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

plain Mr.) Elsmere on two occasions--in 18__, when his client had been triumphantly returned at a bye-election; and two years later, when a repetition of the tactics, so successful in the previous contest, led to a petition, and to the disappearance of the heir to the Elsmere property from parliamentary life.

Of these matters, however, he was ignorant, and Mrs. Seaton did not enlighten him. Drawing herself up a little, and proceeding in a more neutral tone than before, she proceeded to put him through a catechism on Oxford, alternately cross-examining him and expounding to him her own views and her husband's on the functions of the Universities. She and the Archdeacon conceived that the Oxford authorities were mainly occupied in ruining the young men's health by over-examination, and poisoning their minds by free-thinking opinions. In her belief, if it went on, the motherly of England would refuse to send their sons to these ancient but deadly resorts. She looked at him sternly as she spoke, as though defying him to be flippant in return. And he, indeed, did his polite best to be serious.

But it somewhat disconcerted him in the middle to find Miss Leyburn's eyes upon him. And undeniably there was spark of laughter in them, quenched, as soon as his glance crossed hers, under long lashes. How that spark had lit up the grave, pale face! He longed to provoke it again, to cross over to her and say, 'What amused you? Do you think me very young and simple? Tell me about these people.'

But, instead, ho made friends with Rose. Mrs. Seaton was soon engaged in giving the vicar advice on his parochial affairs, an experience which generally, ended by the appearance of certain truculent elements in one of the mildest of men. So Robert was free to turn to his girl neighbor and ask her what people meant by calling the Lakes rainy.

'I understand it is pouring at Oxford. To-day your sky has been without a cloud, and your rivers are running dry.'

'And you have mastered our climate in twenty-four hours, like the tourists--isn't it?--that do the Irish question in three weeks?'

'Not the answer of a bread-and-butter miss,' he thought to himself, amused, 'and yet what a child it looks.'

He threw himself into a war of words with her, and enjoyed it extremely. Her brilliant coloring, her gestures as fresh and untamed as the movements of the leaping river outside, the mixture in her of girlish pertness and ignorance with the promise of a remarkable general capacity, made her a most taking, provoking creature. Mrs. Thornburgh--much recovered in mind since Dr. Baker had praised the pancakes by which Sarah had sought to prove to her mistress the superfluity of naughtiness involved in her recourse to foreign cooks--watched the young man and maiden with a face which grew more and more radiant. The conversation in the garden had not pleased her. Why should people always talk of Catherine; Mrs. Thornburgh stood in awe of Catherine and had given her up in despair. It was the other two whose fortunes, as possibly directed by her, filled her maternal heart with sympathetic emotion.

Suddenly in the midst of her satisfaction she had a rude shock. What on earth was the vicar doing? After they had got through better than anyone could have hoped, thanks to a discreet silence and Sarah's makeshifts, there was the master of the house pouring the whole tale of his wife's aspirations and disappointment into Mrs. Seaton's ear! If it were ever allowable to rush upon your husband at table and stop his mouth with a dinner napkin, Mrs. Thornburgh could at this moment have performed such a feat. She nodded and coughed and fidgeted in vain!

The vicar's confidences were the result of a fit of nervous exasperation. Mrs. Seaton had just embarked upon an account of 'our charming time with Lord Fleckwood.' Now Lord Fleckwood was a distant cousin of Archdeacon Seaton, and the great magnate of the neighborhood--not, however, a very respectable magnate. Mr. Thornburgh had heard accounts of Lupton Castle from Mrs. Seaton on at least half a dozen different occasions. Privately he believed them all to refer to one visit, an event of immemorial antiquity periodically brought up to date by Mrs. Seaton's imagination. But the vicar was a timid man, without the courage of his opinions, and in his eagerness to stop the flow of his neighbor's eloquence he could think of no better device, or more suitable rival subject, than to plunge into the story of the drunken carrier, and the pastry still reposing on the counter at Randall's.

He blushed, good man, when he was well in it. His wife's horrified countenance embarrassed him. But anything was better than Lord Fleckwood. Mrs. Seaton listened to him with the slightest smile on her formidable lip. The story was pleasing to her.

'At least, my dear sir,' she said when he paused, nodding her diademed head with stately emphasis, 'Mrs. Thornburgh's inconvenience may have one good result. You can now make an example of the carrier. It is our special business, as my husband always says, who are in authority, to bring their low vices home to these people.'

The vicar fidgeted in his chair. What ineptitude had he been guilty of now! By way of avoiding Lord Fleckwood he might have started Mrs. Seaton on teetotalism. Now if there was one topic on which this awe-inspiring woman was more awe-inspiring than another it was on the topic of teetotalism. The vicar had already felt himself a criminal as he drank his modest glass of claret under her eye.

'Oh, the drunkenness about here is pretty bad,' said Dr. Baker from the other end of the table. 'But there are plenty of worse things in these valleys. Besides, what person in his senses would think of trying to disestablish John Backhouse? He and his queer brother are as much a feature of the valley as High Fell. We have too few originals left to be so very particular about trifles.'

'Trifles?' repeated Mrs. Seaton in a deep voice, throwing up her eyes. But she would not venture an argument with Dr. Baker. He had all the cheery self-confidence of the old established local doctor, who knows himself to be a power, and neither Mrs. Seaton nor her restless, intriguing little husband had ever yet succeeded in putting him down.

'You must see these two old characters,' said Dr. Baker to Elsmere across the table. 'They are relics of Westmoreland which will soon have disappeared. Old John, who is going on for seventy, is as tough an old dalesman as ever you saw. He doesn't measure his cups, but he would scorn to be floored by them. I don't believe he does drink much, but if he does there is probably no amount of whiskey that he couldn't carry. Jim, the other brother, is about five years older. He is a kind of softie--all alive on one side of his brain, and a noodle on the other. A single glass of rum and water puts him under the table. And as he never can refuse this glass, and as the temptation generally seizes him when they are on their rounds, he is always getting John into disgrace. John swears at him and slangs him. No use. Jim sits still, looks--well, nohow. I never saw an old creature with a more singular gift of denuding his face of all expression. John vow's he shall go to the "house;" he has no legal share in the business; the house and the horse and cart are John's. Next day you see them on the cart again just as usual. In reality neither brother can do without the other. And three days after, the play begins again.'

'An improving spectacle for the valley,' said Mrs. Seaton dryly.

'Oh, my dear madam,' said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders, 'we can't all be so virtuous. If old Jim is a drunkard, he has got a heart of his own somewhere, and can nurse a dying niece like a woman. Miss Leyburn can tell us something about that.'

And he turned round to his neighbor with a complete change of expression, and a voice that had a new note in it of affectionate respect. Catherine colored as if she did not like being addressed on the subject, and just nodded a little with gentle affirmative eyes.

'A strange case.' said Dr. Baker again looking at Elsmere. It is a family that is original and old-world even in its ways of dying. I have been a doctor in these parts for five-and-twenty years. I have seen what you may call old Westmoreland die out--costume, dialect, superstitions. At least, as to dialect, the people have become bilingual. I sometimes think they talk it to each other as much as ever, but some of them won't talk it to you and me at all. And as to superstitions, the only ghost story I know that still has some hold on popular belief is the one which attaches to this mountain here, High Fell, at the end of this valley.'

He paused a moment. A salutary sense has begun to penetrate even modern provincial society, that no man may tell a ghost story without leave. Rose threw a merry glance at him. They two were very old friends. Dr. Baker had pulled out her first teeth and given her a sixpence afterward for each operation. The pull was soon forgotten; the sixpence lived on gratefully in a child's warm memory.

'Tell it,' she said; 'we give you leave. We won't interrupt you unless you put in too many inventions.'

'You invite me to break the first law of storytelling, Miss Rose,' said the doctor, lifting a finger at her. 'Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it. However, I couldn't tell it if I would. I don't know what makes the poor ghost walk; and if you do, I shall say you invent. But at any rate there is a ghost, and she walks along the side of High Fell at midnight every Midsummer day. If you see her and she passes you in silence, why you only got a fright for your pains. But if she speaks to you, you die within the year. Old John Backhouse is a widower with one daughter. This girl saw the ghost last Midsummer day, and Miss Leyburn and I are now doing our best to keep her alive over the next; but with very small prospect of success.'

'What is the girl dying of?--fright?' asked Mrs. Seaton harshly.

'Oh, no!' said the doctor hastily, 'not precisely. A sad story; better not inquire into it. But at the present moment the time of her death seeing likely to be determined by the strength of her own and other people's belief in the ghost's summons.'

Mrs. Seaton's grim mouth relaxed into an ungenial smile. She put up her eye-glass and looked at Catherine. 'An unpleasant household, I should imagine,' she said shortly, 'for a young lady to visit.'

Doctor Baker looked at the rector's wife, and a kind of flame came into his eyes. He and Mrs. Seaton were old enemies, and he was a quick-tempered mercurial sort of Man.

'I presume that one's guardian angel may have to follow one sometimes into unpleasant quarters,' he said hotly. 'If this girl lives, it will be Miss Leyburn's doing; if she dies, saved and comforted, instead of lost in this world and the next, it will be Miss Leyburn's doing too. Ah, my dear young lady, let me alone! You tie my tongue always, and I won't have it.'

And the doctor turned his weather-beaten elderly