Robert Elsmere Part 88

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders and vowed he had been doing nothing. But, in truth, he knew very well that the day before he had overstepped the line. There had been a little scene between them, a quick pa.s.sage of speech, a rash look and gesture on his part, which had been quite unpremeditated, but which had nevertheless transformed their relation.

Rose had flushed up, had said a few incoherent words, which he had understood to be words of reproach, had left Lady Helen's as quickly as possible, and next morning his Greenlaws party had fallen through.

'Check, certainly,' said Flaxman to himself ruefully, as he pondered these circ.u.mstances--'not mate, I hope, if one can but find out how not to be a fool in future.'

And over his solitary fire he meditated far into the night.

Next day, at half-past seven in the evening, he entered Lady Charlotte's drawing-room, gayer, brisker, more alert than ever.

Rose started visibly at the sight of him, and shot a quick glance at the unblus.h.i.+ng Lady Charlotte.

'I thought you were at Greenlaws,' she could not help saying to him, as she coldly offered him her hand. _Why_ had Lady Charlotte never told her he was to escort them? Her irritation rose anew.

'What can one do,' he said lightly, 'if Elsmere will fix such a performance for Easter Eve? My party was at its last gasp too; it only wanted a telegram to Helen to give it its _coup de grace_.'

Rose flushed up, but he turned on his heel at once, and began to banter his aunt on the housekeeper's bonnet and veil in which she had a little too obviously disguised herself.

And certainly, in the drive to the East End, Rose had no reason to complain of importunity on his part. Most of the way he was deep in talk with Lady Charlotte as to a certain loan exhibition in the East End, to which he and a good many of his friends were sending pictures; apparently his time and thoughts were entirely occupied with it. Rose, leaning back silent in her corner, was presently seized with a little shock of surprise that there should be so many interests and relations in his life of which she knew nothing. He was talking now as the man of possessions and influence. She saw a glimpse of him as he was in his public aspect, and the kindness, the disinterestedness, the quiet sense, and the humour of his talk insensibly affected her as she sat listening.

The mental image of him which had been dominant in her mind altered a little. Nay, she grew a little hot over it. She asked herself scornfully whether she were not as ready as any bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss of her acquaintance to imagine every man she knew in love with her.

Very likely he had meant what he said quite differently, and she--oh!

humiliation--had flown into a pa.s.sion with him for no reasonable cause.

Supposing he _had_ meant, two days ago, that if they were to go on being friends she must let him be her lover too, it would of course have been unpardonable. How _could_ she let any one talk to her of love yet--especially Mr. Flaxman, who guessed, as she was quite sure, what had happened to her? He must despise her to have imagined it. His outburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulant resentment.

Were all men self-seeking? Did all men think women shallow and fickle?

Could a man and a woman never be honestly and simply friends? If he _had_ made love to her, he could not possibly--and there was the sting of it--feel towards her maiden dignity that romantic respect which she herself cherished towards it. For it was incredible that any delicate-minded girl should go through such a crisis as she had gone through, and then fall calmly into another lover's arms a few weeks later as though nothing had happened.

How we all att.i.tudinise to ourselves! The whole of life often seems one long dramatic performance, in which one half of us is for ever posing to the other half.

But had he really made love to her?--had he meant what she had a.s.sumed him to mean? The girl lost herself in a torment of memory and conjecture, and meanwhile Mr. Flaxman sat opposite, talking away, and looking certainly as little love-sick as any man can well look. As the lamps flashed into the carriage her attention was often caught by his profile and finely-balanced head, by the hand lying on his knee, or the little gestures, full of life and freedom, with which he met some raid of Lady Charlotte's on his opinions, or opened a corresponding one on hers. There was certainly power in the man, a bright human sort of power, which inevitably attracted her. And that he was good too she had special grounds for knowing.

But what an aristocrat he was after all! What an over-prosperous exclusive set he belonged to! She lashed herself into anger as the other two chatted and sparred, with all these names of wealthy cousins and relations, with their parks and their pedigrees and their pictures! The aunt and nephew were debating how they could best bleed the family, in its various branches, of the art treasures belonging to it for the benefit of the East-Enders; therefore the names were inevitable. But Rose curled her delicate lip over them. And was it the best breeding, she wondered, to leave a third person so ostentatiously outside the conversation?

'Miss Leyburn, why are you coughing?' said Lady Charlotte suddenly.

'There is a great draught,' said Rose, s.h.i.+vering a little.

'So there is!' cried Lady Charlotte. 'Why, we have got both the windows open. Hugh, draw up Miss Leyburn's.'

He moved over to her and drew it up.

'I thought you liked a tornado,' he said to her, smiling. 'Will you have a shawl?--there is one behind me.'

'No, thank you,' she replied rather stiffly, and he was silent--retaining his place opposite to her, however.

'Have we reached Mr. Elsmere's part of the world yet?' asked Lady Charlotte, looking out.

'Yes, we are not far off--the river is to our right. We shall pa.s.s St.

Wilfrid's soon.'

The coachman turned into a street where an open-air market was going on. The roadway and pavements were swarming; the carriage could barely pick its way through the ma.s.ses of human beings. Flaming gas-jets threw it all into strong satanic light and shade. At the corner of a dingy alley Rose could see a fight going on; the begrimed ragged children, regardless of the April rain, swooped backwards and forwards under the very hoofs of the horses, or flattened their noses against the windows whenever the horses were forced into a walk.

The young girl-figure in gray, with the gray feathered hat, seemed specially to excite their notice. The glare of the street brought out the lines of the face, the gold of the hair. The Arabs outside made loutishly flattering remarks once or twice, and Rose, colouring, drew back as far as she could into the carriage. Mr. Flaxman seemed not to hear; his aunt, with that obtrusive thirst for information which is so fas.h.i.+onable now among all women of position, was cross-questioning him as to the trades and population of the district, and he was drily responding. In reality his mind was full of a whirl of feeling, of a wild longing to break down a futile barrier and trample on a baffling resistance, to take that beautiful tameless creature in strong coercing arms, scold her, crush her, love her! Why does she make happiness so difficult? What right has she to hold devotion so cheap? He too grows angry. 'She was _not_ in love with that spectral creature,' the inner self declares with energy--'I will vow she never was. But she is like all the rest--a slave to the merest forms and trappings of sentiment.

Because he _ought_ to have loved her, and didn't, because she _fancied_ she loved him, and didn't, my love is to be an offence to her!

Monstrous--unjust!'

Suddenly they sped past St. Wilfrid's, resplendent with lights, the jewelled windows of the choir rising above the squalid walls and roofs into the rainy darkness, as the mystical chapel of the Graal, with its 'torches glimmering fair,' flashed out of the mountain storm and solitude on to Galahad's seeking eyes.

Rose bent forward involuntarily. 'What angel singing!' she said, dropping the window again to listen to the retreating sounds, her artist's eye kindling. 'Did you hear it? It was the last chorus in the St. Matthew Pa.s.sion music.'

'I did not distinguish it,' he said--'but their music is famous.'

His tone was distant; there was no friendliness in it. It would have been pleasant to her if he would have taken up her little remark and let bygones be bygones. But he showed no readiness to do so. The subject dropped, and presently he moved back to his former seat and Lady Charlotte and he resumed their talk. Rose could not but see that his manner towards her was much changed. She herself had compelled it, but all the same she saw him leave her with a capricious little pang of regret, and afterwards the drive seemed to her more tedious and the dismal streets more dismal than before.

She tried to forget her companions altogether. Oh! what would Robert have to say? She was unhappy, restless. In her trouble lately it had often pleased her to go quite alone to strange churches, where for a moment the burden of the self had seemed lightened. But the old things were not always congenial to her, and there were modern ferments at work in her. No one of her family, unless it were Agnes, suspected what was going on. But in truth the rich crude nature had been touched at last, as Robert's had been long ago in Mr. Grey's lecture-room, by the piercing under-voices of things--the moral message of the world. 'What will he have to say?' she asked herself again feverishly, and as she looked across to Mr. Flaxman she felt a childish wish to be friends again with him, with everybody. Life was too difficult as it was, without quarrels and misunderstandings to make it worse.

CHAPTER XL

A long street of warehouses--and at the end of it the horses slackened.

'I saw the president of the club yesterday,' said Flaxman, looking out.

'He is an old friend of mine--a most intelligent fanatic--met him on a Mansion House Fund committee last winter. He promised we should be looked after. But we shall only get back seats, and you'll have to put up with the smoking. They don't want ladies, and we shall only be there on sufferance.'

The carriage stopped. Mr. Flaxman guided his charges with some difficulty through the crowd about the steps, who inspected them and their vehicle with a frank and not over-friendly curiosity. At the door they found a man who had been sent to look for them, and were immediately taken possession of. He ushered them into the back of a large bare hall, glaringly lit, lined with white brick, and hung at intervals with political portraits and a few cheap engravings of famous men, Jesus of Nazareth taking his turn with Buddha, Socrates, Moses, Shakespeare, and Paul of Tarsus.

'Can't put you any forrarder, I'm afraid,' said their guide, with a shrug of the shoulders. 'The committee don't like strangers coming, and Mr. Collett, he got hauled over the coals for letting you in this evening.'

It was a new position for Lady Charlotte to be anywhere on sufferance.

However, in the presence of three hundred smoking men, who might all of them be political a.s.sa.s.sins in disguise for anything she knew, she accepted her fate with meekness; and she and Rose settled themselves into their back seat under a rough sort of gallery, glad of their veils, and nearly blinded with the smoke.

The hall was nearly full, and Mr. Flaxman looked curiously round upon its occupants. The majority of them were clearly artisans--a spare, stooping, sharp-featured race. Here and there were a knot of stalwart dock-labourers, strongly marked out in physique from the watchmakers and the potters, or an occasional seaman out of work, s.h.i.+p-steward, boatswain, or what not, generally bronzed, quick-eyed, and comely, save where the film of excess had already deadened colour and expression.

Almost every one had a pot of beer before him, standing on long wooden flaps attached to the benches. The room was full of noise, coming apparently from the farther end, where some political bravo seemed to be provoking his neighbours. In their own vicinity the men scattered about were for the most part tugging silently at their pipes, alternately eyeing the clock and the new-comers.

There was a stir of feet round the door.

'There he is,' said Mr. Flaxman, craning round to see, and Robert entered.

He started as he saw them, flashed a smile to Rose, shook his head at Mr. Flaxman, and pa.s.sed up the room.

'He looks pale and nervous,' said Lady Charlotte grimly, pouncing at once on the unpromising side of things. 'If he breaks down are you prepared, Hugh, to play Elisha?'

Flaxman was far too much interested in the beginnings of the performance to answer.

Robert was standing forward on the platform, the chairman of the meeting at his side, members of the committee sitting behind on either hand. A good many men put down their pipes, and the hubbub of talk ceased.

Others smoked on stolidly.