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

new lights on modern character altogether to see how he was preparing himself for this Surrey living--reading up the history, geology, and botany of the Weald and its neighborhood, plunging into reports of agricultural commissions, or spending his quick brain on village sanitation, with the oddest results sometimes, so far as his conversation was concerned. And then in the middle of his disquisitions, which would keep her breathless with a sense of being whirled through space at the tail of an electric kite, the kite would come down with a run, and the preacher and reformer would come hat in hand to the girl beside him, asking her humbly to advise him, to pour out on him some of that practical experience of hers among the poor and suffering, for the sake of which he would in an instant scornfully fling out of sight all his own magnificent plannings. Never had she told so much of her own life to anyone; her consciousness of it sometimes filled her with a sort of terror, lest she might have been trading as it were, for her own advantage, on the sacred things of God. But he would have it. His sympathy, his sweetness, his quick spiritual feeling drew the stories out of her. And then how his bright frank eyes would soften! With what a reverence would he touch her hand when she said good-by!

And on her side she felt that she knew almost as much about Murewell as he did. She could imagine the wild beauty of the Surrey heathland, she could see the white square rectory with its sloping walled garden, the juniper common just outside the straggling village; she could even picture the strange squire, solitary in the great Tudor Hall, the author of terrible books against the religion of Christ of which she shrank from hearing, and share the anxieties of the young rector as to his future relations toward a personality so marked, and so important to every soul in the little community he was called to rule. Here all was plain sailing; she understood him perfectly, and her gentle comments, or her occasional sarcasms, were friendliness itself.

But it was when he turned to larger things--to books, movements, leaders, of the day--that she was often puzzled, sometimes distressed. Why would he seem to exalt and glorify rebellion against the established order in the person of Mr. Grey? Or why, ardent as his own faith was, would he talk as though opinion was a purely personal matter, hardly in itself to be made the subject of moral judgment at all, and as though right belief were a blessed privilege and boon rather than a law and an obligation? When his comments on men and things took this tinge, she would turn silent, feeling a kind of painful opposition between his venturesome speech and his clergyman's dress.

And yet, as we all know, these ways of speech were not his own. He was merely talking the natural Christian language of this generation; whereas she, the child of a mystic--solitary, intense, and deeply reflective from her earliest Youth--was still thinking and speaking in the language of her father's generation.

But although, as often as his unwariness brought him near to these points of jarring, he would hurry away from them, conscious that here was the one profound difference between them; it was clear to him that insensibly she had moved further than she knew from her father's standpoint. Even among these solitudes, far from men and literature, she had unconsciously felt the breath of her time in some degree. As he penetrated deeper into the nature, he found it honeycombed as it were, here and there, with beautiful, unexpected softnesses and diffidences. Once, after a long walk, as they were lingering homeward under a cloudy evening sky, he came upon the great problem of her life--Rose and Rose's art. He drew her difficulty from her with the most delicate skill. She had laid it bare, and was blushing to think how she had asked his counsel, almost before she knew where their talk was leading. How was it lawful for the Christian to spend the few short years of the earthly combat in any pursuit however noble and exquisite, which merely aimed at the gratification of the senses, and implied in the pursuer the emphasizing rather than the surrender of self?

He argued it very much as Kingsley would have argued it, tried to lift her to a more intelligent view of a multifarious work, dwelling on the function of pure beauty in life, and on the influence of beauty on character, pointing out the value to the race of all individual development, and pressing home on her the natural religious question: How are the artistic aptitudes to be explained unless the Great Designer meant them to have a use and function in His world? She replied doubtfully that she had always supposed they were lawful for recreation, and like any other trade for bread-winning, but--

Then he told her much that he knew about the humanizing effect of music on the poor. He described to her the efforts of a London society, of which he was a subscribing member, to popularize the best music among the lowest class; he dwelt almost with passion on the difference between the joy to be got out of such things and the common brutalizing joys of the workman. And you could not have art without artists. In this again he was only talking the commonplaces of his day. But to her they were not commonplaces at all. She looked at him from time to time, her great eyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with every fresh thrust of his.

'I am grateful to you,' she said at last, with an involuntary outburst, 'I am _very_ grateful to you!'

And she gave a long sigh, as if some burden she had long borne in patient silence had been loosened a little, if only by the fact of speech about it. She was not convinced exactly. She was too strong a nature to relinquish a principle without a period of meditative struggle in which conscience should have all its dues. But her tone made his heart leap. He felt in it a momentary self-surrender that, coming from a creature of so rare a dignity, filled him with an exquisite sense of power, and yet at the same time with a strange humility beyond words.

A day or two later he was the spectator of a curious little scene. An aunt of the Leyburns living in Whinborough came to see them. She was their father's youngest sister, and the wife of a man who had made some money as a builder in Whinborough. When Robert came in he found her sitting on the sofa having tea, a large homely-looking woman with gray hair, a high brow, and prominent white teeth. She had unfastened her bonnet strings, and a clean white handkerchief lay spread out on her lap. When Elsmere was introduced to her, she got up, and said with some effusiveness, and a distinct Westmoreland accent:

'Very pleased indeed to make your acquaintance, sir,' while she enclosed his fingers in a capacious hand.

Mrs. Leyburn, looking fidgety and uncomfortable, was sitting near her, and Catherine, the only member of the party who showed no sign of embarrassment when Robert entered was superintending her aunt's tea and talking busily the while.

Robert sat down at a little distance beside Agnes and Rose, who were chattering together a little artificially and of set purpose, as it seemed to him. But the aunt was not to be ignored. She talked too loud not to be overheard, and Agnes inwardly noted that as soon as Robert Elsmere appeared she talked louder than before. He gathered presently that she was an ardent Wesleyan, and that she was engaged in describing to Catherine and Mrs. Leyburn the evangelistic exploits of her oldest son, who had recently obtained his first circuit as a Wesleyan minister. He was shrewd enough, too, to guess, after a minute or two, that his presence and probably his obnoxious clerical dress gave additional zest to the recital.

'Oh, his success at Colesbridge has been somethin' marvellous,' he heard her say, with uplifted hands and eyes, '"some-thin" marvellous. The Lord has blessed him indeed! It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's meetin's, or sermons, or parlor work, or just faithful dealin's with souls one by one. Satan has no cleverer foe than Edward. He never shuts his eyes; as Edward says himself, it's like trackin' for game is huntin' for souls. Why, the other day he was walkin' out from Coventry to a service. It was the Sabbath, and he saw a man in a bit of grass by the road-side, mendin' his cart. And he stopped did Edward, and gave him the Word _strong_. The man seemed puzzled like, and said he meant no harm. "No harm!" says Edward, "when you're just doin' the devil's work every nail you put in, and hammerin' away, mon, at your own damnation." But here's his letter.' And while Rose turned away to a far window to hide an almost hysterical inclination to laugh, Mrs. Fleming opened her bag, took out a treasured paper, and read with the emphasis and the unction peculiar to a certain type of revivalism:--

'"Poor sinner! He was much put about. I left him, praying the Lord my shaft might rankle in him; ay, might fester and burn in him till he found no peace but in Jesus. He seemed very dark and destitute--no respect for the Word or its ministers. A bit farther I met a boy carrying a load of turnips. To him, too, I was faithful, and he went on, taking without knowing it, a precious leaflet with him in his bag. Glorious work! If Wesleyans will but go on claiming even the highways for God, sin will skulk yet."'

A dead silence. Mrs. Fleming folded up the letter and put it back into her bag.

'There's your true minister,' she said, with a large judicial utterance as she closed the snap. 'Wherever he goes Edward must have souls!'

And she threw a swift searching look at the young clergyman in the window.

'He must have very hard work with so much walking and preaching,' said Catherine, gently.

Somehow, as soon as she spoke, Elsmere saw the whole odd little scene with other eyes.

'His work is just wearin' him out,' said the mother, fervently; 'but a minister doesn't think of that. Wherever he goes there are sinners saved. He stayed last week at a house near Nuneaton. At family prayer alone there were five saved. And at the prayer-meetin's on the Sabbath such outpourin's of the Spirit! Edward comes home, his wife tells me, just ready to drop. Are you acquainted, sir,' she added, turning suddenly to Elsmere, and speaking in a certain tone of provocation, 'with the labors of our Wesleyan ministers?'

'No,' said Robert, with his pleasant smile, 'not personally. But I have the greatest respect for them as a body of devoted men.'

The look of battle faded from the woman's face. It was not an unpleasant face. He even saw strange reminiscences of Catherine in it at times.

'You're aboot right there, sir. Not that they dare take any credit to themselves--it's grace, sir, all grace.'

'Aunt Ellen,' said Catherine, while a sudden light broke over her face; 'I just want you to take Edward a little story from me. Ministers are good things, but God can do without them.'

And she laid her hand on her aunt's knee with a smile in which there was the slightest touch of affectionate satire.

'I was up among the fells the