charlotte, had introducedhim to Miss Leyburn--watching him the while with a half-smile which soonbroadened into one of sly triumph--Hugh Flaxman had persuaded himselfthat country houses are intolerable even in the shooting season, andthat London is the only place of residence during the winter for theman who aspires to govern his life on principles of reason. Through hisinfluence and that of his aunt, Rose and Agnes--Mrs. Leyburn never wentout--were being carried into all the high life that London can supply inNovember and January. Wealthy, highborn, and popular, he was graduallydevoting his advantages in the freest way to Rose's service. He was anexcellent musical amateur, and was always proud to play with her; he hada fine country house, and the little rooms on Campden Hill were almostalways filled with flowers from his gardens; he had a famous musicallibrary, and its treasures were lavished on the girl violinist; he had asingularly wide circle of friends, and with his whimsical energy hewas soon inclined to make kindness to the two sisters the one test of afriend's good-will. 

He was clearly touched by Rose; and what was to prevent his making animpression on her? To her sex he had always been singularly attractive. Like his sister, he had all sorts of bright impulses and audacitiesflashing and darting about him. He had a certain _hauteur_ with men, and could play the aristocrat when he pleased, for all his philosophicalradicalism. But with women he was the most delightful mixture ofdeference and high spirits. He loved the grace of them, the daintinessof their dress, the softness of their voices. He would have doneanything to please them, anything to save them pain. At twenty-five, when he was still 'Citizen Flaxman' to his college friends, and in thefirst fervors of a poetic defiance of prejudice and convention, hehad married a gamekeeper's pretty daughter. She had died with herchild--died, almost, poor thing! of happiness and excitement--of theover-greatness of Heaven's boon to her. Flaxman had adored her, anddeath had tenderly embalmed a sentiment to which life might possiblyhave been less kind. Since then he had lived in music, letters, andsociety, 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 perhapsthe richest _parti_ in London. 

Still, in spite of it all, Langham held his ground--Langham would seeit out! And indeed, Flaxman's footing with the beauty was by no meansclear--least of all to himself. She evidently liked him, but shebantered him a good deal; she would not be the least subdued or dazzledby his birth and wealth, or by those of his friends; and if she allowedhim to provide her with pleasure, she would hardly ever take his advice, or knowingly consult his tastes. 

Meanwhile she tormented them both a good deal by the artisticacquaintance she gathered about her. Mrs. Pierson's world, as we havesaid, contained a good many dubious odds and ends, and she had handedthem all over to Rose. The Leyburns' growing intimacy with Mr. Flaxmanand his circle, and through them with the finer types of the artisticlife, would naturally and by degrees have carried them away somewhatfrom this earlier circle if Rose would have allowed it. But she clungpersistently to its most unpromising specimens, partly out of a naturalgenerosity of feeling, but partly also for the sake of that oppositionher soul loved, her poor prickly soul, full under all her gayety andindifference of the most desperate doubt and soreness, --opposition toCatherine, opposition to Mr. Flaxman, but, above all, opposition toLangham. 

Flaxman could often avenge himself on her--or rather on the moreobnoxious members of her following--by dint of a faculty for light andstinging repartee which would send her, flushed and biting her lip, to have her laugh out in private. But Langham for a long time wasdefenseless. Many of her friends in his opinion were simply pathologicalcuriosities--their vanity was so frenzied, their sensibilities somorbidly developed. He felt a doctor's interest in them coupledwith more than a doctor's scepticism as to all they had to say aboutthemselves. But Rose would invite them, would assume a _quasi_-intimacywith 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 theconcentration of a good many different lines of feeling in Langham'smind betrayed itself at last in a sharp and sudden openness. It beganto seem to him that she was specially bent often on tormenting _him_by these caprices of hers, and he vowed to himself finally, with anoutburst of irritation due in reality to a hundred causes, that he wouldassert himself, that he would make an effort at any rate to save herfrom her own follies. 

One afternoon, at a crowded musical party, to which he had come muchagainst his will, and only in obedience to a compulsion he dared notanalyze, 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 notto 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 orcloak room, in a state of collapse, flanked by whisky and water, andattended by two frightened maids, who handed over their charge toLangham and fled. 

Then it appeared that the great man had been offended by a change in theprogramme, which hurt his vanity, had withdrawn from the drawing-room onthe brink of hysterics, had called for spirits, which had been providedfor him with great difficulty by Mrs. Leyburn's maids, and was theredrinking himself into a state of rage and rampant dignity which wouldsoon have shown itself in a melodramatic return to the drawing-room, and a public refusal to sing at all in a house where art had beenoutraged in his person. 

Some of the old disciplinary instincts of the Oxford tutor awoke inLangham at the sight of the creature, and, with a prompt sternness whichamazed himself, and nearly set MacFadden whimpering, he got rid of theman, 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 andbrightness looking down upon her; 'he was in no condition to sing. Hechose to be offended, apparently because he was put out of his turn, andhas been giving the servants trouble. '

Rose flushed deeply, and drew herself up with a look of half trouble, half defiance, at Langham. 

'I trust you will not ask him again, ' he said, with the same decision. 'And if I might say so, there are one or two people still here whom Ishould like to see you exclude at the same time. '

They had withdrawn into the bow window out of earshot of the rest of theroom. Langham's look turned significantly toward 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 orinvent malicious stories of the girl they were now flattering, and whosestandards and instincts represented a coarser world than Rose in realityknew anything about. 

Her eyes followed his. 

'I know, ' she said, petulantly, 'that you dislike artists. They are notyour world. They are mine. '

'I dislike artists? What nonsense, too! To me personally these men'sways don't matter in the least. They go their road and I mine. But Ideeply resent any danger of discomfort and annoyance to you!'

He still stood frowning, a glow of indignant energy showing itself inhis attitude, his glance. She could not know that he was at that momentvividly realizing the drunken scene that might have taken place in herpresence if he had not succeeded in getting the man safely out of thehouse. But she felt that he was angry, and mostly angry with her, andthere was something so piquant and unexpected in his anger!

'I am afraid, ' she said, with a queer sudden submissiveness, 'you havebeen going through something very disagreeable. I am very sorry. Isit my fault?' she added, with a whimsical flash of eye, half fun, halfserious. 

He could hardly believe his ears. 

'Yes, it is your fault, I think!' he answered her, amazed at hisown boldness. 'Not that _I_ was annoyed--Heavens! what does thatmatter?--but that you and your mother and sister were very near anunpleasant scene. You will not take advice, Miss Leyburn, you will takeyour own way in spite of what anyone else can say or hint to you, andsome day you will expose yourself to annoyance when there is no one nearto protect you!'

'Well, if so, it won't be for want of a mentor, ' she said, dropping hima mock courtesy. But her lips trembled under its smile, and her tone hadnot lost its gentleness. 

At this moment Mr. Flaxman, who had gradually established himself as thejoint leader of these musical afternoons, came forward to summon Roseto a quartet. He looked from one to the other, a little surprisepenetrating through his suavity of manner. 

'Am I interrupting you?'

'Not at all, ' said Rose; then, turning back to Langham, she said, in ahurried whisper: 'Don't say anything about the wretched man: it wouldmake mamma nervous. He shan't come here again. '

Mr. Flaxman waited till the whisper was over, and then led her off, witha change of manner which she immediately perceived, and which lasted forthe rest of the evening. 

Langham went home and sat brooding over the fire. Her voice had notbeen so kind, her look so womanly, for months. Had she been reading'Shirley, ' and would she have liked him to play Louis Moore? He wentinto a fit of silent convulsive 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 beencollating the MSS. Of some obscure Alexandrian, the old craving returnedwith added strength and he turned involuntarily westward. 

An acquaintance of his, recently made in the course of work at theMuseum, a young Russian professor, ran after him, and walked with him. Presently they passed a poster on the wall, which contained in enormousletters the announcement of Madame Desforêts' approaching visit toLondon, a list of plays, and the dates of performances. 

The young Russian suddenly stopped and stood pointing at theadvertisement, with shaking derisive finger, his eyes aflame, the wholeman quivering with what looked like antagonism and hate. 

Then he broke into a fierce flood of French. Langham listened till theyhad passed Piccadilly, passed the Park, and till the young _savant_turned southward toward his Brompton lodgings. 

Then Langham slowly climbed Campden Hill, meditating. His thoughtswere an odd mixture of the things he had just heard, and of a scene atMurewell long ago when a girl had denounced him for 'calumny. '

At the door of Lerwick Gardens he was informed that Mrs. Leyburn wasupstairs with an attack of bronchitis. But the servant thought the youngladies were at home. Would he come in? He stood irresolute a moment, then went in on a pretext of 'inquiry. '

The maid threw open the drawing-room door, and there was Rose sittingwell into the fire--for it was a raw February afternoon--with a book. 

She received him with all her old hard brightness. He was indeedinstantly sorry that he had made his way in. Tyrant! was she displeasedbecause he had slipped his chain for rather longer than usual?

However, he sat down, delivered his book, and they talked first abouther 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 appearance atLady Charlotte's this evening?' he asked her. 

The omnivorous Lady Charlotte of course had made acquaintance with him, in the Leyburns' drawing-room, as she did with everybody who crossedher path, and three days before he had received a card from her for thisevening. 

'Oh, yes! But I have had to miss a rehearsal this afternoon. Thatconcert at Searle House is becoming a great nuisance. '

'It will be a brilliant affair, I suppose. Princes on one side ofyou--and Albani on the other. I see they have given you the mostconspicuous part as violinist. '

'Yes, ' she said with a little satirical tightening of the lip. 'Yes--Isuppose I ought to be much flattered. '

'Of course--' he said, smiling, but embarrassed. 'To many people youmust be at this moment one of the most enviable persons in the world. Adelightful art--and every opportunity to make it tell!'

There was a pause. She looked into the fire. 

'I 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 suddenlyspirited back to Burwood!'

Langham gave vent to some incredulous interjection. He had apparentlysurprised her in a fit of _ennui_ which was rare with her. 

'Oh no, not yet!' she said suddenly, with a return of animation. 'MadameDesforêts comes next week, and I am to see her. ' She drew herself upand turned a beaming face upon him. Was there a shaft of mischief in hereye? He could not tell. The firelight was perplexing. 

'You are to see her?' he said slowly. 'Is she coming here?'

'I hope so. Mrs. Pierson is to bring, her. I want mamma to have theamusement of seeing her. My artistic friends are a kind of tonic toher--they excite her so much. She regards them as a sort of show--muchas you do, in fact, only in a more charitable fashion. '

But he took no notice of what she was saying. 

'Madame Desforêts is coming here?' he sharply repeated, bending forward, a curious accent in his tone. 

'Yes!' she replied, with apparent surprise. Then with a careless smile:'Oh, I remember when we were at Murewell, you were exercised that weshould know her. Well, Mr. Langham, I told you then that you were onlyechoing unworthy gossip. I am in the same mind still. I have seen her, and you haven't. To me she is the greatest actress in the world, and anill-used woman to boot!'

Her tone had warmed with every sentence. It struck him that she hadwilfully brought up the topic--that it gave her pleasure to quarrel withhim. 

He put down his hat deliberately, got up, and stood with his back tothe fire. She looked up at him curiously. But the dark regular face wasalmost hidden from her. 

'It is strange, ' he said slowly; 'very strange--that you should havetold me this at this moment! Miss Leyburn, a great deal of the truthabout Madame Desforêts I could neither tell, nor could you hear. Thereare charges against her proved in open court, again and again, which Icould not even mention in your presence. But one thing I can speak of. Do you know the story of the sister at St. Petersburg?'

'I know no stories against Madame Desforêts, ' said Rose loftily, herquickened breath responding to the energy of his tone. 'I have alwayschosen not to know them. '

'The newspapers were full of this particular story just beforeChristmas. I should have thought it must have reached you. '

'I did not see it, ' she replied stiffly; 'and I cannot see what goodpurpose 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 beendetermined and in earnest. 

'You will let me tell it, I hope?' he said quietly. 'I will tell it sothat it shall not offend your ears. As it happens, I myself thought itincredible at the time. But, by an odd coincidence, it has just thisafternoon been repeated to me by a man who was an eyewitness of part ofit. '

Rose was silent. Her attitude Was _hauteur_ itself, but she made nofurther active opposition. 

'Three months ago--' he began, speaking with some difficulty, but stillwith a suppressed force of feeling which amazed his hearer-'MadameDesforêts was acting in St. Petersburg. She had with her a largecompany, and among them her own young sister, Elise Romey, a girl ofeighteen. This girl had been always kept away from Madame Desforêts byher parents, who had never been sufficiently consoled by their eldestdaughter's artistic success for the infamy of her life. '

Rose started indignantly. Langham gave her no time to speak. 

'Elise Romey, however, had developed a passion for the stage. Herparents were respectable--and you know young girls in France are broughtup strictly. She knew next to nothing of her sister's escapades. Butshe knew that she was held to be the greatest actress in Europe--thephotographs in the shops told her that she was beautiful. She conceiveda romantic passion for the woman whom she had last seen when she was achild of five, and actuated partly by this hungry affection, partly byher own longing wish to become an actress, she escaped from home andjoined Madame Desforêts in the South of France. Madame Desforêts seemsat first to have been pleased to have her. The girl's adoration pleasedher vanity. Her presence with her gave her new opportunities of posing. I believe, ' and Langham gave a little dry laugh, 'they were photographedtogether at Marseilles with their arms round each other's necks, and thephotograph had an immense success. However on the way to St. Petersburg, difficulties arose. Elise was pretty, in a _blonde_ childish way, and she caught the attention of the _jeune premier_ of the company, aman'--the speaker became somewhat embarrassed-'whom Madame Desforêtsseems to have regarded as her particular property. There were scenes atdifferent towns on the journey. Elise became frightened--wanted to gohome. But the elder sister, having begun tormenting her, seems tohave determined to keep her hold on her, as a cat keeps and tortures amouse--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 wornout with travelling, unhappy, and ill. One night in Madame Desforêtsapartment there was a supper party, and after it a horrible quarrel. Noone exactly knows what happened. But toward twelve o'clock that nightMadame Desforêts turned her young sister in evening dress, a light shawlround her, out into the snowy streets of St Petersburg, barred the doorbehind her, and revolver in hand dared the wretched man who had causedthe _fracas_ to follow her. '

Rose sat immovable. She had grown pale, but the firelight was notrevealing. 

Langham turned away from her toward the blaze, holding out his hands toit mechanically. 

'The poor child, ' he said, after a pause, in a lower voice, 'wanderedabout for some hours. It was a frightful night--the great capital wasquite strange to her. She was insulted--fled this way and that--grewbenumbed with cold and terror, and was found unconscious in the earlymorning under the archway of a house some two miles from her sister'slodgings. '

There was a dead silence. Then Rose drew a long quivering breath. 

'I do not believe it!' she said passionately. 'I cannot believe it!'

'It was amply proved at the time, ' said Langham dryly, 'though of courseMadame Desforêts tried to put her own color on it. But I told you I hadprivate information. On one of the floors of the house where Elise Romeywas picked up, lived a young university professor. He is editing animportant Greek text, and has lately had business at the Museum. I madefriends with him there. He walked home with me this afternoon, saw theannouncement of Madame Desforêts coming, and poured out the story. Heand his wife nursed the unfortunate girl with devotion. She lived justa week, and died of inflammation of the lungs. I never in my life heardanything so pitiful as his description of her delirium, her terror, herappeals, her shivering misery of cold. '

There was a pause. 

'She is not a woman, ' he said presently, between his teeth. 'She is awild beast. '

Still there was silence, and still he held out his hand to the flamewhich Rose too was staring at. At last he turned round. 

'I have told you a shocking story, ' he said hurriedly, 'Perhaps I oughtnot to have done it. But, as you sat there talking so lightly, so gayly, it suddenly became to me utterly intolerable that that woman should eversit here in this room--talk to you--call you by your name--laugh withyou--touch your hand! Not even your wilfulness shall carry you sofar--you _shall_ not do it!'

He hardly knew what he said. He was driven on by a passionate sense ofphysical repulsion to the notion of any contact between her pure fairyouth and something malodorous and corrupt. And there was beside a wildunique excitement in claiming for once to stay--to control her. 

Rose lifted her head slowly. The fire was bright. He saw the tears inher eyes, tears of intolerable pity for another girl's awful story. But through the tears something gleamed--a kind of exultation--theexultation which the magician feels when he has called spirits from thevasty deep and after long doubt and difficult invocation they rise atlast before his eyes. 

'I will never see her again'--she said in a low wavering voice, butshe too was hardly conscious of her own words. Their looks were oneach other; the ruddy capricious light touched her glowing cheeks, her straight-lined grace, her white hand. Suddenly from the gulf ofanother's misery into which they had both been looking, there had sprungup, by the strange contrariety of human things, a heat and intoxicationof feeling, wrapping them round, blotting out the rest of the world fromthem like a golden mist. 'Be always thus!' her parted lips, her liquideyes were saying to him. His breath seemed to fail him; he was lost inbewilderment. 

There were sounds outside--Catherine's voice. He roused himself with asupreme 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 washastily drawn away, and the door opened. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

'In the first place, my dear aunt, ' said Mr. Flaxman, throwing himselfback in his chair in front of Lady Charlotte's drawing-room fire, 'youmay spare your admonitions, because it is becoming more and more clearto me that, whatever my sentiments may be, Miss Leyburn never gives aserious thought to me. '

He turned to look at his companion over his shoulder. His tone andmanner were perfectly gay, and Lady Charlotte was puzzled by him. 

'Stuff and nonsense!' replied the lady with her usual emphasis; 'I neverflatter you, Hugh, and I don't mean to begin now, but it would be merefolly not to recognize that you have advantages which must tell on themind of any girl in Miss Leyburn's position. '

Hugh Flaxman rose, and, standing before the fire with his hands in hispockets, made what seemed to be a close inspection of his irreproachabletrouser-knees. 

'I am sorry for your theory, Aunt Charlotte, ' he said, still stooping, 'but Miss Leyburn doesn't care twopence about my advantages. '

'Very proper of you to say so, ' returned Lady Charlotte sharply; 'theremark, however, my good sir, does more credit to your heart than yourhead. '

'In the next place, ' he went on undisturbed, 'why you should have doneyour best this whole winter to throw Miss Leyburn and me together, ifyou meant in the end to oppose my marrying her, I don't quite see. '

He looked up smiling. Lady Charlotte reddened ever so slightly. 

'You know my weakness, ' she said presently, with an effrontery whichdelighted her nephew. 'She is my latest novelty, she excites me, Ican't do without her. As to you, I can't remember that you wantedmuch encouragement, but I acknowledge, after all these years ofresistance--resistance to my most legitimate efforts to dispose ofyou--there was a certain piquancy in seeing you caught at last!'

'Upon my word!' he said, throwing back his head with a not very cordiallaugh, in which, however, his aunt joined. She was sitting opposite tohim, her powerful, loosely-gloved hands crossed over the rich velvet ofher dress, her fair large face and grayish hair surmounted by a mightycap, as vigorous, shrewd, and individual a type of English middle ageas could be found. The room behind her and the second and thirddrawing-rooms were brilliantly lighted. Mr. Wynnstay was enjoying acigar in peace in the smoking-room, while his wife and nephew wereawaiting the arrival of the evening's guests upstairs. 

Lady Charlotte's mind had been evidently much perturbed by theconversation with her nephew of which we are merely describing thelatter half. She was laboring under an uncomfortable sense of beinghoist with her own petard--an uncomfortable memory of a certain warningof her husband's, delivered at Murewell. 

'And now, ' said Mr. Flaxman, 'having confessed in so many words thatyou have done your best to bring me up to the fence, will you kindlyrecapitulate the arguments why in your opinion I should not jump it?'

'Society, amusement, flirtation, are one thing, ' she replied withjudicial imperativeness, 'marriage is another. In these democratic dayswe must know everybody; we should only marry our equals. '

The instant, however, the words were out of her mouth, she regrettedthem. Mr. Flaxman's expression changed. 

'I do not agree with you, ' he said calmly, 'and you know I do not. Youcould not, I imagine, have relied much upon _that_ argument. '

'Good gracious, Hugh!' cried Lady Charlotte crossed, 'you talk as if Iwere really the old campaigner some people suppose me to be. I have beenamusing myself--I have liked to see you amused. And it is only the lastfew weeks, since you have begun to devote yourself so tremendously, thatI have come to take the thing seriously at all. I confess, if you like, that I have got you into the scrape--now I want to get you out of it!I am not thin-skinned, but I hate family unpleasantnesses--and you knowwhat the Duke will say. '

'The Duke be--translated!' said Flaxman, coolly. 'Nothing of what youhave said or could say on this point, my dear aunt, has the smallestweight with me. But Providence has been kinder to you and the Duke thanyou deserve. Miss Leyburn does not care for me, and she does care--or Iam very much mistaken--for somebody else. '

He pronounced the words deliberately, watching their effect upon her. 

'What, that Oxford nonentity, Mr. Langham, the Elsmeres' friend?Ridiculous! What attraction could a man of that type have for a girl ofhers?'

'I am not bound to supply an answer to that question, ' replied hernephew. 'However, he is not a nonentity. Far from it! Ten yearsago, when I was leaving Cambridge, he was certainly one of the mostdistinguished of the young Oxford tutors. '

'Another instance of what university reputation is worth!' said LadyCharlotte scornfully. It was clear that even in the case of a beautywhom she thought it beneath him to marry, she was not pleased to see hernephew ousted by the _force majeure_ of a rival--and that rival whom sheregarded as an utter nobody, having neither marketable eccentricity, norfamily, nor social brilliance to recommend him. 

Flaxman understood her perplexity and watched her with critical, amusedeyes. 

'I should like to know--' he said presently, with a curious slownessand suavity, --'I should greatly like to know why you asked him hereto-night?'

'You know perfectly well that I should ask anybody--a convict, acrossing sweeper--if I happened to be half an hour in the same room withhim!'

Flaxman laughed. 

'Well, it may be convenient to-night, ' he said reflectively. 'What arewe 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. '

She mentioned an amateur thought-reader greatly in request at themoment. 

Flaxman cogitated for a while and then propounded a little plan to hisaunt, to which she, after some demur, agreed. 

'I want to make a few notes, ' he said dryly, when it was arranged; 'Ishould be glad to satisfy myself. '

When the Miss Leyburns were announced, Rose, though the younger, camein first. She always took the lead by a sort of natural right, and Agnesnever dreamt of protesting. To-night the sisters were in white. Somesoft creamy stuff was folded and draped about Rose's slim shapely figurein such a way as to bring out all its charming roundness and grace. Herneck and arms bore the challenge of the dress victoriously. Her red-goldhair gleamed in the light of Lady Charlotte's innumerable candles. Aknot of dusky blue feathers on her shoulder, and a Japanese fan of thesome color, gave just that touch of purpose and art which the spectatorsseems to claim as the tribute answering to his praise in the dress of ayoung girl. She moved with perfect self-possession, distributing afew smiling looks to the people she knew as she advanced toward LadyCharlotte. Anyone with a discerning eye could have seen that she was inthat stage of youth when a beautiful woman is like a statue to which themaster is giving the finishing touches. Life, the sculptor, had been atwork upon her, refining here, softening there, planing away awkwardness, emphasizing grace, disengaging as it were, week by week, and month bymonth, all the beauty of which the original conception was capable. And the process is one attended always by a glow and sparkle, a kind ofeffluence of youth and pleasure, which makes beauty more beautiful andgrace more graceful. 

The little murmur and rustle of persons turning to look, which hadalready begun to mark her entrance into a room, surrounded Rose as shewalked up to Lady Charlotte. Mr. Flaxman, who had been standing absentlysilent, woke up directly she appeared, and went to greet her before hisaunt. 

'You failed us at rehearsal, ' he said with smiling reproach; 'we wereall at sixes and sevens. '

'I had a sick mother, unfortunately, who kept me at home. LadyCharlotte, Catherine couldn't come. Agnes and I are alone in the world. Will you chaperon us?'

'I don't know whether I will accept the responsibility to-night--in thatnew gown'--replied Lady Charlotte grimly, putting up her eyeglass tolook at it and the wearer. Rose bore the scrutiny with a light smilingsilence, even though she knew Mr. Flaxman was looking too. 

'On the contrary, ' she said, 'one always feels so particularly good andprim 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 quite otherthings to her, as they finished their inspection of her dress. 

Lady Charlotte threw a sharp glance first at him and then at Rose'ssmiling ease, before she hurried off to other guests. 

'I have made a muddle as usual, ' she said to herself in disgust, 'perhaps even a worse one than I thought!'

Whatever might be Hugh Flaxman's state of mind, however, he never showedgreater self-possession than on this particular evening. 

A few minutes after Rose's entry he introduced her for the first timeto his sister, Lady Helen. The Varleys had only just come up to town forthe opening of Parliament, and Lady Helen had come to-night to MartinStreet, all ardor to see Hugh's new adoration, and the girl whom all theworld was beginning to talk about--both as a beauty and as an artist. She rushed at Rose, if any word so violent can be applied to anythingso light and airy as Lady Helen's movements, caught the girl's hands inboth hers, and, gazing up at her with undisguised admiration, said toher the prettiest, daintiest, most effusive things possible. Rose--whowith all her lithe shapeliness, looked over-tall and even a triflestiff beside the tiny bird-like Lady Helen--took the advances of HughFlaxman's sister with a pretty flush of flattered pride. She lookeddown at the small radiant creature with soft and friendly eyes, and HughFlaxman stood by, so far well pleased. 

Then he went off to fetch Mr. Denman, the hero of the evening, to beintroduced to her. While he was away, Agnes, who was behind her sister, saw Rose's eyes wandering from Lady Helen to the door, restlesslysearching and then returning. 

Presently through the growing crowd round the entrance Agnes spied awell-known form emerging. 

'Mr. Langham! But Rose never told me he was to be here to-night, and howdreadful he looks!'

Agnes was so startled that her eyes followed Langham closely across theroom. Rose had seen him at once; and they had greeted each other acrossthe crowd. Agnes was absorbed, trying to analyze what had struck herso. The face was always melancholy, always pale, but to-night it wasghastly, and from the whiteness of cheek and brow, the eyes, the jetblack hair stood out in intense and disagreeable relief. She would haveremarked on it to Rose, but that Rose's attention was claimed by theyoung thought-reader, Mr. Denman, whom Mr. Flaxman had brought up. Mr. Denman was a fair-haired young Hercules, whose tremulous, agitatedmanner contrasted oddly with his athlete's looks. Among other magnetismshe was clearly open to the magnetism of women, and he stayed talkingto Rose, --staring furtively at her the while from under his heavylids, --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 beardedface. 

'Oh, yes!' she said flippantly. 'We have tried it sometimes. It is verygood fun. '

He drew himself up. 'Not _fun_, ' he said impressively; 'not fun. Thought-reading wants seriousness; the most tremendous things dependupon it. If established it will revolutionize our whole views of life. Even a Huxley could not deny that!'

'She studied him with mocking eyes. 'Do you imagine this party to-nightlooks 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 themuscles Nature had given him so amply, to some decent practical purpose, instead of making a business out of ruining his own nerves and otherpeople's night after night in hot drawing-rooms? And when would he goaway?

'Come, Mr. Denman, ' said Flaxman, laying hands upon him; 'the audienceis about collected, I think. Ah, there you are!' and he gave Langham acool greeting. 'Have you seen anything yet of these fashionable dealingswith the devil!'

'Nothing. Are you a believer?'

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders. 'I never refuse an experiment of anykind, ' he added with an odd change of voice. Come, Denman. '

And the two went off. Langham came to stand beside Rose, while LordRupert, as jovial as ever, and bubbling over with gossip about theQueen's speech, appropriated Lady Helen, who was the darling of allelderly men. 

They did not speak. Rose sent him a ray from eyes full of a new divineshyness. He smiled gently in answer to it, and full of her own youngemotions, and of the effort to conceal it from all the world, shenoticed none of that change which had struck Agnes. 

And all the while, if she could have penetrated the man's silence! Anhour before this moment Langham had vowed that nothing should take himto Lady Charlotte's that night. And yet here he was, riveted toher side, alive like any normal human being to every detail of herloveliness, shaken to his inmost being by the intoxicating message ofher look, of the transformation which had passed in an instant over theteasing difficult creature of the last few months. 

At Murewell, his chagrin had been _not_ to feel, _not_ to struggle, tohave been cheated out of experience. Well, here is the experience ingood earnest! And Langham is wrestling with it for dear life. And howlittle the exquisite child beside him knows of it or of the man on whomshe is spending her first wilful passion! She stands strangely exultingin her own strange victory over a life, a heart, which had defied andeluded her. The world throbs and thrills about her, the crowd beside heris all unreal, the air is full of whisper, of romance. 

The thought-reading followed its usual course. A murder andits detection were given in dumb show. Then it was the turn ofcard-guessing, bank-note-finding, and the various other forms oftelepathic hide and seek. Mr. Flaxman superintended them all, hisrestless eye wandering every other minute to the further drawing-room inwhich the lights had been lowered, catching there always the same patchof black and white, --Rose's dress and the dark form beside her. 

'Are you convinced? Do you believe?' said Rose, merrily looking up ather companion. 

'In telepathy? Well--so far--I have not got beyond the delicacy andperfection of Mr. Denman's muscular sensation. So much I am sure of!'

'Oh, but your scepticism is ridiculous!' she said gayly. 'We know thatsome people have an extraordinary power over others. '

'Yes, that certainly we know!' he answered, his voice dropping, an odd, strained note in it. 'I grant you that. '

She trembled deliciously. Her eyelids fell. They stood together, conscious only of each other. 

'Now, ' said Mr. Denman, advancing to the doorway between the twodrawing-rooms, 'I have done all I can--I am exhausted. But let me begof you all to go on with some experiments among yourselves. Every freshdiscovery of this power in a new individual is a gain to science. Ibelieve about one in ten has some share of it. Mr. Flaxman and I willarrange everything, if anyone will volunteer?'

The audience broke up into groups, laughing, chatting, suggesting thisand that. Presently Lady Charlotte's loud dictatorial voice made itselfheard, as she stood eyeglass in hand looking round the circle of herguests. 

'Somebody must venture--we are losing time. '

Then the eyeglass stopped at Rose, who was now sitting tall and radianton the sofa, her blue fan across her white knees. 'Miss Leyburn--you arealways 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 Leyburn?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 withLady Charlotte and the whole affair sweeping through him. But there wasno time to demur; that judicial eye was on them; the large figure andtowering cap bent toward him. Refusal was impossible. 

'Command me!' he said with a sudden straightening of the form and aflush on the pale cheek. 'I am afraid Miss Leyburn will find me a verybad partner. '

'Well, now then!' said Flaxman; 'Miss Leyburn, will you please go downinto the library while we settle what you are to do?'

She went, and he held the door open for her. But she passed outunconscious of him--rosy, confused, her eyes bent on the ground. 

'Now, then, what shall Miss Leyburn do?' asked Lady Charlotte in thesame loud emphatic tone. 

'If I might suggest something quite different from anything that hasbeen yet tried, ' said Mr. Flaxman, 'suppose we require Miss Leyburnto kiss the hand of the little marble statue of Hope in the fardrawing-room. What do you say, Langham?'

'What you please!' said Langham, moving up to him. A glance passedbetween the two men. In Langham's there was a hardly sane antagonism andresentment, in Flaxman's an excited intelligence. 

'Now then, ' said Flaxman coolly, 'fix your mind steadily on what MissLeyburn is to do--you must take her hand--but except in thought, youmust carefully follow and not lead her. Shall I call her?'

'Langham abruptly assented. He had a passionate sense of beingwatched--tricked. Why were he and she to be made a spectacle for thisman and his friends! A mad irrational indignation surged through him. 

Then she was led in blindfolded, one hand stretched out feeling the airin front of her. The circle of people drew back. Mr. Flaxman and Mr. Denman prepared, notebook in hand, to watch the experiment. Langhammoved desperately forward. 

But the instant her soft trembling hand touched his, as though byenchantment, the surrounding scene, the faces, the lights, were blottedout from him. He forgot his anger, he forgot everything but her andthis thing she was to do. He had her in his grasp--he was the man, themaster--and what enchanting readiness to yield in the swaying pliantform! In the distance far away gleamed the statue of Hope, a child ontiptoe, one outstretched arm just visible from where he stood. 

There was a moment's silent expectation. Every eye was riveted on thetwo figures--on the dark handsome man--on the blindfolded girl. 

At last Rose began to move gently forward. It was a strange waveringmotion. The breath came quickly through her slightly parted lips; herbright color was ebbing. She was conscious of nothing but the grasp inwhich her hand was held, --otherwise her mind seemed a blank. Her stateduring the next few seconds was not unlike the state of some one underthe partial influence of an anaesthetic; a benumbing grip was laid onall her faculties; and she knew nothing of how she moved or where shewas going. 

Suddenly the trance cleared away. It might have lasted half an houror five seconds, for all she knew. But she was standing beside a smallmarble statue in the farthest drawing-room, and her lips had on thema slight sense of chill as though they had just been laid to somethingcold. 

She pulled off the handkerchief from her eyes. Above her was Langham'sface, a marvellous 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 Bewildered. 

He nodded, smiling. 

'I am so glad, ' she said, still in the same quick whisper, gazing athim. 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 forone bright flashing instant each saw nothing but the other. 

The heavy curtain which had partially hidden the door of the littleold-fashioned powder-closet as they approached it, and through whichthey had swept without heeding, was drawn back with a rattle. 

'She has done it! Hurrah!' cried Mr. Flaxman. 'What a rush that lastwas, Miss Leyburn! You left us all behind!'

Rose turned to him, still dazed, drawing her hand across her eyes. Arush? She had known nothing about it!

Mr. Flaxman turned and walked back, apparently to report to his aunt, who, with Lady Helen, had been watching the experiment from the maindrawing-room. His face was a curious mixture of gravity and the keenestexcitement. The gravity was mostly sharp compunction. He had satisfieda passionate curiosity, but in the doing of it he had outragedcertain instincts of breeding and refinement which were now revengingthemselves. 

'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 herlook. 

'Lady Charlotte, where is my sister?' said Rose, coming up from the backroom, looking now nearly as white as her dress. 

It appeared that Agnes had just been carried off by a lady who lived onCampden Hill close to the Leyburns, and who had been obliged to go atthe beginning of the last experiment. Agnes, torn between her interestin what was going on and her desire to get back to her mother, had atlast hurriedly accepted this Mrs. Sherwood's offer of a seat in hercarriage, imagining that her sister would want to stay a good deallater, and relying on Lady Charlotte's promise that she should be safelyput into a hansom. 

'I must go, ' said Rose, putting her hand to her head. How tiring thisis! How long did it take, Mr. Flaxman?'

'Exactly three minutes' he said, his gaze fixed upon her with anexpression that only Lady Helen noticed. 

'So little! Good-night, Lady Charlotte!' and giving her hand first toher hostess, then to Mr. Flaxman's bewildered sister, she moved awayinto the crowd. 

'Hugh, of course you are going down with her?' exclaimed Lady Charlotteunder her breath. 'You must. I promised to see her safely off thepromises. '

He stood immovable. Lady Helen with a reproachful look made a stepforward, but he caught her arm. 

'Don't spoil sport, ' he said, in a tone which, amid the hum ofdiscussion caused by the experiment, was heard only by his aunt andsister. 

They looked at him--the one amazed, the other grimly observant--andcaught a slight significant motion of the head toward Langham's distantfigure. 

Langham came up and made his farewells. As he turned his back, LadyHelen'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 bewildered sympathyof her look; 'I will tell you all about it to-morrow. I have not beenbehaving well, and am not particularly pleased with myself. But for herit is all right. Poor, pretty little thing!'

And he walked away into the thick of the conversation. 

Downstairs the hall was already full of people waiting for theircarriages. Langham, hurrying down, saw Rose coming out of thecloak-room, muffled up in brown furs, a pale, child-like fatigue in herlooks which set his heart beating faster than ever. 

'Miss Leyburn, how are you going home?'

'Will you ask for a hansom, please?'

'Take my arm, ' he said, and she clung to him through the crush till theyreached 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, herethey were, out in the wind and the darkness, every step carrying themfarther 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 coming back. She held her cloak tightly round her, and her little feet, fairly wellshod, slipped in and out on the dry frosty pavement. 

Suddenly they passed a huge unfinished house, the building of which wasbeing pushed on by electric light. The great walls, ivory white in theglare, rose into the purply-blue of the starry February sky, and as theypassed within the power of the lamps each saw with noonday distinctnessevery line and feature in the other's face. They swept on-the night, with its alternations of flame and shadow, an unreal and enchanted worldabout them. A space of darkness succeeded the space of daylight. Behindthem 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 thiswandering of theirs. 

A blast of wind blew her cloak out of her grasp. But before she couldclose it again, an arm was flung around her. Should not speak or move, she stood passive, conscious only of the strangeness of the wintry wind, and of this warm breast against which her cheek was laid. 

'Oh, stay there!' a voice said close to her ear. 'Rest there--pale tiredchild--pale tired little child!'

That moment seemed to last an eternity. He held her close, cherishingand protecting her from the cold--not kissing her--till at length shelooked up with bright eyes, shining through happy tears. 

'Are you sure at last?' she said, strangely enough, speaking out of thefar depths of her own thought to his. 

'Sure!' he said, his expression changing. 'What can I be sure of? Iam sure that I am not worth your loving, sure that I am poor, insignificant, obscure, that if you give yourself to me you will bemiserably throwing yourself away!'

She looked at him, still smiling, a white sorceress weaving spells abouthim 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 thetone of passion-'how little I have to give you?'

'I know, ' she answered, her face turned shly away from him, her wordscoming from under the fur hood which had fallen forward a little. 'Iknow that-that--you are not rich, that you distrust yourself, that----'

'Oh, hush, ' he said, and his voice was full of pain. 'You know solittle; let me paint myself. I have lived alone, for myself, in myself, till sometimes there seems to be hardly anything left in me to love orbe loved; nothing but a brain, a machine that exists only for certainselfish ends. My habits are the tyrants of years; and at Murewell, though I loved you there, they were strong enough to carry me away fromyou. There is something paralyzing in me, which is always forbiddingme to feel, to will. Sometimes I think it is an actual physicaldisability--the horror that is in me of change, of movement, of effort. Can you bear with me? Can you be poor? Can you live a life of monotony?Oh, impossible!' he broke out, almost putting her hand away from him. 'You, who ought to be a queen of this world, for whom everything brightand brilliant is waiting if you will but stretch out your hand to it. Itis a crime--an infamy--that I should be speaking to you like this!'

Rose raised her head. A passing light shone upon her. She was tremblingand pale again, but her eyes were unchanged. 

'No, no, ' she said wistfully; 'not if you love me. '

He hung above her, an agony of feeling in the fine rigid face, of whichthe beautiful features and surfaces were already worn and blanched bythe life of thought. What possessed him was not so much distrust ofcircumstance as doubt, hideous doubt, of himself, of this verypassion beating within him. She saw nothing, meanwhile, but theself-depreciation which she knew so well in him, and against which herlove in its rash ignorance and generosity cried out. 

'You will not say you love me!' she cried, with hurrying breath. 'But Iknow--I know--you do. '

Then her courage sinking, ashamed, blushing, once more turning away fromhim--'At least, if you don't, I am very--very--unhappy. '

The soft words flew through his blood. For an instant he felt himselfsaved, like Faust, --saved by the surpassing moral beauty of one moment'simpression. That she should need him, that his life should matter tohers! They were passing the garden wall of a great house. In the deepestshadow of it, he stooped suddenly and kissed her. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Langham parted with Rose at the corner of Martin Street. She would notlet him take her any farther. 

'I will say nothing, ' she whispered to him, as he put her into a passinghansom, 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 anotherinstant he was facing the north wind alone. 

He walked on fast toward Beaumont Street, but by the time he reached hisdestination midnight had struck. He made his way into his room where thefire was still smouldering, and striking a light, sank into his largereading chair, beside which the volumes used in the afternoon laylittered on the floor. 

He was suddenly penetrated with the cold of the night, and hungshivering over the few embers which still glowed. What had happened tohim? In this room, in this chair, the self-forgetting excitement ofthat walk, scarcely half an hour old, seems to him already longpast--incredible almost. 

And yet the brain was still full of images, the mind still full of ahundred new impressions. That fair head against his breast, thosesoft confiding words, those yielding lips. Ah! it is the poor, silent, insignificant student that has conquered. It is he, not the successfulman of the world, that has held that young and beautiful girl in hisarms, and heard from her the sweetest and humblest confession of love. Fate can have neither wit nor conscience to have ordained it so; butfate has so ordained it. Langham takes note of his victory, takes dismalnote also, that the satisfaction of it has already half departed. 

So the great moment has come and gone! The one supreme experience whichlife and his own will had so far rigidly denied him, is his. He has feltthe torturing thrill of passion--he has evoked such an answer as allmen 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 ofgratitude and tenderness; the next--is nothing what it promises tobe?--and has the boon already, now that he has it in his grasp, lostsome of its beauty, just as the sea-shell drawn out of the water, whereits lovely iridescence tempted eye and hand, loses half its fairy charm?

The night wore on. Outside an occasional cab or cart would rattle overthe stones of the street, an occasional voice or step would penetratethe thin walls of the house, bringing a shock of sound into thatsilent upper room. Nothing caught Langham's ear. He was absorbed in thedialogue which was to decide his life. 

Opposite to him, as it seemed, there sat a spectral reproduction ofhimself, 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 Itoo can achieve what other men achieve. I have gifts, great gifts. Merecontact with her, the mere necessities of the situation, will drive meback to life, teach me how to live normally, like other men. I have notforced 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 ropethrown to him?'

To which the pale spectre self said scornfully--

'_Courage_ and _effort_ may as well be dropped out of your vocabulary. They are words that you have no use for. Replace them by twoothers--_habit_ and _character_. Slave as you are of habit, of thecharacter you have woven for yourself--out of years of deliberateliving--what wild unreason to imagine that love can unmake, canre-create! What you are, you are to all eternity. Bear your own burden, but for God's sake beguile no other human creature into trusting youwith theirs!'

'But she loves me! Impossible that I should crush and tear so kind, sowarm a heart! Poor child--poor child! I have played on her pity. I havewon all she had to give. And now to throw her gift back in her face--ohmonstrous--oh inhuman!' and the cold drops stood on his forhead. 

But the other self was inexorable. 'You have acted as you were bound toact--as any man may be expected to act in whom will and manhood and truehuman kindness are dying out, poisoned by despair and the tyranny of thecritical 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, suchambitions? You are poor--you must go back to Oxford--you must take upthe work your soul loathes--grow more soured, more embittered--maintaina useless degrading struggle, till her youth is done, her beauty wasted, and till you yourself have lost every shred of decency and dignity, eventhat decorous outward life in which you can still wrap yourself fromthe world! Think of the little house--the children--the moneydifficulties--she, spiritually starved, every illusion gone, --youincapable soon of love, incapable even of pity, conscious only of a dullrage with her, yourself, the world! Bow the neck--submit--refusethat 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 dismalHogarthian series, image leading to image, calamity to calamity, till inthe last scene of all the maddened inward sight perceived two figures, two gray and withered figures, far apart, gazing at each other with oldand sunken eyes across dark rivers of sordid irremediable regret. 

The hours passed away, and in the end, the spectre self, cold andbloodless conqueror, slipped back into the soul which remorse andterror, love and pity, a last impulse of hope, a last stirring ofmanhood, had been alike powerless to save. 

The February dawn was just beginning when he dragged himself to a tableand wrote. 

Then for hours afterward he sat sunk in his chair, the stupor of fatiguebroken every now and then by a flash of curious introspection. It wasa base thing which he had done--it was also a strange thingpsychologically--and at intervals he tried to understand it--to track itto its causes. 

At nine o'clock he crept out into the frosty daylight, found acommissionaire who was accustomed to do errands for him, and sent himwith a letter to Lerwick Gardens. 

On his way back he passed a gunsmith's, and stood looking fascinatedat the shining barrels. Then he moved away, shaking his head, his eyesgleaming as though the spectacle of himself had long ago passed thebounds of tragedy--become farcical even. 

'I should only stand a month--arguing--with my finger on the trigger. '

In the little hall his landlady met him, gave a start at the sight ofhim, and asked him if he ailed and if she could do anything for him. Hegave her a sharp answer and went upstairs, where she heard him draggingbooks 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. Theground and roofs were white, a promise of sun was struggling throughthe fog. So far everything in these unfrequented Campden Hill roads wasclean, crisp, enlivening, and the sparkle in Rose's mood answered tothat of nature. 

Breakfast had just been cleared away. Agnes was upstairs with Mrs. Leyburn. Catherine, who was staying in the house for a day or two, was in a chair by the fire, reading some letters forwarded to her fromBedford Square. 

He would appear some time in the morning, she supposed. With anexpression half rueful, half amused, she fell to imagining hisinterview, with Catherine, with her mother. Poor Catherine! Rose feelsherself happy enough to allow herself a good honest pang of remorse formuch 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 afresh blow! 'But afterward, when she has got over it--when she knowsthat it makes me happy, --that nothing else would make me happy, --thenshe will be reconciled, and she and I perhaps will make friends, allover again, from the beginning. I won't be angry or hard over it--poorCathie!'

And with regard to Mr. Flaxman. As she stands there waiting idly forwhat destiny may send her, she puts herself through a little lightcatechism about this other friend of hers. He had behaved somewhat oddlytoward her of late; she begins now to remember that her exit from LadyCharlotte's house the night before had been a very different matter fromthe royally attended leave takings, presided over by Mr. Flaxman, whichgenerally befell her there. Had he understood? With a little toss ofher head she said to herself that she did not care if it was so. 'I havenever 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 isdismally throwing herself away, and her mother, no doubt influenced bythe clamor, will take up very much the same line. 

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 wilful determination toovercome it. That she was about to do the last thing she could have beenexpected to do, gave her pleasure. Almost all artistic faculty goes witha love of surprise and caprice in life. Rose had her full share of theartistic love for the impossible and the difficult. 

Besides--success! To make a man hope and love, and live again--_that_shall be her success. She leaned against the window, her eyes filling, her heart very soft. 

Suddenly she saw a commissionaire coming up the little flaggedpassage to the door. He gave in a note, and immediately afterward thedining-room door opened. 

'A letter for you, Miss, ' said the maid. 

Rose took it--glanced at the hand-writing. A bright flush--asurreptitious glance at Catherine, who sat absorbed in a wanderingletter from, Mrs. Darcy. Then the girl carried her prize to the windowand opened it. 

Catherine read on, gathering up, the Murewell names and details assome famished gleaner might gather up the scattered ears on a plunderedfield. At last something in the silence of the room, and of the otherinmate in it, struck her. 

'Rose, ' she said, looking up, 'was that someone brought you a note?'

The girl turned with a start--a letter fell to the ground. She made afaint ineffectual effort to pick it up, and sank into a chair. 

'Rose--darling!' cried Catherine, springing up, 'are you ill?'

Rose looked at her with a perfectly colorless fixed face, made a feeblenegative sign, and then laying her arms on the breakfast-table in frontof her, let her head fall upon them. 

Catherine stood over her aghast. 'My darling--what is it? Come and liedown--take this water. '

She put some close to her sister's hand, but Rose pushed it away. 'Don'ttalk to me, 'she said, with difficulty. 

Catherine knelt beside her in helpless pain and perplexity, her cheekresting against her sister's shoulder as a mute sign of sympathy. Whatcould be the matter? Presently her gaze travelled from Rose to theletter on the floor. It lay with the address uppermost, and she atonce recognized Langham's handwriting. But before she could combine anyrational ideas with this quick perception, Rose had partially masteredherself. She raised her head slowly and grasped her sister's arm. 

'I was startled, ' she said, a forced smile on her white lips. 'Lastnight Mr. Langham asked me to marry him--I expected him here thismorning to consult with mamma and you. That letter is to informme that--he made a mistake--and he was very sorry! So am I! It isso--so--bewildering!'

She got up restlessly and went to the fire as though shivering withcold. Catherine thought she hardly knew what she was saying. The oldersister followed her, and throwing an arm round her pressed the slimirresponsive figure close. Her eyes were bright with anger, her lipsquivering. 

'That he should _dare!_' she cried. 'Rose--my poor little Rose?'

'Don't blame him!' said Rose, crouching down before the fire, whileCatherine fell into the arm-chair again. 'It doesn't seem to count, fromyou--you have always been so ready to blame him!'

Her brow contracted--she looked frowning into the fire--her stillcolorless mouth working painfully. 

Catherine was cut to the heart. 'Oh Rose!' she said, holding out herhands, 'I will blame no one, dear, I seem hard--but I love you so. Oh, tell me--you would have told we everything once!'

There was the most painful yearning in her tone. Rose lifted a listlessright hand and put it into her sister's out-stretched palms. But shemade no answer, till suddenly, with a smothered cry, she fell towardCatherine. 

'Catherine! I cannot bear it. I said I loved him--he kissed me--I couldkill myself and him. '

Catherine never forgot the mingled tragedy and domesticity of the hourthat followed--the little familiar morning sounds in and about thehouse, maids running up and down stairs, tradesmen calling, bellsringing--and here, at her feet, a spectacle of moral and mental strugglewhich she only half understood, but which wrung her inmost heart. Twostrains of feeling seemed to be present in Rose--a sense of shook, ofwounded pride, of intolerable humiliation--and a strange interveningpassion of pity, not for herself but for Langham, which seemed to havebeen stirred in her by his letter. But though the elder questioned, andthe younger seemed to answer, Catherine could hardly piece the storytogether, nor could she find the answer to the question filling her ownindignant heart, 'Does she love him?'

At last Rose got up from her crouching position by the fire and stood, a white ghost of herself, pushing back the bright encroaching hair fromeyes that were dry and feverish. 

'If I could only be angry, --downright angry, ' she said, more to herselfthan Catherine--'it would do one good. '

'Give others leave to be angry for you!' cried Catherine. 

'Don't!' said Rose, almost fiercely drawing herself away. 'You don'tknow. It is a fate. Why did we ever meet? You may read his letter; youmust--you misjudge him--you always have. No, no'--and she nervouslycrushed the letter in her hand--'not yet. But you shall read it sometime--you and Robert too. Married people always tell one another. Itis due to him, perhaps due to me too, ' and a hot flush transfigured herpaleness for an instant. 'Oh, my head! Why does one's mind effect one'sbody like this? It shall not--it is humiliating! "Miss Leyburn has beenjilted and cannot see visitors, "--that is the kind of thing. Catherine, when you have finished that document, will you kindly come and hear mepractise my last Raff?--I am going. Good-by. '

She moved to the door, but Catherine had only just time to catch her, orshe would have fallen over a chair from sudden giddiness. 

'Miserable!' she said, dashing a tear from her eyes, 'I must go and liedown then in the proper missish fashion. Mind, on your peril, Catherine, not a word to anyone but Robert. I shall tell Agnes. And Robert is notto speak to me! No, don't come--I will go alone. '

And warning her sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside herroom, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with theletter in her hand, --the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham hadfor once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finishedsentence pleaded with her, --even in the first smart of her wrong--forpardon, for compassion, as toward something maimed and paralyzed frombirth, unworthy even of her contempt. Then the tears began to rain overher 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 papercrushed in her hands against her lips. Not good enough for what! _Tosave_?

How lightly she had dreamed of healing, redeeming, changing! And thetask is refused her. It is not so much the cry of personal desire thatshakes her as she kneels and weeps, --nor is it mere wounded woman'spride. It is a strange stern sense of law. Had she been other than sheis--more loving, less self-absorbed, loftier in motive--he couldnot have loved her so, have left her so. Deep undeveloped forcesof character stir within her. She feels herself judged, --and witha righteous judgement-issuing inexorably from the facts of life andcircumstance. 

Meanwhile Catherine was shut up downstairs with Robert who had come overearly to see how the household fared. 

Robert listened to the whole luckless story with astonishment anddismay. This particular possibility of mischief had gone out of his mindfor some time. He had been busy in his East End work. Catherine had beensilent. Over how many matters they would once have discussed with openheart was she silent now?

'I ought to have been warned, ' he said, with quick decision--'if youknew this was going on. I am the only man, among you, and I understandLangham better than the rest of you. I might have looked after the poorchild a little. '

Catherine accepted the reproach mutely as one little smart the more. However, what had she known? She had seen nothing unusual of late, nothing to make her think a crisis was approaching. Nay, she hadflattered herself that Mr. Flaxman, whom she liked, was gaining ground. 

Meanwhile Robert stood pondering anxiously what could be done. Couldanything be done?

'I must go and see him, ' he said presently. 'Yes, dearest, I must. Impossible the thing should be left so! I am his old friend, --almost herguardian. You say she is in great trouble--why it may shadow her wholelife! No--he must explain things to us--he is bound to--he shall. Itmay be something comparatively trivial in the way after all--money orprospects or something of the sort. You have not seen the letter, yousay? It is the last marriage in the world one could have desired forher--but if she loves him, Catherine, if she loves him----'

He turned to her--appealing, remonstrating. Catherine stood pale andrigid. Incredible that he should think it right to intermeddle--to takethe smallest step toward reversing so plain a declaration of God's will!She could not sympathize--she would not consent. Robert watched her inpainful indecision. He knew that she thought him indifferent to her truereason for finding some comfort even in her sister's trouble--that heseemed to her mindful only of the passing human misery, indifferent tothe 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 someone came into the room--someone with pale looks and flashingeyes. It was Agnes. 

'She just let me in to tell me, and put me out again, ' said thegirl--her whole, even cheerful self one flame of scorn and wrath. 'Whatare such creatures made for, Catherine--why do they exist?'

Meanwhile, Robert had trudged off through the frosty morning streetsto Langham's lodgings. His mood was very hot by the time he reachedhis destination, and he climbed the staircase to Langham's room in someexcitement. When he tried to open the door after the answer to his knockbiding 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 hisvisitor, Langham stood for a moment in sombre astonishment. The room waslittered with books and packing-cases with which he had been busy. 

'Come in, ' he said, not offering to shake hands. 

Robert shut the door, and, picking his way among the books, stoodleaning on the back of the chair Langham pointed out to him. Langhampaused opposite to him, his waving jet-black hair falling forwardover the marble-pale face which had been Robert's young ideal of manlybeauty. 

The two men were only six years distant in age, but so strong is oldassociation, that Robert's feeling toward his friend had always remainedin many respects the feeling of the undergraduate toward the don. Hissense of it now filled him with a curious awkwardness. 

'I know why you are come, ' said Langham slowly, after a scrutiny of hisvisitor. 

'I am here by a mere accident, ' said the other, thinking perfectfrankness best. 'My wife was present when her sister received yourletter. Rose gave her leave to tell me. I had gone up to ask after themall, 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 clearlyhad the grace to suffer in the doing of it. 

'You can have nothing to say!' said Langham, leaning against thechimney-piece and facing him with black, darkly-burning eyes. 'You knowme. '

Never had Robert seen him under this aspect. All the despair, all thebitterness hidden under 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 youmean. I do not know you as the man who could beguile a girl on to aconfession of love, and then tell her that for you marriage was toogreat a burden to be faced!'

Langham started, and then closed his lips in an iron silence. Robertrepented him a little. Langham's strange individuality always impressedhim against his will. 

'I did not come simply to reproach you, Langham, ' he went on, 'though Iconfess to being very hot! I came to try and find out--for myself only, mind--whether what prevents you from following up what I understandhappened last night is really a matter of feeling, or a matter ofoutward circumstance. If, upon reflection, you find that your feelingfor Rose is not what you imagined it to be, I shall have my own opinionabout your conduct:--but I shall be the first to acquiesce in what youhave done this morning. If, on the other hand, you are simply afraidof yourself in harness, and afraid of the responsibilities of practicalmarried life, I cannot help be begging you to talk the matter over withme, and let us face it together. Whether Rose would ever, under anycircumstances, got over the shock of this morning--I have not theremotest idea. But--' and he hesitated, 'it seems the feeling youappealed to yesterday has been of long growth. You know perfectly wellwhat havoc a thing of this kind may make in a girl's life. I don't sayit will. But, at any rate, it is all so desperately serious I could nothold my hand. I am doing what is no doubt wholly unconventional; but Iam your friend and her brother; I brought you together, and I ask you totake me into counsel. If you had but done it before!'

There was a moment's dead silence. 

'You cannot pretend to believe, ' said Langham, at last, with the samesombre self-containedness, 'that a marriage with me would be for yoursister-in-law's happiness?'

'I don't know what to believe!' cried Robert. 'No, ' he added frankly, 'no; when I saw you first attracted by Rose at Murewell I disliked theidea heartily; I was glad to see you separated; _á priori_, I neverthought you suited to each other. But reasoning that holds good whena thing is wholly in the air, looks very different when a man hascommitted himself and another, as you have done. '

Langham surveyed him for a moment, then shook his hair impatiently fromhis eyes and rose from his bending position by the fire. 

'Elsmere, there is nothing to be said! I have behaved as vilely asyou please. I have forfeited your friendship. But I should be an evengreater fiend and weakling than you think me, if, in cold blood, Icould let your sister run the risk of marrying me. I could not trustmyself--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 Iwas utterly and irrevocably sure of it. My habits are any masters. Ibelieve, '--he added slowly, his eyes fixed weirdly on something beyondRobert, 'I could even grow to _hate_ what came between me and them!'

Was it the last word of the man's life? It struck Robert with a kind ofshiver. 

'Pray heaven, ' he said with a groan, getting up to go, you may not havemade her miserable already!'

'Did it hurt her so much?' asked Langham, almost inaudibly, turningaway, Robert's tone meanwhile calling up a new and scorching image inthe subtle brain tissue. 

'I have not seen her, ' said Robert abruptly; 'but when I came in, Ifound my wife--who has no light tears--weeping for her sister. '

His voice dropped as though what he were saying were in truth toopitiful and too intimate for speech. 

Langham said no more. His face had become a marble mask again. 

'Good-by!' said Robert, taking up his hat with a dismal sense of havinggot foolishly through a fool's errand. 'As I said to you before, whatRose's feeling is at this moment I cannot even guess. Very likely shewould be the first to repudiate half of what I have been saying. AndI see that you will not talk to me--you will not take me into yourconfidence 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 cannot stay inthese rooms, in these streets. '

Robert was sore perplexed. What real--nay, what terrible suffering--inthe face and manner, and yet how futile, how needless! He felthimself wrestling with something intangible and phantom-like, whollyunsubstantial, and yet endowed with a ghastly indefinite power overhuman life. 

'It is very hard--' he said hurriedly, moving nearer--'that our oldfriendship should be crossed like this. Do trust me a little! Youare always undervaluing yourself. Why not take a friend into councilsometimes 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 andone of the most irrelevant things he had ever seen. 

'I will write to you, Elsmere, ' he said, holding out his hand, 'speechis 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 day sitting dumb andimmovable in his chair. Imagination was at work again more feverishlythan ever. He was tortured by a fixed image of Rose, suffering andpaling. 

And after a certain number of hours he could no more bear the incubusof this thought than he could put up with the flat prospects of marriedlife the night before. He was all at sea, barely sane, in fact. His lifehad been so long purely intellectual, that this sudden strain of passionand fierce practical interests seemed to unhinge him, to destroy hismental balance. 

He bethought him. This afternoon he knew she had a last rehearsal atSearle House. Afterward her custom was to come back from St. James'sPark 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 atLerwick Gardens, waiting for her, with Agnes and Mrs. Leyburn. Would shego this afternoon? A subtle instinct told him that she would. 

It was nearly six o'clock that evening when Rose, stepping out from theHigh Street station, crossed the main road and passed into the darknessof one of the streets leading up the hill. She had forced herself togo and she would go alone. But as she toiled along she felt weary andbruised all over. She carried with her a heart of lead--a sense of uttersoreness--a longing to hide herself from eyes and tongues. The onlything that dwelt softly in the shaken mind was a sort of inconsequentmemory of Mr. Flaxman's manner at the rehearsal. Had she looked so ill?She flushed hotly at the thought, and then realized again, with a senseof childish comfort, the kind look and voice, the delicate care shown inshielding her from any unnecessary exertion, the brotherly grasp ofthe hand with which he had put her into the cab that took her to theUnderground. 

Suddenly, where the road made a dark turn to the right, she saw a manstanding. As she came nearer she saw that it was Langham. 

'You!' she cried, stopping. 

He came up to her. There was a light over the doorway of a largodetached, house not far off, which threw a certain illumination overhim, though it left her in the shadow. He said nothing, but he held outboth his hands mutely. She fancied rather than saw the pale emotion ofhis look. 

'What?' she said, after a pause. 'You think to-night is last night! Youand I have nothing to say to each other, Mr. Langham. '

'I have every thing to say, ' he answered, under his breath; 'I havecommitted a crime--a villainy. '

'And it is not pleasant to you?' she said, quivering. 'I am sorry--Icannot help you. But you are wrong--it was no crime--it was necessaryand profitable like the doses of one's childhood! Oh! I might haveguessed you would do this! No, Mr. Langham, I am in no danger of aninteresting decline. I have just played my concerto very fairly. Ishall not disgrace myself at the concert to-morrow night. You may be atpeace--I have learnt several things to-day that have been salutary--verysalutary. '

She paused. He walked beside her while she pelted him--unresisting, helplessly silent. 

'Don't come any farther, ' she said resolutely after a minute, turningto face him. 'Let us be quits! I was a tempting easy prey. I bear you nomalice. And do not let me break your friendship with Robert; that beganbefore this foolish business--it should outlast it. Very likely _we_shall be friends again, like ordinary people, some day. I do not imagineyour wound is very deep, and----'

But no! Her lips closed; not even for pride's sake, and retort'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 amongher furs but the gleaming whiteness of her face. The whole personalityseemed centred in the voice--the half-mocking, vibrating voice. He tookher hand and dropped it instantly. 

'You do not understand, ' he said, hopelessly--feeling as though everyphrase he uttered, or could utter, were equally fatuous, equallyshameful. 'Thank heaven you never will understand. '

'I think I do, ' she said with a change of tone, and paused. He raisedhis eyes involuntarily, met hers, and stood bewildered. What _was_ theexpression in them? It was yearning--but not the yearning of passion. 'If things had been different--if one could change the self--if the pastwere nobler!--was that the cry of them? A painful humility--a boundlesspity--the rise of some moral wave within her he could neither measurenor explain--these were some of the impressions which passed from her tohim. A fresh gulf opened between them, and he saw her transformed onthe farther side, with, as it were, a loftier gesture, a nobler stature, than had ever yet been hers. 

He bent forward quickly, caught her hands, held them for an instant tohis lips in a convulsive grasp, dropped them, and was gone. 

He gained his own room again. There lay the medley of his books, hisonly friends, his real passion. Why had he ever tampered with any other?

'_It was not love--not love!_' he said to himself, with an accent ofinfinite relief as he sank into his chair. '_Her_ smart will heal. '

BOOK VI. NEW OPENINGS. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Ten days after Langham's return to Oxford, Elsmere received acharacteristic letter from him, asking whether their friendship was tobe considered as still existing or at an end. The calm and even proudmelancholy of the letter showed a considerable subsidence of that stateof half-frenzied irritation and discomfort in which Elsmere had lastseen him. The writer, indeed, was clearly settling down into anotherperiod of pessimistic quietism such as that which had followed uponhis first young efforts at self-assertion years before. But this secondperiod bore the marks of an even profounder depression of all the vitalforces than the first, and as Elsmere, with a deep sigh, half-angry, half-relenting, put down the letter, he felt the conviction that nofresh influence from the outside world would ever again be allowed topenetrate the solitude of Langham's life. In comparison with the man whohad just addressed him, the tutor of his undergraduate recollections wasa vigorous and sociable human being. 

The relenting grew upon him, and he wrote a sensible, affectionateletter in return. Whatever had been his natural feelings of resentment, he said, he could not realize, now that the crisis was past, that hecared less about his old friend. 'As far as we two are concerned, lotus forget it all. I could hardly say this, you will easily imagine, if Ithought you had done serious or irreparable harm. But both my wife andI agree now in thinking that by a pure accident, as it were, and to herown surprise, Rose has escaped either. It will be some time, no doubt, before she will admit it. A girl is not so easily disloyal to her past. But to us it is tolerably clear. At any rate, I send you our opinion forwhat 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 thatnow vulnerableness of soul produced in her by the shock of that Februarymorning was a great softening toward Catherine. Whatever might havebeen Catherine's intense relief when Robert returned from his abortivemission, she never afterward let a disparaging word toward Langhamescape her lips to Rose. She was tenderness and sympathy itself, andRose, in her curious reaction against her old self, and against thenoisy world of flattery and excitement in which she had been living, turned to Catherine as she had never done since she was a tiny child. She would spend hours in a corner of the Bedford Square drawing-roompretending to read, or play with little Mary, in reality recovering, like some bruised and trodden plant, under the healing influence ofthought and silence. 

One day when they were alone in the firelight, she startled Catherine bysaying with one of her old, odd smiles, --

'Do you know, Cathie, how I always see myself nowadays? It is a sort ofhullucination. I see a girl at the foot of a precipice. She has had afall, and she is sitting up, feeling all her limbs. And, to her greatastonishment, there is no bone broken!'

And she held herself back from Catherine's knee lest her sister shouldattempt to caress her, her eyes bright and calm. Nor would she allowan answer, drowning all that Catherine might have said in a sudden rushafter the child, who was wandering round them in search of a playfellow. 

In truth, Rose Leyburn's girlish passion for Edward Langham had beena kind of accident unrelated to the main forces of character. He hadcrossed her path in a moment of discontent, of aimless revolt andlounging when she was but fresh emerged from the cramping conditions ofher childhood and trembling on the brink of new and unknown activities. His intellectual prestige, his melancholy, his personal beauty, his verystrangenesses and weaknesses, had made a deep impression on the girl'simmature romantic sense. His resistance had increased the charm, and theinterval of angry, resentful separation had done nothing to weaken it. As to the months in London, they had been one long duel betweenherself and him--a duel which had all the fascination of difficulty anduncertainty, but in which pride and caprice had dealt and sustaineda large portion of the blows. Then, after a moment of intoxicatingvictory, Langham's endangered habits and threatened individualityhad asserted themselves once for all. And from the whole longstruggle--passion, exultation, and crushing defeat--it often seemed toher that she had gained neither joy nor irreparable grief, but a newbirth of character, a soul!

It may easily be imagined that Hugh Flaxman felt a peculiarly keeninterest in Langham's disappearance. On the afternoon of the SearleHouse rehearsal he had awaited Rose's coming in a state of extraordinaryirritation. He expected a blushing _fiancée_, in a fool's paradise, asking by manner, if not by word, for his congratulations, and taking adecent feminine pleasure perhaps in the pang she might suspect inhim. And he had already taken his pleasure in the planning of somedouble-edged congratulations. 

Then up the steps of the concert platform there came a pale, tired girlwho seemed specially to avoid his look, who found a quiet corner andsaid hardly a word to anybody till her turn came to play. 

His revulsion of feeling was complete. After her piece he made his wayup to her, and was her watchful, unobtrusive guardian for the rest ofthe afternoon. 

He walked home after he had put her into her cab in a whirl of impatientconjecture. 

'As compared to last night, she looks this afternoon as if she had hadan illness! What on earth has that philandering ass been about? If hedid 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_ sawnothing, like all the rest! Poor little cold hand!'

Next day in the street he met Elsmere, turned and walked with him, andby dint of leading the conversation a little discovered that Langham hadleft London. 

Gone! But not without a crisis--that was evident. During the din ofpreparation for the Searle House concert, and during the meetingswhich it entailed, now at the Varleys', now at the house of some otherconnection of his--for the concert was the work of his friends, andgiven in the town house of his decrepit great-uncle, Lord Daniel--he hadmany opportunities of observing Rose. And he felt a soft, indefinablechange in her which kept him in a perpetual answering vibration ofsympathy and curiosity. She seemed to him for the moment to have losther passionate relish for living, that relish which had always beenso marked with her. Her bubble of social pleasure was pricked. She dideverything she had to do, and did it admirably. But all through she wasto his fancy absent and _distraite_, pursuing, through the tumult ofwhich she was often the central figure, some inner meditations of whichneither he or anyone else knew anything. Some eclipse had passed overthe girl's light, self-satisfied temper; some searching thrill ofexperience had gone through the whole nature. She had suffered, and shewas quietly fighting down her suffering without a word to anybody. 

Flaxman's guesses as to what had happened came often very near thetruth, and the mixture of indignation and relief with which he receivedhis own conjectures amused himself. 

'To think, ' he said to himself once with a long breath 'that thatcreature was never at a public school, and will go to his death withoutany one of the kickings due to him!'

Then his very next impulse, perhaps, would be an impulse of gratitudetoward this same 'creature, ' toward the man who had released a prize hehad had the tardy sense to see was not meant for him. _Free_ again--tobe loved, to be won! There was the fact of facts after all. 

His own future policy, however, gave him much anxious thought. Clearlyat present the one thing to be done was to keep his own ambitionscarefully out of sight. He had the skill to see that she was in a stateof reaction, of moral and mental fatigue. What she mutely seemed to askof her friends was not to be made to feel. 

He took his cue accordingly. He talked to his sister. He kept LadyCharlotte in order. After all her eager expectation on Hugh's behalf, Lady Helen had been dumfounded by the sudden emergence of Langhamat Lady Charlotte's party for their common discomfiture. Who was theman?--why?--what did it all mean? Hugh had the most provoking way ofgiving 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 wasprobably on the point of engaging herself to somebody else! Lady Helenmade believe to be angry, and it was not till she had reduced Hugh to awhimsical penitence and a full confession of all he knew or suspected, that she consented, with as much loftiness as the physique of an elfallowed her, to be his good friend again, and to play those cards forhim which at the moment he could not play for himself. 

So in the cheeriest, daintiest way Rose was made much of by both brotherand sister. Lady Helen chatted of gowns and music and people, whiskedRose and Agnes off to this party and that, brought fruit and flowers toMrs. Leyburn, made pretty deferential love to Catherine, and generally, to Mrs. Pierson's disgust, became the girls' chief chaperon in a fastfilling London. Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman was always there to befriend oramuse his sister's _protégées_--always there, but never in the way. Hewas bantering, sympathetic, critical, laudatory, what you will; but allthe time he preserved a delicate distance between himself and Rose, abright nonchalance and impersonality of tone toward her which made hiscompanionship a perpetual tonic. And, between them, he and Helen coercedLady Charlotte. A few inconvenient inquiries after Rose's health, afew unexplained stares and 'humphs' and grunts, a few irrelevantdisquisitions on her nephew's merits of head and heart, were all she wasable to allow herself. And yet she was inwardly seething with a massof sentiments, to which it would have been pleasant to giveexpression--anger with Rose for having been so blind and so presumptuousas to prefer some one else to Hugh; terror with Hugh for his persistentdisregard of her advice and the Duke's feelings; and a burning desire toknow the precise why and wherefore of Langham's disappearance. She wastoo lofty to become Rose's aunt without a struggle, but she was not toolofty to feel the hungriest interest in her love affairs. 

But, as we have said, the person who for the time profited most byRose's shaken mood was Catherine. The girl coming over, restless underher own smart, would fall to watching the trial of the woman and thewife, and would often perforce forget herself and her smaller woes inthe pity of it. She stayed in Bedford Square once for a week, and thenfor the first time she realized the profound change which had passedover the Elsmeres' life. As much tenderness between husband and wife asever--perhaps more expression of it even than before, as though from aninstinctive craving to hide the separateness below from each other andfrom the world. But Robert went his way, Catherine hers. Their spheresof work lay far apart; their interests were diverging fast; and thoughRobert at any rate was perpetually resisting, all sorts of freshinvading silences were always coming in to limit talk, and increase thenumber of sore points which each avoided. Robert was hard at work inthe East End. Under Murray Edwardes' auspices. He was already known tocertain circles as a seceder from the Church who was likely to becomeboth powerful and popular. Two articles of his in the 'NineteenthCentury, ' on disputed points of Biblical criticism, had distinctly madetheir mark, and several of the veterans of philosophical debatehad already taken friendly and flattering notice of the new writer. Meanwhile Catherine was teaching in Mr. Clarendon's Sunday-school, andattending his prayer-meetings. The more expansive Robert's energiesbecame, the more she suffered, and the more the small dailyopportunities for friction multiplied. Soon she could hardly bear tohear him talk about his work, and she never opened the number of the'Nineteenth Century' which contained his papers. Nor had he the heart toask her to read them. 

Murray Edwardes had received Elsmere, on his first appearance 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, atany 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 lookrather for a combination from many sides than for the development of anynow existing sect. But, supposing, ' he added, smiling, 'supposing I doin time set up a congregation and a service of my own, is there reallyroom for you and me? Should I not be infringing on a work I respect agreat deal too much for anything of the sort?'

Edwardes laughed the notion to scorn. 

The parish, as a whole, contained 20, 000 persons. The existing churches, which, with the exception of St. Wilfrid's, were miserably attended, provided accommodation at the out-side for 3, 000. His own chapel held400, and was about half full. 

'You and I may drop our lives here, ' he said, his pleasant friendlinessdarkened for a moment by the look of melancholy which London work seemsto develop even in the most buoyant of men, 'and only a few hundredpersons, at the most, be ever the wiser. Begin with us--then make yourown circle. '

And he forthwith carried off his visitor to the point from which, as itseemed to him, Elsmere's work might start, viz. , a lecture-room half amile from his own chapel, where two helpers of his had just establishedan independent venture. 

Murray Edwardes had at the time an interesting and miscellaneous staffof lay-curates. He asked no questions as to religious opinions, butin general the men who volunteered under him--civil servants, a youngdoctor, a briefless barrister or two--were men who had drifted fromreceived beliefs, and found pleasure and freedom in working for andwith him they could hardly have found elsewhere. The two who had plantedtheir outpost in what seemed to them a particularly promising corner ofthe district were men of whom Edwardes knew personally little. 'I havereally not much concern with what they do, ' he explained to Elsmere, 'except that they got a small share of our funds. But I know they wanthelp, and if they will take you in, I think you will make something ofit. '

After a tramp through the muddy winter streets, they came upon a newblock of warehouses, in the lower windows of which some bills announceda night-school for boys and men. Here, to judge from the commotion roundthe doors, a lively scene was going on. Outside, a gang of young roughswere hammering at the doors, and shrieking witticisms through thekeyhole. Inside, as soon as Murray Edwardes and Elsmere, by dint of goodhumor and strong shoulders, had succeeded in shoving their way throughand shutting the door behind them, they found a still more animatedperformance in progress. The schoolroom was in almost total darkness;the pupils, some twenty in number, were racing about, like so manyshadowy demons, pelting each other and their teachers with the 'dips'which, as the buildings were new, and not yet fitted for gas, had beenprovided to light them through their three R's. In the middle stood thetwo philanthropists they were in search of, freely bedaubed withtallow, one employed in boxing a boy's ears, the other in saving a hugeink-bottle whereon some enterprising spirit had just laid hands byway of varying the rebel ammunition. Murray Edwardes, who was in hiselement, went to the rescue at once, helped by Robert. The boy-minister, as he looked, had been, in fact, 'bow' of the Cambridge eight, andpossessed muscles which men twice his size might have envied. In threeminutes he had put a couple of ringleaders into the street by the scruffof the neck, relit a lamp which had been turned out, and got the rest ofthe rioters in hand. Elsmere backed him ably, and in a very short timethey had cleared the premises. 

Then the four looked at each other, and Edwardes went off into a shoutof laughter. 

'My dear Wardlaw, my condolences to your coat! But I don't believe ifI were a rough myself I could resist "dips. " Let me introduce afriend--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 Elsmere, scrutinizing him from under bushy eyebrows. He was panting andbeplastered with tallow, but the inner man was evidently quiteunruffled, and Elsmere liked the shrewd Scotch face and gray eyes. 

'It isn't only a pair of arms we want, ' he remarked dryly, 'but a bit ofscience behind them. Mr. Elsmere, I observed, can use his. '

Then he turned to a tall, affected-looking youth with a large nose andlong fair hair, who stood gasping with his hands upon his sides, hiseyes, full of a moody wrath, fixed on the wreck and disarray of theschoolroom. 

'Well, Mackay, have they knocked the wind out of you? My friend andhelper, --Mr. Elsmere. Come and sit down, won't you, a minute? They'veleft us the chairs, I perceive, and there's a spark or two of fire. Doyou smoke? Will you light up?'

The four men sat on chatting some time, and then Wardlaw and Elsmerewalked home together. It had been all arranged. Mackay, a curious, morbid fellow, who had thrown himself into Unitarianism and charitymainly out of opposition to an orthodox and bourgeois family, and whohad a great idea of his own social powers, was somewhat grudging andungracious through it all. But Elsmere's proposals were much too goodto be refused. He offered to bring to the undertaking his time, hisclergyman's experience, and as much money as might be wanted. Wardlawlistened to him cautiously for an hour, took stock of the whole manphysically and morally, and finally said, as he very quietly anddeliberately knocked the ashes out of his pipe, --

'All right, I'm your man, Mr. Elsmere. If Mackay agrees, I vote we makeyou captain of this venture. '

'Nothing of the sort, ' said Elsmere. 'In London I am a novice; I come tolearn, not to lead. '

Wardlaw shook his head with a little shrewd smile. Mackay faintlyendorsed his companion's offer, and the party broke up. 

That was in January. In two months from that time, by the natural forceof things, Elsmere, in spite of diffidence and his own most sincere wishto avoid a premature leadership, had become the head and heart ofthe Elgood Street undertaking, which had already assumed much largerproportions. Wardlaw was giving him silent approval and invaluablehelp, while young Mackay was in the first uncomfortable stages of ahero-worship which promised to be exceedingly good for him. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

There were one or two curious points connected with the beginnings ofElsmere's venture in North R---- one of which may just be noticed here. Wardlaw, his predecessor and colleague, had speculatively little ornothing in common with Elsmere or Murray Edwardes. He was a devotedand Orthodox Comtist, for whom Edwardes had provided an outlet forthe philanthropic passion, as he had for many others belonging to farstranger and remoter faiths. 

By profession, he was a barrister, with a small and struggling practice. On ibis practice, however, he had married, and his wife, who had been adoctor's daughter and a national schoolmistress, had the same ardors ashimself. They lived in one of the dismal little squares near the GoswellRoad, and had two children. The wife, as a Positivist mother is bound todo, tended and taught her children entirely herself. She might have beenseen any day wheeling their perambulator through the dreary streets of adreary region; she was their Providence, their deity, the representativeto them of all tenderness and all authority. But when her work with themwas done, she would throw herself into charity organization cases, intoefforts for the protection of workhouse servants, into the homeliestacts of ministry toward the sick, till her dowdy little figure and herface, which but for the stress of London, of labor, and of poverty, would have had a blunt fresh-colored dairymaid's charm, became symbolsof a divine and sacred helpfulness in the eyes of hundreds of strainingmen and women. 

The husband also, after a day spent in chambers, would give his eveningsto teaching or committee work. They never allowed themselves to breatheeven to each other that life might have brighter things to showthem than the neighborhood of the Goswell Road. There was a certainnarrowness in their devotion; they had their bitternesses and ignoranceslike other people; but the more Robert knew of them the more profoundbecame his admiration for that potent spirit of social help which in ourgeneration Comtism has done so much to develop, even among those of uswho are but moderately influenced by Comte's philosophy, and can makenothing of the religion of Humanity. 

Wardlaw has no large part in the story of Elsmere's work in North R----. In spite of Robert's efforts, and against his will, the man of meanergifts and commoner clay was eclipsed by that brilliant and persuasivesomething in Elsmere which a kind genius had infused into him at birth. And we shall see that in time Robert's energies took a direction whichWardlaw could not follow with any heartiness. But at the beginningElsmere owed him much, and it was a debt he was never tired of honoring. 

In the fast place, Wardlaw's choice of the Elgood Street room as a freshcentre for civilizing effort had been extremely shrewd. The districtlying about it, as Robert soon came to know, contained a number ofpromising elements. 

Close by the dingy street which sheltered their school-room, rose thegreat pile of a new factory of artistic pottery, a rival on the northside of the river to Doulton's immense works on the south. The oldwinding streets near it, and the blocks of workman's dwellings recentlyerected under its shadow, were largely occupied by the workers in itsinnumerable floors, and among these workers was a large proportion ofskilled artisans, men often of a considerable amount of cultivation, earning high wages, and maintaining a high standard of comfort. A greatmany of them, trained in the art school which Murray Edwardes had beenlargely instrumental in establishing within easy distance of theirhouses, were men of genuine artistic gifts and accomplishment, and asthe development of one faculty tends on the whole to set others working, when Robert, after a few weeks' work in the place, set up a popularhistorical lecture once a fortnight, announcing the fact by a blue andwhite poster in the school-room windows, it was the potters who providedhim with his first hearers. 

The rest of the parish was divided between a population of docklaborers, settled there to supply the needs of the great dock which ranup into the south-eastern corner of it, two or three huge breweries, anda colony of watchmakers, an offshoot of Clerkenwell, who lived togetherin two or three streets, and showed the same peculiarities of race andspecialized training to be noticed in the more northerly settlement fromwhich they had been thrown off like a swarm from a hive. Outside thesewell-defined trades there was, of course, a warehouse population, and amass of heterogeneous cadging and catering which went on chiefly in theriver-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 verysuccessful work among the lowest strata of the parish. From them at oneend of the scale, and from the innumerable clerks and superintendentswho during the daytime crowded the vast warehouses, of which thedistrict was full, its Lenten congregations, now in full activity, werechiefly drawn. 

The Protestant opposition, which had shown itself so brutally andpersistently in old days, was now, so far as outward manifestationswent, all but extinct. The cassocked monk-like clergy might preach and'process' in the open air as much as they pleased. The populace, whereit was not indifferent, was friendly, and devoted living had borne itsnatural fruits. 

A small incident, which need not be recorded, recalled to Elsmere'smind--after he had been working some six weeks in the district--theforgotten unwelcome fact that St. Wilfrid's was the very church whereNewcome, first as senior curate and then as vicar, had spent those tenwonderful years into which Elsmere at Murewell had been never tired ofinquiring. The thought of Newcome was a very sore thought. Elsmere hadwritten to him announcing his resignation of his living immediatelyafter his interview with the Bishop. The letter had remained unanswered, and it was by now tolerably clear that the silence of its recipientmeant a withdrawal from all friendly relations with the writer. Elsmere's affectionate, sensitive nature took such things hardly, especially as he knew that Newcome's life was becoming increasinglydifficult end embittered. And it gave him now a fresh pang to imaginehow Newcome would receive the news of his quondam friend's 'infidelpropaganda, ' established on the very ground where he himself had all butdied for those beliefs Elsmere had thrown over. 

But Robert was learning a certain hardness in this London life which wasnot without its uses to character. Hitherto he had always swum with thestream, cheered by the support of all the great and prevailing Englishtraditions. Here, he and his few friends were fighting a solitaryfight apart from the organized system of English religion and Englishphilanthropy. All the elements of culture and religion already existingin the place were against them. The clergy of St. Wilfrid's passed therewith cold averted eyes; the old and _fainéant_ rector of the parishchurch very soon let it be known what he thought as to the taste ofElsmere's intrusion on his parish, or as to the eternal chances of thosewho 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 clearlyno relation at all to the facts. But every little incident in this newstruggle of his life cost Elsmere more perhaps than it would have costother men. No part of it came easily to him. Only a high Utopian visiondrove 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 theprosaic and perplexing details of this hew attempt to carry enthusiasminto life. 

It was soon plain to him that in this teeming section of London thechance of the religious reformer lay entirely among the _upper workingclass_. In London, at any rate, all that is most prosperous andintelligent among the working class holds itself aloof--broadlyspeaking--from all existing spiritual agencies, whether of Church orDissent. 

Upon the genuine London artisan the Church has practically no holdwhatever; and Dissent has nothing like the hold which it has on similarmaterial in the great towns of the North. Toward religion in generalthe prevailing attitude is, one of indifference tinged with hostility. 'Eight hundred thousand people in South London, of whom the enormousproportion belong to the working class, and among them, Church andDissent nowhere--_Christianity not in possession_. Such is the estimateof an Evangelical of our day; and similar laments come from all partsof the capital. The Londoner is on the whole more conceited, moreprejudiced, more given over to crude theorizing, than his North-countrybrother, the mill-hand, whose mere position, as one of a homogeneousand tolerably constant body, subjects him to a continuous disciplineof intercourse and discussion. Our popular religion, broadlyspeaking, means nothing to him. He is sharp enough to see through itscontradictions and absurdities; he has no dread of losing what henever valued; his sense of antiquity, of history, is nil; and hislife supplies him with excitement enough without the stimulants of'other-worldliness. ' Religion has been on the whole irrationallypresented to him, and the result on his part has been an irrationalbreach with the whole moral and religious order of ideas. 

But the race is quick-witted and imaginative. The Greek cities whichwelcomed and spread Christianity carried within them much the sameelements as are supplied by certain sections of the London workingclass-elements of restlessness, of sensibility, of passion. The moreintermingling of races, which a modern city shares with those oldtowns of Asia Minor, predisposes the mind to a greater openness andreceptiveness, whether for good or evil. 

As the weeks passed on, and after the first inevitable despondencyproduced by strange surroundings and an unwonted isolation had begunto wear off; Robert often found himself filled with a strange flame andardor of hope! But his first steps had nothing to do with Religion. He made himself quickly felt in the night school, and as soon as hepossibly could he hired a large room at the back of their existing room, on the same floor, where, on the recreation evenings, he might beginthe storytelling which had been so great a success at Murewell. Thestory-telling struck the neighborhood as a great novelty. At firstonly a few youths straggled in from the front room, where dominoes anddraughts and the illustrated papers held seductive sway. The next nightthe number was increased, and by the fourth or fifth evening the roomwas so well filled both by boys and a large contingent of artisans, that it seemed well to appoint a special evening in the week forstory-telling, or the recreation room would have been deserted. 

In these performances Elsmere's aim had always been two-fold--therousing of moral sympathy and the awakening of the imaginative powerpure and simple. He ranged the whole world for stories. Sometimes itwould be merely some feature of London life itself--the history of agreat fire, for instance, and its hairbreadth escapes; a collision inthe river; a string of instances as true and homely and realisticas they could be made of the way in which the poor help one another. Sometimes it would be stories illustrating the dangers and difficultiesof particular trades--a colliery explosion and the daring of therescuers; incidents from the life of the great Northern iron-works, orfrom that of the Lancashire factories; or stories of English countrylife and its humors, given sometimes in dialect--Devonshire, orYorkshire, 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 thelifeboats, or the fascinating story of the ships of science, exploringstep by step, through miles of water, the past, the inhabitants, thehills and valleys of that underworld, that vast Atlantic bed, in whichMount Blanc might be buried without showing even his top-most snow-fieldabove the plain of waves. Then at other times it would be the simplefrolic and fancy of fiction--fairy tale and legend, Greek myth orIcelandic saga, episodes from Walter Scott, from Cooper, from Dumas;to be followed perhaps on the next evening by the terse and vigorousbiography of some man of the people--of Stephenson or Cobden, of ThomasCooper or John Bright, or even of Thomas Carlyle. 

One evening, some weeks after it had begun, Hugh Flaxman, hearingfrom Rose of the success of the experiment, went down to hear his newacquaintance tell the story of Monte Cristo's escape from the Châteaud'If. He started an hour earlier than was necessary, and with anadmirable impartiality he spent that hour at St. Wilfrid's hearingvespers. Flaxman had a passion for intellectual or social novelty; andthis passion was beguiling him into a close observation of Elsmere. Atthe same time he was crossed and complicated by all sorts of fastidiousconservative fibres, and when his friends talked rationalism, itoften gave him a vehement pleasure to maintain that a good Catholic orRitualist service was worth all their arguments, and would outlast them. His taste drew him to the Church, so did a love of opposition to current'isms. ' Bishops counted on him for subscriptions, and High Churchdivines sent him their pamphlets. He never refused the subscriptions, but it should be added that with equal regularity _he_ droppedthe pamphlets into his waste-paper basket. Altogether a not verydecipherable person in religious matters--as Rose had alreadydiscovered. 

The change from the dim and perfumed spaces of St. Wilfrid's to the barewarehouse room with its packed rows of listeners was striking enough. Here were no bowed figures, no _recueillement_. In the blaze of crudelight every eager eye was fixed upon the slight elastic figure on theplatform, each change in the expressive face, each gesture of the longarms and thin flexible hands, finding its response in the laughter, theattentive silence, the frowning suspense of the audience. At one point aband of young roughs at the back made a disturbance, but their neighborshad the offenders quelled and out in a twinkling, and the room cried outfor a repetition of the sentences which had been lost in the noise. WhenDantes, opening his knife with his teeth, managed to out the stringsof the sack, a gasp of relief ran through the crowd; when at last hereached _terra firma_ there was a ringing cheer. 

'What is he, d'ye know?' Flaxman heard a mechanic ask his neighbor, asRobert paused for a moment to get breath, the man jerking a grimy thumbin the story-teller's direction meanwhile. 'Seems like a parson somehow. But he ain't a parson. '

'Not he, ' said the other laconically. 'Knows better. Most of 'em ascomes down 'ere stuffs all they have to say as full of goody-goody asan egg's full of meat. If he wur that sort you wouldn't catch _me_ here. Never heard him say anything in the "dear brethren" sort of style, andI'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 speakerdubiously. 'Means to shovel it in by-and-by. '

'Well, I don't know as I couldn't stand it if he did, ' returned hiscompanion. 'He'd let other fellows have their say, anyhow. '

Flaxman looked curiously at the speaker. He was a young man, agas-fitter--to judge by the contents of the basket he seemed to havebrought in with him on his way from work--with eyes like live birds, andsmall emaciated features. During the story Flaxman had noticed the man'sthin begrimed hand, as it rested on the bench in front of him, tremblingwith excitement. 

Another project of Robert's, started as soon as he had felt his way alittle in the district, was the scientific Sunday-school. This was thedirect result of a paragraph in Huxley's Lay Sermons, where the hint ofsuch a school was first thrown out. However, since the introduction ofscience teaching into the Board schools, the novelty and necessity ofsuch a supplement to a child's ordinary education is not what it was. Robert set it up mainly for the sake of drawing the boys out of thestreets in the afternoons, and providing them with some other food forfancy and delight than larking and smoking and penny dreadfuls. A littlesimple chemical and electrical experiment went down greatly; so dida botany class, to which Elsmere would come armed with two storesof flowers, one to be picked to pieces, the other to be distributedaccording to memory and attention. A year before he had had a number oflarge colored plates of tropical fruit and flowers prepared for him by aKew assistant. Those he would often set up on a large screen, or putup on the walls, till the dingy school-room became a bower of superbblossom and luxuriant leaf, a glow of red and purple and orange. Andthen--still by the help of pictures--he would take his class on atour through strange lands, talking to them of China or Egypt or SouthAmerica, till they followed him up the Amazon, or into the pyramids orthrough the Pampas, or into the mysterious buried cities of Mexico, asthe children of Hamelin followed the magic of the Pied Piper. 

Hardly any of those who came to him, adults or children, while almostall of the artisan class, were of the poorest class. He knew it, and hadlaid his plans for such a result. Such work as he had at heart has nochance with the lowest in the social scale, in its beginnings. It musthave something to work upon, and must penetrate downward. He only canreceive who already hath--there is no profounder axiom. 

And meanwhile the months passed on, and he was still brooding, stillwaiting. At last the spark fell. 

There, in the next street but one to Elgood Street rose the famousWorkmen's Club of North R----. It had been started by a former Liberalclergyman of the parish, whose main object however, had been to trainthe workmen to manage it for themselves. His training had been, in facttoo successful. Not only was it now wholly managed by artisans, but ithad come to be a centre of active, nay, brutal, opposition to the Churchand faith which had originally fostered it. In organic connection withit was a large debating hall, in which the most notorious secularistlecturers held forth every Sunday evening; and next door to it, underits shadow and patronage, was a little dingy shop filled to overflowingwith the coarsest freethinking publications, Colonel Ingersoll's booksoccupying the place of honor in the window and the 'Freethinker' placardflaunting at the door. Inside there was still more highly seasonedliterature even than the 'Freethinker' to be had. There was inparticular a small half-penny paper which was understood to be in somesense the special organ of the North R---- Club; which was at any ratepublished close by, and edited by one of the workmen founders of theclub. This unsavory sheet began to be more and more defiantly advertisedthrough the parish as Lent drew on toward Passion week, and theexertions of St. Wilfrid's and of the other churches, which were beingspurred on by the Ritualists' success, became more apparent. Soon itseemed to Robert that every bit of boarding and every waste wall wasfilled with the announcement:--

'Read "Faith and Fools. " Enormous success. Our "Comic Life of Christ"now nearly completed. Quite the best thing of its kind going. Woodcutthis week--Transfiguration. '

His heart grew fierce within him. One night in Passion week he left thenight school about ten o'clock. His way led him past the club, which wasbrilliantly lit up, and evidently in full activity. Round the door therewas a knot of workmen lounging. It was a mild moonlit April night, andthe air was pleasant. Several of them had copies of 'Faith and Fools, 'and were showing the week's woodcut to those about them, with chucklesand spurts of laughter. 

Robert caught a few words as he hurried past them, and stirred by asudden 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_sang-froid_, which struck on his tired nerves almost more painfullythen the laughing brutality of the men he had just passed. 

Directly he found himself in another street he opened the paper undera lamp-post. It contained a caricature of the Crucifixion, the scrollemanating from Mary Magdalene's mouth, in particular, containingobscenities which cannot be quoted here. 

Robert thrust it into his pocket and strode on, every nerve quivering. 

'This is Wednesday in Passion week, ' he said to himself. The day afterto-morrow is Good Friday!'

He walked fast in a north-westerly direction, and soon found himselfwithin the City, where the streets were long since empty and silent. Buthe noticed nothing around him. His thoughts were in the distant East, among the flat roofs and white walls of Nazareth, the olives of Bethany, the steep streets and rocky ramparts of Jerusalem. He had seen them withthe bodily eye, and the fact had enormously quickened his historicalperception. The child of Nazareth, the moralist and teacher of Capernaumand Gennesaret, the strenuous seer and martyr of the later Jerusalempreaching--all these various images sprang into throbbing poetic lifewithin him. That anything in human shape should be found capable ofdragging this life and this death through the mire of a hideous andbefouling laughter! Who was responsible? To what cause could one tracesuch a temper of mind toward such an object--present and militant asthat temper is in all the crowded centres of working life throughoutmodern Europe? The toiler of the world as he matures may be made to loveSocrates or Buddha or Marcus Aurelius. It would seem often as thoughhe could not be made to love Jesus! Is it the Nemesis that ultimatelydiscovers and avenges the sublimest, the least conscious departure fromsimplicity and verity?--is it the last and most terrible illustration ofa great axiom! '_Faith has a judge--in truth?_'

He went home and lay awake half the light pondering. If he could butpour out his heart! But though Catherine, the wife of his heart, of hisyouth, is there, close beside him, doubt and struggle and perplexity arealike frozen on his lips. He cannot speak without sympathy, and she willnot bear except under a moral compulsion which he shrinks more and morepainfully from exercising. 

The next night was a storytelling night. He spent it in telling thelegend of St. Francis. When it was over he asked the audience to waita moment, and there and then--with the tender, imaginative Franciscanatmosphere, as it were, still about them--he delivered a short andvigorous protest, in the name of decency, good feeling, and common-senseagainst the idiotic profanities with which the whole immediateneighborhood seemed to be reeking. It was the first time he hadapproached any religious matter directly. A knot of workmen sittingtogether at the back of the room looked at each other with a significantgrimace or two. 

When Robert ceased speaking, one of them, an elderly watchmaker, got upand made a dry and cynical little speech, nothing moving but the thinlips in the shrivelled mahogany face. Robert knew the man well. He was aGenevese by birth, Calvinist by blood, revolutionist by development. Hecomplained that Mr. Elsmere had taken his audience by surprise; that agood many of those present understood the remarks he had just made as anattack upon an institution in which many of them were deeply interested;and that he invited Mr. Elsmere to a more thorough discussion of thematter, in a place where he could be both heard and answered. 

The room applauded with some signs of suppressed excitement. Most of themen there were accustomed to disputation of the sort which any Sundayvisitor to Victoria Park may hear going on there week after week. Elsmere had made a vivid impression; and the prospect of a fight withhim had an unusual piquancy. '

Robert sprang up. 'When you will, ' he said. 'I am ready to stand by whatI have just said in the face of you all, it you care to hear it. '

Place and particulars were hastily arranged, subject to the approvalof the club committee, and Elsmere's audience separated in a glow ofcuriosity and expection. 

'Didn't I tell ye?' the gas-fitter's snarling friend said to him. 'Scratch him and you find the parson. Then upper-class folk, when theycome among us poor ones, always seem to me just hunting for souls, asthose Injuns he was talking about last week hunt for scalps. They can'tgo to heaven without a certain number of 'em slung about 'em. '

'Wait a bit!' said the gas-fitter, his quick dark eyes betraying acertain raised inner temperature. 

Next morning the North R---- Club was placarded with announcements thaton Easter Eve next Robert Elsmere, Esq. , would deliver a lecture in theDebating Hall on 'The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life;' to be followed, as usual, by general discussion. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

It was the afternoon of Good Friday. Catherine had been to church atSt. Paul's, and Robert, though not without some inward struggle, hadaccompanied her. Their mid-day meal was over, and Robert had beendevoting himself to Mary, who had been tottering round the room in hiswake, clutching one finger tight with her chubby hand. In particular, hehad been coaxing her into friendship with a wooden Japanese dragon whichwound itself in awful yet most seductive coils all round the cabinet atthe end of the room. It was Mary's weekly task to embrace this horror, and the performance went by the name of 'kissing the Jabberwock. ' Ithad been triumphantly achieved, and, as the reward of bravery, Marywas being carried round the room on her father's shoulder, holding onmercilessly to his curls, her shining blue eyes darting scorn at thedefeated monster. 

At last Robert deposited her on a rug beside a fascinating farm-yardwhich lay there spread out for her, and stood looking, not at the childbut at his wife. 

'Catherine, I feel so much as Mary did three minutes ago!'

She looked up startled. The tone was light, but the sadness, the emotionof the eyes, contradicted it. 

'I want courage, ' he went on--'courage to tell you something that mayhurt you. And yet I ought to tell it. '

Her face took the shrinking expression which was so painful to him. Butshe waited quietly for what he had to say. 

'You know, I think, ' he said, looking away from her to the gray Museumoutside, '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 deliveredmyself in any way. Now there has come an opening. '

And he described to her--while she shivered a little and drew herselftogether--the provocations which were leading him into a tussle with theNorth R---- Club. 

'They have given me a very civil invitation. They are the sort of menafter 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 littlemore purpose. '

'What have you to give them, Robert?' asked Catherine, after a pause, her eyes bent on the child's stocking she was knitting. Her heart wasfull enough already, poor soul. Oh, the bitterness of this Passion week!He had been at her side often in church, but through all his tendersilence and consideration she had divined the constant struggle in himbetween love and intellectual honesty, and it had filled her with a dumbirritation and misery indescribable. Do what she would, wrestle withherself as she would, there was constantly emerging in her now a noteof anger, not with Robert, but, as it were, with those malign forces ofwhich 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 wasin that state of depression which often precedes a great effort. But shewas 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 bothyou and I hold dear. And the men are decent fellows. There will be nodisturbance. '

'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 wantsimply, if I can, to transfer to their minds that image of Jesus ofNazareth which thought--and love--and reading--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 realfigure, as it went in and out among men--so far as our eyes can nowdiscern it. '

The words came quicker toward the end, while the voice sank--took thevibrating 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 willinsult him. If he was man, he was not a good man!'

'Come and see, ' was all he said, holding out his hand to her. It was insome sort a renewal of the scene at Les Avants, the inevitable renewalof 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 therug was alternately caressing and scourging a woolly baa-lamb, which wasthe fetish of her childish worship. Her broken, incessant baby-talk, and the ringing kisses with which she atoned to the baa-lamb for eachsuccessive outrage, made a running accompaniment to the moved undertonesof the parents. 

'Don't ask me, Robert, don't ask me! Do you want me to come and sitthinking 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 ofevery feature, 'now you are not miserable? You are quite confident andsure? You are going to devote your life to attacking the few remnants offaith that still remain in the world?

Never in her married life had she spoken to him with this accent ofbitterness and hostility. He started and withdrew his hand, and therewas a silence. 

'I held once a wife in my arms, ' he said presently with a voice hardlyaudible, 'who said to me that she would never persecute her husband. Butwhat is persecution, if it is not the determination not to understand?'

She buried her face in her hands. 'I could not understand, ' she saidsombrely. 

'And rather than try, ' he insisted, 'you will go on believing that I ama man without faith, seeking only to destroy. '

'I know you think you have faith, ' she answered, 'but how can it seemfaith to me? "He that will not confess Me before men, him will I alsodeny before My Father which is in heaven. " Your unbelief seems to memore dangerous than these horrible things which shock you. For you canmake it attractive, you can make it loved, as you once made the faith ofChrist loved. '

He was silent She raised her face presently, whereon were the traces ofsome of those quiet, difficult tears which were characteristic of her, and went softly out of the room. 

He stood awhile leaning against the mantelpiece, deaf to little Mary'sclamor, and to her occasional clutches at his knees, as she tried toraise herself on her tiny tottering feet. A sense as though of somefresh disaster was upon him. His heart was sinking, sinking within him. And yet none knew better than he that there was nothing fresh. It wasmerely that the scene had recalled to him anew some of those unpalpabletruths which the optimist is always much too ready to forget. 

Heredity, the moulding force of circumstance, the iron hold of thepast upon the present--a man like Elsmere realizes the working of thesethings in other men's lives with it singular subtlety and clearness, andis for ever overlooking them, running his head against them, in his own. 

He turned and laid his arms on the chimney-piece, burying his head onthem. Suddenly he felt a touch on his knee, and, looking down, saw Marypeering up, her masses of dark hair streaming back from the straininglittle face, the grave open mouth, and alarmed eyes. 

'Fader, tiss! fader, tiss!' she said imperatively. 

He lifted her up and covered the little brown cheeks with kisses. Butthe touch of the child only woke in him a fresh dread--the like ofsomething he had often divined of late in Catherine. Was she actuallyafraid now that he might feel himself bound in future to take her childspiritually from her? The suspicion of such a fear in her woke in hima fresh anguish; it seemed a measure of the distance they had travelledfrom that old perfect unity. 

'She thinks I could even become in time her tyrant and torturer, ' hesaid to himself with measureless pain, 'and who knows--who can answerfor himself? Oh, the puzzle of living!'

When she came back into the room, pale and quiet, Catherine saidnothing, and Robert went to his letters. But after a while she openedhis study door. 

'Robert, will you tell me what your stories are to be next week, and letme put out the pictures?'

It was the first time she had made any such offer. He sprang up with aflash in his gray eyes, and brought her a slip of paper with a list. Shetook it without looking at him. But he caught her in his arms, and for amoment in that embrace the soreness of both hearts passed away. 

But if Catherine would not go, Elsmere was not left on this criticaloccasion without auditors from his own immediate circle. On the eveningof Good Friday Flaxman had found his way to Bedford Square, and asCatherine was out, was shown into Elsmere's study. 

'I have come, ' he announced, 'to try and persuade you and Mrs. Elsmereto go down with me to Greenlaws to-morrow. My Easter party has cometo grief, and it would be a real charity on your part to come andresuscitate it. Do! You look abominably fagged, and as if some countrywould, do you good. '

'But I thought--' began Robert, taken aback. 

'You thought, ' repeated Flaxman coolly, 'that, your two sisters-in-lawwere going down there with Lady Helen, to meet some musical folk. Well, they are not coming. Miss Leyburn thinks your mother-in-law not verywell to-day, and doesn't like to come. And your younger sister prefersalso to stay in town. Helen is much disappointed, so am I. But--' And heshrugged his shoulders. 

Robert found it difficult to make a suitable remark. His sisters-in-lawwere certainly inscrutable young women. This Easter party at Greenlaws, Mr. Flaxman's country house, had been planned, he knew, for weeks. Andcertainly nothing could be very wrong with Mrs. Leyburn, or Catherinewould have been warned. 

'I am afraid your plans must be greatly put out, ' he said, with someembarrassment. 

'Of course they are, ' implied Flaxman, with a dry smile. He stoodopposite Elsmere, his hands in his pockets. 

'Will you have a confidence?' the bright eyes seemed to say. 'I am quiteready. Claim it if you like. '

But Elsmere had no intention of offering it. The position of all Rose'skindred, indeed, at the present moment was not easy. None of them hadthe least knowledge of Rose's mind. Had she forgotten Langham? Had, shelost her heart afresh to Flaxman? No one knew. Flaxman's absorption inher was clear enough. But his love-making, if it was such, was not ofan ordinary kind, and did not always explain itself. And, moreover, hiswealth and social position were elements in the situation calculatedto make people like the Elsmeres particularly diffident and discreet. Impossible for them, much as they liked him, to make any of theadvances!

No, Robert wanted no confidences. He was not prepared to take theresponsibility of them. So, letting Rose alone, he took up his visitor'sinvitation to themselves, and explained the engagement for Easter Eve, which tied them to London. 

'Whew!' said Hugh Flaxman, 'but that will be a shindy worth seeing, Imust come!'

'Nonsense!' said Robert, smiling. 'Go down to Greenlaws, and go tochurch. That will be much more in your line. '

'As for church, ' said Flaxman meditatively. 'If I put off may partyaltogether, and stay in town, there will be this further advantage, that, after hearing you on Saturday night, I can, with a blamelessimpartiality, spend the following day in St. Andrew's, Wells Street. Yes! I telegraph to Helen--she knows my ways--and I come down to protectyou against an atheistical mob to-morrow night!'

Robert tried to dissuade him. He did not want Flaxman. Flaxman'sEpicureanism, the easy tolerance with which, now that the effervescenceof his youth had subsided, the man harbored and dallied with a dozencontradictory beliefs, were at times peculiarly antipathetic to Elsmere. They were so now, just as heart and soul were nerved to an effort whichcould 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 soforbidding! In the first place, you won't see me; in the next, ifyou did, you would feel me as wax in your hands. I am like the man inSophocles--always the possession of the last speaker! One day I am allfor the Church. A certain number of chances in the hundred there stillare, you will admit, that she is the right of it. And if so, why shouldI cut myself off from a whole host of beautiful things not to be gotoutside her? But the next day--_vive_ Elsmere and the Revolution! Ifonly Elsmere could persuade me intellectually! But I never yet cameacross a religious novelty that seemed to me to have a leg of logic tostand on!'

He laid his hand on Robert's shoulder, his eyes twinkling with a suddenenergy. Robert made no answer. He stood erect, frowning a little, hishands thrust far into the pockets of his light gray coat. He was in nomood to disclose himself to Flaxman. The inner vision was fixed withextraordinary intensity on quite another sort of antagonist with whomthe mind was continuously grappling. 

'Ah, well--till to-morrow!' said Flaxman, with a smile, shook hands, andwent. 

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 oneither side of the fire. Lady Charlotte was reading the latest politicalbiography with an apparent profundity of attention; Mr. Wynnstay waslounging and caressing the cat. But both his aunt's absorption andMr. Wynnstay's nonchalance seemed to Flaxman overdone. He suspected adomestic breeze. 

Lady Charlotte made him effusively welcome. He had come to propose thatshe should accompany him the following evening to hear Elsmere lecture. 

'I advise you to come, ' he said. 'Elsmere will deliver his soul, andthe amount of soul he has to deliver in these dull days is astounding. A dowdy dress and a veil, of course. I will go down beforehand and seesome one on the spot, in case there should be difficulties about gettingin. Perhaps Miss Leyburn, too, might like to hear her brother-in-law?'

'_Really_, Hugh, ' cried Lady Charlotte impatiently, 'I think you mighttake your snubbing with dignity. Her refusal this morning to go toGreenlaws was brusqueness itself. To my mind that young person givesherself airs!' And the Duke of Sedbergh's sister drew herself up with arustle of all her ample frame. 

'Yes, I was snubbed, ' said Flaxman, unperturbed; 'that, however, is noreason 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 ofher, you have given up your Easter party and left your sister in thelurch?'

'I never had excessive notions of dignity, ' he replied composedly. 'Youmay make up any story you please. The real fact is that I want to hearElsmere. '

'You had better go, my dear!' said her husband sardonically. 'I cannotimagine anything more piquant than an atheistic slum on Easter Eve. '

'Nor can I!' she replied, her combativeness rousing at once. 'Muchobliged to you, Hugh. I will borrow my housekeeper's dress, and be readyto leave here at half-past seven. '

'Nothing more was said of Rose, but Flaxman knew that she would beasked, and let it alone. 

'Will his wife be there?' asked Lady Charlotte. 

'Who? Elsmere's? My dear aunt, when you happen to be the orthodoxwife of a rising heretic, your husband's opinions are not exactly thespectacular performance they are to you and me. I should think it mostunlikely. '

'Oh, she persecutes him does she?'

'She wouldn't be a woman if she didn't!' observed Mr. Wynnstay, _sottovoce_. The small dark man was lost in a great arm-chair, his delicatepainter's hands playing with the fur of a huge Persian cat. LadyCharlotte threw him an eagle glance, and he subsided, --for the moment. 

Flaxman, however, was perfectly right. There had been a breeze. Ithad been just announced to the master of the house by his spouse thatcertain Socialist celebrities--who might any day be expected to makeacquaintance with the police--were coming to dine at his table, tofinger his spoons, and mix their diatribes with his champagne, on thefollowing Tuesday. Overt rebellion had never served him yet, and he knewperfectly well that when it came to the point he should smile more orless affably upon these gentry, as he had smiled upon others of the samesort before. But it had not yet come to the point and his intermediatestate was explosive in the extreme. 

Mr. Flaxman dexterously continued the subject of the Elsmeres. Droppinghis bantering tone, he delivered himself of a very delicate, criticalanalysis of Catherine Elsmere's temperament and position, as in thecourse of several months his intimacy with her husband had revealed themto him. He did it well, with acuteness and philosophical relish. Thesituation presented itself to him as an extremely refined and yet tragicphase of the religious difficulty, and it gave him intellectual pleasureto draw it out in words. 

Lady Charlotte sat listening, enjoying her nephew's crisp phrases, butalso gradually gaining a perception of the human reality behind thisword-play of Hugh's. That 'good heart' of hers was touched; the largeimperious face began to frown. 

'Dear me!' she said, with a little sob. 'Don't go on, Hugh! I supposeit's because we all of us believe so little that the poor thing's pointof view seems to one so unreal. All the same, however, ' she added, regaining her usual _rôle_ of magisterial common-sense, 'a woman, in myopinion ought to go with her husband in religious matters. '

'Provided, of course, she sets him at nought in all others, ' put in Mr. Wynnstay, rising and daintily depositing the cat. 'Many men, however, mydear, might be willing to compromise it differently. Granted a certain_modicum_ of worldly conformity, they would not be at all indisposed toa conscience clause. '

He lounged out of the room, while Lady Charlotte shrugged her shoulderswith a look at her nephew in which there was an irrepressible twinkle. Mr. Flaxman neither heard nor saw. Life would have ceased to be worthhaving long ago had he ever taken sides in the smallest degree in thisménage. 

Flaxman walked home again, not particularly satisfied with himself andhis manœuvres. Very likely it was quite unwise of him to have devisedanother meeting between himself and Rose Leyburn so soon. Certainly shehad snubbed him--there could be no doubt of that. Nor was he in muchperplexity as to the reason. He had been forgetting himself, forgettinghis _rôle_ and the whole lie of the situation and if a man will be anidiot he must suffer for it. He had distinctly been put back a move. 

The facts were very simple. It was now nearly three months sinceLangham's disappearance. During that time Rose Leyburn had been, toFlaxman's mind, enchantingly dependent on him. He had played his partso well, and the beautiful high-spirited child had suited herself sonaively to his acting! Evidently she had said to herself that his age, his former marriage, his relation to Lady Helen, his constant kindnessto her and her sister, made it natural that she should trust him, makehim her friend, and allow him an intimacy she allowed to no other malefriend. And when once the situation had been so defined in her mind, how the girl's true self had come out!--what delightful moments thatintimacy had contained for him!

He remembered how on one occasion he had been reading some Browning toher and Helen, in Helen's crowded, belittered drawing-room, which seemedall piano and photographs and lilies of the valley. He never couldexactly trace the connection between the passage he had been reading andwhat happened. Probably it was merely Browning's poignant, passionatenote that had addicted her. In spite of all her proud, bright reserve, both he and Helen often felt through these weeks that just below thissurface there was a heart which quivered at the least touch. 

He finished the lines and laid down the book. Lady Helen heard herthree-year-old boy crying upstairs, and ran up to see what was thematter. He and Rose were left alone in the scented, fire-lit room. And ajet of flame suddenly showed him the girl's face turned away, convulsedwith a momentary struggle for self-control. She raised a hand an instantto her eyes, not dreaming evidently that she could be seen in thedimness; and her gloves dropped from her lap. 

He moved forward, stooped on one knee, and as she held out her hand forthe gloves, he kissed the hand very gently, detaining it afterward as abrother might. There was not a thought of himself in his mind. Simply hecould not bear that so bright a creature should ever be sorry. It seemedto him intolerable, against the nature of things. If he could haveprocured for her at that moment a coerced and transformed Langham, aLangham 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 goon his knee to her, and comfort her in tender, brotherly fashion. 

She did not say anything; she let her hand stay a moment, and thenshe got up, put on her veil, left a quiet message for Lady Helen, anddeparted. But as he put her into a hansom her whole manner to him wasfull of a shy, shrinking sweetness. And when Rose was shy and shrinkingshe was adorable. 

Well, and now he had never again gone nearly so far as to kiss her hand, and yet because of an indiscreet moment everything was changed betweenthem; she had turned resentful, stand-off, nay, as nearly rude as agirl under the restraints of modern manners can manage to be. He almostlaughed as he recalled Helen's report of her interview with Rose thatmorning, in which she had tried to persuade a young person outrageouslyon her dignity to keep an engagement she had herself spontaneously made. 

'I am very sorry, Lady Helen, ' Rose had said, her slim figure drawn upso stiffly that the small Lady Helen felt herself totally effaced besideher. 'But I had rather not leave London this week. I think I will staywith mamma and Agnes. '

And nothing Lady Helen could say moved her, or modified her formula ofrefusal. 

'What _have_ you been doing, Hugh?' his sister asked him, half dismayed, half provoked. 

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders and vowed he had been doing nothing. But, in truth, he knew very well that the day before he had overstepped theline. There had been a little scene between them, a quick passageof speech, a rash look and gesture on his part, which had been quiteunpremeditated, but which had nevertheless transformed their relation. Rose had flushed up, and said a few incoherent words, which he hadunderstood to be words of reproach, had left Lady Helen's as quickly aspossible, and next morning his Greenlaws party had fallen through. 

'Check, certainly, ' said Flaxman to himself ruefully, as he ponderedthese circumstances, 'not mate, I hope, if one can but find out how notto be a fool in future. '

And over his solitary fire he meditated far into the night. 

Next day, at half-past seven in the evening, he entered Lady Charlotte'sdrawing-room, gayer, brisker, more alert than ever. 

Rose started visibly at the sight of him, and shot a quick glance at theunblushing Lady Charlotte. 

'I thought you were at Greenlaws, ' she could not help saying to him, andshe coldly offered him her hand. Why had Lady Charlotte never told herhe was to escort them? Her irritation arose anew. 

'What can one do, ' he said lightly, 'if Elsmere will fix such aperformance for Easter Eve? My party was at its last gasp too; it onlywanted a telegram to Helen to give it its _coup de grâce_. '

Rose flushed up, but he turned on his heel at once, and began to banterhis aunt on the housekeeper's bonnet and veil in which she had a littletoo obviously disguised herself. 

And certainly, in the drive to the East End, Rose had no reason tocomplain of importunity on his part. Most of the way he was deep in talkwith Lady Charlotte as to a certain loan exhibition in the East End, to which he and a good many of his friends were sending pictures;apparently his time and thoughts were entirely occupied with it. Rose, leaning back silent in her corner, was presently seized with a littleshock of surprise that there should be so many interests and relationsin his life of which she knew nothing. He was talking now as the manof possessions and influence. She saw a glimpse of him as he was in hispublic aspect, and the kindness, the disinterestedness, the quiet sense, and the humor of his talk insensibly affected her as she sat listening. The mental image of him which had been dominant in her mind altereda little. Nay, she grew a little hot over it. She asked, herselfscornfully whether she was not as ready as any bread-and-buttery miss ofher acquaintance to imagine every man she knew in love with her. 

Very likely he had meant what he said quite differently, and she--oh!humiliation--had flown into a passion with him for no reasonable cause. Supposing he had meant, two days ago, that if they were to go on beingfriends she must let him be her lover too, it would of course havebeen unpardonable. How _could_ she let any one talk to her of loveyet?--especially Mr. Flaxman, who guessed, as she was quite sure, what had happened to her? He must despise her to have imagined it. Hisoutburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulent resentment. Were all men self-seeking? Did all men think women shallow and fickle?Could a man and a woman never be honestly and simply friends? If he_had_ made love to her, he could not possibly--and there was the stingof it--feel toward her maiden dignity that romantic respect whichshe herself cherished toward it. For it was incredible that anydelicate-minded girl should go through such a crisis as she had gonethrough, and then fall calmly into another lover's arms a few weekslater as though nothing had happened. 

How we all attitudinize to ourselves! The whole of life often seems onelong dramatic performance, in which one-half of us is forever posing tothe other half. 

But had he really made love to her?--had he meant what she hadassumed him to mean? The girl lost herself in a torrent of memory andconjecture, and meanwhile Mr. Flaxman sat opposite, talking away, andlooking certainly as little love sick as any man can well look. As thelamps flashed into the carriage her attention was often caught by hisprofile and finely-balanced head, by the hand lying on his knee, or thelittle gestures, full of life and freedom, with which he met some raidof Lady Charlotte's on his opinions, or opened a corresponding oneon hers. There was certainly power in the man, a bright human sort ofpower, which inevitably attracted her. And that he was good too she hadspecial grounds for knowing. 

But what an aristocrat he was after all! What an over-prosperous, exclusive set he belonged to! She lashed herself into anger as the othertwo chatted and sparred, with all these names of wealthy cousins andrelations, with their parks and their pedigrees and their pictures! Theaunt and nephew were debating how they could best bleed the family, in its various branches, of the art treasures belonging to it for thebenefit of the East-enders; therefore the names were inevitable. ButRose curled her delicate lip over them. And was it the best breeding, she wondered, to leave a third person so ostentatiously outside theconversation?

'Miss Leyburn, why are you coughing?' said Lady Charlotte suddenly. 

'There is a great draught, ' said Rose, shivering a little. 

'So there is!' cried Lady Charlotte. 'Why, we have got both the windowsopen. Hugh, draw up Miss Leyburn's. '

He moved over to her and drew it up. 

'I thought you liked a tornado, ' he said to her, smiling. 'Will you havea shawl--there is one behind me. '

'No, thank you, ' she replied rather stiffly, and he wassilent--retaining his place opposite to her, however. 

'Have we reached Mr. Elsmere's part of the world yet?' asked LadyCharlotte, looking out. 

'Yes, we are not far off--the river is to our right. We shall pass St. Wilfrid's soon. '

The coachman turned into a street where an open-air market was going on. The roadway and pavements were swarming; the carriage could barely pickits way through the masses of human beings. Flaming gas-jets threw itall into strong satanic light and shade. At this corner of a dingyalley Rose could see a fight going on; the begrimed, ragged children, regardless of the April rain, swooped backward and forward under thevery hoofs of the horses, or flattened their noses against the windowswhenever the horses were forced into a walk. 

The young girl-figure, with the gray feathered hat, seemed especiallyto excite their notice. The glare of the street brought out the linesof the face, the gold of the hair. The Arabs outside made loutishlyflattering remarks once or twice, and Rose, coloring, drew back as faras she could into the carriage. Mr. Flaxman seemed not to hear; hisaunt, with that obtrusive thirst for information which is so fashionablenow among all women of position, was cross-questioning him as to thetrades and population of the district, and he was dryly responding. Inreality his mind was full of a whirl of feeling, of a wild longing tobreak down a futile barrier and trample on a baffling resistance, totake that beautiful, tameless creature in strong coercing arms, scoldher, crush her, love her! Why does she make happiness so difficult? Whatright has she to hold devotion so cheap? He too grows angry. 'She was_not_ in love with that spectral creature, ' the inner self declares withenergy--'I will vow she never was. But she is like all the rest--a slaveto the merest forms and trappings of sentiment. Because he _ought_ tohave loved her, and didn't, because she _fancied_ she loved him, anddidn't, my love is to be an offence to her! Monstrous--unjust!'

Suddenly they swept past St. Wilfrid's, resplendent with lights, thejewelled windows of the choir rising above the squalid walls and roofsinto the rainy darkness, as the mystical chapel of the Graal, withits 'torches glimmering fair, ' flashed out of the mountain storm andsolitude on to Galahad's seeking eyes. 

Rose bent forward involuntarily. 'What angel singing!' she said, dropping the window again to listen to the retreating sounds, herartist's eye Kindling. 'Did you hear it? It was the last chorus in theSt. Matthew Passion music. '

'I did not distinguish it, ' he said--'but their music is famous. '

His tone was distant; there was no friendliness in it. It would havebeen pleasant to her if he would have taken up her little remark andlet bygones be bygones. But he showed no readiness to do so. The subjectdropped, and presently he moved back to his former seat, and LadyCharlotte and he resumed their talk. Rose could not but see that hismanner toward her was much changed. She herself had compelled it, butall the same she saw him leave her with a capricious little pang ofregret, and afterward the drive seemed to her more tedious and thedismal streets more dismal than before. 

She tried to forget her companions altogether. Oh! what would Roberthave to say? She was unhappy, restless. In her trouble lately it hadoften pleased her to go quite alone to strange churches, where for amoment the burden of the self had seemed lightened. But the old thingswere not always congenial to her, and there were modern ferments at workin her. No one of her family, unless it were Agnes, suspected what wasgoing on. But in truth the rich crude nature had been touched atlast, as Robert's had been long ago in Mr. Grey's lecture-room, by thepiercing under-voices of things--the moral message of the world. 'Whatwill he have to say?' she asked herself again feverishly, and as shelooked across to Mr. Flaxman she felt a childish wish to be friendsagain with him, with everybody. Life was too difficult as it was, without quarrels and misunderstandings to make it worse. 

CHAPTER XL. 

A long street of warehouses--and at the end of it the horses slackened. 

'I saw the president of the club yesterday, ' said Flaxman, looking out. 'He is an old friend of mine--a most intelligent fanatic--met him ona Madison House Fund committee last winter. He promised we should belooked after. But we shall only get back seats, and you'll have to putup with the smoking. They don't want ladies, and we shall only be thereon sufferance. '

The carriage stopped. Mr. Flaxman guided his charges with somedifficulty through the crowd about the steps, who inspected them andtheir vehicle with a frank and not over-friendly curiosity. At thedoor they found a man who had been sent to look for them, and wereimmediately taken possession of. He ushered them into the back of alarge bare hall, glaringly lit, lined with white brick, and hung atintervals with political portraits and a few cheap engravings of famousmen, Jesus of Nazareth taking his turn with Buddha, Socrates, Moses, Shakespeare, and Paul of Tarsus. 

'Can't put you any forrarder, I'm afraid, ' said their guide, with ashrug of the shoulders. 'The committee don't like strangers coming, and Mr. Collett, he got hauled over the coals for letting you in thisevening. '

It, was a new position for Lady Charlotte to be anywhere on sufferance. However, in the presence of three hundred smoking men, who might allof them be political assassins in disguise for anything she knew, sheaccepted her fate with meekness; and she and Rose settled themselvesinto their back seat under a rough sort of gallery, glad of their veils, and nearly blinded with the smoke. 

The hall was nearly full, and Mr. Flaxman looked curiously round uponits occupants. The majority of them were clearly artisans--a spare, stooping sharp-featured race. Here and there were a knot of stalwartdock-laborers, strongly marked out in physique from the watchmakersand the potters, or an occasional seaman out of work, ship-steward, boatswain, or what not, generally bronzed, quick-eyed, and comely, savewhere the film of excess had already deadened color and expression. Almost everyone had a pot of beer before him, standing on long woodenflaps attached to the benches. The room was full of noise, comingapparently from the further end, where some political bravo seemed to beprovoking his neighbors. In their own vicinity the men scattered aboutwere for the most part tugging silently at their pipes, alternatelyeyeing 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 Robertentered. 

He started as he saw them, flashed a smile to Rose, shook his head atMr. Flaxman, and passed up the room. 

'He looks pale and nervous, ' said Lady Charlotte grimly, pouncing atonce on the unpromising side of things. 'If he breaks down are youprepared, Hugh to play Elisha?'

Flaxman was far too much interested in the beginnings of the performanceto answer. 

Robert was standing forward on the platform, the chairman of the meetingat his side, members of the committee sitting behind on either hand. A good many men put down their pipes, and the hubbub of talk ceased. Others smoked on stolidly. 

The chairman introduced the lecturer. The subject of the address wouldbe, as they already knew, 'The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life. ' It wasnot very likely, he imagined, that Mr. Elsmere's opinions would squarewith those dominant in the club; but whether or no, he claimed for him, as for everybody, a patient hearing, and the Englishman's privilege offair play. 

The speaker, a cabinetmaker dressed in a decent brown suit, spoke withfluency, and at the same time with that accent of moderation and _savoirfaire_ which some Englishmen in all classes have obviously inheritedfrom centuries of government by discussion. Lady Charlotte, whoseLiberalism was the mere varnish of an essentially aristocratic temper, was conscious of a certain dismay at the culture of the democracy asthe man sat down. Mr. Flaxman, glancing to the right, saw a group of menstanding, and among them a slight, sharp-featured thread-paper of a man, with a taller companion whom he identified as the pair he had noticedon the night of the story-telling. The little gas-fitter was clearly allnervous fidget and expectation; the other, large and gaunt in figure, with a square impassive face, and close-shut lips that had a perpetualmocking twist in the corners, stood beside him like some clumsy modernversion, in a commoner clay, of Goothe's 'spirit that denies. '

Robert came forward with a roll of papers in his hands. 

His first, words were hardly audible. Rose felt her color rising, LadyCharlotte glanced at her nephew, the standing group of men cried, 'Speakup!' The voice in the distance rose at once, braced by the touch ofdifficulty, and what it said came calmly down to them. 

In after days Flaxman could not often be got to talk of the experiencesof this evening. When he did he would generally say, briefly, that asan _intellectual_ effort he had never been inclined to rank this firstpublic utterance very high among Elsmere's performances. The speaker'sown emotion had stood somewhat in his way. A man argues better, perhaps, when he feels less. 

'I have often heard him put his case, as I thought, more cogently inconversation, ' Flaxman would say--though only to his most intimatefriends--'but what I never saw before or since was such an _effect ofpersonality_ as he produced that night. From that moment at any rate Iloved him, and I understood his secret!'

Elsmere began with a few words of courteous thanks to the club for thehearing they had promised him. 

Then he passed on to the occasion of his address--the vogue in thedistrict of 'certain newspapers which, I understand, are speciallyrelished and patronized by your association. '

And he laid down on the table beside him the copies of the 'Freethinker'and of 'Faith and Fools' which he had brought with him, and faced hisaudience again, his hands on his sides. 

'Well! I am not here to-night to attack those newspapers. I want toreach your sympathies if I can in another way. If there is anybodyhere who takes pleasure in them, who thinks that such writings and suchwitticisms as he gets purveyed to him in these sheets do really help thecause of truth and intellectual freedom, I shall not attack his positionfrom the front. I shall try to undermine it. I shall aim at rousing inhim such a state of feeling as may suddenly convince him that what isinjured by writing of this sort is not the orthodox Christian, or theChurch, or Jesus of Nazareth, but always and inevitably, the manwho writes it and the man who loves it! His mind is possessed of aninflaming and hateful image, which drives him to mockery and violence. Iwant to replace it, if I can, by one of calm, of beauty and tenderness, which may drive him to humility and sympathy. And this, indeed, is theonly way in which opinion is ever really altered--by the substitution ofone mental picture for another. 

'But in the first place, ' resumed the speaker, after a moment's pause, changing his note a little, 'a word about myself. I am not here to-nightquite in the position of the casual stranger, coming down to yourdistrict for the first time. As some of you know, I am endeavoring tomake what is practically a settlement among you, asking you working-mento teach me, if you will, what you have to teach as to the wants andprospects of your order, and offering you in return whatever there isin me which may be worth your taking. Well, I imagine I should look at aman who preferred a claim of that sort with some closeness! You may wellask me for "antecedents, " and I should like, if I may, to give them toyou very shortly. '

Well, then, though I came down to this place under the wing of Mr. Edwardes' (some cheering) 'who is so greatly liked and respected here, Iam not a Unitarian, nor am I an English Churchman. A year ago I was therector of an English country parish, where I should have been proud, sofar as personal happiness went, to spend my life. Last autumn I left itand resigned my orders because I could no longer accept the creed of theEnglish Church. ' Unconsciously, the thin dignified figure drew itselfup, the voice took a certain dryness. All this was distasteful but theorator's instinct was imperious. 

As he spoke about a score of pipes which had till now been activein Flaxman's neighborhood went down. The silence in the room becamesuddenly of a perceptibly different quality. 

'Since then I have joined no other religious association. But it isnot--God forbid!--because there is nothing left me to believe, butbecause in this transition England it is well for a man who has brokenwith the old things, to be very _patient_. No good can come of forcingopinion or agreement prematurely. A generation, nay, more, may have tospend itself in mere waiting and preparing for those new leaders andthose new forms of corporate action which any great revolution ofopinion, such as that we are now living through, has always produced inthe past, and will, we are justified in believing, produce again. Butthe hour and the men will come, and "they also serve who only stand andwait!"'

Voice and look had kindled into fire. The consciousness of his audiencewas passing from him--the world of ideas was growing clearer. 

'So much, then for personalities of one sort. There are some of another, however, which I must touch upon for a moment. I am to speak to youto-night of the Jesus of history, but not only as an historian. Historyis good, but religion is better!--and if Jesus of Nazareth concerned me, and, in my belief, concerned you, only as an historical figure, I shouldnot be here to-night. 

'But if I am to talk religion to you, and I have begun by telling you Iam 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 topresent to you, you must let me run through a preliminary confession offaith--as short and simple as I can make it. You must let me describecertain views of the universe and of man's place in it, which make theframework, as it were, into which I shall ask you to fit the picture ofJesus which will come after. '

Robert stood a moment considering. An instant's nervousness, a momentarysign of self-consciousness, would have broken the spell and set the roomagainst him. He showed neither. 

'My friends, ' he said at last, speaking to the crowded benches of Londonworkmen with the same simplicity he would have used toward his boys atMurewell, 'the man who is addressing you to-night believes in _God_;and in _Conscience_, which is God's witness in the soul; and in_Experience_, which is at once the record and the instrument of man'seducation at God's hands. He places his whole trust, for life, anddeath, "_in God the Father Almighty!_"--in that force at the root ofthings which is revealed to us whenever a man helps his neighbor, or amother denies herself for her child; whenever a soldier dies without amurmur for his country, or a sailor puts out in the darkness to rescuethe perishing; whenever a workman throws mind and conscience into hiswork, or a statesman labors not for his own gain but for that of theState! He believes in an Eternal Goodness---and an Eternal Mind--ofwhich Nature and Man are the continuous and the only revelation. '... 

The room grew absolutely still. And into the silence, there fell, oneby one, the short, terse sentences, in which the seer, the believer, struggled to express what God has been, is, and will ever be to the soulwhich trusts Him. In them the whole effort of the speaker was reallyto restrain, to moderate, to depersonalize the voice of faith. But theintensity of each word burnt it into the hearer as it was spoken. EvenLady Charlotte turned a little pale--the tears stood in her eyes. 

Then, from the witness of God in the soul, and in the history of man'smoral life, Elsmere turned to the glorification of _Experience_, 'ofthat unvarying and rational order of the world which has been theappointed instrument of mans training since life and thought began. '

'_There_, ' he said slowly, 'in the unbroken sequences of nature, in thephysical history of the world, in the long history of man, physical, intellectual, moral--_there_ lies the revelation of God. There is noother, my friends!'

Then, while the room hung on his words, he entered on a brief expositionof the text, '_Miracles do not happen_, ' restating Hume's old argument, and adding to it some of the most cogent of those modern arguments drawnfrom literature, from history, from the comparative study of religionsand religious evidence, which were not practically at Hume's disposal, but which are now affecting the popular mind as Hume's reasoning couldnever have affected it. 

'We are now able to show how miracle, or the belief in it, which is thesame thing, comes into being. The study of miracle in all nations, andunder all conditions, yields everywhere the same results. Miracle may bethe child of imagination, of love, nay, of a passionate sincerity, butinvariably it lives with ignorance and is withered by knowledge!'

And then, with lightning unexpectedness, he turned upon his audience, as though the ardent soul reacted at once against a strain of merenegation. 

'But do not let yourselves imagine for an instant that, because ina rational view of history there is no place for a Resurrection andAscension, therefore you may profitably allow yourself a mean andmiserable mirth of _this_ sort over the past!'--and his outstretchedhand struck the newspapers beside him with passion--'Do not imagine foran instant that what is binding, adorable, beautiful in that past isdone away with when miracle is given up! No, thank God! We still "liveby admiration, hope, and love. " God only draws closer, great men becomegreater, human life more wonderful as miracle disappears. Woe to you ifyou cannot see it!--it is the testing truth of our day. '

'And besides--do you suppose that mere violence, mere invective, andsavage mockery ever accomplished anything--nay, what is more to thepoint, ever _destroyed_ anything in human history? No--an idea cannot bekilled from without--it can only be supplanted, transformed, by anotheridea, and that one of equal virtue and magic. Strange paradox! Inthe moral world you cannot pull down except by gentleness--you cannotrevolutionize except by sympathy. Jesus only superseded Judaismby absorbing and re-creating all that was best in it. There are noinexplicable gaps and breaks in the story of humanity. The religion ofthe day with all its faults and mistakes, will go on unshaken so longas there is nothing else of equal loveliness and potency to put in itsplace. The Jesus of the churches will remain paramount so long as theman of to-day imagines himself dispensed by any increase of knowledgefrom loving the Jesus of history. 

'But _why?_ you will ask me. What does the Jesus of history matter tome?'

And so he was brought to the place of great men in the development ofmankind--to the part played in the human story by those lives in whichmen have seen all their noblest thoughts of God, of duty, and of lawembodied, realized before them with a shining and incomparable beauty. 

... 'You think--because it is becoming plain to the modern eye that theignorant love of his first followers wreathed his life in legend, thattherefore you can escape from Jesus of Nazareth, you can put him asideas though he had never been? Folly! Do what you will, you cannot escapehim. His life and death underlie our institutions as the alphabetunderlies our literature. Just as the lives of Buddha and of Mohammedare wrought ineffaceably into the civilization of Africa and Asia, sothe life of Jesus is wrought ineffaceably into the higher civilization, the nobler social conceptions of Europe. It is wrought into yourbeing and into mine. We are what we are to-night, as Englishmen andas citizens, largely because a Galilean peasant was born and grew tomanhood, and preached, and loved, and died. And you think that a fact sotremendous can be just scoffed away--that we can get rid of it, and ofour share in it, by a ribald paragraph and a caricature!'

'No. Your hatred and your ridicule are powerless. And thank God they arepowerless. There is no wanton waste in the moral world, any more thanin the material. There is only fruitful change and beneficenttransformation. Granted that the true story of Jesus of Nazareth wasfrom the beginning obscured by error and mistake; granted that thoseerrors and mistakes which were once the strength of Christianity arenow its weakness, and by the slow march and sentence of time are nowthreatening, unless we can clear them away, to lessen the hold of Jesuson the love and remembrance of man. What then? The fact is merely a callto you and me, who recognize it, to go, back to the roots of things, tore-conceive the Christ, to bring him afresh into our lives, to make thelife so freely given for man minister again in new ways to man's newneeds. Every great religion is, in truth, a concentration of greatideas, capable, as all ideas are, of infinite expansion and adaptation. And woe to our human weakness if it loose its hold one instant before itmust, on any of those rare and precious possessions which have helped itin the past, and may again inspire it in the future!'

'_To reconceive the Christ!_ It is the special task of our age, thoughin some sort and degree it has been the ever recurring task of Europesince the beginning. '

He paused, and then very simply, and so as to be understood by those whoheard him, he gave a rapid sketch of that great operation worked bythe best intellect of Europe during the last half-century--broadlyspeaking--on the facts and documents of primitive Christianity. From allsides and by the help of every conceivable instrument those facts havebeen investigated, and now at last the great result-'the revivified, reconceived truth--seems ready to emerge! Much may still be known--muchcan never be known; but if we will, we may now discern the true featuresof Jesus of Nazareth, as no generation but our own has been able todiscern them, since those who had seen and handled, passed away. '

'Let me try, however feebly, and draw it afresh for you, that life oflives, that story of stories, as the labor of our own age in particularhas patiently revealed it to us. Come back with me through thecenturies; let us try and see the Christ of Galilee and the Christ ofJerusalem as he was, before a credulous love and Jewish tradition andGreek subtlety had at once dimmed and glorified the truth. Ah! do whatwe will, it is so scanty and poor, this knowledge of ours, compared withall that we yearn to know--but, such as it is, let me, very humbly andvery tentatively, endeavor to put it before you. '

At this point Flaxman's attention was suddenly distracted by a stirround the door of entrance on his left hand. Looking round, he saw aRitualist priest, in cassock and cloak, disputing in hurried undertoneswith the men about the door. At last he gained his point apparently, forthe men, with half-angry, half-quizzing looks at each other, allowedhim to come in, and he found a seat. Flaxman was greatly struck by theface--by its ascetic beauty, the stern and yet delicate whiteness andemaciation of it. He sat with both hands resting on the stick he held infront of him, intently listening, the perspiration of physical weaknesson his brow and round his finely curved mouth. Clearly he could hardlysee the lecturer, for the room had become inconveniently crowded, andthe men about him were mostly standing. 

'One of the St. Wilfrid's priests, I suppose, ' Flaxman said to himself. 'What on earth is he doing _dans cette galère?_ Are we to have adisputation? That would be dramatic. '

He had no attention, however, to spare, and the intruder was promptlyforgotten. When he turned back to the platform he found that Robert, with Mackay's help, had hung on a screen to his right, four or fivelarge drawings of Nazareth, of the Lake of Gennesaret, of Jerusalem, andthe Temple of Herod, of the ruins of that synagogue on the probable siteof Capernaum in which conceivably Jesus may have stood. They were boldand striking, and filled the bare hall at once with suggestions of theEast. He had used them often at Murewell. Then, adopting a somewhatdifferent tone, he plunged, into the life of Jesus. He brought to itall his trained historical power, all his story-telling faculty, all hissympathy with the needs of feeling. And bit by bit, as the quick nervoussentences issued and struck, each like the touch of a chisel, themajestic figure emerged, set against its natural background, instinctwith some fraction at least of the magic of reality, most human, mostpersuasive, most tragic. He brought out the great words of the newfaith, to which, whatever may be their literal origin, Jesus, and Jesusonly, gave currency and immortal force. He dwelt on the magic, the permanence, the expansiveness, of the young Nazarene's centralconception--the spiritualized, universalized 'Kingdom of God. ' Elsmere'sthought, indeed, knew nothing of a perfect man, as it knew nothing of anincarnate God; he shrank from nothing that he believed true; but everylimitation, every reserve he allowed himself, did but make the wholemore poignantly real, and the claim of Jesus more penetrating. 

'The world has grown since Jesus preached in Galilee and Judæa. Wecannot learn the _whole_ of God's lesson from him now--nay, we could notthen! 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 hadit for the men and women of his own time. '

Then he came to the last scenes. His voice sank a little his notesdropped from his hand; and the silence grew oppressive. The dramaticforce, the tender passionate insight, the fearless modernness with whichthe story was told, made it almost unbearable. Those listening sawthe trial, the streets of Jerusalem, that desolate place outside thenorthern gate; they were spectators of the torture, they heard the lastcry. No one present had ever so seen, so heard before. Rose had hiddenher face. Flaxman for the first time forgot to watch the audience; themen had forgotten each other; and for the first time that night, inmany a cold embittered heart, there was born that love of the Son of Manwhich Nathaniel felt, and John, and Mary of Bethany, and which has in itnow, as then, the promise of the future. 

_'"He laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock, and herolled a stone against the door of the tomb. " The ashes of Jesus ofNazareth mingled with the earth of Palestin--_

 '"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 gleambroke over the pale exhausted face--a gleam of extraordinary sweetness. 

'And in the days and weeks that followed the devout and passionatefancy of a few mourning Galileans begat the exquisite fable of theResurrection. How natural--and amid all its falseness, how true--is thatnaïve and contradictory story! The rapidity with which it spread is ameasure of many things. It is, above all, a measure of the greatness ofJesus, of the force with which he had drawn to himself the hearts andimaginations of men. '... 

'And now, my friends, what of all this? If these things I have beensaying 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, anddegrading your souls, by indulgence in such grime as this'--and hepointed to the newspapers-'it is your urgent business and mine--atthis moment--to do our very _utmost_ to bring this life of Jesus, ourprecious, invaluable possession as a people, back into some real andcogent relation with our modern lives and beliefs and hopes. Do notanswer me that such an effort is a mere dream and futility, conceived inthe vague, apart from reality--that men must have something to worship, and that if they cannot worship Jesus they will not trouble to love him. Is the world desolate with God still in it, and does it rest merely withus to love or not to love? Love and revere _something_ we must, if weare to be men and not beasts. At all times and in all nations, as I havetried to show you, man has helped himself by the constant and passionatememory of those great ones of his race who have spoken to him mostaudibly 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 beendisfigured and misrepresented by the Churches we turn away from that inwhich our weak will; and desponding souls are meant to find their mostobvious and natural help and inspiration from that symbol of theDivine, which, of necessity, means' most to us. No! give him back yourhearts--be ashamed that you have ever forgotten your debt to him! Letcombination and brotherhood do for the newer and simpler faith what theydid once for the old--let them give it a practical shape, a practicalgrip on human life. Then we too shall have our Easter!--we too shallhave the right to say, _He is not here, he is risen_. Not here--inlegend, in miracle, in the beautiful out-worn forms and crystallizationsof older thought. _He is risen_--in a wiser reverence and a morereasonable love; risen in new forms of social help inspired by hismemory, called afresh by his name!-Risen--if you and your children willit--in a church or company of the faithful--over the gates of whichtwo sayings of man's past, in to which man's present has breathed newmeanings, shall be written:--

 '_In Thee, O Eternal, have I put my trust:_

and--

 '_This do in remembrance of Me. _'

The rest was soon over. The audience woke from the trance in which ithad been held with a sudden burst of talk and movement. In the midstof it, and as the majority of the audience were filing out into theadjoining rooms, the gas-fitter's tall companion Andrews mounted theplatform, while the gas-fitter himself with an impatient shrug, pushedhis way into the outgoing crowd. Andrews went slowly and deliberatelyto work, dealing out his long cantankerous sentences with a nasal_sang-froid_ which seemed to change in a moment the whole aspect andtemperature of things. He remarked that Mr. Elsmere had talked ofwhat great scholars had done to clear up this matter of Christ andChristianity. Well, he was free to maintain that old Tom Paine was asgood a scholar as any of 'em, and most of them in that hall knew what hethought about it. Tom Paine hadn't anything to say against Jesus Christ, and he hadn't. He was a workman and a fine sort of Man, and if he'd beenalive now he'd have been a Socialist, 'as most of us are, ' and he'd havemade it hot for the rich loafers, and the sweaters, and the middle-men, 'as we'd like to make it hot for 'em. ' But as for those people who gotup the Church-Mythologists Tom Paine called 'em-and the miracles, andmade an uncommonly good thing out of it, pecuniarily speaking, hedidn't see what they'd got to do with keeping, or mending, or preserving_their_ precious bit of work. The world had found 'em out, and serve'emright. 

And he wound up with a fierce denunciation of priests, not without harshsavor and eloquence, which was much clapped by the small knot of workmenamong whom he had been standing. 

Then there followed a Socialist--an eager, ugly, black-bearded littlefellow, who preached the absolute necessity of doing without 'any cultuswhatsoever, ' threw scorn on both the Christians and the Positivists forrefusing so to deny themselves, and appealed earnestly to his group ofhearers 'to help in brining religion back from heaven to earth, where itbelongs. ' Mr. Elsmere's new church, if he ever got it, would only be afresh instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie. And when the peoplehad got their rights and brought down the capitalists, they were notgoing to be such fools as put their necks under the heel of what werecalled 'the educated classes. ' The people who wrote the newspapers Mr. Elsmere objected to, know quite enough for the working-man--And peopleshould not be too smooth-spoken; what the working class wanted beyondeverything just now was _grit_. 

A few other short speeches followed, mostly of the common Secularisttype, in defence of the newspapers attacked. But the defence, on thewhole, was shuffling and curiously half-hearted. Robert, sitting by withhis head on his hand, felt that there, at any rate, his onslaught hadtold. 

He said a few words in reply, in a low husky voice, without a traceof his former passion, and the meeting broke up. The room had quicklyfilled when it was known that he was up again; and as he descendedthe steps of the platform, after shaking hands with the chairman, thehundreds present broke into a sudden burst of cheering. Lady Charlottepressed forward to him through the crowd, offering to take him home. 'Come with us, Mr. Elsmere; you look like a ghost. ' But he shook hishead, smiling. No, thank you, Lady Charlotte--I must have some air, ' andhe took her out on his arm, while Flaxman followed with Rose. 

It once occurred to Flaxman to look round for the priest he had seencome in. But there were no signs of him. 'I had an idea he would havespoken, ' 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'tcome and hear him! Must be a woman with a character, that--a Straffordin petticoats!'

Robert turned up the street to the City, the tall slight figureseeming 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 offeverish protest, as he strode along, against his own powerlessness, against that weight of the present and the actual which seems to theenthusiast alternately light as air, or heavy as the mass of Ætna on thebreast of Enceladus. 

Suddenly, at the corner of a street, a man's figure in a long black robestopped him and laid a hand on his arm. 

'Newcome!' cried Robert, standing still. 

'I was there, ' said the other, bending forward and looking close intohis eyes. 'I heard almost all. I went to confront, to denounce you!'

By the light of a lamp not far off Robert caught the attenuatedwhiteness and sharpness of the well-known face, to which weeksof fasting and mystical excitement had given a kind of unearthlyremoteness. He gathered himself together with an inward groan. He feltas though there were no force in him at that moment wherewith to meetreproaches, to beat down fanaticism. The pressure on nerve and strengthseemed unbearable. 

Newcome, watching him with eagle eye, saw the sudden shrinking andhesitation. He had often in old days felt the same sense of power overthe man who yet, in what seemed his weakness, had always escaped him inthe end. 

'I went to denounce, ' he continued, in a strange, tense voice; 'and theLord refused it to me. He kept me watching for you here--these words arenot mine I speak. I waited patiently in that room till the Lord shoulddeliver His enemy into my hand. My wrath was hot against the deserterthat could not even desert in silence--hot against his dupes. Thensuddenly words came to me--they have come to me before, they burn up thevery heart and marrow in me--"_Who is he that saith, and it cometh topass, and the Lord commandeth it not?_" There they were in my ears, written on the walls--the air----'

The hand dropped from Robert's arm. A dull look of defeat, of regret, darkened the gleaming eyes. They were standing in a quiet desertedstreet, but through a side-opening the lights, the noise, the turbulenceof the open-air market came drifting to them through the rainyatmosphere which blurred and magnified everything. 

'Ay, after days and nights in His most blessed sanctuary, ' Newcomeresumed slowly, 'I came, by His commission, as I thought, to fight Hisbattle, with a traitor! And at the last moment His strength, which wasin me, went from me. I sat there dumb; His hand was heavy upon me. Hiswill be done!'

The voice sank; the priest drew his thin, shaking hand across his eyes, as though the awe of a mysterious struggle were still upon him. Then heturned again to Elsmere, his face softening, radiating. 

'Elsmere, take the sign, the message! I thought it was given to me todeclare the Lord's wrath. Instead, He sends you once more by me, evennow--even fresh from this new defiance of His mercy, the tender offer ofHis grace! He lies at rest to-night, my brother'--what sweetness in thelow vibrating tones! 'after all the anguish. Let me draw you down onyour knees beside Him. It is you, you, who have helped to drive in thenails, to embitter the agony! It is you who in His loneliness have beenrobbing Him of the souls that should be his! It is you who have beendoing your utmost to make His cross and passion of no effect. Oh, letit break your heart to think of it! Watch by Him to-night, my friend, mybrother, and to-morrow let the risen Lord reclaim his own!'

Never had Robert seen any mortal face so persuasively beautiful; neversurely did saint or ascetic plead with a more penetrating gentleness. After the storm of those opening words the change was magical. The tearsstood in Elsmere's eyes. But his quick insight, in spite of himself, divined the subtle natural facts behind the outburst, the strainedphysical state, the irritable brain--all the consequences of a longdefiance of physical and mental law. The priest repelled him, the mandrew him like a magnet. 

'What can I say to you, Newcome?' he cried despairingly. 'Let me saynothing, dear old friend! I am tired out; so, I expect, are you. I knowwhat this week has been to you. Walk with me a little. Leave these greatthings alone. We cannot agree. Be content--God knows! Tell me about theold place, and the people. I long for news of them. '

A sort of shudder passed through his companion. Newcome stood wrestlingwith himself. It was like the slow departure of a possessing force. Thenhe sombrely assented, and they turned toward the City. But his answers, as Robert questioned him, were sharp and mechanical and presently itbecame evident that the demands of the ordinary talk to which Elsmerevigorously held him were more than he could bear. 

As they reached St. Paul's, towering into the watery moon-light of theclouded sky, he stopped abruptly and said good-night. 

You came to me in the spirit of war, ' said Robert, with some emotion, ashe held his hand; 'give me instead the grasp of peace!'

The spell of his manner, his presence, prevailed at last. A quiveringsmile dawned on the priest's delicate lip. 

'God bless you--God restore you!' he said sadly, and was gone. 

CHAPTER XLI. 

A week later Elsmere was startled to find himself detained, after hisstory-telling, by a trio of workmen, asking on behalf of some thirty orforty members of the North R---- Club that he would give them a courseof lectures on the New Testament. One of them was the gas-fitter CharlesRichards; another was the watchmaker Lestrange, who had originallychallenged Robert to deliver himself; and the third was a tough oldScotchman of sixty with a philosophical turn, under whose spoutings ofHume and Locke, of Reid and Dugald Stewart, delivered in the shrillestof cracked voices, the Club had writhed many an impatient half-hour ondebating nights. He had an unexpected artistic gift, a kind of 'sport'as compared with the rest of his character, which made him a valueddesigner in the pottery works; but his real interests were speculativeand argumentative, concerned with 'common nawtions of the praimaryelements of reason, ' and the appearance of Robert in the district seemedto offer him at last a foeman worthy of his steel. Elsmere shrewdlysuspected that the last two looked forward to any teaching he might givemostly as a new and favorable exercising ground for their own witsbut he took the risk, gladly accepted the invitation, and fixed Sundayafternoons for a weekly New Testament lecture. 

His first lecture, which he prepared with great care, was delivered tothirty-seven men a fortnight later. It was on the political and socialstate of Palestine and the East at the time of Christ's birth; andRobert, who was as fervent a believer in 'large maps' as Lord Salisbury, had prepared a goodly store of them for the occasion, together with anumber of drawings and photographs which formed part of the collectionhe had been gradually making since his own visit to the Holy Land. Therewas nothing he laid more stress on than, these helps to the eye andimagination in dealing with the Bible. He was accustomed to maintain inhis arguments with Hugh Flaxman that the orthodox traditional teachingof Christianity would become impossible as soon as it should be thehabit to make a free and modern use of history and geography and socialmaterial in connection with the Gospels. Nothing tends so much, he wouldsay, to break down the irrational barrier which men have raised aboutthis particular tract of historical space, nothing helps so much tolet in the light and air of scientific thought upon it, and thereforenothing prepares the way so effectively for a series of new conceptions. 

By a kind of natural selection Richards became Elsmere's chief helperand adjutant in the Sunday lectures, --with regard to all such matters asbeating up recruits, keeping guard over portfolios, handing round mapsand photographs, &c. --supplanting in this function the jealous andsensitive Mackay, who, after his original opposition, had now arrivedat regarding Robert as his own particular property, and the lecturer'squick smile of thanks for services rendered as his own especial right. The bright, quicksilvery, irascible little workman, however, wasirresistible and had his way. He had taken a passion for Robert as fora being of another order and another world. In the discussionswhich generally followed the lecture he showed a receptiveness, anintelligence, which were in reality a matter not of the mind but ofthe heart. He loved, therefore he understood. At the Club he stood forElsmere with a quivering, spasmodic eloquence, as against Andrews, andthe Secularists. One thing only puzzled Robert. Among all the littlefellow's sallies and indiscretions, which were not infrequent, noreference to his home life was ever included. Here he kept even Robertabsolutely at arm's length. Robert knew that he was married and hadchildren, nothing more. 

The old Scotchman, Macdonald, came out after the first lecture somewhatcrestfallen. 

'Not the sort of stooff I'd expected!' he said, with a shade ofperplexity on the rugged face. 'He doosn't talk eneuf in the _aa_bstractfor me. '

But he went again, and the second lecture, on the origin of the Gospels, got hold of him, especially as it supplied him with a whole armoryof new arguments in support of Hume's doctrine of conscience, and indefiance of 'that blatin' creetur, Reid'. The thesis with which Robert, drawing on some of the stores supplied him by the Squire's book, beganhis account--i. E. The gradual growth within the limits of historyof man's capacity for telling the exact truth--fitted in, to theScotchman's thinking, so providentially with his own favoriteexperimental doctrines as against the 'intueetion' folks, 'who will haveit that a babby's got as moch mind as Mr. Gladstone ef it only knew it!'that afterward he never missed a lecture. 

Lestrange was more difficult. He had the inherited temperament of theGenevese _frondeur_, which made Geneva the headquarters of Calvinismin the sixteenth century, and bids fair to make her the headquarters ofcontinental radicalism in the nineteenth. Robert never felt his witsso much stretched and sharpened as when after the lecture Lestrange wasputting questions and objections with an acrid subtlety and persistenceworthy of a descendant of that burgher class which first built up theCalvinistic system and then produced the destroyer of it in Rousseau. Robert bore his heckling, however, with great patience and adroitness. He had need of all he knew, as Murray Edwardes had warned him. Butluckily he knew a great deal; his thought was clearing and settlingmonth by month, and whatever he may have lost at any moment by theturn of an argument, he recovered immediately afterward by the force ofpersonality, and of a single-mindedness in which there was never a traceof personal grasping. 

Week by week the lecture became more absorbing to him, the men morepliant, his hold on them firmer. His disinterestedness, his brightnessand resource, perhaps, too, the signs about him of a light and frailphysical organization, the novelty of his position, the inventivenessof his method, gave him little by little an immense power in the place. After the first two lectures Murray Edwardes became his constant andenthusiastic hearer on Sunday afternoons, and, catching some of Robert'sways and spirit, he gradually brought his own chapel and teaching moreand more into line with the Elgood Street undertaking. So that theventure of the two men began to take ever larger proportions; and, kindled by the growing interest and feeling about him, dreams began torise in Elsmere's mind which as yet he hardly dared to cherish whichcame and went, however, weaving a substance for themselves out of eachsuccessive incident and effort. 

Meanwhile he was at work on an average three evenings in the weekbesides the Sunday. In West End drawing-rooms his personal gift hadbegun to tell no less than in this crowded, squalid East; and as hisaims became known, other men, finding the thoughts of their own heartsrevealed in him, or touched with that social compunction which is oneof the notes of our time, came down and became his helpers. Of all thesocial projects of which that Elgood Street room became the centre, Elsmere was, in some sense, the life and inspiration. But it was notthese projects themselves which made this period of his life remarkable. London at the present moment, if it be honey-combed with vice andmisery, is also honey-combed with the labor of ever expanding charity. Week, by week men and women of like gifts and energies with Elsmerespend themselves, as he did, in the constant effort to serve and toalleviate. What _was_ noticeable, what _was_ remarkable in this work ofhis, was the spirit, the religious passion which, radiating from him, began after a while to kindle the whole body of men about him. It wasfrom his Sunday lectures and his talks with the children, boys andgirls, who came in after the lecture to spend a happy hour and a halfwith him on Sunday afternoons, that in later years hundreds of men andwomen will date the beginnings of a new absorbing life. There came atime, indeed, when, instead of meeting criticism by argument, Robert wasable simply to point to accomplished facts. 'You ask me, ' he wouldsay in effect, 'to prove to you that men can love, can make a new andfruitful use, for daily life and conduct, of a merely human Christ. Go among our men, talk to our children, and satisfy yourself. A littlewhile ago scores of these men either hated the very name of Christianityor were entirely indifferent to it. To scores of them now the name ofthe teacher of Nazareth, the victim of Jerusalem, is dear and sacred;his life, his death, his words, are becoming once more a constant sourceof moral effort and spiritual hope. See for yourself!'

However, we are anticipating. Let us go back to May. 

One beautiful morning Robert was sitting working in his study, hiswindows open to the breezy blue sky and the budding plane-trees outside, when the door was thrown open and Mr. Wendover was announced. 

The Squire entered; but what a shrunken and aged Squire! The gait wasfeeble, the bearing had lost all its old erectness, the bronzed strengthof the face had given place to a waxen and ominous pallor. Robert, springing up with joy to meet the great gust of Murewell air whichseemed to blow about him with the mention of the Squire's name, wasstruck, arrested. He guided his guest to a chair with an almost filialcarefulness. 

'I don't believe, Squire, ' he exclaimed, 'you ought to be doingthis---wandering about London by yourself!'

But the Squire, as silent and angular as ever when anything personal tohimself was concerned, would take no notice of the implied anxiety andsympathy. He grasped his umbrella between his knees with a pair of browntwisted hands, and, sitting very upright, looked critically round theroom. Robert, studying the dwindled figure, remembered with a pang thesaying of another Oxford scholar, _à propos_ of the death of a youngman of extraordinary promise, '_What learning has perished with him! Howvain seem all toil to acquire!_'--and the words, as they passed throughhis mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell. 

But after the first painful impression he could not help losing himselfin the pleasure of the familiar face, the Murewell associations. 

'How is the village, and the lnstitute? And what sort of man is mysuccessor--the man, I mean, who came after Armitstead?'

'I had him once to dinner, ' said the Squire briefly; 'he made a falsequantity, and asked me to subscribe to the Church Missionary Society. I haven't seen him since. He and the village have been at loggerheadsabout the Institute, I believe. He wanted to turn out the Dissenters. Bateson came to me, and we circumvented him, of course. But the man's anass. Don't talk of him!'

Robert sighed a long sigh. Was all his work undone? It wrung his heartto remember the opening of the Institute, the ardor of his boys. He asked a few questions about individuals, but soon gave it up ashopeless. The Squire neither knew nor cared. 

'And Mrs. Darcy?'

'My sister had tea in her thirtieth summer-house last Sunday, ' remarkedthe Squire grimly. 'She wished me to communicate the fact to you andMrs. Elsmere. Also, that the worst novel of the century will be out ina fortnight, and she trusts to you to see it well reviewed in all theleading journals. '

Robert laughed, but it was not very easy to laugh. There was a sort ofghastly undercurrent in the Squire's sarcasms that effectually deprivedthem of anything mirthful. 

'And your book?'

'Is in abeyance. I shall bequeath you the manuscript in my will, to dowhat you like with. '

'Squire!'

'Quite true! If you had stayed, I should have finished it, I suppose. But after a certain age the toil of spinning cobwebs entirely out of hisown brain becomes too much for a man. '

It was the first thing of the sort that iron mouth had ever said to him. Elsmere was painfully touched. 

'You must not--you shall not give it up, ' he urged. Publish the firstpart alone, and ask me for any help you please. '

The Squire shook his head. 

'Let it be. Your paper in the "Nineteenth Century" showed me that thebest thing I can do is to hand on my materials to you. Though I am notsure that when you have got them you will make the best use of them. Youand Grey between you call yourselves Liberals, and imagine yourselvesreformers, and all the while you are doing nothing but playing into thehands of the Blacks. All this theistic philosophy of yours only means somuch grist to their mill in the end. '

'They don't see it in that light themselves, ' said Robert, smiling. 

'No, ' returned the Squire, 'because most men are puzzle-heads. Why, ' headded, looking darkly at Robert, while the great head fell forward onhis breast in the familiar Murewell attitude, 'why can't you do yourwork and let the preaching alone?'

'Because, ' said Robert, 'the preaching seems to me my work. There is thegreat difference between us, Squire. You look upon knowledge as an endin itself. It may be so. But to me, knowledge has always been valuablefirst and foremost for its bearing on life. '

'Fatal twist that, ' returned the Squire harshly. 'Yes, I know; it wasalways in you. Well, are you happy? does this new crusade of yours giveyou pleasure?'

'Happiness, ' replied Robert, leaning against the chimney-piece andspeaking in a low voice, 'is always relative. No one knows it betterthan you. Life is full of oppositions. But the work takes my whole heartand all my energies. '

The Squire looked at him in disapproving silence for a while. 

'You will bury your life in it miserably, ' he said at last; it will be atoil of Sisyphus leaving no trace behind it; whereas such a book as youmight write, if you gave your life to it, might live and work, and harrythe enemy when you are gone. '

Robert forbore the natural retort. 

The Squire went round his library, making remarks, with all the causticshrewdness natural to him, on the new volumes that Robert had acquiredsince their walks and talks together. 

'The Germans, ' he said at last, putting back a book into the shelveswith a new accent of distaste and weariness, 'are beginning to founderin the sea of their own learning. Sometimes I think I will read no moreGerman. It is a nation of learned fools, none of whom ever sees an inchbeyond his own professorial nose. '

Then he stayed to luncheon, and Catherine, moved by manyfeelings--perhaps in subtle striving against her own passionate senseof 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 tookindividual notice of her, and as he parted with Elsmere in the hall madethe remark that Mrs. Elsmere seemed to like London, to which Robert, busy in an opportune search for his guest's coat made no reply. 

'When are you coming to Murewell?' the Squire said to him abruptly, ashe stood at the door muffled up as though it were December. 'There area good many points in that last article you want talking to about. Comenext month with Mrs. Elsmere. '

Robert drew a long breath, inspired by many feelings. 

'I will come, but not yet. I must get broken in here more thoroughlyfirst. Murewell touches me too deeply, and my wife. You are going abroadin the summer, you say. Let me come to you in the autumn. '

The Squire said nothing, and went his way, leaning heavily on his stick, across the square. Robert felt himself a brute to let him go, and almostran after him. 

That evening Robert was disquieted by the receipt of a note from a youngfellow of St. Anselm's, an intimate friend and occasional secretaryof Grey. Grey, the writer said, had received Robert's last letter, wasdeeply interested in his account of his work, and begged him to writeagain. He would have written, but that he was himself in the doctor'shands, suffering from various ills, probably connected with an attack ofmalarial fever which had befallen him in Rome the year before. 

Catherine found him poring over the letter, and, as it seemed to her, oppressed by an anxiety out of all proportion to the news itself. 

'They are not really troubled, I think, ' she said, kneeling down besidehim, and laying her cheek against his. 'He will soon get over it, Robert. '

But, alas! this mood, the tender characteristic mood of the oldCatherine, was becoming rarer and rarer with her. As the springexpanded, as the sun and the leaves came back, poor Catherine's temperhad only grown more wintry and more rigid. Her life was full of momentsof acute suffering. Never, for instance, did she forget the eveningof Robert's lecture to the club. All the time he was away she hadsat brooding by herself in the drawing-room, divining with a bitterclairvoyance all that scene in which he was taking part, her beingshaken with a tempest of misery and repulsion. And together with thattorturing image of a glaring room in which her husband, once Christ'sloyal minister, was employing all his powers of mind and speech to makeit easier for ignorant men to desert and fight against the Lord whobought them, there mingled a hundred memories of her father which werenow her constant companions. In proportion as Robert and she became moredivided, her dead father resumed a ghostly hold upon her. There weredays when she went about rigid and silent, in reality living altogetherin the past, among the gray farms, the crags and the stony ways of themountains. 

At such times her mind would be full of pictures of her father'sministrations--his talks with the shepherds on the hills, with the womenat their doors, his pale dreamer's face beside some wild death-bed, shining with the Divine message, the 'visions' which to her awe-struckchildish sense would often seem to hold him in their silent walks amongthe misty hills. 

Robert, taught by many small indications, came to recognize these statesof feeling in her with a dismal clearness, and to shrink more and moresensitively while they lasted from any collision with her. He kept hiswork, his friends, his engagements to himself, talking resolutely ofother things, she trying to do the same, but with less success, as hernature was less pliant than his. 

Then there would come moments when the inward preoccupation would giveway, and that strong need of loving, which was, after all, the basisof Catherine's character, would break hungrily through, and the wifeof their early married days would reappear, though still only withlimitations. A certain nervous physical dread of any approach to aparticular range of subjects with her husband was always present in her. Nay, through all these months it gradually increased in morbid strength. Shock had produced it; perhaps shock alone could loosen the stiffingpressure of it. But still every now and then her mood was brighter, morecaressing, and the area of common mundane interests seemed suddenly tobroaden for them. 

Robert did not always make a wise use of these happier times; he wasincessantly possessed with his old idea that if she only would allowherself some very ordinary intercourse with his world, her mood wouldbecome less strained, his occupations and his friends would cease tobe such bugbears to her, and, for his comfort and hers, she mightultimately be able to sympathize with certain sides at any rate of hiswork. 

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 cleverlythan he would have managed anybody else's affairs, as generally happens. For instance, at a period when he was feeling more enthusiasm than usualfor his colleague Wardlaw, and when Catherine was more accessible thanusual, it suddenly occurred to him to make an effort to bring themtogether. Brought face to face, each _must_ recognize the noblenessof the other. He felt boyishly confident of it. So he made it a point, tenderly but insistently, that Catherine should ask Wardlaw and his wifeto come and see them. And Catherine, driven obscurely by a longing toyield in something, which recurred, and often terrified herself, yieldedin this. 

The Wardlaws, who in general never went into society, were asked to aquiet dinner in Bedford Square, and came. Then, of course, it appearedthat Robert, with the idealist blindness, had forgotten a hundred smalldifferences of temperament and training which must make it impossiblefor Catherine, in a state of tension, to see the hero in James Wardlaw. It was an unlucky dinner. James Wardlaw, with all his heroisms andvirtues, had long ago dropped most of those delicate intuitions anddivinations, which make the charm of life in society, along the roughpaths of a strenuous philanthropy. He had no tact, and, like mostsaints, he drew a certain amount of inspiration from a contentedignorance of his neighbor's point of view. Also, he was not a man whomade much of women, and he held strong views as to the subordination ofwives. It never occurred to him that Robert might have a Dissenter inhis own household, and as, in spite of their speculative differences, he had always been accustomed to talk freely with Robert he now talkedfreely 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 his equals, had developed in him a good many crude Jacobinisms. His experience ofLondon clergymen, for instance, had not been particularly favorable, and he had a store of anecdotes on the subject which Robert had heardbefore, but which now, repeated in Catherine's presence, seemed to havelost every shred of humor they once possessed. Poor Elsmere tried withall his might to divert the stream, but it showed a tormenting tendencyto recur to the same channel. And meanwhile the little spectacled wife, dressed in a high home-made cashmere, sat looking at her husband witha benevolent and smiling admiration. She kept all her eloquence for thepoor. 

After dinner things grew worse. Mrs. Wardlaw had recently presented herhusband with a third infant, and the ardent pair had taken advantageof the visit to London of an eminent French Comtist to have it baptizedwith full Comtist rites. Wardlaw stood astride, on the rug, giving theassembled company a minute account of the ceremony observed, whilehis wife threw in gentle explanatory interjections. The manner of bothshowed a certain exasperating confidence, if not in the active sympathy, at least in the impartial curiosity of their audience, and in theimportance to modern religious history of the incident itself. Catherine's silence grew deeper and deeper; the conversation fellentirely to Robert. At last Robert, by main force as it were, gotWardlaw off into politics, but the new Irish Coercion Bill was hardlyintroduced before the irrepressible being turned to Catherine, and saidto her with smiling obtuseness, --

'I don't believe I've seen you at one of your husband's Sunday addressesyet, Mrs. Elsmere? And it isn't so far from this part of the worldeither. '

Catherine slowly raised her beautiful large eyes upon him. Robertlooking at her with a qualm, saw an expression he was learning to dreadflash across the face. 

'I have my Sunday-school at that time, Mr. Wardlaw. I am a Churchwoman. '

The tone had a touch of _hauteur_ Robert had hardly ever heard from hiswife before. It effectually stopped all further conversation. Wardlawfell into silence, reflecting that he had been a fool. His wife, witha timid flush, drew out her knitting and stuck to it for the twentyminutes that remained. Catherine immediately did her best to talk, to bepleasant; but the discomfort of the little party was too great. It brokeup at ten, and the Wardlaws departed. 

Catherine stood on the rug while Elsmere went with his guests to thedoor, waiting restlessly for her husband's return. Robert, however, came back to her, tired, wounded, and out of spirits, feeling that theattempt had been wholly unsuccessful, and shrinking from any furthertalk about it. He at once sat down to some letters for the late post. Catherine lingered a little, watching him longing miserably, like anygirl of eighteen, to throw herself on his neck and reproach him fortheir unhappiness, his friends--she knew not what! He all the time wasintimately conscious of her presence, of her pale beauty, which nowat twenty-seven, in spite of its severity, had a subtler finish andattraction than ever, of the restless little movements so unlikeherself, which she made from time to time. But neither spoke except uponindifferent things. Once more the difficult conditions of their livesseemed too obvious, too oppressive. Both were ultimately conquered bythe same sore impulse to let speech alone. 

CHAPTER XLII. 

And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of theseason which followed, Robert taxed to the utmost on all sides, yieldedto the impulse of silence more and more. 

Society was another difficulty between them. Robert delighted in it sofar as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever moreready 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 iskind to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becomingknown and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found itdifficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of socialquestions attracted the men of action; his growing historical reputationdrew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished to know himand to talk to him, and Catherine, smiled upon for his sake, and assumedto be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more bewildered andantagonistic as the season rushed on. 

For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings, which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus? With herall the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune. At any time RichardLeyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society whereeverything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more orless bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon inRobert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy--nay, a certainty, that, however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrongand mistaken! She went here and there obediently because he wished; buther youth seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gayety entirely lefther, and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have marrieda wife older than himself, and apparently so unsuited to him intemperament. 

Especially was she tried at Madame de Netteville's. For Robert's sakeshe tried for a time to put aside her first impression and to bearMadame de Netteville's evenings--little dreaming, poor thing, allthe time that Madame de Netteville thought her presence at the famous'Fridays' an incubus only to be put up with because her husband wasbecoming socially an indispensable. 

But after two or three Fridays Catherine's endurance failed her. On thelast occasion she found herself late in the evening hemmed in behindMadame de Netteville and a distinguished African explorer, who was thelion of the evening. Eugénie de Netteville had forgotten her silentneighbor, and presently, with some biting little phrase or other, sheasked the great man his opinion on a burning topic of the day, theresults of Church missions in Africa. The great man laughed, shruggedhis shoulders, and ran lightly through a string of stories in which bothmissionaries and converts played parts which were either grotesque orworse. Madame de Netteville thought the stories amusing, and as oneceased she provoked another, her black eyes full of a dry laughter, herwhite hand lazily plying her great ostrich fan. 

Suddenly a figure rose behind them. 

'Oh, Mrs. Elsmere!' said Madame de Netteville, starting, and then coollyrecovering herself, 'I had no idea you were there all alone. I am afraidour conversation has been disagreeable to you. I am afraid you are afriend of missions!'

And her glance, turning from Catherine to her companion, made a littlemalicious signal to him which only he detected, as though bidding himtake note of a curiosity. 

'Yes, I care for them, I wish for their success, ' said Catherine, onehand, which trembled slightly, resting on the table beside her, hergreat gray eyes fixed on Madame de Netteville. 'No Christian has anyright to do otherwise. '

Poor brave goaded soul! She had a vague idea of 'bearing testimony' asher father would have borne it in like circumstances. But she turnedvery pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell inthat room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tallwoman in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a somethingindescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. Shelooked like a Quaker prophetess--like Dinah Morris in society--like--buthis comparisons failed him. How did such a being come _there_? He wasamazed; but he was a man of taste, and Madame de Netteville caught acertain Aesthetic approbation in his look. 

She rose, her expression hard and bright as usual. 

'May one Christian pronounce for all?' she said, with a scornfulaffectation of meekness. 'Mrs. Elsmere, please find some chair morecomfortable than that ottoman; and Mr. Ansdale, will you come and beintroduced to Lady Aubrey?'

After her guests had gone Madame de Netteville came back to the fireflushed and frowning. It seemed to her that in that strange littleencounter she had suffered, and she never forgot or forgave the smallestsocial discomfiture. 

'Can I put up with that again?' she asked herself with a contemptuoushardening of the lip. 'I suppose I must if he cannot be got without her. But I have an instinct that it is over--that she will not appear hereagain. Daudet might make use of her. I can't. What a specimen! A boy andgirl match, I suppose. What else could have induced that poor wretch tocut his throat in such fashion? He, of all men. '

And Eugénie de Netteville stood thinking--not, apparently, of thepuritanical wife; the dangerous softness which over-spread the facecould have had no connection with Catherine. 

Madame de Netteville's instinct was just. Catherine Elsmere neverappeared again in her drawing-room. 

But, with a little sad confession of her own invincible distaste, thewife pressed the husband to go without her. She urged it at a bittermoment, when it was clear to her that their lives must of necessity, even in outward matters, be more separate than before. Elsmere resistedfor a time; then, lured one evening toward this end of February by theprospect conveyed in a note from Madame de Netteville, wherein Catherinewas mentioned in the most scrupulously civil terms, of meeting one ofthe most eminent of French critics, he went, and thenceforward wentoften. He had, so far, no particular liking for the hostess; he hatedsome of her _habitués_; but there was no doubt that in some ways shemade an admirable holder of a _salon_, and that round about her therewas a subtle mixture of elements, a liberty of discussion and comment, to be found nowhere else. And how bracing and refreshing was that freeplay of equal mind to the man weary sometimes of his leader's _rôle_ andweary of himself!

As to the _woman_, his social naïveté, which was extraordinary, but ina man of his type most natural, made him accept her exactly as he foundher. If there were two or three people in Paris or London who knew orsuspected incidents of Madame de Netteville's young married days whichmade her reception at some of the strictest English houses a matter ofcynical amusement to them, not the remotest inkling of their knowledgewas ever likely to reach Elsmere. He was not a man who attractedscandals. Nor was it anybody's interest to spread them. Madame deNetteville's position in London society was obviously excellent. If shehad peculiarities of manner and speech they were easily supposed to beFrench. Meanwhile she was undeniably rich and distinguished, and giftedwith a most remarkable power of protecting herself and her neighborsfrom boredom. At the same time, though Elsmere was, in truth, moreinterested in her friends than in her, he could not possibly beinsensible to the consideration shown for him in her drawing-room. Madame de Netteville allowed herself plenty of jests with her intimatesas to the young reformer's social simplicity, his dreams, his optimisms. But those intimates were the first to notice that as soon as he enteredthe room those optimisms of his were adroitly respected. She had variousdelicate contrivances for giving him the lead; she exercised a kind of_surveillance_ over the topics introduced; or in conversation withhim she would play that most seductive part of the cynic shamed out ofcynicism by the neighborhood of the enthusiast. 

Presently she began to claim a practical interest in his Street work. Her offers were made with a curious mixture of sympathy and mockery. Elsmere could not take her seriously. But neither could he refuse toaccept her money, if she chose to spend it on a library for ElgoodStreet, or to consult with her about the choice of books. This whim ofhers created a certain friendly bond between them which was not presentbefore. And on Elsmere's side it was strengthened when, one evening, ina corner of her inner drawing-room, Madame de Netteville suddenly, butvery quietly, told him the story of her life--her English youth, herelderly French husband, the death of her only child, and her flight as ayoung widow to England during the war of 1870. She told the story of thechild, as it seemed to Elsmere, with a deliberate avoidance of emotion, nay, even with a certain hardness. But it touched him profoundly. Andeverything else that she said, though she professed no great regretfor her husband, or for the break-up of her French life and thougheverything was reticent and measured, deepened the impression of a realforlornness behind all the outward brilliance and social importance. Hebegan to feel a deep and kindly pity for her, coupled with an earnestwish that he could help her to make her life more adequate andsatisfying. 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-by to her. 

Madame de Netteville's gaze followed him out of the room--the tallboyish figure, the nobly carried head. The riddle of her flushed cheekand sparkling eye was hard to read. But there were one or two personsliving who could have read it, and who could have warned you that the_true_ story of Eugénie de Netteville's life was written, not in herliterary studies or her social triumphs, but in various recurrentoutbreaks of unbridled impulse--the secret, and in one or two casesthe shameful landmarks of her past. And, as persons of experience, theycould also have warned you that the cold intriguer, always mistress ofherself, only exists in fiction, and that a certain poisoned and feveredinterest in the religious leader, the young and pious priest, as such, is common enough among the corrupter women of all societies. 

Toward the end of May she asked Elsmere to dine '_en petit comité_, agentleman's dinner--except for my cousin, Lady Aubrey Willert'--to meetan eminent Liberal Catholic, a friend of Montalembert's youth. 

It was a week or two after the failure of the Wardlaw experiment. Dowhat each would, the sore silence between the husband and wife wasgrowing, 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 himscrupulously, as though she had nothing to do with it. 

He knelt down before her, and put his arms round her, looking at herwith eyes which had a dumb and yet fiery appeal written in them. Hisheart was hungry for that old clinging dependence, that willing weaknessof love, her youth had yielded him so gladly, instead of this silentstrength of antagonism. The memory of her Murewell self flashedmiserably through him as he knelt there, of her delicate penitencetoward him after her first sight of Newcome, of their night walks duringthe Mile End epidemic. Did he hold now in his arms only the ghost andshadow of that Murewell Catherine?

She must have read the reproach, the yearning of his look, for shegave a little shiver, as though bracing herself with a kind of agony toresist. 

'Let me go, Robert!' she said gently, kissing him on the forehead anddrawing back. 'I hear Mary calling, and nurse is out. '

The days went on and the date of Madame de Netteville's dinner partyhad come round. About seven o'clock that evening Catherine sat with thechild in the drawing-room, expecting Robert. He had gone off earlyin the afternoon to the East End with Hugh Flaxman to take part in acommittee of workmen organized for the establishment of a choral unionin R----, the scheme of which had been Flaxman's chief contribution sofar to the Elgood Street undertaking. 

It seemed to her as she sat there working, the windows open on to thebit of garden, where the trees are already withered and begrimed, thatthe air without and her heart within were alike stifling and heavy withstorm. _Something_ must put an end to this oppression, this misery! Shedid not know herself. Her whole inner being seemed to her lessened anddegraded by this silent struggle, this fever of the soul, which madeimpossible all those serenities and sweetnesses of thought in which hernature had always lived of old. The fight into which fate had forced herwas destroying her. She was drooping like a plant cut off from all thatnourishes its life. 

And yet she never conceived it possible that she should relinquishthat fight. Nay, at times there sprang up in her now a dangerous anddespairing foresight of even worse things in store. In the middle of hersuffering, she already began to feel at moments the ascetic's terriblesense of compensation. What, after all, is the Christian life butwarfare? '_I came not to send peace, but a sword!_'

Yes, in these June days Elsmere's happiness was perhaps nearer wreckthan it had ever been. All strong natures grow restless under such apressure as was now weighing on Catherine. Shock and outburst becomeinevitable. 

So she sat alone this hot afternoon, haunted by presentiments, by vagueterror for herself and him; while the child tottered about her, cooing, shouting, kissing, and all impulsively, with a ceaseless energy, likeher father. 

The outer door opened and she heard Robert's step and apparently Mr. Flaxman's also. There was a hurried rushed word or two in the hall, andthe two entered the room where she was sitting. 

Robert came, pressing back the hair from his eyes with a gesture whichwith him was the invariable accompaniment of mental trouble. Catherinesprang up. 

'Robert, you look so tired! and how late you are!' Then as she camenearer to him: 'And your coat--_torn--blood!_'

'There is nothing wrong with _me_, dear, ' he said hastily, taking herhands 'nothing! But it has been an awful afternoon. Flaxman will tellyou. I must go to this place, I suppose, though I hate the thought ofit! Flaxman, will you tell her all about it?' And, loosing his hold, hewent heavily out of the room and upstairs. 

'It has been an accident, ' said Flaxman gently, coming forward, 'to oneof the men of his class. May we sit down, Mrs. Elsmere? Your husband andI have gone through a good deal these last two hours. '

He sat down with, a long breath, evidently to regain, his ordinary evenmanner. His clothes, too, were covered with dust, and his hand shook. Catherine stood before him in consternation, while a nurse came for thechild. 

'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 greatshouting 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 thestreet and a man run over. Your husband pushed his way in. I followed, and, to my horror, I found him kneeling by--Charles Richards!'

'Charles Richards?' Catherine repeated vacantly. 

Flaxman looked up at her, as though puzzled; then a flash ofastonishment 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 hehas been your husband's shadow, never saw such devotion. We found himlying in the middle of the road. He had only just left work, a man said, who had been with him, and was running to the meeting. He slipped andfell, crossing the street, which was muddy from last night's rain. Thedray swung round the corner--the driver was drunk or careless--and theywent right over him. One foot was a sickening sight. Your husband and Iluckily know how to lift him for the best. We sent off for doctors. His home was in the next street, as it as it happened--nearer than anyhospital; so we carried him there. The neighbors were around the door. '

Then he stopped himself. 

'Shall I tell you the whole story?' he said kindly, 'it has been atragedy! I won't give you details if you had rather not. '

'Oh, no!' she said hurriedly; 'no--tell me. '

And she forgot to feel any wonder that Flaxman, in his chivalry, shouldtreat her as though she were a girl with nerves. 

'Well, it was the surroundings that were so ghastly. When we got to thehouse, an old woman rushed at me, "His wife's in there, but ye'llnot find her in her senses; she's been at it from eight o'clock thismorning. We've took the children away. " I didn't know what she meantexactly 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; thebreakfast things on the table, the sun blazing in on the dust and thedirt, and on the woman's face. I wanted to carry him into the room onthe other side--he was unconscious; but a doctor had come up with us, and made us put him down on a bed there was in the corner. Then we gotsome brandy and poured it down. The doctor examined him, looked at hisfoot, threw something over it. "Nothing to be done, " he said--"internalinjuries--he can't live half an hour. " The next minute the poor fellowopened his eyes. They had pulled away the bed from the wall. Yourhusband was on the further side, knelling. When he opened his eyes, clearly the first thing he saw was his wife. He half sprang up--Elsmerecaught him--and gave a horrible cry--indescribably horrible. "_At itagain, at it again! My God!_" Then he fell back fainting. They got thewife out of the room between them--a perfect log--you could hear herheavy breathing from the kitchen opposite. We gave him more brandy andhe came to again. He looked up in your husband's face. "_She hasn'tbroke out for two months, _" he said, so piteously, "_two months--andnow--I'm done--I'm done--and she'll just go straight to the devil!_" Andit comes out, so the neighbors told us, that for two years or morehe had been patiently trying to reclaim this woman, without a word ofcomplaint to anybody, though his life must have been a dog's life. Andnow, on his death-bed, what seemed to be breaking his heart was, notthat he was dying, but that his task was snatched from him!'

Flaxman paused, and looked away out of the window. He told his storywith difficulty. 

'Your husband tried to comfort him--promised that the wife and childrenshould be his special case, that everything that could be done to saveand protect them should be done. And the poor little fellow looked up athim, with the tears running down his cheeks, and--and--blessed him. "I cared about nothing, " he said, "when you came. You've been--God--tome--I've seen Him--in you. " Then he asked us to say something. Yourhusband said verse after verse of the Psalms, of the Gospels, of St. Paul. His eyes grew filmy but he seemed every now and then to struggleback to, life, and as soon as he caught Elsmere's face his looklightened. Toward the last he said something we none of us caught; butyour husband thought it was a line from Emily Brontë's "Hymn, " which hesaid to them last Sunday in lecture. '

He looked up at her interrogatively, but there was no response in herface. 

'I asked him about it, ' the speaker went on, 'as we came home. He saidGrey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, and he has had a love for itever since. '

'Did he die while you were there?' asked Catherine presently after asilence. Her voice was dull and quiet. He thought her a strange woman. 

'No, ' said Flaxman, almost sharply-'but by now, it must be over. Thelast sign of consciousness was a murmur of his children's names. Theybrought them in, but his hands had to be guided to them. A few minutesafter it seemed to me that he was really gone, though he still breathed. The doctor was certain there would be no more consciousness. We stayednearly 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 astory 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, theface full of signs of what he had gone through. 

'Yes, it was terrible!' she said, with an effort. 

His face fell. He kissed her on the forehead and went away. 

When he was gone, Flaxman suddenly got up and leant against the openFrench window, looking keenly down on his companion. A new idea hadstirred in him. 

And presently, after more talk of the incident of the afternoon, andwhen he had recovered his usual manner, he slipped gradually intothe subject of his own experiences in North R---- during the last sixmonths. He assumed all through that she knew as much as there was tobe known of Elsmere's work, and that she was as much interested as thenormal wife is in her husband's doings. His tact, his delicacy, neverfailed him for a moment. But he spoke of his own impressions, of matterswithin his personal knowledge. And since the Easter sermon he had beenmuch 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 foldsabout her, her head bent, her long fingers crossed on her lap. Sometimesshe gave him a startled look, sometimes she shaded her eyes, while herother hand played silently with her watch-chain. Flaxman, watchingher closely, however little he might seem to do so, was struck by heraustere and delicate beauty as he had never been before. 

She hardly spoke all through, but he felt that she listened withoutresistance, nay, at last that she listened with a kind of hunger. Hewent from story to story, from scene to scene, without any excitement, in his most ordinary manner, making his reserves now and then, expressing his own opinion when it occurred to him, and not alwaysfavorably. But gradually the whole picture emerged, began to live beforethem. At last he hurriedly looked at his watch. 

'What a time I have kept you! It has been a relief to talk to you. '

'You have not had dinner!' she said, looking up at him with a suddennervous bewilderment which touched him and subtly changed his impressionof her. 

'No matter. I will got some at home. Good-night!'

When he was gone she carried the child up to bed; her supper was broughtto her solitary in the dining-room; and afterward in the drawing-room, where a soft twilight was fading into a soft and starlit night, shemechanically brought out some work for Mary, and sat bending over it bythe window. After about an hour she looked up straight before her, threwher work down, and slipped on to the floor, her head resting on thechair. 

The shock, the storm, had come. There for hours lay Catherine Elsmereweeping her heart away, wrestling with herself, with memory, with God. It was the greatest moral upheaval she had ever known--greater even thanthat which had convulsed her life at Murewell. 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

Robert, tired and sick at heart, felt himself in no mood this eveningfor a dinner-party in which conversation would be treated more or lessas a fine art. Liberal Catholicism had lost its charm; his sympatheticinterest in Montalembert, Lacordaire, Lamennais, had to be quickened, pumped up again as it were, by great efforts, which were constantlyrelaxed within him as he sped westward by the recurrent memory of thatmiserable room, the group of men, the bleeding hand, the white dyingface. 

In Madame de Netteville's drawing-room he found a small number of peopleassembled. M. De Quérouelle, a middle-sized, round-headed old gentlemanof a familiar French type; Lady Aubrey, thinner, more lath-like thanever, clad in some sumptuous mingling of dark red and silver; LordRupert, beaming under the recent introduction of a Land Purchase Billfor Ireland, by which he saw his way at last to wash his hands of 'abeastly set of tenants;' Mr. Wharncliffe, a young private secretarywith a waxed moustache, six feet of height, and a general air ofsuperlativeness which demanded, and secured attention; a famousjournalist, whose smiling, self-repressive look assured you that hecarried with him the secrets of several empires; and one Sir JohnHeadlam, a little black-haired Jewish-looking man with a limp--anex-Colonial Governor, who had made himself accepted in London as anamusing fellow, but who was at least as much disliked by one half ofsociety as he was popular with the other. 

'Purely for talk, you see, not for show!' said Madame de Netteville toRobert, with a little smiling nod round her circle as they stood waitingfor the commencement of dinner. 

'I shall hardly do my part, ' he said with a little sigh. 'I have justcome from a very different scene. '

She looted at him with inquiring eyes. 

'A terrible accident in the East End, ' he said briefly. 'We won't talkof it. I only mention it to propitiate you before-hand. Those things arenot forgotten at once. '

She said no more, but, seeing that he was indeed out of heart, physically and mentally, she showed the most subtle consideration forhim at dinner. M. De Quérouelle was made to talk. His hostess wound himup and set him going, tune after tune. He played them all and, by dintof long practice, to perfection, in the French way. A visit of his youthto the Island grave of Chateaubriand; his early memories, as a poeticalaspirant, of the magnificent flatteries by which Victor Hugo madehimself the god of young romantic Paris; his talks with Montalembertin the days of _L'Avenir_; his memories of Lamennais' sombre figure, of Maurice de Guérin's feverish ethereal charm; his account of theopposition _salons_ under the Empire--they had all been elaborated inthe course of years, till every word fitted and each point led to thenext with the 'inevitableness' of true art. Robert, at first silentand _distraut_, found it impossible after a while not to listen withinterest. He admired the skill, too, of Madame de Netteville's second inthe duet, the finish, the alternate sparkle and melancholy of it; andat last he too was drawn in, and found himself listened to with greatbenevolence by the French man, who had been informed about him, andregarded him indulgently, as one more curious specimen of Englishreligious provincialisms. The journalist, Mr. Addlestone, who had wona European reputation for wisdom by a great scantiness of speech insociety, coupled with the look of Minerva's owl, attached himselfto them; while Lady Aubrey, Sir John Headlam, Lord Rupert, and Mr. Wharncliffe made a noisier and more dashing party at the other end. 

'Are you still in your old quarters?' Lady Aubrey asked Sir JohnHeadlam, turning his old, roguish face upon her. 'That house of WellGwynne's, wasn't it, in Meade Street?'

'Oh dear no! We could only get it up to May this year, and then theymade us turn out for the season, for the first time for ten years. Thereis a tiresome young heir who has married a wife and wants to live in it. I could have left a train of gunpowder and a slow match behind, I was socross!'

'Ah, --"Reculer pour mieux _faire_ sauter!"' said Sir John, mincing outhis pun as though he loved it. 

'Not bad, Sir John, ' she said, looking at him calmly, 'but you have wayto make up. You were so dull the last time you took me in to dinner, that positively----'

'You began to wonder to what I owed my paragraph in the "Société deLondres, "' he rejoined, smiling, though a close observer might have seenan angry flash in his little eyes. 'My dear Lady Aubrey, it wassimply because I had not seen you for six weeks. My education had beenneglected. I get my art and my literature from you. The last time butone we meet, you gave me the cream of three new French novels and allthe dramatic scandal of the period. I have lived on it for weeks. By theway, 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 arapier-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 motioncharacteristic of him, while Mr. Wharncliffe followed like a moderngunboat behind a three-decker. That young man was a delusion. The casualspectator, to borrow a famous Cambridge _mot_, invariably assumed thatall 'the time he could spare from neglecting his duties he must spend inadorning his person. ' Not at all! The _tenue_ of a dandy was never morecleverly used to mask the schemes of a Disraeli or the hard ambition ofa Talleyrand than in Master Frederick Wharncliffe, who was in realitygoing up the ladder hand over hand, and meant very soon to be on the toprungs. 

It was a curious party, typical of the house, and of a certain stratumof London. When, every now and then, in the pauses of their ownconversation, Elsmere caught something of the chatter going on at theother end of the table, or when the party became fused into one for awhile under the genial influence of a good story or the exhilaration ofa personal skirmish, the whole scene--the dainty oval room, the lights, the servants, the exquisite fruit and flowers, the gleaming silver, the tapestried wall--would seem to him for an instant like a mirage, a dream, yet with something glittering and arid about it which a dreamnever has. 

The hard self-confidence of these people--did it belong to the sameworld as that humbling, that heavenly self-abandonment which had shoneon him that afternoon from Charles Richards' begrimed and blood-stainedface? '_Blessed are the poor in spirit_, ' he said to himself once withan inward groan. 'Why am I here? Why am I not at home with Catherine?'

But Madame de Netteville was pleasant to him. He had never seen her sowomanly, never felt more grateful for her delicate social skill. Asshe talked to him, or to the Frenchman, of literature, or politics, orfamous folk, flashing her beautiful eyes from one to the other, SirJohn Headlam would, every now and then, turn his odd puckered faceobservantly toward the farther end of the table. 

'By Jove!' he said afterward to Wharncliffe as they walked away fromthe door together, 'she was inimitable to-night; she has more rôles thanDesforêts!' Sir John and his hostess were very old friends. 

Upstairs, smoking began, Lady Aubrey and Madame de Netteville joiningin. M. De Quérouelle, having talked the best of his repertoire atdinner, was now inclined for amusement, and had discovered that LadyAubrey could amuse him, and was, moreover, _une belle personne_. Madamede Netteville, was obliged to give some time to Lord Rupert. The othermen stood chatting politics and the latest news, till Robert, consciousof a complete failure of social energy, began to took at his watch. Instantly Madame de Netteville glided up to him. 

'Mr. Elsmere, you have talked no business to me, and I must know hownay affairs in Elgood Street are getting on. Come into my littlewriting-room. ' And she led him into a tiny panelled room at the far endof the drawing-room and shut off from it by a heavy curtain, which shenow left half-drawn. 

'The latest?' said Fred Wharncliffe to Lady Aubrey, raising his eyebrowswith the slightest motion of the head toward the writing-room. 

'I suppose so, ' she said indifferently; 'She is East-Ending, for achange. We all do it nowadays. It is like Dizzy's young man who "likedbad wine, he was so bored with good. "'

Meanwhile, Madame de Netteville was leaning against the open window ofthe fantastic little room, with Robert beside her. 

'You look as if you had had a strain, ' she said to him, abruptly, afterthey had talked business for a few minutes. 'What has been the matter?'

He told her Richards' story, very shortly. It would have been impossibleto him to give more than the dryest outline of it in that room. Hiscompanion listened gravely. She was an epicure in all things, especiallyin moral sensation, and she liked his moments of reserve and strongself-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 reformer shouldrefuse no one. '

'You have your own opportunities, ' he said quietly; 'I think the menprefer to have it to themselves for the present. Some of them aredreadfully in earnest. '

'Oh, I don't pretend to be in earnest, ' she said with a little wave ofher hand; 'or, at any rate, I know better than to talk of earnestness to_you_. '

'Why to me?' he asked, smiling. 

'Oh, because you and your like have your fixed ideas of the upperclass and the lower. One social type fills up your horizon. You are notinterested in any other. '

She looked at him defiantly. Everything about her to-night was splendidand regal--her dress of black and white brocade, the diamonds at herthroat, the carriage of her head, nay, the marks of experience andliving on the dark subtle face. 

'Perhaps not, ' he replied; 'it is enough for one life to try and makeout where the English working class is tending to. '

'You are quite wrong, utterly wrong. The man who keeps his eye only onthe lower class will achieve nothing. What can the idealist do withoutthe men of action--the men who can take his beliefs and make them enterby violence into existing institutions? And the men of action are to befound with _us_. '

'It hardly looks just now as if the upper class was to go on enjoying amonopoly of them, ' he said, smiling. 

'Then appearances are deceptive, The populace supplies mass andweight--nothing else. What _you_ want is to touch the leaders, the menand women whose voices carry, and then your populace would follow hardenough, For instance'--and she dropped her aggressive tone and spokewith a smiling kindness--'come down next Saturday to my little Surreycottage; you shall see some of these men and women there, and I willmake you confess when you go away that you have profited your workmenmore 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 BrookFarm, but nothing more. The religious movement of the future will wanta vast effusion of feeling and passion to carry it into action, andfeeling and passion are only to be generated in sufficient volume amongthe masses, where the vested interests of all kinds are less tremendous. You upper-class folk have your part, of course. Woe betide you if youshirk--but----'

'Oh, let us leave it alone, ' she said with a little shrug. 'I knew youwould give us all the work and refuse us all the profits. We areto starve for your workman, to give him our hearts and purses andeverything we have, not that we may hoodwink him--which might be worthdoing--but that he may rule us. It is too much!'

'Very well, ' he said dryly, his color rising. 'Very well, let it be toomuch. '

And, dropping his lounging attitude, he stood erect, and she saw that hemeant to be going. Her look swept over him from head to foot--over theworn face with its look of sensitive refinement and spiritual force, theactive frame, the delicate but most characteristic hand. Never had anyman so attracted her for years; never had she found it so difficult togain a hold. Eugénie de Netteville, _poseuse_, schemer, woman of theworld that she was, was losing command of herself. 

'What did you really mean by "worldliness" and the "world" in yourlecture last Sunday?' she asked him suddenly, with a little accent ofscorn. 'I thought your diatribes absurd. What you religious people callthe "world" is really only the average opinion of sensible people whichneither you nor your kind could do without for a day. '

He smiled, half amused by her provocative tone, and defended himself notvery seriously. But she threw all her strength into the argument, andhe forgot that he had meant to go at once. When she chose she couldtalk admirably, and she chose now. She had the most aggressive ways ofattacking, and then, in the same breath, the most subtle and softeningways of yielding and, as it were, of asking pardon. Directly herantagonist turned upon her he found himself disarmed he knew not how. The disputant disappeared, and he felt the woman, restless, melancholy, sympathetic, hungry for friendship and esteem, yet too proud to makeany direct bid for either. It was impossible not to be interested andtouched. 

Such at least was the woman whom Robert Elsmere felt. Whether in hishours of intimacy with her twelve months before, young Alfred Evershedhad received the same impression, may be doubted. In all things Eugéniede Netteville was an artist. 

Suddenly the curtain dividing them from the larger drawing-room wasdrawn back, and Sir John Headlam stood in the doorway. He had theglittering amused eyes of a malicious child as he looked at them. 

'Very sorry, Madame, ' he began in his high cracked voice, 'butWharncliffe and I are off to the New Club to see Desforéts. They havegot her there to-night. '

'Go, ' she said, waving her hand to him, 'I don't envy you. She is notwhat she was. '

'No, there is only one person, ' he said, bowing with grotesque littleairs of gallantry, 'for whom time stands still. '

Madame de Netteville looked at him with smiling, half-contemptuousserenity. He bowed again, this time with ironical emphasis, anddisappeared. 

'Perhaps I had better go and send them off, ' she said, rising. 'But youand I have not had our talk out yet. '

She led the way into the drawing-room. Lady Aubrey was lying back onthe velvet sofa, a little green paroquet that was accustomed to wandertamely about the room was perching on her hand. She was holding thefield against Lord Rupert and Mr. Addlestone in a three-cornered duelof wits, while M. De Quérouelle sat by, his plump hands on his knees, applauding. 

They all rose as their hostess came in. 

'My dear, ' said Lady Aubrey, 'it is disgracefully early, but my countrybefore pleasure. It is the Foreign Office to-night, and since Jamestook office I can't with decency absent myself. I had rather be ascullery-maid than a minister's wife. Lord Rupert, I will take you on ifyou want a lift. '

She touched Madame de Netteville's cheek with her lips, nodding to theother men present, and went out, her fair stag-like head well in theair, 'chaffing' Lord Rupert, who obediently followed her, performingmarvellous feats of agility in his desire to keep out of the way of thesuperb train sweeping behind her. It always seemed as if Lady Aubreycould have had no childhood, as if she must always have had just thatvoice and those eyes. Tears she could never have shed, not even as ababy over a broken toy. Besides, at no period of her life could she havelooked upon a lost possession as anything else than the opportunity fora new one. 

The other men took their departure for one reason or another. It wasnot late, but London was in full swing, and M. De Quérouelle talked withgusto of four 'At homes' still to be grappled with. 

As she dismissed Mr. Wharncliffe, Robert too held out his hand. 

'No, ' she said, with a quick impetuousness, 'no: I want my talk out. Itis barely half-past ten, and neither one of us wants to be racing aboutLondon to-night. '

Elsmere had always a certain lack of social decision, and he lingeredrather reluctantly for another ten minutes, as he supposed. 

She threw herself into a low chair. The windows were open to the backof the house, and the roar of Piccadilly and Sloane Street came borne inupon the warm night air. Her superb dark head stood out against a standof yellow lilies close behind her, and the little paroquet, bright withall the colors of the tropics, perched now on her knee, now on the backof her chair, touched every now and then by quick unsteady fingers. 

Then an incident followed which Elsmere remembered to his dying day withshame and humiliation. 

In ten minutes from the time of their being left alone, a woman who wasfive years his senior had made him what was practically a confession oflove--had given him to understand that she know what were the relationsbetween himself and his wife--and had implored him with the quick breathof an indescribable excitement to see what a woman's sympathy and awoman's unique devotion could do for the causes he had at heart. 

The truth broke upon Elsmere very slowly, awakening in him, when at lastit was unmistakable, a swift agony of repulsion, which his most friendlybiographer can only regard with a kind of grim satisfaction. For afterall there is an amount of innocence and absentmindedness in matters ofdaily human life, which is not only _niaiserie_, but comes very near tomoral wrong. In this crowded world a man has no business to walk aboutwith his eyes always on the stars. His stumbles may have too manyconsequences. A harsh but a salutary truth! If Elsmere needed it, it wasbitterly taught him during a terrible half-hour. When the half-coherentenigmatical sentences, to which he listened at first with a perplexedsurprise, began gradually to define themselves; when he found awoman roused and tragically beautiful between him and escape; when nodetermination on his part not to understand; when nothing he could sayavailed to protect her from her-self; when they were at last face toface with a confession and an appeal which were a disgrace to both--thenat last Elsmere paid 'in one minute glad life's arrears'--the naturalpenalty of an optimism, a boundless faith in human nature, with whichlife, as we know it, is inconsistent. 

How he met the softness, the grace, the seduction of a woman who was anexpert in all the arts of fascination he never knew. In memory afterwardit was all a ghastly mirage to him. The low voice, the splendid dress, the scented room came back to him, and a confused memory of his ownfutile struggle to ward off what she was bent on saying--little else. Hehad been maladroit, he thought, had lost his presence of mind. Any manof the world of his acquaintance, he believed, trampling on himself, would have done better. 

But when the softness and the grace were all lost in smart andhumiliation, when the Madame de Netteville of ordinary life disappeared, and something took her place which was like a coarse and malignantunderself suddenly brought into the light of day, --from that pointonward, in after days, he remembered it all. 

'... I know, ' cried Eugénie de Netteville at last, standing at baybefore him, her hands locked before her, her white lips quivering, whenher cup of shame was full, and her one impulse left was to strike theman who had humiliated her-'I know that you and your puritanical wifeare miserable--_miserable_. What is the use of denying facts that allthe world can see, that you have taken pains, ' and she laid a fierce, deliberate emphasis on each word, 'all the world shall see? There, --letyour wife's ignorance and bigotry, and your own obvious relation toher, be my excuse, if I wanted any; but'--and she shrugged her whiteshoulders passionately--'I want _none!_ I am not responsible to yourpetty codes. Nature and feeling are enough for me. I saw you wantingsympathy 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 stepforward. 

'Let me go, Madame de Netteville, let me go, or I shall forget that youare a woman, and I a man, and that in some way I cannot understand myown blindness and folly----'

'Must have led to this most undesirable scene, ' she said with mockingsuddenness, throwing, herself, however, effectually in his way. Then achange came over her, and erect, ghastly white, with frowning brow andshaking limbs, a baffled and smarting woman from whom every restrainthad fallen away, let loose upon him a torrent of gall and bitternesswhich he could not have cut short without actual violence. 

He stood proudly enduring it, waiting for the moment when what seemedto him an outbreak of mania should have spent itself. But suddenly hecaught Catherine's name coupled with some contemptuous epithet or other, and his self-control failed him. With flashing eyes he went close up toher and took her wrists in a grip of iron. 

'You shall not, ' he said; beside himself, 'You shall not! What have Idone--what has she done--that you should allow yourself such words? Mypoor wife!'

A passionate flood of self-reproachful love was on his lips. He chokedit back. It was desecration that her name should be mentioned in thatroom. But he dropped the hand he held. The fierceness died out of hiseyes. His companion stood beside him panting, breathless, afraid. 

'Thank God, ' he said slowly, 'thank God for yourself and me that I lovemy wife! I am not worthy of her--doubly unworthy, since it has beenpossible for any human being to suspect for one instant that I wasungrateful for the blessing of her love, that I could ever forget anddishonor her! But worthy or not----No!--no matter! Madame de Netteville, let me go, and forget that such a person exists. '

She looked at him steadily for a moment, at the stern manliness of theface which seemed in this half-hour to have grown older, at the attitudewith its mingled dignity and appeal. In that second she realized whatshe had done and what she had forfeited; she measured the gulf betweenherself and the man before her. But she did not flinch. Still holdinghim, as it were, with menacing defiant eyes, she moved aside, she, wavedher hand with a contemptuous gesture of dismissal. He bowed, passed her, and the door shut. 

For nearly an hour afterward Elsmere wandered blindly and aimlesslythrough the darkness and silence of the park. 

The sensitive optimist nature was all unhinged, felt itself wrestlingin the grip of dark, implacable things, upheld by a single thread abovethat moral abyss which yawns beneath us all, into which the individuallife sinks so easily to ruin and nothingness. At such moments a manrealizes within himself, within the circle of consciousness, the germsof all things hideous and vile. '_Save for the grace of God_, ' he saysto himself, shuddering, 'save only for the grace of God----'

Contempt for himself, loathing for life and its possibilities, as hehad just beheld them; moral tumult, pity, remorse, a stingingself-reproach--all these things wrestled within him. What, preach toothers, and stumble himself into such mire as this? Talk loudly oflove and faith, and make it possible all the time that a fellow humancreature should think you capable at a pinch of the worst treasonagainst both?

Elsmere dived to the very depths of his own soul that night. Was it allthe natural consequence of a loosened bond, of a wretched relaxation ofeffort--a wretched acquiescence in something second best? Had love beencooling? Had it simply ceased to take the trouble love must take tomaintain itself? And had this horror been the subtle inevitable Nemesis?

All at once, under the trees of the park, Elsmere stopped for a momentin the darkness, and bared his head, with the passionate reverentialaction of a devotee before his saint. The lurid image which had beenpursuing him gave way, and in its place came the image of a new-mademother, her child close within her sheltering arm. Ah! it was all plainto him now. The moral tempest had done its work. 

One task of all tasks had been set him from the beginning--to keep hiswife's love! If she had slipped away from him, to the injury and morallessening of both, on his cowardice, on his clumsiness, be the blame!Above all, on his fatal power of absorbing himself in a hundred outsideinterests, controversy, literature, society. Even his work seemed tohave lost half its sacredness. If there be a canker at the root, nomatter how large the show of leaf and blossom overhead, there is but themore to wither! Of what worth is any success, but that which is groundeddeep on the rock of personal love and duty?

Oh! let him go back to her!--wrestle with her, open his heart again, trynew ways, make new concessions. How faint the sense of _her_ trial hasbeen growing within him of late! hers which had once been more terribleto him than his own! He feels the special temptations of his own nature;he throws himself, humbled, convicted, at her feet. The woman, the scenehe has left, is effaced, blotted out by the natural intense reaction ofremorseful love. 

So he sped homeward at last through the noise of Oxford Street, hearingnothing. He opened, his own door, and let himself into the dim, silenthouse. How the moment recalled to him that other supreme moment of hislife at Murewell! No light in the drawing-room. He went upstairs andsoftly turned the handle of her room. 

Inside the room seemed to him nearly dark. But the window was wideopen. The free, loosely growing branches of the plane trees made a dark, delicate network against the luminous blue of the night. A cool aircame to him laden with an almost rural scent of earth and leaves. By thewindow sat a white motionless figure. As he closed the door it roseand walked toward him without a word. Instinctively Robert felt thatsomething unknown to him had been passing here. He paused, breathless, expectant. 

She came to him. She linked her cold, trembling fingers round his neck. 

'Robert, I have been waiting so long--it was so late! I thought'--andshe choked down a sob-'perhaps something has happened to--him, we areseparated forever, and I shall never be able to tell him. Robert, Mr. Flaxman talked to me; he opened my eyes; I have been so cruel to you, sohard! I have broken my vow. I don't deserve it; but--_Robert!_----'

She had spoken with extraordinary self-command till the last word, whichfell into a smothered cry for pardon. Catherine Elsmere had very littleof the soft clingingness which makes the charm of a certain type ofwoman. Each phrase she had spoken had seemed to take with it a piece ofher life. She trembled and tottered in her husband's arms. 

He bent over her with half-articulate words of amazement, of passion. Heled her to her chair, and kneeling before her, he tried, so far as theemotion of both would let him, to make her realize what was in his ownheart, the penitence and longing which had winged his return to her. Without a mention of Madame de Netteville's name, indeed! _That_ horrorshe should never know. But it was to it, as he held his wife, he owedhis poignant sense of something half-jeopardized and wholly recovered;it was that consciousness in the background of his mind, ignorant of itas Catherine was then and always, which gave the peculiar epoch-makingforce to this sacred and critical hour of their lives. But she wouldhear nothing of his self-blame--nothing. She put her hand across hislips. 

'I have seen things as they are, Robert, ' she said very simply; 'whileI have been sitting here, and downstairs, after Mr. Flaxman left me. You were right--I _would_ not understand. And, in a sense, I shall neverunderstand. I cannot change, ' and her voice broke into piteousness. 'MyLord is my Lord always--, but He is yours too. Oh, I know it, saywhat you will! _That_ is what has been hidden from me; that is what mytrouble has taught me; the powerlessness, the worthlessness, of words. _It is the spirit that quickeneth_. I should never have felt it so, butfor this fiery furnace of pain. But I have been wandering in strangeplaces, through strange thoughts. God has not one language, but many. Ihave dared to think He had but one, the one I know. I have dared'--andshe faltered--'to condemn your faith as no faith. Oh! I lay there solong in the dark downstairs, seeing you by that bed; I heard your voice, I crept to your side. Jesus was there, too. Ah, He was--He was! Leave methat comfort! What are you saying? Wrong--you? unkind? Your wife knowsnothing of it. Oh, did you think when you came in just now before dinnerthat I didn't care, that I had a heart of stone? Did you think I hadbroken my solemn promise, my vow to you that day at Murewell? So I have, a hundred times over. I made it in ignorance; I had not counted thecost--how could I? It was all so new, so strange. I dare not make itagain, the will is so weak, circumstances so strong. But oh! take meback into your life! Hold me there! Remind me always of this night;convict me out of my own mouth! But I _will_ learn my lesson; I willlearn to hear the two voices, the voice that speaks to you and thevoice that speaks to me--I must. It is all plain to me now. It has beenappointed me. '

Then she broke down into a kind of weariness, and fell back in herchair, her delicate fingers straying with soft childish touch over hishair. 

'But I am past thinking. Let us bury it all, and begin again. Words arenothing. '

Strange ending to a day of torture! As she towered above him in thedimness, white and pure and drooping, her force of nature all dissolved, lost in this new heavenly weakness of love, he thought of the man whopassed through the place of sin, and the place of expiation, and saw, at last the rosy light creeping along the East; caught the white movingfigures, and that sweet distant melody rising through the luminous air, which announced to him the approach of Beatrice and the nearness ofthose 'shining tablelands whereof our God Himself is moon and sun. 'For eternal life, the ideal state, is not something future and distant. Dante knew it when he talked of '_quella que imparadisa la mia mente_. 'Paradise is here, visible and tangible by mortal eyes and hands, whenever self is lost in loving, whenever the narrow limits ofpersonality are beaten down by the inrush of the Divine Spirit. 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

The saddest moment in the lives of these two persons whose history wehave followed for so long, was over and done with. Henceforward to theend Elsmere and his wife were lovers as of old. 

But that day and night left even deeper marks on Robert than onCatherine. Afterward she gradually came to feel, running all through hisviews of life, a note sterner, deeper, maturer than any present therebefore. The reasons for it were unknown to her, though sometimes her owntender, ignorant, remorse supplied them. But they were hidden deep inElsmere's memory. 

A few days afterward he was casually told that Madame de Netteville hadleft England for some time. As a matter of fact he never set eyes on heragain. After a while the extravagance of his self-blame abated. Hesaw things as they were--without morbidness. But a certain boyishcarelessness of mood he never afterward quite recovered. Men and womenof all classes, and not only among the poor, became more real and moretragic--moral truths more awful--to him. It was the penalty of a highlystrung nature set with exclusive intensity toward certain spiritualends. 

On the first opportunity after that conversation with Hugh Flaxman whichhad so deeply affected her, Catherine accompanied Elsmere to his Sundaylecture. He tried a little, tenderly, to dissuade her. But she went, shrinking and yet determined. 

She had not heard him speak in public since that last sermon of his inMurewell Church, every detail of which by long brooding had been burntinto her mind. The bare Elgood Street room, the dingy outlook on thehigh walls of a warehouse opposite, the lines of blanched, quick-eyedartisans, the dissent from what she loved, and he had once loved, implied in everything, the lecture itself, on the narratives of thePassion; it was all exquisitely painful to her, and, yet, yet she wasglad to be there. 

Afterward Wardlaw, with the brusque remark to Elsmere that 'any foolcould see he was getting done up, ' insisted on taking the children'sclass. Catherine, too, had been impressed, as she saw Robert raiseda little above her in the glare of many windows, with the suddenperception that the worn, exhausted look of the preceding summer hadreturned upon him. She held out her hand to Wardlaw with a quick, warmword of thanks. He glanced at her curiously. What had brought her thereafter all?

Then Robert, protesting that he was being ridiculously coddled, and thatWardlaw was much more in want of a holiday than he, was carried offto the Embankment, and the two spent a happy hour wandering westward, Somerset House, the bridges, the Westminster towers rising before theminto the haze of the June afternoon. A little fresh breeze came off theriver; that, or his wife's hand on his arm, seemed to put new life intoElsmere. 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 finalrestoration, in an all-atoning moment, perhaps at the very end of life, in which the blind would see, the doubter be convinced. And, meanwhile, the blessedness of this peace, this surrender! Surely the air thisafternoon 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 tohim. For Mr. Grey's illness had taken a dangerous and alarming turn. Itseemed to be the issue of long ill-health, and the doctors feared thatthere 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 despairing. Since Elsmere had leftOxford, he could count on the fingers of one hand the occasions on whichhe and Grey had met face to face. But for him, as for many another manof our time, Henry Grey's influence was not primarily an influence ofpersonal contact. His mere life, that he was there, on English soil, within a measurable distance, had been to Elsmere in his darkest momentsone of his thoughts of refuge. At a time when a religion which can nolonger be believed clashes with a scepticism full of danger to conduct, every such witness as Grey to the power of a new and coming truth holdsa special place in the hearts of men who can neither accept fairy tales, nor reconcile themselves to a world without faith. The saintly lifegrows to be a beacon, a witness. Men cling to it as they have alwaysclung to each other, to the visible, and the tangible; as the elders ofMiletus, though the Way lay before them, clung to the man who had settheir feet therein, 'sorrowing most of all that they should see his faceno more. '

The accounts grew worse--all friends shut out, no possibility of lastwords--the whole of Oxford moved and sorrowing. Then at list, on aFriday, came the dreaded, expected letter: 'He is gone! He died earlythis morning, without pain, conscious almost to the end. He mentionedseveral friends by name, you among them, during the night. The funeralis to be on Tuesday. You will be here, of course. '

Sad and memorable day! By an untoward chance it fell in Commemorationweek, and Robert found the familiar streets teeming with life and noise, under a showery, uncertain sky, which every now and then would sendthe bevies of lightly gowned maidens, with their mothers, and theirattendant squires, skurrying for shelter, and leave the roofs andpavements glistening. He walked up to St. Anselm's, found as he expectedthat the first part of the service was to be in the chapel, the restin the cemetery, and then mounted the well-known staircase to Langham'srooms. Langham was apparently in his bedroom. Lunch was on thetable--the familiar commons, the familiar toast-and-water. There, ina recess, were the same splendid wall maps of Greece he had so oftenconsulted after lecture. There was the little case of coins, withthe gold Alexanders he had handled with so much covetous reverence ateighteen. Outside, the irregular quadrangle with its dripping treesstretched before him; the steps of the new Hall, now the shower wasover, were crowded with gowned figures. It might have been yesterdaythat 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 flatnessin it, an absence of positive cordiality which was new to him in anygreeting of Langham's to himself, and had a chilling effect upon him. The face, too, was changed. Tint and expression were both dulled; itsmarble-like sharpness and finish had coarsened a little, and the figure, which had never possessed the erectness of youth had now the pinchedlook and the confirmed stoop of the valetudinarian. 

'I did not write to you, Elsmere, ' he said immediately, as though inanticipation of what the other would be sure to say; 'I knew nothing butwhat the bulletins said, and I was told that Cathcart wrote to you. Itis many years now since I have seen much of Grey. Sit down and have somelunch. We have time, but not too much time. '

Robert took a few mouthfuls. Langham was difficult, talkeddisconnectedly of trifles, and Robert was soon painfully conscious thatthe old sympathetic bond between them no longer existed. Presently, Langham, as though with an effort to remember, asked after Catherine, then inquired what he was doing in the way of writing, and neitherof them mentioned the name of Leyburn. They left the table and satspasmodically talking, in reality expectant. And at last the soundpresent already in both minds made itself heard--the first long solitarystroke of the chapel bell. 

Robert covered his eyes. 

'Do you remember in this room, Langham, you introduced us first?'

'I remember, ' replied the other abruptly. Then, with a half-cynical, half-melancholy scrutiny of his companion, he said, after a pause, 'Whata faculty of hero-worship you have always had, Elsmere!'

'Do you know anything of the end?' Robert asked him presently, asthat tolling bell seemed to bring the strong feeling beneath moreirresistibly to the surface. 

'No, I never asked!' cried Langham, with sudden harsh animation. 'Whatpurpose could be served? Death should be avoided by the living. We haveno business with it. Do what we will, we cannot rehearse our own parts. And the sight of other men's performances helps us no more than thesight of a great actor gives the dramatic gift. All they do for us is toimperil the little nerve, break through the little calm, we have left. '

Elsmere's hand dropped, and he turned round to him with a flashingsmile. 

'Ah--I know it now--you loved him still. '

Langham, who was standing, looked down on him sombrely, yet moreindulgently. 

'How much you always made of feeling' he said after a little pause, 'ina world where, according to me, our chief object should be not to feel!'

Then he began to hunt for his cap and gown. In another minute the twomade part of the crowd in the front quadrangle, where the rain wassprinkling, and the insistent grief-laden voice of the bell rolled, frompause to pause, above the gowned figures, spreading thence in wide wavesof mourning sound over Oxford. 

The chapel service passed over Robert like a solemn pathetic dream. Thelines of undergraduate faces the Provost's white head, the voice of thechaplain reading, the full male unison of the voices replying--how theycarried him back to the day when as a lad from school he had sat on oneof the chancel benches beside his mother, listening for the first timeto the subtle simplicity, if one may be allowed the paradox, of theProvost's preaching! Just opposite to where he sat now with Langham, Grey had sat that first afternoon; the freshman's curious eyes had beendrawn again and again to the dark massive head, the face with itslook of reposeful force, of righteous strength. During the lesson fromCorinthians, Elsmere's thoughts were irrelevantly busy with all sorts ofmundane memories of the dead. What was especially present to him was aseries of Liberal election meetings in which Grey had taken a warmpart, and in which he himself had helped just before he took orders. Ahundred, odd, incongruous details came back to Robert now with poignantforce. Grey had been to him at one time primarily the professor, Thephilosopher, the representative of all that was best in the life of theUniversity; now, fresh from his own grapple with London and its life, what moved him most was the memory of the citizen, the friend andbrother of common man, the thinker who had never shirked action in thename of thought, for whom conduct had been from beginning to end thefirst reality. 

The procession through the streets afterward which conveyed the bodyof this great son of modern Oxford to its last resting-place in thecitizens' cemetery on the western side of the town, will not soon beforgotten, even in a place which forgets notoriously soon. All theUniversity was there, all the town was there side by side with menhonorably dear to England, who had carried with them into one or otherof the great English careers the memory of the teacher, were men whohad known from day to day the cheery modest helper in a hundred localcauses; side by side with the youth of Alma Mater went the poor ofOxford; tradesmen and artisans followed or accompanied the group ofgowned and venerable figures, representing the Heads of Houses and theProfessors, or mingled with the slowly pacing crowds of Masters;while along the route groups of visitors and merrymakers, young men inflannels or girls in light dresses, stood with suddenly grave faces hereand there, caught by the general wave of mourning, and wondering whatsuch a spectacle might mean. 

Robert, losing sight of Langham as they left the chapel, found hisarm grasped by young Cathcart, his correspondent. The man was a juniorFellow who had attached himself to Grey during the two preceding yearswith especial devotion. Robert had only a slight knowledge of him, butthere was something in his voice and grip which made him feel at onceinfinitely more at home with him at this moment than he had felt withthe old friend of his undergraduate years. 

They walked down Beaumont Street together. The rain came on again, andthe long black crowd stretched before them was lashed by the drivinggusts. As they went along, Cathcart told him all he wanted to know. 

'The night before the end he was perfectly calm and conscious. Itold you he mentioned your name among the friends to whom he sent hisgood-by. He thought for everybody. For all those of his house he leftthe most minute and tender directions. He forgot nothing. And all withsuch extraordinary simplicity and quietness, like one arranging for ajourney! In the evening an old Quaker aunt of his, a North-country womanwhom 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 inher white cap and kerchief, and it seemed to please him to lie andlook at her. "It'll not be for long, Henry, " she said to him once "I'mseventy-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 muchof 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 ofnothing--_but Himself!_ I ask no more. " I shall never forget the accentof those words: they were the breath of his inmost life. If ever man was_Gottbetrunken_ it was he--and yet not a word beyond what he felt to betrue, beyond what the intellect could grasp!'

Twenty minutes later Robert stood by the open grave. The rain beat downon the black concourse of mourners. But there were blue spaces in thedrifting sky, and a wavering rainy light played at intervals over theWytham and Hinksey Hills, and over the butter-cupped river meadows, where the lush hay-grass bent in long lines under the showers. To hisleft, the Provost, his glistening white head bare to the rain, wasreading the rest of the service. 

As the coffin was lowered Elsmere bent over the grave. 'My friend, mymaster, ' cried the yearning filial heart, 'oh, give me something ofyourself to take back into life, something to brace me through thisdarkness of our ignorance, something to keep hope alive as you kept itto the end!'

And on the inward ear there rose, with the solemnity of a last message, words which years before he had found marked in a little book ofMeditations borrowed from Grey's table--words long treasured and oftenrepeated:--

'Amid a world of forgetfulness and decay, in the sight of his ownshortcomings and limitations, or on the edge of the tomb, he alone whohas found his soul in losing it, who in singleness of mind _has lived inorder to love and understand_, will find that the God who is near to himas his own conscience has a face of light and love!'

Pressing the phrases into his memory, he listened to the triumphantoutbursts of the Christian service. 

'Man's hope, ' he thought, 'has grown humbler than this. It keeps now amore modest mien in the presence of the Eternal Mystery; but is it intruth less real, less sustaining? Let Grey's trust answer for me. '

He walked away absorbed, till at last in the little squalid streetoutside 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 somebitterness. 'Grey made many efforts to get him to come and see himbefore he became so desperately ill. Langham came once. Grey never askedfor him again. '

'It is his old horror of expression, I suppose, ' said Robert, troubled;'his dread of being forced to take a line, to face anything certain andirrevocable. I understand. He could not say good-by to a friend to savehis life. There is no shirking that! One must either do it or leave it!'

Cathcart shrugged his shoulders, and drew a masterly little picture ofLangham's life in college. He had succeeded by the most adroit devicesin completely isolating himself both from the older and the younger men. 

'He attends college-meeting sometimes, and contributes a sarcasm ortwo on the cramming system of the college. He takes a constitutional toSummertown every day on the least frequented side of the road, that hemay avoid being spoken to. And as to his ways of living, he and I happento have the same scout--old Dobson, you remember? And if I would lethim, he would tell me tales by the hour. He is the only man in theUniversity who knows anything about it. I gather from what he saysthat Langham is becoming a complete valetudinarian. Everything must goexactly by rule--his food, his work, the management of his clothes--andany little _contretemps_ makes him ill. But the comedy is to watch himwhen there is anything going on in the place that he thinks may leadto a canvass and to any attempt to influence him for a vote. On theseoccasions he goes off with automatic regularity to an hotel at WestMalvern, and only reappears when the "Times" tells him the thing is donewith. '

Both laughed. Then Robert sighed. Weaknesses of Langham's sort may beamusing enough to the contemptuous and unconcerned outsider. But thegeneral result of them, whether for the man himself or those whom heaffects, is tragic, not comic; and Elsmere had good reason for knowingit. 

Later, after a long talk with the Provost, and meetings with variousother old friends, he walked down to the station, under a sky clear fromrain, and through a town gay with festal preparations. Not a sign now, in the crowded, bustling streets, of that melancholy pageant of theafternoon. The heroic memory had flashed for a moment like somethingvivid and gleaming in the sight of all, understanding and ignorant. Now it lay committed to a few faithful hearts, there to become one seedamong many of a new religious life in England. 

On the platform Robert found himself nervously accosted by a tallshabbily-dressed man. 

'Elsmere, have you forgotten me?'

He turned and recognized a man whom he had last seen as a St. Anselm'sundergraduate--one MacNiell, a handsome rowdy young Irishman, supposedto be clever, and decidedly popular in the college. As he stood lookingat him, puzzled by the difference between the old impression and thenew, suddenly the man's story flashed across him; he remembered somedisgraceful escapade--an expulsion. 

'You came for the funeral, of course?' said the other, his face flushingconsciously. 

'Yes--and you too?'

The man turned away, and something in his silence led Robert to strollon beside him to the open end of the platform. 

'I have lost my only friend, ' MacNiell said at last hoarsely. 'He tookme up when my own father would have nothing to say to me. He found mework; he wrote to me; for years he stood between me and perdition. Iam just going out to a post in New Zealand he got for me, and next weekbefore I sail-I--I--am to be married--and he was to be there. He was sopleased--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, and then the train loomed in thedistance. 

'He saved you, ' said Robert, holding out his hand, 'and at a dark momentin my own life I owed him everything. There is nothing we can do for himin return but--to remember him! Write to me, if you can or will, fromNew Zealand, for his sake. '

A few seconds later the train sped past the bare little cemetery, whichlay just beyond the line. Robert bent forward. In the pale yellow glowof the evening he could distinguish the grave, the mound of gravel, theplanks, and some figures moving beside it. He strained his eyes till hecould see no more, his heart full of veneration, of memory, of prayer. In himself life seemed so restless and combative. Surely he, more thanothers, had need of the lofty lessons of death!

CHAPTER XLV. 

In the weeks which followed--weeks often of mental and physicaldepression, caused by his sense of personal loss and by the influence ofan overworked state he could not be got to admit--Elsmere owed much toHugh Flaxman's cheery sympathetic temper, and became more attached tohim than ever, and more ready than ever, should the fates deem it so, to welcome him as a brother-in-law. However, the fates for the momentseemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham's book, and did notapparently know their own minds. It says volumes for Hugh Flaxman'sgeneral capacities as a human being that at this period he should havehad any attention to give to a friend, his position as a lover was sodubious and difficult. 

After the evening at the Workmen's Club, and as a result of furthermeditation, he had greatly developed the tactics first adopted onthat occasion. He had beaten a masterly retreat, and Rose Leyburn wastroubled with him no more. 

The result was that a certain brilliant young person was soon sharplyconscious of a sudden drop in the pleasure of living. Mr. Flaxman hadbeen the Leyburns' most constant and entertaining visitor. During thewhole of May he paid one formal call in Lerwick Gardens, and was thenentertained tête-à-tête by Mrs. Leyburn, to Rose's intense subsequentannoyance, who know perfectly well that her mother was incapable ofchattering about anything but her daughters. 

He still sent flowers, but they came from his head gardener, addressedto Mrs. Leyburn. Agnes put them in water, and Rose never gave them alook. Rose went to Lady Helen's because Lady Helen made her, and wasmuch too engaging a creature to be rebuffed; but, however merry andprotracted the teas in those scented rooms might be, Mr. Flaxman's stepon 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 their list of common friends wasnow considerable; but Agnes, reporting matters to Catherine, couldonly say that each of these occasions left Rose more irritable and moreinclined to say biting things as to the foolish ways in which societytakes its pleasures. 

Rose certainly was irritable, and at times, Agnes thought, depressed. But as usual she was unapproachable about her own affairs, and the stateof her mind could only be somewhat dolefully gathered from the fact thatshe was much less unwilling to go back to Burwood this summer than hadever been known before. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman left certain other people in no doubt as to hisintentions. 

'My dear aunt, ' he said calmly to Lady Charlotte, 'I mean to marry MissLeyburn if I can at any time persuade her to have me. So much you maytake as fixed, and it will be quite waste of breath on your part toquote dukes to me. But the other factor in the problem is by no meansfixed. Miss Leyburn won't have me at present, and as for the future Ihave most salutary qualms. '

'Hugh!' interrupted Lady Charlotte angrily, 'as if you hadn't had themothers of London at your feet for years!'

Lady Charlotte was in a most variable frame of mind; one day hopingdevoutly that the Langham affair might prove lasting enough in itseffects to tire Hugh out; the next, outraged that a silly girl shouldwaste a thought on such a creature, while Hugh was in her way; at onetime angry that an insignificant chit of a schoolmasters daughter shouldapparently care so little to be the Duke of Sedberg's niece, and shouldeven dare to allow herself the luxury of snubbing a Flaxman; at another, utterly skeptical as to any lasting obduracy on the chit's part, The girl was clearly anxious not to fall too easily, but as to finalrefusal--pshaw! And it made her mad that Hugh would hold himself socheap. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Flaxman felt himself in no way called upon to answer thatremark of his aunt's we have recorded. 

'I have qualms, ' he repeated, 'but I mean to do all I know, and you andHelen must help me. '

Lady Charlotte crossed her hands before her. 

'I may be a Liberal and a lion-hunter, ' she said firmly, 'but I havestill conscience enough left not to aid and abet my nephew in throwinghimself 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 byourselves. '

But this did not suit Lady Charlotte at all. She had always playedthe part of earthly providence to this particular nephew, and it wasabominable to her that the wretch, having refused for ten years toprovide her with a love affair to manage, should now manage one forhimself, in spite of her. 

'You are such an arbitrary creature!' she said fretfully: 'you pranceabout the world like Don Quixote, and expect me to play Sancho without amurmur. '

'How many drubbings have I brought you yet?' he asked her, laughing. Hewas really very fond of her. 'It is true there is a point of likeness;I won't take your advice. But then why don't you give me better? It isstrange, ' he added, musing; 'women talk to us about love as if we weretoo gross to understand it; and when they come to business, and they'renot in it themselves, they show the temper of attorneys. '

'Love!' cried Lady Charlotte, nettled. 'Do you mean to tell me, Hugh, that you are really, seriously in love with that girl?'

'Well, I only know, ' he said, thrusting his hands far into his pockets, 'that unless things mend I shall go out to California in the autumn andtry ranching. '

Lady Charlotte burst into an angry laugh. He stood opposite to her, withhis orchid in his buttonhole, himself the fine flower of civilization. Ranching, indeed! However, he had done so many odd things in his life, that, as she knew, it was never quite safe to decline to take himseriously, and he looked at her now so defiantly, his clear greenisheyes so wide open and alert, that her will began to waver under thepressure of his. 

'What do you want me to do, sir?'

His glance relaxed at once, and he laughingly explained to her that whathe asked of her was to keep the prey in sight. 

'I can do nothing for myself at present, ' he said; 'I get on her nerves. She was in love with that black-haired _enfant du siècle_, --or rather, she prefers to assume that she was--and I haven't given her time toforget him. A serious blunder, and I deserve to suffer for it. Verywell, then, I retire, and I ask you and Helen to keep watch. Don't lether go. Make yourselves nice to her; and, in fact, spoil me a little nowI am on the high rode to forty, as you used to spoil me at fourteen. '

Mr. Flaxman sat down by his aunt and kissed her hand, after which LadyCharlotte was as wax before him. 'Thank heaven, ' she reflected, 'in tendays the Duke and all of them go out of town. ' Retribution, therefore, for wrong-doing would be, tardy, if wrongdoing there must be. She couldbut ruefully reflect that after all the girl was beautiful and gifted;moreover, if Hugh would force her to befriend him in this criminality, there might be a certain joy in thereby vindicating those Liberalprinciples of hers, in which a scornful family had always refused tobelieve. So, being driven into it, she would fain have done it boldlyand with a dash. But she could not rid her mind of the Duke, and herperformance 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 littlehead, could find no excuse for quarrelling either with her or LadyHelen. 

Toward the middle of June there was a grand ball given by LadyFauntleroy at Fauntleroy House, to which the two Miss Leyburns, by LadyHelen's machinations, were invited. It was to be one, of the events ofthe season, and when the cards arrived 'to have the honor of meetingtheir Royal Highnesses, ' etc. , etc. , Mrs. Leyburn, good soul, gazedat them with eyes which grew a little moist under her spectacles. Shewished Richard could have seen the girls, dressed, 'just once. ' But Rosetreated the cards with no sort of tenderness. 'If one could put themup to auction, ' she said flippantly, holding them up, 'how many Germanopera tickets I should get for nothing! I don't know what Agnes feels. As for me, I have neither nerve enough for the peoples nor money enoughfor the toilette. '

However, with eleven o'clock Lady Helen ran in, a fresh vision of blueand white, to suggest certain dresses for the sisters which had occurredto her in the visions of the night, 'original, adorable, --cost, a merenothing!'

'My harpy, ' she remarked, alluding to her dressmaker, 'would ruin youover them, of course. Your maid'--the Leyburns possessed a remarkablyclever one--'will make them divinely for twopence half-penny. Listen. '

Rose listened; her eye kindled; the maid was summoned; and theinvitation accepted in Agnes's neatest hand. Even Catherine was rousedduring the following ten days to a smiling indulgent interest in theconcerns of the workroom. 

The evening came, and Lady Helen fetched the sisters in her carriage. The ball was a magnificent affair. The house was one of historicalinterest and importance, and all that the ingenuity of the presentcould do to give fresh life and gayety to the pillared rooms, thecarved galleries and stately staircases of the past, had been done. Theball-room, lined with Vandycks and Lelys, glowed softly with electriclight; the picture-gallery had been banked with flowers and carpetedwith red, and the beautiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it, challenging the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls. 

Rose's card was soon full to overflowing. The young men present were ofthe smartest, and would not willingly have bowed the knee to a nobody, however pretty. But Lady Helen's devotion, the girl's reputation as amusician, and her little nonchalant disdainful ways, gave her a kind ofprestige, which made her, for the time being at any rate, the equal ofanybody. Petitioners came and went away empty. Royalty was introducedand smiled both upon the beauty and the beauty's delicate and becomingdress; and still Rose, though a good deal more flushed and erect thanusual, and though flesh and blood could not resist the contagiouspleasure which glistened even in the eyes of that sage Agnes, was morethan half-inclined to say with the Preacher, that all was vanity. 

Presently, as she stood waiting with her hand on her partner's arm, before gliding into a waltz, she saw Mr. Flaxman opposite to her, andwith him a young débutante, in white tulle--a thin, pretty, undevelopedcreature, whose sharp elbows and timid movements, together with theblushing enjoyment glowing so frankly from her face, pointed her outas the school-girl of sweet sixteen, just emancipated, and trying herwings. 

'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? Really she keeps too much in the family!'

'Is Mr. Flaxman a cousin?'

The young man replied that he was, and then, in the intervals ofwaltzing, went on to explain to her the relationships of many of thepeople present, till the whole gorgeous affair began to seem to Rose amere family party. Mr. Flaxman was of it. She was not. 

'Why am I here?' the little Jacobin said to herself fiercely as shewaltzed; 'it is foolish, unprofitable. I do not belong to them, nor theyto me!'

'Miss Leyburn! charmed to see you!' cried, Lady Charlotte, stopping her;and then, in a loud whisper in her ear, 'Never saw you look better. Yourtaste, 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. ShallI find you by Helen? Now, Lady Florence, patience a moment. That corneris too crowded. How good that last turn was!'

And bending with a sort of kind chivalry over his partner, who lookedat him with the eyes of a joyous, excited child, he led her away. Fiveminutes later Rose, standing flushed by Lady Helen, saw him coming againtoward her, ushering a tall blue-eyed youth, whom he introduced to heras 'Lord Waynflete. ' The handsome boy looked at her with a boy's openadmiration, and beguiled her of a supper dance, while a group standingnear, a mother and three daughters, stood watching with cold eyes andexpressions which said plainly to the initiated that mere beauty wasreceiving a ridiculous amount of attention. 

'I wouldn't have given it him, but it is _rude_--it is _bad manners_, not even to ask!' the supposed victress was saying to herself, withquivering lips, her eyes following not the Trinity freshman, who wastheir latest captive, but an older man's well-knit figure, and a head onwhich the fair hair was already growing scantily, receding a little fromthe fine intellectual brows. 

An hour later she was again standing by Lady Helen, waiting for apartner, when she saw two persons crossing the room, which was justbeginning to fill again for dancing, toward them. One was Mr. Flaxman, the other was a small wrinkled old man, who leant upon his arm, displaying the ribbon of the Garter as he walked. 

'Dear me, ' said Lady Helen, a little fluttered, 'here is my uncleSedbergh. I thought they had left town. '

The pair approached, and the old Duke bowed over his niece's hand, withthe manners of a past generation. 

'I made Hugh give me an arm, ' he said quaveringly. 'These floors arehomicidal. If I come down on them I shall bring an action. '

'I thought you had all left town?' said Lady Helen. 

'Who can make plans with a Government in power pledged to every sortof villainy and public plunder?' said the old man testily. 'Isuppose Varley's there to-night, helping to vote away my property andFauntleroy's. '

'Some of his own, too, if you please!', said Lady Helen, smiling. 'Yes, I suppose he is waiting for the division, or he would be here. '

'I wonder why Providence blessed _me_ with such a Radical crew ofrelations?' remarked the Duke. 'Hugh is a regular Communist. I neverheard such arguments in my life. And as for any idea of standing byhis order----' The old man shook his bald head and shrugged his smallshoulders with almost French vivacity. He had been handsome once, anddelicately featured, but now the left eye drooped, and the face had astrong look of peevishness and ill-health. 

'Uncle, ' interposed Lady Helen, 'let me introduce you to my two greatfriends, Miss Leyburn, Miss Rose Leyburn. '

The Duke bowed, looked at them through a pair of sharp eyes, seemed tocogitate inwardly whether such a name had ever been known to him, andturned to his nephew. 

'Get me out of this, Hugh, and I shall be obliged to you. Young peoplemay risk it, but if _I_ broke I shouldn't mend. '

And still grumbling audibly about the floor, he hobbled off toward thepicture gallery. Mr. Flaxman had only time for a smiling backward glanceat Rose. 

'Have you given my pretty boy a dance?'

'Yes, ' she said, but with as much stiffness as she might have shown tohis uncle. 

'That's over, ' said Lady Helen with relief. 'My uncle hardly meets anyof us now without a spar. He has never forgiven my father for going overto the Liberals. And then he thinks we none of us consult him enough. Nomore 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 theyonly knew!'

Lady Helen was called away, and Rose was left standing, wondering whathad happened to her partner. 

Opposite, Mr. Flaxman was pushing through a doorway, and Lady Florencewas again on his arm. At the same time she became conscious of a morselof chaperon's conversation such as, by the kind contrivances of fate, agirl is tolerably sure to bear under similar circumstances. 

The débutante's good looks, Hugh Flaxman's apparent susceptibility tothem, the possibility of results, and the satisfactory disposition ofthe family goods and chattels that would be brought about, by such amatch, the opportunity it would offer the man, too, of rehabilitatinghimself socially after his first matrimonial escapade--Rose caughtfragments of all these topics as they were discussed by two old ladies, presumably also of the family 'ring, ' who gossiped behind her with moregusto than discretion. Highmindedness, of course, told her to move away;something else held her fast, till her partner came up for her. 

Then she floated away into the whirlwind of waltzers. But as she movedround the room on her partners arm, her delicate half-scornful graceattracting look after look, the soul within was all aflame--aflameagainst the serried ranks and phalanxes of this unfamiliar, hostileworld! She had just been reading Trevelyan's 'Life of Fox' aloud to hermother, who liked occasionally to flavor her knitting with literature, and she began now to revolve a passage from it, describing the upperclass of the last century, which had struck that morning on her quickretentive memory: "_A few thousand people who thought that the worldwas made for them_"-did it not run so?-"_and that, all outside theirown fraternity were unworthy of notice or criticism, bestowed upon eachother an amount of attention quite inconceivable. ... Within the charmedprecincts there prevailed an easy and natural mode of intercourse, insome respects singularly delightful. _" Such, for instance, as the Dukeof Sedbergh was master of! Well, it was worth while, perhaps, to havegained an experience, even at the expense of certain illusions, as tothe manners of dukes, and--and--as to the constancy of friends. Butnever again-never again!' said the impetuous inner voice. 'I have myworld--they theirs!'

But why so strong a flood of bitterness against our poor upper class, so well intentioned for all its occasional lack of lucidity, shouldhave arisen in so young a breast it is a little difficult for the mostconscientious biographer to explain. She had partners to her heart'sdesire; young Lord Waynflete used his utmost arts upon her to persuadeher that at half a dozen numbers of the regular programme were extrasand, therefore at his disposal; and when royalty supped, it wasgraciously pleased to ordain that Lady Helen and her two companionsshould sup behind the same folding-doors as itself, while beyond thesedoors surged the inferior crowd of persons who had been speciallyinvited to 'meet their Royal Highnesses, ' and had so far been heldworthy neither to dance nor to eat in the same room with them. Butin vain. Rose still felt herself, for all her laughing outward_insouciance_, a poor bruised, helpless chattel, trodden under the heelof a world which was intolerably powerful, rich, and self-satisfied, theodious product of 'family arrangements. '

Mr. Flaxman sat far away at the same royal table as herself. Besidehim was the thin tall _débutante_. 'She is like one of the Gainsboroughprincesses, ' thought Rose, studying her with, involuntary admiration. 'Of course it is all plain. He will get everything he wants, and a LadyFlorence into the bargain. Radical, indeed! What nonsense!'

Then it startled her to find that eyes of Lady Florence's neighborswere, as it seemed, on herself; or was he merely nodding to LadyHelen?--and she began immediately to give a smiling attention to the manon her left. 

An hour later she and Agnes and Lady Helen were descending the greatstaircase on their way to their carriage. The morning light wasflooding through the chinks of the carefully veiled windows; Lady Helenwas yawning behind her tiny white hand, her eyes nearly asleep. But thetwo sisters, who had not been up till three, on four preceding nights, like their chaperon, were still as fresh as the flowers massed in thehall below. 

'Ah, there is Hugh!' cried Lady Helen. 'How I hope he has found thecarriage!'

At that moment Rose slipped on a spray of gardenia, which had droppedfrom the bouquet of some predecessor. To prevent herself from fallingdown stairs, she caught hold of the stem of a brazen chandelier fixedin the balustrade. It saved her, but she gave her arm a most painfulwrench, and leant limp and white against the railing of the stairs. LadyHelen turned at Agnes's exclamation, but before she could speak, as itseemed, Mr. Flaxman, who had been standing talking just below them, wason the stairs. 

'You have hurt your arm? Don't speak--take mine. Let me get you downstairs out of the crush. '

She was too far gone to resist, and when she was mistress of herselfagain she found herself in the library with some water in her hand whichMr. 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 itbut with a contortion of pain. 

'Don't raise it, ' he said peremptorily. 'We will have a doctor here in amoment, and have it bandaged. '

He disappeared. Rose tried to sit up, seized with a frantic longing todisobey him, and get off before he returned. Stinging the girl's mindwas the sense that it might, all perfectly well seem to him a plannedappeal to his pity. 

'Agnes, help me up, ' she said with a little involuntary groan; 'I shallbe better at home. '

But both Lady Helen and Agnes laughed her to scorn, and she lay backonce more, overwhelmed by fatigue and faintness. A few more minutes, anda doctor appeared, caught by good luck in the next street. He pronouncedit a severe muscular strain, but nothing more; applied a lotion andimprovised a sling. Rose consulted him anxiously, as to the interferencewith her playing. 

'A week, ' he said; 'no more, if you are careful. '

Her pale face brightened. Her art had seemed specially dear to her oflate. 

'Hugh!' called Lady Helen, going to the door. 'Now we are ready for thecarriage. '

Rose, leaning on Agnes, walked out into the hall. They found him therewaiting. 

'The carriage is here, ' he said, bending toward her with a look and tonewhich so stirred the fluttered nerves, that the sense of faintness stoleback upon her. 'Let me take you to it. '

'Thank you, ' she said, coldly, but by a superhuman effort 'my sister'shelp is quite enough. '

He followed them with Lady Helen. At the carriage door the sistershesitated a moment. Rose was helpless without a right hand. A littleimperative movement from behind displaced Agnes, and Rose felt herselfhoisted in by a strong arm. She sank into the further corner. Theglow of the dawn caught her white delicate features, the curls on hertemples, all the silken confusion of her dress. Hugh Flaxman put inAgnes and his sister, said something to Agnes about coming to inquire, and raised his hat. Rose caught the quick force and intensity of hiseyes, 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 the mistystretches of the Park. His hat was over his eyes, his hands thrust intohis pockets; a close observer would have noticed a certain trembling ofthe lips. It was but a few seconds since her young warm beauty had beenfor an instant in his arms; his whole being was shaken by it, andby that last look of hers. 'Have I gone too far?' he asked himselfanxiously. 'Is it divinely true--_already_--that she resents being leftto herself! Oh! little rebel! You tried your best not to let me see. Butyou were angry, you were! Now, then, how to proceed? She is all fire, all character; I rejoice in it. She will give me trouble; so much thebetter. Poor little hurt thing! the fight is only beginning; but I willmake her do penance some day for all that loftiness to-night. '

If these reflections betray to the reader a certain masterful note ofconfidence in Mr. Flaxman's mind, he will perhaps find small cause toregret that Rose did give him a great deal of trouble. 

Nothing could have been more 'salutary, ' to use his own word, than thedance she led him during the next three weeks. She provoked him indeedat moments so much that he was a hundred times on the point of tryingto seize his kingdom of heaven by violence, of throwing himself upon herwith a tempest shock of reproach and appeal. But some secret instinctrestrained him. She was wilful, she was capricious; she had a real andpowerful distraction in her art. He must be patient and risk nothing. 

He suspected, too, what was the truth--that Lady Charlotte was doingharm. Rose, indeed, had grown so touchily sensitive that she foundoffence in almost every word of Lady Charlotte's about her nephew. Whyshould the apparently casual remarks of the aunt bear so constantly onthe subject of the nephew's social importance? Rose vowed to herselfthat she needed no reminder of that station whereunto it had pleasedGod to call her, and that Lady Charlotte might spare herself all thoseanxieties and reluctances which the girl's quick sense detected, inspite of the invitations so freely showered on Lerwick Gardens. 

The end of it all was that Hugh Flaxman found himself again driven intoa corner. At the bottom of him was still a confidence that would notyield. Was it possible that he had ever given her some tiny involuntaryglimpse of it, and that but for that glimpse she would have let him makehis peace much more easily? At any rate, now he felt himself at the endof his resources. 

'I must change the venue, ' he said to himself; 'decidedly I must changethe venue. '

So by the end of June he had accepted an invitation to fish in Norwaywith a friend, and was gone. Rose received the news with a callousnesswhich made even Lady Helen want to shake her. 

On the eve of his journey, however, Hugh Flaxman had at last confessedhimself to Catherine and Robert. His obvious plight made any furtherscruples on their part futile, and what they had they gave him in theway of sympathy. Also, Robert, gathering that he already knew much, andwithout betraying any confidence of Rose's, gave him a hint or two onthe subject of Langham. But more, not the friendliest mortal could dofor him, and Flaxman went off into exile announcing to a mocking Elsmerethat he should sit pensive on the banks of Norwegian rivers till fortunehad had time to change. 

BOOK VII. GAIN AND LOSS. 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

A hot July had well begun, but still Elsmere was toiling on in ElgoodStreet, and could not persuade himself to think of a holiday. Catherineand the child he had driven away more than once, but the claims uponhimself were becoming so absorbing, he did not know how to go even for afew weeks. There were certain individuals in particular who depended onhim from day to day. One was Charles Richards' widow. The poor desperatecreature had put herself abjectly into Elsmere's hands. He had senther to an asylum, where she had been kindly and skillfully treated, andafter six weeks' abstinence she had just returned to her children, andwas being watched by himself and a competent woman neighbor, whom he hadsucceeded in interesting in the case. 

Another was a young 'secret springer, ' to use the mysterious terms ofthe trade--Robson by name--whom Elsmere had originally known as a cleverworkman belonging to the watchmaking colony, and a diligent attendantfrom the beginning on the Sunday lectures. He was now too ill to leavehis lodgings, and his sickly pessimist personality had established aspecial hold on Robert. He was dying of tumor in the throat, and hadbecome a torment to himself and a disgust to others. There was a sparkof wayward genius in him, however, which enabled him to bear his illswith a mixture of savage humor and clear-eyed despair. In generaloutlook he was much akin to the author of the 'City of Dreadful Night, 'whose poems he read; the loathsome spectacles of London had filled himwith a kind of sombre energy of revolt against all that is. And nowthat he could only work intermittently, he would sit brooding forhours, startling the fellow-workmen who came in to see him with ghastlyHeine-like jokes on his own hideous disease, living no one exactly knewhow, though it was supposed on supplies sent him by a shopkeeper unclein the country, and constantly on the verge, as all his acquaintancesfelt, of some ingenious expedient or other for putting an end to himselfand his troubles. He was unmarried, and a misogynist to boot. No womanwillingly went near him, and he tended himself. How Robert had gainedany 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 go and see him, the elder man felt instinctively thatvirtue had gone out of him and, that in some subtle way yet another lifehad become pitifully, silently dependent on his own stock of strengthand comfort. 

His lecturing and teaching also was becoming more and more theinstrument of far-reaching change, and thereafter, more and more, difficult to leave. The thoughts of God, the image of Jesus which wereactive and fruitful in his own mind, had been gradually passing from theone into the many, and Robert watched the sacred transforming emotionnurtured at his own heart, now working among the crowd of men and womenhis fiery speech had gathered round him, with a trembling joy, ahumble prostration of soul before the Eternal Truth, no words can fitlydescribe. With and ever increasing detachment of mind from the objectsof self and sense, he felt himself a tool, in the Great Workman's hand, 'Accomplish Thy purposes in me, ' was the cry of his whole heart andlife; 'use me to the utmost; spend every faculty I have, O "Thou whomouldest men!"'

But in the end his work itself drove him away. A certain memorableSaturday evening brought it about. It had been his custom of late, tospend an occasional evening hour after the night-school work in theNorth R---- Club, of which he was now by invitation a member. Here, inone of the inner rooms, he would stand against the mantelpiece chatting, smoking often with the men. Everything came up in turn to be discussed;And Robert was at least as ready to learn from the practical workersabout him as to teach. But in general these informal talks and debatesbecame the supplement of the Sunday lectures. Here he met Andrews andthe Secularist crew face to face; here he grappled in Socratic fashionwith objections and difficulties throwing into the task all his charmand all his knowledge, a man at once of no pretensions and of unfailingnatural dignity. Nothing, so far, had served his cause and his influenceso well as these moments of free discursive intercourse. The mereorator, the mere talker, indeed, would never have gained any permanenthold; but the life behind gave weight to every acute or eloquent word, and importance even to those mere sallies of a boyish enthusiasm whichwere still common enough in him. 

He had already visited the club once during the week precedingthis Saturday. On both occasions there was much talk of the growingpopularity and efficiency of the Elgood Street work, of the numbersattending the lectures, the story-telling, the Sunday-school, and of theway in which the attractions of it had spread into other quarters of theparish, exciting there, especially among the clergy of St. Wilfrid's, an anxious and critical attention. The conversation on Saturday night, however, took a turn of its own. Robert felt in it a new and curiousnote of _responsibility_. The men present were evidently beginning toregard the work as _their_ work also, and its success as their interest. It was perfectly natural, for not only had most of them been hissupporters and hearers from the beginning, but some of them were nowactually teaching in the night-school or helping in the various branchesof the large and overflowing boys' club. He listened to them for a whilein his favorite attitude, leaning against the mantelpiece, throwing ina word or two now and then as to how this or that part of the work mightbe mended or expanded. Then suddenly a kind of inspiration seemed topass from them to him. Bending forward as the talk dropped a moment, heasked them, with an accent more emphatic than usual, whether in view ofthis collaboration of theirs, which was becoming more valuable tohim and his original helpers every week, it was not time for a newdeparture. 

'Suppose I drop my dictatorship, ' he said; 'suppose we set upparliamentary government, are you ready to take your share? Are youready to combine, to commit yourselves? Are you ready for an effort toturn this work into something lasting and organic?'

The men gathered round him, smoked on in silence for a minute. OldMacdonald, who had been sitting contentedly puffing away in a cornerpeculiarly his own, and dedicated to the glorification--in broadBerwickshire--of the experimental philosophers, laid down his pipe andput on his spectacles, that he might grasp the situation better. ThenLestrange, in a dry cautious way, asked Elsmere to explain himselffurther. 

Robert began to pace up and down, talking out his thought, his eyekindling. 

But in a minute or two he stopped abruptly, with one of those strikingrapid gestures characteristic of him. 

'But no mere social and educational body, mind you!' and his brightcommanding look swept round the circle. 'A good thing, surely, "yet isthere better than it. " The real difficulty of every social effort--youknow it and I know it--lies not in the planning of the work, but in thekindling of will and passion enough to carry it _through_. And that canonly be done by religion--by faith. '

He went back to his old leaning attitude, his hands behind him. The mengazed at him--at the slim figure, the transparent changing face--with akind of fascination, but were still silent, till Macdonald said slowly, taking off his glasses again and clearing his throat--

'You'll be aboot starrtin' a new church, I'm thinkin', Misther Elsmere?'

'If you like, ' said Robert impetuously. 'I have no fear of the greatwords. You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; youcan also do nothing by being too much afraid of them, by letting themchoke and stifle your own life. Let the new wine have its new bottlesif it must, and never mince 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 elbowson his knees studying him, the spare gray hair brushed back tightly fromthe bony face, on the lips the slightest Voltairean smile. Perhaps itwas the coolness of his look which insensibly influenced Robert's nextwords. 

'However, I don't imagine we should call ourselves a church! Somethingmuch humbler will do, if you choose ever to make anything of thesesuggestions of mine. "Association, " "society, " "brotherhood, " what youwill! But always, if I can persuade you, with something in the name, andeverything in the body itself, to show that for the members of it, liferests still, as all life worth having has everywhere rested, on _trust_and _memory!_--_trust_ in the God of experience and history; _memory_of that God's work in man, by which alone we know Him, and can approachHim. Well, of that work--I have tried to prove it to you a thousandtimes--Jesus of Nazareth has become to us, by the evolution ofcircumstance, the most moving, the most efficacious of all types andepitomes. We have made our protest--we are daily making it--in the faceof society, against the fictions and overgrowths which at the presenttime are excluding Him more and more from human love. But now, supposewe turn our backs on negation, and have done with mere denial! Supposewe throw all our energies into the practical building of a new house offaith, the gathering and organizing of a new Company of Jesus!'

Other men had been stealing in while he was speaking. The little roomwas nearly full. It was strange, the contrast between the squalidmodernness of the scene, with its incongruous sights and sounds, theClub-room, painted in various hideous shades of cinnamon and green, the smoke, the lines and groups of workingmen in every sort ofworking-dress, the occasional rumbling of huge wagons past the window, the click of glasses and cups in the refreshment bar outside, and thisstir of spiritual passion which any competent observer might have feltsweeping through the little crowd as Robert spoke, connecting what waspassing there with all that is sacred and beautiful in the history ofthe 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, ' becauseof his long hair, his little affectations of dress, and his æstheticsusceptibilities generally. The wits of the Club made him, their target, but the teasing of him that went on was more or less tempered by theknowledge that in his own queer way he had brought up and educated twoyoung sisters almost from infancy, and that his sweetheart had beenkilled before his eyes a year before in a railway accident. 

'I dun know, ' he said in a high, treble voice, 'I dun know whether Ispeak for anybody but myself--very likely not; but what I _do_ know, 'and he raised his right hand and shook it with a gesture of curiousfelicity, 'is this, --what Mr. Elsmere starts I'll join, --'where he goesI'll go--what's good enough for him's good enough, for me. He's put anew heart and a new stomach into me and what I've got he shall have, whenever it pleases 'im to call for it! So if he wants to run a newthing against or alongside the old uns, and he wants me to help him withit--I don't know as I'm very clear what he's driving at, nor what good Ican 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 thelittle assembly. Robert bent forward, his eye glistening, a movedacknowledgment in his look and gesture. But in reality a pang ranthrough the fiery soul. It was 'the personal estimate, ' after all, thatwas shaping their future and his, and the idealist was up in arms forhis idea, sublimely jealous lest any mere personal fancy should usurpits power and place. 

A certain amount of desultory debate followed as to the possibleoutlines of a possible organization, and as to the observances whichmight be devised to mark its religious character. As it flowed on theatmosphere grew more and more electric. A new passion, though stilltimid and awe-struck, seemed to shine from the looks of the men, standing or sitting round the central figure. Even Lestrange lost hissmile under the pressure of that strange subdued expectancy about him;and when Robert walked homeward, about midnight, there weighed upon himan almost awful sense of crisis, of an expanding future. 

He let himself in softly and went into his study. There he sank into achair and fainted. He was probably not unconscious very long, but afterhe had struggled back to his senses, and was lying stretched on the sofaamong the books with which it was littered, the solitary candle in thebig room throwing weird shadows about him, a moment of black depressionovertook him. It was desolate and terrible, like a prescience of death. How was it he had come to feel so ill? Suddenly, as he looked back overthe preceding weeks, the physical weakness and disturbance which hadmarked them, and which he had struggled through, paying as little heedas possible, took shape, spectre-like, in his mind. 

And at the same moment a passionate rebellion against weakness anddisablement arose in him. He sat up dizzily, his head in his hands. 

'Rest--strength, ' he said to himself, with strong inner resolve, 'forthe work's sake!'

He dragged himself up to bed and said nothing to Catherine till themorning. Then, with boyish brightness, he asked her to take him and thebabe off without delay to the Norman coast, vowing that he would loungeand idle for six whole weeks if she would let him. Shocked by his looks, she gradually got from him the story of the night before. As he toldit, his swoon was a mere untoward incident and hindrance in a spiritualdrama, the thrill of which, while he described it, passed even to her. The contrast, however between the strong hopes she felt pulsing throughhim, and his air of fragility and exhaustion, seemed to melt the heartwithin her, and make her whole being, she hardly knew why, one Sensitivedread. She sat beside him, her head laid against his shoulder, oppressedby a strange and desolate sense of her comparatively small share in thisardent life. In spite of his tenderness and devotion, she felt often asthough he were no longer hers--as though a craving, hungry world, whoseneeds were all dark and unintelligible to her, were asking him from her, claiming to use as roughly and prodigally as it pleased the quick mindand delicate frame. 

As to the schemes developing round him, she could not take them in, whether for protest or sympathy. She could think only of where to go, what doctor to consult, how she could persuade him to stay away longenough. 

There was little surprise in Elgood Street when Elsmere announced thathe must go off for a while. He so announced it that everybody whoheard him understood that his temporary withdrawal was to be the merepreparation for a great effort--the vigil before the tourney; and theeager friendliness with which he was met sent him off in good heart. 

Three or four days later, he, Catherine, and Mary were at PetitesDalles, a little place on the Norman coast, near Fécamp, with which hehad first made acquaintance years before, when he was at Oxford. 

Here all that in London had been oppressive in the August heat suffered'a sea change, ' and became so much matter for physical delight. Itwas fiercely hot indeed. Every morning, between five and six o'clock, Catherine would stand by the little white-veiled window, in the dewysilence, to watch the eastern shadows spreading sharply already into ablazing world of sun, and see the tall poplar just outside shooting intoa quivering, changeless depth of blue. Then, as early as possible, theywould sally forth before the glare became unbearable. The first event ofthe day was always Mary's bathe, which gradually became a spectacle forthe whole beach, so ingenious were the blandishments of the father whowooed her into the warm sandy shallows, and so beguiling the glee andpluck of the two-year-old English _bébé_. By eleven the heat out ofdoors grew intolerable, and they would stroll back--father and mother, and trailing child--past the hotels on the _plage_, along the irregularvillage lane, to the little house where they had established themselves, with Mary's nurse and a French _bonne_ to look after them; would findthe green wooden shutters drawn close; the déjeuner waiting for themin the cool bare room; and the scent of the coffee penetrating from thekitchen, where the two maids kept up a humble but perpetual warfare. Then afterward Mary, emerging from her sun-bonnet, would be tumbledinto her white bed upstairs, and lie, a flushed image of sleep, till thepatter of her little feet on the boards which alone separated one storyfrom the other, warned mother and nurse that an imp of mischief was letloose again. Meanwhile Robert, in the carpetless _salon_, would lie backin the rickety arm-chair which was its only luxury, lazily dozing, till dreaming, Balzac, perhaps, in his hand, but quite another _comédiehumaine_ unrolling itself vaguely meanwhile in the contriving optimistmind. 

Petites Dalles was not fashionable yet, though it aspired to be; but itcould boast of a deputy, and a senator, and a professor of the Collègede France, as good as any at Étretat, a tired journalist or two, anda sprinkling of Rouen men of business. Robert soon made friends amongthem, _more suo_, by dint of a rough-and-ready French, spoken with themost unblushing accent imaginable, and lounged along the sandsthrough many an amusing and sociable hour with one or other of his newacquaintances. 

But by the evening husband and wife would leave the crowded beach, andmount by some tortuous dusty way on to the high plateau through whichwas cleft far below the wooded fissure of the village. Here they seemedto have climbed the bean-stalk into a new world. The rich Normandycountry lay all around them--the cornfields, the hedgeless tracts ofwhite-flowered lucerne or crimson clover, dotted by the orchard treeswhich make one vast garden of the land as one sees it from a height. Onthe fringe of the cliff, where the soil became too thin and barreneven for French cultivation, there was a wild belt, half heather, halftangled grass and flower-growth, which the English pair loved for theirown special reasons. Bathed in light, cooled by the evening wind, thepatches of heather glowing, the tall grasses swaying in the breeze, there were moments when its wide, careless, dusty beauty reminded thempoignantly, and yet most sweetly, of the home of their first uncloudedhappiness, of the Surrey commons and wildernesses. 

One evening they were sitting in the warm dusk by the edge of a littledip of heather sheltered by a tuft of broom, when suddenly they heardthe purring sound of the night-jar and immediately after the bird itselflurched past them, and as it disappeared into the darkness they caughtseveral times the characteristic click of the wing. 

Catherine raised her hand and laid it on Robert's. The sudden tearsdropped on to her cheeks. 

'Did you hear it, Robert?'

He drew her to him. These involuntary signs of an abiding pain in heralways smote him to the heart. 

'I am not unhappy, Robert, ' she said at last, raising her head. 'No;if you will only get well and strong. I have submitted. It is not formyself, but----'

For what then? Merely the touchingness of mortal things as such?--ofyouth, of hope, of memory?

Choking down a sob, she looked seaward over the curling flame-coloredwaves while he held her hand close and tenderly. No--she was notunhappy. Something, indeed, had gone forever out of that early joy. Herlife had been caught and nipped in the great inexorable wheel ofthings. It would go in some sense maimed to the end. But the bitterself-torturing of that first endless year was over. Love, and herhusband, and the thousand subtle forces of a changing world hadconquered. She would live and die steadfast to the old faiths. But herpresent mind and its outlook was no more the mind of her early marriedlife than the Christian philosophy of to-day is the Christian philosophyof the Middle Ages. She was not conscious of change, but change therewas. She had, in fact, undergone that dissociation of the moral judgmentfrom a special series of religious formulæ which is the crucial, theepoch-making fact of our day. 'Unbelief, ' says the orthodox preacher, 'is sin, and implies it:' and while he speaks, the saint in theunbeliever gently smiles down his argument; and suddenly, in the rebelof yesterday men see the rightful heir of to-morrow. 

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 tofriends and acquaintances of the Flaxman family--by concerts, and thedemands of several new and exciting artistic friendships. But she wasseldom loath to come back to the little bare valley and the gray-walledhouse. Even the rain which poured down in August, quite unabashed by anyconsciousness of fine weather elsewhere, was not as intolerable to heras in past days. 

The girl was not herself; there was visible in her not only that generalsoftening and deepening of character which had been the consequenceof her trouble in the spring, but a painful _ennui_ she could hardlydisguise, a longing for she knew not what. She was beginning to take thehomage paid to her gift and her beauty with a quiet dignity, which wasin no sense false modesty, but implied a certain clearness of vision, curious and disquieting in so young and dazzling a creature. And whenshe came home from her travels she would develop a taste for long walks, breasting the mountains in rain or sun, penetrating to their austerestsolitudes alone, as though haunted by that profound saying of Obermann, 'Man, is not made for enjoyment only--_la tristesse fait aussi partie deses vastes besoins_. '

What, indeed, was it that ailed her? In her lonely moments, especiallyin those moments among the high fells, beside some little tarn orstreamlet, while the sheets of swept by her, or the great clouds dappledthe spreading sides of the hills, she thought often of Langham--ofthat first thrill of passion which had passed through her, delusive andabortive, like one of those first thrills of spring which bring outthe buds, only to provide victims for the frost. Now with her again, 'a moral east; wind was blowing. ' The passion was gone. The thoughtof Langham still roused in her a pity that seemed to strain at herheartstrings. But was it really she, really this very Rose, who hadrested for that one intoxicating instant on his breast? She felt a sortof bitter shame over her own shallowness of feeling. She must surely bea poor creature, else how could such a thing have befallen her and haveleft so little trace behind?

And then, her hand dabbling in the water, her face raised to the blindfriendly mountains, she would go dreaming far afield. Little vignettesof London would come and go on the inner retina, smiles and sighs wouldfollow one another. 

'_How kind he was that time! how amusing this!_'

Or, '_How provoking he was that afternoon! how cold, that Evening!_'

Nothing else:--the pronoun remained ambiguous. 

'I want a friend!' she said to herself once as she was sitting far up inthe bosom of High Fill, 'I want a friend badly. Yet my lover deserts me, and I send away my friend!'

One afternoon Mrs. Thornburgh, the Vicar, and Rose were wandering roundthe churchyard together, enjoying a break of sunny weather after days ofrain. Mrs. Thornburgh's personal accent, so to speak, had grown perhapsa little more defined, a little more emphatic even, than when we firstknew her. The Vicar, on the other hand, was a trifle grayer, a triflemore submissive, as though on the whole, in the long conjugal contestof life, he was getting clearly worsted as the years went on. Butthe performance through which his wife was now taking him tried himexceptionally, and she only kept him to it with difficulty. She hadhad an attack of bronchitis in the spring, and was still somewhatdelicate--a fact which to his mind gave her an unfair advantage of him. For she would make use of it to keep constantly before him ideas whichhe disliked, and in which he considered she took a morbid and unbecomingpleasure. The Vicar was of opinion that when his latter end overtook himhe should meet it on the whole as courageously as other men. But hewas altogether averse to dwelling upon it, or the adjuncts of it, beforehand. Mrs. Thornburgh, however, since her illness had awoke tothat inquisitive affectionate interest in these very adjuncts which manywomen feel. And it was extremely disagreeable to the Vicar. 

At the present moment she was engaged in choosing the precise spots inthe little churchyard where it seemed to her it would be pleasant torest. There was one corner in particular which attracted her, and shestood now looking at it with measuring eyes and dissatisfied mouth. 

'William, I wish you would come here and help me!'

The Vicar took no notice, but went on talking to Rose. 

'William!' imperatively. 

The Vicar turned unwillingly. 

'You know, William, if you wouldn't mind lying with your foot _that_way, there would be just room for me. But of course if you _will_ havethem the other way----' The shoulders in the old black silk mantle wentup, and the gray curls shook dubiously. 

The Vicar's countenance showed plainly that he thought the remark worsethan irrelevant. 

'My dear, ' he said crossly, 'I am not thinking of those things, nor do Iwish to think of them. Everything has its time and place. It is close ontea, and Miss Rose says we must be going home. '

Mrs. Thornburgh again shook her head, this time with a disapprovingsigh. 

'You talk, William, ' she said severely, 'as if you were a young man, instead of being turned sixty-six last birthday. '

And again she measured the spaces with her eye, checking the resultsaloud. But the Vicar was obdurately deaf. He strolled on with Rose, whowas chattering to him about a visit to Manchester, and the littlechurch gate clicked behind them. Hearing it, Mrs. Thornburgh relaxed hermeasurements. They were only really interesting to her after all whenthe Vicar was by. She hurried after them as fast as her short squatfigure would allow, and stopped midway to make an exclamation. 

'A carriage!' she said, shading her eyes with a very plump hand, 'stopping at Greybarns!'

The one road of the valley was visible from the churchyard, windingalong the bottom of the shallow green trough, for at least two miles. Greybarns was a farmhouse just beyond Burwood, about half a mile away. 

Mrs. Thornburgh moved on, her matronly face aglow with interest. 

'Mary Jenkinson taken ill!' she said. 'Of course, that's Doctor Baker!Well, it's to be hoped it won't be _twins_ this time. But, as I toldher last Sunday, "It's constitutional, my dear. " I knew a woman who hadthree pairs! Five o'clock now. Well, about seven it'll be worth whilesending to inquire. '

When she overtook the Vicar and his companion, she began to whispercertain particulars into the ear that was not on Rose's side. The Vicar, who, like Uncle Toby, was possessed of a fine natural modesty, wouldhave preferred that his wife should refrain from whispering on thesetopics in Rose's presence. But he submitted lest opposition shouldprovoke her into still more audible improprieties; and Rose walked ona step or two in front of the pair, her eyes twinkling a little. At theVicarage gate she was let off without the customary final gossip. Mrs. Thornburgh was so much occupied in the fate hanging over Mary Jenkinsonthat she, for once, forgot to catechize Rose, as to any marriageableyoung men she might have come across in a recent visit to a greatcountry-house of the neighborhood; an operation which formed theinvariable pendant to any of Rose's absences. 

So, with a smiling nod to them both, the girl turned homeward. As shedid so she became aware of a man's figure walking along the space ofroad between Graybarns and Burwood, the western light behind it. 

Dr. Baker? But even granting that Mrs. Jenkinson had brought him fivemiles on a false alarm, in the provoking manner of matrons, the shortestprofessional visit could not be over in this time. 

She looked again, shading her eyes. She was nearing the gate of Burwood, and involuntarily slackened step. The man who was approaching, catchingsight of the slim girlish figure in the broad hat and pink and whitecotton dress, hurried up. The color rushed to Rose's cheek. In anotherminute she and Hugh Flaxman were face to face. 

She could not hide her astonishment. 

'Why are you not in Scotland?' she said after she had given him herhand. 'Lady Helen told me last week she expected you in Ross-shire. '

Directly the word 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 downupon her. He was bronzed as she had never seen him. And never had heseemed to bring with him such an atmosphere of cool pleasant strength. 'I have slain so much since the first of July that I can slay no more. I am not like other men. The Nimrod in me is easily gorged, and goes tosleep after a while. So this is Burwood?'

He had caught her just on the little sweep, leading to gate, and now hiseye swept quickly over the modest old house, with its trim garden, itsovergrown porch and open casement windows. She dared not ask him againwhy he was there. In the properest manner she invited him 'to come inand see Mamma. '

'I hope Mrs. Leyburn is better than she was in town? I shall bedelighted to see her. But must you go in so soon? I left my carriagehalf a mile below, and have been reveling in the sun and air. I am loathto go indoors yet awhile. Are you busy? Would it trouble you to put mein the way to the head of the valley? Then if you will allow me, I willpresent myself later. '

Rose thought his request as little in the ordinary line of things as hisappearance. But she turned and walked beside him pointing out thecrags at the head, the great sweep of High Fell, and the pass over toUllswater with as much _sang-froid_ as she was mistress of. 

He, on his side, informed her that on his way to Scotland he hadbethought himself that he had never seen the Lakes, that he hadstopped at Whinborough, was bent on walking over the High Fell passto Ullswater, and making his way thence to Ambleside, Grasmere, andKeswick. 

'But you are much too late to-day to get to Ullswater?' cried Roseincautiously. 

'Certainly. You see my hotel, ' and he pointed, smiling, to a whitefarmhouse standing just at the bend of the valley, where the road turnedtoward Whinborough. 'I persuaded the good woman there to give me a bedfor the night, took my carriage a little farther, then, knowing I hadfriends 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 inWhindale. '

'Tourist! I repudiate the name. I am a worshipper at the shrine ofWordsworth and Nature. Helen and I long ago defined a tourist as a beingwith straps. I defy you to discover a strap about me, and I left myMurray in the railway carriage. '

He looked at her laughing. She laughed too. The infection of his strongsunny presence was irresistible. In London it had been so easy to standon her dignity, to remember whenever he was friendly that the nightbefore he had been distant. In these green solitudes it was not easy tobe anything but natural--the child of the moment!

'You are neither more practical nor more economical than when I saw youlast', she said demurely. 'When did you leave Norway?'

They wandered on past the vicarage talking fast. Mr. Flaxman, who hadbeen joined for a time, on his fishing tour, by Lord Waynflete, wasgiving her an amusing account of the susceptibility to titles shownby the primitive democrats of Norway. As they passed a gap in vicaragehedge, laughing and chatting, Rose became aware of a window and a grayhead hastily withdrawn. Mr. Flaxman was puzzled by the merry flash, instantly suppressed, that shoot across her face. 

Presently they reached the hamlet of High Close, and the house whereMary Backhouse died, and where her father and the poor bed-ridden Jimstill lived. They mounted the path behind it, and plunged into thehazel plantation which had sheltered Robert and Catherine on a memorablenight. But when they were through it, Rose turned to the right along ascrambling path leading to the top of the first great shoulder of HighFell. It was a steep climb, though a short one, and it seemed to Rosethat when she had once let him help her over a rock her hand was neverher own again. He kept it an almost constant prisoner on one pretext oranother till they were at the top. 

Then she sank down on a rock out of breath. He stood beside her, liftinghis brown wideawake from his brow. The air below had been warm andrelaxing. Here it played upon them both with a delicious life-givingfreshness. He looked round on the great hollow bosom of the fell, the crags buttressing it on either hand, the winding greenness of thevalley, the white sparkle of the river. 

'It reminds me a little of Norway. The same austere and frugalbeauty--the same bare valley floors. But no pines, no peaks, no fiords!'

'No!' said Rose scornfully, 'we are not Norway, and we are notSwitzerland. To prevent disappointment, I may at once inform you thatwe have no glaciers, and that there is perhaps only one place in thedistrict where a man who is not an idiot could succeed in killinghimself. '

He looked at her, calmly smiling. 

'You are angry, ' he said, 'because I make comparisons. You are wholly ona wrong scent. I never saw a scene in the world that pleased me halfas much as this bare valley, that gray roof'--and he pointed to Burwoodamong its trees-'and this knoll of rocky ground. '

His look traveled back to her, and her eyes sank beneath it. He threwhimself down on the short grass beside her. 

'It rained this morning, ' she still had the spirit to murmur under herbreath. 

He took not the smallest heed. 

'Do you know, ' he said--and his voice dropped--'can you guess at all whyI am here to-day?'

'You had never seen the Lakes, ' she repeated in a prim voice, her eyesstill cast down, the corners of her mouth twitching. 'You stopped atWhinborough, intending to take the pass over to Ullswater, thenceto make your way to Ambleside and Keswick--or was it to Keswick andAmbleside?'

She looked up innocently. But the flashing glance she met abashed heragain. 

'_Taquine!_' he said, 'but you shall not laugh me out of countenance. If I said all that to you just now, may I be forgiven. One purpose, oneonly, brought me from Norway, forbade me to go to Scotland, drew me toWhinborough, guided me up your valley--the purpose of seeing your face!'

It could not be said at that precise moment that he had attained it. Rather she seemed bent on hiding that face quite away from him. Itseemed to him an age before, drawn by the magnetism of his look, herhands dropped, and she faced him, crimson, her breath fluttering alittle. Then she would have spoken, but he would not let her. Verytenderly and quietly his hand possessed itself of hers as he kneltbeside her. 

'I have been in exile for two months--you sent me. I saw that I troubledyou in London. You thought I was pursuing you--pressing you. Your manorsaid "Go!" and I went. But do you think that for one day, or hour, ormoment I have thought of anything else in those Norway woods but of youand of this blessed moment when I should be at your feet, as I am now?'

She trembled. Her hand seemed to leap in his. His gaze melted, enwrappedher. He bent forward. In another moment her silence would have soanswered for her that his covetous arms would have stolen about her forgood and ill. But suddenly a kind of shiver ran through her--a shiverwhich was half memory, half shame. She drew back violently, covering hereyes with her hand. 

'Oh no, no!' she cried, and her other hand struggled to get free, 'don't, don't talk to me so--I have a--a--confession. '

He watched her, his lips trembling a little, a smile of the mostexquisite indulgence and understanding dawning in his eyes. Was shegoing to confess to him what he knew so well already? If he could onlyforce 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. 

'That thought-reading night at Lady Charlotte's, on the way home, hespoke to me. I said I loved him. I _did_ love him; I let him kiss me!'

Her flush had quite faded. He could hardly tell whether she was yieldingor defiant as the words burst from her. 

An expression, half trouble, half compunction, came into his face. 

'I knew, ' he said, very low; 'or rather, I guessed. ' And for an instantit occurred to him to unburden himself, to ask her pardon for thatespionage of his. But no, no; not till he had her safe. 'I guessed, Imean, that there had been something grave between you. I saw you weresad. I would have given the world to comfort you. '

Her lip quivered childishly. 

'I said I loved him that night. The next morning he wrote to me that itcould never be. '

He looked at her a moment embarrassed. The conversation was not easy. Then the smile broke once more. 

'And you have forgotten him as he deserved. If I was not sure of thatI could wish him all the tortures of the _Inferno!_ As it is, I cannotthink of him; I cannot let you think of him. Sweet, do you know thatever since I first saw you the one thought of my days, the dream of mynights, the purpose of my whole life, has been to win you? There wasanother in the field; I knew it. I stood by and waited. He failed you--Iknew he must in some form or other. Then I was hasty, and you resentedit. Little tyrant, you made yourself a Rose with many thorns! But, tellme, tell me, its all over--your pain, my waiting. Make yourself sweet tome! unfold to me at last!'

An instant she wavered. His bliss was almost in his grasp. Then shesprang up, and Flaxman found himself standing by her, rebuffed andsurprised. 

'No, no!', she cried, holding out her hand to him though all the time. 'Oh, it is too soon! I should despise myself, I do despise myself. Ittortures me that I can change and forget so easily; it ought to tortureyou. Oh don't ask me yet to--to--'

'To be my wife, ' he said calmly, his cheek, a little flushed, his eyemeeting hers with a passion in it that strove so hard for self-controlit was almost sternness. 

'Not yet!' she pleaded, and then, after a moment's hesitation, shebroke into the most appealing smiles, though the tears were in her eyes, hurrying out the broken beseeching words. 'I want a friend so much--areal friend. Since Catherine left I have had no one. I have been runningriot. Take me in hand. Write to me, scold me, advise me, I will be yourpupil, I will tell you everything. You seem to me so fearfully wise, somuch older. Oh, don't be vexed. And--and--in six months----'

She turned away, rosy as her name. He held her still, so rigidly thather hands were almost hurt. The shadow of the hat fell over her eyes;the delicate outlines of the neck and shoulders in the pretty paledress were defined against the green hill background. He studied herdeliberately, a hundred different expressions sweeping across his face. A debate of the most feverish interest was within him. Her seriousnessat the moment, the chances of the future, her character, his own--allthese knotty points entered into it, had to be weighed and decided withlightning rapidity. But Hugh Flaxman was born under a lucky star, andthe natal charm held good. 

At last he gave a long breath; he stooped and kissed her hands. 

'So be it. For, six months I will be your guardian, your friend, yourteasing, implacable censor. At the end of that time I will be--well, never mind what. I give you fair warning. '

He released her. Rose clasped her hands before her and stood, drooping. Now that she had gained her point, all her bright mocking independenceseemed to have vanished. She might have been in reality the tremulous, timid child she seemed. His spirits rose; he began to like the _rôle_she had assigned to him. The touch of unexpectedness, in all she saidand did, acted with exhilarating force on his fastidious romantic sense. 

'Now, then, ' he said, picking up her gloves from the grass, 'you havegiven me my rights; I will begin to exercise them at once. I must takeyou home, the clouds are coming up again, and on the way will you kindlygive me a full, true, and minute account of these two months duringwhich you have been so dangerously left to your own devices?'

She hesitated, and began to speak with difficulty, her eyes on theground. But by the time they were in the main Shanmoor path again, andshe was not so weakly dependent on his physical aid, her spirits tooreturned. Pacing along with her hands behind her, she began by degreesto throw into her accounts of her various visits and performances plentyof her natural malice. 

And after a bit, as that strange storm of feeling which had assailed heron the mountain top abated something of its bewildering force, certainold grievances began to raise very lively heads in her. The smart ofLady Fauntleroy's ball was still there; she had not yet forgiven him allthose 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 notfar from Burwood, 'that you have been making yourself agreeable to avast number of people. In my new capacity of censor, I should like towarn you that there is nothing so bad for the character as universalpopularity. '

'_I_ have not got a thousand and one important cousins!' she exclaimed, her lip curling. 'If I want to please, I must take pains, else "nobodyminds me. "'

He looked at her attentively, his handsome face aglow with animation. 

'What can you mean by that?' he said slowly. 

But she was quite silent, her head well in air. 

'Cousins?' he repeated. 'Cousins? And clearly meant as a taunt at me!Now when did you see my cousins? I grant that I possess a monstrous andindefensible number. I have it. You think that at Lady Fauntleroy's ballI devoted myself too much to my family, and too little to--'

'Not at all!' cried Rose hastily, adding, with charming incoherence, while she twisted a sprig of honeysuckle in hex restless fingers, '_Some_ cousins of course are pretty. '

He paused an instant; then a light broke over his face, and his burstof quiet laughter was infinitely pleasant to hear. Rose got redder andredder. She realized dimly that she was hardly maintaining the spiritof their contract, and that he was studying her with eyes inconvenientlybright and penetrating. 

'Shall I quote to you, ' he said, 'a sentence of Sterne's? If itviolate our contract I must plead extenuating circumstances. Strerneis admonishing a young friend as to his manners in society: "You are inlove, " he says. "_Tant mieux_. But do not imagine that the fact bestowson 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 herwho possesses thy heart without tearing the flounces of any of theirpetticoats_"--not even those of little cousins of seventeen! I saythis, you will observe, in the capacity you have assigned me. In anothercapacity I venture to think I could justify myself still better. '

'My guardian and director, ' cried Rose, 'must not begin his functions bymisleading and sophistical quotations from the classics!'

He did not answer for a moment. They were at the gate of Burwood, undera thick screen of wild-cherry trees. The gate was half open, and hishand was on it. 

'And my pupil, ' he said, bending to her, 'must not begin by challengingthe prisoner whose hands she has bound, or he will not answer for theconsequences!'

His words were threatening, but his voice, his fine expressive face, were infinitely sweet. By a kind of fascination she never afterwardunderstood, 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 wasthrough it in an instant. He followed her in vain. He never overtook hertill at the drawing-room door she paused with amazing dignity. 

'Mamma, ' she said, throwing it open, 'here is Mr. Flaxman. He is comefrom Norway, and is on his way to Ullswater. I will go and speak toMargaret about tea. '

CHAPTER XLVIII. 

After the little incident recorded at the end of the preceding chapter, Hugh Flaxman may be forgiven if, as he walked home along the valleythat night toward the farmhouse where he had established himself, heentertained a very comfortable scepticism as to the permanence of thatcurious contract into which Rose had just forced him. However, he wasquite mistaken. Rose's maiden dignity avenged itself abundantly on HughFlaxman for the injuries it had received at the hands of Langham. The restraints, the anomalies, the hair-splittings of the situationdelighted her ingenuous youth. 'I am free--he is free. We will befriends for six months. Possibly we may not suit one another at all. Ifwe do--_then_----'

In the thrill of that _then_ lay, of course, the whole attraction of theposition. 

So that next morning Hugh Flaxman saw the comedy was to be scrupulouslykept up. It required a tolerably strong masculine certainty at thebottom of him to enable him to resign himself once more to his part. Buthe achieved it, and being himself a modern of the moderns, a lover ofhalf-shades and refinements of all sorts, he began very soon to enjoyit, and to play it with an increasing cleverness and perfection. 

How Rose got through Agnes' cross-questioning on the matter, historysayeth not. Of one thing, however, a conscientious historian may besure, namely, that Agnes succeeded in knowing as much as she wantedto know. Mrs. Leyburn was a little puzzled by the erratic lines of Mr. Flaxman's journeys. It was, as she said, curious that a man should starton a tour through the Lakes from Long Whindale. 

But she took everything naively as it came, and as she was told. Nothingwith her ever passed through any changing crucible of thought. Itrequired no planning to elude her. Her mind was like a stretch of wetsand, on which all impressions are equally easy to make and equallyfugitive. He liked them all, she supposed, in spite of the comparativescantiness of his later visit to Lerwick Gardens, or he would not havegone out of his way to see them. But as nobody suggested anything elseto her, her mind worked no further, and she was as easily beguiled afterhis appearance as before it by the intricacies of some new knitting. 

Things of course might have been different if Mrs. Thornburgh hadinterfered again; but, as we know, poor Catherine's sorrows had raiseda whole odd host of misgivings in the mind of the Vicar's wife. Sheprowled nervously around Mrs. Leyburn, filled with contempt for herplacidity; but she did not attack her. She spent herself, indeed, onRose and Agnes, but long practice had made them adepts in the art ofbaffling her; and when Mr. Flaxman went to tea at the Vicarage in theircompany, in spite of an absorbing desire to get at the truth, whichcaused her to forget a new cap, and let fall a plate of tea-cakes, she was obliged to confess crossly to the Vicar afterward that 'no onecould, tell what a man like that was after. She supposed his mannerswere very aristocratic, but for her part she liked plain people. '

On the last morning of Mr. Flaxman's stay in the valley he entered theBurwood drive about eleven o'clock, and Rose came down the steps to meethim. For a moment he flattered himself that her disturbed looks were dueto the nearness of their farewells. 

'There is something wrong, ' he said, softly detaining her hand amoment--so much, at least, was in his right. 

'Robert is ill. There has been an accident at Petites Dalles. He hasbeen in bed for a week. They hope to get home in a few days. Catherinewrites bravely, but she evidently is very low. '

Hugh Flaxman's face fell. Certain letters he had received from Elsmerein July had lain heavy on his mind ever since, so pitiful was thehalf-conscious revelation in them of an incessant physical struggle. An accident! Elsmere was in no state for accidents. What miserableill-luck!

Rose read him Catherine's account. It appeared that on a certain stormyday a swimmer had been observed in difficulties among the rocks skirtingthe northern side of the Patites Dalles bay. The old _baigneur_ of theplace, owner of the still primitive _établissement des bains_, withoutstopping to strip, or even to take off his heavy boots, went out to theman in danger with a plank. The man took the plank and was safe. Then tothe people watching, it became evident that the _baigneur_ himself wasin peril. He became unaccountably feeble in the water, and the cry arosethat he was sinking. Robert, who happened to be bathing near, ran off tothe spot, jumped in, and swam out. By this time the old man had driftedsome way. Robert succeeded, however, in bringing him in, and then, amid an excited crowd, headed by the _baigneur's_ wailing family, theycarried the unconscious form on to the higher beach. Elsmere was certainlife was not extinct, and sent off for a doctor. Meanwhile, no oneseemed to have any common sense, or any knowledge of how to proceedbut himself. For two hours he stayed on the beach in his drippingbathing-clothes, a cold wind blowing, trying every device known to him:rubbing, hot bottles artificial respiration. In vain. The man was tooold and too bloodless. Directly after the doctor arrived he breathed hislast, amid the wild and passionate grief of wife and children. 

Robert, with a cloak flung about him, still stayed to talk to thedoctor, to carry one of the _baigneur's_ sobbing grandchildren to itsmother in the village. Then, at last, Catherine got hold of him, andhe submitted to be taken home, shivering, and deeply depressed by thefailure of his efforts. A violent gastric and lung chill declareditself almost immediately, and for three days he had been anxiously ill. Catherine, miserable, distrusting the local doctor, and not knowing howto get hold of a better one, had never left him night or day. 'I had notthe heart to write even to you, ' she wrote to her mother. 'I could thinkof nothing but trying one thing after another. Now he has been in bedeight days and is much better. He talks of getting up to-morrow, anddeclares he must go home next week. I have tried to persuade him to stayhere another fortnight, but the thought of his work distresses him somuch that I hardly dare urge it. I cannot say how I dread the journey. He is not fit for it in any way. '

Rose folded up the letter, her face softened to a most womanly gravity. Hugh Flaxman paused a moment outside the door, his hands on his sides, considering. 

'I shall not go on to Scotland, ' he said; 'Mrs. Elsmere must not beleft. I will go off there at once. '

In Rose's soberly-sweet looks as he left her, Hugh Flaxman saw for aninstant, with the stirring of a joy as profound as if was delicate, notthe fanciful enchantress of the day before, but his wife that was tobe. And yet she held him to his bargain. All that his lips touched ashe said good-by was the little bunch of yellow briar roses she gave himfrom her belt. 

Thirty hours later he was descending the long hill from Sassetôt toPetites Dalles. It was the first of September. A chilly west wind blewup the dust before him and stirred the parched leafage of the valley. Heknocked at the door, of which the woodwork was all peeled and blisteredby the sun. Catherine herself opened it. 

'This is kind--this is like yourself!' she said, after a first stare ofamazement, when he had explained himself. 'He is in there, much better. '

Robert looked up, stupefied, as Hugh Flaxman entered. But he sprang upwith his old brightness. 

Well, this _is_ friendship! What on earth brings you here, old fellow?Why aren't you in the stubbles celebrating St. Partridge?'

Hugh Flaxman said what he had to say very shortly, but so as to makeRobert's eyes gleam, and to bring his thin hand with a sort of caressingtouch upon Flaxman's shoulder. 

'I shan't try to thank you--Catherine can if she likes. How relieved shewill be about that bothering journey of ours! However, I am really everso much better. It was very sharp while it lasted; and the doctor nogreat shakes. But there never was such a woman as my wife; she pulled methrough! And now then, sir, just kindly confess yourself, a little moreplainly. What brought you and my sisters-in-law together? You-need nottry and persuade _me_ that Long Whindale is the natural gate of theLakes, or the route intended by Heaven from London to Scotland, though Ihave 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 perspicacityfor which you are so remarkable, Elsmere. Well, the day before yesterdayI 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 weare to be rather more than friends, and a good deal less than _fiancés_. I am to be allowed to write to her. You may imagine how seductive it isto one of the worst and laziest letter-writers in the threekingdoms, that his fortunes in love should be made to depend on hiscorrespondence. I may scold her _if_ she gives me occasion. And insix months, as one says to a publisher, "the agreement will be open torevision. "'

Robert stared. 

'And you are not engaged?'

'Not as I understand it, ' replied Flaxman. 'Decidedly not!' he addedwith 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 canunderstand. There may have been more than mere caprice in it. '

His eye met his friend's significantly. 

'I suppose so, ' said Flaxman quietly. Not even for Robert's benefit washe going to reveal any details of that scene on High Fell. 'Never mind, old fellow, I am content. And, indeed, _faute de mieux_, I should becontent with anything that brought me nearer to her, were it but by thethousandth of an inch. '

Robert grasped his hand affectionately. 

'Catherine, ' he called through the door, 'never mind the supper; let itburn. Flaxman brings news. '

Catherine listened to the story with amazement. Certainly her ways wouldnever have been as her sister's. 

'Are we supposed to know?' she asked, very naturally. 

'She never forbade me to tell, ' said Flaxman, smiling. 'I think, however, if I were you, I should say nothing about it--yet. I told herit was part of our bargain that _she_ should explain my letters to Mrs. Leyburn. I gave her free leave to invent any fairy tale she pleased, butit was to be _her_ invention, not mine. '

Neither Robert nor Catherine were very well pleased. But there wassomething reassuring as well as comic in the stoicism with which Flaxmantook his position. And clearly the matter must be left to manage itself. 

Next morning the weather had improved. Robert, his hand on Flaxman'sarm, got down to the beach. Flaxman watched him critically, did not likesome of his symptoms, but thought on the whole he must be recovering atthe normal rate, considering how severe the attack had been. 

'What do you think of him?' Catherine asked him next day, with all hersoul in her eyes. They had left Robert established in a sunny nook, andwere strolling on along the sands. 

'I think you must get him home, call in a first-rate doctor, and keephim quiet, ' said Flaxman. 'He will be all right presently. '

'How _can_ we keep him quiet?' said Catherine, with a momentary despairin her fine pale face. 'All day long and all night long he is thinkingof his work. It is like something fiery burning the heart out of him. '

Flaxman felt the truth of the remark during the four days of calm autumnweather he spent with them before the return journey. Robert would talkto him for hours--now on the sands, with the gray infinity of sea beforethem-now pacing the bounds of their little room till fatigue made himdrop heavily into his long chair; and the burden of it all was thereligious future of the working-class. He described the scene in theclub, and brought out the dreams swarming in his mind, presentingthem for Flaxman's criticism, and dealing with them himself, with thatstartling mixture of acute common-sense and eloquent passion which hadalways made him so effective as an initiator. Flaxman listened dubiouslyat first, as he generally listened to Elsmere, and then was carriedaway, not by the beliefs, but by the man. _He_ found his pleasure indallying with the magnificent _possibility_ of the Church; doubt withhim applied to all propositions, whether positive or negative; andhe had the dislike of the aristocrat and the cosmopolitan for theprovincialisms of religious dissent. Political dissent or social reformwas another matter. Since the Revolution, every generous child of thecentury has been open to the fascination of political or social Utopias. But religion! _What--what is truth?_ Why not let the old things alone?

However, it was through the social passion, once so real in him, andstill living, in spite of disillusion and self-mockery, that Robertcaught him, had in fact been slowly gaining possession of him all thesemonths. 

'Well, ' said Flaxman one day, 'suppose I grant you that Christianity ofthe old sort shows strong signs of exhaustion, even in England, andin spite of the Church expansion we hear so much about; and suppose Ibelieve with you that things will go badly without religion: what then?Who can have a religion for the asking?'

'But who can have it without? _Seek_, that you may find. Experiment; trynew 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 theeffort 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 theflashing answer-'a new compelling force in man and in society. Can youdeny that the world wants it? What are you economists and sociologistsof the new type always pining for? Why, for that diminution of theself in man which is to enable the individual to see the _world's_ends clearly, and to care not only for his own but for his neighbor'sinterest, which is to make the rich devote themselves to the poor, andthe poor bear with the rich. If man only _would_, he _could_, you say, solve all the problems which oppress him. It is man's will which iseternally defective, eternally inadequate. Well, the great religions ofthe world are the stimulants by which the power at the root of thingshas worked upon this sluggish instrument of human destiny. Withoutreligion you cannot make the will equal to its tasks. Our presentreligion fails us; we must, we will have another!'

He rose, and began to pace along the sands, now gently glowing in thewarm September evening, Flaxman beside him. 

_A new religion!_ Of all words, the most tremendous? Flaxman pitifullyweighed against it the fraction of force fretting and surging in thethin elastic frame beside him. He knew well, however--few better--thatthe outburst was not a mere dream and emptiness. There was experiencebehind it--a burning, driving experience of actual fact. 

Presently Robert said, with a change of tone, 'I must have that wholeblock of warehouses, Flaxman. '

'Must You? said Flaxman, relieved by the drop from speculation to thepractical. 'Why?'

'Look here!' And sitting down again on a sandhill overgrown with wildgrasses and mats of seathistle, the poor pale reformer began to draw outthe details of his scheme on its material side. Three floors of roomsbrightly furnished, well lit and warmed; a large hall for the Sundaylectures, concerts, entertainments, and story-telling; rooms forthe boys' club; two rooms for women and girls, reached by a separateentrance; a library and reading-room open to both sexes, well storedwith books, and made beautiful by pictures; three or four smaller roomsto serve as committee rooms and for the purposes of the Naturalist Clubwhich had been started in May on the Murewell plan; and, if possible, agymnasium. 

'_Money!_' he said, drawing up with a laugh in mid-career. 'There's therub, of course. But I shall manage it. '

To judge from the past, Flaxman thought it extremely likely that hewould. He studied the cabalistic lines Elsmere's stick had made in thesand for a minute or two; then he said dryly, 'I will take the firstexpense; and draw on me afterward up to five hundred a year, for thefirst four years. '

Robert turned upon him and grasped his hand. 

'I do not thank you, ' he said quietly, after a moment's pause; 'the workitself will do that. '

Again they strolled on, talking, plunging into details, till Flaxman'spulse beat as fast as Robert's; so full of infectious hope and energywas the whole being of the man before him. 

'I can take in the women and girls now, ' Robert said at once. 'Catherinehas promised to superintend it all. '

Then suddenly something struck the mobile mind, and he stood an instantlooking at his companion. It was the first time he had mentionedCatherine's name in connection with the North R---- work. Flaxman couldnot mistake the emotion, the unspoken thanks in those eyes. He turnedaway, nervously knocking off the ashes of his cigar. But the two menunderstood each other. 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

Two days later they were in London again. Robert was a great dealbetter, and beginning to kick against invalid restraints. All men havetheir pet irrationalities. Elsmere's irrationality was an aversion todoctors, from the point of view of his own ailments. He had an unboundedadmiration for them as a class, and would have nothing to say to themas individuals that he could possibly help. Flaxman was sarcastic;Catherine looked imploring in vain. He vowed that he was treatinghimself 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 actfavorably upon him. After his first welcome at the Club he came homewith bright eye and vigorous step, declaring that he was another man. 

Flaxman established himself in St. James' Place. Town was deserted, the partridges at Greenlaws clamored to be shot; the head-keeper wroteletters which would have melted the heart of a stone. Flaxman repliedrecklessly that any decent fellow in the neighborhood was welcome toshoot his birds--a reply which almost brought upon him the resignationof the outraged keeper by return of post. Lady Charlotte wrote andremonstrated with him for neglecting a landowner's duties, inquiring atthe same time what he meant to do with regard to 'that young lady. ' Towhich Flaxman replied calmly that he had just come back from theLakes, where he had done, not indeed all that he meant to do, but stillsomething. Miss Leyburn and he were not engaged, but he was on probationfor six months, and found London the best place for getting through it. 

'So far, ' he said, 'I am getting on well, and developing an amount ofenergy, especially in the matter of correspondence, which alone ought tocommend the arrangement to the relations of an idle man. But we must beleft "to dream our dream unto ourselves alone. " One word from anybodybelonging to me to anybody belonging to her on the subject, and----. Butthreats are puerile. _For the present_, dear Aunt, I am, your devoted Nephew HUGH FLAXMAN. 

'_On probation!_'

Flaxman chuckled as he sent off the letter. 

He stayed because he was too restless to be anywhere else, and becausehe loved the Elsmeres for Rose's sake and his own. He thought moreoverthat a cool-headed friend with an eye for something else in the worldthan religious reform might be useful just then to Elsmere, and he wasdetermined at the same time to see what the reformer meant to be at. 

In the first place, Robert's attention was directed to gettingpossession of the whole block of buildings, in which the existing schooland lecture-rooms took up only the lowest floor. This was a matter ofsome difficulty, for the floors above were employed in warehousing goodsbelonging to various minor import trades, and were hold on tenures ofdifferent lengths. However, by dint of some money and much skill, therequisite clearances were effected during September and part of October. By the end of that month all but the top floor, the tenant of whichrefused to be dislodged, fell into Elsmere's hands. 

Meanwhile at a meeting held every Sunday after lecture--a meetingcomposed mainly of artisans of the district, but including also Robert'shelpers from the West, and a small sprinkling of persons interested inthe man and his work from all parts--the details of 'The New Brotherhoodof Christ' were being hammered out. Catherine was generally present, sitting a little apart, with a look which Flaxman, who now knew herwell, 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. MurrayEdwardes too was always there. It often struck Flaxman afterward that inRobert's attitude toward Edwardes at this time, in his constant desireto bring him forward, to associate him with himself as much as possiblein the government and formation of the infant society, there was ahalf-conscious prescience of a truth that as yet none knew, not even thetender wife, the watchful friend. 

The meetings were of extraordinary interest. The men, the great majorityof whom had been disciplined and moulded for months by contact withElsmere's teaching and Elsmere's thought, showed a responsiveness, areceptivity, even a power of initiation which often struck Flaxman withwonder. Were these the men he had seen in the Club-hall on the nightof Robert's address--sour, stolid, brutalized, hostile to all things inheaven and earth?

'And we go on prating that the age of saints is over, the rôle of theindividual lessening day by day! Fool! go and be a saint, go and giveyourself to ideas; go and _live_ the life hid with Christ in God, andsee, '--so would run the quick comment of the observer. 

But incessant as was the reciprocity, the interchange and play offeeling between Robert and the wide following growing up around him, it was plain to Flaxman that although he never moved a step withoutcarrying his world with him, he was never at the mercy of his world. Nothing was ever really left to chance. Through all these strangedebates, which began rawly and clumsily enough, and grew every week moreand more absorbing to all concerned, Flaxman was convinced that hardlyany rule or formula of the new society was ultimately adopted which hadnot been for long in Robert's mind--thought out and brought into finalshape, 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 bindtogether the new association might have passed the line, and becomepuerile or grotesque. At any moment the jarring characters and ambitionsof the men Elsmere had to deal with might have dispersed that delicateatmosphere of moral sympathy and passion in which the whole new birthseemed to have been conceived, and upon the maintenance of which itsfruition and development depended. But as soon as Elsmere appeared, difficulties vanished, enthusiasm sprang up again. The rules of the newsociety came simply and naturally into being, steeped and halloed, as itwere, from the beginning, in the passion and genius of one great heart. The fastidious critical instinct in Flaxman was silenced no less thanthe sour, half-educated analysis of such a man as Lestrange. 

In the same way all personal jars seemed to melt away beside him. Therewere some painful things connected with the new departure. Wardlaw, forinstance, a conscientious Comtist refusing stoutly to admit anythingmore than 'an unknowable reality behind phenomena, ' was distressed andaffronted by the strongly religious bent Elsmere was giving to the workhe had begun. Lestrange, who was a man of great though raw ability, who almost always spoke at the meetings, and whom Robert was bent onattaching to the society, had times when the things he was half inclinedto worship one day he was much more inclined to burn the next in thesight of all men, and when the smallest failure of temper on Robert'spart might have entailed a disagreeable scene, and the possibleformation of a harassing left wing. 

But Robert's manner to Wardlaw was that of a grateful younger brother. It was clear that the Comtist could not formally join the Brotherhood. But all the share and influence that could be secured him in thepractical working of it, was secured him. And what was more, Robertsucceeded in infusing his own delicacy, his own compunctions onthe subject into the men and youths who had profited in the past byWardlaw's rough self-devotion. So that if, through much that went onnow, he could only be a spectator, at least he was not allowed to feelhimself 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 thewhimsical in life and character, cynicism and vanity seemed to have nocase. Robert's quick temper had been wonderfully disciplined by lifesince his Oxford days. He had now very little of that stiff-neckedness, so fatal to the average reformer, which makes a man insist on all ornothing from his followers. He took what each man had to give. Nay, hemade it almost seem as though the grudging support of Lestrange, or thecritical half-patronizing approval of the young barrister from the Westwho came down to listen to him, and made a favor of teaching in hisnight-school, were as precious to him as was the wholehearted, theself-abandoning veneration, which the majority of those about him hadbegun to show toward the man in whom, as Charles Richards said, they had'seen God. '

At last by the middle of November the whole great building, with theexception of the top floor, was cleared and ready for use. Robert feltthe same joy in it, in it's clean paint, the half-filled shelves in thelibrary, the pictures standing against the walls ready to be hung, therolls of bright-colored matting ready to be laid down, as he had feltin the Murewell Institute. He and Flaxman, helped by a voluntary armyof men, worked at it from morning till night. Only Catherine could everpersuade him to remember that he was not yet physically himself. 

Then came the day when the building was formally opened, when the giltletters over the door, 'The New Brotherhood of Christ, ' shone out intothe dingy street, and when the first enrolment of names in the book ofthe Brotherhood took place. 

For two hours a continuous stream of human beings surrounded the littletable beside which Elsmere stood, inscribing their names, and receivingfrom him the silver badge, bearing the head of Christ, which was to bethe outward and conspicuous sign of membership. Men came of all sorts:the intelligent well-paid artisan, the pallid clerk or small accountant, stalwart warehouse men, huge carters and dray-men, the boy attached toeach by the laws of the profession often straggling lumpishly behind hismaster. Women were there: wives who came because their lords came, orbecause Mr. Elsmere had been 'that good' to them that anything theycould do to oblige him 'they would, and welcome;' prim pupil-teachers, holding themselves with straight superior shoulders; children, who cametrooping in, grinned up into Robert's face and retreated again withred cheeks, the silver badge tight clasped in hands which not even muchscrubbing could make passable. 

Flaxman stood and watched it from the side. It was an extraordinaryscene: the crowd, the slight figure on the platform, the two greatinscriptions, 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 recesses on either side of the hall lined with white marble, and destined, the one to hold the names of the living members of theBrotherhood; the other to commemorate those who had passed away (emptythis last save for the one poor name of 'Charles Richards'); thecopies of Giotto's Paduan Virtues--Faith, Fortitude, Charity, and thelike-which broke the long wall at intervals. The cynic in the onlookertried to assert itself against the feeling with which the air seemedovercharged in vain. 

Whatever comes of it, Flaxman said to himself with strong, involuntaryconviction, 'whether he fails or no, the spirit that is moving hereis the same spirit that spread the Church, the spirit that sent outBenedictine and Franciscan into the world, that fired the children ofLuther, or Calvin, or George Fox; the spirit of devotion, through a man, to an idea; through one much-loved, much-trusted soul to someeternal verity, newly caught, newly conceived, behind it. There is noapproaching the idea for the masses except through the human life; thereis no lasting power for the man except as the slave of the idea!'

A week later he wrote to his aunt as follows. He could not write to herof Rose, he did hot care to write of himself, and he knew that Elsmere'sClub 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 afascination you at a distance cannot possibly understand, even when myjudgement demurs, and my intelligence protests that the thing cannotlive without Elsmere, and that Elsmere's life is a frail one. After theceremony of enrolment which I described to you yesterday the Council ofthe New Brotherhood was chosen by popular election, and Elsmere gave anaddress. Two-thirds of the council, I should think, are workingmen, therest of the upper class; Elsmere, of course, President. '

'Since then the first religious service under the new constitution hasbeen held. The service is extremely simple, and the basis of the wholeis "new bottles for the new wine. " The opening prayer is recited byeverybody present standing. It is rather an act of adoration and faiththan a prayer, properly so called. It represents, in fact, the placingof the soul in the presence of God. The mortal turns to the eternal; theignorant and imperfect look away from themselves to the knowledge andperfection of the All-Holy. It is Elsmere's drawing up, I imagine--atany rate it is essentially modern, expressing the modern spirit, answering to modern need, as I imagine the first Christian prayersexpressed the spirit and answered to the need of an earlier day. '

'Then follows some passage from the life of Christ. Elsmere reads it andexpounds it, in the first place, as a lecturer might expound a passageof Tacitus, historically and critically. His explanation of miracle, his efforts to make his audience realize the germs of miraculous beliefwhich each mass carries with him in the constitution and inheritedfurniture of his mind, are some of the most ingenious--perhaps the mostconvincing--I have ever heard. My heart and my head have never been verymuch at one, as you know, on this matter of the marvelous element inreligion. 

'But then when the critic has done, the poet and the believer begins. Whether he has got hold of the true Christ is another matter; but thatthe Christ he preaches moves the human heart as much as--and in the caseof the London artisan, more than--the current orthodox presentation ofhim, I begin to have ocular demonstration. 

'I was present, for instance, at his children's Sunday class the otherday. He had brought them up to the story of the Crucifixion, readingfrom the Revised Version, and amplifying wherever the sense required it. Suddenly a little girl laid her head on the desk before her, and withchoking sobs implored him not to go on. The whole class seemed ready todo the same. The pure human pity of the story--the contrast betweenthe innocence and the pain of the sufferer--seemed to be more than theycould bear. And there was no comforting sense of a jugglery by which thesuffering 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 thereis something piercingly penetrating and austere even in the consolationsof this new faith. He did but remind the children of the burden ofgratitude laid upon them. "Would you let him stiffer so much in vain?His suffering has made you and me happier and better to-day, at thismoment, than we could have been without Jesus. You will understand how, and why, more clearly when you grow up. Let us in return keep him in ourhearts always, and obey his words! It is all you can do for his sake, just as all you could do for a mother who died would be to follow herwishes and sacredly keep her memory. "

'That was about the gist of it. It was a strange little scene, wonderfully suggestive and pathetic. 

'But a few more words about the Sunday service. After the address camea hymn. There are only seven hymns in the little service book, gatheredout of the finest we have. It is supposed that in a short time they willbecome so familiar to the members of the Brotherhood that they willbe sung readily by heart. The singing of them in the public servicealternates with an equal number of Psalms. And both Psalms and hymns aremeant to be recited or sung constantly in the homes of the members, andto become part of the every-day life of the Brotherhood. They have beenmost carefully chosen, and a sort of ritual importance has been attachedto them from the beginning. Each day in the week has its particular hymnor Psalm. 

'Then the whole wound up with another short prayer, also repeatedstanding, a commendation of the individual, the Brotherhood, the nation, the world, to God. The phrases of it are terse and grand. One can see atonce that it has laid hold of the popular sense, the popular memory. TheLord'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 themwere among the Secularist speakers you and I heard at the club in April. In my wonder, I thought of a saying of Vinet's: "_C'est pour la religionque le peuple a le plus de talent; c'est en religion qu'il montre leplus d'esprit. _"

In a later letter he wrote:----

'I have not yet described to you what is perhaps the mostcharacteristic, the most binding practice of the New Brotherhood. It isthat which has raised most angry comment, cries of "profanity, " "wantoninsult, " and whatnot. I came upon it yesterday in an interesting Way. Iwas working with Elsmere at the arrangement of the library, which is nowbecoming a most fascinating place, under the management of a librarianchosen from the neighborhood, when he asked me to go and take a messageto a carpenter who has been giving us voluntary help in the evening, after his day's work. He thought that as it was the dinner hour, and theman worked in the dock close by, I might find him at home. I went offto the model lodging-house where I was told to look for him, mounted thecommon stairs, and knocked at his door. Nobody seemed to hear me, and asthe door was ajar I pushed it open. 

'Inside was a curious sight. The table was spread with the mid-day meal, a few bloaters, some potatoes, and bread. Round the table stood fourchildren, the eldest about fourteen, and the youngest six or seven. Atone end of it stood the carpenter himself in his working apron, a brawnySaxon, bowed a little by his trade. Before him was a plate of bread, andhis horny hands were resting on it. The street was noisy; they had notheard my knock; and as I pushed open the door there was an old coathanging over the corner of it which concealed me. 

'Something in the attitudes of all concerned reminded me, kept me whereI was, silent. 

'The father lifted his right hand. 

'The Master said, "This do in remembrance of Me!"

'The children stooped for a moment in silence, then the youngestsaid slowly, in a little softened cockney voice that touched meextraordinarily, --

'"_Jesus, we remember Thee always!_"

'It was the appointed response. As she spoke I recollected the childperfectly at Elsmere's class. I also remembered that she had no mother;that her mother had died of cancer in June, visited and comforted to theend by Elsmere and his wife. 

'Well, the great question of course remains--is there a sufficientstrength of _feeling_ and _conviction_ behind these things? If so, after all, everything was new once, and Christianity was but modifiedJudaism. '

 December 22. 

'I believe I shall soon be as deep in this matter as Elsmere. In ElgoodStreet great preparations are going on for Christmas. But it will be anew sort of Christmas. We shall hear very little, it seems, of angelsand shepherds, and a great deal of the humble childhood of a littleJewish boy whose genius grown to maturity transformed the Western world. To see Elsmere, with his boys and girls about him, trying to make themfeel themselves the heirs and fellows of the Nazarene child, to makethem understand something of the lessons that child must have learnt, the sights he must have seen, and the thoughts that must have come tohim, is a spectacle of which I will not miss more than I can help. Don'timagine, however, that I am converted exactly!--but only that I am moreinterested and stimulated than I have been for years. And don't expectme for Christmas. I shall stay here. '

 New Year's Day. 

'I am writing from the library of the New Brotherhood. The amount ofactivity, social, educational, religious, of which this great buildingpromises to be the centre is already astonishing. Everything, of course, including the constitution of the infant society, is as yet purelytentative and experimental. But for a scheme so young, things arefalling into working order with wonderful rapidity. Each department isworked by committees under the central council. Elsmere, of course, is_ex-officio_ chairman of a large proportion; Wardlaw, Mackay, I, and afew other fellows, "run" the rest for the present. But each committeecontains workingmen; and it is the object of everybody concerned tomake the workman element more and more real and efficient. What withthe "tax", on the members which was fixed by a general meeting, and thecontributions from outside, the society already commands a fair income. But Elsmere is anxious not to attempt too much at once, and will goslowly and train his workers. 

'Music, it seems, is going to be a great feature in the future. I havemy own projects as to this part of the business, which, however, Iforbid you to guess at. 

'By the rules of the Brotherhood, every member is bound to some work inconnection with it during the year, but little or much, as he or she isable. And every meeting, every undertaking of whatever kind, opens withthe special "word" or formula of the society, "This do in remembrance ofme. "'

 January 6. 

'Besides the Sunday lectures, Elsmere is pegging away on Saturdayevenings at "The History of the Moral Life in Man. " It is a remarkablecourse, and very largely attended by people of all sorts. He tries tomake it an exposition of the principles of the new movement, of '"thatcontinuous and leading only revelation of God in life and nature, "'which is in reality the basis of his whole thought. By the way, theletters that are pouring in upon him from all parts are extraordinary. They show an amount and degree of interest in ideas of the kind whichare surprising to a Laodicean like me. But he is not surprised--sayshe always expected it--and that there are thousands who only want arallying-point. 

'His personal effect, the love that is felt for him, the passion andenergy of the nature--never has our generation seen anything to equalit. As you perceive, I am reduced to taking it all seriously, and don'tknow what to make of him or myself. 

'_She_, poor soul! is now always with him, comes down with him day afterday, and works away. She no more believes in his ideas, I think, thanshe ever did; but all her antagonism is gone. In the midst of the stirabout him her face often haunts me. It has changed lately; she is nolonger a young woman, but so refined, so spiritual!

'But he is ailing and fragile. _There_ is the one cloud on a scene thatfills me with increasing wonder and reverence. 

CHAPTER L. 

One cold Sunday afternoon, in January, Flaxman, descending the stepsof the New Brotherhood, was overtaken by a Dr. Edmondson, an able youngphysician, just set up for himself as a consultant, who had only latelyattached himself to Elsmere, and was now helping him with eagerness toorganize a dispensary. Young Edmondson and Flaxman exchanged a few wordson Elsmere's lecture, and then the doctor said abruptly, --

'I don't like his looks nor his voice. How long has he been hoarse likethat?'

'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, oncein the country. '

'Clergyman's throat?' Edmondson shook his bead dubiously. 'It may be. Iwish he would let me overhaul him. '

'I wish he would!' said Flaxman devoutly. 'I will see what I can do. Iwill get hold of Mrs. Elsmere. '

Meanwhile Robert and Catherine had driven home together. And as theyentered the study, she caught his hands, a suppressed and exquisitepassion 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 hisfaced changed, blanched before her--he seemed to gasp for breath--shewas only just able to save him from falling. It was apparently anotherswoon of exhaustion. As she knelt beside him on the floor, having donefor him all she could, watching his return to consciousness, Catherine'slook would have terrified any of those who loved her. There are somenatures which are never blind, never taken blissfully unawares, andwhich taste calamity and grief to the very dregs. 

'Robert, to-morrow you will see a doctor?' she implored him when at lasthe was safely in bed--white, but smiling. 

He nodded. 

'Send for Edmondson. What I mind most is this hoarseness, ' he said, in avoice that was little more than a tremulous whisper. 

Catherine hardly closed her eyes all night. The room, the house, seemedto her stifling, oppressive, like a grave. And, by ill luck, with themorning came a long expected letter, not indeed from the Squire, butabout the Squire. Robert had been for some time expecting a summons toMurewell. The Squire had written to him last in October from Clarens, onthe Lake of Geneva. Since then weeks had passed without bringing Elsmereany news of him at all. Meanwhile the growth of the New Brotherhood hadabsorbed its founder, so that the inquiries which should have been sentto Murewell had been postponed. The letter which reached him now wasfrom old Meyrick. 'The Squire has had another bad attack, and is _much_weaker. But his mind is clear again, and he greatly desires to see you. If you can, come to-morrow. '

'_His mind is clear again!_' Horrified by the words and by the imagesthey called up, remorseful also for his own long silence, Robert sprangup from bed, where the letter had been brought to him, and presentlyappeared down stairs, where Catherine, believing him safely captive forthe morning, was going through some household business. 

'I _must_ go, I _must_ go!' he said as he handed her the letter. Meyrickputs it cautiously, but it may be the end!'

Catherine looked at him in despair. 

'Robert, you are like a ghost yourself, and I have sent for Dr. Edmondson. '

'Put him off till the day after to-morrow. Dear little wife, listen; myvoice is ever so much better. Murewell air will do me good. ' She turnedaway to hide the tears in her eyes. Then she tried fresh persuasions, but it was useless--His look was glowing and restless. She saw he feltit a calling impossible to disobey. A telegram was sent to Edmondson, and Robert drove off to Waterloo. 

Out of the form of London it was a mild, sunny winter's day. Robertbreathed more freely with every mile. His eyes took note of everylandmark in the familiar journey with a thirsty eagerness. It was ayear and a half since he had traveled it. He forgot his weakness, theexhausting pressure and publicity of his new work. The past possessedhim, thrust out the present. Surely he had been up to London for the dayand was going back to Catherine!

At the station he hailed an old friend among the cabmen. 

'Take me to the corner of the Murewell Lane, Tom. Then you may drive onmy bag to the Hall, and I shall walk over the common. '

The man urged on his tottering old steed with a will. In the streets ofthe little town Robert saw several acquaintances who stopped and staredat the apparition. Were the houses, the people real, or was it all ahallucination--his flight and his return, so unthought of yesterday, soeasy and swift to-day?

By the time they were out on the wild ground between the market town andMurewell, Robert's spirits were as buoyant as thistle-down. He and thedriver kept up an incessant gossip over the neighborhood, and he jumpeddown from the carriage as the man stopped with the alacrity of a boy. 

'Go on, Tom; see if I'm not there as soon as you. '

'Looks most uncommon bad, ' the man muttered to himself as his horseshambled off. 'Seems as spry as a lark all the same. '

Why, the gorse was out, positively out in January! and the thrushes weresinging as though it were March. Robert stopped opposite a bush coveredwith timid, half-opened blooms, and thought he had seen nothing sobeautiful since he had last trodden that road in spring. Presently hewas in the same cart-track he had crossed on the night of his confessionto Catherine; he lingered beside the same solitary fir on the brinkof the ridge. A winter world lay before him; soft brown woodland, orreddish heath and fern, struck sideways by the sun, clothing the earth'sbareness everywhere--curling mists--blue, points of distant hill--a grayluminous depth of sky. 

The eyes were moist, the lips moved. There in the place of his oldanguish he stood and blessed God!--not for any personal happiness, butsimply for that communication of Himself which may make every hour ofcommon living a revelation. 

Twenty minutes later, leaving the park gate to his left, he hurriedup the lane leading to the Vicarage. One look! he might not be able toleave the Squire later. The gate of the wood-path was ajar. Surely justinside it he should find Catherine in her garden hat, the white-frockedchild dragging behind her! And there was the square stone house, thebrown cornfield, the red-brown woods! Why, what had the man been doingwith the study? White blinds showed it was a bedroom now. Vandal!Besides, how could the boys have free access except of that ground-floorroom? And all that pretty stretch of grass under the acacia had been cutup into stiff little lozenge-shaped beds, filled, he supposed, in summerwith the properest geraniums. He should never dare to tell that toCatherine. 

He stood and watched the little significant signs of change in thisrealm, which had been once his own, with a dissatisfied mouth, hisundermind filled the while with tempestuous yearning and affection. Inthat upper room he had lain through that agonized night of crisis! thedawn-twittering of the summer birds seemed to be still in his ears. Andthere, in the distance, was the blue wreath of smoke hanging over MileEnd. Ah! the new cottages must be warm this winter. The children did notlie in the wet any longer--thank God! Was there time just to run down toIrwin's cottage, to have a look at the Institute?

He had been standing on the further side of the road from the rectorythat he might not seem to be spying out the land and his successor'sways too closely. Suddenly he found himself clinging to a gate near himthat 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 adrowning thing. When the moment passed, he looked round him bewildered, drawing his hand across his eyes. The world had grown black--the sunseemed to be scarcely shining. Were those the sounds of children'svoices on the hill, the rumbling of a cart--or was it all, sight andsound alike, mirage and delirium?

With difficulty, leaning on his stick as though he were a man ofseventy, he groped his way back to the Park. There he sank down, stillgasping, among the roots of one of the great cedars near the gate. Aftera while the attack passed off and he found himself able to walk on. Butthe joy, the leaping pulse of half an hour ago were gone from his veins. Was that the river--the house? He looked at them with dull eyes. Allthe light was lowered. A veil seemed to lie between him and the familiarthings. 

However, by the time he reached the door of the Hall will and nature hadreasserted themselves, and he knew where he was and what he had to do. 

Vincent flung the door open with his old lordly air. 

'Why, sir! _Mr. _ Elsmere!'

The butler's voice began on a note of joyful surprise, sliding at onceinto 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-roomand give him some wine before announcing him. Vincent ministered to himwith a long face, pressing all the alcoholic resources of the Hall uponhim in turn. The Squire was much better, he declared, had been carrieddown to the library. 

'But, lor, sir, there ain't much to be said for your looksneither--seems as if London didn't suit you, sir. '

Elsmere explained feebly that he had been suffering from his throat, andhad overtired himself by walking over the common. Then, recognizingfrom a distorted vision of himself in a Venetian mirror hanging by, thatsomething of his natural color had returned to him, he rose and badeVincent announce him. 

'And Mrs. Darcy?' he asked, as they stopped out into the hall again. 

'Oh, Mrs. Darcy, sir, she's very well, ' said the man, but, as it seemedto Robert with something of an embarrassed air. 

He followed Vincent down the long passage--haunted by old memories, by the old sickening sense of mental anguish--to the curtained door. Vincent ushered him in. There was a stir of feet, and a voice, but atfirst he saw nothing. The room was very much darkened. Then Meyrickemerged into distinctness. 

'Squire, here is Mr. Elsmere! Well, Mr. Elsmere, sir, I'm sure we'revery much obliged to you for meeting the Squire's wishes so promptly. You'll find him poorly, Mr. Elsmere, but mendin--oh yes, mending, sir--no doubt of it. '

Elsmere began to perceive a figure by the fire. A bony hand was advancedto 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 ofrelief. After all, the Squire was still capable of trampling on Meyrick. 

In another minute the door had closed on the old doctor, and the two menwere alone. Robert was beginning to get used to the dim light. Out ofit, the Squire's face gleamed almost as whitely as the tortured marbleof the Medusa just above their heads. 

'It's some inflammation in the eyes, ' the Squire explained briefly, 'that's made Meyrick set up all this d----d business of blinds andshutters. I don't mean to stand it much longer. The eyes are better, andI prefer to see my way out of the world, if possible. '

'But you are recovering?' Robert said, laying his hand affectionately onthe old man's knee. 

'I have added to my knowledge, ' said the Squire dryly, 'Like Heine, Iam qualified to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doctors onearth. And I am not in bed, which I was last week. For Heaven's sakedon't ask questions. If there is a loathsome subject on earth it is thesubject of the human body. Well, I suppose my message to you draggedyou away from a thousand things you had rather be doing. What are you sohoarse for? Neglecting yourself as usual, for the sake of "the people, "who wouldn't even subscribe to bury you? Have you been working up theApocrypha as I recommended you last time we met?'

Robert smiled. 

The great head fell forward, and through the dusk Robert caught thesarcastic gleam of the eyes. 

'For the last four months, Squire, I have been doing two things withneither of which you had 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 beenstarting a new religion, I see. A new religion! _Humph!_'

'You are hardly the man to deny, ' he said, undisturbed, 'that the oldones _laissent à désirer_. '

'Because there are old abuses, is that any reason why you should goand set up a brand-new one--an ugly anachronism besides?' retorted theSquire. 'However, you and I have no common ground--never had. I say_know_, you say _feel_. Where is the difference, after all, between youand any charlatan of the lot? Well, how is Madame de Netteville?'

'I have not seen her for six months, ' Robert replied, with equalabruptness. 

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. 

'Well, I certainly never told you to think anything--_morally_, ' saidthe Squire. 'The word moral has no relation to her. Whom did you seethere?'

The catechism was naturally most distasteful to its object, but Elsmerewent through with it, the Squire watching him for a while with anexpression which had a spark of malice in it. It is not unlikely thatsome gossip of the Lady Aubrey sort had reached him. Elsmere had alwaysseemed to him oppressively good. The idea that Madame de Netteville hadtried her arts upon him was not without its piquancy. 

But while Robert was answering a question, he was aware of a subtlechange in the Squire's attitude-a relaxation of his own sense oftension. After a minute he bent forward, peering through the darkness. The Squire's head had fallen back, his mouth was slightly open, and thebreath came lightly, quiveringly through. The cynic of a moment agohad dropped suddenly into a sleep of more than childish weakness anddefenselessness. 

Robert remained bending forward, gazing at the man who had once meant somuch to him. 

Strange white face, sunk in the great chair! Behind it glimmered theDonatello figures and the divine Hermes, a glorious shape in the dusk, looking scorn on human decrepitude. All round spread the dim walls ofbooks. The life they had nourished was dropping into the abyss out ofken--they remained. Sixty years of effort and slavery to end so--a riverlost in the sands!

Old Meyrick stole in again, and stood looking at the sleeping Squire. 

'A bad sign! a bad sign!' he said, and shook his head mournfully. 

After he had made an effort to take some food which Vincent pressed uponhim, Robert, conscious of a stronger physical _malaise_ than had everyet tormented him, was crossing the hall again, when he suddenly sawMrs. Darcy at the door of a room which opened into the hall. He went upto 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 daybefore, and as he spoke she retreated a step into the room behind her, acurious film, so it seemed to him, darkening her small gray eyes. 

'The Squire is not here. He is gone away. Have you seen my white mice?Oh, they are such darlings! Only, one of them is ill, and they won't letme have the doctor. '

Her voice sank into the most pitiful plaintiveness. She stood in themiddle of the room, pointing with an elfish finger to a large cage ofwhite mice which stood in the window. The room seemed full besidesof other creatures. Robert stood rooted, looking at the tiny witheredfigure in the black dress, its snowy hair and diminutive face swathed inlace with a perplexity into which there slipped an involuntaryshiver. Suddenly he became aware of a woman by the fire, a decent, strong-looking body in gray, who rose as his look turned to her. Theireyes met; her expression and the little jerk of her head toward Mrs. Darcy, who was now standing by the cage coaxing the mice with theweirdest gestures, were enough. Robert turned, and went out sick atheart. The careful exquisite beauty of the great hall struck him assomething mocking and anti-human. 

No one else in the house said a word to him of Mrs. Darcy. In theevening the Squire talked much at intervals, but in another key. Heinsisted on a certain amount of light, and, leaning on Robert's arm, went feebly round the bookshelves. He took out one of the volumes of theFathers that Newman had given him. 

'When I think of the hours I wasted over this barbarous rubbish, ' hesaid, his blanched fingers turning the leaves vindictively, 'and of theother hours I maundered away in services and self-examination! ThankHeaven, however, the germ of revolt and sanity was always there. Andwhen once I got to it, I learnt my lesson pretty quick. '

Robert paused, his kind inquiring eyes looking down on the shrunkenSquire. 

'Oh, not one _you_ have any chance of learning, my good friend, ' saidthe other aggressively. 'And after all it's simple. _Go to your gravewith your eyes open_--that's all. But men don't learn it, somehow. Newman was incapable--so are you. All the religions are nothing but somany vulgar anæsthetics, which only the few have courage to refuse. '

'Do you want me to contradict you?' said Robert, smiling; 'I am quiteready. '

The Squire took no notice. Presently, when he was in his chair again, hesaid abruptly, pointing to a mahogany bureau in the window, 'The bookis all there--both parts, first and second. Publish it if you please. Ifnot, throw it into the fire. Both are equally indifferent to me. It hasdone its work; it has helped me through half a century of living. '

'It shall be to me a sacred trust, ' said Elsmere with emotion. 'Ofcourse, if you don't publish it, I shall publish it. '

'As you please. Well, then, if you have nothing more rational to tell meabout, tell me of this ridiculous Brotherhood of yours. '

Robert, so adjured, began to talk, but with difficulty. The words wouldnot flow, and it was almost a relief when in the middle that strangecreeping sleep overtook the Squire again. 

Meyrick, who was staying in the house, and who had been coming in andout throughout the evening, eyeing Elsmere, now that there was morelight on the scene, with almost as much anxiety and misgiving as theSquire, was summoned. The Squire was put into his carrying-chair. Vincent and a male attendant appeared, and he was borne to his room, Meyrick peremptorily refusing to allow Robert to lend so much as afinger to the performance. They took him up the library stairs, throughthe 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 awareand conscious again. 

'It can't be said that I follow my own precepts, ' he said to Robertgrimly as they put him down. 'Not much of the open eye about this. I shall sleep myself into the unknown as sweetly as any Saint in thecalendar. '

Robert was going when the Squire called him back. 

'You'll stay to-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 anhonest man to do. '

The Squire turned round with a frown. 

'What the deuce are you dawdling about, Benson? Give me my stick and getme out of this. '

By midnight all was still in the vast pile of Murewell. Outside, thenight was slightly frosty. A clear moon shone over the sloping reachesof the park; the trees shone silvery in the cold light, their blackshadows cast along the grass. Robert found himself quartered in theStuart room, where James II had slept, and where the tartan hangings ofthe ponderous carved bed, and the rose and thistle reliefs of the wallsand ceilings, untouched for two hundred years, bore witness to the loyalpreparations made by some bygone Wendover. He was mortally tired, but byway of distracting his thoughts a little from the Squire, and that othertragedy which the great house sheltered somewhere in its walls, he tookfrom his coat-pocket a French _Anthologie_ which had been Catherine'sbirthday gift to him, and read a little before he fell asleep. 

Then he slept profoundly--the sleep of exhaustion. Suddenly he foundhimself sitting up in bed, his heart beating to suffocation, strangenoises in his ears. 

A cry 'Help!' resounded through the wide empty galleries. 

He flung on his dressing-gown, and ran out in the direction of theSquire's room. 

The hideous cries and scuffling grew more apparent as he reached it. Atthat 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 adjoiningit was open, and the stifled sounds came through it. 

They rushed in and found Meyrick struggling in the grip of a whitefigure, that seemed to have the face of a fiend and the grip of a tiger. Those old bloodshot eyes--those wrinkled hands on the throat of thedoctor--horrible!

They released poor Meyrick, who staggered bleeding into the Squire'sroom. Then Robert and Benson got the Squire back by main force. Thewhole face was convulsed, the poor shrunken limbs rigid as iron. Meyrick, who was sitting gasping, by a superhuman effort of willmastered himself enough to give directions for a strong opiate. Bensonmanaged to control the madman while Robert found it. Then between themthey got it swallowed. 

But nature had been too quick for them. Before the opiate could havehad time to work, the Squire shrank together like a puppet of whichthe threads are loosened, and fell heavily sideways out of his captors'hands on to the bed. They laid him there, tenderly covering him from theJanuary cold. The swollen eyelids fell, leaving just a thread ofwhite visible underneath, the clenched hands slowly relaxed; the loudbreathing seemed to be the breathing of death. 

Meyrick, whose wound on the head had been hastily bound up, threwhimself beside the bed. The night-light beyond cast a grotesque shadowof him on the wall, emphasizing, as though in mockery, the long straightback, 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 everspoke through the lips of an Antigone or a Gloucester. 

'The last--the last!' he said, choked, the tears falling down his linedcheeks on to the Squire's hand. 'He can never rally from this. And I wasfool enough to think yesterday I had pulled him through!'

Again a long gaze of inarticulate grief; then he looked up at Robert. 

'He wouldn't have Benson to-night. I slept in the next room with thedoor 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, awind like ice coming up. He looked at me, frowning, all in a flame. "_Myfather_, " he said--"_my father_--he went that way--what do _you_ wanthere? Keep back!" I threw myself on him; he had something sharp whichscratched me on the temple; I got that away from him, but it was hishands'--and the old man shuddered. 'I thought they would have done forme before anyone could hear, and that then he would kill himself as hisfather did. '

Again be hung over the figure on the bed--his own withered hand strokingthat 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, hesuffered. And he's been so lonely. No one to cheer him, no one to pleasehim with his food--to put his cushions right--to coax him up a bit, andthat, --and his poor sister too, always there before his eyes. Of coursehe would stand to it, he liked to be alone. But I'll never believe menare made so unlike one to the other. The Almighty meant a man to have awife 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 booksdidn't seem to please him, nor anything else. I've just broke my heartover him this last year. '

There was silence a moment in the big room, hung round with theshapes of bygone Wendovers. The opiate had taken effect. The Squire'scountenance was no longer convulsed. The great brow was calm; a morethan common dignity and peace spoke from the long peaked face. Robertbent over him. The madman, the cynic, had passed away; the dying scholarand thinker lay before him. 

'Will he rally?' he asked, under his breath. 

Meyrick shook his head. 

'I doubt it. It has exhausted all the strength he had left. The heartis failing rapidly. I think he will sleep away. And, Mr. Elsmere, yougo--go and sleep. Benson and I'll watch. Oh, my scratch is nothing, sir. I'm used to a rough-and-tumble life. But you go. If there's a changewe'll wake you. '

Elsmere bent down and kissed the Squire's forehead tenderly, as a sonmight have done. By this time he himself could hardly stand. He creptaway to his own room, his nerves still quivering with the terror of thatsudden waking, the horror of that struggle. 

It was impossible to sleep. The moon was at the full outside. He drewback the curtains, made up the fire, and wrapping himself in a fur coatwhich Flaxman had lately forced upon him, sat where he could see themoonlit park, and still be within the range of the blaze. 

As the excitement passed away a reaction of feverish weakness set in. The strangest whirlwind of thoughts fled through him in the darkness, suggested very often by the figures on the seventeenth century tapestrywhich lined the walls. Were those the trees in the woodpath? Surely thatwas Catherine's figure trailing--and that dome--strange! Was he stillwalking in Grey's funeral procession, the Oxford buildings looking sadlydown? Death here! Death there! Death everywhere, yawning under life fromthe beginning! The veil which hides the common abyss, in sight of whichmen could not always hold themselves and live, is rent asunder, and helooks shuddering into it. 

Then the image changed, and in its stead, that old familiar image of theriver of Death took possession of him. He stood himself on the brink:on the other side was Grey and the Squire. But he felt no pang ofseparation, of pain; for he himself was just about to cross and jointhem! And during a strange brief lull of feeling the mind harbored imageand expectation alike with perfect calm. 

Then the fever-spell broke, --the brain cleared, --and he was terriblyhimself again. Whence came it--this fresh, inexorable consciousness? Hetried 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 onehand, the fast-growing certainty, urging and penetrating through everynerve and fibre of the shaken frame; on the other, the ideal fabric ofhis efforts and his dreams, the New Jerusalem of a regenerate faith; thepoor, the loving, and the simple walking therein!

'_My God! my God! no time, no future!_'

In his misery, he moved to the uncovered window, and stood lookingthrough it, seeing and not seeing. Outside, the river, just filmedwith ice, shone under the moon; over it bent the trees, laden withhoar-frost. Was that a heron, rising for an instant, beyond the bridge, in the unearthly blue?

And quietly, --heavily, --like an irrevocable sentence, there came, breathed to him as it were from that winter cold and loneliness, wordsthat he had read an hour or two before, in the little red book besidehis hand--words in which the gayest of French poets has fixed, as thoughby accident, the most traginc of all human cries--

'_Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées_. '

He sank on his knees, wrestling with himself and with the bitter longingfor life, and the same words rang through him, deafening every cry buttheir own. 

'_Quittez, --quittez, --le long espoir et les vastes pensées!_'

CHAPTER LI. 

There is little more to tell. The man who had lived so fast was no longtime dying. The eager soul was swift in this as in all else. 

The day after Elsmere's return from Murewell, where he left the Squirestill alive (the telegram announcing the death reached Bedford Squarea few hours after Robert's arrival), Edmondson came up to see him andexamine him. He discovered tubercular disease of the larynx, whichbegins with slight hoarseness and weariness, and develops into one ofthe most rapid forms of phthisis. In his opinion it had been originallyset up by the effects of that chill at Petites Dalles acting upon aconstitution never strong, and at that moment peculiarly susceptibleto mischief. And of course the speaking and preaching of the last fourmonths had done enormous harm. 

It was with great outward composure that Elsmere received his _arrét demort_ at the hands of the young doctor, who announced the result of hisexamination with a hesitating lip and a voice which struggled in vain topreserve its professional calm. He knew too much of medicine himself tobe deceived by Edmondson's optimist remarks as to the possible effect ofa warm climate like Algiers on his condition. He sat down, resting hishead on his hands a moment; then wringing Edmondson's hand, he went outfeebly to find his Wife. 

Catherine had been waiting in the dining-room, her whole soul one dry, tense misery. She stood looking out of the window, taking curious heedof a Jewish wedding that was going on in the Square, of the preposterousbouquets of the coachman and the gaping circle of errand-boys. Howpinched the bride looked in the north wind!

When the door opened and Catherine saw her husband come in--her younghusband, to whom she had been married not yet four years--with thatindescribable look in the eyes which seemed to divine and confirm allthose terrors which had been shaking her during her agonized waiting, there followed a moment between them which words cannot render. When itended--that half-articulate convulsion of love and anguish--she foundherself sitting on the sofa beside him, his head on her breast, his handclasping hers. 

'Do you wish me to go, Catherine?' he asked her gently, '--to Algiers?'

Her eyes implored for her. 

'Then I will, ' he said, but with a long sigh. 'It will only prolong ittwo months, ' he thought; 'and does one not owe it to the people for whomone has tried to live, to make a brave end among them? Ah, no! no! thosetwo months are hers!'

So, without any outward resistance, he let the necessary preparations bemade. It wrung his heart to go, but he could not wring hers by staying. 

After his interview wit Robert, and his further interview withCatherine, to whom he gave the most minute recommendations anddirections, with a reverent gentleness which seemed to make the truestate of the case more ghastly plain to the wife than ever, Edmondsonwent off to Flaxman. 

Flaxman heard his news with horror. 

'A _bad_ case, you say--advanced?'

'A bad case!' Edmondson repeated gloomily. 'He has been fighting againstit too long under that absurd delusion of clergyman's throat. If onlymen would not insist upon being their own doctors! And, of course, thatgoing down to Murewell the other day was madness. I shall go with himto Algiers, and probably stay a week or two. To think of that life, thatcareer, cut short! This is a queer sort of world!'

When Flaxman went over to Bedford Square in the afternoon, he went likea man going himself to execution. In the hall he met Catherine. 

'You have seen Dr. Edmondson?' she asked, pale and still, except for alittle 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 willhave me. The climate may do wonders. '

She looked at him with the most heart-rending of smiles. 

'Will you go in to Robert? He is in the study. '

He went, in trepidation, and found Robert lying tucked up on the sofa, apparently reading. 

'Don't--don't old fellow, ' he said affectionately, as Flaxman almostbroke down. 'It comes to all of us sooner or later. Whenever it comeswe think it too soon. I believe I have been sure of it for some time. We are such strange creatures! It has been so present to me lately thatlife was too good to last. You remember the sort of feeling one used tohave as a child about some treat in the distance--that it was too muchjoy--that something was sure to come between you and it? Well, in asense, 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, Flaxmansaw the eyes darken and the naive boyish mouth contract, and knew thatunder all these brave words there was a heart which hungered. 

'How strange!' Robert went on reflectively; 'yesterday I was travelling, walking like other men, a member of society. To-day I am an invalid; inthe 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. Will you read to them? I have the bookhere prepared--some scenes from David Copperfield. And you will fellthem?'

A hard task, but Flaxman undertook it. Never did he forget the scene. Some ominous rumor had spread, and the New Brotherhood was besieged. Impossible to give the reading. A hall full of strained up-turned faceslistened to Flaxman's announcement, and to Elsmere's messages of cheerand exhortation, and then a wild wave of grief spread through the place. The street outside was blocked, men looking dismally into each other'seyes, women weeping, children sobbing for sympathy, all feelingthemselves at once shelterless and forsaken. When Elsmere heard the newsof it, he turned on his face, and asked even Catherine to leave him fora while. 

The preparations were pushed on. The New Brotherhood had just become thesubject of an animated discussion in the press, and London was touchedby the news of its young founder's breakdown. Catherine found herselfbesieged by offers of help of various kinds. One offer Flaxman persuadedher to accept. It was the loan of a villa at El Biar, on the hill aboveAlgiers, belonging to a connection of his own. A resident on the spotwas to take all trouble off their hands; they were to find servantsready for them, and every comfort. 

Catherine made every arrangement, met every kindness with a self-reliantcalm that never failed. But it seemed to Flaxman that her heart wasbroken--that half of her, in feeling, was already on the other side ofthis horror which stared them all in the face. Was it his perceptionof it which stirred Robert after a while to a greater hopefulness ofspeech, a constant bright dwelling on the flowery sunshine for whichthey were about to exchange the fog and cold of London? The momentaryrevival of energy was more pitiful to Flaxman than his first quietresignation. 

He himself wrote every day to Rose. Strange love-letters! in which thefeeling that could not be avowed ran as a fiery under-current throughall the sad brotherly record of the invalid's doings and prospects. There was deep trouble in Long Whindale. Mrs. Leyburn was tearful andhysterical, and wished to rush off to town to see Catherine. Agnes wrotein distress that her mother was quite unfit to travel, showing her owninner conviction, too, that the poor thing would only be an extra burdenon the Elsmeres if the journey were achieved. Rose wrote asking to beallowed to go with them to Algiers; and after a little consultation itwas so arranged, Mrs. Leyburn being tenderly persuaded, Robert himselfwriting, to stay where she was. 

The morning after the interview with Edmondson, Robert sent for MurrayEdwardes. They were closeted together for nearly an hour. Edwardes cameout with the look of one who has been lifted into 'heavenly places. '

'I thank God, ' he said to Catherine, with deep emotion, 'that I everknew him. I pray that I may be found worthy to carry out my pledges tohim. '

When Catherine went into the study she found Robert gazing into the firewith dreamy eyes. He started and looked up to her with a smile. 

'Murray Edwardes has promised himself heart and soul to the work. Ifnecessary, he will give up his chapel to carry it on. But we hope itwill be possible to work them together. What a brick he is! Whata blessed chance it was that took me to that breakfast party atFlaxman's!'

The rest of the time before departure he spent almost entirely inconsultation and arrangement with Edwardes. It was terrible how rapidlyworse he seemed to grow directly the situation had declared itself, andthe determination _not_ to be ill had been perforce overthrown. But hisstruggle against breathlessness and weakness, and all the other symptomsof his state during these last days, was heroic. On the last day ofall, by his own persistent wish, a certain number of members of theBrotherhood came to say good-by to him. They came in one by one, Macdonald first. The old Scotchman, from the height of his sixty yearsof tough weather-beaten manhood, looked down on Robert with a fatherlyconcern. 

'Eh, Mister Elsmere, but it's a fine place yur gawin' tu, they say. Ye'll do weel there, sir--ye'll do weel. And as for the wark, sir, we'llkeep it oop-we'll not lot the Deil mak' hay o' it, if we knaws it--theauld leer!' he added with a phraseology which did more honor to theCalvinism of his blood than the philosophy of his training. 

Lestrange came in, with a pale sharp face, and said little in his tenminutes. But Robert divined in him a sort of repressed curiosity andexcitement akin to that of Voltaire turning his feverish eyes toward _legrand secret_. 'You, who preached to us that consciousness, and God, and the soul are the only realities--are you so sure of it now you aredying, as you were in health? Are your courage, your certainty, whatthey were?' These were the sort of questions that seemed to underlie theman's spoken words. 

There was something trying in it, but Robert did his best to put asidehis consciousness of it. He thanked him for his help in the past, andimplored him to stand by the young society and Mr. Edwardes. 

'I shall hardly come back, Lestrange. But what does one man matter? Onesoldier falls, another presses forward. '

The watchmaker rose, then paused a moment, a flush passing over him. 

'We can't stand without you!' he said abruptly, then, seeing Robert'slook of distress, he seemed to cast about for something reassuring tosay, but could find nothing. Robert at last held out his hand with asmile, and he went. He left Elsmere struggling with a pang of horribledepression. In reality there was no man who worked harder at the NewBrotherhood during the months that followed than Lestrange. He workedunder perpetual protest from the _frondeur_ within him, but somethingstung him on--on--till a habit had been formed which promises to be thejoy and salvation of his later life. Was it the haunting memory of thatthin figure--the hand clinging to the chair--the white appealing look?

Others came and went, till Catherine trembled for the consequences. Sheherself took in Mrs. Richards and her children, comforting the sobbingcreatures afterward with a calmness born of her own despair. Robson, in the last stage himself, sent him a grimly characteristic message. 'Ishall 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 guessingat. May the blessing of one who never blessed thing or creature beforehe saw you go with you!'

After it all Robert sank on the sofa with a groan. 

'No more!' he said hoarsely-'no more! Now for air-the sea! To-mmorow, wife, to-morrow! _Cras ingens iterabimus sequor_. Ah me! I leave _my_new Salamis behind!'

But on that last evening he insisted on writing letters to Langham andNewcome. 

'I will spare Langham the sight of me, ' he said, smiling sadly. 'And Iwill spare myself the sight of Newcome--I could not bear it, I think!But I must say good-by--for I love them both. '

Next day, two hours after the Elsmeres had left for Dover, a cab droveup to their house in Bedford Square, and Newcome descended from it. 'Gone, sir, two hours ago, ' said the house-maid, and the priest turnedaway with an involuntary gesture of despair. To his dying day thepassionate heart bore the burden of that 'too late, ' believing that evenat the eleventh hour Elsmere would have been granted to his prayers. Hemight even have followed them, but that a great retreat for clergy hewas just on the point of conducting made it impossible. 

Flaxman went down with them to Dover. Rose, in the midst of all her newand womanly care for her sister and Robert, was very sweet to him. Inany other circumstances, he told himself, he could easily have brokendown the flimsy barrier between them, but in those last twenty-fourhours he could press no claim of his own. 

When the steamer cast loose, the girl, hanging over the side, stoodwatching, the tall figure on the pier against the gray January sky. Catherine caught her look and attitude, and could have cried aloud inher own gnawing pain. 

Flaxman got a cheery letter from Edmondson describing their arrival. Their journey had gone well; even the odious passage from Marseilles hadbeen tolerable; little Mary had proved a model traveller; the villa wasluxurious, the weather good. 

'I have got rooms close by them in the Vice-Consul's cottage, ' wroteEdmondson, 'Imagine, within sixty hours of leaving London in a Januaryfog, finding yourself tramping over wild marigolds and mignonette, undera sky and through an air as balmy as those of an English June--when anEnglish June behaves itself. Elsmere's room overlooks the Bay, the greatplain of the Metidja dotted with villages, and the grand range of theDjurjura, backed by snowy summits one can hardly tell from the clouds. His spirits are marvellous. He is plunged in the history of Algiers, raving about one Fromentin, learning Spanish even! The wonderful purityand warmth of the air seem to have relieved the larynx greatly. Hebreathes and speaks much more easily than when we left London. Isometimes feel when I look at him as though in this as in all elsehe were unlike the common sons of men--as though to _him_ it might bepossible to subdue even this fell disease. '

Elsmere himself wrote--

'"I had not heard the half"-Flaxman! An enchanted land--air, sun, warmth, roses, orange blossom, new potatoes, green peas, veiled Easternbeauties, domed mosques and preaching Mahdis--everything that feeds theouter and the inner man. To throw the window open at waking to the depthof sunlit air between us and the curve of the Bay, is for the momentheaven! One's soul seems to escape one, to pour itself into the luminousblue of the morning. I am better--I breathe again. '

'Mary flourishes exceedingly. She lives mostly on oranges, and has beenadopted by sixty nuns who inhabit the convent over the way, and sellus the most delicious butter and cream. Imagine, if she were a trifleolder, her mother would hardly view the proceedings of those dearberosaried women with so much equanimity. '

'As for Rose, she writes more letters than Clarissa, and receives morethan an editor of the "Times. " I have the strongest views, as you know, as to the vanity of letter-writing. There was a time when you sharedthem, but there are circumstances and conjunctures, alas! in which noman can be sure of his friend or his friend's principles. Kind friend, good fellow, go often to Elgood Street. Tell me everything abouteverybody. It is possible, after all, that I may live to come back tothem. '

But a week later, alas! the letters fell into a very different strain. The weather had changed, had turned indeed damp and rainy, the nativesof course declaring that such gloom and storm in January had never beenknown before. Edmondson wrote in discouragement. Elsmere had had a touchof cold, had been confined to bed, and almost speechless. His letter wasfull of medical detail, from which Flaxman gathered that in spite of therally of the first ten days, it was clear that the disease was attackingconstantly fresh tissue. 'He is very depressed too, ' said Edmondson;'I have never seen him so yet. He sits and looks at us in the eveningsometimes with eyes that wring one's heart. It is as though, afterhaving for a moment allowed himself to hope, he found it a doubly hardtask to submit. '

Ah, that depression! It was the last eclipse through which a radiantsoul was called to pass; but while it lasted it was black indeed. Theimplacable reality, obscured at first by the emotion and excitementof farewells, and then by a brief spring of hope and returning vigor, showed itself now in all its stern nakedness--sat down, as it were, eyeto eye with Elsmere--immovable, ineluctable. There were certain featuresof the disease itself which were specially trying to such a nature. Thelong silences it enforced were so unlike him, seemed already to withdrawhim so pitifully from their yearning grasp! In these dark days he wouldsit crouching over the wood-fire in the little _salon_, or lie drawn tothe window looking out on the rainstorms bowing the ilexes or scatteringthe meshes of clematis, silent, almost always gentle, but turningsometimes on Catherine, or on Mary playing at his feet, eyes which, asEdmondson said, 'wrung the heart. '

'But in reality, under the husband's depression, and under the wife'sinexhaustible devotion, a combat was going on, which reached no thirdperson, 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 hermorally at her husband's feet, there had lingered at the bottom of herheart one last supreme hope. All persons of the older Christian typeattribute a special importance to the moment of death. While the manof science looks forward to his last hour as a moment of certainintellectual weakness, and calmly warns his friends before hand that heis to be judged by the utterances of health and not by those of physicalcollapse, the Christian believes that on the confines of eternity theveil of flesh shrouding the soul grows thin and transparent, andthat the glories and the truths of Heaven are visible with a specialclearness and authority to the dying. It was for this moment, eitherin herself or in him, that Catherine's unconquerable faith had beenpatiently and dumbly waiting. Either she would go first, and death wouldwing her poor last words to him with a magic and power not theirown; or, when he came to leave her, the veil of doubt would fall awayperforce from a spirit as pure as it was humble, and the eternal light, the light of the Crucified, shine through. 

Probably, if there had been no breach in Robert's serenity Catherine'spoor last effort would have been much feebler, briefer, more hesitating. But when she saw him plunged for a short space in mortal discouragementin a sombreness that as the days went on had its points and crests offeverish irritation, her anguished pity came to the help of her creed. Robert felt himself besieged, driven within the citadel, her beingurging, grappling with his. In little half-articulate words and ways, inher attempts to draw him back to some of their old religious books andprayers, in those kneeling vigils he often found her maintaining atnight beside him, he felt a persistent attack which nearly--in hisweakness--overthrew him. 

For 'reason and thought grow tired like muscles and nerves. ' Some of thegreatest and most daring thinkers of the world have felt this pitifullonging to be at one with those who love them, at whatever cost, beforethe last farewell. And the simpler Christian faith has still to createaround it those venerable associations and habits which buttressindividual feebleness and diminish the individual effort. 

One early February morning, just before dawn, Robert stretched out hishand for his wife and found her kneeling beside him. The dim mingledlight showed him her face vaguely--her clasped hands, her eyes. Helooked at her in silence, she at him--there seemed to be a strange sheenas of battle between them. Then he drew her head down to him. 

'Catherine, ' he said to her in a feeble intense whisper, 'would youleave me without comfort, without help, at the end?'

'Oh, my beloved!' she cited, under her breath, throwing her arms roundhim, 'if you would but stretch out your hand to the true comfort--thetrue help--the Lamb of God sacrificed for us!'

He stroked her hair tenderly. 

'My weariness might yield--my true best self never. I know whom I havebelieved. Oh, my darling, be content. Your misery, your prayers holdme back from God--from that truth and that trust which can alone behonestly mine. Submit, my wife! Leave me in God's hands. '

She raised her head. His eyes were bright with fever, his lipstrembling, his whole look heavenly. She bowed herself again, with aquiet burst of tears, and all indescribable self abasement. They had hadtheir last struggle, and once more he had conquered! Afterward the cloudlifted from him. Depression and irritation disappeared. It seemed to heroften as though he lay already on the breast of God; even her, wifelylove grew timid and awestruck. 

Yet he did not talk much of immortality, of reunion. It was like ascrupulous child that dares not take for granted more than it's fatherhas allowed it to know. At the same time, it was plain to thoseabout him that the only realities to him in a world of shadows wereGod--love--the soul. 

One day he suddenly caught Catherine's hands, drew her face to him, andstudied it with his, glowing and hollow eyes, as though he would draw itinto his soul. 

'He made it, ' he said hoarsely, as he let her go--'this love--thisyearning. And in life He only makes us yearn that He may satisfy. Hecannot lead us to the end and disappoint the craving He himself set inus. No, no--could you--Could I--do it? And He, the source of love, ofjustice----'

Flaxman arrived a few days afterward. Edmondson had started for Londonthe night before, leaving Elsmere better again, able to drive and evenwalk a little, and well looked after by a local doctor of ability. AsFlaxman, tramping up behind his carriage climbed the long hill to ElBiar, he saw the whole marvellous place in a white light of beauty--thebay, the city, the mountains, olive-yard and orange-grove, drawn in paletints on luminous air. Suddenly, at the entrance of a steep and narrowlane, he noticed a slight figure parasol standing--a parasol against thesun. 

'We thought You would like to be shown the short cut up the hill, ' saidRose'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 thehigh-walled lane which was really the old road up the hill beforethe French brought zigzags and civilization. She gave him news ofRobert--better than he had expected. Under the influence of one of thenatural reactions that wait on illness, the girl's tone 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--ofanything and everything but the hidden something which was responsiblefor the dancing brightness in his eyes, the occasional swift veiling ofher own. 

Then, at, an angle of the lane, where a little spring ran cool and browninto a moss-grown trough, where the blue broke joyously through the graycloud of olive-wood, where not a sight or sound was to be heard of allthe busy life which hides and nestles along the hill, he stopped, hishands seizing hers. 

'How long?' he said, flushing, his light overcoat falling back from hisstrong, well-made frame; 'from August to February--how long?'

No more! It was most natural, nay, inevitable. For the moment deathstood aside and love asserted itself. But this is no place to chroniclewhat it said. 

And he had hardly asked, and she had hardly yielded, before the samemisgiving, the same, shrinking, seized on the lovers themselves. Theysped up the hill, they crept into the house far apart. It was agreedthat neither of them should say word. 

But, with that extraordinarily quick perception that sometimes goes withsuch a state as his, Elsmere had guessed the position of things beforehe and Flaxman had been half an hour together. He took a boyish pleasurein making his friend confess himself, and, when Flaxman left him, atonce sent for Catherine and told her. 

Catherine, coming out afterward, met Flaxman in the little tiled hall. How she had aged and blanched! She stood a moment opposite to him, inher plain long dress with its white collar and cuffs, her face working alittle. 

'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, butwithout a sound. When they met again she was quite self-contained andbright, talking much both with him and Rose about the future. 

And one little word of Rose's must be recorded here, for those who havefollowed 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 thebay, from the terrace just beyond the windows. They had been sitting onthe balustrade talking of Elsmere. In this nearness to death, Rose hadlost her mocking ways; but she was shy and difficult, and Flaxman feltit all very strange, and did not venture to woo her much. 

When, all at once, he felt her hand steal trembling, a little whitesuppliant, into his, and her face against his shoulder. 

'You won't--you won't ever be angry with me for making you wait likethat? It was impertinent--it was like a child playing tricks!'

Flaxman was deeply shocked by the change in Robert. He was terriblyemaciated. They could only talk at rare intervals in the day; and it wasclear that his nights were often one long struggle for breath. But hisspirits were extraordinarily even, and his days occupied to a pointFlaxman could hardly have believed. He would creep, down stairs ateleven, read his English letters (among them always some from ElgoodStreet) write his answers to them--those difficult scrawls are among thetreasured archives of a society which is fast gathering to itself someof the best life in England--then often fall asleep with fatigue. Afterfood there would come a short drive, or, if the day was very warm, anhour or two of sitting outside, generally his best time for talking. He had a wheeled chair in which Flaxman would take him across to theconvent garden--a dream of beauty. Overhead an orange canopy--leaf andblossom and golden fruit all in simultaneous perfection; underneath arevel of every imaginable flower--narcissus and anemones, geraniumsand clematis; and all about, hedges of monthly roses, dark red and palealternately, making a roseleaf carpet under their feet. Through thetree-trunks shone the white sun-warmed convent and far beyond wereglimpses of downward-trending valleys edged by twinkling sea. 

Here, sensitive and receptive to his last hour, Elsmere drank in beautyand delight; talking, too, whenever it was possible to him, of allthings in heaven and earth. Then when he came home, he would have outhis books and fall to some old critical problem--his worn and scoredGreek Testament always beside him, the quick eye making its way throughsome new monograph or other, the parched lips opening every now andthen to call Flaxman's attention to some fresh light on an obscurepoint--only to relinquish the effort again and again with an unfailingpatience. 

But though he would begin as ardently as ever, he could not keep hisattention fixed to these things very long. Then it would be the turn ofhis favorite poets--Wordsworth, Tennyson, Virgil. Virgil perhaps mostfrequently. Flaxman would read the Æneid aloud to him, Robert followingthe passages he loved best in whisper, his hand resting the whilein Catherine's. And then Mary would be brought in, and he would liewatching her while she played. 

'I have had a letter, ' he said to Flaxman one afternoon, 'from a BroadChurch clergyman in the Midlands, who imagines me to be still militantin London, protesting against the "absurd and wasteful isolation" of theNew Brotherhood. He asks me why instead of leaving the Church I did notjoin the Church Reform Union, why I did not attempt to widen theChurch from within, and why we in Elgood Street are not now in organicconnection with the new Broad Church settlement in East London. Ibelieve I have written him rather a sharp letter; I could not help it. It was borne in on me to tell him that it is all owing to him and hisbrethren that we are in the muddle we are in to-day. Miracle is to ourtime what the law was to the early Christians. We _must_ make up ourminds about it one way or the other. And if we decide to throw it overas Paul threw over the law, then we must fight as he did. There is nohelp in subterfuge, no help in anything but a perfect sincerity. Wemust come out of it. The ground must be cleared; then may come therebuilding. Religion itself, the peace of generations to come, is atstake. If we could wait indefinitely while the Church widened, well andgood. But we have but the one life, the one chance of saying the word orplaying 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 theslaves of some metaphysical word--_personality_, or _intelligence_, orwhat not! What meaning can they have as applied to God? Herbert Spenceris quite right. We no sooner attempt to define what we mean by aPersonal God than we lose ourselves in labyrinths of language and logic. But why attempt it at all? I like that French saying, "_Quand on medemande ce que c'est que Dieu, je l'ignore; quand on ne me le demandepas, je le sais très-bien!_" No, we cannot, realize Him in words--we canonly live in Him, and die to Him!'

On another occasion, he said, speaking to Catherine of the Squire and ofMeyrick's account of his last year of life, --

'How selfish one is, _always_--when one least thinks it! How couldI have forgotten him so completely as I did during all that NewBrotherhood time? Where, what is he now? Ah! if somewhere, somehow, onecould----'

He did not finish the sentence, but the painful yearning of his lookfinished it for him. 

But the days passed on, and the voice grew rarer, the strength feebler. By the beginning of March all coming downstairs was over. He wasentirely confined to his room, almost to his bed. Then there came ahorrible week, when no narcotics took effect, when every night was awrestle for life, which it seemed must be the last. They had a goodnurse, but Flaxman and Catherine mostly shared the watching betweenthem. 

One morning he had just dropped into a fevered sleep. Catherine wassitting by the window gazing out into a dawn world of sun which remindedher of the summer sunrises at Petites Dalles. She looked the shadow ofherself. Spiritually, too, she was the shadow of herself. Her life wasno longer her own: she lived in him--in every look of those eyes--inevery movement of that wasted frame. 

As she sat there, her Bible on her knee, her strained unseeing gazeresting on the garden and the sea, a sort of hallucination tookpossession of her. It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son ofMan passing over the misty slope in front of her, that the dim majesticfigure turned and beckoned. In her half-dream she fell on her knees. 'Master!' she cried in agony, 'I cannot leave him! Call me not! My lifeis here. I have no heart--it beats in his. '

And the figure passed on, the beckoning hand dropping at its side. Shefollowed it with a sort of anguish, but it seemed to her as thoughmind and body were alike incapable of moving--that she would not if shecould. Then suddenly a sound from behind startled her. She turned, hertrance shaken off in an instant, and saw Robert sitting up in bed. 

For a moment her lover, her husband, of the early day was before her--asshe ran to him. But he did not see her. 

An ecstasy of joy was on his face; the whole man bent forward listening. 

'_The child's cry!--thank God! Oh! Meyrick--Catherine--thank God!_'

And she knew that he stood again on the stairs at Murewell in thatSeptember night which gave them their first born, and that he thankedGod because her pain was over. 

An instant's strained looking, and, sinking back into her arms, he gavetwo or three gasping breaths, and died. 

Five days later Flaxman and Rose brought Catherine home. It was supposedthat she would return to her mother at Burwood. Instead, she settleddown again in London, and not one of those whom Robert Elsmere had lovedwas forgotten by his widow. Every Sunday morning, with her child besideher, she worshipped in the old ways; every Sunday afternoon saw herblack-veiled figure sitting motionless in a corner of the Elgood StreetHall. In the week she gave all her time and money to the various worksof charity which he had started. But she held her peace. Many weregrateful to her; some loved her; none understood her. She lived for onehope only; and the years passed all too slowly. 

The New Brotherhood still exists, and grows. There are many who imaginedthat as it had been raised out of the earth by Elsmere's genius, soit would sink with him. Not so! He would have fought the struggle tovictory with surpassing force, with a brilliancy and rapidity none afterhim could rival. But the struggle was not his. His effort was but afraction of the effort of the race. In that effort, and in the Divineforce 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. 

THE END