Robert Elsmere by Mrs. Humphry Ward (best classic literature txt) 📕

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 mused her, and she was endeavoring 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 newcomers where the Squire's introduction had brought to her that night. When the Elsmeres rose to go, she said good-by 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 toward 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 lamp-lit 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 realize the gulf that lay between the present and that visit of his to Murewell, when Robert and she had felt in unison toward him, his opinions and his conduct to Rose, as toward 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.

Then his settlement in London had absorbed him, as all such matters absorb men who have become the slaves of their own solitary habits, and in the joy of his new freedom, and the fresh zest for learning it had aroused in him, the beautiful unmanageable child who had disturbed his peace at Murewell was not likely to be more, but less remembered. When he stumbled across her unexpectedly in the National Gallery, his determining impulse had been merely one of flight.

However, as he had written to Robert toward the beginning of his London residence, there was no doubt that his migration had made him for the time much more human, observant, and accessible. Oxford had become to him an oppression and a nightmare and as soon as he had turned his back on it, his mental lungs seemed once more to fill with air. He took his modest part in the life of the capital; happy in the obscurity afforded him by the crowd; rejoicing in the thought that his life and his affairs were once more his own, and the academical yoke had been slipped for ever.

It was in this mood of greater cheerfulness and energy that his fresh sight of Rose found him. For the moment, he was perhaps more susceptible than he ever could have been before to her young perfections, her beauty, her brilliancy, her provoking, stimulating ways. Certainly, from that first afternoon onward he became more and more restless to watch her, to be near her, to see what she made of herself and her gifts. In general, though it was certainly owing to her that he came so much, she took small notice of him. He regarded, or chose to regard, himself as a mere 'item'--something systematically overlooked and forgotten in the bustle of her days and nights. He saw that she thought badly of him, that the friendship he might have had was now proudly refused him, that their first week together had left a deep impression of resentment and hostility in her mind. And all the same he came; and she asked him! And sometimes, after an hour when she had been more difficult or more satirical than usual, ending notwithstanding with a