Robert Elsmere
turned away with as much of an attempt at dignity as his shaking limbs
would allow of.
'Listen, Mr. Henslowe,' said Robert firmly, walking beside him; 'you
know--I know--that if this goes on, in a year's time you will be in your
grave, and your poor wife and children struggling to keep themselves
from the workhouse. You may think that I have no right to preach to
you--that you are the older man--that it is an intrusion. But what is
the good of blinking facts that you must know all the world knows? Come,
now, Mr. Henslowe, let us behave for a moment as though this were our
last meeting. Who knows? the chances of life are many. Lay down your
grudge against me, and let me speak to you as one struggling human being
to another. The fact that you have, as you say, become less prosperous,
in some sort through me, seems to give me a right--to make it a duty for
me, if you will--to help you if I can. Let me send a good doctor to see
you. Let me implore you as a last chance to put yourself into his
hands, and to obey him, and your wife; and let me,'--the rector
hesitated,--'let me make things pecuniarily easier for Mrs. Henslowe
till you have pulled yourself out of the hole in which, by common report
at least, you are now.'
Henslowe stared at him, divided between anger caused by the sore
stirring of his old self-importance, and a tumultuous flood of
self-pity, roused irresistibly in him by Robert's piercing frankness,
and aided by his own more or less maudlin condition. The latter
sensation quickly undermined the former; he turned his back on the
rector and leant over the railings of the lane, shaken by something it
is hardly worth while to dignify by the name of emotion. Robert stood
by, a pale embodiment of mingled judgment and compassion. He gave the
man a few moments to recover himself, and then, as Henslowe turned round
again, he silently and appealingly held out his hand--the hand of the
good man, which it was an honour for such as Henslowe to touch.
Constrained by the moral force radiating from his look, the other took
it with a kind of helpless sullenness.
Then, seizing at once on the slight concession, with that complete lack
of inconvenient self-consciousness, or hindering indecision, which was
one of the chief causes of his effect on men and women, Robert began to
sound the broken repulsive creature as to his affairs. Bit by bit,
compelled by a will and nervous strength far superior to his own,
Henslowe was led into abrupt and blurted confidences which surprised no
one so much as himself. Robert's quick sense possessed itself of point
after point, seeing presently ways of escape and relief which the
besotted brain beside him had been quite incapable of devising for
itself. They walked on into the open country, and what with the
discipline of the rector's presence, the sobering effect wrought by the
shock to pride and habit, and the unwonted brain exercise of the
conversation, the demon in Henslowe had been for the moment most
strangely tamed after half an hour's talk. Actually some reminiscences
of his old ways of speech and thought, the ways of the once prosperous
and self-reliant man of business, had reappeared in him before the end
of it, called out by the subtle influence of a manner which always
attracted to the surface whatever decent element there might be left in
a man, and then instantly gave it a recognition which was more redeeming
than either counsel or denunciation.
By the time they parted Robert had arranged with his old enemy that he
should become his surety with a rich cousin in Churton, who, always
supposing there were no risk in the matter, and that benevolence ran on
all-fours with security of investment, was prepared to shield the credit
of the family by the advance of a sufficient sum of money to rescue the
ex-agent from his most pressing difficulties. He had also wrung from him
the promise to see a specialist in London--Robert writing that evening
to make the appointment.
How had it been done? Neither Robert nor Henslowe ever quite knew.
Henslowe walked home in a bewilderment which for once had nothing to do
with brandy, but was simply the result of a moral shock acting on what
was still human in the man's debased consciousness, just as electricity
acts on the bodily frame.
Robert, on the other hand, saw him depart with a singular lightening of
mood. What he seemed to have achieved might turn out to be the merest
moonshine. At any rate, the incident had appeased in him a kind of
spiritual hunger--the hunger to escape a while from that incessant
process of destructive analysis with which the mind was still beset,
into some use of energy, more positive, human, and beneficent.
The following day was one long trial of endurance for Elsmere and for
Catherine. She pleaded to go, promising quietly to keep out of his
sight, and they started together--a miserable pair.
Crowds, heat, decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuous
among them the squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by side
with a white and radiant Lady Helen--the outer success, the inner revolt
and pain--and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that
hid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the one
thing sharply present to him--these were the sort of impressions that
remained with Elsmere afterwards of this last meeting with his people.
He had made a speech, of which he never could remember a word. As he sat
down, there had been a slight flutter of surprise in the sympathetic
looks of those about him, as though the tone of it had been somewhat
unexpected and disproportionate to the occasion. Had he betrayed himself
in any way? He looked for Catherine, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Only in his search he caught the squire's ironical glance, and wondered
with quick shame what sort of nonsense he had been talking.
Then a neighbouring clergyman, who had been his warm supporter and
admirer from the beginning, sprang up and made a rambling panegyric on
him and on his work, which Elsmere writhed under. His work! absurdity!
What could be done in two years? He saw it all as the merest nothing, a
ragged beginning which might do more harm than good.
But the cheering was incessant, the popular feeling intense. There was
old Milsom waving a feeble arm: John Allwood gaunt, but radiant; Mary
Sharland, white still as the ribbons on her bonnet, egging on her
flushed and cheering husband; and the club boys grinning and shouting,
partly for love of Elsmere, mostly because to the young human animal
mere noise is heaven. In front was an old hedger and ditcher, who came
round the parish periodically, and never failed to take Elsmere's
opinion as to 'a bit of prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancient
as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely
to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their
eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast
entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old
tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone
through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons,
welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his
queer innocuous wit. Robert had had many a gay argumentative walk with
him, and he and his companion had tramped miles to see the function, to
rattle their sticks on the floor in Elsmere's honour, and satiate their
curious gaze on the squire.
When all was over, Elsmere, with his wife on his arm, mounted the hill
to the rectory, leaving the green behind them still crowded with folk.
Once inside the shelter of their own trees, husband and wife turned
instinctively and caught each other's hands. A low groan broke from
Elsmere's lips; Catherine looked at him one moment, then fell weeping on
his breast. The first chapter of their common life was closed.
* * * * *
One thing more, however, of a private nature, remained for Elsmere to
do. Late in the afternoon he walked over to the Hall.
He found the squire in the inner library, among his German books, his
pipe in his mouth, his old smoking coat and slippers bearing witness to
the rapidity and joy with which he had shut the world out again after
the futilities of the morning. His mood was more accessible than Elsmere
had yet found it since his return.
'Well, have you done with all those tomfooleries, Elsmere? Precious
eloquent speech you made! When I see you and people like you throwing
yourselves at the heads of the people, I always think of Scaliger's
remark about the Basques: "They say they understand one another--_I
don't believe a word of it!_" All that the lower class _wants_ to
understand, at any rate, is the shortest way to the pockets of you and
me; all that you and I need understand, according to me, is how to keep
'em off! There you have the sum and substance of _my_ political
philosophy.'
'You remind me,' said Robert drily, sitting down on one of the library
stools, 'of some of those sentiments you expressed so forcibly on the
first evening of our acquaintance.'
The squire received the shaft with equanimity.
'I was not amiable, I remember, on that occasion,' he said coolly, his
thin, old man's fingers moving the while among the shelves of books,
'nor on several subsequent ones. I had been made a fool of, and you were
not particularly adroit. But of course you won't acknowledge it. Who
ever yet got a parson to confess himself!'
'Strangely enough, Mr. Wendover,' said Robert, fixing him with a pair
of deliberate feverish eyes, 'I am here at this moment for that very
purpose.'
'Go on,' said the squire, turning, however, to meet the rector's look,
his gold spectacles falling forward over his long hooked nose, his
attitude one of sudden attention. 'Go on.'
All his grievances against Elsmere returned to him. He stood
aggressively waiting.
Robert paused a moment, and then said abruptly--
'Perhaps even you will agree, Mr. Wendover, that I had some reason for
sentiment this morning. Unless I read the lessons to-morrow, which is
possible, to-day has been my last public appearance as rector of this
parish!'
The squire looked at him dumfoundered.
'And your reasons?' he said, with quick imperativeness.
Robert gave them. He admitted, as plainly and bluntly as he had done to
Grey, the squire's own part in the matter; but here a note of
antagonism, almost of defiance, crept even into his confession of wide
and illimitable defeat. He was there, so to speak, to hand over his
sword. But to the squire, his surrender had all the pride of victory.
'Why should you give up your living?' asked the squire after several
minutes' complete silence.
He too had sat down, and was now bending forward, his sharp small eyes
peering at his companion.
'Simply because I prefer to feel myself an honest man. However, I have
not acted without advice. Grey of St. Anselm's--you know him of
course--was a very close personal friend of mine at Oxford. I have been
to see him, and we agreed it was the only thing to do.'
'Oh, Grey,' exclaimed the squire, with a movement of impatience. 'Grey
of course wanted you to set up a church of your own, or to join his! He
is like all idealists, he has the usual foolish contempt for the
compromise of institutions.'
'Not at all,' said Robert calmly, 'you are mistaken; he has the most
sacred respect for institutions. He only thinks it well, and I agree
with him, that with regard to a man's public profession and practice he
should recognise that two and two make four.'
It was clear to him from the squire's tone and manner that Mr.
Wendover's instincts on the point were very much what he had expected,