Robert Elsmere
movement to him, after his speech about her father! that heavenly
yielding and self-forgetfulness which shone in her every look and
movement as she stood balancing on the stepping-stones! If after all she
should prove cruel to him, would he not have a legitimate grievance, a
heavy charge to fling against her maiden gentleness? He trampled on the
notion. Let her do with him as she would, she would be his saint always,
unquestioned, unarraigned.
But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that any man, least
of all a man of Elsmere's temperament, could be very hopeless. Oh yes,
he had been rash, foolhardy. Do such divine creatures stoop to mortal
men as easily as he had dreamt? He recognises all the difficulties, he
enters into the force of all the ties that bind her--or imagines that he
does. But he is a man and her lover: and if she loves him, in the end
love will conquer--must conquer. For his more modern sense, deeply
Christianised as it is, assumes almost without argument the sacredness
of passion and its claim--wherein a vast difference between himself and
that solitary wrestler in Marrisdale.
Meanwhile he kept all his hopes and fears to himself. Mrs. Thornburgh
was dying to talk to him; but though his mobile, boyish temperament made
it impossible for him to disguise his change of mood, there was in him a
certain natural dignity which life greatly developed, but which made it
always possible for him to hold his own against curiosity and
indiscretion. Mrs. Thornburgh had to hold her peace. As for the vicar,
he developed what were for him a surprising number of new topics of
conversation, and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a run up the fells
to the nearest fragment of the Roman road which runs, with such
magnificent disregard of the humours of Mother Earth, over the very top
of High Street towards Penrith and Carlisle.
Next day it looked as though after many waverings the characteristic
Westmoreland weather had descended upon them in good earnest. From early
morn till late evening the valley was wrapped in damp clouds or moving
rain, which swept down from the west through the great basin of the
hills, and rolled along the course of the river, wrapping trees and
fells and houses in the same misty cheerless drizzle. Under the outward
pall of rain, indeed, the valley was renewing its summer youth; the
river was swelling with an impetuous music through all its dwindled
channels; the crags flung out white waterfalls again, which the heat had
almost dried away; and by noon the whole green hollow was vocal with the
sounds of water--water flashing and foaming in the river, water leaping
downwards from the rocks, water dripping steadily from the larches and
sycamores and the slate-eaves of the houses.
Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system of
Surrey, or pretending to do so. He sat in a corner of the study, where
he and the vicar protected each other against Mrs. Thornburgh. That good
woman would open the door once and again in the morning, and put her
head through in search of prey; but on being confronted with two
studious men instead of one, each buried up to the ears in folios, she
would give vent to an irritable cough and retire discomfited. In reality
Elsmere was thinking of nothing in the world but what Catherine Leyburn
might be doing that morning. Judging a North countrywoman by the
pusillanimous Southern standard, he found himself glorying in the
weather. She could not wander far from him to-day.
After the early dinner he escaped, just as the vicar's wife was devising
an excuse on which to convey both him and herself to Burwood, and
sallied forth with a mackintosh for a rush down the Whinborough road. It
was still raining, but the clouds showed a momentary lightening, and a
few gleams of watery sunshine brought out every now and then that
sparkle on the trees, that iridescent beauty of distance and atmosphere
which goes so far to make a sensitive spectator forget the petulant
abundance of mountain rain. Elsmere passed Burwood with a thrill. Should
he or should he not present himself? Let him push on a bit and think. So
on he swung, measuring his tall frame against the gusts, spirits and
masculine energy rising higher with every step. At last the passion of
his mood had wrestled itself out with the weather, and he turned back
once more determined to seek and find her, to face his fortunes like a
man. The warm rain beating from the west struck on his uplifted face. He
welcomed it as a friend. Rain and storm had opened to him the gates of a
spiritual citadel. What could ever wholly close it against him any more?
He felt so strong, so confident! Patience and courage!
Before him the great hollow of High Fell was just coming out from the
white mists surging round it. A shaft of sunlight lay across its upper
end, and he caught a marvellous apparition of a sunlit valley hung in
air, a pale strip of blue above it, a white thread of stream wavering
through it, and all around it and below it the rolling rain-clouds.
Suddenly between him and that enchanter's vision he saw a dark slim
figure against the mists, walking before him along the road. It was
Catherine--Catherine just emerged from a footpath across the fields,
battling with wind and rain, and quite unconscious of any spectator. Oh,
what a sudden thrill was that! what a leaping together of joy and dread,
which sent the blood to his heart! Alone--they two alone again--in the
wild Westmoreland mists, and half a mile at least of winding road
between them and Burwood. He flew after her, dreading, and yet longing
for the moment when he should meet her eyes. Fortune had suddenly given
this hour into his hands; he felt it open upon him like that mystic
valley in the clouds.
Catherine heard the hurrying steps behind her and turned. There was an
evident start when she caught sight of her pursuer--a quick change of
expression. She wore a close-fitting waterproof dress and cap. Her hair
was lightly loosened, her cheek freshened by the storm. He came up with
her; he took her hand, his eyes dancing with the joy he could not hide.
'What are you made of, I wonder!' he said gaily. 'Nothing, certainly,
that minds weather.'
'No Westmoreland native thinks of staying at home for this,' she said
with her quiet smile, moving on beside him as she spoke.
He looked down upon her with an indescribable mixture of feelings. No
stiffness, no coldness in her manner--only the even gentleness which
always marked her out from others. He felt as though yesterday were
blotted out, and would not for worlds have recalled it to her or
reproached her with it. Let it be as though they were but carrying on
the scene of the stepping-stones.
'Look,' he said, pointing to the west; 'have you been watching that
magical break in the clouds?'
Her eyes followed his to the delicate picture hung high among the moving
mists.
'Ah,' she exclaimed, her face kindling, 'that is one of our loveliest
effects, and one of the rarest. You are lucky to have seen it.'
'I am conceited enough,' he said joyously, 'to feel as if some enchanter
were at work up there drawing pictures on the mists for my special
benefit. How welcome the rain is! As I am afraid you have heard me say
before, what new charm it gives to your valley!'
There was something in the buoyancy and force of his mood that seemed to
make Catherine shrink into herself. She would not pursue the subject of
Westmoreland. She asked with a little stiffness whether he had good news
from Mrs. Elsmere.
'Oh, yes. As usual, she is doing everything for me,' he said, smiling.
'It is disgraceful that I should be idling here while she is struggling
with carpenters and paperers, and puzzling out the decorations of the
drawing-room. She writes to me in a fury about the word "artistic." She
declares even the little upholsterer at Churton hurls it at her every
other minute, and that if it weren't for me she would select everything
as frankly, primevally hideous as she could find, just to spite him. As
it is, he has so warped her judgment that she has left the sitting-room
papers till I arrive. For the drawing-room she avows a passionate
preference for one all cabbage-roses and no stalks; but she admits that
it may be exasperation. She wants your sister, clearly, to advise her.
By the way,' and his voice changed, 'the vicar told me last night that
Miss Rose is going to Manchester for the winter to study. He heard it
from Miss Agnes, I think. The news interested me greatly after our
conversation.'
He looked at her with the most winning interrogative eyes. His whole
manner implied that everything which touched and concerned her touched
and concerned him; and, moreover, that she had given him in some sort a
right to share her thoughts and difficulties. Catherine struggled with
herself.
'I trust it may answer,' she said in a low voice.
But she would say no more, and he felt rebuffed. His buoyancy began to
desert him.
'It must be a great trial to Mrs. Elsmere,' she said presently with an
effort, once more steering away from herself and her concerns, 'this
going back to her old home.'
'It is. My father's long struggle for life in that house is a very
painful memory. I wished her to put it off till I could go with her, but
she declared she would rather get over the first week or two by herself.
How I should like you to know my mother, Miss Leyburn!'
At this she could not help meeting his glance and smile, and answering
them, though with a kind of constraint most unlike her.
'I hope I may some day see Mrs. Elsmere,' she said.
'It is one of my strongest wishes,' he answered hurriedly, 'to bring you
together.'
The words were simple enough; the tone was full of emotion. He was fast
losing control of himself. She felt it through every nerve, and a sort
of wild dread seized her of what he might say next. Oh, she must, she
must prevent it!
'Your mother was with you most of your Oxford life, was she not?' she
said, forcing herself to speak in her most everyday tones.
He controlled himself with a mighty effort.
'Since I became a Fellow. We have been alone in the world so long. We
have never been able to do without each other.'
'Isn't it wonderful to you?' said Catherine, after a little electric
pause--and her voice was steadier and clearer than it had been since the
beginning of their conversation--'how little the majority of sons and
daughters regard their parents when they come to grow up and want to
live their own lives? The one thought seems to be to get rid of them, to
throw off their claims, to cut them adrift, to escape them--decently, of
course, and under many pretexts, but still to escape them. All the long
years of devotion and self-sacrifice go for nothing.'
He looked at her quickly--a troubled, questioning look.
'It is so, often; but not, I think, where the parents have truly
understood their problem. The real difficulty for father and mother is
not childhood, but youth; how to get over that difficult time when the
child passes into the man or woman, and a relation of governor and
governed should become the purest and closest of friendships. You and I
have been lucky.'
'Yes,' she said, looking straight before her, and still speaking with a
distinctness which caught his ear painfully, 'and so are the greater
debtors! There is no excuse, I think, for any child, least of all for
the child who has had years of understanding love to look back upon, if
it puts its own claim first; if it insists on satisfying itself, when
there is age and weakness appealing to it on the other side, when it is
still urgently needed to help those older, to shield those younger, than
itself. Its business first of all is to pay its debt, whatever the
cost.'