Foxglove Manor, Volume II (of III)
“You should not blame me if I am jealous for your honour!”
Haldane started, and uttered an expletive.
“My honour, you dog? What do you mean?”
“This, senor. I would rather die than give you offence; and as for the senora, I love her also, for is she not your wife? But will you be angry still, when I tell you, when I warn you, to beware of that man, that priest? He is a bad man, very bad. Ah, I have watched – and seen!”
“What have you seen?” cried Haldane, clutching him by the arm. “Come, out with it!”
“Enough to show me that he is not your friend – that he is dangerous.”
“Bah! is that all? Now, listen to me, and be sure I mean what I say. I will have no servant of mine spying upon my wife. I will have no servant of mine insinuating that my honour is in danger. If I hear another word of this, if you convey to me by one look the fact that you are still prying, spying, and suspecting, I shall take you by the collar and send you flying out of my house. Now, go!”
Baptisto, who knew his master’s temper perfectly, bowed and withdrew. He had no wish to say one word more. He had thrown out a dark hint, a black seed of suspicion, and he knew that he might safely let it work. It did work, rapidly and terribly. Left alone, Haldane became a prey to the wildest fears and suspicions. He remembered now that his wife had been acquainted with this man in her girlhood; that there had even been some passage of love between them. He remembered how eagerly she had renewed the acquaintance, and with what admiring zeal the clergyman had responded. He pictured to himself the sympathetic companionship, the zealous meetings, the daily religious intercourse, of these two young people, each full of the fervour of a blind superstition. Could it be possible that they loved each other? Questioning his memory, he recalled looks, words, tones, which, although scarcely noticed at the time, seemed now of painful significance. The mere thought was sickening. Already he realized the terrible phrase-of the poet Young – “the jealous are the damned.”
Haldane was not habitually a violent man. Though passionate and headstrong by temperament, he had schooled himself to gentleness after a stormy youth, and the chilly waters of philosophy, at which he drank daily, kept his head cool and his pulses calm. But the stormy spirit, though hushed, was not altogether dead within him, and under his habitual reticence and good-humoured cynicism, there lay the most passionate idolatry for his beautiful wife. He had set her up in his heart of hearts, with a faith too perfect for much expression; and it had not occurred to him, in his remotest dreams, that any other man could ever come between them.
And now, suddenly as a lightning flash illumining a dark landscape, the fear came upon him that perhaps he had been unwary and unwise. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he had’ been too studious and too book-loving, too reticent also in all those little attentions which by women, who always love sweetmeats, are so tenderly prized? Moreover, he was ten years his wife’s, elder – was that disparity of years also a barrier between their souls? No; he was sure it was not. He was sure that she was not hypocritical, and that she loved him. Wherever the blame might be, if blame there were, it was certainly not hers. She had been in all respects, a tender and a sympathetic wife; encouraging his deep study of science, even when she most distrusted its results; proud of his attainments, and eager for his success; in short, a perfect helpmate, but for her old-fashioned prejudices in the sphere of religion. Ah, religion! There was the one word which solved the enigma, and aroused in our philosopher’s bosom that fierce indignation which long ago led Lucretius into such passionate hate against the Phantom,=
Which with horrid head
Leered hideously from all the gates of heaven!”
It needed only this to complete his loathing for the popular theology, for all its teachers. Yes, he reflected, religion only was to blame. In its name, his wife’s sympathies had been tampered with, her spirit more or less turned against himself; in its name, his house had been secretly invaded, his domestic happiness poisoned, his peace of mind destroyed. It was the old story! Wherever this shadow of superstition crawled, craft and dissimulation began. Now, as in the beginning, it came between father and child, sister and brother, man and wife.
It so happened that when George Haldane came forth from having his dark hour alone, he rather avoided meeting his wife at once, and, taking his hat, stepped out from the laboratory on to the shrubbery path. He had scarcely done so, when his eye fell upon two figures standing together in the distance, upon the terrace of the house. One was Mrs. Haldane, wearing her garden hat and a loose shawl thrown over her shoulders. The other was the clergyman of the parish.
Haldane drew back, and watched. In that moment he knew the extent of his humiliation; for never before had he been a spy upon his wife’s actions.
Their backs were towards him. Santley was talking eagerly; Ellen was looking down. Presently they began to move slowly along the terrace, side by side.
Haldane watched them gloomily. The sunlight fell brightly upon them, and on the old Manor house, with its brilliant creepers and glittering panes, while the old chapel, with the watcher in its ruined porch, remained in shadow. It seemed like an omen. In the darkness of his hiding-place, Haldane felt satanic. Yes, there they walked – children of God, as they called themselves – in God’s sunlight; and he, the searcher for light, the unbeliever, was forgotten.
Presently Santley paused again, and, with an impassioned gesture, pointed upward. Ellen raised her head, and looked upward too, listening eagerly to his words. Haldane laughed fiercely to himself, with all the ugliness of his jealousy upon him.
Presently they disappeared into the house. A little afterwards Santley emerged from the front door, and came walking rapidly down the avenue. His manner was eager and happy, almost jubilant, and Haldane saw, when he approached, that his face looked positively radiant.
He was passing, when Haldane stepped out and confronted him. He started, paused, and a shadow fell instantaneously upon his handsome face. Recovering himself, he held out his hand. Haldane did not seem to see the gesture, but, nodding a careless greeting, said, with his habitual sang froid—
“Well met, Mr. Santley. Here I am again, you see, hard at work. Have you come from the house?”
“Yes,” answered Santley.
“On some new message of Christian charity and beneficence, I suppose? Ah, my dear sir, you are indefatigable. And the old women of the parish must indeed find you a Good Shepherd. Did you find my wife at home?”
“Yes.”
“And zealous, as usual, I suppose?’ Ah, what a thing it is to be pious! But let me beg you not to encourage her too much. Charity begins at home; and what with soup-kitchens, offertories, subscriptions for church repairs, and societies for the gratuitous distribution of flannel waistcoats, I am in a fair way of being ruined.”
Santley forced a laugh.
“Don’t be afraid. My errand to-day was not a begging one, I assure you.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“I was merely bringing Mrs. Haldane a book I promised to lend her. To tell the truth, she finds your library rather destitute of works of a religious nature.”
“Do you really think so?” exclaimed Haldane, drily. “Why, I thought it unusually well provided in that respect. Let me see! There are Volney’s ‘Ruins of Empire,’ Monboddo’s ‘Dissertations,’ Drummond’s ‘Academical Questions,’ excellent translations of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, not to speak of thirty-six volumes of Diderot, and fifty of Arouet.”
Santley opened his eyes in horror and astonishment.
“Arouet!” he ejaculated. “Do you actually mean to call Voltaire a religious writer?”
“Highly so. There is religion even in ‘La Pucelle,’ but it reaches its culmination in the ‘Philosophical Dictionary.’”
“And you would actually let Mrs. Haldane read such works as those?”
“Certainly; though, am sorry to say, she prefers ‘The Old Helmet’ and the ‘Heir of Redclyffe.’ May I ask the name of the work you have been good enough to lend her?”
“It is a book from which I myself have received great benefit – Père Hyacinthes ‘Sermons.’”
“Père Hyacinthe?” repeated Haldane. “Ah! the jolly priest who reverenced celibacy, and proclaimed himself the father of a strapping boy. Well, the man was at least honest. I think all clergymen should marry, and at as early an age as possible. What is your opinion?”
Santley flushed to the temples, while Haldane watched him with a gloomy smile.
“I think – I am sure,” he stammered, “that the married state is the happiest – perhaps the holiest.”
“With these sentiments, of which I cordially approve, why the deuce are you a bachelor?”
The clergyman winced at the question, and his colour deepened; then, as if musing, he glanced round towards the house – a look which was observed and fully appreciated by his tormentor.
“I am sure my wife would encourage you to change your condition. Like most women, she is by instinct a matchmaker.”
Santley did not seem to hear; at any rate, he made no reply, but, holding out his hand quickly, exclaimed —
“I must go now. I am rather in haste.”
Haldane did not take the hand, but put his arm upon the clergyman’s shoulder.
“Well, good day,” he said. “Take my advice, though, and get a sensible wife as soon as possible.”
Santley tried to smile, but only succeeded in looking more pale and nervous than usual. With a few murmured words of adieu, he moved rapidly away.
Haldane watched him thoughtfully until he disappeared down the avenue.
“I wonder if that man can smile?” he said to himself. “No; I am afraid he is too horribly in earnest. I suppose, the women would call him handsome —spiritual; but I hate such pallid, waxen-featured, handsome dolls. A pretty shepherd, that, for a Christian flock to follow; a fellow who makes his very ignorance of this world constitute his claim to act as cicerone to the next. Fancy being jealous, actually jealous, of such a thing as that!”
He turned back into his laboratory and tried to dismiss Baptisto’s suggestion from his mind; but it was impossible. He could not disguise from himself that Santley, with his seraphic face and sad, earnest eyes, was the kind of creature whom the weaker sex adore, and that he was rendered doubly dangerous to women by the radiant mesmerism of a fascinating and voluptuous celestial superstition.
CHAPTER XXVI. FIRST LEAVES FROM A PHILOSOPHER NOTE-BOOK
I am about to set down, in as concise a manner as possible, and at present solely for my private edification (some day, perhaps, another eye may read the lines, but not yet), certain events which have lately influenced my domestic life. Were it not that even a professed scientist might decline to publish experiments affecting his own private happiness, the description of the events to which I allude might almost form a chapter in my slowly progressing “Physiology of Ethics,” and the description would be at least as interesting as many of Ferriers accounts of vivisection on dumb animals. But, unfortunately, I am unable, in this case, to apply the dissecting knife to my neighbours heart, without laying bare the ugly wound in my own.
To begin then, I, George Haldane, recluse, pessimist, moral physiologist, and would-be moral philosopher, have discovered, at forty years of age, that I am capable of the most miserable of all human passions; worse, that this said ignoble passion of jealousy has a certain rational foundation. For ten years I have been happy with a wife who seemed the perfection of human gentleness and beauty; who, although unfortunately we have been blest with no offspring, has shown the tenderest solicitude and sympathy for the children of my brain; and who, in her wifely faith and sanctity, seemed to be the sole link still holding me to a church whose history has always filled me with abhorrence, and a religion whose infantine theology I despise. Well, nous avons changé tout cela. My mind is no longer peaceful, my hearth no longer sacred; and the woman I love seems slowly drifting from me on a stream of sensuous spiritualism – another name for a religious rehabilitation of the flesh.
If any other man were the victim, I should think the situation highly absurd. Here, on the one hand, is a fanatical Protestant priest, with the face of a seraphic monk, the experience of a schoolgirl, and the gaucherie of a country chorister who has never grown a beard; a fellow whose sole claims to notice are his white hands, his clean linen, and his function as a silly shepherd; a man fresh from college, ignorant of the world. Here, on the other hand, am I, physically and intellectually his master, knowing almost every creed beneath the sun, and the slave of none; indifferent to vulgar human passions, and disposed to disintegrate them one and all with the electric current of a negative philosophy. Between us both, trembling this way and that, is that fair thing of flesh and blood, my wife, zealous to save her own soul alive, and fearful at times, I fancy, that I have sold mine to the Prince of Darkness. It is another version of science against superstition, common sense against a lie; and Ellen Haldane is the prize. A fiery Spaniard, like Baptisto yonder, would end the affair with a stiletto-thrust; but I, of colder blood, am not likely to do anything so courageous or so foolish, but am content to watch and watch, and to feel the sick contamination of my suspicion creeping over me like an unwholesome mildew. A stiletto thrust? Why, the mere tongue, a less fatal weapon, would do it all. If I could only summon up the courage to say to my wife, “I know your secret; choose between this man and me, between his creed and mine, between your duty as a wife and your zeal as a Christian,” I fancy there would be an end to it all. But I am too timorous; I suppose, too ashamed of my suspicions, too proud to acknowledge so contemptible a rival. As a Spaniard covers his face with his mantle, I veil my soul with my pride; and, under the mantle of unsuspicion, rest irresolute, while the thing grows.
Once or twice, I have thought of another way – of taking my wife by the hand and saying, “To-morrow, my dear, we shall leave this place, and return to Spain or Italy – some quiet place abroad.” I could easily find an excuse for the migration, which, once effected, would make an end of the affair. But that, in my opinion, would be too cowardly. It would, indeed, be an admission that the danger was real and imminent; that, in other words, the fight for honour could only be saved by an ignominious retreat. No; Ellen Haldane must take her chance. If she is not strong enough to hold out against evil, then let her go —au bon Dieu or au bon diable, as either leads.
Yet what am I saying? It is precisely because I have the utmost faith in her purity of heart that I watch the struggle with a certain patience. I believe there will be a victim, but not my Ellen. Surely, if there is a good woman in the world, she is that woman. As for the other, every day, every hour, brings the cackling creature further and further into my decoy. Even if he tried to turn back now, I do not think I should let him. No; let him swim in and on, and in and on, till he reaches the place where I, like the decoy man, can catch him fluttering, and – wring his neck? Perhaps.
It is quite clear that the man takes me for an idiot. At first he used precautions, invented subterfuges; latterly, certain of my stupidity or indifference, he comes and goes without disguise. When I meet him driving side by side of my wife in the phaeton, on some pretended errand of mercy, he gives me a careless bow, a nod. As he goes by my den, on his way to invite her out to visit his sister or his church, he makes no excuse, but passes jauntily, with a conversational pat for the stupid watch-dog: that is all. It would be amusing, I say, if it were not almost insufferable.
This afternoon, as Ellen was going out, I blankly suggested that she should stay at home.
“But you are busy,” she said – “always busy with your books and experiments.”
“Not too busy, my dear Nell, for a tête-à-tête with you. Where are you going? To the Vicarage?”
“Yes.”
“To see the parson, or his sister?”
“Both. We have a great deal to discuss, about the designs for the new stained-glass windows, which have just come from London.”
“Very interesting; but they will keep for a day. I fancy I could show you something quite as interesting, in my laboratory.”
“I hate the laboratory,” she cried, “and those horrible experiments.”
“My dear, you should not hate what your husband loves.”
“I don’t mean that I hate them, quite; but I think them so useless!”
“More useless than stained-glass windows?”
“It is certainly not useless to beautify the House of God. Oh, I do so wish you could feel as I do about these things! What is the world without them?”
“Without stained-glass windows?” I suggested sarcastically.
She flushed impatiently.
“George, why have you such a dislike for religion? Why do you hate everything I love?”
“Pardon me, my dear Nell, it was you, not I, that spoke of hating. Philosophers never hate.”
“But you do worse; you despise it. Thank God we have no children. It would be horrible to tell them that their father forbade them to go to church, or pray!”
It was like a stab into my heart of hearts, that cry of thanks to God. Despite myself, I lost my composure. She saw it instantly, and in the manner of her sex, encroached.
“Oh, George, do try to think sometimes of these things, for my sake! You would be so much happier, you surely would have so much more blessing, if you sometimes prayed.”
“How do you know that I do not pray?”
“Because you do not believe.”
“I do not believe precisely as your priest believes, that is all.”
She looked at me eagerly; then, after a moments hesitation, cried —
“George, if I asked a favour, would you grant it?”
“Try.”
“Let Mr. Santley come sometimes, and speak with you about God!”
This was too much, almost, for even me to bear with equanimity. I am afraid I did not look particularly amiable as I answered, sharp and short, turning from her —
“After all, I think you had better go and look at those designs.”
“There, you are angry again!” she cried; and I knew by the sound of her voice that her throat was choked with tears. “You are always angry when I touch upon religion.”
“You were not talking of religion,” I retorted; “you were talking of that man.”
“Why do you dislike him so? Because he is a preacher of the Word?”
“Because he is a canting hypocrite, like all his tribe,” I cried.
She saw that I had lost my temper, as was inevitable, and, sighing deeply, moved to the door. I followed her with my eyes. I would have given the world to call her back; to clasp her in my arms; to tell her my aching fears; to promise her I would worship any God she choose, in any place, in any way, so long as she would only be true, and answer my eager impulse with a little love. But I was too proud for that.
“Then you are going?” I said.
She turned, looking at me very sadly.
“Yes, if you do not mind.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and after another sad, reproachful look, she left the room. A minute afterwards, she drove her ponies past the window, without looking up.
Thursday, September 15. – A golden autumn day, so warm and still that it reminded me of the Indian summer. Not a leaf stirred, but the insects in the air were like floating blossoms, and seemed to sleep upon their wings. Even all round my den the shadows were sultry, and intertangled with slumberous shafts of light.
This fine weather rather disappointed me, for I had arranged for a day’s recreation. In my youth, before I was caught myself in the tedious snares of speculation, I used to be an ardent fisherman, and I still retain sufficient knowledge of the gentle craft to cast a fly tolerably. So, tired of work, and a little weary of my own thoughts, I determined, for the first time, to take advantage of the permission my neighbour, Lord – , has given me, and spend a day upon the river banks.
Despite the sunshine, and the absence of even a breath of wind, I shouldered my basket, lifted my rod, and set off. Ellen was already out and about; so I did not see her before I started. Taking a short cut through the shrubberies, I soon came to the banks of the Emmet – as pretty a little stream as ever rippled over golden sands, or reached out an azure arm to turn some merry watermill. Arrived there, I soon saw that it would be useless to try a cast till there was a little wind; so, without putting my rod together, I strolled on along the river-side, till I was several miles away from the Manor house.
The stream was rather low, but here and there were good deep pools, but so calm, so sunny, that every overhanging tree, every finger of fern, every blade of grass, was reflected in them as in a mirror. Still, as the time was, the waters were full of life. Over the pools hung clusters of flies like glittering spiders’ webs, scarcely moving in the sunshine; and when, from time to time, a trout rose, he leaped a full foot into the golden air above him, and sank back to coolness beneath an ever-widening ring of light. Sometimes from the grassy edge of the bank a water-rat would slip, swimming rapidly across, with his nose just lifted above the water, and his tail leaving a thin, bright trail. Water-ouzels rose at every curve, following swiftly the winding of the stream; and twice past my feet flashed a kingfisher, like an azure ray.
The way lay sometimes through deep grassy meadows, sometimes by the sides of corn-fields where the sheaves were already slanted, oftentimes through thick shrubberies and woods already yellow with the withering leaf. From time to time I passed a farm, with orchards sloping down to the very water’s edge, or pastures slanting down to shallows where the cattle waded, breaking the water to silver streaks and whisking their tails against the clustering swarms of gnats. It was very pleasant and very still, but, from a fishing point of view, exceedingly absurd.
By-and-by, however, a faint breeze began to touch the pools, and putting my rod together, and selecting my finest casting-line and two tiny flies, I tried a cast. Fortunately the wind was blowing sunward, and as I faced the light, the shadow fell behind me; but, nevertheless, the shadow of my rod flitted about at every cast, and threatened to spoil my sport. My first catch was an innocent baby-fish as big as my thumb, who came at the fly with a rush, and fought desperately when hooked. When I had disengaged him, and put him back into the water, he simply gave a flip of his little tail, and sailed contemptuously and quite leisurely out of sight, making me call to mind, with unusual humiliation, the well-known definition which Dr. Johnson gave of angling – “a fish at one end of the line, and a fool at the other,” I had tried a good many, casts before I took my first respectable fish – a trout of about half a pound. I caught him in a nice broken bit of water, just below a quaint old water-mill; and just as I put him into the basket, the portly miller came out to the granary door, and looked at me with a dusty smile. He evidently thought me a lunatic, to be out with a fishing-rod on such a day.
Half a mile further on I landed another glittering picture of at least a quarter of a pound; after that, another of half a pound; then my luck ceased, the wind fell, and it was full sunshine. By this time I had wandered a good many miles from home, and reached the spot where the river plunges into the Great Omberley woods. Here the stream was so rapid and the boughs so thick, that it was useless to think of casting; so I put up my rod, and, leaping over a fence, rambled away into the woods.
How strange and dark and still it was, passing out of the sunshine into those shadows, deep and cool as the bottom of the sea! The oak trees stretched their gnarled boughs into the air, and all around them were the lesser trees of the wood-willow, elder, blackthorn, ash, and hazel. The ground beneath was carpeted with moss and grass as thick and soft as velvet, with thick clusters of fern and bluebells round the tree roots, and creepers dangling from every bough. And the wood, like the river, was all alive! Conies tumbled across the patches of light, and flitted in the shadow, like very elves of the woodland; squirrels ran up the gnarled tree trunks; harmless silver snakes glided along the moss; but here and there, swift and ominous, ran a weazel, darting its head this way and that, and fiercely scenting the air, in one eternal glitter and hurry of bloodthirsty emotion. Thrush, blackbird, finch, birds without number, sang overhead; save when the shadow of the wind-hover or the sparrow-hawk passed across the topmost branches, when there was a sudden and respectful silence, to be followed by a precipitate hurry of exultation, as the enemy passed away.
