Robert Elsmere
guessed anything; there was no need, with three daughters to think for
her, and give her the benefit of their young brains. 'No,' she said
again. 'I can't imagine what you mean.'
Mrs. Thornburgh felt a rush of inward contempt for so much obtuseness.
'Well, then, _he is in love with Catherine!_' she said abruptly, laying
her hand on Mrs. Leyburn's knee, and watching the effect.
'With Catherine!' stammered Mrs. Leyburn; '_with Catherine!_'
The idea was amazing to her. She took up her knitting with trembling
fingers, and went on with it mechanically a second or two. Then laying
it down--'Are you quite sure? has he told you?'
'No, but one has eyes,' said Mrs. Thornburgh hastily. 'William and I
have seen it from the very first day. And we are both certain that on
Tuesday she made him understand in some way or other that she wouldn't
marry him, and that is why he went off to Ullswater, and why he made up
his mind to go south before his time is up.'
'Tuesday?' cried Mrs. Leyburn. 'In that walk, do you mean, when
Catherine looked so tired afterwards? You think he proposed in that
walk?'
She was in a maze of bewilderment and excitement.
'Something like it--but if he did, she said "No"; and what I want to
know is _why_ she said "No."'
'Why, of course, because she didn't care for him!' exclaimed Mrs.
Leyburn, opening her blue eyes wider and wider. 'Catherine's not like
most girls; she would always know what she felt, and would never keep a
man in suspense.'
'Well, I don't somehow believe,' said Mrs. Thornburgh boldly, 'that she
doesn't care for him. He is just the young man Catherine might care for.
You can see that yourself.'
Mrs. Leyburn once more laid down her knitting and stared at her visitor.
Mrs. Thornburgh, after all her meditations, had no very precise idea as
to _why_ she was at that moment in the Burwood drawing-room bombarding
Mrs. Leyburn in this fashion. All she knew was that she had sallied
forth determined somehow to upset the situation, just as one gives a
shake purposely to a bundle of spillikins on the chance of more
favourable openings. Mrs. Leyburn's mind was just now playing the part
of spillikins, and the vicar's wife was shaking it vigorously, though
with occasional qualms as to the lawfulness of the process.
'You think Catherine does care for him?' resumed Mrs. Leyburn
tremulously.
'Well, isn't he just the kind of man one would suppose Catherine would
like?' repeated Mrs. Thornburgh persuasively; 'he is a clergyman, and
she likes serious people; and he's sensible and nice and well-mannered.
And then he can talk about books, just like her father used--I'm sure
William thinks he knows everything! He isn't as nice-looking as he might
be just now, but then that's his hair and his fever, poor man. And then
he isn't hanging about. He's got a living, and there'd be the poor
people all ready, and everything else Catherine likes. And now I'll just
ask you--did you ever see Catherine more--more--_lively_--well, I know
that's not just the word, but you know what I mean--than she has been
the last fortnight?'
But Mrs. Leyburn only shook her head helplessly. She did not know in the
least what Mrs. Thornburgh meant. She never thought Catherine doleful,
and she agreed that certainly 'lively' was not the word.
'Girls get so frightfully particular nowadays,' continued the vicar's
wife, with reflective candour. 'Why, when William fell in love with me,
I just fell in love with him--at once--because he did. And if it hadn't
been William, but somebody else, it would have been the same. I don't
believe girls have got hearts like pebbles--if the man's nice, of
course!'
Mrs. Leyburn listened to this summary of matrimonial philosophy with the
same yielding flurried attention as she was always disposed to give to
the last speaker.
'But,' she said, still in a maze, 'if she did care for him, why should
she send him away?'
'_Because she won't have him!_' said Mrs. Thornburgh energetically,
leaning over the arm of her chair that she might bring herself nearer to
her companion.
The fatuity of the answer left Mrs. Leyburn staring.
'Because she won't have him, my dear Mrs. Leyburn! And--and--I'm sure
nothing would make me interfere like this if I weren't so fond of you
all, and if William and I didn't know for certain that there never was a
better young man born! And then I was just sure you'd be the last person
in the world, if you knew, to stand in young people's way!'
'_I!_' cried poor Mrs. Leyburn--'I stand in the way!' She was getting
tremulous and tearful, and Mrs. Thornburgh felt herself a brute.
'Well,' she said, plunging on desperately, 'I have been thinking over it
night and day. I've been watching him, and I've been talking to the
girls, and I've been putting two and two together, and I'm just about
sure that there might be a chance for Robert, if only Catherine didn't
feel that you and the girls couldn't get on without her!'
Mrs. Leyburn took up her knitting again with agitated fingers. She was
so long in answering that Mrs. Thornburgh sat and thought with
trepidation of all sorts of unpleasant consequences which might result
from this audacious move of hers.
'I don't know how we _should_ get on,' cried Mrs. Leyburn at last, with
a sort of suppressed sob, while something very like a tear fell on the
stocking she held.
Mrs. Thornburgh was still more frightened, and rushed into a flood of
apologetic speech. Very likely she was wrong, perhaps it was all a
mistake, she was afraid she had done harm, and so on. Mrs. Leyburn took
very little heed, but at last she said, looking up and applying a soft
handkerchief gently to her eyes--
'Is his mother nice? Where's his living? Would he want to be married
soon?'
The voice was weak and tearful, but there was in it unmistakable
eagerness to be informed. Mrs. Thornburgh, overjoyed, let loose upon her
a flood of particulars, painted the virtues and talents of Mrs. Elsmere,
described Robert's Oxford career, with an admirable sense for effect,
and a truly feminine capacity for murdering every university detail,
drew pictures of the Murewell living and rectory, of which Robert had
photographs with him, threw in adroit information about the young man's
private means, and in general showed what may be made of a woman's mind
under the stimulus of one of the occupations most proper to it. Mrs.
Leyburn brightened visibly as the flood proceeded. Alas, poor Catherine!
How little room there is for the heroic in this trivial everyday life of
ours!
Catherine a bride, Catherine a wife and mother, dim visions of a white
soft morsel in which Catherine's eyes and smile should live again--all
these thoughts went trembling and flashing through Mrs. Leyburn's mind
as she listened to Mrs. Thornburgh. There is so much of the artist in
the maternal mind, of the artist who longs to see the work of his hand
in fresh combinations and under all points of view. Catherine, in the
heat of her own self-surrender, had perhaps forgotten that her mother
too had a heart!
'Yes, it all sounds very well,' said Mrs. Leyburn at last, sighing,
'but, you know, Catherine isn't easy to manage.'
'Could you talk to her--find out a little?'
'Well, not to-day; I shall hardly see her. Doesn't it seem to you that
when a girl takes up notions like Catherine's, she hasn't time for
thinking about the young men? Why, she's as full of business all day
long as an egg's full of meat. Well, it was my poor Richard's doing--it
was his doing, bless him! I am not going to say anything against it. But
it _was_ different--once.'
'Yes, I know,' said Mrs. Thornburgh thoughtfully. 'One had plenty of
time, when you and I were young, to sit at home and think what one was
going to wear, and how one would look, and whether _he_ had been paying
attention to any one else; and if he had, why; and all that. And now the
young women are so superior. But the marrying has got to be done somehow
all the same. What is she doing to-day?'
'Oh, she'll be busy all to-day and to-morrow; I hardly expect to see her
till Saturday.'
Mrs. Thornburgh gave a start of dismay.
'Why, what _is_ the matter now?' she cried in her most aggrieved tones.
'My dear Mrs. Leyburn, one would think we had the cholera in the parish.
Catherine just spoils the people.'
'Don't you remember,' said Mrs. Leyburn, staring in her turn, and
drawing herself up a little, 'that to-morrow is Midsummer Day, and that
Mary Backhouse is as bad as she can be?'
'Mary Backhouse! Why, I had forgotten all about her!' cried the vicar's
wife, with sudden remorse. And she sat pensively eyeing the carpet
awhile.
Then she got what particulars she could out of Mrs. Leyburn. Catherine,
it appeared, was at this moment at High Ghyll, was not to return till
late, and would be with the dying girl through the greater part of the
following day, returning for an hour or two's rest in the afternoon, and
staying in the evening till the twilight, in which the ghost always made
her appearances, should have passed into night.
Mrs. Thornburgh listened to it all, her contriving mind working the
while at railway speed on the facts presented to her.
'How do you get her home to-morrow night?' she asked, with sudden
animation.
'Oh, we send our man Richard at ten. He takes a lantern if it's dark.'
Mrs. Thornburgh said no more. Her eyes and gestures were all alive again
with energy and hope. She had given her shake to Mrs. Leyburn's mind.
Much good might it do! But, after all, she had the poorest opinion of
the widow's capacities as an ally.
She and her companion said a few more excited, affectionate, and
apologetic things to one another, and then she departed.
Both mother and knitting were found by Agnes half an hour later in a
state of considerable confusion. But Mrs. Leyburn kept her own counsel,
having resolved for once, with a timid and yet delicious excitement, to
act as the head of the family.
Meanwhile Mrs. Thornburgh was laying plans on her own account.
'Ten o'clock--moonlight,' said that contriving person to herself going
home--'at least if the clouds hold up--that'll do--couldn't be better.'
* * * * *
To any person familiar with her character the signs of some unusual
preoccupation were clear enough in Mrs. Leyburn during this Thursday
evening. Catherine noticed them at once when she got back from High
Ghyll about eight o'clock, and wondered first of all what was the
matter; and then, with more emphasis, why the trouble was not
immediately communicated to her. It had never entered into her head to
take her mother into her confidence with regard to Elsmere. Since she
could remember, it had been an axiom in the family to spare the delicate
nervous mother all the anxieties and perplexities of life. It was a
system in which the subject of it had always acquiesced with perfect
contentment, and Catherine had no qualms about it. If there was good
news, it was presented in its most sugared form to Mrs. Leyburn; but the
moment any element of pain and difficulty cropped up in the common life,
it was pounced upon and appropriated by Catherine, aided and abetted by
the girls, and Mrs. Leyburn knew no more about it than an unweaned babe.
So that Catherine was thinking at most of some misconduct of a Perth
dyer with regard to her mother's best gray poplin, when one of the
greatest surprises of her life burst upon her.
She was in Mrs. Leyburn's bedroom that night, helping to put away her
mother's things, as her custom was. She had just taken off the widow's
cap, caressing as she did so the brown hair underneath, which was still
soft and plentiful, when Mrs. Leyburn turned upon her. 'Catherine!' she
said in an agitated voice, laying a thin hand on her daughter's arm.