ROBERT ELSMERE
By Mrs. Humphrey Ward
Author of “Miss Bretherton”
BOSTON: DeWOLFE, FISKE & CO., 365 Washington Street
Dedicated to the memory
Of
MY TWO FRIENDS
SEPARATED, IN MY THOUGHT OF THEM, BY MUCH DIVERSITY OF
CIRCUMSTANCE AND OPINION; LINKED, IN MY FAITH ABOUT
THEM, TO EACH OTHER, AND TO ALL THE SINNING
ONES OF THE PAST, BY THE LOVE OF GOD
AND THE SERVICE OF MAN:
THOMAS HILL GREEN
(LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)
Died March 26, 1882
AND
LAURA OCTAVIA MARY LYTTELTON
Died Easter Eve, 1886
[Transcriber’s note: In one section, marked by **, two Greek letters,
delta and epsilon, are transcribed as de. The allusion is to a poem by
Browning--‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’]
[Italics are indicated by underscores.]
BOOK I. WESTMORELAND.
CHAPTER I.
It was a brilliant afternoon toward the end of May. The spring had been
unusually cold and late, and it was evident from the general aspect of
the lonely Westmoreland valley of Long Whindale that warmth and sunshine
had only just penetrated to its bare, green recesses, where the few
scattered trees were fast rushing into their full summer dress, while at
their feet, and along the bank of the stream, the flowers of March and
April still lingered, as though they found it impossible to believe
that their rough brother, the east wind, had at last deserted them. The
narrow road, which was the only link between the farm-houses sheltered
by the crags at the head of the valley, and those far away regions of
town and civilization suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on
the southern horizon, was lined with masses of the white heckberry or
bird-cherry, and ran, an arrowy line of white through the greenness of
the sloping pastures. The sides of some of the little becks running down
into the main river and, many of the plantations round the farms
were gay with the same tree, so that the farm-houses, gray-roofed and
gray-walled, standing in the hollows of the fells, seemed here and there
to have been robbed of all their natural austerity of aspect, and to be
masquerading in a dainty garb of white and green imposed upon them by
the caprice of the spring.
During the greater part of its course the valley of Long Whindale is
tame and featureless. The hills at the lower part are low and rounded,
and the sheep and cattle pasture over slopes unbroken either by wood or
rock. The fields are bare and close shaven by the flocks which feed on
them; the walls run either perpendicularly in many places up the fells
or horizontally along them, so that, save for the wooded course of the
tumbling river and the bush-grown hedges of the road, the whole valley
looks like a green map divided by regular lines of grayish black. But
as the walker penetrates further, beyond a certain bend which the stream
makes half-way from the head of the dale, the hills grow steeper, the
breadth between them contracts, the enclosure lines are broken and
deflected by rocks and patches of plantation, and the few farms stand
more boldly and conspicuously forward, each on its spur of land, looking
up to or away from the great masses of frowning crag which close in the
head of the valley, and which from the moment they come into sight give
it dignity and a wild beauty.
On one of these solitary houses, the afternoon sun, about to descend
before very long behind the hills dividing Long Whindale from Shanmoor,
was still lingering on this May afternoon we are describing, bringing
out the whitewashed porch and the broad bands of white edging the
windows, into relief against the gray stone of the main fabric, the gray
roof overhanging it, and the group of sycamores and Scotch firs which
protected it from the cold east and north. The Western light struck full
on a copper beech, which made a welcome patch of warm color in front of
a long gray line of outhouses standing level with the house, and touched
the heckberry blossom which marked the upward course of the little lane
connecting the old farm with the road; above it rose the green fell,
broken here and there by jutting crags, and below it the ground sank
rapidly through a piece of young hazel plantation, at this present
moment a sheet of bluebells, toward the level of the river. There was a
dainty and yet sober brightness about the whole picture. Summer in the
North is for Nature a time of expansion and of joy as it is elsewhere,
but there is none of that opulence, that sudden splendor and
superabundance, which mark it in the South. In these bare green valleys
there is a sort of delicate austerity even in the summer; the memory of
winter seems to be still lingering about these wind-swept fells, about
the farm-houses, with their rough serviceable walls, of the same stone
as the crags behind them, and the ravines in which the shrunken brooks
trickle musically down through the _débris_ of innumerable Decembers.
The country is blithe, but soberly blithe. Nature shows herself
delightful to man, but there is nothing absorbing or intoxicating about
her. Man is still well able to defend himself against her, to live his
own independent life of labor and of will, and to develop that tenacity
of hidden feeling, that slowly growing intensity of purpose which is so
often wiled out of him by the spells of the South.
The distant aspect of Burwood Farm differed in nothing from that of
the few other farmhouses which dotted the fells or clustered beside the
river between it and the rocky end of the valley. But as one came nearer
certain signs of difference became visible. The garden, instead of being
the old-fashioned medley of phloxes, lavender bushes, monthly roses,
gooseberry trees, herbs, and pampas grass, with which the farmers’ wives
of Long Whindale loved to fill their little front enclosures, was trimly
laid down in turf dotted with neat flowerbeds, full at the moment we
are writing of with orderly patches of scarlet and purple anemones,
wallflowers, and pansies. At the side of the house a new bow window,
modest enough in dimensions and make, had been thrown out on to
another close-shaven piece of lawn, and by its suggestion of a distant
sophisticated order of things disturbed the homely impression left
by the untouched ivy-grown walls, the unpretending porch, and wide
slate-window sills of the front. And evidently the line of sheds
standing level with the dwelling-house no longer sheltered the animals,
the carts, or the tools which make the small capital of a Westmoreland
farmer. The windows in them were new, the doors fresh painted and
closely shut; curtains of some soft outlandish make showed themselves
in what had once been a stable, and the turf stretched smoothly up to a
narrow gravelled path in front of them, unbroken by a single footmark.
No, evidently the old farm, for such it undoubtedly was, had been but
lately, or comparatively lately, transformed to new and softer uses;
that rough patriarchal life of which it had once been a symbol and
centre no longer bustled and clattered through it. It had become the
shelter of new ideals, the home of another and a milder race than once
possessed it.
In a stranger coming upon the house for the first time, on this
particular evening, the sense of a changing social order and a vanishing
past produced by the slight but significant modifications it had
undergone, would have been greatly quickened by certain sounds which
were streaming out on to the evening air from one of the divisions of
that long one-storied addition to the main dwelling we have already
described. Some indefatigable musician inside was practising the violin
with surprising energy and vigor, and within the little garden the
distant murmur of the river and the gentle breathing of the West wind
round the fell were entirely conquered and banished by these triumphant
shakes and turns, or by the flourishes and the broad _cantabile_
passages of one of Spohr’s Andantes. For a while, as the sun sank lower
and lower toward the Shanmoor hills, the hidden artist had it all his,
or her, own way; the valley and its green spaces seemed to be possessed
by this stream of eddying sound, and no other sign of life broke the
gray quiet of the house. But at last, just as the golden ball touched
the summit of the craggy fell, which makes the western boundary of the
dale at its higher end, the house-door opened, and a young girl, shawled
and holding some soft burden in her arms, appeared on the threshold,
and stood there for a moment, as though trying the quality of the air
outside. Her pause of inspection seemed to satisfy her, for she moved
forward, leaving the door open behind her, and, stepping across the
lawn, settled herself in a wicker chair under an apple-tree, which had
only just shed its blossoms on the turf below. She had hardly done so
when one of the distant doors opening on the gravel path flew open,
and another maiden, a slim creature garbed in aesthetic blue, a mass of
reddish brown hair flying back from her face, also stepped out into the
garden.
‘Agnes!’ cried the new-comer, who had the strenuous and dishevelled air
natural to one just emerged from a long violin practice. ‘Has Catherine
come back yet?’
‘Not that I know of. Do come here and look at pussy; did you ever see
anything so comfortable?’
‘You and she look about equally lazy. What have you been doing all the
afternoon?’
‘We look what we are, my dear. Doing? Why, I have been attending to
my domestic duties, arranging the flowers, mending my pink dress for
to-morrow night, and helping to keep mamma in good spirits; she is
depressed because she has been finding Elizabeth out in some waste or
other, and I have been preaching to her to make Elizabeth uncomfortable
if she likes, but not to worrit herself. And after all, pussy and I have
come out for a rest. We’ve earned it, haven’t we, Chattie? And as for
you, Miss Artistic, I should like to know what you’ve been doing for the
good of your kind since dinner. I suppose you had tea at the vicarage?’
The speaker lifted inquiring eyes to her sister as she spoke, her cheek
plunged in the warm fur of a splendid Persian cat, her whole look
and voice expressing the very highest degree of quiet, comfort, and
self-possession. Agnes Leyburn was not pretty; the lower part of the
face was a little heavy in outline and moulding; the teeth were not as
they should have been, and the nose was unsatisfactory. But the eyes
under their long lashes were shrewdness itself, and there was an
individuality in the voice, a cheery even-temperediness in look and
tone, which had a pleasing effect on the bystander. Her dress was neat
and dainty; every detail of it bespoke a young woman who respected both
herself and the fashion.
Her sister, on the other hand, was guiltless of the smallest trace of
fashion. Her skirts were cut with the most engaging naïveté, she was
much adorned with amber beads, and her red brown hair had been tortured
and frizzled to look as much like an aureole as possible. But, on the
other hand, she was a beauty, though at present you felt her a beauty in
disguise, a stage Cinderella as it were, in very becoming rags, waiting
for the fairy godmother.
‘Yes, I had tea at the vicarage,’ said this young person, throwing
herself on the grass in spite of a murmured protest from Agnes, who had
an inherent dislike of anything physically rash, ‘and I had the greatest
difficulty to get away. Mrs. Thornburgh is in such a flutter about
this visit! One would think it was the Bishop and all his Canons, and
promotion depending on it, she has baked so many cakes and put out so
many dinner napkins! I don’t envy the young man. She will have no wits
left at all to entertain him with. I actually wound up by administering
some sal-volatile to her.’
‘Well, and after the sal-volatile did you get anything coherent out of
her on the subject of the young man?’
‘By degrees,’ said the girl, her eyes twinkling; ‘if one can only
remember the thread between whiles one gets at the facts somehow. In
between the death of Mr. Elsmere’s father and his going to college, we
had, let me see,--the spare room curtains, the making of them and the
cleaning of them, Sarah’s idiocy in sticking to her black sheep of a
young man, the price of tea when she married, Mr. Thornburgh’s singular
preference of boiled mutton to roast, the poems she had written to her
when she was eighteen, and I can’t tell you what else besides. But I
held fast, and every now and then I brought her up to the point again,
gently but firmly, and now I think I know all I want to know about the
interesting stranger.’
‘My ideas about him are not many,’ said Agnes, rubbing her cheek gently
up and down the purring cat, ‘and there doesn’t seem to be much order
in them. He is very accomplished--a teetotaller--he has been to the Holy
Land, and his hair has been cut close after a fever. It sounds odd, but
I am not curious. I can very well wait till to-morrow evening.’
‘Oh, well, as to ideas about a person, one doesn’t got that sort of
thing from Mrs. Thornburgh. But I know how old he is, where he went
to college, where his mother lives, a certain number of his mother’s
peculiarities which seem to be Irish and curious, where his living is,
how much it is worth, likewise the color of his eyes, as near as Mrs.
Thornburgh can get.’
‘What a start you have been getting!’ said Agnes lazily. ‘But what is it
makes the poor old thing so excited?’
Rose sat up and began to fling the fir-cones lying about her at a
distant mark with an energy worthy of her physical perfections and the
aesthetic freedom of her attire.
‘Because, my dear, Mrs. Thornburgh at the present moment is always
seeing herself as the conspirator sitting match in hand before a mine.
Mr. Elsmere is the match--we are the mine.’
Agnes looked at her sister, and they both laughed, the bright rippling
laugh of young women perfectly aware of their own value, and in no hurry
to force an estimate of it on the male world.
‘Well,’ said Rose deliberately, her delicate cheek flushed with her
gymnastics, her eyes sparkling, ‘there is no saying. “Propinquity
does it”--as Mrs. Thornburgh is always reminding us. But where _can_
Catherine be? She went out directly after lunch.’
‘She has, gone out to see that youth who hurt his back at the Tysons--at
least I heard her talking to mamma about him, and she went out with a
basket that looked like beef-tea.’
Rose frowned a little.
‘And I suppose I ought to have been to the school or to see Mrs.
Robson instead of fiddling all the afternoon. I dare say I ought--only
unfortunately I like my fiddle, and I don’t like stuffy cottages, and as
for the goody books, I read them so badly that the old women themselves
come down upon me.’
‘I seem to have been making the best of both worlds,’ said Agnes
placidly. ‘I haven’t been doing anything I don’t like, but I got hold
of that dress she brought home to make for little Emma Payne and nearly
finished the skirt, so that I feel as good as when one has been twice to
church on a wet Sunday. Ah, there is Catherine, I heard the gate.’
As she spoke steps were heard approaching through the clump of trees
which sheltered the little entrance gate, and as Rose sprang to her feet
a tall figure in white and gray appeared against the background of the
sycamores, and came quickly toward the sisters.
‘Dears, I am so sorry; I am afraid you have been waiting for me. But
poor Mrs. Tyson wanted me so badly that I could not leave her. She had
no one else to help her or to be with her till that eldest girl of hers
came home from work.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said, Rose, as Catherine put her arm round her
shoulder; ‘mamma has been fidgeting, and as for Agnes, she looks as if
she never wanted to move again.’
Catherine’s clear eyes, which at the moment seemed to be full of inward
light, kindled in them by some foregoing experience, rested kindly, but
only half consciously, on her younger sister as Agnes softly nodded
and smiled to her. Evidently she was a good deal older than the other
two--she looked about six-and-twenty, a young and vigorous woman in the
prime of health and strength. The lines of the form were rather thin and
spare, but they were softened by the loose bodice and long full skirt of
her dress, and by the folds of a large, white muslin handkerchief which
was crossed over her breast. The face, sheltered by the plain shady
hat was also a little spoilt from the point of view of beauty by
the sharpness of the lines about the chin and mouth, and by a slight
prominence of the cheek-bones, but the eyes, of a dark bluish gray, were
fine, the nose delicately cut, the brow smooth and beautiful, while the
complexion had caught the freshness and purity of Westmoreland air and
Westmoreland streams. About face and figure there was a delicate austere
charm, something which harmonized with the bare stretches and lonely
crags of the fells, something which seemed to make her a true daughter
of the mountains, partaker at once of their gentleness and their
severity. _She_ was in her place here, beside the homely Westmoreland
house, and under the shelter of the fells. When you first saw the other
sisters you wondered what strange chance had brought them into that
remote sparely peopled valley; they were plainly exiles, and conscious
exiles, from the movement and exhilarations of a fuller social life. But
Catherine impressed you as only a refined variety of the local type;
you could have found many like her, in a sense, among the sweet-faced
serious women of the neighboring farms.
Now, as she and Rose stood together, her hand still resting lightly on
the other’s shoulder, a question from Agnes banished the faint smile on
her lips, and left, only the look of inward illumination, the expression
of one who had just passed, as it were, through a strenuous and heroic
moment of life, and was still living in the exaltation of memory.
‘So the poor fellow is worse?’
‘Yes. Doctor Baker, whom they have got to-day, says the spine is
hopelessly injured. He may live on paralyzed for a few months or longer,
but there is no hope of cure.’
Both girls uttered a shocked exclamation. ‘That fine strong young man!’
said Rose under her breath. ‘Does he know?’
‘Yes; when I got there the doctor had just gone, and Mrs. Tyson, who was
quite unprepared for anything so dreadful, seemed to have almost lost
her wits, poor thing! I found her in the front kitchen with her
apron over her head, rocking to and fro, and poor Arthur in the inner
room--all alone--waiting in suspense.’
‘And who told him? He has been so hopeful.’
‘I did,’ said Catherine, gently; ‘they made me. He _would_ know, and she
couldn’t--she ran out of the room. I never saw anything so pitiful.’
‘Oh, Catherine!’ exclaimed Rose’s moved voice, while Agnes got up, and
Chattie jumped softly down from her lap unheeded.
‘How did he bear it?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Catherine, while the quiet tears filled her eyes
and her voice broke, as the hidden feeling would have its way. ‘It was
terrible. I don’t know how we got through that half-hour--his mother
and I. It was like wrestling with someone in agony. At last he was
exhausted--he let me say the Lord’s Prayer; I think it soothed him, but
one couldn’t tell. He seemed half asleep when I left. Oh!’ she cried,
laying her hand in a close grasp on Rose’s arm, ‘if you had seen his
eyes, and his poor hands--there was such despair in them! They say,
though he was so young, he was thinking of getting married; and he was
so steady, such a good son!’
A silence fell upon the three. Catherine stood looking out across the
valley toward the sunset. Now that the demand upon her for calmness and
fortitude was removed, and that the religious exaltation in which she
had gone through the last three hours was becoming less intense, the
pure human pity of the scene she had just witnessed seemed to be gaining
upon her. Her lip trembled, and two or three tears silently overflowed.
Rose turned and gently kissed her cheek, and Agnes touched her hand
caressingly. She smiled at them, for it was not in her nature to let any
sign of love pass unheeded, and in a few more seconds she had mastered
herself.
‘Dears, we must go in. Is mother in her room? Oh, Rose! in that thin
dress on the grass; I oughtn’t to have kept you out. It is quite cold by
now.’
And, she hurried them in, leaving them to superintend the preparations
for supper downstairs while she ran up to her mother.
A quarter of an hour afterward they were all gathered round the
supper-table, the windows open to the garden and the May twilight. At
Catherine’s right hand sat Mrs. Leyburn, a tall delicate-looking woman,
wrapped in a white shawl, about whom there were only three things to be
noticed--an amiable temper, a sufficient amount of weak health to excuse
her all the more tiresome duties of life, and an incorrigible tendency
to sing the praises of her daughters at all times and to all people. The
daughters winced under it: Catherine, because it was a positive pain
to her to bear herself brought forward and talked about; the others,
because youth infinitely prefers to make its own points in its own way.
Nothing, however, could mend this defect of Mrs. Leyburn’s. Catherine’s
strength of will could keep it in check sometimes, but in general it
had to be borne with. A sharp word would have silenced the mother’s
well-meant chatter at any time--for she was a fragile nervous woman,
entirely dependent on her surroundings--but none of them were capable of
it, and their mere refractoriness counted for nothing.
The dining room in which they were gathered had a good deal of homely
dignity, and was to the Leyburns full of associations. The oak settle
near the fire, the oak sideboard running along one side of the room, the
black oak table with carved legs at which they sat, were genuine pieces
of old Westmoreland work, which had belonged to their grandfather. The
heavy carpet covering the stone floor of what twenty years before had
been the kitchen of the farm-house was a survival from a south-country
home, which had sheltered their lives for eight happy years. Over the
mantelpiece hung the portrait of the girls’ father, a long serious
face, not unlike Wordsworth’s face in outline, and bearing a strong
resemblance to Catherine; a line of silhouettes adorned the mantelpiece;
on the walls were prints of Winchester and Worcester Cathedrals,
photographs of Greece, and two old-fashioned engravings of Dante and
Milton; while a bookcase, filled apparently with the father’s college
books and college prizes and the favorite authors--mostly poets,
philosophers, and theologians--of his later years, gave a final touch
of habitableness to the room. The little meal and its appointments--the
eggs, the home-made bread and preserves, the tempting butter and
old-fashioned silver gleaming among the flowers which Rose arranged with
fanciful skill in Japanese pots of her own providing--suggested the same
family qualities as the room. Frugality, a dainty personal self-respect,
a family consciousness, tenacious of its memories and tenderly careful
of all the little material objects, which were to it the symbols of
those memories--clearly all these elements entered into the Leyburn
tradition.
And of this tradition, with its implied assertions and denials, clearly
Catherine Leyburn, the eldest sister, was, of all the persons gathered
in this little room, the most pronounced embodiment. She sat at the head
of the table, the little basket of her own and her mother’s keys beside
her. Her dress was a soft black brocade, with lace collar and cuff,
which had once belonged to an aunt of her mother’s. It was too old
for her both in fashion and material, but it gave her a gentle, almost
matronly dignity, which became her. Her long thin hands, full of
character and delicacy, moved nimbly among the cups; all her ways were
quiet and yet decided. It was evident that among this little party
she, and not the plaintive mother, was really in authority. To-night,
however, her looks were specially soft. The scene she had gone through
in the afternoon had left her pale, with traces of patient fatigue round
the eyes and mouth, but all her emotion was gone, and she was devoting
herself to the others, responding with quick interest and ready smiles
to all they had to say, and contributing the little experiences of her
own day in return.
Rose sat on her left hand in yet another gown of strange tint and
archaic outline. Rose’s gowns were legion. They were manufactured by
a farmer’s daughter across the valley, under her strict and precise
supervision. She was accustomed, as she boldly avowed, to shut herself
up at the beginning of each season of the year for two days’ meditation
on the subject. And now, thanks to the spring warmth, she was entering
at last with infinite zest on the results of her April vigils.
Catherine had surveyed her as she entered the room with a smile, but a
smile not altogether to Rose’s taste.
‘What, another, Röschen?’ she had said with the slightest lifting of the
eyebrows. ‘You never confided that to me. Did you think I was unworthy
of anything so artistic?’
‘Not at all,’ said Rose calmly, seating herself. ‘I thought you were
better employed.’
But a flush flew over her transparent cheek, and she presently threw an
irritated look at Agnes, who had been looking from her to Catherine with
amused eyes.
‘I met Mr. Thornburgh and Mr. Elsmere driving from the station,’
Catherine announced presently; ‘at least there was a gentleman in a
clerical wideawake with a portmanteau behind, so I imagine it must have
been he.’
‘Did he look promising?’ inquired Agnes.
‘I don’t think I noticed,’ said Catherine simply, but with a momentary
change of expression. The sisters, remembering how she had come in
upon them with that look of one ‘lifted up,’ understood why she had not
noticed, and refrained from further questions.
‘Well, it is to be hoped the young man is recovered enough to stand Long
Whindale festivities,’ said Rose. ‘Mrs. Thornburgh means to let them
loose on his devoted head to-morrow night.’
‘Who are coming?’ asked Mrs. Leyburn eagerly. The occasional tea parties
of the neighborhood were an unfailing excitement to her, simply because,
by dint of the small adornings, natural to the occasion, they showed her
daughters to her under slightly new aspects. To see Catherine, who never
took any thought for her appearance, forced to submit to a white dress,
a line of pearls round the shapely throat, a flower in the brown hair,
put there by Rose’s imperious fingers; to sit in a corner well out
of draughts, watching the effect of Rose’s half-fledged beauty, and
drinking in the compliments of the neighborhood on Rose’s playing or
Agnes’s conversation, or Catherine’s practical ability--these were Mrs.
Leyburn’s passions, and a tea-party always gratified them to the full.
‘Mamma asks as if really she wanted an answer,’ remarked Agnes dryly.
‘Dear mother, can’t you by now make up a tea-party at the Thornburghs
out of your head?’
‘The Seatons?’ inquired Mrs. Leyburn.
‘_Mrs._ Seaton and Miss Barks,’ replied Rose. ‘The rector won’t come.
And I needn’t say that, having moved heaven, and earth to get Mrs.
Seaton, Mrs. Thornburgh is now miserable because she has got her. Her
ambition is gratified, but she knows that she has spoilt the party.
Well, then, Mr. Mayhew, of course, his son, _and_ his flute.’
‘You to play his accompaniments?’ put in Agnes slyly. Rose’s lip curled.
‘Not if Miss Barks knows it,’ she said emphatically, ‘nor if I know it.
The Bakers, of course, ourselves, and the unknown.’
‘Dr. Baker is always pleasant,’ said Mrs. Leyburn, leaning back and
drawing her white shawl languidly round her. ‘He told me the other
day, Catherine, that if it weren’t for you he should have to retire. He
regards you as his junior partner. “Marvellous nursing gift your
eldest daughter has, Mrs. Leyburn,” he said to me the other day. A most
agreeable man.’
‘I wonder if I shall be able to get any candid opinions out of Mr.
Elsmere the day after to-morrow?’ said Rose, musing. ‘It is difficult to
avoid having an opinion of some sort about Mrs. Seaton.’
‘Oxford dons don’t gossip and are never candid,’ remarked Agnes
severely.
‘Then Oxford dons must be very dull,’ cried Rose. ‘However,’ and her
countenance brightened, ‘if he stays here four weeks we can teach him.’
Catherine, meanwhile, sat watching the two girls with a soft elder
sister’s indulgence. Was it in connection with their bright attractive
looks that the thought flitted through her head, ‘I wonder what the
young man will be like?’
‘Oh, by the way,’ said Rose presently, ‘I had nearly forgotten Mrs.
Thornburgh’s two messages. I informed her, Agnes, that you had given up
water color and meant to try oils, and she told me to implore you not
to, because “water color is so _much_ more lady-like than oils.” And as
for you, Catherine, she sent you a most special message. I was to tell
you that she just _loved_ the way you had taken to plaiting your hair
lately--that it was exactly like the picture of Jeanie Deans she has
in the drawing-room, and that she would never forgive you if you didn’t
plait it so to-morrow night.’
Catherine flushed faintly as she got up from the table.
‘Mrs. Thornburgh has eagle-eyes,’ she said, moving away to give her arm
to her mother, who looked fondly at her, making some remark in praise of
Mrs. Thornburgh’s taste.
‘Rose!’ cried Agnes indignantly, when the other two had disappeared,
‘you and Mrs. Thornburgh have not the sense you were born with. What on
earth did you say that to Catherine for?’
Rose stared; then her face fell a little.
‘I suppose it was foolish,’ she admitted. Then she leant her head on one
hand and drew meditative patterns on the tablecloth with the other. ‘You
know, Agnes,’ she said presently, looking up, ‘there are drawbacks to
having a St. Elizabeth for a sister.’
Agnes discreetly made no reply, and Rose was left alone. She sat
dreaming a few minutes, the corners of the red mouth drooping. Then she
sprang up with a long sigh. ‘A little life!’ she said half-aloud, ‘A
little _wickedness!_’ and she shook her curly head defiantly.
A few minutes later, in the little drawing-room on the other side of
the hall, Catherine and Rose stood together by the open window. For the
first time in a lingering spring, the air was soft and balmy; a tender
grayness lay over the valley; it was not night, though above the clear
outline’s of the fell the stars were just twinkling in the pale blue.
Far away under the crag on the further side of High Fell a light was
shining. As Catherine’s eyes caught it there was a quick response in the
fine Madonna-like face.
‘Any news for me from the Backhouses this afternoon?’ she asked Rose.
‘No, I heard of none. How is she?’
‘Dying,’ said Catherine simply, and stood a moment looking out. Rose
did not interrupt her. She knew that the house from which the light was
shining sheltered a tragedy; she guessed with the vagueness of nineteen
that it was a tragedy of passion and sin; but Catherine had not been
communicative on the subject, and Rose had for some time past set up
a dumb resistance to her sister’s most characteristic ways of life
and thought, which prevented her now from asking questions. She wished
nervously to give Catherine’s extraordinary moral strength no greater
advantage over her than she could help.
Presently, however, Catherine threw her arm round her with a tender
protectingness.
‘What did you do with yourself all the afternoon, Röschen?’
‘I practised for two hours,’ said the girl shortly, ‘and two hours this
morning. My Spohr is nearly perfect.’
‘And you didn’t look into the school?’ asked Catherine, hesitating; ‘I
know Miss Merry expected you.’
‘No, I didn’t. When one can play the violin and can’t teach, any more
than a cuckatoo, what’s the good of wasting one’s time in teaching?’
Catherine did not reply. A minute after Mrs. Leyburn called her, and she
went to sit on a stool at her mother’s feet, her hands resting on the
elder woman’s lap, the whole attitude of the tall active figure one of
beautiful and childlike abandonment. Mrs. Leyburn wanted to confide in
her about a new cap, and Catherine took up the subject with a zest which
kept her mother happy till bedtime.
‘Why couldn’t she take as much interest in my Spohr? thought Rose.
Late that night, long after she had performed all a maid’s offices for
her mother, Catherine Leyburn was busy in her own room arranging a
large cupboard containing medicines and ordinary medical necessaries, a
storehouse whence all the simpler emergencies of their end of the valley
were supplied. She had put on a white flannel dressing-gown and moved
noiselessly about in it, the very embodiment of order, of purity, of
quiet energy. The little white-curtained room was bareness and neatness
itself. There were a few book-shelves along the walls, holding the books
which her father had given her. Over the bed were two enlarged portraits
of her parents, and a line of queer little faded monstrosities,
representing Rose and Agnes in different stages of childhood. On the
table beside the bed was a pile of well-worn books--Keble, Jeremy
Taylor, the Bible--connected in the mind of the mistress of the room
with the intensest moments of the spiritual life. There was a strip of
carpet by the bed, a plain chair or two, a large press; otherwise no
furniture that was not absolutely necessary, and no ornaments. And yet,
for all its emptiness, the little room in its order and spotlessness had
the look and spell of a sanctuary.
When her task was finished Catherine came forward to the infinitesimal
dressing-table, and stood a moment before the common cottage
looking-glass upon it. The candle behind her showed her the outlines of
her head and face in shadow against the white ceiling. Her soft brown
hair was plaited high above the broad white brow, giving to it an added
stateliness, while it left unmasked the pure lines of the neck.
Mrs. Thornburgh and her mother were quite right. Simple as the new
arrangement was, it could hardly have been more effective.
But the looking-glass got no smile in return for its information.
Catherine Leyburn was young; she was alone; she was being very plainly
told that, taken as a whole, she was, or might be at any moment, a
beautiful woman. And all her answer was a frown and a quick movement
away from the glass. Putting up her hands she began to undo the plaits
with haste, almost with impatience; she smoothed the whole mass then
set free into the severest order, plaited it closely together, and then,
putting out her light, threw herself on her knees beside the window,
which was partly open to the starlight and the mountains. The voice of
the river far away, wafted from the mist-covered depths of the valley,
and the faint rustling of the trees just outside, were for long after
the only sounds which broke the silence.
When Catherine appeared at breakfast next morning her hair was plainly
gathered into a close knot behind, which had been her way of dressing it
since she was thirteen. Agnes threw a quick look at Rose; Mrs. Leyburn,
as soon as she had made out through her spectacles what was the matter,
broke into warm expostulations.
‘It is more comfortable, dear mother, and takes much less time,’ said
Catherine, reddening.
‘Poor Mrs. Thornburgh!’ remarked Agnes dryly.
‘Oh, Rose will make up!’ said Catherine, glancing, not without a spark
of mischief in her gray eyes, at Rose’s tortured locks; ‘and mamma’s new
cap, which will be superb!’