Robert Elsmere
refuse to accept her money, if she chose to spend it on a library for
Elgood Street, or to consult with her about the choice of books. This
whim of hers created a certain friendly bond between them which was not
present before. And on Elsmere's side it was strengthened when, one
evening, in a corner of her inner drawing-room, Madame de Netteville
suddenly, but very quietly, told him the story of her life--her English
youth, her elderly French husband, the death of her only child, and her
flight as a young widow to England during the war of 1870. She told the
story of the child, as it seemed to Elsmere, with a deliberate avoidance
of emotion, nay, even with a certain hardness. But it touched him
profoundly. And everything else that she said, though she professed no
great regret for her husband, or for the break-up of her French life,
and though everything was reticent and measured, deepened the impression
of a real forlornness behind all the outward brilliance and social
importance. He began to feel a deep and kindly pity for her, coupled
with an earnest wish that he could help her to make her life more
adequate and satisfying. And all this he showed in the look of his frank
gray eyes, in the cordial grasp of the hand with which he said good-bye
to her.
Madame de Netteville's gaze followed him out of the room--the tall
boyish figure, the nobly carried head. The riddle of her flushed cheek
and sparkling eye was hard to read. But there were one or two persons
living who could have read it, and who could have warned you that the
_true_ story of Eugenie de Netteville's life was written, not in her
literary studies or her social triumphs, but in various recurrent
outbreaks of unbridled impulse--the secret, and in one or two cases the
shameful landmarks of her past. And, as persons of experience, they
could also have warned you that the cold intriguer, always mistress of
herself, only exists in fiction, and that a certain poisoned and fevered
interest in the religious leader, the young and pious priest, as such,
is common enough among the corrupter women of all societies.
Towards the end of May she asked Elsmere to dine '_en petit comite_, a
gentlemen's dinner--except for my cousin, Lady Aubrey Willert'--to meet
an eminent Liberal Catholic, a friend of Montalembert's youth.
It was a week or two after the failure of the Wardlaw experiment. Do
what each would, the sore silence between the husband and wife was
growing, was swallowing up more of life.
'Shall I go, Catherine?' he asked, handing her the note.
'It would interest you,' she said gently, giving it back to him
scrupulously, as though she had nothing to do with it.
He knelt down before her, and put his arms round her, looking at her
with eyes which had a dumb and yet fiery appeal written in them. His
heart was hungry for that old clinging dependence, that willing weakness
of love, her youth had yielded him so gladly, instead of this silent
strength of antagonism. The memory of her Murewell self flashed
miserably through him as he knelt there, of her delicate penitence
towards him after her first sight of Newcome, of their night walks
during the Mile End epidemic. Did he hold now in his arms only the ghost
and shadow of that Murewell Catherine?
She must have read the reproach, the yearning of his look, for she gave
a little shiver, as though bracing herself with a kind of agony to
resist.
'Let me go, Robert!' she said gently, kissing him on the forehead and
drawing back. 'I hear Mary calling, and nurse is out.'
The days went on and the date of Madame de Netteville's dinner-party had
come round. About seven o'clock that evening Catherine sat with the
child in the drawing-room, expecting Robert. He had gone off early in
the afternoon to the East End with Hugh Flaxman to take part in a
committee of workmen organised for the establishment of a choral union
in R----, the scheme of which had been Flaxman's chief contribution so
far to the Elgood Street undertaking.
It seemed to her as she sat there working, the windows open on to the
bit of garden, where the trees were already withered and begrimed, that
the air without and her heart within were alike stifling and heavy with
storm. _Something_ must put an end to this oppression, this misery! She
did not know herself. Her whole inner being seemed to her lessened and
degraded by this silent struggle, this fever of the soul, which made
impossible all those serenities and sweetnesses of thought in which her
nature had always lived of old. The fight into which fate had forced her
was destroying her. She was drooping like a plant cut off from all that
nourishes its life.
And yet she never conceived it possible that she should relinquish that
fight. Nay, at times there sprang up in her now a dangerous and
despairing foresight of even worse things in store. In the middle of her
suffering she already began to feel at moments the ascetic's terrible
sense of compensation. What, after all, is the Christian life but
warfare? '_I came not to send peace, but a sword!_'
Yes, in these June days Elsmere's happiness was perhaps nearer wreck
than it had ever been. All strong natures grow restless under such a
pressure as was now weighing on Catherine. Shock and outburst become
inevitable.
So she sat alone this hot afternoon, haunted by presentiments, by vague
terror for herself and him; while the child tottered about her, cooing,
shouting, kissing, and all impulsively, with a ceaseless energy, like
her father.
The outer door opened, and she heard Robert's step, and apparently Mr.
Flaxman's also. There was a hurried subdued word or two in the hall, and
the two entered the room where she was sitting.
Robert came, pressing back the hair from his eyes with a gesture which
with him was the invariable accompaniment of mental trouble. Catherine
sprang up.
'Robert, you look so tired! and how late you are!' Then as she came
nearer to him: 'And your coat--_torn--blood_!'
'There is nothing wrong with _me_, dear,' he said hastily, taking her
hands--'nothing! But it has been an awful afternoon. Flaxman will tell
you. I must go to this place, I suppose, though I hate the thought of
it! Flaxman, will you tell her all about it?' And, loosing his hold, he
went heavily out of the room and upstairs.
'It has been an accident,' said Flaxman gently, coming forward, 'to one
of the men of his class. May we sit down, Mrs. Elsmere? Your husband and
I have gone through a good deal these last two hours.'
He sat down with a long breath, evidently trying to regain his ordinary
even manner. His clothes, too, were covered with dust, and his hand
shook. Catherine stood before him in consternation, while a nurse came
for the child.
'We had just begun our committee at four o'clock,' he said at last,
'though only about half of the men had arrived, when there was a great
shouting and commotion outside, and a man rushed in calling for Elsmere.
We ran out, found a great crowd, a huge brewer's dray standing in the
street, and a man run over. Your husband pushed his way in. I followed,
and, to my horror, I found him kneeling by--Charles Richards!'
'Charles Richards?' Catherine repeated vacantly.
Flaxman looked up at her, as though puzzled; then a flash of
astonishment passed over his face.
'Elsmere has never told you of Charles Richards, the little gasfitter,
who has been his right hand for the past three months?'
'No--never,' she said slowly.
Again he looked astonished; then he went on sadly: 'All this spring he
has been your husband's shadow--I never saw such devotion. We found him
lying in the middle of the road. He had only just left work, a man said
who had been with him, and was running to the meeting. He slipped and
fell, crossing the street, which was muddy from last night's rain. The
dray swung round the corner--the driver was drunk or careless--and they
went right over him. One foot was a sickening sight. Your husband and I
luckily knew how to lift him for the best. We sent off for doctors. His
home was in the next street, as it happened--nearer than any hospital;
so we carried him there. The neighbours were round the door.'
Then he stopped himself.
'Shall I tell you the whole story?' he said kindly; 'it has been a
tragedy! I won't give you details if you had rather not.'
'Oh no!' she said hurriedly; 'no--tell me.'
And she forgot to feel any wonder that Flaxman, in his chivalry, should
treat her as though she were a girl with nerves.
'Well, it was the surroundings that were so ghastly. When we got to the
house an old woman rushed at me--"His wife's in there, but ye'll not
find her in her senses; she's been at it from eight o'clock this
morning. We've took the children away." I didn't know what she meant
exactly till we got into the little front room. There, such a spectacle!
A young woman on a chair by the fire sleeping heavily, dead drunk; the
breakfast things on the table, the sun blazing in on the dust and the
dirt, and on the woman's face. I wanted to carry him into the room on
the other side--he was unconscious; but a doctor had come up with us,
and made us put him down on a bed there was in the corner. Then we got
some brandy and poured it down. The doctor examined him, looked at his
foot, threw something over it. "Nothing to be done," he said--"internal
injuries--he can't live half an hour." The next minute the poor fellow
opened his eyes. They had pulled away the bed from the wall. Your
husband was on the farther side, kneeling. When he opened his eyes,
clearly the first thing he saw was his wife. He half sprang up--Elsmere
caught him--and gave a horrible cry--indescribably horrible. "_At it
again, at it again! My God!_" Then he fell back fainting. They got the
wife out of the room between them--a perfect log--you could hear her
heavy breathing from the kitchen opposite. We gave him more brandy and
he came to again. He looked up in your husband's face. "She hasn't broke
out for two months," he said, so piteously, "two months--and now--I'm
done--I'm done--and she'll just go straight to the devil!" And it comes
out, so the neighbours told us, that for two years or more he had been
patiently trying to reclaim this woman, without a word of complaint to
anybody, though his life must have been a dog's life. And now, on his
deathbed, what seemed to be breaking his heart was, not that he was
dying, but that his task was snatched from him!'
Flaxman paused, and looked away out of window. He told his story with
difficulty.
'Your husband tried to comfort him--promised that the wife and children
should be his special care, that everything that could be done to save
and protect them should be done. And the poor little fellow looked up at
him, with the tears running down his cheeks, and--and--blessed him. "I
cared about nothing," he said, "when you came. You've been--God--to
me--I've seen Him--in you." Then he asked us to say something. Your
husband said verse after verse of the Psalms, of the Gospels, of St.
Paul. His eyes grew filmy, but he seemed every now and then to struggle
back to life, and as soon as he caught Elsmere's face his look
lightened. Towards the last he said something we none of us caught; but
your husband thought it was a line from Emily Bronte's "Hymn," which he
said to them last Sunday in lecture.'
He looked up at her interrogatively, but there was no response in her
face.
'I asked him about it,' the speaker went on, 'as we came home. He said
Grey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, and he has had a love for it
ever since.'
'Did he die while you were there?' asked Catherine presently after a
silence. Her voice was dull and quiet. He thought her a strange woman.
'No,' said Flaxman, almost sharply; 'but by now it must be over. The