Robert Elsmere
indefinable change of accent. It drove him into a harsh abruptness of
reply.
'The end of it--so far--must be, if I remain an honest man, that I must
give up my living, that I must cease to be a minister of the Church of
England. What the course of our life after that shall be is in your
hands--absolutely.'
She caught her breath painfully. His heart was breaking for her, and yet
there was something in her manner now which kept down caresses and
repressed all words.
Suddenly, however, as he sat there mutely watching her, he found her at
his knees, her dear arms around him, her face against his breast.
'Robert, my husband, my darling, it _cannot_ be! It is a madness--a
delusion. God is trying you, and me! You cannot be planning so to desert
Him, so to deny Christ--you cannot, my husband. Come away with me, away
from books and work, into some quiet place where He can make Himself
heard. You are overdone, overdriven. Do nothing now--say nothing--except
to me. Be patient a little, and He will give you back Himself! What can
books and arguments matter to you or me? Have we not _known_ and _felt_
Him as He is--have we not, Robert? Come!'
She pushed herself backwards, smiling at him with an exquisite
tenderness. The tears were streaming down her cheeks. They were wet on
his own. Another moment and Robert would have lost the only clue which
remained to him through the mists of this bewildering world. He would
have yielded again as he had many times yielded before, for infinitely
less reason, to the urgent pressure of another's individuality, and
having jeopardised love for truth, he would now have murdered--or tried
to murder--in himself the sense of truth for love.
But he did neither.
Holding her close pressed against him, he said in breaks of intense
speech: 'If you wish, Catherine, I will wait--I will wait till you bid
me speak--but I warn you--there is something dead in me--something gone
and broken. It can never live again--except in forms which now it would
only pain you more to think of. It is not that I think differently of
this point or that point--but of life and religion altogether. I see
God's purposes in quite other proportions as it were. Christianity seems
to me something small and local. Behind it, around it--including it--I
see the great drama of the world, sweeping on--led by God--from change
to change, from act to act. It is not that Christianity is false, but
that it is only an imperfect human reflection of a part of truth. Truth
has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system!'
She heard, but through her exhaustion, through the bitter sinking of
hope, she only half understood. Only she realised that she and he were
alike helpless--both struggling in the grip of some force outside
themselves, inexorable, ineluctable.
Robert felt her arms relaxing, felt the dead weight of her form against
him. He raised her to her feet, he half carried her to the door, and
on to the stairs. She was nearly fainting, but her will held it
at bay. He threw open the door of their room, led her in, lifted
her--unresisting--on to the bed. Then her head fell to one side, and her
lips grew ashen. In an instant or two he had done for her all that his
medical knowledge could suggest with rapid decided hands. She was not
quite unconscious; she drew up round her, as though with a strong vague
sense of chill, the shawl he laid over her, and gradually the slightest
shade of colour came back to her lips. But as soon as she opened her
eyes and met those of Robert fixed upon her, the heavy lids dropped
again.
'Would you rather be alone?' he said to her, kneeling beside her.
She made a faint affirmative movement of the head, and the cold hand he
had been chafing tried feebly to withdraw itself. He rose at once, and
stood a moment beside her, looking down at her. Then he went.
CHAPTER XXIX
He shut the door softly, and went downstairs again. It was between ten
and eleven. The lights in the lower passage were just extinguished;
every one else in the house had gone to bed. Mechanically he stooped and
put away the child's bricks, he pushed the chairs back into their
places, and then he paused a while before the open window. But there was
not a tremor on the set face. He felt himself capable of no more
emotion. The fount of feeling, of pain, was for the moment dried up.
What he was mainly noticing was the effect of some occasional gusts of
night-wind on the moonlit cornfield; the silver ripples they sent
through it; the shadows thrown by some great trees in the western
corners of the field; the glory of the moon itself in the pale immensity
of the sky.
Presently he turned away, leaving one lamp still burning in the room,
softly unlocked the hall door, took his hat, and went out. He walked up
and down the woodpath or sat on the bench there for some time, thinking
indeed, but thinking with a certain stern practical dryness. Whenever he
felt the thrill of feeling stealing over him again, he would make a
sharp effort at repression. Physically he could not bear much more, and
he knew it. A part remained for him to play, which must be played with
tact, with prudence, and with firmness. Strength and nerves had been
sufficiently weakened already. For his wife's sake, his people's sake,
his honourable reputation's sake, he must guard himself from a collapse
which might mean far more than physical failure.
So in the most patient methodical way he began to plan out the immediate
future. As to waiting, the matter was still in Catherine's hands; but he
knew that finely tempered soul; he knew that when she had mastered her
poor woman's self, as she had always mastered it from her childhood, she
would not bid him wait. He hardly took the possibility into
consideration. The proposal had had some reality in his eyes when he
went to see Mr. Grey; now it had none, though he could hardly have
explained why.
He had already made arrangements with an old Oxford friend to take his
duty during his absence on the Continent. It had been originally
suggested that this Mr. Armitstead should come to Murewell on the Monday
following the Sunday they were now approaching, spend a few days with
them before their departure, and be left to his own devices in the house
and parish, about the Thursday or Friday. An intense desire now seized
Robert to get hold of the man at once, before the next Sunday. It was
strange how the interview with his wife seemed to have crystallised,
precipitated, everything. How infinitely more real the whole matter
looked to him since the afternoon! It had passed--at any rate for the
time--out of the region of thought, into the hurrying evolution of
action, and as soon as action began it was characteristic of Robert's
rapid energetic nature to feel this thirst, to make it as prompt, as
complete, as possible. The fiery soul yearned for a fresh consistency,
though it were a consistency of loss and renunciation.
To-morrow he must write to the bishop. The bishop's residence was only
eight or ten miles from Murewell; he supposed his interview with him
would take place about Monday or Tuesday. He could see the tall stooping
figure of the kindly old man rising to meet him; he knew exactly the
sort of arguments that would be brought to bear upon him. Oh, that it
were done with--this wearisome dialectical necessity! His life for
months had been one long argument. If he were but left free to feel, and
live again!
The practical matter which weighed most heavily upon him was the
function connected with the opening of the new Institute, which had been
fixed for the Saturday--the next day but one. How was he--but much more
how was Catherine--to get through it? His lips would be sealed as to any
possible withdrawal from the living, for he could not by then have seen
the bishop. He looked forward to the gathering, the crowds, the local
enthusiasm, the signs of his own popularity, with a sickening distaste.
The one thing real to him through it all would be Catherine's white
face, and their bitter joint consciousness.
And then he said to himself, sharply, that his own feelings counted for
nothing. Catherine should be tenderly shielded from all avoidable pain,
but for himself there must be no flinching, no self-indulgent weakness.
Did he not owe every last hour he had to give to the people amongst whom
he had planned to spend the best energies of life, and for whom his own
act was about to part him in this lame impotent fashion?
Midnight! The sounds rolled silverly out, effacing the soft murmurs of
the night. So the long interminable day was over, and a new morning had
begun. He rose, listening to the echoes of the bell, and--as the tide of
feeling surged back upon him--passionately commending the new-born day
to God.
Then he turned towards the house, put the light out in the drawing-room,
and went upstairs, stepping cautiously. He opened the door of
Catherine's room. The moonlight was streaming in through the white
blinds. Catherine, who had undressed, was lying now with her face hidden
in the pillow, and one white-sleeved arm flung across little Mary's cot.
The night was hot, and the child would evidently have thrown off all its
coverings had it not been for the mother's hand, which lay lightly on
the tiny shoulder, keeping one thin blanket in its place.
'Catherine,' he whispered, standing beside her.
She turned, and by the light of the candle he held shaded from her he
saw the austere remoteness of her look, as of one who had been going
through deep waters of misery, alone with God. His heart sank. For the
first time that look seemed to exclude him from her inmost life.
He sank down beside her, took the hand lying on the child, and laid down
his head upon it, mutely kissing it. But he said nothing. Of what
further avail could words be just then to either of them? Only he felt
through every fibre the coldness, the irresponsiveness of those fingers
lying in his.
'Would it prevent your sleeping,' he asked her presently, 'if I came to
read here, as I used to when you were ill? I could shade the light from
you, of course.'
She raised her head suddenly.
'But you--you ought to sleep.'
Her tone was anxious, but strangely quiet and aloof.
'Impossible!' he said, pressing his hand over his eyes as he rose. 'At
any rate I will read first.'
His sleeplessness at any time of excitement or strain was so inveterate,
and so familiar to them both by now, that she could say nothing. She
turned away with a long sobbing breath, which seemed to go through her
from head to foot. He stood a moment beside her, fighting strong
impulses of remorse and passion, and ultimately maintaining silence and
self-control.
In another minute or two he was sitting beside her feet, in a low chair
drawn to the edge of the bed, the light arranged so as to reach his book
without touching either mother or child. He had run over the book-shelf
in his own room, shrinking painfully from any of his common religious
favourites as one shrinks from touching a still sore and throbbing
nerve, and had at last carried off a volume of Spenser.
And so the night began to wear away. For the first hour or two, every
now and then, a stifled sob would make itself just faintly heard. It was
a sound to wring the heart, for what it meant was that not even
Catherine Elsmere's extraordinary powers of self-suppression could avail
to check the outward expression of an inward torture. Each time it came
and went, it seemed to Elsmere that a fraction of his youth went with
it.
At last exhaustion brought her a restless sleep. As soon as Elsmere
caught the light breathing which told him she was not conscious of her
grief, or of him, his book slipped on to his knee.
'Open the temple gates unto my love,