Robert--there is no occasion to mention his surname: he was a young farmer of some education who tried to coax the aged soil of Wiltshire scientifically--came to Cadover on business and fell in love with Mrs. Elliot. She was there on her bridal visit, and he, an obscure nobody, was received by Mrs. Failing into the house and treated as her social equal. He was good-looking in a bucolic way, and people sometimes mistook him for a gentleman until they saw his hands. He discovered this, and one of the slow, gentle jokes he played on society was to talk upon some cultured subject with his hands behind his back and then suddenly reveal them. "Do you go in for boating?" the lady would ask; and then he explained that those particular weals are made by the handles of the plough. Upon which she became extremely interested, but found an early opportunity of talking to some one else.
He played this joke on Mrs. Elliot the first evening, not knowing that she observed him as he entered the room. He walked heavily, lifting his feet as if the carpet was furrowed, and he had no evening clothes. Every one tried to put him at his ease, but she rather suspected that he was there already, and envied him. They were introduced, and spoke of Byron, who was still fashionable.
Out came his hands--the only rough hands in the drawing-room, the only hands that had ever worked. She was filled with some strange approval, and liked him.
After dinner they met again, to speak not of Byron but of manure.
The other people were so clever and so amusing that it relieved her to listen to a man who told her three times not to buy artificial manure ready made, but, if she would use it, to make it herself at the last moment. Because the ammonia evaporated.
Here were two packets of powder. Did they smell? No. Mix them together and pour some coffee--An appalling smell at once burst forth, and every one began to cough and cry. This was good for the earth when she felt sour, for he knew when the earth was ill.
He knew, too, when she was hungry he spoke of her tantrums--the strange unscientific element in her that will baffle the scientist to the end of time. "Study away, Mrs. Elliot," he told her; "read all the books you can get hold of; but when it comes to the point, stroll out with a pipe in your mouth and do a bit of guessing." As he talked, the earth became a living being--or rather a being with a living skin,--and manure no longer dirty stuff, but a symbol of regeneration and of the birth of life from life. "So it goes on for ever!" she cried excitedly. He replied:
"Not for ever. In time the fire at the centre will cool, and nothing can go on then."He advanced into love with open eyes, slowly, heavily, just as he had advanced across the drawing room carpet. But this time the bride did not observe his tread. She was listening to her husband, and trying not to be so stupid. When he was close to her--so close that it was difficult not to take her in his arms--he spoke to Mr. Failing, and was at once turned out of Cadover.
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Failing, as he walked down the drive with his hand on his guest's shoulder. "I had no notion you were that sort. Any one who behaves like that has to stop at the farm.""Any one?"
"Any one." He sighed heavily, not for any personal grievance, but because he saw how unruly, how barbaric, is the soul of man.
After all, this man was more civilized than most.
"Are you angry with me, sir?" He called him "sir," not because he was richer or cleverer or smarter, not because he had helped to educate him and had lent him money, but for a reason more profound--for the reason that there are gradations in heaven.
"I did think you--that a man like you wouldn't risk ****** people unhappy. My sister-in-law--I don't say this to stop you loving her; something else must do that--my sister-in-law, as far as Iknow, doesn't care for you one little bit. If you had said anything, if she had guessed that a chance person was in--this fearful state, you would simply--have opened hell. A woman of her sort would have lost all--""I knew that."
Mr. Failing removed his hand. He was displeased.
"But something here," said Robert incoherently. "This here." He struck himself heavily on the heart. "This here, doing something so unusual, makes it not matter what she loses--I--" After a silence he asked, "Have I quite followed you, sir, in that business of the brotherhood of man?""How do you mean?"
"I thought love was to bring it about."
"Love of another man's wife? Sensual love? You have understood nothing--nothing." Then he was ashamed, and cried, "I understand nothing myself." For he remembered that sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use; that there are, perhaps, not two Aphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face. "I only understand that you must try to forget her.""I will not try."
"Promise me just this, then--not to do anything crooked.""I'm straight. No boasting, but I couldn't do a crooked thing--No, not if I tried."
And so appallingly straight was he in after years, that Mr. Failing wished that he had phrased the promise differently.
Robert simply waited. He told himself that it was hopeless; but something deeper than himself declared that there was hope. He gave up drink, and kept himself in all ways clean, for he wanted to be worthy of her when the time came. Women seemed fond of him, and caused him to reflect with pleasure, "They do run after me.
There must be something in me. Good. I'd be done for if there wasn't." For six years he turned up the earth of Wiltshire, and read books for the sake of his mind, and talked to gentlemen for the sake of their patois, and each year he rode to Cadover to take off his hat to Mrs. Elliot, and, perhaps, to speak to her about the crops. Mr. Failing was generally present, and it struck neither man that those dull little visits were so many words out of which a lonely woman might build sentences. Then Robert went to London on business. He chanced to see Mr. Elliot with a strange lady. The time had come.