Robert Elsmere
yet, in the present state of the world, to make himself socially
ridiculous. The cause suffers.'
'Just my feeling,' said young Evershed calmly. 'Though I mayn't care a
rap about him personally, I prefer that a man on my own front bench
shouldn't make a public ass of himself if he can help it--not for his
sake, of course, but for mine!'
Robert looked at Catherine. She sat upright by the side of Lady Aubrey;
her face, of which the beauty to-night seemed lost in rigidity, pale and
stiff. With a contraction of heart he plunged himself into the
conversation. On his road home that evening he had found an important
foreign telegram posted up at the small literary club to which he had
belonged since Oxford days. He made a remark about it now to Count
Wielandt; and the diplomatist, turning rather unwillingly to face his
questioner, recognised that the remark was a shrewd one.
Presently the young man's frank intelligence had told. On his way to and
from the Holy Land three years before Robert had seen something of the
East, and it so happened that he remembered the name of Count Wielandt
as one of the foreign secretaries of legation present at an official
party given by the English Ambassador at Constantinople, which he and
his mother had attended on their return journey, in virtue of a family
connection with the Ambassador. All that he could glean from memory he
made quick use of now, urged at first by the remorseful wish to make
this new world into which he had brought Catherine less difficult than
he knew it must have been during the last quarter of an hour.
But after a while he found himself leading the talk of a section of the
room, and getting excitement and pleasure out of the talk itself. Ever
since that Eastern journey he had kept an eye on the subjects which had
interested him then, reading in his rapid voracious way all that came
across him at Murewell, especially in the squire's foreign newspapers
and reviews, and storing it when read in a remarkable memory.
Catherine, after the failure of some conversational attempts between her
and Madame de Netteville, fell to watching her husband with a start of
strangeness and surprise. She had scarcely seen him at Oxford among his
equals; and she had very rarely been present at his talks with the
squire. In some ways, and owing to the instinctive reserves set up
between them for so long, her intellectual knowledge of him was very
imperfect. His ease, his resource, among these men of the world, for
whom--independent of all else--she felt a countrywoman's dislike, filled
her with a kind of bewilderment.
'Are you new to London?' Lady Aubrey asked her presently, in that tone
of absolute detachment from the person addressed which certain women
manage to perfection. She, too, had been watching the husband, and the
sight had impressed her with a momentary curiosity to know what the
stiff, handsome, dowdily-dressed wife was made of.
'We have been two months here,' said Catherine, her large gray eyes
taking in her companion's very bare shoulders, the costly fantastic
dress, and the diamonds flashing against the white skin.
'In what part?'
'In Bedford Square.'
Lady Aubrey was silent. She had no ideas on the subject of Bedford
Square at command.
'We are very central,' said Catherine, feeling desperately that she was
doing Robert no credit at all, and anxious to talk if only something
could be found to talk about.
'Oh yes, you are near the theatres,' said the other indifferently.
This was hardly an aspect of the matter which had yet occurred to
Catherine. A flash of bitterness ran through her. Had they left their
Murewell life to be 'near the theatres,' and kept at arm's length by
supercilious great ladies?
'We are very far from the Park,' she answered with an effort. 'I wish we
weren't, for my little girl's sake.'
'Oh, you have a little girl! How old?'
'Sixteen months.'
'Too young to be a nuisance yet. Mine are just old enough to be in
everybody's way. Children are out of place in London. I always want to
leave mine in the country, but my husband objects,' said Lady Aubrey
coolly. There was a certain piquancy in saying frank things to this
stiff Madonna-faced woman.
Madame de Netteville, meanwhile, was keeping up a conversation in an
undertone with young Evershed, who had come to sit on a stool beside
her, and was gazing up at her with eyes of which the expression was
perfectly understood by several persons present. The handsome,
dissipated, ill-conditioned youth had been her slave and shadow for the
last two years. His devotion now no longer amused her, and she was
endeavouring to get rid of it and of him. But the process was a
difficult one, and took both time and _finesse_.
She kept her eye, notwithstanding, on the new-comers whom the squire's
introduction had brought to her that night. When the Elsmeres rose to
go, she said good-bye to Catherine with an excessive politeness, under
which her poor guest, conscious of her own _gaucherie_ during the
evening, felt the touch of satire she was perhaps meant to feel. But
when Catherine was well ahead Madame de Netteville gave Robert one of
her most brilliant smiles.
'Friday evening, Mr. Elsmere; always Fridays. You will remember?'
The _naivete_ of Robert's social view, and the mobility of his temper,
made him easily responsive. He had just enjoyed half an hour's brilliant
talk with two or three of the keenest and most accomplished men in
Europe. Catherine had slipped out of his sight meanwhile, and the
impression of their _entree_ had been effaced. He made Madame de
Netteville, therefore, a cordial smiling reply before his tall slender
form disappeared after that of his wife.
'Agreeable--rather an acquisition!' said Madame de Netteville to Lady
Aubrey, with a light motion of the head towards Robert's retreating
figure. 'But the wife! Good heavens! I owe Roger Wendover a grudge. I
think he might have made it plain to those good people that I don't want
strange women at my Friday evenings.'
Lady Aubrey laughed. 'No doubt she is a genius, or a saint, in mufti.
She might be handsome too if some one would dress her.'
Madame de Netteville shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh! life is not long
enough to penetrate that kind of person,' she said.
Meanwhile the 'person' was driving homeward very sad and ill at ease.
She was vexed that she had not done better, and yet she was wounded by
Robert's enjoyment. The Puritan in her blood was all aflame. As she sat
looking into the motley lamplit night, she could have 'testified' like
any prophetess of old.
Robert meanwhile, his hand slipped into hers, was thinking of Wielandt's
talk, and of some racy stories of Berlin celebrities told by a young
_attache_ who had joined their group. His lips were lightly smiling, his
brow serene.
But as he helped her down from the cab, and they stood in the hall
together, he noticed the pale discomposure of her looks. Instantly the
familiar dread and pain returned upon him.
'Did you like it, Catherine?' he asked her, with something like
timidity, as they stood together by their bedroom fire.
She sank into a low chair and sat a moment staring at the blaze. He was
startled by her look of suffering, and, kneeling, he put his arms
tenderly round her.
'Oh, Robert, Robert!' she cried, falling on his neck.
'What is it?' he asked, kissing her hair.
'I seem all at sea,' she said in a choked voice, her face hidden,--'the
old landmarks swallowed up! I am always judging and condemning,--always
protesting. What am I that I should judge? But how--how--can I help it?'
She drew herself away from him, once more looking into the fire with
drawn brows.
'Darling, the world is full of difference. Men and women take life in
different ways. Don't be so sure yours is the only right one.'
He spoke with a moved gentleness, taking her hand the while.
'"_This_ is the way, walk ye in it!"' she said presently, with strong,
almost stern emphasis. 'Oh, those women, and that talk! Hateful!'
He rose and looked down on her from the mantelpiece. Within him was a
movement of impatience, repressed almost at once by the thought of that
long night at Murewell, when he had vowed to himself to 'make amends'!
And if that memory had not intervened she would still have disarmed him
wholly.
'Listen!' she said to him suddenly, her eyes kindling with a strange
childish pleasure. 'Do you hear the wind, the west wind? Do you remember
how it used to shake the house, how it used to come sweeping through the
trees in the wood-path? It must be trying the study window now, blowing
the vine against it.'
A yearning passion breathed through every feature. It seemed to him she
saw nothing before her. Her longing soul was back in the old haunts,
surrounded by the old loved forms and sounds. It went to his heart. He
tried to soothe her with the tenderest words remorseful love could
find. But the conflict of feeling--grief, rebellion, doubt,
self-judgment--would not be soothed, and long after she had made him
leave her and he had fallen asleep, she knelt on, a white and rigid
figure in the dying firelight, the wind shaking the old house, the
eternal murmur of London booming outside.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Meanwhile, as if to complete the circle of pain with which poor
Catherine's life was compassed, it began to be plain to her that, in
spite of the hard and mocking tone Rose generally adopted with regard to
him, Edward Langham was constantly at the house in Lerwick Gardens, and
that it was impossible he should be there so much unless in some way or
other Rose encouraged it.
The idea of such a marriage--nay, of such a friendship--was naturally as
repugnant as ever to her. It had been one of the bitterest moments of a
bitter time when, at their first meeting after the crisis in her life,
Langham, conscious of a sudden movement of pity for a woman he disliked,
had pressed the hand she held out to him in a way which clearly showed
her what was in his mind, and had then passed on to chat and smoke with
Robert in the study, leaving her behind to realise the gulf that lay
between the present and that visit of his to Murewell, when Robert and
she had felt in unison towards him, his opinions, and his conduct to
Rose, as towards everything else of importance in their life.
Now it seemed to her Robert must necessarily look at the matter
differently, and she could not make up her mind to talk to him about it.
In reality, his objections had never had the same basis as hers, and he
would have given her as strong a support as ever, if she had asked for
it. But she held her peace, and he, absorbed in other things, took no
notice. Besides, he knew Langham too well. He had never been able to
take Catherine's alarms seriously.
An attentive onlooker, however, would have admitted that this time, at
any rate, they had their justification. Why Langham was so much in the
Leyburns' drawing-room during these winter months was a question that
several people asked--himself not least. He had not only pretended to
forget Rose Leyburn during the eighteen months which had passed since
their first acquaintance at Murewell--he had for all practical purposes
forgotten her. It is only a small proportion of men and women who are
capable of passion on the great scale at all; and certainly, as we have
tried to show, Langham was not among them. He had had a passing moment
of excitement at Murewell, soon put down, and followed by a week of
extremely pleasant sensations, which, like most of his pleasures, had
ended in reaction and self-abhorrence. He had left Murewell remorseful,
melancholy, and ill at ease, but conscious, certainly, of a great relief
that he and Rose Leyburn were not likely to meet again for long.