Robert Elsmere Part 24

'I'll go with her,' he said hastily, his face lighting up. 'There is nothing whatever to be afraid of, only don't leave your patient.'

Catherine trembled as she heard the words, but she made no sign, and the two men and the woman watched their departure with blank uneasy wonderment. A second later they were on the fell-side climbing a rough stony path, which in places was almost a watercourse, and which wound up the fell towards a tract of level swampy moss or heath, beyond which lay the descent to Shanmoor. Daylight was almost gone; the stormy yellow west was being fast swallowed up in cloud; below them as they climbed lay the dark group of houses, with a light twinkling here and there. All about them were black mountain forms; a desolate tempestuous wind drove a gusty rain into their faces; a little beck roared beside them, and in the distance from the black gulf of the valley the swollen river thundered.

Elsmere looked down on his companion with an indescribable exultation, a pa.s.sionate sense of possession which could hardly restrain itself. He had come back that morning with a mind clearly made up. Catherine had been blind indeed when she supposed that any plan of his or hers would have been allowed to stand in the way of that last wrestle with her, of which he had planned all the methods, rehea.r.s.ed all the arguments. But when he reached the vicarage he was greeted with the news of her absence. She was inaccessible it appeared for the day. No matter! The vicar and he settled in the fewest possible words that he should stay till Monday, Mrs. Thornburgh meanwhile looking on, saying what civility demanded, and surprisingly little else. Then in the evening Mrs.

Thornburgh had asked of him with a manner of admirable indifference whether he felt inclined for an evening walk to High Ghyll to inquire after Mary Backhouse. The request fell in excellently with a lover's restlessness, and Robert a.s.sented at once. The vicar saw him go with puzzled brows and a quick look at his wife, whose head was bent close over her worsted work.

It never occurred to Elsmere--or if it did occur, he pooh-poohed the notion--that he should find Catherine still at her post far from home on this dark stormy evening. But in the glow of joy which her presence had brought him he was still capable of all sorts of delicate perceptions and reasonings. His quick imagination carried him through the scene from which she had just momentarily escaped. He had understood the exaltation of her look and tone. If love spoke at all, ringed with such surroundings, it must be with its most inward and spiritual voice, as those speak who feel 'the Eternities' about them.

But the darkness hid her from him so well that he had to feel out the situation for himself. He could not trace it in her face.

'We must go right up to the top of the pa.s.s,' she said to him as he held a gate open for her which led them into a piece of larch plantation on the mountain-side. 'The ghost is supposed to walk along this bit of road above the houses, till it reaches the heath on the top, and then it turns towards Bleacliff Tarn, which lies higher up to the right, under High Fell.'

'Do you imagine your report will have any effect?'

'At any rate,' she said sighing, 'it seemed to me that it might divert her thoughts a little from the actual horror of her own summons.

Anything is better than the torture of that one fixed idea as she lies there.'

'What is that?' said Robert, startled a little by some ghostly sounds in front of them. The little wood was almost dark, and he could see nothing.

'Only a horse trotting on in front of us,' said Catherine; 'our voices frightened him, I suppose. We shall be out on the fell again directly.'

And as they quitted the trees, a dark bulky form to the left suddenly lifted a shadowy head from the gra.s.s, and clattered down the slope.

A cl.u.s.ter of white-stemmed birches just ahead of them caught whatever light was still left in the atmosphere, their feathery tops bending and swaying against the sky.

'How easily, with mind attuned, one could people this whole path with ghosts!' said Robert. 'Look at those stems, and that line of stream coming down to the right, and listen to the wind among the fern.'

For they were pa.s.sing a little gully deep in bracken, up which the blast was tearing its tempestuous way.

Catherine s.h.i.+vered a little, and the sense of physical exhaustion, which had been banished like everything else--doubt, humiliation, bitterness--by the one fact of his presence, came back on her.

'There _is_ something rather awful in this dark and storm,' she said, and paused.

'Would you have faced it alone?' he asked, his voice thrilling her with a hundred different meanings. 'I am glad I prevented it.'

'I have no fear of the mountains,' she said, trembling. 'I know them, and they me.'

'But you are tired--your voice is tired--and the walk might have been more of an effort than you thought it. Do you never think of yourself?'

'Oh dear, yes,' said Catherine, trying to smile, and could find nothing else to say. They walked on a few moments in silence, splashes of rain breaking in their faces. Robert's inward excitement was growing fast.

Suddenly Catherine's pulse stood still. She felt her hand lifted, drawn within his arm, covered close with his warm trembling clasp.

'Catherine, let it stay there. Listen one moment. You gave me a hard lesson yesterday, too hard--I cannot learn it--I am bold--I claim you.

Be my wife. Help me through this difficult world. I have loved you from the first moment. Come to me. Be kind to me.'

She could hardly see his face, but she could feel the pa.s.sion in his voice and touch. Her cheek seemed to droop against his arm. He felt her tottering.

'Let me sit down,' she said; and after one moment of dizzy silence he guided her to a rock, sinking down himself beside her, longing, but not daring, to shelter her under his broad Inverness cloak against the storm.

'I told you,' she said, almost whispering, 'that I was bound, tied to others.'

'I do not admit your plea,' he said pa.s.sionately; 'no, not for a moment.

For two days have I been tramping over the mountains thinking it out for yourself and me. Catherine, your mother has no son--she should find one in me. I have no sisters--give me yours. I will cherish them as any brother could. Come and enrich my life; you shall still fill and shelter theirs. I dare not think what my future might be with you to guide, to inspire, to bless--dare not, lest with a word you should plunge me into an outer darkness I cannot face.'

He caught her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips.

'Is there no sacredness,' he said brokenly, 'in the fate that has brought us together--out of all the world--here in this lonely valley?

Come to me, Catherine. You shall never fail the old ties, I promise you; and new hands shall cling to you--new voices shall call you blessed.'

Catherine could hardly breathe. Every word had been like balm upon a wound--like a ray of intense light in the gloom about them. Oh, where was this softness bearing her--this emptiness of all will, of all individual power? She hid her eyes with her other hand, struggling to recall that far away moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused to work.

Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of his hand--the tones of his voice.

He saw her struggle, and pressed on remorselessly.

'Speak to me--say one little kind word. Oh, you cannot send me away miserable and empty!'

She turned to him, and laid her trembling free hand on his arm. He clasped them both with rapture.

'Give me a little time.'

'No, no,' he said, and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling: 'time for you to escape me again, my wild mountain bird; time for you to think yourself and me into all sorts of moral mists! No, you shall not have it. Here, alone with G.o.d and the dark--bless me or undo me. Send me out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful, or send me out your knight, your possession, pledged----'

But his voice failed him. What a note of youth, of imagination, of impulsive eagerness there was through it all! The more slowly-moving inarticulate nature was swept away by it. There was but one object clear to her in the whole world of thought or sense, everything else had sunk out of sight--drowned in a luminous mist.

He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum, his tall form drawn up to its full height. In the east, across the valley, above the farther b.u.t.tress of High Fell, there was a clearer strip of sky, visible for a moment among the moving storm clouds, and a dim haloed moon shone out in it. Far away a white-walled cottage glimmered against the fell; the pools at their feet shone in the weird pa.s.sing light.

She lifted her head, and looked at him, still irresolute. Then she too rose, and helplessly, like some one impelled by a will not her own, she silently held out to him two white trembling hands.

'Catherine--my angel--my wife!'

There was something in the pale virginal grace of look and form which kept his young pa.s.sion in awe. But he bent his head again over those yielded hands, kissing them with dizzy unspeakable joy.

About twenty minutes later Catherine and Robert, having hurried back with all speed from the top of Shanmoss, reached the farmhouse door. She knocked. No one answered. She tried the lock; it yielded, and they entered. No one in the kitchen. She looked disturbed and conscience-stricken.

'Oh!' she cried to him, under her breath; 'have we been too long?' And hurrying into the inner room she left him waiting.

Inside was a mournful sight. The two men and Mrs. Irwin stood close round the settle, but as she came nearer, Catherine saw Mary Backhouse lying panting on her pillows, her breath coming in loud gasps, her dress and all the coverings of the bed showing signs of disorder and confusion, her black hair tossed about her.

'It's bin awfu' work sence you left, miss,' whispered Mrs. Irwin to Catherine excitedly, as she joined them. 'She thowt she heerd s...o...b..dy fleytin' and callin'--it was t' wind came skirlin' round t' place, an'

she aw' but thrown hirsel' oot o' t' bed, an' aa shooted for Jim, and they came, and they and I--it's bin as much as we could a' du to hod 'er.'

'Luke! Steady!' exclaimed Jim. 'She'll try it again.'

For the hands were moving restlessly from side to side, and the face was working again. There was one more desperate effort to rise, which the two men checked--gently enough, but effectually--and then the exhaustion seemed complete. The lids fell, and the struggle for breath was pitiful.

Catherine flew for some drugs which the doctor had left, and shown her how to use. After some twenty minutes they seemed to give relief, and the great haunted eyes opened once more.