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

other day'--she went on--'I met an elderly man cutting wood in a plantation, and I stopped and asked him how he was. "Ah, miss," he said, "verra weel, verra weel. And yet it was nobbut Friday morning lasst, I cam oop here, awfu' bad in my sperrits like. For my wife she's sick an a' dwinnelt away, and I'm gettin' auld, and can't wark as I'd used to, and it did luke to me as thoo there was naethin' afore us nobbut t' Union. And t' mist war low on t' fells, and I sat oonder t' wall, wettish and broodin' like. And theer--all ov a soodent the Lord found me! Yes, puir Reuben Judge, as dawn't matter to naebody, the Lord found un. It war leyke as thoo His feeace cam a glisterin' an' a shinin' through t' mist. An' iver sense then, miss, aa've jest felt as thoo aa could a' cut an' stackt all t' wood on t' fell in naw time at a'!" And he waved his hand round the mountain side which was covered with plantation. And all the way along the path for ever so long I could hear him singing, chopping away, and quavering out "Rock of Ages."'

'She paused; her delicate face, with just a little quiver in the lip, turned to her aunt, her eyes glowing as though a hidden fire had leapt suddenly outward. And yet the gesture, the attitude, was simplicity and unconsciousness itself. Robert had never heard her say anything so intimate before. Nor had he ever seen her so inspired, so beautiful. She had transmuted the conversation at a touch. It had been barbarous prose; she had turned it into purest poetry. Only the noblest souls have such an alchemy as this at command, thought the watcher on the other side, of the room, with a passionate reverence.

'I wasn't thinkin' of narrowin' the Lord down to ministers; said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. 'We all know He can do without us puir worms.'

Then, seeing that no one replied, the good woman got up to go. Much of her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervors of revivalist anecdote, and while she hunted for gloves and reticule--officiously helped by the younger girls--Robert crossed over to Catherine.

'You lifted us on to your own high places!' he said, bending down to her; 'I shall carry your story with me through the fells.'

She looked up, and as she met his warm, moved look a little glow and tremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted expression. He broke the spell; she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman.

'You must see my old man,' she said, with an effort; 'he is worth a library of sermons. I must introduce him to you.'

He could think of nothing else to say just then, but could only stand impatiently wishing for Mrs. Fleming's disappearance, that he might somehow appropriate her eldest niece. But alas! when she went, Catherine went out with her, and reappeared no more, though he waited some time.

He walked home in a whirl of feeling; on the way he stopped, and leaning over a gate which led into one of the river-fields, gave himself up to the mounting tumult within. Gradually, from the half-articulate chaos of hope and memory, there emerged the deliberate voice of his inmost manhood.

'In her and her only is my heart's desire! She and she only if she will, and God will, shall be my wife!'

He lifted his head and looked out on the dewy field, the evening beauty of the hills, with a sense of immeasurable change:--

Tears Were in his eyes, and in his ears The murmur of a thousand years.

He felt himself knit to his kind, to his race, as he had never felt before. It was as though, after a long apprenticeship, he had sprung suddenly into maturity--entered at last into the full human heritage. But the very intensity and solemnity of his own feeling gave him a rare clear-sightedness. He realized that he had no certainty of success, scarcely even an entirely reasonable hope. But what of that? Were they not together, alone, practically, in these blessed solitudes? Would they not meet to-morrow, and next day, and the day after? Were not time and opportunity all his own? How kind her looks are even now! Courage! And through that maidenly kindness his own passion shall send the last, transmuting glow.


CHAPTER VII.

The following morning about noon, Rose, who had been coaxed and persuaded by Catherine, much against her will, into taking a singing class at the school, closed the school door behind her with a sigh of relief, and tripped up the road to Burwood.

'How abominably they sang this morning!' she said to herself, with curving lip. 'Talk of the natural north-country gift for music! What ridiculous fictions people set up! Dear me, what clouds! Perhaps we shan't got our walk to Shanmnoor after all, and if we don't, and if-if--' her cheek flashed with a sudden excitement-'if Mr. Elsmere doesn't propose, Mrs. Thornburgh will be unmanageable. It is all Agnes and I can do to keep her in bounds as it is, and if something doesn't come off to-day, she'll be for reversing the usual proceeding, and asking Catherine her intentions, which would ruin everything.'

Then raising her head she swept her eyes round the sky. The wind was freshening, the clouds were coming up fast from the westward; over the summit of High Fell and the crags on either side, a gray straight-edged curtain was already lowering.

'It will hold up yet a while,' she thought, 'and if it rains later we can get a carriage at Shanmoor and come back by the road.'

And she walked on homeward meditating, her thin fingers clasped before her, the wind blowing her skirts, the blue ribbons on her hat, the little gold curls on her temples, in an artistic many-colored turmoil about her. When she got to Burwood she shut herself into the room which was peculiarly hers, the room which had been a stable. Now it was full of artistic odds and ends--her fiddle, of course, and piles of music, her violin stand, a few deal tables and cane chairs beautified by a number of _chiffons_, bits of Liberty stuffs with the edges still ragged, or cheap morsels of Syrian embroidery. On the tables stood photographs of musicians and friends--the spoils of her visits to Manchester, and of two visits to London which gleamed like golden points in the girl's memory. The plastered walls were covered with an odd medley. Here was a round mirror, of which Rose was enormously proud. She had extracted it from a farmhouse of the neighborhood, and paid for it with her own money. There a group of unfinished, headlong sketches of the most fiercely-impressionist description--the work and the gift of a knot of Manchester artists, who had feted and flattered the beautiful little Westmoreland girl, when she was staying among them, to her heart's content. Manchester, almost alone among our great towns of the present day, has not only a musical, but a pictorial life of its own; its young artists dub themselves 'a school,' study in Paris, and when they come home scout the Academy and its methods, and pine to set up a rival art-centre, skilled in all the methods of the Salon, in the murky north. Rose's uncle, originally a clerk in a warehouse, and a rough diamond enough, had more or less moved with the times, like his brother Richard; at any rate he had grown rich, had married a decent wife, and was glad enough to befriend his dear brother's children, who wanted nothing of him, and did their uncle a credit of which he was sensible, by their good manners and good looks. Music was the only point at which he touched the culture of the times, like so many business men; but it pleased him also to pose as a patron of local art; so that when Rose went to stay with her childless uncle and aunt, she found long-haired artists and fiery musicians about the place, who excited and encouraged her musical gift, who sketched her while she played, and talked to the pretty, clever, unformed creature of London and Paris, and Italy, and set her pining for that golden _vie de Boheme_ which she alone apparently of all artists was destined never to know.

For she was an artist--she would be an artist--let Catherine say what she would! She came back from Manchester restless for she knew not what, thirsty for the joys and emotions of art, determined to be free, reckless, passionate; with Wagner and Brahms in her young blood; and found Burwood waiting for her, Burwood, the lonely house in the lonely valley, of which Catherine was the presiding genius. _Catherine!_ For Rose, what a multitude of associations clustered round the name! To her it meant everything at this moment against which her soul rebelled--the most scrupulous order, the most rigid self-repression, the most determined sacrificing of 'this warm kind world,' with all its indefensible delights, to a cold other-world, with its torturing, inadmissible claims. Even in the midst of her stolen joys at Manchester or London, this mere name, the mere mental image of Catherine moving through life, wrapped in a religious peace and certainty as austere as they were beautiful, and asking of all about her the same absolute surrender to an awful Master she gave so easily herself, was enough to chill the wayward Rose, and fill her with a kind of restless despair. And at home, as the vicar said, the two sisters were always on the verge of conflict. Rose had enough of her father in her to suffer in resisting, but resist she must by the law of her nature.

Now, as she threw off her walking things, she fell first upon her violin, and rushed through a Brahms' 'Liebeslied,' her eyes dancing, her whole light form thrilling with the joy of it; and then with a sudden revulsion she stopped playing, and threw herself down listlessly by the open window. Close by against the wall was a little looking-glass, by which she often arranged her ruffled locks; she glanced at it now, it showed her a brilliant face enough, but drooping lips, and eyes darkened with the extravagant melancholy of eighteen.

'It is come to a pretty pass,' she said to herself, 'that I should be able to think of nothing but schemes for getting Catherine married and out of my way! Considering what she is and what I am, and how she has slaved for us all her life, I seem to have descended pretty low. Heigho!'

And with a portentous sigh she dropped her chin on her hand. She was half acting, acting to herself. Life was not really quite unbearable, and she knew it. But it relieved her to overdo it.

'I wonder how much chance there is,' she mused, presently. 'Mr. Elsmere will soon be ridiculous. Why, _I_ saw him gather up those violets she threw away yesterday on Moor Crag. And as for her, I don't believe she has realized the situation a bit. At least, if she has she is as unlike other mortals in this as in everything else. But when