Robert Elsmere
treasured archives of a society which is fast gathering to itself some
of the best life in England--then often fall asleep with fatigue. After
food there would come a short drive, or, if the day was very warm, an
hour or two of sitting outside, generally his best time for talking. He
had a wheeled chair in which Flaxman would take him across to the
convent garden--a dream of beauty. Overhead an orange canopy--leaf and
blossom and golden fruit all in simultaneous perfection; underneath a
revel of every imaginable flower--narcissus and anemones, geraniums and
clematis; and all about, hedges of monthly roses, dark red and pale
alternately, making a roseleaf carpet under their feet. Through the
tree-trunks shone the white sun-warmed convent, and far beyond were
glimpses of downward-trending valleys edged by twinkling sea.
Here, sensitive and receptive to his last hour, Elsmere drank in beauty
and delight; talking, too, whenever it was possible to him, of all
things in heaven and earth. Then, when he came home, he would have out
his books and fall to some old critical problem--his worn and scored
Greek Testament always beside him, the quick eye making its way through
some new monograph or other, the parched lips opening every now and then
to call Flaxman's attention to some fresh light on an obscure
point--only to relinquish the effort again and again with an unfailing
patience.
But though he would begin as ardently as ever, he could not keep his
attention fixed to these things very long. Then it would be the turn of
his favourite poets--Wordsworth, Tennyson, Virgil. Virgil perhaps most
frequently. Flaxman would read the AEneid aloud to him, Robert following
the passages he loved best in a whisper, his hand resting the while in
Catherine's. And then Mary would be brought in, and he would lie
watching her while she played.
'I have had a letter,' he said to Flaxman one afternoon, 'from a Broad
Church clergyman in the Midlands, who imagines me to be still militant
in London, protesting against the "absurd and wasteful isolation" of the
New Brotherhood. He asks me why instead of leaving the Church I did not
join the Church Reform Union, why I did not attempt to widen the Church
from within, and why we in Elgood Street are not now in organic
connection with the new Broad Church settlement in East London. I
believe I have written him rather a sharp letter; I could not help it.
It was borne in on me to tell him that it is all owing to him and his
brethren that we are in the muddle we are in to-day. Miracle is to our
time what the law was to the early Christians. We _must_ make up our
minds about it one way or the other. And if we decide to throw it over
as Paul threw over the law, then we must _fight_ as he did. There is no
help in subterfuge, no help in anything but a perfect sincerity. We must
come out of it. The ground must be cleared; then may come the
re-building. Religion itself, the peace of generations to come, is at
stake. If we could wait indefinitely while the Church widened, well and
good. But we have but the one life, the one chance of saying the word or
playing the part assigned us.'
On another occasion, in the convent garden, he broke out with--
'I often lie here, Flaxman, wondering at the way in which men become the
slaves of some metaphysical word--_personality_, or _intelligence_, or
what not! What meaning can they have as applied to _God_? Herbert
Spencer is quite right. We no sooner attempt to define what we mean by a
Personal God than we lose ourselves in labyrinths of language and logic.
But why attempt it at all? I like that French saying, "_Quand on me
demande ce que c'est que Dieu, je l'ignore; quand on ne me le demande
pas, je le sais tres-bien!_" No, we cannot realise Him in words--we can
only live in Him, and die to Him!'
On another occasion, he said, speaking to Catherine of the squire and of
Meyrick's account of his last year of life--
'How selfish one is, _always_--when one least thinks it! How could I
have forgotten him so completely as I did during all that New
Brotherhood time? Where, what is he now? Ah! if somewhere, somehow, one
could----'
He did not finish the sentence, but the painful yearning of his look
finished it for him.
But the days passed on, and the voice grew rarer, the strength feebler.
By the beginning of March all coming downstairs was over. He was
entirely confined to his room, almost to his bed. Then there came a
horrible week, when no narcotics took effect, when every night was a
wrestle for life, which it seemed must be the last. They had a good
nurse, but Flaxman and Catherine mostly shared the watching between
them.
One morning he had just dropped into a fevered sleep. Catherine was
sitting by the window gazing out into a dawn-world of sun which reminded
her of the summer sunrises at Petites Dalles. She looked the shadow of
herself. Spiritually, too, she was the shadow of herself. Her life was
no longer her own: she lived in him--in every look of those eyes--in
every movement of that wasted frame.
As she sat there, her Bible on her knee, her strained unseeing gaze
resting on the garden and the sea, a sort of hallucination took
possession of her. It seemed to her that she saw the form of the Son of
man passing over the misty slope in front of her, that the dim majestic
figure turned and beckoned. In her half-dream she fell on her knees.
'Master!' she cried in agony, 'I cannot leave him! Call me not! My life
is here. I have no heart--it beats in his.'
And the figure passed on, the beckoning hand dropping at its side. She
followed it with a sort of anguish, but it seemed to her as though mind
and body were alike incapable of moving--that she would not if she
could. Then suddenly a sound from behind startled her. She turned, her
trance shaken off in an instant, and saw Robert sitting up in bed.
For a moment her lover, her husband, of the early days was before
her--as she ran to him. But he did not see her.
An ecstasy of joy was on his face; the whole man bent forward listening.
'_The child's cry!--thank God! Oh! Meyrick--Catherine--thank God!_'
And she knew that he stood again on the stairs at Murewell in that
September night which gave them their first-born, and that he thanked
God because her pain was over.
An instant's strained looking, and, sinking back into her arms, he gave
two or three gasping breaths, and died.
* * * * *
Five days later Flaxman and Rose brought Catherine home. It was supposed
that she would return to her mother at Burwood. Instead, she settled
down again in London, and not one of those whom Robert Elsmere had loved
was forgotten by his widow. Every Sunday morning, with her child beside
her, she worshipped in the old ways; every Sunday afternoon saw her
black-veiled figure sitting motionless in a corner of the Elgood Street
Hall. In the week she gave all her time and money to the various works
of charity which he had started. But she held her peace. Many were
grateful to her; some loved her; none understood her. She lived for one
hope only; and the years passed all too slowly.
The New Brotherhood still exists, and grows. There are many who imagined
that as it had been raised out of the earth by Elsmere's genius, so it
would sink with him. Not so! He would have fought the struggle to
victory with surpassing force, with a brilliancy and rapidity none after
him could rival. But the struggle was not his. His effort was but a
fraction of the effort of the race. In that effort, and in the Divine
force behind it, is our trust, as was his.
'Others, I doubt not, if not we,
The issue of our toils shall see;
And (they forgotten and unknown)
Young children gather as their own
The harvest that the dead had sown.
THE END
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation (misplaced
quotes and the like) have been fixed. Text that has been changed to
correct an error by the publisher is noted below:
page 6: "adminstering" corrected to "administering"
I actually wound up by administering some sal-volatile to her.
page 42: added possible dropped word "the"
But she turned and, with quickened breath, looked out of
[the] window after the retreating figures.
page 121: part of text was added from another source because of unclear
scan:
[and a ]desirable marriage spoilt, all for want of a little
common [sense and ]plain speaking, which _one_ person at
least in the [valley co]uld have supplied them with, had she
not been ignored [and brow] beaten on all sides. She
contained herself, however, [in his pres]ence, but the vicar
suffered proportionately in the [privacy of ]the connubial
chamber. He had never seen his wife [so exasperat]ed. To
think what might have been, what she [might have] done for
the race, but for the whims of two stuck-[up, sup]erior,
impracticable young persons, that would neither [ma]nage
their own affairs nor allow other people to manage [th]em for
them! The vicar behaved gallantly, kept the secret
page 153: "apropos" corrected to "a propos"
Langham's tone _a propos_ of Grey's politics and Grey's dreams
page 228: "enjoys" corrected to "enjoy"
his look, to examine his wine, study his menu, and enjoy his
entrees in silence, undisturbed by the uncertain pleasures of
page 263: added comma:
Two days later Mrs. Leyburn and Agnes made their appearance[,] Mrs.
Leyburn all in a flutter
page 325: "seem" corrected to "seemed"
drawing a long breath when she stopped, which seemed to
relax the fibres
page 341: "everthing" corrected to "everything"
Otherwise everything was forgotten.
page 571: "reasuring" corrected to "reassuring"
But there was something reassuring as well as comic
page 585: "lorldly" corrected to "lordly"
Vincent flung the door open with his old lordly air.