Robert

“ LADY CHILTERN. Robert, that is all very well for other men, for men who treat life simply as a sordid speculation; but not for you, Robert, not for you. You are different. All your life you have stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that ideal still. That great inheritance throw not away - that tower of ivory do not destroy. Robert, men can love what is beneath them - things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. ”

“ She moved closer to him and spoke deprecatingly, "Do not be angry with me, Robert; I believe I am doing right to remain away. I must remain."
"Well, of all the simpletons that ever walked, you are about the worst," was his complimentary rejoinder as he caught up his gloves. "Good-bye, Clary," he added, stooping to kiss her.
"Oh, Robert, I hope you will come back safely!" she said, clinging to him as if she feared he was going away for ever; and the tone of her voice, full of mournful wailing, struck upon the ear of her husband. ”

“ Robert sighed and went near the window. He was ready to meet his fate. A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape of that still, whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool would draw. He was a peasant gambolling indecorously in the valley, and the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn could not but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions. All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze. ”

“ The war is not ours, but God’s!’
Robert’s eyes had kindled. He was about to indulge himself in such a quick passage of arms as all such natures as his delight in, when his look travelled past the gaunt figure of the Ritualist vicar to his wife. A sudden pang smote, silenced him. She was sitting with her face raised to Newcome; and her beautiful gray eyes were full of a secret passion of sympathy. It was like the sudden re-emergence of something repressed, the satisfaction of something hungry. Robert moved closer to her, and the color rushed over all his young boyish face. ”

“ Robert was grave, thoughtful, and affectionate; with the shyness always attendant on deep feeling, and the sensitiveness which is ever the best guard against wounding that of others—such have known the suffering too well to inflict it;—enthusiastic in his admirations, imaginative in his tastes, and therefore solitary in his habits. ”

“ And after this little scene, through the busy exciting weeks of the season which followed, Robert taxed to the utmost on all sides, yielded to the impulse of silence more and more.
Society was another difficulty between them. Robert delighted in it so far as his East End life allowed him to have it. No one was ever more ready to take other men and women at their own valuation than he. Nothing was so easy to him as to believe in other people’s goodness, or cleverness, or super-human achievement. ”

“ And it’s the same with Sir Robert. All I can do is to make myself useful, and I have to work hard to keep my hold upon both of them; I have to keep a smile always ready for little Caryl and to indulge his whims; to keep my place in his heart I have to be always working, working hard. As for Sir Robert, I’m afraid his appreciation of me is confined to my capacity for making out his handwriting, and his admiration is given only to my beautiful capitals, and not to me. If I thought that you meant that I presumed upon my position——”
“But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t!” cried Lady Sarah briskly. ”

“ Robert flung the last of his seed corn into the earth with a sigh of thankfulness, for though he gave the powers of his body to the labors of the farm, he refused to bestow on them his thoughts or his cares. He longed to seek the quiet of his attic room, for his soul was bursting with song and his nervous fingers fairly itched to grasp his pencil and catch and hold forever the pearls dropped from the lap of the Goddess Muse into his worshipful soul, ere they faded and dissolved into lusterless fragments. Mechanically he turned his footsteps toward the cottage, plunged in deep reverie. ”

“ As Robert approached manhood, he took more and more to the moors, wandering alone among the haunts of the whaup and other moor birds, wrestling with problems to which older heads never gave a thought, trying to understand life and to build from his heart and experience something that would be satisfying. ”

“ LADY CHILTERN. To have kept it would have been the first stain on a career that has been stainless always. Robert must be above reproach. He is not like other men. He cannot afford to do what other men do. [She looks at LORD GORING, who remains silent.] Don't you agree with me? You are Robert's greatest friend. You are our greatest friend, Lord Goring. No one, except myself, knows Robert better than you do. ”

“ Like Lord Robert, too, he has a most pleasant voice, and a slow deliberate way of speaking, and a warm kindly smile which fades at the first movement of serious thought, leaving the whole pale face, even the dark eyes under their heavy brows, almost deathlike in immobility. One seems to see in such moments the spirit withdraw from the surface of things to take up its duty at the citadel of the intellect. ”

“ Robert shook his head with a doubting smile. “’Twill not be I who will tire first, my lord,” he returned quietly. “I know myself and the world so well. You see the novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, my imperfection of awkward rusticity has raised a partial tide of public notice which has borne me to a height where I am absolutely certain my abilities are inadequate to support me.” ”

“ So had he seen himself that morning in his Venetian mirror—the familiar smooth face and waved hair, the familiar carriage, the chosen robes and gold and jewels. All present, save only Robert, saluted Robert’s double reverentially, Sigurd released his grasp of Robert’s arm, and then on Robert’s stricken ears came the sound of his own voice from the threshold of the church.
“Who says he is the King?” his own voice asked. The archbishop turned to him who spoke and answered, “Sire, your fool in a most unseemly humor plagues us.” ”

“ Robert was the clean, decisive man, Lester the man of doubts. Robert was the spirit of business energy and integrity embodied, Lester the spirit of commercial self-sufficiency, looking at life with an uncertain eye. ”

“ He had heard rumors of Robert’s many amourous escapades in Mauchline; then perhaps Mary would again turn to him for comfort. His eyes shone with renewed hope and his heart was several degrees lighter as he left the house. Going to the high knoll back of the cottage, he gazed eagerly, longingly, across the moor to where, in the hazy distance, the lofty turrets of Castle Montgomery, the home of the winsome dairymaid, Mary Campbell, reared their heads toward the blue heavens. ”

“ Robert flushed painfully. “My miserable health was brought on and aggravated solely by my headstrong, thoughtless carelessness, and I felt so heartily ashamed of myself that I sought to conceal from all friends my real condition, but ’tis out at last. How long I will be confined to the house, God alone knows,” and he sighed deeply.
“Do not give yourself up to despondency, my lad,” encouraged the Duke brightly, “nor speak the language of despair. You must get well.” ”

“ That evening Robert did not go down town to dinner, but stayed at home, by way of doing penance. He sat in his room, reading; suddenly he threw aside the paper and said:
“What nonsense to pretend to read in a home like this, I ought to give all my time to adoration of you; few men are so blessed.”
“How lovely of you to say that; you are the very best husband in all the world, I know you are.” ”

“ The boy, throwing off his drowsiness, lay watching the rector's face as he talked in an undertone to the nurse, his haggard eyes full of a dumb friendly wistfulness. When Robert bent over him to say good-bye, this expression brightened into something more positive, and Robert left him, feeling at last that there was a promise of life in his look and touch. ”

“ Robert was still uncertain what he should do, when his eyes wandered from the central figure and fell on something else which made him give a little cry of astonishment—a cry which was drowned amid the howling of the gale. ”

“ When evening came again, Robert returned to the shop, and asked for a glass of rum. He wanted something to stifle the keen reproaches of conscience. The dram-seller knew my husband, knew of his reform, that from being a nuisance to the town, he had become an orderly and respectable citizen; and now that he had been seduced from the right way, instead of denying him the cause of all our former misery—instead of a little friendly advice—with his usual courteous smile, he put the fatal glass into his hand. ”

“ As we have learned, Robert was a lad whose body and mind and soul were clean. He had read Donald’s mind and soul through his eyes and knew at once that he could not have much in common with the older man, so long at least as the Factor maintained that domineering spirit which usually belongs to a lower class nature. Robert was only a youth, it is true, but instinct and his training had taught him the principles of right and wrong, the equality and brotherhood of man, and the supremacy of God. ”

“ Robert is the typical feudal noble of the time, circumspect and politic, persuasive and eloquent, impetuous and daring in battle, and an able military engineer; in person, tall and strong; greedy for land, an oppressor of the weak, a systematic rebel and traitor, and savagely cruel. ”

“ But the influence of the Bible did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a spirit of peace and love: he interposed between man and wife: he threw himself between the angry, touching his hat the while with all the ceremony of an usher: he protected the birds from everybody but himself, seeing, I suppose, a great difference between official execution and wanton sport. ”

“ All this theistic philosophy of yours only means so much grist to their mill in the end.’
‘They don’t see it in that light themselves,’ said Robert, smiling.
‘No,’ returned the Squire, ‘because most men are puzzle-heads. Why,’ he added, looking darkly at Robert, while the great head fell forward on his breast in the familiar Murewell attitude, ‘why can’t you do your work and let the preaching alone?’
‘Because,’ said Robert, ‘the preaching seems to me my work. There is the great difference between us, Squire. You look upon knowledge as an end in itself. It may be so. ”

“ Robert stood a moment considering. An instant’s nervousness, a momentary sign of self-consciousness, would have broken the spell and set the room against him. He showed neither.
‘My friends,’ he said at last, speaking to the crowded benches of London workmen with the same simplicity he would have used toward his boys at Murewell, ‘the man who is addressing you to-night believes in God; and in Conscience, which is God’s witness in the soul; and in Experience, which is at once the record and the instrument of man’s education at God’s hands. ”

“ Instantly her face was buried in his bosom, and her little frame quivered in every nerve with the strange and exciting emotions.
Robert’s face lighted with instant happiness. The varying expression of that innocent face was all the answer he needed, and he did not press her for a reply, but held her in a close and silent embrace for a few moments.
At length, he said, tenderly:
“Look up, Brightie, for I must go, or I shall be missed. You must say good-by, now. I know that you will not forget me; and, see here, darling! I have brought you something to look at when I am gone.” ”

“ Robert’s curiosity was excited. He joined the eager crowds that followed the steps of the monk, and listened to the thrilling words till the latent desire of pilgrimage that had long slumbered in his mind awoke to life and activity, and he became a convert to the preachings of Peter the Hermit. But while he hesitated at the palmer’s gown and staff, the united voices of chivalry and religion, bade him don his armor and draw his sword. ”

“ Robert’s going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing. She sought him everywhere—in others whom she induced to talk about him. She went up in the mornings to Madame Lebrun’s room, braving the clatter of the old sewing-machine. She sat there and chatted at intervals as Robert had done. ”

“ Robert was a favorite with the village children, to whom he gave the freedom of the fire-room, and was a boon companion of his own houseful of boys and girls, kindling their fancy by his headful of tales, and sharpening their observation of the beauties of nature by making them the companions of his walks a-field, where the birds and other living things were the objects of his peculiar interest and love. ”

“ I feel to-night that I have saved you from something that might have been a danger to you, from something that might have made men honour you less than they do. I don't think you realise sufficiently, Robert, that you have brought into the political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude towards life, a freer air of purer aims and higher ideals - I know it, and for that I love you, Robert. ”

“ Standing, pale and lanky, amid his electrodes and his retorts, there was still something majestic about this man, who, amid all his stupendous good fortune, could still keep his moral sense undazzled by the glitter of his gold. Robert's weak nature had never before realised the strength which lay in those thin, firm lips and earnest eyes. ”