Robert Elsmere
'An unblushing old worldling, I should call your Archbishop,' she said
briskly. 'And a very good thing for him that he lived when he did. Our
modern good people would have dusted his apron for him.'
Lady Charlotte prided herself on these vigorous forms of speech, and the
squire's neighbourhood generally called out an unusual crop of them. The
squire was still sitting with his hands on the table, his great brows
bent, surveying his guests.
'Oh, of course all the sensible men are dead!' he said indifferently.
'But that is a pet saying of mine--the Church of England in a nutshell.'
Robert flushed, and after a moment's hesitation bent forward.
'What do you suppose,' he asked quietly, 'your Archbishop meant, Mr.
Wendover, by enthusiasm? Nonconformity, I imagine.'
'Oh, very possibly!' and again Robert found the hawk-like glance
concentrated on himself. 'But I like to give his remark a much wider
extension. One may make it a maxim of general experience, and take it as
fitting all the fools with a mission who have teased our generation--all
your Kingsleys, and Maurices, and Ruskins--every one bent upon making
any sort of aimless commotion, which may serve him both as an investment
for the next world, and an advertisement for this.'
'Upon my word, squire,' said Lady Charlotte, 'I hope you don't expect
Mr. Elsmere to agree with you?'
Mr. Wendover made her a little bow.
'I have very little sanguineness of any sort in my composition,' he said
drily.
'I should like to know,' said Robert, taking no notice of this by-play;
'I should like to know, Mr. Wendover, leaving the Archbishop out of
count, what _you_ understand by this word enthusiasm in this maxim of
yours?'
'An excellent manner,' thought Lady Charlotte, who, for all her
noisiness, was an extremely shrewd woman, 'an excellent manner and an
unprovoked attack.'
Catherine's trained eye, however, had detected signs in Robert's look
and bearing which were lost on Lady Charlotte, and which made her look
nervously on. As to the rest of the table, they had all fallen to
watching the 'break' between the new rector and their host with a good
deal of curiosity.
The squire paused a moment before replying,--
'It is not easy to put it tersely,' he said at last; 'but I may define
it, perhaps, as the mania for mending the roof of your right-hand
neighbour with straw torn off the roof of your left-hand neighbour; the
custom, in short, of robbing Peter to propitiate Paul.'
'Precisely,' said Mr. Wynnstay warmly; 'all the ridiculous Radical
nostrums of the last fifty years--you have hit them off exactly.
Sometimes you rob more and propitiate less; sometimes you rob less and
propitiate more. But the principle is always the same.' And mindful of
all those intolerable evenings, when these same Radical nostrums had
been forced down his throat at his own table, he threw a pugnacious look
at his wife, who smiled back serenely in reply. There is small redress
indeed for these things, when out of the common household stock the wife
possesses most of the money, and a vast proportion of the brains.
'And the cynic takes pleasure in observing,' interrupted the squire,
'that the man who effects the change of balance does it in the loftiest
manner, and profits in the vulgarest way. Other trades may fail. The
agitator is always sure of _his_ market.'
He spoke with a harsh contemptuous insistence which was gradually
setting every nerve in Robert's body tingling. He bent forward again,
his long thin frame and boyish bright-complexioned face making an
effective contrast to the squire's bronzed and wrinkled squareness.
'Oh, if you and Mr. Wynnstay are prepared to draw an indictment against
your generation and all its works, I have no more to say,' he said,
smiling still, though his voice had risen a little in spite of himself.
'I should be content to withdraw with my Burke into the majority. I
imagined your attack on enthusiasm had a narrower scope, but if it is to
be made synonymous with social progress I give up. The subject is too
big. Only----'
He hesitated. Mr. Wynnstay was studying him with somewhat insolent
coolness; Lady Charlotte's eyeglass never wavered from his face, and he
felt through every fibre the tender timid admonitions of his wife's
eyes.
'However,' he went on after an instant, 'I imagine that we should find
it difficult anyhow to discover common ground. I regard your
Archbishop's maxim, Mr. Wendover,' and his tone quickened and grew
louder, 'as first of all a contradiction in terms; and in the next
place, to me, almost all enthusiasms are respectable!'
'You are one of those people, I see,' returned Mr. Wendover, after a
pause, with the same nasal emphasis and the same _hauteur_, 'who imagine
we owe civilisation to the heart; that mankind has _felt_ its
way--literally. The school of the majority, of course--I admit it amply.
I, on the other hand, am with the benighted minority who believe that
the world, so far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by the
_head_,' and he flung the noun at Robert scornfully. 'But I am quite
aware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all the kicks,
and the philanthropists, to give them their own label, all the
halfpence.'
The impassive tone had gradually warmed to a heat which was
unmistakable. Lady Charlotte looked on with increasing relish. To her
all society was a comedy played for her entertainment, and she detected
something more dramatic than usual in the juxtaposition of these two
men. That young rector might be worth looking after. The dinners in
Martin Street were alarmingly in want of fresh blood. As for poor Mr.
Bickerton, he had begun to talk hastily to Catherine, with a sense of
something tumbling about his ears; while Mr. Longstaffe, eyeglass in
hand, surveyed the table with a distinct sense of pleasurable
entertainment. He had not seen much of Elsmere yet, but it was as clear
as daylight that the man was a firebrand, and should be kept in order.
Meanwhile there was a pause between the two main disputants; the
storm-clouds were deepening outside, and rain had begun to patter on the
windows. Mrs. Darcy was just calling attention to the weather when the
squire unexpectedly returned to the charge.
'The one necessary thing in life,' he said, turning to Lady Charlotte, a
slight irritating smile playing round his strong mouth, 'is--not to be
duped. Put too much faith in these fine things the altruists talk of,
and you arrive one day at the condition of Louis XIV. after the battle
of Ramillies: "Dieu a donc oublie tout ce que j'ai fait pour lui?" Read
your Renan; remind yourself at every turn that it is quite possible
after all the egotist _may_ turn out to be in the right of it, and you
will find at any rate that the world gets on excellently well without
your blundering efforts to set it straight. And so we get back to the
Archbishop's maxim--adapted, no doubt, to English requirements,' and he
shrugged his great shoulders expressively: '_Pace_ Mr. Elsmere, of
course, and the rest of our clerical friends!'
Again he looked down the table, and the strident voice sounded harsher
than ever as it rose above the sudden noise of the storm outside.
Robert's bright eyes were fixed on the squire, and before Mr. Wendover
stopped Catherine could see the words of reply trembling on his lips.
'I am well content,' he said, with a curious dry intensity of tone. 'I
give you your Renan. Only leave us poor dupes our illusions. We will not
quarrel with the division. With you all the cynics of history; with us
all the "scorners of the ground" from the world's beginning until now!'
The squire make a quick impatient movement. Mr. Wynnstay looked
significantly at his wife, who dropped her eyeglass with a little
irrepressible smile.
As for Robert, leaning forward with hastened breath, it seemed to him
that his eyes and the squire's crossed like swords. In Robert's mind
there had arisen a sudden passion of antagonism. Before his eyes there
was a vision of a child in a stifling room, struggling with mortal
disease, imposed upon her, as he hotly reminded himself, by this man's
culpable neglect. The dinner-party, the splendour of the room, the
conversation, excited a kind of disgust in him. If it were not for
Catherine's pale face opposite, he could hardly have maintained his
self-control.
Mrs. Darcy, a little bewildered, and feeling that things were not going
particularly well, thought it best to interfere.
'Roger,' she said plaintively, 'you must not be so philosophical. It's
too hot! He used to talk like that,' she went on, bending over to Mr.
Wynnstay, 'to the French priests who came to see us last winter in
Paris. They never minded a bit--they used to laugh. "Monsieur votre
frere, madame, c'est un homme qui a trop lu," they would say to me when
I gave them their coffee. Oh, they were such dears, those old priests!
Roger said they had great hopes of me.'
The chatter was welcome, the conversation broke up. The squire turned to
Lady Charlotte, and Rose to Langham.
'Why didn't you support Robert?' she said to him, impulsively, with a
dissatisfied face. 'He was alone, against the table!'
'What good should I have done him?' he asked, with a shrug. 'And pray,
my lady confessor, what enthusiasms do you suspect me of?'
He looked at her intently. It seemed to her they were by the gate
again--the touch of his lips on her hand. She turned from him hastily to
stoop for her fan which had slipped away. It was only Catherine who, for
her annoyance, saw the scarlet flush leap into the fair face. An instant
later Mrs. Darcy had given the signal.
CHAPTER XVIII
After dinner Lady Charlotte fixed herself at first on Catherine, whose
quiet dignity during the somewhat trying ordeal of the dinner had
impressed her, but a few minutes' talk produced in her the conviction
that without a good deal of pains--and why should a Londoner, accustomed
to the cream of things, take pains with a country clergyman's wife?--she
was not likely to get much out of her. Her appearance promised more,
Lady Charlotte thought, than her conversation justified, and she looked
about for easier game.
'Are you Mr. Elsmere's sister?' said a loud voice over Rose's head; and
Rose, who had been turning over an illustrated book, with a mind wholly
detached from it, looked up to see Lady Charlotte's massive form
standing over her.
'No, his sister-in-law,' said Rose, flushing in spite of herself, for
Lady Charlotte was distinctly formidable.
'Hum,' said her questioner, depositing herself beside her. 'I never saw
two sisters more unlike. You have got a very argumentative
brother-in-law.'
Rose said nothing, partly from awkwardness, partly from rising
antagonism.
'Did you agree with him?' asked Lady Charlotte, putting up her glass and
remorselessly studying every detail of the pink dress, its ornaments,
and the slippered feet peeping out beneath it.
'Entirely,' said Rose fearlessly, looking her full in the face.
'And what can you know about it, I wonder? However, you are on the right
side. It is the fashion nowadays to have enthusiasms. I suppose you
muddle about among the poor like other people?'
'I know nothing about the poor,' said Rose.
'Oh, then, I suppose you feel yourself effective enough in some other
line?' said the other coolly. 'What is it--lawn tennis, or private
theatricals, or--hem--prettiness?' And again the eyeglass went up.
'Whichever you like,' said Rose calmly, the scarlet on her cheek
deepening, while she resolutely reopened her book. The manner of the
other had quite effaced in her all that sense of obligation, as from the
young to the old, which she had been very carefully brought up in. Never
had she beheld such an extraordinary woman.