CHAPTER XVII
When Catharine returned to the little sitting-room, in which the darkness of a rainy October evening was already declaring itself, she came shaken by many emotions in which only one thing was clear--that the man before her was a good man in distress, and that her daughter loved him.
If she had been of the true bigot stuff she would have seen in the threatened scandal a means of freeing Mary from an undesirable attachment. But just as in her married life, her heart had not been able to stand against her husband while her mind condemned him, so now. While in theory, and toward people with whom she never came in contact, she had grown even more bitter and intransigent since Robert"s death than she had been in her youth, she had all the time been living the daily life of service and compa.s.sion which--unknown to herself--had been the real saving and determining force. Impulses of love, impulses of sacrifice toward the miserable, the vile, and the helpless--day by day she had felt them, day by day she had obeyed them. And thus all the arteries, so to speak, of the spiritual life had remained soft and pliant--that life itself in her was still young. It was there in truth that her Christianity lay; while she imagined it to lie in the a.s.sent to certain historical and dogmatic statements. And so strong was this inward and vital faith--so strengthened in fact by mere living--that when she was faced with this second crisis in her life, brought actually to close grips with it, that faith, against all that might have been expected, carried her through the difficult place with even greater sureness than at first. She suffered indeed. It seemed to her all through that she was endangering Mary, and condoning a betrayal of her Lord. And yet she could not act upon this belief. She must needs act--with pain often, and yet with mysterious moments of certainty and joy, on quite another faith, the faith which has expressed itself in the perennial cry of Christianity: "Little children, love one another!" And therein lay the difference between her and Barron.
It was therefore in this mixed--and yet single--mood that she came back to Meynell, and asked him--quietly--the strange question: "What shall I do--what do you wish me to do or say--with regard to my daughter?"
Meynell could not for a moment believe that he had heard aright. He stared at her in bewilderment, at first pale, and then in a sudden heat and vivacity of colour.
"I--I hardly understand you, Mrs. Elsmere."
They stood facing each other in silence.
"Surely we need not inform her," he said, at last, in a low voice.
"Only that a wicked and untrue story has been circulated--that you cannot, for good reasons, involving other persons, prosecute those responsible for it in the usual way. And if she comes across any signs of it, or its effects, she is to trust your wisdom in dealing with it--and not to be troubled--is not that what you would like me to say?"
"That is indeed what I should like you to say." He raised his eyes to her gravely.
"Or--will you say it yourself?"
He started.
"Mrs. Elsmere!"--he spoke with quick emotion--"You are wonderfully good to me." He scanned her with an unsteady face--then made an agitated step toward her. "It almost makes me think--you permit me--"
"No--no," said Catharine, hurriedly, drawing back. "But if you would like to speak to Mary--she will be here directly."
"No!"--he said, after a moment, recovering his composure--"I couldn"t!
But--will you?"
"If you wish it." Then she added, "She will of course never ask a question; it will be her business to know nothing of the matter--in itself. But she will be able to show you her confidence, and to feel that we have treated her as a woman--not a child.""
Meynell drew a deep breath. He took Catharine"s hand and pressed it. She felt with a thrill--which was half bitterness--that it was already a son"s look he turned upon her.
"You--you have guessed me?" he said, almost inaudibly.
"I see there is a great friendship between you."
"_Friendship!_" Then he restrained himself sharply. "But I ought not to speak of it--to intrude myself and my affairs on her notice at all at this moment...." He looked at his companion almost sternly. "Is it not clear that I ought not? I meant to have brought her a book to-day. I have not brought it. I have been even glad--thankful--to think you were going away, although--" But again he checked the personal note. "The truth is I could not endure that through me--through anything connected with me--she might be driven upon facts and sorrows--ugly facts that would distress her, and sorrows for which she is too young. It seemed to me indeed I might not be able to help it. But at the same time it was clear to me, to-day, that at such a time--feeling as I do--I ought not in the smallest degree to presume upon her--and your--kindness to me. Above all"--his voice shook--"I could not come forward--I could not speak to her--as at another time I might have spoken. I could not run the smallest risk--of her name being coupled with mine--when my character was being seriously called in question. It would not have been right for her; it would not have been seemly for myself. So what was there--but silence? And yet I felt--that through this silence--we should somehow trust each other!"
He paused a moment, looking down upon his companion. Catharine was sitting by the fire near a small table on which her elbow rested, her face propped on her hand. There was something in the ascetic refinement, the grave sweetness of her aspect, that played upon him with a tonic and consoling force. He remembered the frozen reception she had given him at their first meeting; and the melting of her heart toward him seemed a wonderful thing. And then came the delicious thought--"Would she so treat him, unless Mary--_Mary_!--"
But, at the same time, there was in him the mind of the practical man, which plainly and energetically disapproved her. And presently he tried, with much difficulty, to tell her so, to impress upon her--upon her, Mary"s mother--that Mary must not be allowed to hold any communication with him, to show any kindness toward him, till this cloud had wholly cleared away, and the sky was clear again. He became almost angry as he urged this; so excited, indeed, and incoherent that a charming smile stole into Catharine"s gray eyes.
"I understand quite what you feel," she said as she rose, "and why you feel it. But I am not bound to follow your advice--or to agree with you--am I?"
"Yes, I think you are," he said stoutly.
Then a shadow fell over her face.
"I suppose I am doing a strange thing"--her manner faltered a little--"but it seems to me right--I have been _led_--else why was it so plain?"
She raised her clear eyes, and he understood that she spoke of those "hints" and "voices" of the soul that play so large a part in the more mystical Christian experience. She hurried on:
"When two people--two people like you and Mary--feel such a deep interest in each other--surely it is G.o.d"s sign." Then, suddenly, the tears shone. "Oh, Mr. Meynell!--trial brings us nearer to our Saviour.
Perhaps--through it--you and Mary--will find Him!"
He saw that she was trembling from head to foot; and his own emotion was great.
He took her hand again, and held it in both his own.
"Do you imagine," he said huskily "that you and I are very far apart?"
And again the tenderness of his manner was a son"s tenderness.
She shook her head, but she could not speak. She gently withdrew her hand, and turned aside to gather up some letters on the table.
A sound of footsteps could be heard outside. Catharine moved to the window.
"It is Mary," she said quietly. "Will you wait a little while I meet her?" And without giving him time to reply, she left the room.
He walked up and down, not without some humorous bewilderment in spite of his emotion. The saints, it seemed, are persons of determination! But, after a minute, he thought of nothing, realized nothing, save that Mary was in the little house again, and that one of those low voices he could just hear, as a murmur in the distance, through the thin walls of the cottage, was hers.
The door opened softly, and she came in. Though she had taken off her hat, she still wore her blue cloak of Irish frieze, which fell round her slender figure in long folds. Her face was rosy with rain and wind; the same wind and rain which had stamped such a gray fatigue on Alice Puttenham"s cheeks. Amid the dusk, the fire-light touched her hair and her ungloved hand. She was a vision of youth and soft life; and her composure, her slight, shy smile, would alone have made her beautiful.
Their hands met as she gently greeted him. But there was that in his look which disturbed her gentleness--which deepened her colour. She hurried to speak.
"I am so glad that mother made you stay--just that I might tell you." Then her breath began to hasten. "Mother says you are--or may be--unjustly attacked--that you don"t think it right to defend yourself publicly--and those who follow you, and admire you, may be hurt and troubled. I wanted to say--and mother approves--that whoever is hurt and troubled, I can never be--except for you. Besides, I shall know and ask nothing. You may be sure of that. And people will not dare to speak to me."
She stood proudly erect.
Meynell was silent for a moment. Then, by a sudden movement, he stooped and kissed a fold of her cloak. She drew back with a little stifled cry, putting out her hands, which he caught. He kissed them both, dropped them, and walked away from her.
When he returned it was with another aspect.
"Don"t let"s make too much of this trouble. It may all die away--or it may be a hard fight. But whatever happens, you are going to Westmoreland immediately. That is my great comfort."
"Is it?" She laughed unsteadily.
He too smiled. There was intoxication he could not resist--in her presence--and in what it implied.
"It is the best possible thing that could be done. Then--whatever happens--I shall not be compromising my friends. For a while--there must be no communication between them and me."
"Oh, yes!" she said, involuntarily clasping her hands. "Friends may write."
"May they?" He thought it over, with a furrowed brow, then raised it, clear. "What shall they write about?"