Robert Elsmere

They stood a moment hand in hand fronting the cornfield and the sun-filled west, while the afternoon breeze blew back the man's curly reddish hair, long since restored to all its natural abundance.

Presently Robert broke into a broad smile.

'What do you suppose Langham has been entertaining Rose with on the way, Catherine? I wouldn't miss her remarks to-night on the escort we provided her for a good deal.'

Catherine said nothing, but her delicate eyebrows went up a little.

Robert stooped and lightly kissed her.

'You never performed a greater act of virtue even in _your_ life, Mrs.

Elsmere, than when you wrote Langham that nice letter of invitation.'

And then the young rector sighed, as many a boyish memory came crowding upon him.

A sound of wheels! Robert's long legs took him to the gate in a twinkling, and he flung it open just as Rose drove up in fine style, a thin dark man beside her.

Rose lent her bright cheek to Catherine's kiss, and the two sisters walked up to the door together, while Robert and Langham loitered after them talking.

'Oh, Catherine!' said Rose under her breath, as they got into the drawing-room, with a little theatrical gesture, 'why on earth did you inflict that man and me on each other for two mortal hours?'

'Sh-s.h.!.+' said Catherine's lips, while her face gleamed with laughter.

Rose sank flushed upon a chair, her eyes glancing up with a little furtive anger in them as the two gentlemen entered the room.

'You found each other easily at Waterloo?' asked Robert.

'Mr. Langham would never have found _me_,' said Rose drily; 'but I pounced on him at last--just, I believe, as he was beginning to cherish the hope of an empty carriage and the solitary enjoyment of his _Sat.u.r.day Review_.'

Langham smiled nervously. 'Miss Leyburn is too hard on a blind man,' he said, holding up his eyegla.s.s apologetically; 'it was my eyes, not my will, that were at fault.'

Rose's lip curled a little. 'And Robert,' she cried, bending forward as though something had just occurred to her, 'do tell me--I vowed I would ask--_is_ Mr. Langham a Liberal or a Conservative? _He_ doesn't know!'

Robert laughed, so did Langham.

'Your sister,' he said, flus.h.i.+ng, 'will have one so very precise in all one says.'

He turned his handsome olive face towards her, an unwonted spark of animation lighting up his black eyes. It was evident that he felt himself persecuted, but it was not so evident whether he enjoyed the process or disliked it.

'Oh dear, no!' said Rose nonchalantly. 'Only I have just come from a house where everybody either loathes Mr. Gladstone or would die for him to-morrow. There was a girl of seven and a boy of nine who were always discussing "Coercion" in the corners of the schoolroom. So, of course, I have grown political too, and began to catechise Mr. Langham at once, and when he said "he didn't know," I felt I should like to set those children at him! They would soon put some principles into him!'

'It is not generally lack of principle, Miss Rose,' said her brother-in-law, 'that turns a man a doubter in politics, but too much!'

And while he spoke, his eyes resting on Langham, his smile broadened as he recalled all those instances in their Oxford past, when he had taken a humble share in one of the herculean efforts on the part of Langham's friends, which were always necessary whenever it was a question of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a vote out of him on any debated University question.

'How dull it must be to have too much principle!' cried Rose. 'Like a mill choked with corn. No bread because the machine can't work!'

'Defend me from my friends!' cried Langham, roused. 'Elsmere, when did I give you a right to caricature me in this way? If I were interested,' he added,

And then seizing the m.u.f.fins, he stood presenting them to Rose as though in deprecation of any further personalities. Inside him there was a hot protest against an unreasonable young beauty whom he had done his miserable best to entertain for two long hours, and who in return had made him feel himself more of a fool than he had done for years. Since when had young women put on all these airs? In his young days they knew their place.

Catherine meanwhile sat watching her sister. The child was more beautiful than ever, but in other outer respects the Rose of Long Whindale had undergone much transformation. The puffed sleeves, the aesthetic skirts, the nave adornments of bead and sh.e.l.l, the formless hat, which it pleased her to imagine 'after Gainsborough,' had all disappeared. She was clad in some soft fawn-coloured garment, cut very much in the fas.h.i.+on; her hair was closely rolled and twisted about her lightly-balanced head; everything about her was neat and fresh and tight-fitting. A year ago she had been a damsel from the 'Earthly Paradise'; now, so far as an English girl can achieve it, she might have been a model for Tissot. In this phase, as in the other, there was a touch of extravagance. The girl was developing fast, but had clearly not yet developed. The restlessness, the self-consciousness of Long Whindale were still there; out they spoke to the spectator in different ways.

But in her anxious study of her sister Catherine did not forget her place of hostess. 'Did our man bring you through the park, Mr. Langham?'

she asked him timidly.

'Yes. What an exquisite old house!' he said, turning to her, and feeling through all his critical sense the difference between the gentle matronly dignity of the one sister and the young self-a.s.sertion of the other.

'Ah,' said Robert, 'I kept that as a surprise! Did you ever see a more perfect place?'

'What date?'

'Early Tudor--as to the oldest part. It was built by a relation of Bishop Fisher's; then largely rebuilt under James I. Elizabeth stayed there twice. There is a trace of a visit of Sidney's. Waller was there, and left a copy of verses in the library. Evelyn laid out a great deal of the garden. Lord Clarendon wrote part of his History in the garden, et cetera, et cetera. The place is steeped in a.s.sociations, and as beautiful as a dream to begin with.'

'And the owner of all this is the author of _The Idols of the Market-place_?'

Robert nodded.

'Did you ever meet him at Oxford? I believe he was there once or twice during my time, but I never saw him.'

'Yes,' said Langham, thinking. 'I met him at dinner at the Vice-Chancellor's, now I remember. A bizarre and formidable person--very difficult to talk to,' he added reflectively.

Then as he looked up he caught a sarcastic twitch of Rose Leyburn's lip and understood it in a moment. Incontinently he forgot the squire and fell to asking himself what had possessed him on that luckless journey down. He had never seemed to himself more perverse, more unmanageable; and for once his philosophy did not enable him to swallow the certainty that this slim flas.h.i.+ng creature must have thought him a morbid idiot with as much _sangfroid_ as usual.

Robert interrupted his reflections by some Oxford question, and presently Catherine carried off Rose to her room. On their way they pa.s.sed a door, beside which Catherine paused hesitating, and then with a bright flush on the face, which had such maternal calm in it already, she threw her arm round Rose and drew her in. It was a white empty room, smelling of the roses outside, and waiting in the evening stillness for the life that was to be. Rose looked at it all--at the piles of tiny garments, the cradle, the pictures from Retsch's 'Song of the Bell,'

which had been the companion of their own childhood, on the walls--and something stirred in the girl's breast.

'Catherine, I believe you have everything you want, or you soon will have!' she cried, almost with a kind of bitterness, laying her hands on her sister's shoulders.

'Everything but worthiness!' said Catherine softly, a mist rising in her calm gray eyes. 'And you, Roschen,' she added wistfully, 'have you been getting a little more what you want?'

'What's the good of asking?' said the girl, with a little shrug of impatience. 'As if creatures like me ever got what they want! London has been good fun certainly--if one could get enough of it. Catherine, how long is that marvellous person going to stay?' and she pointed in the direction of Langham's room.

'A week,' said Catherine, smiling at the girl's disdainful tone. 'I was afraid you didn't take to him.'

'I never saw such a being before,' declared Rose--'never! I thought I should never get a plain answer from him about anything. He wasn't even quite certain it was a fine day! I wonder if you set fire to him whether he would be sure it hurt! A week, you say? Heigh ho! what an age!'

'Be kind to him,' said Catherine, discreetly veiling her own feelings, and caressing the curly golden head as they moved towards the door.

'He's a poor lone don, and he was so good to Robert!'

'Excellent reason for you, Mrs. Elsmere,' said Rose, pouting; 'but----'

Her further remarks were cut short by the sound of the front-door bell.

'Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Newcome!' cried Catherine, starting. 'Come down soon, Rose, and help us through.'

'Who is he?' inquired Rose sharply.

'A High Church clergyman near here, whom Robert asked to tea this afternoon,' said Catherine, escaping.

Rose took her hat off very leisurely. The prospect downstairs did not seem to justify despatch. She lingered and thought of 'Lohengrin' and Albani, of the crowd of artistic friends that had escorted her to Waterloo, of the way in which she had been applauded the night before, of the joys of playing Brahms with a long-haired pupil of Rubinstein's, who had dropped on one knee and kissed her hand at the end of it, etc.