Robert Elsmere
before, but which now, repeated in Catherine's presence, seemed to have
lost every shred of humour they once possessed. Poor Elsmere tried with
all his might to divert the stream, but it showed a tormenting tendency
to recur to the same channel. And meanwhile the little spectacled wife,
dressed in a high home-made cashmere, sat looking at her husband with a
benevolent and smiling admiration. _She_ kept all her eloquence for the
poor.
After dinner things grew worse. Mrs. Wardlaw had recently presented her
husband with a third infant, and the ardent pair had taken advantage of
the visit to London of an eminent French Comtist to have it baptized
with full Comtist rites. Wardlaw stood astride on the rug, giving the
assembled company a minute account of the ceremony observed, while his
wife threw in gentle explanatory interjections. The manner of both
showed a certain exasperating confidence, if not in the active sympathy,
at least in the impartial curiosity of their audience, and in the
importance to modern religious history of the incident itself.
Catherine's silence grew deeper and deeper; the conversation fell
entirely to Robert. At last Robert, by main force, as it were, got
Wardlaw off into politics, but the new Irish Coercion Bill was hardly
introduced before the irrepressible being turned to Catherine, and said
to her with smiling obtuseness--
'I don't believe I've seen you at one of your husband's Sunday addresses
yet, Mrs. Elsmere? And it isn't so far from this part of the world
either.'
Catherine slowly raised her beautiful large eyes upon him. Robert,
looking at her with a qualm, saw an expression he was learning to dread
flash across the face.
'I have my Sunday school at that time, Mr. Wardlaw. I am a Churchwoman.'
The tone had a touch of _hauteur_ Robert had hardly ever heard from his
wife before. It effectually stopped all further conversation. Wardlaw
fell into silence, reflecting that he had been a fool. His wife, with a
timid flush, drew out her knitting, and stuck to it for the twenty
minutes that remained. Catherine immediately did her best to talk, to be
pleasant; but the discomfort of the little party was too great. It broke
up at ten, and the Wardlaws departed.
Catherine stood on the rug while Elsmere went with his guests to the
door, waiting restlessly for her husband's return. Robert, however, came
back to her, tired, wounded, and out of spirits, feeling that the
attempt had been wholly unsuccessful, and shrinking from any further
talk about it. He at once sat down to some letters for the late post.
Catherine lingered a little, watching him, longing miserably, like any
girl of eighteen, to throw herself on his neck and reproach him for
their unhappiness, his friends--she knew not what! He all the time was
intimately conscious of her presence, of her pale beauty, which now at
twenty-nine, in spite of its severity, had a subtler finish and
attraction than ever, of the restless little movements so unlike
herself, which she made from time to time. But neither spoke except upon
indifferent things. Once more the difficult conditions of their lives
seemed too obvious, too oppressive. Both were ultimately conquered by
the same sore impulse to let speech alone.
CHAPTER XLII
And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of the
season which followed, Robert, taxed to the utmost on all sides, yielded
to the impulse of silence more and more.
Society was another difficulty between them, Robert delighted in it so
far as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever more
ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he.
Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other people's goodness, or
cleverness, or superhuman achievement. On the other hand, London is kind
to such men as Robert Elsmere. His talk, his writing, were becoming
known and relished; and even the most rigid of the old school found it
difficult to be angry with him. His knowledge of the poor and of social
questions attracted the men of actions; his growing historical
reputation drew the attention of the men of thought. Most people wished
to know him and to talk to him, and Catherine, smiled upon for his
sake, and assumed to be his chief disciple, felt herself more and more
bewildered and antagonistic as the season rushed on.
For what pleasure could she get out of these dinners and these evenings,
which supplied Robert with so much intellectual stimulus? With her all
the moral nerves were jarring and out of tune. At any time Richard
Leyburn's daughter would have found it hard to tolerate a society where
everything is an open question and all confessions of faith are more or
less bad taste. But now, when there was no refuge to fall back upon in
Robert's arms, no certainty of his sympathy--nay, a certainty that,
however tender and pitiful he might be, he would still think her wrong
and mistaken! She went here and there obediently because he wished; but
her youth seemed to be ebbing, the old Murewell gaiety entirely left
her, and people in general wondered why Elsmere should have married a
wife older than himself, and apparently so unsuited to him in
temperament.
Especially was she tried at Madame de Netteville's. For Robert's sake
she tried for a time to put aside her first impression and to bear
Madame de Netteville's evenings--little dreaming, poor thing, all the
time that Madame de Netteville thought her presence at the famous
'Fridays' an incubus only to be put up with because the husband was
becoming socially an indispensable.
But after two or three Fridays Catherine's endurance failed her. On the
last occasion she found herself late in the evening hemmed in behind
Madame de Netteville and a distinguished African explorer, who was the
lion of the evening. Eugenie de Netteville had forgotten her silent
neighbour, and presently, with some biting little phrase or other, she
asked the great man his opinion on a burning topic of the day, the
results of Church Missions in Africa. The great man laughed, shrugged
his shoulders, and ran lightly through a string of stories in which both
missionaries and converts played parts which were either grotesque or
worse. Madame de Netteville thought the stories amusing, and as one
ceased she provoked another, her black eyes full of a dry laughter, her
white hand lazily plying her great ostrich fan.
Suddenly a figure rose behind them.
'Oh, Mrs. Elsmere!' said Madame de Netteville, starting, and then coolly
recovering herself, 'I had no idea you were there all alone. I am afraid
our conversation has been disagreeable to you. I am afraid you are a
friend of missions!'
And her glance, turning from Catherine to her companion, made a little
malicious signal to him which only he detected, as though bidding him
take note of a curiosity.
'Yes, I care for them, I wish for their success,' said Catherine, one
hand, which trembled slightly, resting on the table beside her, her
great gray eyes fixed on Madame de Netteville. 'No Christian has any
right to do otherwise.'
Poor brave goaded soul! She had a vague idea of 'bearing testimony' as
her father would have borne it in like circumstances. But she turned
very pale. Even to her the word 'Christian' sounded like a bombshell in
that room. The great traveller looked up astounded. He saw a tall woman
in white with a beautiful head, a delicate face, a something
indescribably noble and unusual in her whole look and attitude. She
looked like a Quaker prophetess--like Dinah Morris in society--like--but
his comparisons failed him. How did such a being come _there_? He was
amazed; but he was a man of taste, and Madame de Netteville caught a
certain aesthetic approbation in his look.
She rose, her expression hard and bright as usual.
'May one Christian pronounce for all?' she said with a scornful
affectation of meekness. 'Mrs. Elsmere, please find some chair more
comfortable than that ottoman; and Mr. Ansdale, will you come and be
introduced to Lady Aubrey?'
After her guests had gone Madame de Netteville came back to the fire
flushed and frowning. It seemed to her that in that strange little
encounter she had suffered, and she never forgot or forgave the smallest
social discomfiture.
'Can I put up with that again?' she asked herself with a contemptuous
hardening of the lip. 'I suppose I must if _he_ cannot be got without
her. But I have an instinct that it is over--that she will not appear
here again. Daudet might make use of her. I can't. What a specimen! A
boy and girl match, I suppose. What else could have induced that poor
wretch to cut his throat in such fashion? He, of all men!'
And Eugenie de Netteville stood thinking--not, apparently, of the
puritanical wife; the dangerous softness which overspread the face could
have had no connection with Catherine.
Madame de Netteville's instinct was just. Catherine Elsmere never
appeared again in her drawing-room.
But, with a little sad confession of her own invincible distaste, the
wife pressed the husband to go without her. She urged it at a bitter
moment, when it was clear to her that their lives must of necessity,
even in outward matters, be more separate than before. Elsmere resisted
for a time; then, lured one evening towards the end of February by the
prospect conveyed in a note from Madame de Netteville, wherein Catherine
was mentioned in the most scrupulously civil terms, of meeting one of
the most eminent of French critics, he went, and thenceforward went
often. He had, so far, no particular liking for the hostess; he hated
some of her _habitues_; but there was no doubt that in some ways she
made an admirable holder of a _salon_, and that round about her there
was a subtle mixture of elements, a liberty of discussion and comment,
to be found nowhere else. And how bracing and refreshing was that free
play of equal mind to the man weary sometimes of his leader's _role_ and
weary of himself!
As to the _woman_, his social _naivete_, which was extraordinary, but in
a man of his type most natural, made him accept her exactly as he found
her. If there were two or three people in Paris or London who knew or
suspected incidents of Madame de Netteville's young married days which
made her reception at some of the strictest English houses a matter of
cynical amusement to them, not the remotest inkling of their knowledge
was ever likely to reach Elsmere. He was not a man who attracted
scandals. Nor was it anybody's interest to spread them. Madame de
Netteville's position in London society was obviously excellent. If she
had peculiarities of manner and speech they were easily supposed to be
French. Meanwhile she was undeniably rich and distinguished, and gifted
with a most remarkable power of protecting herself and her neighbours
from boredom. At the same time, though Elsmere was, in truth, more
interested in her friends than in her, he could not possibly be
insensible to the consideration shown for him in her drawing-room.
Madame de Netteville allowed herself plenty of jests with her intimates
as to the young reformer's social simplicity, his dreams, his optimisms.
But those intimates were the first to notice that as soon as he entered
the room those optimisms of his were adroitly respected. She had various
delicate contrivances for giving him the lead; she exercised a kind of
_surveillance_ over the topics introduced; or in conversation with him
she would play that most seductive part of the cynic shamed out of
cynicism by the neighbourhood of the enthusiast.
Presently she began to claim a practical interest in his Elgood Street
work. Her offers were made with a curious mixture of sympathy and
mockery. Elsmere could not take her seriously. But neither could he