Robert Elsmere, Mrs. Humphry Ward [e book reader online TXT] 📗

appeal written in them. His heart was hungry for that old clinging dependence, that willing weakness of love, her youth had yielded him so gladly, instead of this silent strength of antagonism. The memory of her Murewell self flashed miserably through him as he knelt there, of her delicate penitence toward him after her first sight of Newcome, of their night walks during the Mile End epidemic. Did he hold now in his arms only the ghost and shadow of that Murewell Catherine?

She must have read the reproach, the yearning of his look, for she gave a little shiver, as though bracing herself with a kind of agony to resist.

'Let me go, Robert!' she said gently, kissing him on the forehead and drawing back. 'I hear Mary calling, and nurse is out.'

The days went on and the date of Madame de Netteville's dinner party had come round. About seven o'clock that evening Catherine sat with the child in the drawing-room, expecting Robert. He had gone off early in the afternoon to the East End with Hugh Flaxman to take part in a committee of workmen organized for the establishment of a choral union in R----, the scheme of which had been Flaxman's chief contribution so far to the Elgood Street undertaking.

It seemed to her as she sat there working, the windows open on to the bit of garden, where the trees are already withered and begrimed, that the air without and her heart within were alike stifling and heavy with storm. _Something_ must put an end to this oppression, this misery! She did not know herself. Her whole inner being seemed to her lessened and degraded by this silent struggle, this fever of the soul, which made impossible all those serenities and sweetnesses of thought in which her nature had always lived of old. The fight into which fate had forced her was destroying her. She was drooping like a plant cut off from all that nourishes its life.

And yet she never conceived it possible that she should relinquish that fight. Nay, at times there sprang up in her now a dangerous and despairing foresight of even worse things in store. In the middle of her suffering, she already began to feel at moments the ascetic's terrible sense of compensation. What, after all, is the Christian life but warfare? '_I came not to send peace, but a sword!_'

Yes, in these June days Elsmere's happiness was perhaps nearer wreck than it had ever been. All strong natures grow restless under such a pressure as was now weighing on Catherine. Shock and outburst become inevitable.

So she sat alone this hot afternoon, haunted by presentiments, by vague terror for herself and him; while the child tottered about her, cooing, shouting, kissing, and all impulsively, with a ceaseless energy, like her father.

The outer door opened and she heard Robert's step and apparently Mr. Flaxman's also. There was a hurried rushed word or two in the hall, and the two entered the room where she was sitting.

Robert came, pressing back the hair from his eyes with a gesture which with him was the invariable accompaniment of mental trouble. Catherine sprang up.

'Robert, you look so tired! and how late you are!' Then as she came nearer to him: 'And your coat--_torn--blood!_'

'There is nothing wrong with _me_, dear,' he said hastily, taking her hands 'nothing! But it has been an awful afternoon. Flaxman will tell you. I must go to this place, I suppose, though I hate the thought of it! Flaxman, will you tell her all about it?' And, loosing his hold, he went heavily out of the room and upstairs.

'It has been an accident,' said Flaxman gently, coming forward, 'to one of the men of his class. May we sit down, Mrs. Elsmere? Your husband and I have gone through a good deal these last two hours.'

He sat down with, a long breath, evidently to regain, his ordinary even manner. His clothes, too, were covered with dust, and his hand shook. Catherine stood before him in consternation, while a nurse came for the child.

'We had just begun our committee at four o'clock,' he said at last, 'though only about half of the men had arrived when there was a great shouting and commotion outside, and a man rushed in calling for Elsmere. We ran out, found a great crowd, a huge brewer's dray standing in the street and a man run over. Your husband pushed his way in. I followed, and, to my horror, I found him kneeling by--Charles Richards!'

'Charles Richards?' Catherine repeated vacantly.

Flaxman looked up at her, as though puzzled; then a flash of astonishment passed over his face.

'Elsmere has never told you of Charles Richards the little gas-fitter, who has been his right hand for the past three months?'

'No--never,' she said slowly.

Again he looked astonished; then he went on sadly: 'All this spring he has been your husband's shadow, never saw such devotion. We found him lying in the middle of the road. He had only just left work, a man said, who had been with him, and was running to the meeting. He slipped and fell, crossing the street, which was muddy from last night's rain. The dray swung round the corner--the driver was drunk or careless--and they went right over him. One foot was a sickening sight. Your husband and I luckily know how to lift him for the best. We sent off for doctors. His home was in the next street, as it as it happened--nearer than any hospital; so we carried him there. The neighbors were around the door.'

Then he stopped himself.

'Shall I tell you the whole story?' he said kindly, 'it has been a tragedy! I won't give you details if you had rather not.'

'Oh, no!' she said hurriedly; 'no--tell me.'

And she forgot to feel any wonder that Flaxman, in his chivalry, should treat her as though she were a girl with nerves.

'Well, it was the surroundings that were so ghastly. When we got to the house, an old woman rushed at me, "His wife's in there, but ye'll not find her in her senses; she's been at it from eight o'clock this morning. We've took the children away." I didn't know what she meant exactly till we got into the little front room. There, such a spectacle! A young woman on a chair by the fire sleeping heavily, dead drunk; the breakfast things on the table, the sun blazing in on the dust and the dirt, and on the woman's face. I wanted to carry him into the room on the other side--he was unconscious; but a doctor had come up with us, and made us put him down on a bed there was in the corner. Then we got some brandy and poured it down. The doctor examined him, looked at his foot, threw something over it. "Nothing to be done," he said--"internal injuries--he can't live half an hour." The next minute the poor fellow opened his eyes. They had pulled away the bed from the wall. Your husband was on the further side, knelling. When he opened his eyes, clearly the first thing he saw was his wife. He half sprang up--Elsmere caught him--and gave a horrible cry--indescribably horrible. "_At it again, at it again! My God!_" Then he fell back fainting. They got the wife out of the room between them--a perfect log--you could hear her heavy breathing from the kitchen opposite. We gave him more brandy and he came to again. He looked up in your husband's face. "_She hasn't broke out for two months,_" he said, so piteously, "_two months--and now--I'm done--I'm done--and she'll just go straight to the devil!_" And it comes out, so the neighbors told us, that for two years or more he had been patiently trying to reclaim this woman, without a word of complaint to anybody, though his life must have been a dog's life. And now, on his death-bed, what seemed to be breaking his heart was, not that he was dying, but that his task was snatched from him!'

Flaxman paused, and looked away out of the window. He told his story with difficulty.

'Your husband tried to comfort him--promised that the wife and children should be his special case, that everything that could be done to save and protect them should be done. And the poor little fellow looked up at him, with the tears running down his cheeks, and--and--blessed him. "I cared about nothing," he said, "when you came. You've been--God--to me--I've seen Him--in you." Then he asked us to say something. Your husband said verse after verse of the Psalms, of the Gospels, of St. Paul. His eyes grew filmy but he seemed every now and then to struggle back to, life, and as soon as he caught Elsmere's face his look lightened. Toward the last he said something we none of us caught; but your husband thought it was a line from Emily Bronte's "Hymn," which he said to them last Sunday in lecture.'

He looked up at her interrogatively, but there was no response in her face.

'I asked him about it,' the speaker went on, 'as we came home. He said Grey of St. Anselm's once quoted it to him, and he has had a love for it ever since.'

'Did he die while you were there?' asked Catherine presently after a silence. Her voice was dull and quiet. He thought her a strange woman.

'No,' said Flaxman, almost sharply-'but by now, it must be over. The last sign of consciousness was a murmur of his children's names. They brought them in, but his hands had to be guided to them. A few minutes after it seemed to me that he was really gone, though he still breathed. The doctor was certain there would be no more consciousness. We stayed nearly another hour. Then his brother came, and some other relations, and we left him. Oh, it is over now!'

Hugh Flaxman sat looking out into the dingy bit of London garden. Penetrated with pity as he was, he felt the presence of Elsmere's pale, silent, unsympathetic wife an oppression. How could she, receive such a story in such a way?

The door opened and Robert came in hurriedly.

'Good-night, Catherine--he has told you?'

He stood by her, his hand on her shoulder, wistfully looking at her, the face full of signs of what he had gone through.

'Yes, it was terrible!' she said, with an effort.

His face fell. He kissed her on the forehead and went away.

When he was gone, Flaxman suddenly got up and leant against the open French window, looking keenly down on his companion. A new idea had stirred in him.

And presently, after more talk of the incident of the afternoon, and when he had recovered his usual manner, he slipped gradually into the subject of his own experiences in North R---- during the last six months. He assumed all through that she knew as much as there was to be known of Elsmere's work, and that she was as much interested as the normal wife is in her husband's doings. His tact, his delicacy, never failed him for a moment. But he spoke of his own impressions, of matters within his personal knowledge. And since the Easter sermon he had been much on Elsmere's track; he had been filled with curiosity about him.

Catherine sat a little way from him, her blue dress lying in long folds about her, her head bent, her long fingers crossed on her lap. Sometimes she gave him a startled look, sometimes