"Catharine could never—never—reconcile herself."
"I don't know," said Rose, doubtfully. "What did she want to go to that
Council for?"
"Perhaps to lift up her voice?"
"No. Catharine isn't that sort. She would have suffered dreadfully—and sat still."
And with a thoughtful shake of the head, as though to indicate that the veins of meditation opened up by the case were rich and various, Rose went slowly away.
* * * * *
Then Hugh was left to his Times, and to speculations on the reasons why Henry Barron—a man whom he had never liked and often thwarted—should have asked for this interview in a letter marked "private." Flaxman made an agreeable figure, as he sat pondering by the fire, while the Times gradually slipped from his hands to the floor. And he was precisely what he looked—an excellent fellow, richly endowed with the world's good things, material and moral. He was of spare build, with grizzled hair; long-limbed, clean-shaven and gray-eyed. In general society he appeared as a person of polished manners, with a gently ironic turn of mind. His friends were more numerous and more devoted than is generally the case in middle age; and his family were rarely happy out of his company. Certain indeed of his early comrades in life were inclined to accuse him of a too facile contentment with things as they are, and a rather Philistine estimate of the value of machinery. He was absorbed in "business" which he did admirably. Not so much of the financial sort, although he was a trusted member of important boards. But for all that unpaid multiplicity of affairs—magisterial, municipal, social or charitable—which make the country gentleman's sphere Hugh Flaxman's appetite was insatiable. He was a born chairman of a county council, and a heaven-sent treasurer of a hospital.
And no doubt this natural bent, terribly indulged of late years, led occasionally to "holding forth"; at least those who took no interest in the things which interested Flaxman said so. And his wife, who was much more concerned for his social effect than for her own, was often nervously on the watch lest it should be true. That her handsome, popular Hugh should ever, even for a quarter of an hour, sit heavy on the soul even of a youth of eighteen was not to be borne; she pounced on each incipient harangue with mingled tact and decision.
But though Flaxman was a man of the world, he was by no means a worldling. Tenderly, unflinchingly, with a modest and cheerful devotion, he had made himself the stay of his brother-in-law Elsmere's harassed and broken life. His supreme and tyrannical common sense had never allowed him any delusions as to the ultimate permanence of heroic ventures like the New Brotherhood; and as to his private opinions on religious matters it is probable that not even his wife knew them. But outside the strong affections of his personal life there was at least one enduring passion in Flaxman which dignified his character. For liberty of experiment, and liberty of conscience, in himself or others, he would gladly have gone to the stake. Himself the loyal upholder of an established order, which he helped to run decently, he was yet in curious sympathy with many obscure revolutionists in many fields. To brutalize a man's conscience seemed to him worse than to murder his body. Hence a constant sympathy with minorities of all sorts; which no doubt interfered often with his practical efficiency. But perhaps it accounted for the number of his friends.
* * * * *