Robert Elsmere
She put on her hat and cloak, said something in Mrs. Irwin's ear, and
stooped to kiss the brow which to the shuddering sense under her will
seemed already cold and moist with the sweats of death. Mary watched her
go; Mrs. Irwin, with the air of one bewildered, drew her chair nearer to
the settle; and the light of the fire, shooting and dancing through the
June twilight, threw such fantastic shadows over the face on the pillow
that all expression was lost. What was moving in the crazed mind?
Satisfaction, perhaps, at having got rid of one witness, one jailer, one
of the various antagonistic forces surrounding her? She had a dim
frenzied notion she should have to fight for her liberty when the call
came, and she lay tense and rigid, waiting--the images of insanity
whirling through her brain, while the light slowly, slowly waned.
Catherine opened the door into the kitchen. The two carriers were
standing there, and Robert Elsmere also stood with his back to her,
talking to them in an undertone.
He turned at the sound behind him, and his start brought a sudden flush
to Catherine's cheek. Her face, as the candle-light struck it amid the
shadows of the doorway, was like an angelic vision to him--the heavenly
calm of it just exquisitely broken by the wonder, the shock, of his
presence.
'You here?' he cried, coming up to her, and taking her hand--what secret
instinct guided him?--close in both of his. 'I never dreamt of it--so
late. My cousin sent me over--she wished for news.'
She smiled involuntarily. It seemed to her she had expected this in some
sort all along. But her self-possession was complete.
'The excited state may be over in a short time now,' she answered him in
a quiet whisper; 'but at present it is at its height. It seemed to
please her'--and withdrawing her hand, she turned to John
Backhouse--'when I suggested that I should walk up to Shanmoss and back.
I said I would come back to her in half an hour or so, when the daylight
was quite gone, and prove to her there was nothing on the path.'
A hand caught her arm. It was Mrs. Irwin, holding the door close with
the other hand.
'Miss Leyburn--Miss Catherine! Yur not gawin' oot--not gawin' oop _that_
path?' The woman was fond of Catherine, and looked deadly frightened.
'Yes, I am, Mrs. Irwin--but I shall be back very soon. Don't leave her;
go back.' And Catherine motioned her back with a little peremptory
gesture.
'Doan't ye let 'ur, sir,' said the woman excitedly to Robert. 'One's
eneuf aa'm thinking.' And she pointed with a meaning gesture to the room
behind her.
Robert looked at Catherine, who was moving towards the outer door.
'I'll go with her,' he said hastily, his face lighting up. 'There is
nothing whatever to be afraid of, only don't leave your patient.'
Catherine trembled as she heard the words, but she made no sign, and the
two men and the woman watched their departure with blank uneasy
wonderment. A second later they were on the fell-side climbing a rough
stony path, which in places was almost a watercourse, and which wound up
the fell towards a tract of level swampy moss or heath, beyond which lay
the descent to Shanmoor. Daylight was almost gone; the stormy yellow
west was being fast swallowed up in cloud; below them as they climbed
lay the dark group of houses, with a light twinkling here and there. All
about them were black mountain forms; a desolate tempestuous wind drove
a gusty rain into their faces; a little beck roared beside them, and in
the distance from the black gulf of the valley the swollen river
thundered.
Elsmere looked down on his companion with an indescribable exultation, a
passionate sense of possession which could hardly restrain itself. He
had come back that morning with a mind clearly made up. Catherine had
been blind indeed when she supposed that any plan of his or hers would
have been allowed to stand in the way of that last wrestle with her, of
which he had planned all the methods, rehearsed all the arguments. But
when he reached the vicarage he was greeted with the news of her
absence. She was inaccessible it appeared for the day. No matter! The
vicar and he settled in the fewest possible words that he should stay
till Monday, Mrs. Thornburgh meanwhile looking on, saying what civility
demanded, and surprisingly little else. Then in the evening Mrs.
Thornburgh had asked of him with a manner of admirable indifference
whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High Ghyll to inquire
after Mary Backhouse. The request fell in excellently with a lover's
restlessness, and Robert assented at once. The vicar saw him go with
puzzled brows and a quick look at his wife, whose head was bent close
over her worsted work.
It never occurred to Elsmere--or if it did occur, he pooh-poohed the
notion--that he should find Catherine still at her post far from home on
this dark stormy evening. But in the glow of joy which her presence had
brought him he was still capable of all sorts of delicate perceptions
and reasonings. His quick imagination carried him through the scene from
which she had just momentarily escaped. He had understood the exaltation
of her look and tone. If love spoke at all, ringed with such
surroundings, it must be with its most inward and spiritual voice, as
those speak who feel 'the Eternities' about them.
But the darkness hid her from him so well that he had to feel out the
situation for himself. He could not trace it in her face.
'We must go right up to the top of the pass,' she said to him as he held
a gate open for her which led them into a piece of larch plantation on
the mountain-side. 'The ghost is supposed to walk along this bit of road
above the houses, till it reaches the heath on the top, and then it
turns towards Bleacliff Tarn, which lies higher up to the right, under
High Fell.'
'Do you imagine your report will have any effect?'
'At any rate,' she said sighing, 'it seemed to me that it might divert
her thoughts a little from the actual horror of her own summons.
Anything is better than the torture of that one fixed idea as she lies
there.'
'What is that?' said Robert, startled a little by some ghostly sounds in
front of them. The little wood was almost dark, and he could see
nothing.
'Only a horse trotting on in front of us,' said Catherine; 'our voices
frightened him, I suppose. We shall be out on the fell again directly.'
And as they quitted the trees, a dark bulky form to the left suddenly
lifted a shadowy head from the grass, and clattered down the slope.
A cluster of white-stemmed birches just ahead of them caught whatever
light was still left in the atmosphere, their feathery tops bending and
swaying against the sky.
'How easily, with mind attuned, one could people this whole path with
ghosts!' said Robert. 'Look at those stems, and that line of stream
coming down to the right, and listen to the wind among the fern.'
For they were passing a little gully deep in bracken, up which the blast
was tearing its tempestuous way.
Catherine shivered a little, and the sense of physical exhaustion, which
had been banished like everything else--doubt, humiliation,
bitterness--by the one fact of his presence, came back on her.
'There _is_ something rather awful in this dark and storm,' she said,
and paused.
'Would you have faced it alone?' he asked, his voice thrilling her with
a hundred different meanings. 'I am glad I prevented it.'
'I have no fear of the mountains,' she said, trembling. 'I know them,
and they me.'
'But you are tired--your voice is tired--and the walk might have been
more of an effort than you thought it. Do you never think of yourself?'
'Oh dear, yes,' said Catherine, trying to smile, and could find nothing
else to say. They walked on a few moments in silence, splashes of rain
breaking in their faces. Robert's inward excitement was growing fast.
Suddenly Catherine's pulse stood still. She felt her hand lifted, drawn
within his arm, covered close with his warm trembling clasp.
'Catherine, let it stay there. Listen one moment. You gave me a hard
lesson yesterday, too hard--I cannot learn it--I am bold--I claim you.
Be my wife. Help me through this difficult world. I have loved you from
the first moment. Come to me. Be kind to me.'
She could hardly see his face, but she could feel the passion in his
voice and touch. Her cheek seemed to droop against his arm. He felt her
tottering.
'Let me sit down,' she said; and after one moment of dizzy silence he
guided her to a rock, sinking down himself beside her, longing, but not
daring, to shelter her under his broad Inverness cloak against the
storm.
'I told you,' she said, almost whispering, 'that I was bound, tied to
others.'
'I do not admit your plea,' he said passionately; 'no, not for a moment.
For two days have I been tramping over the mountains thinking it out for
yourself and me. Catherine, your mother has no son--she should find one
in me. I have no sisters--give me yours. I will cherish them as any
brother could. Come and enrich my life; you shall still fill and shelter
theirs. I dare not think what my future might be with you to guide, to
inspire, to bless--dare not, lest with a word you should plunge me into
an outer darkness I cannot face.'
He caught her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips.
'Is there no sacredness,' he said brokenly, 'in the fate that has
brought us together--out of all the world--here in this lonely valley?
Come to me, Catherine. You shall never fail the old ties, I promise you;
and new hands shall cling to you--new voices shall call you blessed.'
Catherine could hardly breathe. Every word had been like balm upon a
wound--like a ray of intense light in the gloom about them. Oh, where
was this softness bearing her--this emptiness of all will, of all
individual power? She hid her eyes with her other hand, struggling to
recall that far away moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused to work.
Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of his
hand--the tones of his voice.
He saw her struggle, and pressed on remorselessly.
'Speak to me--say one little kind word. Oh, you cannot send me away
miserable and empty!'
She turned to him, and laid her trembling free hand on his arm. He
clasped them both with rapture.
'Give me a little time.'
'No, no,' he said, and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling:
'time for you to escape me again, my wild mountain bird; time for you to
think yourself and me into all sorts of moral mists! No, you shall not
have it. Here, alone with God and the dark--bless me or undo me. Send me
out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful, or send me out your
knight, your possession, pledged----'
But his voice failed him. What a note of youth, of imagination, of
impulsive eagerness there was through it all! The more slowly-moving
inarticulate nature was swept away by it. There was but one object clear
to her in the whole world of thought or sense, everything else had sunk
out of sight--drowned in a luminous mist.
He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum, his tall
form drawn up to its full height. In the east, across the valley, above
the farther buttress of High Fell, there was a clearer strip of sky,
visible for a moment among the moving storm clouds, and a dim haloed
moon shone out in it. Far away a white-walled cottage glimmered against
the fell; the pools at their feet shone in the weird passing light.
She lifted her head, and looked at him, still irresolute. Then she too
rose, and helplessly, like some one impelled by a will not her own, she
silently held out to him two white trembling hands.
'Catherine--my angel--my wife!'
There was something in the pale virginal grace of look and form which