Robert Elsmere
delicately cut, gravely smiling face, swaying above the rushing brown
water, was never seen in Westmoreland wilds before.
'It is clearing,' he cried, with ready optimism, as they reached the
bank. 'We shall get our picnic to-morrow after all--we _must_ get it!
Promise me it shall be fine--and you will be there!'
The vicar was only fifty yards away waiting for them against the field
gate. But Robert held her eagerly, imperiously,--and it seemed to her,
her head was still dizzy with the water.
'Promise!' he repeated, his voice dropping.
She could not stop to think of the absurdity of promising for
Westmoreland weather. She could only say faintly 'Yes!' and so release
her hand.
'You _are_ pretty wet!' said the vicar, looking from one to the other
with a curiosity which Robert's quick sense divined at once was directed
to something else than the mere condition of their garments. But
Catherine noticed nothing; she walked on wrestling blindly with she knew
not what till they reached the vicarage gate. There stood Mrs.
Thornburgh, the light drizzle into which the rain had declined beating
unheeded on her curls and ample shoulders. She stared at Robert's
drenched condition, but he gave her no time to make remarks.
'Don't take it off,' he said with a laughing wave of the hand to
Catherine; 'I will come for it to-morrow morning.'
And he ran up the drive, conscious at last that it might be prudent to
get himself into something less spongelike than his present attire as
quickly as possible.
The vicar followed him.
'Don't keep Catherine, my dear. There's nothing to tell. Nobody's the
worse.'
Mrs. Thornburgh took no heed. Opening the iron gate she went through it
on to the deserted rain-beaten road, laid both her hands on Catherine's
shoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes. The vicar's anxious hint
was useless. She could contain herself no longer. She had watched them
from the vicarage come down the fell together, had seen them cross the
stepping stones, lingeringly, hand in hand.
'My dear Catherine!' she cried, effusively kissing Catherine's glowing
cheek under the shelter of the laurustinus that made a bower of the
gate. 'My _dear_ Catherine!'
Catherine gazed at her in astonishment. Mrs. Thornburgh's eyes were all
alive, and swarming with questions. If it had been Rose she would have
let them out in one fell flight. But Catherine's personality kept her in
awe. And after a second, as the two stood together, a deep flush rose on
Catherine's face, and an expression of half-frightened apology dawned in
Mrs. Thornburgh's.
Catherine drew herself away. 'Will you please give Mr. Elsmere his
mackintosh?' she said, taking it off; 'I shan't want it this little
way.'
And putting it on Mrs. Thornburgh's arm she turned away, walking quickly
round the bend of the road.
Mrs. Thornburgh watched her open-mouthed, and moved slowly back to the
house in a state of complete collapse.
'I always knew'--she said with a groan--'I always knew it would never go
right if it was Catherine! _Why_ was it Catherine?'
And she went in, still hurling at Providence the same vindictive query.
Meanwhile Catherine, hurrying home, the receding flush leaving a sudden
pallor behind it, was twisting her hands before her in a kind of agony.
'What have I been doing?' she said to herself. 'What have I been doing?'
At the gate of Burwood something made her look up. She saw the girls in
their own room--Agnes was standing behind, Rose had evidently rushed
forward to see Catherine come in, and now retreated as suddenly when she
saw her sister look up.
Catherine understood it all in an instant. 'They, too, are on the
watch,' she thought to herself bitterly. The strong reticent nature was
outraged by the perception that she had been for days the unconscious
actor in a drama of which her sisters and Mrs. Thornburgh had been the
silent and intelligent spectators.
She came down presently from her room very white and quiet, admitted
that she was tired, and said nothing to anybody. Agnes and Rose noticed
the change at once, whispered to each other when they found an
opportunity, and foreboded ill.
After their tea-supper, Catherine, unperceived, slipped out of the
little lane gate, and climbed the stony path above the house leading on
to the fell. The rain had ceased, but the clouds hung low and
threatening, and the close air was saturated with moisture. As she
gained the bare fell, sounds of water met her on all sides. The river
cried hoarsely to her from below, the becks in the little ghylls were
full and thunderous; and beside her over the smooth grass slid many a
new-born rivulet, the child of the storm, and destined to vanish with
the night. Catherine's soul went out to welcome the gray damp of the
hills. She knew them best in this mood. They were thus most her own.
She climbed on till at last she reached the crest of the ridge. Behind
her lay the valley, and on its further side the fells she had crossed in
the afternoon. Before her spread a long green vale, compared to which
Whindale with its white road, its church, and parsonage, and scattered
houses, was the great world itself. Marrisdale had no road and not a
single house. As Catherine descended into it she saw not a sign of human
life. There were sheep grazing in the silence of the long June twilight;
the blackish walls ran down and up again, dividing the green hollow with
melancholy uniformity. Here and there was a sheepfold, suggesting the
bleakness of winter nights; and here and there a rough stone barn for
storing fodder. And beyond the vale, eastwards and northwards, Catherine
looked out upon a wild sea of moors wrapped in mists, sullen and
storm-beaten, while to the left the clouds hung deepest and inkiest over
the high points of the Ullswater mountains.
When she was once below the pass, man and his world were shut out. The
girl figure in the blue cloak and hood was absolutely alone. She
descended till she reached a point where a little stream had been turned
into a stone trough for cattle. Above it stood a gnarled and solitary
thorn. Catherine sank down on a rock at the foot of the tree. It was a
seat she knew well; she had lingered there with her father; she had
thought and prayed there as girl and woman; she had wrestled there often
with despondency or grief, or some of those subtle spiritual temptations
which were all her pure youth had known, till the inner light had dawned
again, and the humble enraptured soul could almost have traced amid the
shadows of that dappled moorland world, between her and the clouds, the
white stoles and 'sleeping wings' of ministering spirits.
But no wrestle had ever been so hard as this. And with what fierce
suddenness had it come upon her! She looked back over the day with
bewilderment. She could see dimly that the Catherine who had started on
that Shanmoor walk had been full of vague misgivings other than those
concerned with a few neglected duties. There had been an undefined sense
of unrest, of difference, of broken equilibrium. She had shown it in the
way in which at first she had tried to keep herself and Robert Elsmere
apart.
And then; beyond the departure from Shanmoor she seemed to lose the
thread of her own history. Memory was drowned in a feeling to which the
resisting soul as yet would give no name. She laid her head on her knees
trembling. She heard again the sweet imperious tones with which he broke
down her opposition about the cloak; she felt again the grasp of his
steadying hand on hers.
But it was only for a very few minutes that she drifted thus. She raised
her head again, scourging herself in shame and self-reproach,
recapturing the empire of the soul with a strong effort. She set herself
to a stern analysis of the whole situation. Clearly Mrs. Thornburgh and
her sisters had been aware for some indefinite time that Mr. Elsmere had
been showing a peculiar interest in her. _Their_ eyes had been open. She
realised now with hot cheeks how many meetings and _tete-a-tetes_ had
been managed for her and Elsmere, and how complacently she had fallen
into Mrs. Thornburgh's snares.
'Have I encouraged him?' she asked herself sternly.
'Yes,' cried the smarting conscience.
'Can I marry him?'
'No,' said conscience again; 'not without deserting your post, not
without betraying your trust.'
What post? What trust? Ah, conscience was ready enough with the answer.
Was it not just ten years since, as a girl of sixteen, prematurely old
and thoughtful, she had sat beside her father's deathbed, while her
delicate hysterical mother, in a state of utter collapse, was kept away
from him by the doctors? She could see the drawn face, the restless
melancholy eyes. 'Catherine, my darling, you are the strong one. They
will look to you. Support them.' And she could see in imagination her
own young face pressed against the pillows. 'Yes, father,
always--always!'--'Catherine, life is harder, the narrow way narrower
than ever. I die'--and memory caught still the piteous, long-drawn
breath by which the voice was broken--'in much--much perplexity about
many things. You have a clear soul, an iron will. Strengthen the others.
Bring them safe to the day of account.'--'Yes, father, with God's help.
Oh, with God's help!'
That long-past dialogue is clear and sharp to her now, as though it were
spoken afresh in her ears. And how has she kept her pledge? She looks
back humbly on her life of incessant devotion, on the tie of long
dependence which has bound to her her weak and widowed mother, on her
relations to her sisters, the efforts she has made to train them in the
spirit of her father's life and beliefs.
Have those efforts reached their term? Can it be said in any sense that
her work is done, her promise kept?
Oh, no--no! she cries to herself with vehemence. Her mother depends on
her every day and hour for protection, comfort, enjoyment. The girls are
at the opening of life,--Agnes twenty, Rose eighteen, with all
experience to come. And Rose---- Ah! at the thought of Rose, Catherine's
heart sinks deeper and deeper--she feels a culprit before her father's
memory. What is it has gone so desperately wrong with her training of
the child? Surely she has given love enough, anxious thought enough, and
here is Rose only fighting to be free from the yoke of her father's
wishes, from the galling pressure of the family tradition!
No. Her task has just now reached its most difficult, its most critical,
moment. How can she leave it? Impossible.
What claim can she put against these supreme claims--of her promise, her
mother's and sisters' need?
_His_ claim? Oh, no--no! She admits with soreness and humiliation
unspeakable that she has done him wrong. If he loves her she has opened
the way thereto; she confesses in her scrupulous honesty that when the
inevitable withdrawal comes she will have given him cause to think of
her hardly, slightingly. She flinches painfully under the thought. But
it does not alter the matter. This girl, brought up in the austerest
school of Christian self-government, knows nothing of the divine rights
of passion. Half modern literature is based upon them. Catherine Leyburn
knew of no supreme right but the right of God to the obedience of man.
Oh, and besides--besides--it is impossible that he should care so very
much. The time is so short--there is so little in her, comparatively, to
attract a man of such resource, such attainments, such access to the
best things of life.
She cannot--in a kind of terror--she _will_ not, believe in her own
love-worthiness, in her own power to deal a lasting wound.
Then her _own_ claim? Has she any claim, has the poor bounding heart
that she cannot silence, do what she will, through all this strenuous
debate, no claim to satisfaction, to joy?