ARTICLE III.-AN OMITTED CHAPTER OF "ROBERT

ELSMERE."

Ir may be inferred that Mrs. Ward thought it best not to give this fragment to the public. What may be the reasons for its late appearance should properly be left as a question to whet the instinct of conjecture. Nor can I consent to gratify the morbid curiosity of people who go off wondering how this chapter came to light in a publisher's office. Some may see fit to comment upon the propriety of committing to the critical public that which seems to have been designedly omitted in the authorized text; but if any such there be, let them reflect, that if the author of "Robert Elsmere" is not excessively grateful for this supplement to a plain hiatus in her novel it must obviously be for the reason that the hiatus itself is preferable in her mind to the natural sequences of her logic as they herein appear. Having been made certain from an examination of various "internal evidences" that some such chapter must be in existence I have naturally been pleased to verify the suspicion by actually finding the manuscript. I submit the question to a fair-minded public if my failure to reveal how and where this was done should in the least prejudice the cordiality of its reception. This, I fancy, will not occur with those keen scented critics who like myself have noticed the omission.

However that may befall, I herewith submit the document. WHITTEKER WHIMSEY.

CHAPTER XXV. (Original draft.)

"And he did face it through.

The next three months were the bitterest in Elsmere's experience. They were marked by anguished mental struggle, by a consciousness of painful separation from the soul nearest to his own, and by a constantly increasing sense of oppression, of closing avenues and narrowing alternatives, which for weeks together seemed to hold his mind in a grip whence there was

no escape.

That struggle was not hurried and imbittered by the bodily presence of the squire. Mr. Wendover went off to Italy a few days after the conversation we have described." In the interim Elsmere had one of those reactionary experiences which seemed likely for the time to upset the influences to which he had been yielding. The squire being absent, there remained to Elsmere some possibilities of intellectual independence, of which he had not been as yet totally bereft by the acrid strength of this incarnate intellect which inhabited the great library at the Hall. Elsmere had been scarcely aware himself, how far the process of subjugation had proceeded. Conscientious as he had ever been with his own mind, it is scarcely to be doubted that he believed himself to be following the purely independent convictions wrought by his historical studies. The squire, indeed, had furnished the clue, and the great library had opened up the material of the research, but Elsmere would have resented as a slur upon his mental rectitude the imputation of any decisive tyranny of the squire's stronger personality over his own. He reverenced the marvellous scholarship, but supposed himself merely to be using it as an aid to his own intellectual emancipation.

During these three miserable months it cannot be said-poor Elsmere that he attempted any systematic study of Christian evidence. His mind was too much torn for the most part with the sharp edge of the squire's intellectual contempt for Christian polemics. It thus happened that he would have made no more decisive struggles against the liberalizing influences, if the fates had not thrust the occasion upon him quite against his mood. The squire's half ghoulish certainty that he had been for some time undermined, and was only waiting to find it out, seemed to have considerable warrant. Now the squire would have said he was finding it out.

But Elsmere was not destined after all to go quite over to new positions without facing the whole question. Thus far the process had been the comparatively simple one of overbearing his traditional training. Elsmere had a large confidence in his historical instinct, and testimony settled with him, as he supposed, a large range of questions. Against testimony, naturally enough, Catharine's intuitions and ingrained tradi

tions, however much they enhanced his moral struggle, could not much affect his logic. His Oxford training had introduced him into the scientific method, and when its application seemed to bring a clear product, his faith in the product was a kind of geometric multiple of his confidence in the process. Certainly Catharine's faith was non-reasonable. She herself had never put it to a single historic test. Had she been able to do so, she would have declined. Elsmere believed that to be a legitimate position for her, but certainly not for himself. He respected even an unreasonable faith, but he believed himself as absolutely incompetent to retain such a religion as Catharine to relinquish it.

The only other living antagonist of Elsmere's new speculations was Newcome-if he could be said to count. In such circumstances Elsmere might have shifted his foundations without much minute examination of the old ones, if he had been left to himself. Had this occurred, doubtless he would scarcely have suspected the squire's assumption and Langham's languid affirmation concerning the value of testimony: "The whole of orthodox Christianity is in it." But probably it was better that Elsmere should go "with his eyes open," and it must be confessed that he had not yet seen the full import of his idolized "method." His reconstruction of the past had been mostly under the guidance of the squire, before whose pitiless learning he had seen the myth-making centuries dissected and put together again so dispassionately that he supposed he actually had finished that question. "These are fairy tales because we know just how they are made," the squire had seemed to say. Actually he never did say it. He only made Elsmere say it. If the young disciple said it at the end of the squire's reasoning rather than of his own, Elsmere believed that the reasoning and the material for it was final research. In the face of its outcome he stood, slowly swaying to the bitter certainty that Murewell was at an end. Here was the inexorable truth, and to the truth he must sacrifice himself. And Catharine? The tenants?

Was history then that pitiless evictor? Yes, history and his conscience! "Miracles do not happen." Testimony has said it.

He was thus at the end of rending conflicts so far as the mind was concerned. "Much of the actual struggle he was able to keep from Catharine's view, as he had vowed to himself to keep it. For, after the squire's departure, Mrs. Darcy too went joyously up to London to flutter awhile through the golden alleys of Mayfair, and Elsmere was left once more in undisturbed possession of the Murewell library. There, for awhile, every day-oh, pitiful relief-he could hide himself from the eyes he loved."

He was startled in the midst of this crumbling of his traditions by a flying visit from Langham. He would almost have preferred to see anybody else, or rather to see Langham at any other time. His friend had been seized with a sudden desire to see Murewell again-he knew Rose was not there-and curiously enough had started at once for the train. He was surprised at his own decision, but as the train started before he had been an instant in the coach, he was saved the necessity of balancing and debating the issue.

“And as I am, as usual doing nothing with considerable assiduity, you'll allow me to impart my chill to you Elsmere. It's good for these overheated people to get a cool breath occasionally."

Elsmere who had met Langham in the lane civilly led the way to the rectory. Langham was more voluble than usual and talked all the way. Elsmere watched Catharine as they met. He saw by the sudden compression of her lips that she was displeased. Did she suspect that it was his doing? That was probably the case. "He had sent for Langham,-to help him in a great mental and spiritual emergency,”—Elsmere read this much in her manner and hastened to enlighten her at the first opportunity. Catharine was partially relieved,-only partially. Langham was here all the same, he did not say for how long. He was grayer and paler than when they had last seen him. But on the whole he seemed more lively and actually took some apparent interest in the general conversation. Elsmere laid it to London, and smilingly declared that Langham would yet become a man of action if he continued to haunt the metropolis.

In the afternoon at Langham's request the two men went to the library. Elsmere had no intention of taking Langham into his confidence, but his remembrance of his friend's tenacious and comprehensive scholarship made him feel a desire to sound Langham abstractly on some of the main questions. He remembered that it was Langham who had suggested this problem of testimony.

"I have been diving into the matter some," said the rector, carelessly, as far as he could control his feelings. "There is a deal more to it than one could have prophesied. But such reconstruction of dead centuries is extremely fascinating."

Langham was poring over the title page of a Syriac manuscript and paused long enough to ask: "How do you progress with the Gallic origins? Is it building?"

66

Nothing in it yet. Only a boiling mass of stuff. A lifetime I fancy will be short enough for that."

Both men were silent a little. Elsmere supposed that his question had not struck fire but in a few minutes Langham put down his manuscript and said coolly: "There's no accounting for predilections. I, now, for instance, could hardly believe it credible that a sane man should attempt to settle a religious question by testimony. I have revised that opinion I gave you. Or rather I have finished it. It is easier to rule out testimony than to hunt it to its hole. As a matter of fact it has too many holes. It never does get hunted to death. It is better to have an unassailable a priori negative.”

Elsmere was astounded.

"Why, you discredit the method of rational science utterly," he replied. "You would have us go back to the scholastic metaphysics."

"Be obliged to, I fancy-or at least to a substratum of common sense. What amount of scientific testimony, for instance, would suffice to convince the owner of this library that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead!" Langham drawled, and was really as calm as ever. He seemed unconscious that he had pricked a bubble.

"Do you mean," said Elsmere, hotly, "that a man of his keenness would yield first to a priori antipathies?