The Uninhabited House | Page 6

earthly salvation.
There were those who said he never could compass eternal; but they
chanced to be his debtors--and, after all, that question lay between
himself and God. The other lay between himself and his wife, and it
must be confessed, except so far as his passionate, disinterested love for
an utterly selfish woman tended to redeem and humanise his nature, she
never helped him one step along the better path.
But, then, the world could not know this, and Mr. Craven, of whom I
am speaking at the moment, was likely, naturally, to think Mr.
Elmsdale all in the wrong.
On the one hand he saw the man as he appeared to men: on the other he
saw the woman as she appeared to men, beautiful to the last; fragile,
with the low voice, so beautiful in any woman, so more especially

beautiful in an Irish woman; with a languid face which insured
compassion while never asking for it; with the appearance of a martyr,
and the tone and the manner of a suffering saint.
Everyone who beheld the pair together, remarked, "What a pity it was
such a sweet creature should be married to such a bear!" but Mr.
Elmsdale was no bear to his wife: he adored her. The selfishness, the
discontent, the ill-health, as much the consequence of a peevish, petted
temper, as of disease, which might well have exhausted the patience
and tired out the love of a different man, only endeared her the more to
him.
She made him feel how inferior he was to her in all respects; how
tremendously she had condescended, when she agreed to become his
wife; and he quietly accepted her estimation of him, and said with a
humility which was touching from its simplicity:
"I know I am not worthy of you, Kathleen, but I do my best to make
you happy."
For her sake, not being a liberal man, he spent money freely; for her
sake he endured Miss Blake; for her sake he bought the place which
afterwards caused us so much trouble; for her sake, he, who had always
scoffed at the folly of people turning their houses into stores for
"useless timber," as he styled the upholsterer's greatest triumphs,
furnished his rooms with a lavish disregard of cost; for her sake, he,
who hated society, smiled on visitors, and entertained the guests she
invited, with no grudging hospitality. For her sake he dressed well, and
did many other things which were equally antagonistic to his original
nature; and he might just as well have gone his own way, and pleased
himself only, for all the pleasure he gave her, or all the thanks she gave
him.
If Mr. Elmsdale had come home drunk five evenings a week, and
beaten his wife, and denied her the necessaries of life, and kept her
purse in a chronic state of emptiness, she might very possibly have
been extremely grateful for an occasional kind word or smile; but, as
matters stood, Mrs. Elmsdale was not in the least grateful for a
devotion, as beautiful as it was extraordinary, and posed herself on the
domestic sofa in the character of a martyr.
Most people accepted the representation as true, and pitied her. Miss
Blake, blissfully forgetful of that state of impecuniosity from which Mr.

Elmsdale's proposal had extricated herself and her sister, never wearied
of stating that "Katty had thrown herself away, and that Mr. Elmsdale
was not fit to tie her shoe-string."
She generously admitted the poor creature did his best; but, according
to Blake, the poor creature's best was very bad indeed.
"It's not his fault, but his misfortune," the lady was wont to remark,
"that he's like dirt beside her. He can't help his birth, and his
dragging-up, and his disreputable trade, or business, or whatever he
likes to call it; he can't help never having had a father nor mother to
speak of, and not a lady or gentleman belonging to the family since it
came into existence. I'm not blaming him, but it is hard for Kathleen,
and she reared as she was, and accustomed to the best society in
Ireland,--which is very different, let me tell you, from the best anybody
ever saw in England."
There were some who thought, if Mrs. Elmsdale could tolerate her
sister's company, she might without difficulty have condoned her
husband's want of acquaintance with some points of grammar and
etiquette; and who said, amongst themselves, that whereas he only
maltreated, Miss Blake mangled every letter in the alphabet; but these
carping critics were in the minority.
Mrs. Elmsdale was a beauty, and a martyr; Mr. Elmsdale a rough beast,
who had no capacity of ever developing into a prince. Miss Blake was a
model of sisterly affection, and if