Then his thoughts would run over the future, dwelling, with a tense

realistic sharpness, on every detail which lay before him--the

arrangements with his _locum tenens_, the interview with the bishop, the

parting with the rectory. It even occurred to him to wonder what must be

done with Martha and his mother's cottage.

His mother? As he thought of her a wave of unutterable longing rose and

broke. The difficult tears stood in his eyes. He had a strange

conviction that at this crisis of his life she of _all_ human beings

would have understood him best.

When would the squire know? He pictured the interview with him,

divining, with the same abnormal clearness of inward vision, Mr.

Wendover's start of mingled triumph and impatience--triumph in the new

recruit, impatience with the Quixotic folly which could lead a man to

look upon orthodox dogma as a thing real enough to be publicly

renounced, or clerical pledges as more than a form of words. So

henceforth he was on the same side with the squire, held by an

indiscriminating world as bound to the same negations, the same

hostilities! The thought roused in him a sudden fierceness of moral

repugnance. The squire and Edward Langham--they were the only sceptics

of whom he had ever had close and personal experience. And with all his

old affection for Langham, all his frank sense of pliancy in the

squire's hands, yet in this strait of life how he shrinks from them

both!--souls at war with life and man, without holiness, without

perfume!

Is it the law of things? 'Once loosen a man's _religio_, once fling away

the old binding elements, the old traditional restraints which have made

him what he is, and moral deterioration is certain.' How often he has

heard it said! How often he has endorsed it! Is it true? His heart grows

cold within him. What good man can ever contemplate with patience the

loss, not of friends or happiness, but of his best self? What shall it

profit a man, indeed, if he gain the whole world--the whole world of

knowledge and speculation--and _lose his own soul_?

And then, for his endless comfort, there rose on the inward eye the

vision of an Oxford lecture room, of a short sturdy figure, of a great

brow over honest eyes, of words alive with moral passion, of thought

instinct with the beauty of holiness. Thank God for the saint in Henry

Grey! Thinking of it, Robert felt his own self-respect re-born.

Oh! to see Grey in the flesh, to get his advice, his approval! Even

though it was the depth of vacation, Grey was so closely connected with

the town, as distinguished from the university, life of Oxford, it might

be quite possible to find him at home. Elsmere suddenly determined to

find out at once if he could be seen.

And if so, he would go over to Oxford at once. _This_ should be the next

step, and he would say nothing to Catherine till afterwards. He felt

himself so dull, so weary, so resourceless. Grey should help and counsel

him, should send him back with a clearer brain--a quicker ingenuity of

love, better furnished against her pain and his own.

Then everything else was forgotten; and he thought of nothing but that

grisly moment of waking in the empty room, when still believing it

night, he had put out his hand for his wife, and with a superstitious

pang had felt himself alone. His heart torn with a hundred inarticulate

cries of memory and grief, he sat on beside the water, unconscious of

the passing of time, his gray eyes staring sightlessly at the

wood-pigeons as they flew past him, at the occasional flash of a

kingfisher, at the moving panorama of summer clouds above the trees

opposite.

At last he was startled back to consciousness by the fall of a few heavy

drops of warm rain. He looked at his watch. It was nearly four o'clock.

He rose, stiff and cramped with sitting, and at the same instant he saw

beyond the birchwood on the open stretch of common a boy's figure,

which, after a step or two, he recognised as Ned Irwin.

'You here, Ned?' he said, stopping, the pastoral temper in him

reasserting itself at once. 'Why 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 from

Witley, he hev, and they won't let him have it till Thursday, so I've

been out after things for the club.'

And opening the tin box strapped on his back, he showed the day's

capture of butterflies, and some belated birds' eggs, the plunder of a

bit of common where the turf for the winter's burning was just being

cut.

'Goatsucker, linnet, stonechat,' said the rector, fingering them. 'Well

done for August, Ned. If you haven't got anything better to do with

them, give them to that small boy of Mr. Carter's that's been ill so

long. He'd thank you for them, I know.'

The lad nodded with a guttural sound of assent. Then his new-born

scientific ardour seemed to struggle with his rustic costiveness of

speech.

'I've been just watching a queer creetur,' he said at last hurriedly; 'I

b'leeve he's that un.'

And he pulled out a well-thumbed handbook, and pointed to a cut of the

grasshopper warbler.

'Whereabouts?' asked Robert, wondering the while at his own start of

interest.

'In that bit of common 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. And

sure enough, after a little beating about, they heard the note which had

roused the lad's curiosity, the loud whirr of a creature that should

have been a grasshopper, and was not.

They stalked the bird a few yards, stooping and crouching, Robert's

eager hand on the boy's arm, whenever the clumsy rustic movements made

too much noise among the underwood. They watched it uttering its jarring

imitative note on bush after bush, just dropping to the ground as they

came near, and flitting a yard or two farther, but otherwise showing no

sign of alarm at their presence. Then suddenly the impulse which had

been leading him on died in the rector. He stood upright, with a long

sigh.

'I must go home, Ned,' he said abruptly. 'Where are you off to?'

'Please, sir, there's my sister at the cottage, her as married Jim, the

under-keeper. I be going there for my tea.'

'Come along, then, we can go together.'

They trudged along in silence; presently Robert turned on his companion.

'Ned, this natural history has been a fine thing for you, my lad; mind

you stick to it. That and good work will make a man of you. When I go

away----'

The boy started and stopped dead, his dumb animal eyes fixed on his

companion.

'You know I shall soon be going off on my holiday,' said Robert, smiling

faintly; adding hurriedly as the boy's face resumed its ordinary

expression: 'But some day, Ned, I shall go for good. I don't know

whether you've been depending on me--you and some of the others. I think

perhaps you have. If so, don't depend on me, Ned, any more! It must all

come to an end--everything must--_everything!_--except the struggle to

be a man in the world, and not a beast--to make one's heart clean and

soft, and not hard and vile. That is the _one_ thing that matters, and

lasts. Ah, never forget that, Ned! Never forget it!'

He stood still, towering over the slouching thick-set form beside him,

his pale intensity of look giving a rare dignity and beauty to the face

which owed so little of its attractiveness to comeliness of feature. He

had the makings of a true shepherd of men, and his mind as he spoke was

crossed by a hundred different currents of feeling--bitterness, pain,

and yearning unspeakable. No man could feel the wrench that lay before

him more than he.

Ned Irwin said not a word. His heavy lids were dropped over his deep-set

eye; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling with his butterfly

net--awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irresponsiveness, in his whole

attitude.

Robert gathered himself together.

'Well, good-night, my lad,' he said with a change of tone. 'Good luck to

you; be off to your tea!'

And he turned away, striding swiftly over the short burnt August grass

in the direction of the Murewell woods, which rose in a blue haze of

heat against the slumberous afternoon sky. He had not gone a hundred

yards before he heard a clattering after him. He stopped, and Ned came

up with him.

'They're heavy, them things,' said the boy, desperately blurting it out,

and pointing, with heaving chest and panting breath, to the rod and

basket. 'I am going that way, I can leave un at the rectory.'

Robert's eyes gleamed.

'They are no weight, Ned--'cause why? I've been lazy and caught no fish!

But there,'--after a moment's hesitation he slipped off the basket and

rod, and put them into the begrimed hands held out for them. 'Bring them

when you like; I don't know when I shall want them again. Thank you, and

God bless you!'

The boy was off with his booty in a second.

'Perhaps he'll like to think he did it for me, by and by,' said Robert

sadly 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 he

had telegraphed to ask if Grey was at home. The reply had been--'Here

for a week on way north; come by all means.' Oh! that look of

Catherine's when he had told her of his plan, trying in vain to make it

look merely casual and ordinary.

'It is more than a year since I have set eyes on Grey, Catherine. And

the day's change would be a boon. I could stay the night at Merton, and

get home early next day.'

But as he turned a pleading look to her, he had been startled by the

sudden rigidity of face and form. Her silence had in it an intense,

almost a haughty, reproach, which she was too keenly hurt to put into

words.

He caught her by the arm, and drew her forcibly to him. There he made

her look into the eyes which were full of nothing but the most

passionate imploring affection.

'Have patience a little more, Catherine!' he just murmured. 'Oh, how I

have blessed you for silence! Only till I come back!'

'Till you come back,' she repeated slowly. 'I cannot bear it any longer,

Robert, that you should give others your confidence, and not me.'

He groaned and let her go. No--there should be but one day more of

silence, and that day was interposed for her sake. If Grey from his

calmer standpoint bade him wait and test himself, before taking any

irrevocable step, he would obey him. And if so, the worst pang of all

need not yet be inflicted on Catherine, though as to his state of mind

he would be perfectly open with her.

A few hours later his cab deposited him at the well-known door. It

seemed to him that he and the scorched plane-trees lining the sides of

the road were the only living things in the wide sun-beaten street.

Every house was shut up. Only the Greys' open windows, amid their

shuttered neighbours, had a friendly human air.

Yes; Mr. Grey was in, and expecting Mr. Elsmere. Robert climbed the dim

familiar staircase, his heart beating fast.

'Elsmere, this is a piece of good fortune!'

And the two men, after a grasp of the hand, stood 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 man before

him.

'Come and sit down, Elsmere--there, in the window, where we can talk.

One has to live on this east side of the house this weather.'

'In the first place,' said Mr. Grey, scrutinising him, as he returned to

his own book-littered corner of the window-seat. 'In the first place, my

dear fellow, I can't congratulate you on your appearance. I never saw a

man look in worse condition--to be up and about.'

'That's nothing!' said Robert almost impatiently. 'I want a holiday, I

believe. Grey!' and he looked nervously out over garden and apple-trees,

'I have come--very selfishly--to ask your advice; to throw a trouble

upon you, to claim all your friendship can give me.'

He stopped. Mr. Grey was silent--his expression changing instantly, the

bright eyes profoundly, anxiously attentive.

'I have just come to the conclusion,' said Robert, after a moment, with

quick abruptness, 'that I ought now--at this moment--to leave the

Church, and give up my living, for reasons which I will describe to you.

But before I act on the conclusion, I wanted the light of your mind upon

it, seeing that--that--other persons than myself are concerned.'

'Give up your living!' echoed Mr. Grey in a low voice of astonishment.

He sat looking at the face and figure of the man before him with a

half-frowning expression. How often Robert had seen some rash exuberant

youth quelled by that momentary frown! Essentially conservative as was

the inmost nature of the man, for all his radicalism there were few

things for which Henry Grey felt more instinctive distaste than for

unsteadiness of will and purpose, however glorified by fine names.

Robert knew it, and, strangely enough, felt for a moment in the presence

of the heretical tutor as a culprit before a judge.

'It is, of course, a matter of opinions,' he said, with an effort. 'Do

you remember, before I took orders, asking whether I had ever had

difficulties, and I told you that I had probably never gone deep enough.

It was profoundly true, though I didn't really mean it. But this

year---- No, no, I have not been merely vain and hasty! I may be a

shallow creature, but it has been natural growth, not wantonness.'

And at last his eyes met Mr. Grey's firmly, almost with solemnity. It

was as if in the last few moments he had been instinctively testing the

quality of his own conduct and motives by the touchstone of the rare

personality beside him; and they had stood the trial. There was such

pain, such sincerity, above all such freedom from littleness of soul

implied in words 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 tone was

grave sympathy itself. 'Or would you rather confine yourself to

generalities and accomplished facts?'

'I will try and give you an account of it,' said Robert; and sitting

there with his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on the yellowing

afternoon sky, and the intricacies of the garden-walls between them and

the new Museum, he went through the history of the last two years. He

described the beginnings of his historical work, the gradual enlargement

of the mind's horizons, and the intrusion within them of question after

question, and subject after subject. Then he mentioned the squire's

name.

'Ah!' exclaimed Mr. Grey, 'I had forgotten you were that man's

neighbour. I wonder he didn't set you against the whole business,

inhuman old cynic!'

He spoke with the strong dislike of the idealist, devoted in practice to

an everyday ministry to human need, for the intellectual egotist. Robert

caught and relished the old pugnacious flash in the eye, the Midland

strength of accent.

'Cynic he is, not altogether inhuman, I think. I fought him about his

drains and his cottages, however,'--and he smiled sadly--'before I began

to read his books. But the man's genius is incontestable, his learning

enormous. He found me in a susceptible state, and I recognise that his

influence immensely accelerated a process already begun.'

Mr. Grey was struck with the simplicity and fulness of the avowal. A

lesser man would hardly have made it in the same way. Rising to pace up

and down the room--the familiar action recalling vividly to Robert the

Sunday afternoons of bygone years--he began to put questions with a

clearness and decision that made them so many guides to the man

answering, through the tangle of his own recollections.

'I see,' said the tutor at last, his hands in the pockets of his short

gray coat, his brow bent and thoughtful. 'Well, the process in you has

been the typical process of the present day. Abstract thought has had

little or nothing to say to it. It has been all a question of literary

and historical evidence. _I_ am old-fashioned enough'--and he

smiled--'to stick to the _a priori_ impossibility of miracles, but then

I am a philosopher! _You_ have come to see how miracle is manufactured,

to recognise in it merely a natural inevitable outgrowth of human

testimony, in its pre-scientific stages. It has been all experimental,

inductive. I imagine'--he looked up--'you didn't get much help out of

the orthodox apologists?'

Robert shrugged his shoulders.

'It often seemed to me,' he said drearily, 'I might have got through,

but for the men whose books I used to read and respect most in old days.

The point of view is generally 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 of

the world, and then argues upon its details. You might as well isolate

English jurisprudence, and discuss its details without any reference to

Teutonic custom or Roman law! You may be as logical or as learned as you

like within the limits chosen, but the whole result is false! You treat

Christian witness and Biblical literature as you would treat no other

witness, and no other literature in the world. And you cannot show cause

enough. For your reasons depend on the very witness under dispute. And

so you go on arguing in a circle, _ad infinitum_.'

But his voice dropped. The momentary eagerness died away as quickly as

it had risen, leaving nothing but depression behind it.

Mr. Grey meditated. At last he said, with a delicate change of tone,--

'And now--if I may ask it, Elsmere--how far has this destructive process

gone?'

'I can't tell you,' said Robert, turning away almost with a groan; 'I

only know that the things I loved once I love still, and that--that--if

I had the heart to think at all, I should see more of God in the world

than I ever saw before!'

The tutor's eye flashed. Robert had gone back to the window, and was

miserably looking out. After all, he had told only half his story.

'And so you feel you must give up your living?'

'What else is there for me to do?' cried Robert, turning upon him,

startled by the slow deliberate tone.

'Well, of course, you know that there are many men, men with whom both

you and I are acquainted, who hold very much what I imagine your

opinions now are, or will settle into, who are still in the Church of

England, doing admirable work there!'

'I know,' said Elsmere quickly--'I know; I cannot conceive it, nor could

you. Imagine standing up Sunday after Sunday to say the things you do

_not_ believe,--using words as a convention which those who hear you

receive as literal truth,--and trusting the maintenance of your position

either to your neighbour's forbearance or to your own powers of evasion!

With the ideas at present in my head, nothing would induce me to preach

another Easter Day sermon to a congregation that have both a moral and a

legal right to demand from me an implicit belief in the material

miracle!'

'Yes,' said the other gravely--'yes, I believe you are right. It can't

be said the Broad Church movement has helped us much! How greatly it

promised!--how little it has performed! For the private person, the

worshipper, it is different--or I think so. No man pries into our

prayers; and to cut ourselves off from common worship is to lose that

fellowship which is in itself a witness and vehicle of God.'

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 you

think this change has been too rapid to last--if you, knowing me better

than at this moment I can know myself--if you bid me wait a while,

before I take any overt step, I will wait--oh, God knows I will

wait!--my wife----' and his husky voice failed him utterly.

'Your wife!' cried Mr. Grey, startled. 'Mrs. Elsmere does not know?'

'My wife knows nothing, or almost nothing--and it will break her heart!'

He moved hastily away again, and stood with his back to his friend, his

tall narrow form outlined against the window. Mr. Grey was left in

dismay, rapidly turning over the impressions of Catherine left on him by

his last year's sight of her. That pale distinguished woman with her

look of strength and character,--he remembered Langham's analysis of

her, and of the silent religious intensity she had brought with her from

her training among the northern hills.

Was there a bitterly human tragedy preparing under all this

thought-drama he had been listening to?

Deeply moved, he went up to Robert, and laid his rugged hand almost

timidly upon him.

'Elsmere, it won't break her heart! You are a good man. She is a good

woman.' What an infinity of meaning there was in the simple words! 'Take

courage. Tell her at once--tell her everything--and let _her_ decide

whether there shall be any waiting. I cannot help you there; she can;

she will probably understand you better than you understand yourself.'

He tightened his grasp, and gently pushed his guest into a chair beside

him. Robert was deadly pale, his face quivering painfully. The long

physical strain of the past months had weakened for the moment all the

controlling forces of the will. Mr. Grey stood over him--the whole man

dilating, expanding, under a tyrannous stress of feeling.

'It is hard, it is bitter,' he said slowly, with a wonderful manly

tenderness. 'I know it, I have gone through it. So has many and many a

poor soul that you and I have known! But there need be no sting in the

wound unless we ourselves envenom it. I know--oh! I know very well--the

man of the world scoffs, but to him who has once been a Christian of the

old sort, the parting with the Christian mythology is the rending

asunder of bones and marrow. It means parting with half the confidence,

half the joy, of life! But take heart,' and the tone grew still more

solemn, still more penetrating. 'It is the education of God! Do not

imagine it will put you farther from Him! He is in criticism, in

science, in doubt, so long as the doubt is a pure and honest doubt, as

yours is. He is in all life, in all thought. The thought of man, as it

has shaped itself in institutions, in philosophies, in science, in

patient critical work, or in the life of charity, is the one continuous

revelation of God! Look for Him in it all; see how, little by little,

the Divine indwelling force, using as its tools--but _merely_ as its

tools!--man's physical appetites and conditions, has built up conscience

and the moral life; think how every faculty of the mind has been trained

in turn to take its part in the great work of faith upon the visible

world! Love and imagination built up religion,--shall reason destroy it!

No!--reason is God's like the rest! Trust it,--trust him. The leading

strings of the past are dropping from you; they are dropping from the

world, not wantonly, or by chance, but in the providence of God. Learn

the lesson of your own pain,--learn to seek God, not in any single event

of past history, _but in your own soul_,--in the constant verifications

of experience, in the life of Christian love. Spiritually you have gone

through the last wrench; I promise it you! You being what you are,

nothing can cut this ground from under your feet. Whatever may have been

the forms of human belief, _faith_, the faith which saves, has always

been rooted here! All things change,--creeds and philosophies and

outward systems,--but God remains!

'"Life, that in me has rest,

As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!"'

The lines dropped with low vibrating force from lips unaccustomed indeed

to such an outburst. The speaker stood a moment longer in silence beside

the figure in the chair, and it seemed to Robert, gazing at him with

fixed eyes, that the man's whole presence, at once so homely and so

majestic, was charged with benediction. It was as though invisible hands

of healing and consecration had been laid upon him. The fiery soul

beside him had kindled anew the drooping life of his own. So the torch

of God passes on its way, hand reaching out to hand.

He bent forward, stammering incoherent words of assent and gratitude, he

knew not what. Mr. Grey, who had sunk into his chair, gave him time to

recover himself. The intensity of the tutor's own mood relaxed; and

presently he began to talk to his guest, in a wholly different tone, of

the practical detail of the step before him, supposing it to be taken

immediately, discussing the probable attitude of Robert's bishop, the

least conspicuous mode of withdrawing from the living, and so on--all

with gentleness and sympathy indeed, but with an indefinable change of

manner, which showed that he felt it well both for himself and Elsmere

to repress any further expression of emotion. There was something, a

vein of stoicism perhaps, in Mr. Grey's temper of mind, which, while it

gave a special force and sacredness to his rare moments of fervent

speech, was wont in general to make men more self-controlled than usual

in his presence. Robert felt now the bracing force of it.

'Will you stay with us to dinner?' Mr. Grey asked when at last Elsmere

got up to go. 'There are one or two lone Fellows coming--asked before

your telegram came, of course. Do exactly as you like.'

'I think not,' said Robert, after a pause. 'I longed to see you, but I

am not fit for general society.'

Mr. Grey did not press him. He rose and went with his visitor to the

door.

'Good-bye, good-bye! Let me always know what I can do for you. And your

wife--poor thing, poor thing! Go and tell her, Elsmere; don't lose a

moment you can help. God help her and you!'

They grasped each other's hands. Mr. Grey followed him down the stairs

and along the narrow hall. He opened the hall door, and smiled a last

smile of encouragement and sympathy into the eyes that expressed such a

young moved gratitude. The door closed. Little did Elsmere realise that

never, in this life, would he see that smile or hear that voice again!

CHAPTER XXVIII

In half an hour from the time Mr. Grey's door closed upon him, Elsmere

had caught a convenient cross-country train, and had left the Oxford

towers and spires, the shrunken summer Isis, and the flat hot river

meadows far behind him. He had meant to stay at Merton, as we know, for

the night. Now, his one thought was to get back to Catherine. The

urgency of Mr. Grey's words was upon him, and love had a miserable pang

that it should have needed to be urged.

By eight o'clock he was again at Churton. There were no carriages

waiting at the little station, but the thought of the walk across the

darkening common through the August moonrise had been a refreshment to

him in the heat and crowd of the train. He hurried through the small

town, where the streets were full of summer idlers, and the lamps were

twinkling in the still balmy air, along a dusty stretch of road, leaving

man and his dwellings farther and farther to the rear of him, till at

last he emerged on a boundless tract of common, and struck to the right

into a cart-track leading to Murewell.

He was on the top of a high sandy ridge, looking west and north, over a

wide evening world of heather and wood and hill. To the right, far

ahead, across the misty lower grounds 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 stretching

downwards from where he stood rose suddenly towards a height crowned

with a group of gaunt and jagged firs--landmarks for all the plain--of

which every ghostly bough and crest was now sharply outlined against a

luminous sky. For the wide heaven in front of him was still delicately

glowing in all its under parts with soft harmonies of dusky red or blue,

while in its higher zone the same tract of sky was closely covered with

the finest network of pearl-white cloud, suffused at the moment with a

silver radiance so intense that a spectator might almost have dreamed

the moon had forgotten its familiar place of rising, and was about to

mount into a startled expectant west. Not a light in all the wide

expanse, and for a while not a sound of human life, save the beat of

Robert's step, or the occasional tap of his stick against the pebbles of

the road.

Presently he reached the edge of the ridge whence the rough track he was

following sank sharply to the lower levels. Here was a marvellous point

of view, and the rector stood a moment, beside a bare weather-blasted

fir, a ghostly shadow thrown behind him. All around the gorse and

heather seemed still radiating light, as though the air had been so

drenched in sunshine that even long after the sun had vanished the

invading darkness found itself still unable to win firm possession of

earth and sky. Every little stone in the sandy road was still weirdly

visible; the colour of the heather, now in lavish bloom, could be felt

though hardly seen.

Before him melted line after line of woodland, broken by hollow after

hollow, filled with vaporous wreaths of mist. About him were the sounds

of a wild nature. The air was resonant with the purring of the

night-jars, and every now and then he caught the loud clap of their

wings as they swayed unsteadily through the furze and bracken. Overhead

a trio of wild ducks flew across, from pond to pond, their hoarse cry

descending through the darkness. The partridges on the hill called to

each other, and certain sharp sounds betrayed to the solitary listener

the presence of a flock of swans on a neighbouring pool.

The rector felt himself alone on a wide earth. It was almost with a

start of pleasure that he caught at last the barking of dogs on a few

distant farms, or the dim thunderous rush of a train through the wide

wooded landscape beyond the heath. Behind that frowning mass of wood lay

the rectory. The lights must be lit in the little drawing-room;

Catherine must be sitting by the lamp, her fine head bent over book or

work, grieving for him perhaps, her anxious expectant heart going out to

him through the dark. He thinks of the village lying wrapped in the

peace of the August night, the lamp rays from shop-front or casement

streaming out on to the green; he thinks of his child, of his dead

mother, feeling heavy and bitter within him all the time the message of

separation and exile.

But his mood was no longer one of mere dread, of helpless pain, of

miserable self-scorn. Contact with Henry Grey had brought him that

rekindling of the flame of conscience, that medicinal stirring of the

soul's waters, which is the most precious boon that man can give to man.

In that sense which attaches to every successive resurrection of our

best life from the shades of despair or selfishness, he had that day,

almost that hour, been born again. He was no longer filled mainly with

the sense of personal failure, with scorn for his own blundering

impetuous temper, so lacking in prescience and in balance; or, in

respect to his wife, with such an anguished impotent remorse. He was

nerved and braced; whatever oscillations the mind might go through in

its search for another equilibrium, 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 old

familiar images of thought, returned to him new-clad, re-entering the

desolate heart in a white-winged procession of consolation. On the heath

beside him the Christ stood once more, and as the disciple felt the

sacred presence he could bear for the first time to let the chafing

pent-up current of love flow into the new channels, so painfully

prepared for it by the toil of thought. '_Either God or an impostor._'

What scorn the heart, the intellect, threw on the alternative! Not in

the dress of speculations which represent the product of long past, long

superseded looms of human thought, but in the guise of common manhood,

laden like his fellows with the pathetic weight of human weakness and

human ignorance, the Master moves towards him--

'_Like you, my son, I struggled and I prayed. Like you, I had my days of

doubt and nights of wrestling. I had my dreams, my delusions, with my

fellows. I was weak; I suffered; I died. But God was in me, and the

courage, the patience, the love He gave to me, the scenes of the poor

human life He inspired, have become by His will the world's eternal

lesson--man's primer of Divine things, hung high in the eyes of all,

simple and wise, that all may see and all may learn. Take it to your

heart again--that life, that pain, of mine! Use it to new ends;

apprehend it in new ways; but knowledge shall not take it from you; and

love, instead of weakening or forgetting, if it be but faithful, shall

find ever fresh power of realising and renewing itself._'

So said the vision; and carrying the passion of it deep in his heart the

rector went his way, down the long stony hill, past the solitary farm

amid the trees at the foot of it, across the grassy common beyond, with

its sentinel clumps of beeches, past an ethereal string of tiny lakes

just touched by the moonrise, beside some of the first cottages of

Murewell, up the hill, with pulse beating and step quickening, and

round into the stretch of road leading to his own gate.

As soon as he had passed the screen made by the shrubs on the lawn, he

saw it all as he had seen it in his waking dream on the common--the

lamplight, the open windows, the white muslin curtains swaying a little

in the soft evening air, and Catherine's figure seen dimly through them.

The noise of the gate, however--of the steps on the drive--had startled

her. He saw her rise quickly from her low chair, put some work down

beside her, and move in haste to the window.

'Robert!' she cried in amazement.

'Yes,' he answered, still some yards from her, his voice coming

strangely to her out of the moonlit darkness. 'I did my errand early; I

found I could get back; and here I am.'

She flew to the door, opened it, and felt herself caught in his arms.

'Robert, you are quite damp!' she said, fluttering and shrinking, for

all her sweet habitual gravity of manner--was it the passion of that

yearning embrace? 'Have you walked?'

'Yes. It is the dew on the common, I suppose. The grass was drenched.'

'Will you have some food? They can bring back the supper directly.'

'I don't want any food now,' he said, hanging up his hat. 'I got some

lunch in town, and a cup of soup at Reading coming back. Perhaps you

will give me some tea soon--not yet.'

He came up to her, pushing back the thick disordered locks of hair from

his eyes with one hand, the other held out to her. As he came under the

light of the hall lamp she was so startled by the gray pallor of the

face that she caught hold of his outstretched hand with both hers. What

she said he never knew--her look was enough. He put his arm round her,

and as he opened the drawing-room door holding her pressed against him,

she felt the desperate agitation in him penetrating, beating against an

almost iron self-control of manner. He shut the door behind them.

'Robert, dear Robert!' she said, clinging to him, 'there is bad

news,--tell me--there is something to tell me! Oh! what is it--what is

it?'

It was almost like a child's wail. His brow contracted still more

painfully.

'My darling,' he said; 'my darling--my dear dear wife!' and he bent his

head down to her as she lay against his breast, kissing her hair with a

passion of pity, of remorse, of tenderness, which seemed to rend his

whole nature.

'Tell me--tell me--Robert!'

He guided her gently across the room, past the sofa over which her work

lay scattered, past the flower-table, now a many-coloured mass of roses,

which was her especial pride, past the remains of a brick castle which

had delighted Mary's wondering eyes and mischievous fingers an hour or

two before, to a low chair by the open window looking on the wide

moonlit expanse of cornfield. He put her into it, walked to the window

on the other side of the room, shut it, and drew down the blind. Then he

went back to her, and sank down beside her, kneeling, her hands in his.

'My dear wife--you have loved me--you do love me?'

She could not answer, she could only press his hands with her cold

fingers, with a look and gesture that implored him to speak.

'Catherine,' he said, still kneeling before her, 'you remember that

night you came down to me in the study, the night I told you I was in

trouble and you could not help me. Did you guess from what I said what

the trouble was?'

'Yes,' she answered, trembling, 'yes, I did, Robert; I thought you were

depressed--troubled--about religion.'

'And I know,' he said with an outburst of feeling, kissing her hands as

they lay in his--'I know very well that you went upstairs and prayed for

me, my white-souled angel! But Catherine, the trouble grew--it got

blacker and blacker. You were there beside me, and you could not help

me. I dared not tell you about it; I could only struggle on alone, so

terribly alone, sometimes; and now I am beaten, beaten. And I come to

you to ask you to help me in the only thing that remains to me. Help me,

Catherine, to be an honest man--to follow conscience--to say and do the

truth!'

'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 austerity

and delicacy,--

'For six or seven months, Catherine--really for much longer, though I

never knew it--I have been fighting with _doubt_--doubt of orthodox

Christianity--doubt of what the Church teaches--of what I have to say

and preach every Sunday. First it crept on me I knew not how. Then the

weight grew heavier, and I began to struggle with it. I felt I must

struggle with it. Many men, I suppose, in my position would have

trampled on their doubts--would have regarded them as sin in themselves,

would have felt it their duty to ignore them as much as possible,

trusting to time and God's help. I _could_ not ignore them. The thought

of questioning the most sacred beliefs that you and I'--and his voice

faltered a moment--'held in common was misery to me. On the other hand,

I knew myself. I knew that I could no more go on living to any purpose,

with a whole region of the mind shut up, as it were, barred away from

the rest of me, than I could go on living with a secret between myself

and you. I could not hold my faith by a mere tenure of tyranny and fear.

Faith that is not free--that is not the faith of the whole creature,

body, soul, and intellect--seemed to me a faith worthless both to God

and man!'

Catherine looked at him stupefied. The world seemed to be turning round

her. Infinitely more terrible than his actual words was the accent

running through words and tone and gesture--the accent of

irreparableness, as of something dismally _done_ and _finished_. What

did it all mean? For what had he brought her there? She sat stunned,

realising with awful force the feebleness, the inadequacy, of her own

fears.

He, meanwhile, had paused a moment, meeting her gaze with those yearning

sunken eyes. Then he went on, his voice changing a little,--

'But if I had wished it ever so much, I could not have helped myself.

The process, so to speak, had gone too far by the time I knew where I

was. I think the change must have begun before the Mile End time.

Looking back, I see the foundations were laid in--in--the work of last

winter.'

She shivered. He stooped and kissed her hands again passionately. 'Am I

poisoning even the memory of our past for you?' he cried. Then,

restraining himself at once, he hurried on again: 'After Mile End you

remember I began to see much of the squire. Oh, my wife, don't look at

me so! It was not his doing in any true sense. I am not such a weak

shuttlecock as that! But being where I was before our intimacy began,

his influence hastened everything. I don't wish to minimise it. I was

not made to stand alone!'

And again that bitter, perplexed, half-scornful sense of his own pliancy

at the hands of circumstance as compared with the rigidity of other men

descended upon him. Catherine made a faint movement as though to draw

her hands away.

'Was it well,' she said, in a voice which sounded like a harsh echo of

her own, 'was it right for a clergyman to discuss sacred things--with

such a man?'

He let her hands go, guided for the moment by a delicate imperious

instinct which bade him appeal to something else than love. Rising, he

sat down opposite to her on the low window seat, while she sank back

into her chair, her fingers clinging to the arm of it, the lamplight far

behind deepening all the shadows of the face, the hollows in the cheeks,

the line of experience and will about the mouth. The stupor in which she

had just listened to him was beginning to break up. Wild forces of

condemnation and resistance were rising in her; and he knew it. He knew,

too, that as yet she only half realised the situation, and that blow

after blow still remained to him to deal.

'Was it right that I should discuss religious matters 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 shadowy

face of his wife, his ear catching her quick uneven breath, he went once

more through the dismal history of the last few months, dwelling on his

state of thought before the intimacy with Mr. Wendover began, on his

first attempts to escape the squire's influence, on his gradual pitiful

surrender. Then he told the story of the last memorable walk before the

squire's journey, of the moment in the study afterwards, and of the

months of feverish reading and wrestling which had followed. Half-way

through it a new despair seized him. What was the good of all he was

saying? He was speaking a language she did not really understand. What

were all these critical and literary considerations to her?

The rigidity of her silence showed him that her sympathy was not with

him, that in comparison with the vibrating protest of her own passionate

faith which must be now ringing through her, whatever he could urge must

seem to her the merest culpable trifling with the soul's awful

destinies. In an instant of tumultuous speech he could not convey to her

the temper and results of his own complex training, and on that

training, as he very well knew, depended the piercing, convincing force

of all that he was saying. There were gulfs between them--gulfs which,

as it seemed to him, in a miserable insight, could never be bridged

again. Oh, the frightful separateness of experience!

Still he struggled on. He brought the story down to the conversation at

the Hall, described--in broken words of fire and pain--the moment of

spiritual wreck which had come upon him in the August lane, his night of

struggle, his resolve to go to Mr. Grey. And all through he was not so

much narrating as pleading a cause, and that not his own, but Love's.

Love was at the bar, and it was for love that the eloquent voice, the

pale varying face, were really pleading, through all the long story of

intellectual change.

At the mention of Mr. Grey Catherine grew restless; she sat up suddenly,

with a cry of bitterness.

'Robert, why did you go away from me? It was cruel. I should have known

first. He had no right--no right!'

She clasped her hands round her knees, her beautiful mouth set and

stern. The moon had been sailing westward all this time, and as

Catherine bent forward the yellow light caught her face, and brought out

the haggard change in it. He held out his hands to her with a low groan,

helpless against her reproach, her jealousy. He dared not speak of what

Mr. Grey had done for him, of the tenderness of his counsel towards her

specially. He felt that everything he could say would but torture the

wounded heart still more.

But she did not notice the outstretched hands. She covered her face in

silence a moment, as though trying to see her way more clearly through

the mazes of disaster; and he waited. At last she looked up.

'I cannot follow all you have been saying,' she said, almost harshly. 'I

know so little of books, I cannot give them the place you do. You say

you have convinced yourself the Gospels are like other books, full of

mistakes, and credulous, like the people of the time; and therefore you

can't take what they say as you used to take it. But what does it all

quite mean? Oh, I am not clever--I cannot see my way clear from thing to

thing as you do. If there are mistakes, does it matter so--so--terribly

to you?' and she faltered. 'Do you think _nothing_ is true because

something may be false? Did not--did not--Jesus still live, and die, and

rise again?--_can_ you doubt--_do_ you doubt--that He rose--that He is

God--that He is in heaven--that we shall see Him?'

She threw an intensity into every word, which made the short breathless

questions thrill through him, through the nature saturated and steeped

as hers was in Christian association, with a bitter accusing force. But

he did not flinch from them.

'I can believe no longer in an Incarnation and Resurrection,' he said

slowly, but with a resolute plainness. 'Christ is risen in our hearts,

in the Christian life of charity. Miracle is a natural product of human

feeling and imagination; and God was in Jesus--pre-eminently, as He is

in all great souls, but not otherwise--not otherwise in kind than He is

in me or you.'

His voice dropped to a whisper. She grew paler and paler.

'So to you,' she said presently in the same strange altered voice. 'My

father--when I saw that light on his face before he died, when I heard

him cry, "Master, _I come!_" was dying--deceived--deluded. Perhaps

even,' and she trembled, 'you think it ends here--our life--our love?'

It was agony to him to see her driving herself through this piteous

catechism. The lantern of memory flashed a moment on to the immortal

picture of Faust and Margaret. Was it not only that winter they had read

the scene together?

Forcibly he possessed himself once more of those closely locked hands,

pressing their coldness on his own burning eyes and forehead in hopeless

silence.

'_Do_ you, Robert?' she repeated insistently.

'I know nothing,' he said, his eyes still hidden. 'I know nothing! But I

trust God with all that is dearest to me, with our love, with the soul

that is His breath, His work in us!'

The pressure of her despair seemed to be wringing his own faith out of

him, forcing into definiteness things and thoughts that had been lying

in an accepted, even a welcomed, obscurity.

She tried again to draw her hands away, but he would not let them go.

'And the end of it all, Robert?' she said--'the end of it?'

Never did he forget the note of that question, the desolation of it, the

indefinable change of accent. It drove him into a harsh abruptness of

reply.

'The end of it--so far--must be, if I remain an honest man, that I must

give up my living, that I must cease to be a minister of the Church of

England. What the course of our life after that shall be is in your

hands--absolutely.'

She caught her breath painfully. His heart was breaking for her, and yet

there was something in her manner now which kept down caresses and

repressed all words.

Suddenly, however, as he sat there mutely watching her, he found her at

his knees, her dear arms around him, her face against his breast.

'Robert, my husband, my darling, it _cannot_ be! It is a madness--a

delusion. God is trying you, and me! You cannot be planning so to desert

Him, so to deny Christ--you cannot, my husband. Come away with me, away

from books and work, into some quiet place where He can make Himself

heard. You are overdone, overdriven. Do nothing now--say nothing--except

to me. Be patient a little, and He will give you back Himself! What can

books and arguments matter to you or me? Have we not _known_ and _felt_

Him as He is--have we not, Robert? Come!'

She pushed herself backwards, smiling at him with an exquisite

tenderness. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. They were wet on

his own. Another moment and Robert would have lost the only clue which

remained to him through the mists of this bewildering world. He would

have yielded again as he had many times yielded before, for infinitely

less reason, to the urgent pressure of another's individuality, and

having jeopardised love for truth, he would now have murdered--or tried

to murder--in himself the sense of truth for love.

But he did neither.

Holding her close pressed against him, he said in breaks of intense

speech: 'If you wish, Catherine, I will wait--I will wait till you bid

me speak--but I warn you--there is something dead in me--something gone

and broken. It can never live again--except in forms which now it would

only pain you more to think of. It is not that I think differently of

this point or that point--but of life and religion altogether. I see

God's purposes in quite other proportions as it were. Christianity seems

to me something small and local. Behind it, around it--including it--I

see the great drama of the world, sweeping on--led by God--from change

to change, from act to act. It is not that Christianity is false, but

that it is only an imperfect human reflection of a part of truth. Truth

has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!'

She heard, but through her exhaustion, through the bitter sinking of

hope, she only half understood. Only she realised that she and he were

alike helpless--both struggling in the grip of some force outside

themselves, inexorable, ineluctable.

Robert felt her arms relaxing, felt the dead weight of her form against

him. He raised her to her feet, he half carried her to the door, and

on to the stairs. She was nearly fainting, but her will held it

at bay. He threw open the door of their room, led her in, lifted

her--unresisting--on to the bed. Then her head fell to one side, and her

lips grew ashen. In an instant or two he had done for her all that his

medical knowledge could suggest with rapid decided hands. She was not

quite unconscious; she drew up round her, as though with a strong vague

sense of chill, the shawl he laid over her, and gradually the slightest

shade of colour came back to her lips. But as soon as she opened her

eyes and met those of Robert fixed upon her, the heavy lids dropped

again.

'Would you rather be alone?' he said to her, kneeling beside her.

She made a faint affirmative movement of the head, and the cold hand he

had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, and

stood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went.

CHAPTER XXIX

He shut the door softly, and went downstairs again. It was between ten

and eleven. The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished;

every one else in the house had gone to bed. Mechanically he stooped and

put away the child's bricks, he pushed the chairs back into their

places, and then he paused a while before the open window. But there was

not a tremor on the set face. He felt himself capable of no more

emotion. The fount of feeling, of pain, was for the moment dried up.

What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gusts of

night-wind on the moonlit cornfield; the silver ripples they sent

through it; the shadows thrown by some great trees in the western

corners of the field; the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensity

of the sky.

Presently he turned away, leaving one lamp still burning in the room,

softly unlocked the hall door, took his hat, and went out. He walked up

and down the woodpath or sat on the bench there for some time, thinking

indeed, but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness. Whenever he

felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again, he would make a

sharp effort at repression. Physically he could not bear much more, and

he knew it. A part remained for him to play, which must be played with

tact, with prudence, and with firmness. Strength and nerves had been

sufficiently weakened already. For his wife's sake, his people's sake,

his honourable reputation's sake, he must guard himself from a collapse

which might mean far more than physical failure.

So in the most patient methodical way he began to plan out the immediate

future. As to waiting, the matter was still in Catherine's hands; but he

knew that finely tempered soul; he knew that when she had mastered her

poor woman's self, as she had always mastered it from her childhood, she

would not bid him wait. He hardly took the possibility into

consideration. The proposal had had some reality in his eyes when he

went to see Mr. Grey; now it had none, though he could hardly have

explained why.

He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to take his

duty during his absence on the Continent. It had been originally

suggested that this Mr. Armitstead should come to Murewell on the Monday

following the Sunday they were now approaching, spend a few days with

them before their departure, and be left to his own devices in the house

and parish, about the Thursday or Friday. An intense desire now seized

Robert to get hold of the man at once, before the next Sunday. It was

strange how the interview with his wife seemed to have crystallised,

precipitated, everything. How infinitely more real the whole matter

looked to him since the afternoon! It had passed--at any rate for the

time--out of the region of thought, into the hurrying evolution of

action, and as soon as action began it was characteristic of Robert's

rapid energetic nature to feel this thirst, to make it as prompt, as

complete, as possible. The fiery soul yearned for a fresh consistency,

though it were a consistency of loss and renunciation.

To-morrow he must write to the bishop. The bishop's residence was only

eight or ten miles from Murewell; he supposed his interview with him

would take place about Monday or Tuesday. He could see the tall stooping

figure of the kindly old man rising to meet him; he knew exactly the

sort of arguments that would be brought to bear upon him. Oh, that it

were done with--this wearisome dialectical necessity! His life for

months had been one long argument. If he were but left free to feel, and

live again!

The practical matter which weighed most heavily upon him was the

function connected with the opening of the new Institute, which had been

fixed for the Saturday--the next day but one. How was he--but much more

how was Catherine--to get through it? His lips would be sealed as to any

possible withdrawal from the living, for he could not by then have seen

the bishop. He looked forward to the gathering, the crowds, the local

enthusiasm, the signs of his own popularity, with a sickening distaste.

The one thing real to him through it all would be Catherine's white

face, and their bitter joint consciousness.

And then he said to himself, sharply, that his own feelings counted for

nothing. Catherine should be tenderly shielded from all avoidable pain,

but for himself there must be no flinching, no self-indulgent weakness.

Did he not owe every last hour he had to give to the people amongst whom

he had planned to spend the best energies of life, and for whom his own

act was about to part him in this lame impotent fashion?

Midnight! The sounds rolled silverly out, effacing the soft murmurs of

the night. So the long interminable day was over, and a new morning had

begun. He rose, listening to the echoes of the bell, and--as the tide of

feeling surged back upon him--passionately commending the new-born day

to God.

Then he turned towards the house, put the light out in the drawing-room,

and went upstairs, stepping cautiously. He opened the door of

Catherine's room. The moonlight was streaming in through the white

blinds. Catherine, who had undressed, was lying now with her face hidden

in the pillow, and one white-sleeved arm flung across little Mary's cot.

The night was hot, and the child would evidently have thrown off all its

coverings had it not been for the mother's hand, which lay lightly on

the tiny shoulder, keeping one thin blanket in its place.

'Catherine,' he whispered, standing beside her.

She turned, and by the light of the candle he held shaded from her he

saw the austere remoteness of her look, as of one who had been going

through deep waters of misery, alone with God. His heart sank. For the

first time that look seemed to exclude him from her inmost life.

He sank down beside her, took the hand lying on the child, and laid down

his head upon it, mutely kissing it. But he said nothing. Of what

further avail could words be just then to either of them? Only he felt

through every fibre the coldness, the irresponsiveness of those fingers

lying in his.

'Would it prevent your sleeping,' he asked her presently, 'if I came to

read here, as I used to when you were ill? I could shade the light from

you, of course.'

She raised her head suddenly.

'But you--you ought to sleep.'

Her tone was anxious, but strangely quiet and aloof.

'Impossible!' he said, pressing his hand over his eyes as he rose. 'At

any rate I will read first.'

His sleeplessness at any time of excitement or strain was so inveterate,

and so familiar to them both by now, that she could say nothing. She

turned away with a long sobbing breath, which seemed to go through her

from head to foot. He stood a moment beside her, fighting strong

impulses of remorse and passion, and ultimately maintaining silence and

self-control.

In another minute or two he was sitting beside her feet, in a low chair

drawn to the edge of the bed, the light arranged so as to reach his book

without touching either mother or child. He had run over the book-shelf

in his own room, shrinking painfully from any of his common religious

favourites as one shrinks from touching a still sore and throbbing

nerve, and had at last carried off a volume of Spenser.

And so the night began to wear away. For the first hour or two, every

now and then, a stifled sob would make itself just faintly heard. It was

a sound to wring the heart, for what it meant was that not even

Catherine Elsmere's extraordinary powers of self-suppression could avail

to check the outward expression of an inward torture. Each time it came

and went, it seemed to Elsmere that a fraction of his youth went with

it.

At last exhaustion brought her a restless sleep. As soon as Elsmere

caught the light breathing which told him she was not conscious of her

grief, or of him, his book slipped on to his knee.

'Open the temple gates unto my love,

Open them wide that she may enter in,

And all the posts adorn as doth behove,

And all the pillars deck with garlands trim,

For to receive this saint with honour due

That cometh in to you.

With trembling steps and humble reverence,

She cometh in before the Almighty's view.'

The leaves fell over as the book dropped, and these lines, which had

been to him, as to other lovers, the utterance of his own bridal joy,

emerged. They brought about him a host of images--a little gray church

penetrated everywhere by the roar of a swollen river; outside, a road

filled with empty farmers' carts, and shouting children carrying

branches of mountain-ash--winding on and up into the heart of wild hills

dyed with reddening fern, the sun-gleams stealing from crag to crag, and

shoulder to shoulder; inside, row after row of intent faces, all turned

towards the central passage, and, moving towards him, a figure 'clad all

in white, that seems a virgin best,' whose every step brings nearer to

him the heaven of his heart's desire. Everything is plain to him--Mrs.

Thornburgh's round cheeks 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 he

knows well that out of all griefs, the grief he has brought upon her in

two short years is the one which will seem to her hardest to bear. Very

few women of the present day could feel this particular calamity as

Catherine Elsmere must feel it.

'Was it a crime to love and win you, my darling?' he cried to her in his

heart. 'Ought I to have had more self-knowledge? could I have guessed

where I was taking you? Oh, how could I know--how could I know.'

But it was impossible to him to sink himself wholly in the past.

Inevitably such a nature as Elsmere's turns very quickly from despair to

hope; from the sense of failure to the passionate planning of new

effort. In time will he not be able to comfort her, and, after a

miserable moment of transition, to repair her trust in him and make

their common life once more rich towards God and man? There must be

painful readjustment and friction, no doubt. He tries to see the facts

as they truly are, fighting against his own optimist tendencies, and

realising as best he can all the changes which his great change must

introduce into their most intimate relations. But after all can love and

honesty and a clear conscience do nothing to bridge over, nay, to

efface, such differences as theirs will be?

Oh to bring her to understand him! At this moment he shrinks painfully

from the thought of touching her faith--his own sense of loss is too

heavy, too terrible. But if she will only be still open with him!--still

give him her deepest heart, any lasting difference between them will

surely be impossible. Each will complete the other, and love knit up the

ravelled strands again into a stronger unity.

Gradually he lost himself in half-articulate prayer, in the solemn

girding of the will to this future task of a recreating love. And by the

time the morning light had well established itself sleep had fallen on

him. When he became sensible of the longed-for drowsiness, he merely

stretched out a tired hand and drew over him a shawl hanging at the foot

of the bed. He was too utterly worn out to think of moving.

When he woke the sun was streaming into the room, and behind him sat the

tiny Mary on the edge of the bed, the rounded apple cheeks and wild-bird

eyes aglow with mischief and delight. She had climbed out of her cot,

and, finding no check to her progress, had crept on, till now she sat

triumphantly, 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 in

his sleep had awed the baby sense.

But Catherine was gone.

He sprang up with a start. Mary was frightened by the abrupt movement,

perhaps disappointed by the escape of her prey, and raised a sudden

wail.

He carried her to her nurse, even forgetting to kiss the little wet

cheek, ascertained that Catherine was not in the house, and then came

back, miserable, with the bewilderment of sleep still upon him. A sense

of wrong rose high within him. How _could_ she have left him thus

without a word?

It had been her way, sometimes, during the summer, to go out early to

one or other of the sick folk who were under her especial charge.

Possibly she had gone to a woman, just confined, on the farther side of

the village, who yesterday had been in danger.

But, whatever explanation he could make for himself, he was none the

less irrationally wretched. He bathed, dressed, and sat down to his

solitary meal in a state of tension and agitation indescribable. All the

exaltation, the courage of the night, was gone.

Nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and no sign of Catherine.

'Your mistress must have been detained somewhere,' he said as quietly

and carelessly as he could to Susan, the parlour-maid, who had been with

them since their marriage. 'Leave breakfast things for one.'

'Mistress took a cup of milk when she went out, cook says,' observed the

little maid with a consoling intention, wondering the while at the

rector's haggard mien and restless movements.

'Nursing other people indeed!' she observed severely downstairs, glad as

we all are at times to pick holes in excellence which is inconveniently

high. 'Missis had a deal better stay at home and nurse _him_!'

The day was excessively hot. Not a leaf moved in the garden; over the

cornfield the air danced in long vibrations of heat; the woods and hills

beyond were indistinct and colourless. Their dog Dandy lay sleeping in

the sun, waking up every now and then to avenge himself on the flies. On

the far edge of the cornfield reaping was beginning. Robert stood on the

edge of the sunk fence, his blind eyes resting on the line of men, his

ear catching the shouts of the farmer directing operations from his gray

horse. He could do nothing. The night before, in the wood-path, he had

clearly mapped out the day's work. A mass of business was waiting,

clamouring to be done. He tried to begin on this or that, and gave up

everything with a groan, wandering out again to the gate on to the

wood-path to sweep the distances of road or field with hungry straining

eyes.

The wildest fears had taken possession of him. Running in his head was a

passage from _The confessions_, describing Monica's horror of her son's

heretical opinions. 'Shrinking from and detesting the blasphemies of his

error, she began to doubt whether it was right in her to allow her son

to live in her house and to eat at the same table with her;' and the

mother's heart, he remembered, could only be convinced of the lawfulness

of its own yearning by a prophetic vision of the youth's conversion. He

recalled, with a shiver, how in the life of Madame Guyon, after

describing the painful and agonising death of a kind but comparatively

irreligious husband, she quietly adds, 'As soon as I heard that my

husband had just expired, I said to Thee, O my God, Thou hast broken my

bonds, and I will offer to Thee a sacrifice of praise!' He thought of

John Henry Newman, disowning all the ties of kinship with his younger

brother because of divergent views on the question of baptismal

regeneration; of the long tragedy of Blanco White's life, caused by the

slow dropping-off of friend after friend, on the ground of heretical

belief. What right had he, or any one in such a strait as his, to assume

that the faith of the present is no longer capable of the same stern

self-destructive consistency as the faith of the past? He knew that to

such Christian purity, such Christian inwardness as Catherine's, the

ultimate sanction and legitimacy of marriage rest, both in theory and

practice, on a common acceptance of the definite commands and promises

of a miraculous revelation. He had had a proof of it in Catherine's

passionate repugnance to the idea of Rose's marriage with Edward

Langham.

Eleven o'clock striking from the distant tower. He walked desperately

along the wood-path, meaning to go through the copse at the end of it

towards the park, and look there. He had just passed into the copse, a

thick interwoven mass of young trees, when he heard the sound of the

gate which on the farther side of it led on to the road. He hurried on;

the trees closed behind him; the grassy path broadened; and there, under

an arch of young oak and hazel, stood Catherine, arrested by the sound

of his step. He, too, stopped at the sight of her; he could not go on.

Husband and wife looked at each other one long quivering moment. Then

Catherine sprang forward with a sob and threw herself on his breast.

They clung to each other, she in a passion of tears--tears of such

self-abandonment as neither Robert nor any other living soul had ever

seen Catherine Elsmere shed before. As for him he was trembling from

head to foot, his arms scarcely strong enough to hold her, his young

worn face bent down over her.

'Oh, Robert!' she sobbed at last, putting up her hand and touching his

hair, 'you look so pale, so sad.'

'I have you again!' he said simply.

A thrill of remorse ran through her.

'I went away,' she murmured, her face still hidden--'I went away,

because when I woke up it all seemed to me, suddenly, too ghastly to be

believed; I could not stay still and bear it. But, Robert, Robert, I

kissed you as I passed! I was so thankful you could sleep a little and

forget. I hardly know where I have been most of the time--I think I have

been sitting in a corner of the park, where no one ever comes. I began

to think of all you said to me last night--to put it together--to try

and understand it, and it seemed to me more and more horrible! I thought

of what it would be like to have to hide my prayers from you--my faith

in Christ--my hope of heaven. I thought of bringing up the child--how

all that was vital to me would be a superstition to you, which you would

bear with for my sake. I thought of death,' and she shuddered--'your

death, or my death, and how this change in you would cleave a gulf of

misery between us. And then I thought of losing my own faith, of denying

Christ. It was a nightmare--I saw myself on a long road, escaping with

Mary in my arms, escaping from you! Oh, Robert! it wasn't only for

myself,'--and she clung to him as though she were a child, confessing,

explaining away, some grievous fault hardly to be forgiven. 'I was

agonised by the thought that I was not my own--I and my child were

_Christ's_. Could I risk what was His? Other men and women had died, had

given up all for His sake. Is there no one now strong enough to suffer

torment, to kill even love itself rather than deny Him--rather than

crucify Him afresh?'

She paused, struggling for breath. The terrible excitement of that

bygone 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. One

moment I was sitting up looking straight before me, without a tear,

thinking of what was the least I must do, even--even--if you and I

stayed together--of all the hard compacts and conditions I must

make--judging you all the while from a long, long distance, and feeling

as though I had buried the old self--sacrificed the old heart--for ever!

And the next I was lying on the ground crying for you, Robert, crying

for you! Your face had come back to me as you lay there in the early

morning light. I thought how I had kissed you--how pale and gray and

thin you looked. Oh, how I loathed myself! That I should think it could

be God's will that I should leave you, or torture you, my poor husband!

I had not only been wicked towards you--I had offended Christ. I could

think of nothing as I lay there--again and again--but "_Little children,

love one another; little children, love one another._" Oh, my

beloved,'--and she looked up with the solemnest, tenderest smile

breaking on the marred tear-stained face,--'I will never give up hope, I

will pray for you night and day. God will bring you back. You cannot

lose yourself so. No, no! His grace is stronger than our wills. But I

will not preach to you--I will not persecute you--I will only live

beside you--in your heart--and love you always. Oh, how could I--how

could I have such thoughts!'

And again she broke off, weeping, as if to the tender torn heart the

only crime that could not be forgiven was its own offence against love.

As for him he was beyond speech. If he had ever lost his vision of God,

his 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 your

word for it that it is best not, that it would do no good. The only hope

is in time--and prayer. I must suffer, dear, I must be weak sometimes;

but oh, I am so sorry for you! Kiss me, forgive me, Robert; I will be

your faithful wife unto our lives' end.'

He kissed her, and in that kiss, so sad, so pitiful, so clinging, their

new life was born.

CHAPTER XXX

But the problem of these two lives was not solved by a burst of feeling.

Without that determining impulse of love and pity in Catherine's heart

the salvation of an exquisite bond might indeed have been impossible.

But in spite of it the laws of character had still to work themselves

inexorably out on either side.

The whole gist of the matter for Elsmere lay really in this question:

Hidden in Catherine's nature, was there, or was there not, the true

stuff of fanaticism? Madame Guyon left her infant children to the

mercies of chance, while she followed the voice of God to the holy war

with heresy. Under similar conditions Catherine Elsmere might have

planned the same. Could she ever have carried it out?

And yet the question is still ill stated. For the influences of our

modern time on religious action are so blunting and dulling, because in

truth the religious motive itself is being constantly modified, whether

the religious person knows it or not. Is it possible now for a good

woman with a heart, in Catherine Elsmere's position, to maintain herself

against love, and all those subtle forces to which such a change as

Elsmere's opens the house doors, without either hardening, or greatly

yielding? Let Catherine's further story give some sort of an answer.

Poor soul! As they sat together in the study, after he had brought her

home, Robert, with averted eyes, went through the plans he had already

thought into shape. Catherine listened, saying almost nothing. But

never, never had she loved this life of theirs so well as now that she

was called on, at barely a week's notice, to give it up for ever! For

Robert's scheme, in which her reason fully acquiesced, was to keep to

their plan of going to Switzerland, he having first, of course, settled

all things with the bishop, and having placed his living in the hands of

Mowbray Elsmere. When they left the rectory, in a week or ten days'

time, he proposed, in fact, his voice almost inaudible as he did so,

that Catherine should leave it for good.

'Everybody had better suppose,' he said choking, 'that we are coming

back. Of course we need say nothing. Armitstead will be here for next

week certainly. Then afterwards I can come down and manage everything. I

shall get it over in a day if I can, and see nobody. I cannot say

good-bye, nor can you.'

'And next Sunday, Robert?' she asked him, after a pause.

'I shall write to Armitstead this afternoon and ask him, if he possibly

can, to come to-morrow afternoon, instead of Monday, and take the

service.'

Catherine's hands clasped each other still more closely. So then she had

heard her husband's voice for the last time in the public ministry of

the Church, in prayer, in exhortation, in benediction! One of the most

sacred traditions of her life was struck from her at a blow.

It was long before either of them spoke again. Then she ventured another

question.

'And have you any idea of what we shall do next, Robert--of--of our

future?'

'Shall we try London for a little?' he answered in a queer strained

voice, leaning against the window, and looking out, that he might not

see her. 'I should find work among the poor--so would you--and I could

go on with my book. And your mother and sister will probably be there

part of the winter.'

She acquiesced silently. How mean and shrunken a future it seemed to

them both, beside the wide and honourable range of his clergyman's life

as he and she had developed it. But she did not dwell long on that. Her

thoughts were suddenly invaded by the memory of a cottage tragedy in

which she had recently taken a prominent part. A girl, a child of

fifteen, from one of the crowded Mile End hovels, had gone at Christmas

to a distant farm as servant, and come back a month ago, ruined, the

victim of an outrage over which Elsmere had ground his teeth in fierce

and helpless anger. Catherine had found her a shelter, and was to see

her through her 'trouble'; the girl, a frail half-witted creature, who

could find no words even to bewail herself, clinging to her the while

with the dumbest, pitifulest tenacity.

How _could_ she leave that girl? It was as if all the fibres of life

were being violently wrenched from all their natural connections.

'Robert!' she cried at last with a start. 'Had you forgotten the

Institute 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 through

it?'

'But there are all those flags and wreaths,' she said, getting up in

pained bewilderment. 'I must go and look after them.'

He caught her in his arms.

'Oh, my wife, my wife, forgive me!' It was a groan of misery. She put up

her hands and pressed his hair back from his temples.

'I love you, Robert,' she said simply, her face colourless, but

perfectly calm.

Half an hour later, after he had worked through some letters, he went

into the workroom and found her surrounded with flags, and a vast litter

of paper roses and evergreens, which she and the new agent's daughters

who had come up to help her were putting together for the decorations of

the morrow. Mary was tottering from chair to chair in high glee, a big

pink rose stuck in the belt of her pinafore. His pale wife, trying to

smile and talk as usual, her lap full of evergreens, and her politeness

exercised by the chatter of the two Miss Batesons, seemed to Robert one

of the most pitiful spectacles he had ever seen. He fled from it out

into the village driven by a restless longing for change and movement.

Here he found a large gathering round the new Institute. There were

carpenters at work on a triumphal arch in front, and close by, an

admiring circle of children and old men, huddling in the shade of a

great chestnut.

Elsmere spent an hour in the building, helping and superintending,

stabbed every now and then by the unsuspecting friendliness of those

about him, or worried by their blunt comments on his looks. He could not

bear more than a glance into the new rooms apportioned to the

Naturalists' Club. There against the wall stood the new glass cases he

had wrung out of the squire, with various new collections lying near,

ready to be arranged and unpacked when time allowed. The old collections

stood out bravely in the added space and light; the walls were hung here

and there with a wonderful set of geographical pictures he had carried

off from a London exhibition, and fed his boys on for weeks; the floors

were freshly matted; the new pine fittings gave out their pleasant

cleanly scent; the white paint of doors and windows shone in the August

sun. The building had been given by the squire. The fittings and

furniture had been mainly of his providing. What uses he had planned for

it all!--only to see the fruits of two years' effort out of doors, and

personal frugality at home, handed over to some possibly unsympathetic

stranger. The heart beat painfully against the iron bars of fate,

rebelling against the power of a mental process so to affect a man's

whole practical and social life!

He went out at last by the back of the Institute, where a little bit of

garden, spoilt with building materials, led down to a lane.

At the end of the garden, beside the untidy gap in the hedge made by the

builders' carts, he saw a man standing, who turned away down the lane,

however, as soon as the rector's figure emerged into view.

Robert had recognised the slouching gait and unwieldy form of Henslowe.

There were at this moment all kinds of gruesome stories afloat in the

village about the ex-agent. It was said that he was breaking up fast; it

was known that he was extensively in debt; and the village shopkeepers

had already held an agitated meeting or two, to decide upon the best

mode of getting their money out of him, and upon a joint plan of

cautious action towards his custom in future. The man, indeed, was

sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of sordid misery, maintaining all

the while a snarling exasperating front to the world, which was rapidly

converting the careless half-malicious pity wherewith the village had

till now surveyed his fall into that more active species of baiting

which the human animal is never very loth to try upon the limping

specimens of his race.

Henslowe stopped and turned as he heard the steps behind him. Six

months' self-murdering had left ghastly traces. He was many degrees

nearer the brute than he had been even when Robert made his ineffectual

visit. But at this actual moment Robert's practised eye--for every

English parish clergyman becomes dismally expert in the pathology of

drunkenness--saw that there was no fight in him. He was in one of the

drunkard's periods of collapse--shivering, flabby, starting at every

sound, a misery to himself and a spectacle to others.

'Mr. Henslowe!' cried Robert, still pursuing him, 'may I speak to you a

moment?'

The ex-agent turned, his prominent bloodshot eyes glowering at the

speaker. But he had to catch at his stick for support, or at the nervous

shock of Robert's summons his legs would have given way under him.

Robert came up with him and stood a second, fronting the evil silence of

the other, his boyish face deeply flushed. Perhaps the grotesqueness of

that former scene was in his mind. Moreover, the vestry meetings had

furnished Henslowe with periodical opportunities for venting his gall on

the rector, and they had never been neglected. But he plunged on boldly.

'I am going away next week, Mr. Henslowe; I shall be away some

considerable time. Before I go I should like to ask you whether you do

not think the feud between us had better cease. Why will you persist in

making an enemy of me? If I did you an injury it was neither wittingly

nor willingly. I know you have been ill and I gather that--that--you are

in trouble. If I could stand between you and further mischief I

would--most gladly. If help--or--or money----' He paused. He shrewdly

suspected, indeed, from the reports that reached him, that Henslowe was

on the brink of bankruptcy.

The rector had spoken with the utmost diffidence and delicacy, but

Henslowe found energy in return for an outburst of quavering animosity,

from which, however, physical weakness had extracted all its sting.

'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 he

turned away with as much of an attempt at dignity as his shaking limbs

would allow of.

'Listen, Mr. Henslowe,' said Robert firmly, walking beside him; 'you

know--I know--that if this goes on, in a year's time you will be in your

grave, and your poor wife and children struggling to keep themselves

from the workhouse. You may think that I have no right to preach to

you--that you are the older man--that it is an intrusion. But what is

the good of blinking facts that you must know all the world knows? Come,

now, Mr. Henslowe, let us behave for a moment as though this were our

last meeting. Who knows? the chances of life are many. Lay down your

grudge against me, and let me speak to you as one struggling human being

to another. The fact that you have, as you say, become less prosperous,

in some sort through me, seems to give me a right--to make it a duty for

me, if you will--to help you if I can. Let me send a good doctor to see

you. Let me implore you as a last chance to put yourself into his

hands, and to obey him, and your wife; and let me,'--the rector

hesitated,--'let me make things pecuniarily easier for Mrs. Henslowe

till you have pulled yourself out of the hole in which, by common report

at least, you are now.'

Henslowe stared at him, divided between anger caused by the sore

stirring of his old self-importance, and a tumultuous flood of

self-pity, roused irresistibly in him by Robert's piercing frankness,

and aided by his own more or less maudlin condition. The latter

sensation quickly undermined the former; he turned his back on the

rector and leant over the railings of the lane, shaken by something it

is hardly worth while to dignify by the name of emotion. Robert stood

by, a pale embodiment of mingled judgment and compassion. He gave the

man a few moments to recover himself, and then, as Henslowe turned round

again, he silently and appealingly held out his hand--the hand of the

good man, which it was an honour for such as Henslowe to touch.

Constrained by the moral force radiating from his look, the other took

it with a kind of helpless sullenness.

Then, seizing at once on the slight concession, with that complete lack

of inconvenient self-consciousness, or hindering indecision, which was

one of the chief causes of his effect on men and women, Robert began to

sound the broken repulsive creature as to his affairs. Bit by bit,

compelled by a will and nervous strength far superior to his own,

Henslowe was led into abrupt and blurted confidences which surprised no

one so much as himself. Robert's quick sense possessed itself of point

after point, seeing presently ways of escape and relief which the

besotted brain beside him had been quite incapable of devising for

itself. They walked on into the open country, and what with the

discipline of the rector's presence, the sobering effect wrought by the

shock to pride and habit, and the unwonted brain exercise of the

conversation, the demon in Henslowe had been for the moment most

strangely tamed after half an hour's talk. Actually some reminiscences

of his old ways of speech and thought, the ways of the once prosperous

and self-reliant man of business, had reappeared in him before the end

of it, called out by the subtle influence of a manner which always

attracted to the surface whatever decent element there might be left in

a man, and then instantly gave it a recognition which was more redeeming

than either counsel or denunciation.

By the time they parted Robert had arranged with his old enemy that he

should become his surety with a rich cousin in Churton, who, always

supposing there were no risk in the matter, and that benevolence ran on

all-fours with security of investment, was prepared to shield the credit

of the family by the advance of a sufficient sum of money to rescue the

ex-agent from his most pressing difficulties. He had also wrung from him

the promise to see a specialist in London--Robert writing that evening

to make the appointment.

How had it been done? Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever quite knew.

Henslowe walked home in a bewilderment which for once had nothing to do

with brandy, but was simply the result of a moral shock acting on what

was still human in the man's debased consciousness, just as electricity

acts on the bodily frame.

Robert, on the other hand, saw him depart with a singular lightening of

mood. What he seemed to have achieved might turn out to be the merest

moonshine. At any rate, the incident had appeased in him a kind of

spiritual hunger--the hunger to escape a while from that incessant

process of destructive analysis with which the mind was still beset,

into some use of energy, more positive, human, and beneficent.

The following day was one long trial of endurance for Elsmere and for

Catherine. She pleaded to go, promising quietly to keep out of his

sight, and they started together--a miserable pair.

Crowds, heat, decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuous

among them the squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by side

with a white and radiant Lady Helen--the outer success, the inner revolt

and pain--and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that

hid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the one

thing sharply present to him--these were the sort of impressions that

remained with Elsmere afterwards of this last meeting with his people.

He had made a speech, of which he never could remember a word. As he sat

down, there had been a slight flutter of surprise in the sympathetic

looks of those about him, as though the tone of it had been somewhat

unexpected and disproportionate to the occasion. Had he betrayed himself

in any way? He looked for Catherine, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Only in his search he caught the squire's ironical glance, and wondered

with quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been talking.

Then a neighbouring clergyman, who had been his warm supporter and

admirer from the beginning, sprang up and made a rambling panegyric on

him and on his work, which Elsmere writhed under. His work! absurdity!

What could be done in two years? He saw it all as the merest nothing, a

ragged beginning which might do more harm than good.

But the cheering was incessant, the popular feeling intense. There was

old Milsom waving a feeble arm: John Allwood gaunt, but radiant; Mary

Sharland, white still as the ribbons on her bonnet, egging on her

flushed and cheering husband; and the club boys grinning and shouting,

partly for love of Elsmere, mostly because to the young human animal

mere noise is heaven. In front was an old hedger and ditcher, who came

round the parish periodically, and never failed to take Elsmere's

opinion as to 'a bit of prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancient

as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely

to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their

eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast

entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old

tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone

through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons,

welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his

queer innocuous wit. Robert had had many a gay argumentative walk with

him, and he and his companion had tramped miles to see the function, to

rattle their sticks on the floor in Elsmere's honour, and satiate their

curious gaze on the squire.

When all was over, Elsmere, with his wife on his arm, mounted the hill

to the rectory, leaving the green behind them still crowded with folk.

Once inside the shelter of their own trees, husband and wife turned

instinctively and caught each other's hands. A low groan broke from

Elsmere's lips; Catherine looked at him one moment, then fell weeping on

his breast. The first chapter of their common life was closed.

* * * * *

One thing more, however, of a private nature, remained for Elsmere to

do. Late in the afternoon he walked over to the Hall.

He found the squire in the inner library, among his German books, his

pipe in his mouth, his old smoking coat and slippers bearing witness to

the rapidity and joy with which he had shut the world out again after

the futilities of the morning. His mood was more accessible than Elsmere

had yet found it since his return.

'Well, have you done with all those tomfooleries, Elsmere? Precious

eloquent speech you made! When I see you and people like you throwing

yourselves at the heads of the people, I always think of Scaliger's

remark about the Basques: "They say they understand one another--_I

don't believe a word of it!_" All that the lower class _wants_ to

understand, at any rate, is the shortest way to the pockets of you and

me; all that you and I need understand, according to me, is how to keep

'em off! There you have the sum and substance of _my_ political

philosophy.'

'You remind me,' said Robert drily, sitting down on one of the library

stools, 'of some of those sentiments you expressed so forcibly on the

first evening of our acquaintance.'

The squire received the shaft with equanimity.

'I was not amiable, I remember, on that occasion,' he said coolly, his

thin, old man's fingers moving the while among the shelves of books,

'nor on several subsequent ones. I had been made a fool of, and you were

not particularly adroit. But of course you won't acknowledge it. Who

ever yet got a parson to confess himself!'

'Strangely enough, Mr. Wendover,' said Robert, fixing him with a pair

of deliberate feverish eyes, 'I am here at this moment for that very

purpose.'

'Go on,' said the squire, turning, however, to meet the rector's look,

his gold spectacles falling forward over his long hooked nose, his

attitude one of sudden attention. 'Go on.'

All his grievances against Elsmere returned to him. He stood

aggressively waiting.

Robert paused a moment, and then said abruptly--

'Perhaps even you will agree, Mr. Wendover, that I had some reason for

sentiment this morning. Unless I read the lessons to-morrow, which is

possible, to-day has been my last public appearance as rector of this

parish!'

The squire looked at him dumfoundered.

'And your reasons?' he said, with quick imperativeness.

Robert gave them. He admitted, as plainly and bluntly as he had done to

Grey, the squire's own part in the matter; but here a note of

antagonism, almost of defiance, crept even into his confession of wide

and illimitable defeat. He was there, so to speak, to hand over his

sword. But to the squire, his surrender had all the pride of victory.

'Why should you give up your living?' asked the squire after several

minutes' complete silence.

He too had sat down, and was now bending forward, his sharp small eyes

peering at his companion.

'Simply because I prefer to feel myself an honest man. However, I have

not acted without advice. Grey of St. Anselm's--you know him of

course--was a very close personal friend of mine at Oxford. I have been

to see him, and we agreed it was the only thing to do.'

'Oh, Grey,' exclaimed the squire, with a movement of impatience. 'Grey

of course wanted you to set up a church of your own, or to join his! He

is like all idealists, he has the usual foolish contempt for the

compromise of institutions.'

'Not at all,' said Robert calmly, 'you are mistaken; he has the most

sacred respect for institutions. He only thinks it well, and I agree

with him, that with regard to a man's public profession and practice he

should recognise that two and two make four.'

It was clear to him from the squire's tone and manner that Mr.

Wendover's instincts on the point were very much what he had expected,

the instincts of the philosophical man of the world, who scorns the

notion of taking popular beliefs seriously, whether for protest or for

sympathy. But he was too weary to argue. The squire, however, rose

hastily and began to walk up and down in a gathering storm of

irritation. The triumph gained for his own side, the tribute to his

life's work, were at the moment absolutely indifferent to him. They were

effaced by something else much harder to analyse. Whatever it was, it

drove him to throw himself upon Robert's position with a perverse

bewildering bitterness.

'Why should you break up your life in this wanton way? Who, in God's

name, is injured if you keep your living? It is the business of the

thinker and the scholar to clear his mind of cobwebs. Granted. You have

done it. But it is also the business of the practical man to live! If I

had your altruist emotional temperament, I should not hesitate for a

moment. I should regard the historical expressions of an eternal

tendency in men as wholly indifferent to me. If I understand you aright,

you have flung away the sanctions of orthodoxy. There is no other in the

way. Treat words as they deserve. _You_'--and the speaker laid an

emphasis on the pronoun which for the life of him he could not help

making sarcastic--'_you_ will always have Gospel enough to preach.'

'I cannot,' Robert repeated quietly, unmoved by the taunt, if it was

one. 'I am in a different stage, I imagine, from you. Words--that is to

say, the specific Christian formulae--may be indifferent to you, though a

month or two ago I should hardly have guessed it; they are just now

anything but indifferent to me.'

The squire's brow grew darker. He took up the argument again, more

pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe

and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold. Robert's resentment was

roused at last. The squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable,

his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He

got up to take his leave.

'What you are about to do, Elsmere,' the squire wound up with saturnine

emphasis, 'is a piece of _cowardice_! You will live bitterly to regret

the haste and the unreason of it.'

'There has been no haste,' exclaimed Robert in the low tone of

passionate emotion; 'I have not rooted up the most sacred growths of

life as a careless child devastates its garden. There are some things

which a man only does because he _must_.'

There was a pause. Robert held out his hand. The squire would hardly

touch it. Outwardly his mood was one of the strangest eccentricity and

anger; and as to what was beneath it, Elsmere's quick divination was

dulled by worry and fatigue. It only served him so far that at the door

he turned back, hat in hand, and said, looking lingeringly the while at

the solitary sombre figure, at the great library, with all its

suggestive and exquisite detail: 'If Monday is fine, Squire, will you

walk?'

The squire made no reply except by another question.

'Do you still keep to your Swiss plans for next week?' he asked sharply.

'Certainly. The plan, as it happens, is a Godsend. But there,' said

Robert, with a sigh, 'let me explain the details of this dismal business

to you on Monday. I have hardly the courage for it now.'

The curtain dropped behind him. Mr. Wendover stood a minute looking

after him; then, with some vehement expletive or other, walked up to

his writing-table, drew some folios that were lying on it towards him,

with hasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the

floor, and plunged doggedly into work.

* * * * *

He and Mrs. Darcy dined alone. After dinner the squire leant against the

mantelpiece sipping his coffee, more gloomily silent than even his

sister had seen him for weeks. And, as always happened when he became

more difficult and morose, she became more childish. She was now wholly

absorbed with a little electric toy she had just bought for Mary

Elsmere, a number of infinitesimal little figures dancing fantastically

under the stimulus of an electric current, generated by the simplest

means. She hung over it absorbed, calling to her brother every now and

then, as though by sheer perversity, to come and look whenever the pink

or the blue _danseuse_ executed a more surprising somersault than usual.

He took not the smallest spoken notice of her, though his eyes followed

her contemptuously as she moved from window to window with her toy in

pursuit of the fading light.

'Oh, Roger,' she called presently, still throwing herself to this side

and that, to catch new views of her pith puppets, 'I have got something

to show you. You must admire them--you shall! I have been drawing them

all day, and they are nearly done. You remember what I told you once

about my "imps"? I have seen them all my life, since I was a child in

France with papa, and I have never been able to draw them till the last

few weeks. They are such dears--such darlings; every one will know them

when he sees them! There is the Chinese imp, the low smirking creature,

you know, that sits on the edge of your cup of tea; there is the

flipperty-flopperty creature that flies out at you when you open a

drawer; there is the twisty-twirly person that sits jeering on the edge

of your hat when it blows away from you; and'--her voice dropped--'that

_ugly_, _ugly_ thing I always see waiting for me on the top of a gate.

They have teased me all my life, and now at _last_ I have drawn them. If

they were to take offence to-morrow I should have them--the

beauties--all safe.'

She came towards him, her _bizarre_ little figure swaying from side to

side, her eyes glittering, her restless hands pulling at the lace round

her blanched head and face. The squire, his hands behind him, looked at

her frowning, an involuntary horror dawning on his dark countenance,

turned abruptly, and left the room.

* * * * *

Mr. Wendover worked till midnight; then, tired out, he turned to the bit

of fire to which, in spite of the oppressiveness of the weather, the

chilliness of age and nervous strain had led him to set a light. He sat

there for long, sunk in the blackest reverie. He was the only living

creature in the great library wing which spread around and above

him--the only waking creature in the whole vast pile of Murewell. The

silver lamps shone with a steady melancholy light on the chequered walls

of books. The silence was a silence that could be felt; and the gleaming

Artemis, the tortured frowning Medusa, were hardly stiller in their

frozen calm than the crouching figure of the squire.

So Elsmere was going! In a few weeks the rectory would be once more

tenanted by one of those nonentities the squire had either patronised or

scorned all his life. The park, the lanes, the room in which he sits,

will know that spare young figure, that animated voice, no more. The

outlet which had brought so much relief and stimulus to his own mental

powers is closed; the friendship on which he had unconsciously come to

depend so much is broken before it had well begun.

All sorts of strange thwarted instincts make themselves felt in the

squire. The wife he had once thought to marry, the children he might

have had, come to sit like ghosts with him beside the fire. He had

never, like Augustine, 'loved to love'; he had only loved to know. But

none of us escapes to the last the yearnings which make us men. The

squire becomes conscious that certain fibres he had thought long since

dead in him had been all the while twining themselves silently round the

disciple who had shown him in many respects such a filial consideration

and confidence. That young man might have become to him the son of his

old age, the one human being from whom, as weakness of mind and body

break him down, even his indomitable spirit might have accepted the

sweetness of human pity, the comfort of human help.

And it is his own hand which has done most to break the nascent

slowly-forming tie. He has bereft himself.

With what incredible recklessness had he been acting all these months!

It was the _levity_ of his own proceeding which stared him in the face.

His rough hand had closed on the delicate wings of a soul as a boy

crushes the butterfly he pursues. As Elsmere had stood looking back at

him from the library door, the suffering which spoke in every line of

that changed face had stirred a sudden troubled remorse in Roger

Wendover. It was mere justice that one result of that suffering should

be to leave himself forlorn.

He had been thinking and writing of religion, of the history of ideas,

all his life. Had he ever yet grasped the meaning of religion _to the

religious man_? _God_ and _faith_--what have these venerable ideas ever

mattered to him personally, except as the subjects of the most ingenious

analysis, the most delicate historical inductions? Not only sceptical to

the core, but constitutionally indifferent, the squire had always found

enough to make life amply worth living in the mere dissection of other

men's beliefs.

But to-night! The unexpected shock of feeling, mingled with the terrible

sense, periodically alive in him, of physical doom, seems to have

stripped from the thorny soul its outer defences of mental habit. He

sees once more the hideous spectacle of his father's death, his own

black half-remembered moments of warning, the teasing horror of his

sister's increasing weakness of brain. Life has been on the whole a

burden, though there has been a certain joy no doubt in the fierce

intellectual struggle of it. And to-night it seems so nearly over! A

cold prescience of death creeps over the squire as he sits in the

lamplit silence. His eye seems to be actually penetrating the eternal

vastness which lies about our life. He feels himself old, feeble, alone.

The awe, the terror which are at the root of all religions have fallen

even upon him at last.

The fire burns lower, the night wears on; outside, an airless, misty

moonlight lies over park and field. Hark! was that a sound upstairs, in

one of those silent empty rooms?

The squire half rises, one hand on his chair, his blanched face

strained, listening. Again! Is it a footstep or simply a delusion of the

ear? He rises, pushes aside the curtains into the inner library, where

the lamps have almost burnt away, creeps up the wooden stair, and into

the deserted upper story.

Why was that door into the end room--his father's room--open? He had

seen it closed that afternoon. No one had been there since. He stepped

nearer. Was that simply a gleam of moonlight on the polished

floor--confused lines of shadow thrown by the vine outside? And was that

sound nothing but the stirring of the rising wind of dawn against the

open casement window? Or----

'_My God!_'

The squire fled downstairs. He gained his chair again. He sat upright an

instant, impressing on himself, with sardonic vindictive force, some of

those truisms as to the action of mind on body, of brain-process on

sensation, which it had been part of his life's work to illustrate. The

philosopher had time to realise a shuddering fellowship of weakness with

his kind, to see himself as a helpless instance of an inexorable law,

before he fell back in his chair; a swoon, born of pitiful human

terror--terror of things unseen--creeping over heart and brain.

BOOK V

ROSE

CHAPTER XXXI

It was a November afternoon. London lay wrapped in rainy fog. The

atmosphere was such as only a Londoner can breathe with equanimity, and

the gloom was indescribable.

Meanwhile, in defiance of the Inferno outside, festal preparations were

being made in a little house on Campden Hill. Lamps were lit; in the

drawing-room chairs were pushed back; the piano was open, and a violin

stand towered beside it; chrysanthemums were everywhere; an invalid lady

in a 'best cap' occupied the sofa; and two girls were flitting about,

clearly making the last arrangements necessary for a 'musical

afternoon.'

The invalid was Mrs. Leyburn, the girls, of course, Rose and Agnes. Rose

at last was safely settled in her longed-for London, and an artistic

company, 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 conscious

that 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 perfectly

aware of it. Towards her sick mother, indeed, she had controlled

herself; nor, for such a restless creature, had she made a bad nurse.

But Agnes had endured much, and found it all the harder because she was

so totally in the dark as to the whys and wherefores of her sister's

moods.

Rose herself would have scornfully denied that any whys and

wherefores--beyond her rooted dislike of Whindale--existed. Since her

return from Berlin, and especially since that moment when, as she was

certain, Mr. Langham had avoided her and Catherine at the National

Gallery, she had been calmly certain of her own heart-wholeness. Berlin

had developed her precisely as she had desired that it might. The

necessities of the Bohemian student's life had trained her to a new

independence and shrewdness, and in her own opinion she was now a woman

of the world judging all things by pure reasons.

Oh, of course, she understood him perfectly. In the first place, at the

time of their first meeting she had been a mere bread-and-butter miss,

the easiest of preys for any one who might wish to get a few hours'

amusement and distraction out of her temper and caprices. In the next

place, even supposing he had been ever inclined to fall in love with

her, which her new sardonic fairness of mind obliged her to regard as

entirely doubtful, he was a man to whom marriage was impossible. How

could any one expect such a superfine dreamer to turn bread-winner for a

wife and household? Imagine Mr. Langham interviewed by a rate-collector

or troubled about coals! As to her--simply--she had misunderstood the

laws of the game. It was a little bitter to have to confess it; a little

bitter that he should have seen it, and have felt reluctantly compelled

to recall the facts to her. But, after all, most girls have some young

follies to blush over.

So far the little cynic would get, becoming rather more scarlet,

however, over the process of reflection than was quite compatible with

the ostentatious worldly wisdom of it. Then a sudden inward restlessness

would break through, and she would spend a passionate hour pacing up and

down, and hungering for the moment when she might avenge upon herself

and him the week of silly friendship he had found it necessary as her

elder and monitor to cut short!

In September came the news of Robert's resignation of his living. Mother

and daughters sat looking at each other over the letter, stupefied. That

this calamity, of all others, should have fallen on Catherine, of all

women! Rose said very little, and presently jumped up with shining

excited eyes, and ran out for a walk with Bob, leaving Agnes to console

their tearful and agitated mother. When she came in she went singing

about the house as usual. Agnes, who was moved by the news out of all

her ordinary _sangfroid_, was outraged by what seemed to her Rose's

callousness. _She_ wrote a letter to Catherine, which Catherine put

among her treasures, so strangely unlike it was to the quiet indifferent

Agnes of every day. Rose spent a morning over an attempt at a letter,

which when it reached its destination only wounded Catherine by its

constraint and convention.

And yet that same night when the child was alone, suddenly some phrase

of Catherine's letter recurred to her. She _saw_, as only imaginative

people see, with every detail visualised, her sister's suffering, her

sister's struggle that was to be. She jumped into bed, and, stifling all

sounds under the clothes, cried herself to sleep, which did not prevent

her next morning from harbouring somewhere at the bottom of her, a

wicked and furtive satisfaction that Catherine might now learn there

were more opinions in the world than one.

As for the rest of the valley, Mrs. Leyburn soon passed from bewailing

to a plaintive indignation with Robert, which was a relief to her

daughters. It seemed to her a reflection on 'Richard' that Robert should

have behaved so. 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. In

Mrs. Thornburgh's dismay there was a secret superstitious pang. Perhaps

she had better not have meddled. Perhaps it was never well to meddle.

One event bears many readings, and the tragedy of Catherine Elsmere's

life took shape in the uneasy consciousness of the vicar's spouse as a

more or less sharp admonition against wilfulness in match-making.

Of course Rose had her way as to wintering in London. They came up in

the middle of October while the Elsmeres were still abroad, and settled

into a small house in Lerwick Gardens, Campden Hill, which Catherine had

secured for them on her way through town to the Continent.

As soon as Mrs. Leyburn had been made comfortable, Rose set to work to

look up her friends. She owed her acquaintance in London hitherto mainly

to Mr. and Mrs. Pierson, the young barrister and his aesthetic wife whom

she 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 at

all a bad fellow. His wife, the daughter of a famous Mrs. Leo Hunter of

a bygone generation, was small, untidy, and in all matters of religious

or political opinion 'emancipated' to an extreme. She had also a strong

vein of inherited social ambition, and she and her husband welcomed Rose

with greater effusion than ever, in proportion as she was more beautiful

and more indisputably gifted than ever. They placed themselves and their

house at the girl's service, partly out of genuine admiration and

good-nature, partly also because they divined in her a profitable social

appendage.

For the Piersons, socially, were still climbing, and had by no means

attained. Their world, so far, consisted too much of the odds and ends

of most other worlds. They were not satisfied with it, and the

friendship of the girl-violinist, whose vivacious beauty and artistic

gift made a stir wherever she went, was a very welcome addition to their

resources. They feted her in their own house; they took her to the

houses of other people; society smiled on Miss Leyburn's protectors more

than it had ever smiled on Mr. and Mrs. Pierson taken alone; and

meanwhile Rose, flushed, excited, and totally unsuspicious, thought the

world a fairy tale, and lived from morning till night in a perpetual din

of music, compliments, and bravos, which seemed to her life indeed--life

at last!

With the beginning of November the Elsmeres returned, and about the same

time Rose began to project tea-parties of her own, to which Mrs. Leyburn

gave a flurried assent. When the invitations were written, Rose sat

staring at them a little, pen in hand.

'I wonder what Catherine will say to some of these people!' she

remarked in a dubious voice to Agnes. 'Some of them are queer, I admit;

but, after all, those two superior persons will have to get used to my

friends some time, and they may as well begin.'

'You cannot expect poor Cathie to come,' said Agnes with sudden energy.

Rose's eyebrows went up. Agnes resented her ironical expression, and

with a word or two of quite unusual sharpness got up and went.

Rose, left alone, sprang up suddenly, and clasped her white fingers

above her head, with a long breath.

'Where my heart used to be there is now just--a black--cold--cinder,'

she remarked with sarcastic emphasis. 'I am sure I used to be a nice

girl once, but it is so long ago I 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.

Amongst the cards she had still to fill up was one of which the envelope

was addressed to the Hon. Hugh Flaxman, 90 St. James's Place. Lady

Charlotte, though she had afterwards again left town, had been in Martin

Street at the end of October. The Leyburns had lunched there, and had

been introduced by her to her nephew, and Lady Helen's brother, Mr.

Flaxman. The girls had found him agreeable; he had called the week

afterwards when they were not at home; and Rose now carelessly sent him

a card, with the inward reflection that he was much too great a man to

come, and was probably enjoying himself at country houses, as every

aristocrat should, in November.

The following day the two girls made their way over to Bedford Square,

where the Elsmeres had taken a house in order to be near the British

Museum. They pushed their way upstairs through a medley of

packing-cases, and a sickening smell of paint. There was a sound of an

opening door, and a gentleman stepped out of the back room, which was to

be Elsmere's study, on to the landing.

It was Edward Langham. He and Rose stood and stared at each other a

moment. Then Rose in the coolest, lightest voice introduced him to

Agnes. Agnes, with one curious glance, took in her sister's defiant

smiling ease and the stranger's embarrassment; then she went on to find

Catherine. The two left behind exchanged a few _banal_ questions and

answers. Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face

and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterwards he stood making a study

of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion.

What was it had gone out of her voice--simply the soft callow sounds of

first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve

months--how formidably, consciously brilliant in look and dress and

manner!

Yes, he was still in town--settled there, indeed, for some time. And

she--was there any special day on which Mrs. Leyburn received visitors?

He asked the question, of course, with various hesitations and

circumlocutions.

'Oh dear, yes! Will you come next Wednesday, for instance, and inspect a

musical menagerie? The animals will go through their performances from

four till seven. And I can answer for it that some of the specimens will

be entirely new to you.'