Phil Comptonwent off next morning by an early train, having in the meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears, but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated the mother. “Don’t you think,” said the Honourable Phil, “becauseI speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don’t know what she is. I’ve got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like Nell. The girls of my set, they’re not worthy to tie her shoes—thing I most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for her. But you can’t help your relations, can you? and you have to stick to them for dozens of reasons. There’s the Jew, when you know her she’s not such a bad sort—not generous, as you may see from what she’s given Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and we’ll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her husband, old Prestwich, isn’t bad for a man that has made his own money, and they’ve got a jolly house, always something going on.”
“But I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that as soon as these autumn visits are over you will have a house of your own.”
“Oh, that!” said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. “Nell,” he went on, “gets on with the Jew like a house on fire—you see they don’t clash. Nell ain’t one of the mannish sort, and she doesn’t flirt—at least not as far as I’ve seen——”
“I should hope not, indeed,” said Mrs. Dennistoun.
“Oh, I’m not one of your curmudgeons. Where’s the harm? But she don’t, and there’s an end of it. She keeps herself to herself, and lets the Jew go ahead, and think she’s the attraction. And she’ll please the old lord down to the ground. For he’s an old-fashioned old coon, and likes what he callstenue, don’t you know: but the end is, there ain’t one of them that can hold a candle to Nell. And I should not wonder a bit if she made a change in the lot of us. Conversion of a family by the influence of a pious wife, don’t you know. Sort of thing that they make tracts out of. Capital thing, it would be,” said Phil, philosophically, “for some of us have been going a pace——”
“Mr. Compton,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, solemnly, “I don’t understand very well what you mean by these phrases. They may be much more innocent than they seem to a country lady’s ears. But I implore you to keep my Elinor clear of anything that you call going the pace. It must mean something very unlike her, whatever it means. She has been used to a very quiet, orderly life. Don’t hurry her off into a whirl of society, or among noisy gay people. Indeed I can assure you that the more you have her to herself the more you will be happy in her. She is the brightest companion, the most entertaining—— Oh, Mr. Compton!”
“I think it’s about time, now, mater, to call me Phil.”
She smiled, with the tears in her eyes, and held out her hand. “Philip, then,” she said, “to make a little difference. Now remember what I say. It is only inthe sacredness of her home that you will know what is in Elinor. One is never dull with her. She has her own opinions—her bright way of looking at things—as you know. It is, perhaps, a strange thing for a mother to say, but she will amuse you, Philip; she is such company. You will never be dull with Elinor: she has so much in her, which will come out in society, it is true, but never so brightly as between you two alone.”
This did not seem to have quite the effect upon the almost-bridegroom which the mother intended. “Perhaps” (she said to herself), “he was a little affected by the thought” (which she kept so completely out of the conversation) “of the loss she herself was about to undergo.” At all events, his face was not so bright as in the vision of that sweet prospect held before him it ought to have been.
“The fact is,” he said, “she knows a great deal more than I do, or ever will. It’s she that will be the one to look blue when she finds herself alone with a fool of a fellow that doesn’t know a book from a brick. That’s the thing I’m most afraid—— As for society, she can have her pick of that,” he added, brightening up, “I’ll not bind her down.”
“You may be sure she’ll prefer you to all the world.”
He shrugged his shoulders a little.
“They say it’s always a leap in the dark,” he said, “for how’s she to know the sort of fellow I am with what she sees of me here? But I promise you I’ll do my best to take her in, and keep her in that delusion,for her good—making believe to be all that’s virtuous: and perhaps not a bad way—some of it may stick. Come, mater, don’t look so horrified. I’m not of the Cousin John sort, but there may be something decent in me after all.”
“I am sure,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that you will try to make her happy, Philip.” She was crying by this time, which was a thing very odious to Phil. He took her by both hands and gave her a hearty kiss, which was a thing for which she was not at all prepared.
“I’ll do by her——” he said, with a murmur which sounded like an oath, “as well as I know how.”
Perhaps this was not the very greatest comfort to her mother, but it was the best she was at all likely to get from a man so entirely different in all ways from her own species. She had her cry out quietly while he went off to get his bag. The pony carriage was at the door in which Elinor was to drive him to the station, and a minute after Mrs. Dennistoun heard his voice in the hall calling to his Nell, his old girl, in terms which went against all the mother’s prejudices of soft and reverent speech. To have her carefully-trained child, her Elinor, whom every one had praised and honoured, her maiden-princess so high apart from all such familiarity, addressed so, gave the old-fashioned lady a pang. It meant nothing but love and kindness, she said to herself. He reverenced Elinor as much as it was in such a man to do. He meant with all his heartto do by her as well as he knew how. It was as fantastic to object to his natural language as it would be to object to a Frenchman speaking French. That was his tongue, the only utterance he knew—— She dried her eyes and went out to the door to see them start. The sun was blazing over all the brilliant autumnal colours of the garden, though it was still full and brilliant summer in the September morning, and only the asters and dahlias replacing the roses betrayed the turn of the season. And nothing could be more bright than the face of Elinor as she sat in the homely little carriage, with the reins gathered up in her hand. He was going away, indeed, but in a week he was coming back. Philip, as Mrs. Dennistoun now called him with dignity, yet a little beginning of affection, packed up his long limbs as well as he could in the small space. “I believe she’ll spill us on the road,” he said, “or bring back the shandrydan with a hole in it.”
“There is too much of you, Phil,” said Elinor, giving the staid pony a quiet touch.
“I should like some of those fellows to see me,” he said, “joggled off to market like a basket of eggs; but don’t smash me, Nell, on the way.”
Mrs. Dennistoun stood on the steps looking after them, or rather, listening after them, for they had soon turned the corner of the house and were gone. She heard them jogging over the stony road, and the sound of their voices in the air for a long time after they were out of sight—the air was so still and so close, nothingin it to break the sound. The atmosphere was all sunshine, not a cloud upon the sky, scarcely a breath stirring over those hill-tops, which had almost the effect of a mountainous landscape, being the highest ground in all the visible space. Along the other side of the combe, where the road became visible, there were gleams of heather brilliant under the dark foliage of the firs. She sat down in the porch and waited to see them pass; there was a sorrowful background to her thoughts, but for the moment she was not actually sad, if perhaps a little forlorn. They had gone away leaving her alone, but yet in an hour or two Elinor was coming back. Time enough to think of the final parting. Next week Elinor would go and would not return. Mrs. Dennistoun held on by both hands to to-day and would not think of that future, near as it was. She waited in a hush of feeling, so near to great commotions of the heart and mind, but holding them at a distance in a suspense of all thought, till the shandrydan appeared in the opening of the road. They were thinking of her, for she saw a gleam of white, the waving of a handkerchief, as the little carriage trundled along the road, and for a moment the tears again blinded her eyes. But Mrs. Dennistoun was very reasonable. She got up from the cottage porch after the pony carriage had passed in the distance, with that determination to make the best of it, which is the inspiration of so many women’s lives.
And what a drive the others had through the sunshine—or at least Elinor! You can never tell by what shadows a man’s thoughts may be haunted, who is a man of the world, and has had many other things to occupy him besides this vision of love. But the girl had no shadows. The parting which was before her was not near enough to harm as yet, and she was still able to think, in her ignorance of the world, that even parting was much more in appearance than in reality, and that she would always be running home, always going upon long visits brightening everything, instead of saddening. But even had she been going to the end of the world with her husband next week, Elinor would still have been happy to-day. The sunshine itself was enough to go to any one’s head, and the pony stepped out so that Phil had the grace to be ashamed of his reflections upon “the old girl.” They got to the station too early for the train, and had half an hour’s stroll together, with all the railway porters looking on admiring. They all knew Miss Dennistoun from her childhood, and they were interested in her “young man.”
“And to think you will be in Ireland to-morrow,” said Elinor, “over the sea, with the Channel between us—in another island!”
“I don’t see much that’s wonderful in that,” said Phil, “the boat goes every day.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wonderful about the boat. Hundreds might go, and I shouldn’t mind, but you—— It’s strange to think of your going off into a world I don’t know at all—and then coming back.”
“To take you off to that world you don’t know, Nell;and then the time will come when you will know it as well as I do, and more, too; and be able to set me down in my proper place.”
“What is your proper place? Your place will always be the same. Phil, you’ve been so good to me this time; you’ve made everybody like you so. Mamma—that’s the best of all. She was a little—I can’t say jealous, that is not the right word, but uncertain and frightened—which just means that she did not know you, Phil; now you’ve condescended to let yourself be known.”
“Have I, Nell? I’ve had more luck than meaning if that’s so.”
“’Tis that you’ve condescended to let yourself be known. A man has such odious pride. He likes to show himself all on the wrong side, to brave people’s opinions—as if it was better to be liked for the badness in you than for the goodness in you!”
“What’s the goodness in me, Nell? I’d like to know, and then I can have it ready in other emergencies and serve it out as it is wanted.”
“Oh, Phil! the goodness in you is—yourself. You can’t help being nice when you throw off those society airs. When you are talking with Mariamne and all that set of people——”
“Why can’t you call her Jew? life is too short to say all those syllables.”
“I don’t like you to call her Jew. It’s unkind. I don’t think she deserves it. It’s a sort of an insult.”
“Shut up, Nell. It’s her name and that’s enough. Mar-ry-am-ne! It’s a beast of a name to begin with. And do you think any of us has got time to say as much as that for one woman? Oh, I suppose I’m fond of her—as men are of their sisters. She is not a bad sort—mean as her name, and never fond of parting with her money—but stands by a fellow in a kind of a way all the same.”
“I’ll never call her Jew,” said Elinor; “and, Phil, all this wonderful amount of things you have to do is simply—nothing. What do you ever do? It is the people who do things that have time to spare. I know one——”
“Don’t come down on me, Nell, again with that eternal Cousin John.”
“Phil! I never think of him till you put him into my head. I was thinking of a gentleman who writes——”
“Rubbish, Nell! What have I to do with men that write, or you either? We are none of us of that sort. I do what my set do, and more—for there was this director business; and I should never mind a bit of work that was well paid, like attending Board meetings and so forth, or signing my name to papers.”
“What, without reading them, Phil?”
“Don’t come over a fellow with your cleverness, Nell! I am not a reader; but I should take good care I knew what was in the papers before I signed them, I can tell you. Eh! you’d like me to slave, to get you luxuries, you little exacting Nell.”
“Yes, Phil,” she said, “I’d like to think you were working for our living. I should indeed. It seems somehow so much finer—so real a life. And I should work at home.”
“A great deal you would work,” he said, laughing, “with those scraps of fingers! Let’s hear what you would do—bits of little pictures, or impossible things in pincushions, or so forth—and walk out in your most becoming bonnet to force them down some poor shopkeeper’s throat?”
“Phil!” she said, “how contemptuous you are of my efforts. But I never thought of either sketches or pincushions. I should work at home to keep the house nice—to look after the servants, and guide the cook, and see that you had nice dinners.”
“And warm my slippers by the parlour fire,” said Phil. “That’s too domestic, Nell, for you and me.”
“But we are going to be very domestic, Phil.”
“Are we? Not if I knows it; yawn our heads off, and get to hate one another. Not for me, Nell. You’ll find yourself up to the eyes in engagements before you know where you are. No, no, old girl, you may do a deal with me, but you don’t make a domestic man of Phil Compton. Time enough for that when we’ve had our fling.”
“I don’t want any fling, Phil,” she said, clinging a little closer to his arm.
“But I do, my pet, in the person of Benedick the married man. Don’t you think I want to show all thefellows what a stunning little wife I’ve got? and all the women I used to flirt with——”
“Did you use to flirt much with them, Phil?”
“You didn’t think I flirted with the men, did you? like you did,” said Phil, who was not particular about his grammar. “I want to show you off a bit, Nell. When we go down to the governor’s, there you can be as domestic as you like. That’s the line to take with him, and pays too if you do it well.”
“Oh, don’t talk as if you were always calculating for your advantage,” she said, “for you are not, Phil. You are not a prudent person, but a horrid, extravagant spendthrift; if you go on chucking sovereigns about as you did yesterday.”
“Well,” he said, laughing, “wasn’t it well spent? Didn’t I make your Rector open his old eyes, and stop the mouths of the old maids? I don’t throw away sovereigns in a general way, Nell, only when there’s a purpose in it. But I think I did them all finely that time—had them on toast, eh?”
“You made an impression, if that is what you mean; but I confess I thought you did it out of kindness, Phil.”
“To the Punch and Judy? catch me! Sovereigns ain’t plentiful enough for that. You little exacting thing, ain’t you pleased, when I did it to please you, and get you credit among your friends?”
“It was very kind of you, I’m sure, Phil,” she said, very soberly, “but I should so much rather you hadnot thought of that. A shilling would have done just as well, and they would have got a bed at the Bull’s Head, and been quite kindly treated. Is this your train coming? It’s a little too soon, I think.”
“Thanks for the compliment, Nell. It is really late,” he said, looking at his watch, “but the time flies, don’t it, pet, when you and I are together? Here, you fellow, put my bag in a smoking carriage. And now, you darling, we’ve got to part; only for a little time, Nell.”
“Only for a week,” she said, with a smile and a tear.
“Not so long—a rush along the rail, a blow on the sea, and then back again; I shall only be a day over there, and then—bless you, Nell. Good-bye—take care of yourself, my little duck: take care of yourself for me.”
“Good-bye,” said Elinor, with a little quiver of her lip. A parting at a roadside station is a very abrupt affair. The train stops, the passenger is shoved in, there is a clanging of the doors, and in a moment it is gone. She had scarcely realized that the hour had come before he was whirled off from her, and the swinging line of carriages disappeared round the next curve. She stood looking vaguely after it till the old porter came up, who had known her ever since she was a child.
“Beg your pardon, miss, but the pony is a-waiting,” he said. And then he uttered his sympathy in the form of a question:—“Coming back very soon, miss, ain’t the gentleman?” he said.
“Oh, yes; very soon,” she said, rousing herself up.
“And if I may make bold to say it, miss,” said the porter, “an open-hearted gentleman as ever I see. There’s many as gives us a threepenny for more than I’ve done for ’im. And look at what he’s give me,” he said, showing the half-crown in his hand.
Did he do that from calculation to please her, ungracious girl as she was, who was so hard to please? But he never could have known that she would see it. She walked through the little station to the pony carriage, feeling that all the eyes of the people about were upon her. They were all sympathetic, all equally aware that she had just parted with her lover: all ready to cheer her, if she had given them an opportunity, by reminding her of his early return. The old porter followed her out, and assisted at her ascent into the pony carriage. He said, solemnly, “And an ’andsome gentleman, miss, as ever I see,” as he fastened the apron over her feet. She gave him a friendly nod as she drove away.
How dreadful it is to be so sensitive, to receive a wound so easily! Elinor was vexed more than she could say by her lover’s denial of the reckless generosity with which she had credited him. To think that he had done it in order to produce the effect which had given her so distinct a sensation of pleasure changed that effect into absolute pain. And yet in the fantastic susceptibility of her nature, there was something in old Judkin’s half-crown which soothed her again. A shilling would have been generous, Elinor said to herself, with a feminine appreciation of the difference of small things as well as great, whereas half-a-crown was lavish—ergo, he gave the sovereign also out of natural prodigality, as she had hoped, not out of calculation as he said. She drove soberly home, thinking over all these things in a mood very different from that triumphant happiness with which she started from the cottage with Phil by her side. The sunshine was still as bright, but it had taken an air of routine and commonplace to Elinor. It had come to be only the common day, not the glory and freshness of the morning. She felt herself, as she had never done before, on the edge of a world unknown, where everything would be new to her, where—it was possible—that which awaited her might not be unmixed happiness, might even be the reverse. It is seldom that a girl on the eve of marriage either thinks this or acknowledges to herself that she thinks it. Elinor did so involuntarily, without thinking upon her thought. Perhaps it would not be unmixed happiness. Strange clouds seemed to hang upon the horizon, ready to roll up in tragic darkness and gloom. Oh, no, not tragic, only commonplace, she said to herself; opaqueness, not blackness. But yet it was ominous and lowering, that distant sky.
Thedays of the last week hurried along like the grains of sand out of an hour-glass when they are nearly gone. It is true that almost everything was done—a few little bits of stitching, a few things still to be “got up” alone remaining, a handkerchief to mark with Elinor’s name, a bit of lace to arrange, just enough to keep up a possibility of something to do for Mrs. Dennistoun in the blank of all other possibilities—for to interest herself or to occupy herself about anything that should be wanted beyond that awful limit of the wedding-day was of course out of the question. Life seemed to stop there for the mother, as it was virtually to begin for the child; though indeed to Elinor also, notwithstanding her love, it was visible more in the light of a point at which all the known and certain ended, and where the unknown and almost inconceivable began. The curious thing was that this barrier which was placed across life for them both, got somehow between them in those last days which should have been the most tender climax of their intercourse. They had a thousand things to say to each other, but they said very little. In the evening after dinner, whether they went out into the garden together to watch the setting of the young moon, or whether they sat together in that room which had witnessed all Elinor’s commencements of life, free to talk as no one elsein the world could ever talk to either of them, they said very little to each other, and what they said was of the most commonplace kind. “It is a lovely night; how clear one can see the road on the other side of the combe!” “And what a bright star that is close to the moon! I wish I knew a little more about the stars.” “They are just as beautiful,” Mrs. Dennistoun would say, “as if you knew everything about them, Elinor.” “Are you cold, mamma? I am sure I can see you shiver. Shall I run and get you a shawl?” “It is a little chilly: but perhaps it will be as well to go in now,” the mother said. And then indoors: “Do you think you will like this lace made up as a jabot, Elinor?” “You are giving me all your pretty things, though you know you understand lace much better than I do.” “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Dennistoun said hurriedly; “that is a taste which comes with time. You will like it as well as I do when you are as old as I am.” “You are not so dreadfully old, mamma.” “No, that’s the worst of it,” Mrs. Dennistoun would say, and then break out into a laugh. “Look at the shadow that handkerchief makes—how fantastic it is!” she cried. She neither cared for the moon, nor for the quaintness of the shadows, nor for the lace which she was pulling into dainty folds to show its delicate pattern—for none of all these things, but for her only child, who was going from her, and to whom she had a hundred, and yet a hundred, things to say: but none of them ever came from her lips.
“Mary Dale has not seen your things, Elinor: she asked if she might come to-morrow.”
“I think we might have had to-morrow to ourselves, mamma—the last day all by ourselves before those people begin to arrive.”
“Yes, I think so too; but it is difficult to say no, and as she was not here when the others came—— She is the greatest critic in the parish. She will have so much to say.”
“I daresay it may be fun,” said Elinor, brightening up a little, “and of course anyhow Alice must have come to talk about her dress. I am tired of those bride’s-maids’ dresses; they are really of so little consequence.” Elinor was not vain, to speak of, but she thought it improbable that when she was there any one would look much at the bride’s-maids’ dresses. For one thing, to be sure, the bride is always the central figure, and there were but two bride’s-maids, which diminished the interest; and then—well, it had to be allowed at the end of all, that, though her closest friends, neither Alice Hudson nor Mary Tatham were, to look at, very interesting girls.
“They are of great consequence to them,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, with the faintest smile.
“I didn’t mean that, of course,” said Elinor, with a blush; “only I never should have worried about my own dress, which after all is the most important, as Alice does about hers.”
“Which nobody will look at,” Mrs. Dennistoun said.
“I did not say that: but to tell the truth, it is a pity for the girls that the men will not quite be, just of their world, you know. Oh, mamma, you know it is not that I think anything of that, but I am sorry for Alice and Mary. Mr. Bolsover and the other gentlemen will not take that trouble which country neighbours, or—or John’s friends from the Temple might have done.”
“Why do you speak of John’s friends from the Temple, Elinor?”
“Mamma! for no reason at all. Why should I? They were the only other men I could think of.”
“Elinor, did John ever give you any reason to think——”
“Mamma,” cried Elinor again, with double vehemence, her countenance all ablaze, “of course he never did! how could you think such foolish things?”
“Well, my dear,” said her mother, “I am very glad he did not; it will prevent any embarrassment between him and you—for I must always believe——”
“Don’t, please, oh, don’t! it would make me miserable; it would take all my happiness away.”
Mrs. Dennistoun said nothing, but she sighed—a very small, infinitesimal sigh—and there was a moment’s silence, during which perhaps that sigh pervaded the atmosphere with a sort of breath of what might have been. After a moment she spoke again:
“I hope you have not packed up your ornaments yet, Elinor. You must leave them to the very last, forMary would like to see that beautiful necklace. What do you think you shall wear on the day?”
“Nothing,” said Elinor, promptly. She was about to add, “I have nothing good enough,” but paused in time.
“Not my little star? It would look very well, my darling, to fix your veil on. The diamonds are very good, though perhaps a little old-fashioned; you might get them reset. But—your father gave it me like that.”
“I would not change it a bit, mamma, for anything in the world.”
“Thanks, my dearest. I thought that was how you would feel about it. It is not very big, of course, but it really is very good.”
“Then I will wear it, mamma, if it will please you, but nothing else.”
“It would please me: it would be like having something from your father. I think we had less idea of ornaments in my day. I cannot tell you how proud I was of my diamond star. I should like to put it in for you myself, Elinor.”
“Oh, mamma!” This was the nearest point they had come to that outburst of two full hearts which both of them would have called breaking down. Mrs. Dennistoun saw it and was frightened. She thought it would be betraying to Elinor what she wished her never to know, the unspeakable desolation to which she was looking forward when her child was taken from her. Elinor’s exclamation, too, was a protest against the imminent breaking down. They both came back with a hurry, with a panting breath, to safer ground.
“Yes, that’s what I regret,” she said. “Mr. Bolsover and Harry Compton will laugh a little at the Rectory. They will not be so—nice as young men of their own kind.”
“The Rectory people are just as well born as any of us, Elinor.”
“Oh, precisely, mamma: I know that; but we too—— It is what they call a differentmonde. I don’t think it is half so nice amonde,” said the girl, feeling that she had gone further than she intended to do; “but you know, mamma——”
“I know, Elinor: but I scarcely expected from you——”
“Oh,” cried Elinor again, in exasperation, “if you think that I share that feeling! I think it odious, I think theirmondeis vulgar, nasty, miserable! I think——”
“Don’t go too far the other way, Elinor. Your husband will be of it, and you must learn to like it. You think, perhaps, all that is new to me?”
“No,” said Elinor, her bright eyes, all the brighter for tears, falling before her mother’s look. “I know, of course, that you have seen—all kinds——”
But she faltered a little, for she did not believe that her mother was acquainted with Phil’s circle and their wonderful ways.
“They will be civil enough,” she went on, hurriedly,“and as everybody chaffs so much nowadays they will, perhaps, never be found out. But I don’t like it for my friends.”
“They will chaff me also, no doubt,” Mrs. Dennistoun said.
“Oh,you, mamma! they are not such fools as that,” cried poor Elinor; but in her own mind she did not feel confident that there was any such limitation to their folly. Mrs. Dennistoun laughed a little to herself, which was, perhaps, more alarming than that other moment when she was almost ready to cry.
“You had better wear Lord St. Serf’s ring,” she said, after a moment, with a tone of faint derision which Elinor knew.
“You might as well tell me,” cried the bride, “to wear Lady Mariamne’s revolving dishes. No, I will wear nothing, nothing but your star.”
“You have got nothing half so nice,” said the mother. Oh yes, it was a little revenge upon those people who were taking her daughter from her, and who thought themselves at liberty to jeer at all her friends: but as was perhaps inevitable it touched Elinor a little too. She restrained herself from some retort with a sense of extreme and almost indignant self-control: though what retort Elinor could have made I cannot tell. It was much “nicer” than anything else she had. None of Phil Compton’s great friends, who were not of the samemondeas the people at Windyhill, had offered his bride anything to compare with the diamonds which herfather had given to her mother before she was born. And Elinor was quite aware of the truth of what her mother said. But she would have liked to make a retort—to say something smart and piquant and witty in return.
And thus the evening was lost, the evening in which there was so much to say, one of the three only, no more, that were left.
Miss Dale came next day to see “the things,” and was very amiable: but the only thing in this visit which affected Elinor’s mind was a curious little unexpected assault this lady made upon her when she was going away. Elinor had gone out with her to the porch, according to the courteous usage of the house. But when they had reached that shady place, from which the green combe and the blue distance were visible, stretching far into the soft autumnal mists of the evening, Mary Dale turned upon her and asked her suddenly, “What night was it that Mr. Compton came here?”
Elinor was much startled, but she did not lose her self-possession. All the trouble about that date had disappeared out of her mind in the stress and urgency of other things. She cast back her mind with an effort and asked herself what the conflict and uncertainty of which she was dimly conscious, had been? It came back to her dimly without any of the pain that had been in it. “It was on the sixth,” she said quietly, without excitement. She could scarcely recall to her mind what itwas that had moved her so much in respect to this date only a little time ago.
“Oh, you must be mistaken, Elinor, I saw him coming up from the station. It was later than that. It was, if I were to give my life for it, Thursday night.”
This was four or five nights before and a haze of uncertainty had fallen on all things so remote. But Elinor cast her eyes upon the calendar in the hall and calm possessed her breast. “It was the sixth,” she said with composed tones, as certain as of anything she had ever known in the course of her life.
“Well, I suppose you must know,” said Mary Dale.
“Look at that, Elinor,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, next day, when she had read, twice over, a letter, large and emblazoned with a very big monogram, which Elinor, well perceiving from whom it came, had furtively watched the effect of from behind an exceeding small letter of her own. Phil was not remarkable as a correspondent: his style was that of the primitive mind which hopes its correspondent is well, “as this leaves me.” He had never much more to say.
“From Mariamne, mamma?”
“She takes great pains to make us certain of thatfact at least,” Mrs. Dennistoun said; which indeed was very true, for the name of the writer was sprawled in gilt letters half over the sheet. And this was how it ran:—
“Dear Mrs. Dennistoun,—“I have been thinking what a great pity it would be to bore you with me, and my maid, and all my belongings. I am so silly that I can never be happy without dragging a lot of things about with me—dogs, and people, and so forth. Going to town in September is dreadful, but it is ratherchicto do a thing that its quite out of the way, and one may perhaps pick up a little fun in the evening. So if you don’t mind, instead of inflicting Fifine and Bijou and Leocadie, not to mention some people that might be with me, upon you, and putting your house all out of order, as these odious little dogs do when people are not used to them—I will come down by the train, which I hope arrives quite punctually, in time to see poor Phil turned off. I am sure you will be so kind as to send a carriage for me to the railway. We shall be probably a party of four, and I hear from Phil you are so hospitable and kind that I need not hesitate to bring my friends to breakfast after it’s all over. I hope Phil will go through it like a man, and I wouldn’t for worlds deprive him of the support of his family. Love to Nell. I am,“Yours truly,“Mariamne Prestwich.”
“Dear Mrs. Dennistoun,—
“I have been thinking what a great pity it would be to bore you with me, and my maid, and all my belongings. I am so silly that I can never be happy without dragging a lot of things about with me—dogs, and people, and so forth. Going to town in September is dreadful, but it is ratherchicto do a thing that its quite out of the way, and one may perhaps pick up a little fun in the evening. So if you don’t mind, instead of inflicting Fifine and Bijou and Leocadie, not to mention some people that might be with me, upon you, and putting your house all out of order, as these odious little dogs do when people are not used to them—I will come down by the train, which I hope arrives quite punctually, in time to see poor Phil turned off. I am sure you will be so kind as to send a carriage for me to the railway. We shall be probably a party of four, and I hear from Phil you are so hospitable and kind that I need not hesitate to bring my friends to breakfast after it’s all over. I hope Phil will go through it like a man, and I wouldn’t for worlds deprive him of the support of his family. Love to Nell. I am,
“Yours truly,“Mariamne Prestwich.”
“The first name very big and the second very small,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, as she received the letter back.
“I am sure we are much obliged to her for not coming, mamma!”
“Perhaps—but not for this announcement of her not coming. I don’t wish to say anything against your new relations, Elinor——”
“You need not put any restraint upon yourself in consideration of my feelings,” said Elinor, with a flush of annoyance.
And this made Mrs. Dennistoun pause. They ate their breakfast, which was a very light meal, in silence. It was the day before the wedding. The rooms down-stairs had been carefully prepared for Phil’s sister. Though Mrs. Dennistoun was too proud to say anything about it, she had taken great pains to make these pretty rooms as much like a fine lady’s chamber as had been possible. She had put up new curtains, and a Persian carpet, and looked out of her stores all the pretty things she could find to decorate the two rooms of the little apartment. She had gone in on the way down-stairs to take a final survey, and it seemed to her that they were very pretty. No picture could have been more beautiful than the view from the long low lattice window, in which, as in a frame, was set the foreground of the copse with its glimpses of ruddy heather and the long sweep of the heights beyond, which stretched away into the infinite. That at leastcould not be surpassed anywhere; and the Persian carpet was like moss under foot, and the chairs luxurious—and there was a collection of old china in some open shelves which would have made the mouth of an amateur water. Well! it was Lady Mariamne’s own loss if she preferred the chance of picking up a little fun in the evening, to spending the night decorously in that pretty apartment, and making further acquaintance with her new sister. It was entirely, Mrs. Dennistoun said to herself, a matter for her own choice. But she was much affronted all the same.
“It will be very inconvenient indeed sending a carriage for her, Elinor. Except the carriage that is to take you to church there is none good enough for this fine lady. I had concluded she would go in your uncle Tatham’s carriage. It may be very fine to have a Lady Mariamne in one’s party, but it is a great nuisance to have to change all one’s arrangements at the last moment.”
“If you were to send the wagonette from the Bull’s Head, as rough as possible, with two of the farm horses, she would think itgenre, if notchic——”
“I cannot put up with all this nonsense!” cried Mrs. Dennistoun, with a flush on her cheek. “You are just as bad as they are, Elinor, to suggest such a thing! I have held my own place in society wherever I have been, and I don’t choose to be condescended to or laughed at, in fact, by any visitor in the world!”
“Mamma! do you think any one would ever compare you with Mariamne—the Jew?”
“Don’t exasperate me with those abominable nicknames. They will give you one next. She is an exceedingly ill-bred and ill-mannered woman. Picking up a little fun in the evening! What does she mean by picking up a little fun——”
“They will perhaps go to the theatre—a number of them; and as nobody is in town they will laugh very much at the kind of people, and perhaps the kind of play—and it will be a great joke ever after among themselves—for of course there will be a number of them together,” said Elinor, disclosing her acquaintance with the habits of her new family with downcast eyes.
“How can well-born people be so vulgar and ill-bred?” cried Mrs. Dennistoun. “I must say for Philip that though he is careless and not nearly so particular as I should like, still he is not like that. He has something of the politeness of the heart.”
Elinor did not raise her downcast eyes. Phil had been on his very good behaviour on the occasion of his last hurried visit, but she did not feel that she could answer even for Phil. “I am very glad anyhow, that she is not coming, mamma: at least we shall have the last night and the last morning to ourselves.”
Mrs. Dennistoun shook her head. “The Tathams will be here,” she said; “and everybody, to dinner—all the party. We must go now and see how we can enlarge the table. To-night’s party will be the largest we have ever had in the cottage.” She sighed a little and paused, restraining herself. “We shall have no quietevening—nor morning either—again; it will be a bustle and a rush. You and I will never have any more quiet evenings, Elinor: for when you come back it will be another thing.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Elinor, throwing herself into her mother’s arms: and for a moment they stood closely clasped, feeling as if their hearts would burst, yet very well aware, too, underneath, that any number of quiet evenings would be as the last, when, with hearts full of a thousand things to say to each other, they said almost nothing—which in some respects was worse than having no quiet evenings evermore.
In the afternoon Phil arrived, having returned from Ireland that morning, and paused only to refresh himself in the chambers which he still retained in town. He had met all his hunting friends during the three days he had been away; and though he retained a gallant appearance, and looked, as Alice Hudson thought, “very aristocratic,” Mrs. Dennistoun caught with anxiety a worn-out look—the look of excitement, of nights without sleep, much smoke, and, perhaps, much wine, in his eyes. What a woman feels who has to hand over her spotless child, the most dear and pure thing upon earth, to a man fresh from those indulgences and dissipations which never seem harmless, and always are repellent to a woman, is not to be described. Fortunately the bride herself, in invincible ignorance and unconsciousness, seldom feels in that way. To Elinor her lover looked tired about the eyes, which was verywell explained by his night journey, and by the agitation of the moment. And, indeed, she did not see very much of Phil, who had his friends with him—his aide-de-camp, Bolsover, and his brother Harry. These three gentlemen carried an atmosphere of smoke and other scents with them into the lavender of the Rectory, which was too amazing in that hemisphere for words, and talked their own talk in the midst of the fringe of rustics who were their hosts, with a calm which was extraordinary, breaking into the midst of the Rector’s long-winded, amiable sentences, and talking to each other over Mrs. Hudson’s head. “I say, Dick, don’t you remember?” “By Jove, Phil, you are too bad!” sounded, with many other such expressions and reminders, over the Rectory party, strictly silent round their own table, trying to make a courteous remark now and then, but confounded, in their simple country good manners, by the fine gentlemen. And then there was the dinner-party at the cottage in the evening, to which Mr. and Mrs. Hudson were invited. Such a dinner-party! Old Mr. Tatham, who was a country gentleman from Dorsetshire, with his nice daughter, Mary Tatham, a quiet country young lady, accustomed, when she went into the world at all, to the serious young men of the Temple, and John’s much-occupied friends, who had their own asides about cases, and what So-and-So had said in court, but were much too well-bred before ladies to fall into “shop;” and Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, who were such as we know them; and the bride’s mother, a little anxious, but always debonair; and Elinor herself, in all the haze and sweet confusion of the great era which approached so closely. The three men made the strangest addition that can be conceived to the quiet guests; but things went better under the discipline of the dinner, especially as Sir John Huntingtower, who was a Master of the hounds and an old friend of the Dennistouns, was of the party, and Lady Huntingtower, who was an impressive person, and knew the world. This lady was very warm in her congratulations to Mrs. Dennistoun after dinner on the absence of Lady Mariamne. “I think you are the luckiest woman that ever was to have got clear of that dreadful creature,” she said. “Oh, there is nothing wrong about her that I know. She goes everywhere with her dogs and hercavaliers servantes. There’s safety in numbers, my dear. She has always two of them at least hanging about her to fetch and carry, and she thinks a great deal more of her dogs; but I can’t think what you could have done with her here.”
“And what will my Elinor do in such a sphere?” the troubled mother permitted herself to say.
“Oh, if that were all,” said Lady Huntingtower, lifting up her fat hands—she was one of those who had protested against the marriage, but now that it had come to this point, and could not be broken off, the judicious woman thought it right to make the best of it—“Elinor need not be any the worse,” she said. “Thank heaven, you are not obliged to be mixed upwith your husband’s sister. Elinor must take a line of her own. You should come to town yourself her first season, and help her on. You used to know plenty of people.”
“But they say,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that it is so much better to leave a young couple to themselves, and that a mother is always in the way.”
“If I were you I would not pay the least attention to what they say. If you hold back too much they will say, ‘There was her own mother, knowing numbers of nice people, that never took the trouble to lend her a hand.’”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, turning round immediately to this other aspect of affairs, “that it never will be necessary for the world to interest itself at all in my child’s affairs.”
“Well, of course, that is the best,” Lady Huntingtower allowed, “if she just goes softly for a year or two till she feels her way.”
“But then she is so young, and so little accustomed to act for herself,” said the mother, with another change of flank.
“Oh, Elinor has a great deal of spirit. She must just make a stand against the Compton set and take her own line.”
Mrs. Hudson and Alice and Miss Tatham were at the other end of the room exchanging a few criticisms under their breath, and disposed to think that they were neglected by their hostess for the greater personage with whom she was in such close conversation. And Lady Mariamne’s defection was a great disappointment to them all. “I should like to have seen a fine lady quite close,” said Mary (it was not; I think, usual to speak of “smart” people in those days), “one there could be no doubt about, a little fast and all that. I have seen them in town at a distance, but all the people we know are sure country people.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, primly, “I don’t like to hear you talk of any other kind. An English lady, I hope, whatever is her rank, can only be of one kind.”
“Oh, mamma, you know very well Lady Mariamne is as different from Lady Huntingtower as——”
“Don’t mention names, my dear; it is not well-bred. The one is young, and naturally fond of gayety; the other—well, is not quite so young, and stout, and all that.”
“Oh, that is all very well,” said Alice; “but Aunt Mary says——”
Miss Dale was coming in the evening, and the Miss Hills, and the curate, and the doctor, and various other people, who could not be asked to dinner, to whom it had been carefully explained (which, indeed, was a fact they knew) that to dine twelve people in the little dining-room of the cottage was a feat which was accomplished with difficulty, and that more was impossible. Society at Windyhill was very tolerant and understanding on this point, for all the dining-rooms were small, except, indeed, when you come to talk of suchplaces as Huntingtower—and they were very glad to be permitted to have a peep at the bridegroom on these terms, or rather, if truth were told, of the bride, and how she was bearing herself so near the crisis of her fate. The bridegroom is seldom very interesting on such occasions. On the present occasion he was more interesting than usual, because he was the Honourable Philip, and because he had a reputation of which most people had heard something. There was a mixture of alarm and suspicion in respect to him which increased the excitement; and many remarks of varied kinds were made. “I think the fellow’s face quite bears out his character,” said the doctor to the Rector. “What a man to trust a nice girl to!” Mr. Hudson felt that as the bridegroom was living under his roof he was partially responsible, and discouraged this pessimistic view. “Mr. Compton has not, perhaps, had all the advantages one tries to secure for one’s own son,” he said, “but I have reason to believe that the things that have been said of him are much exaggerated.” “Oh, advantages!” said the doctor, thinking of Alick, of whom it was his strongly expressed opinion that the fellow should be turned out to rough it, and not coddled up and spoiled at home. But while these remarks were going on, Miss Hill had been expressing to the curate an entirely different view. “I think he has abeautifulface,” she said with the emphasis some ladies use; “a little worn, perhaps, with being too much in the world, and I wish he had a better colour. To me he looksdelicate: but what delightful features, Mr. Whitebands, and what an aristocratic air!”
“He looks tremendously up to everything,” the curate said, with a faint tone of envy in his voice.
“Don’t he just?” cried Alick Hudson. “I should think there wasn’t a thing he couldn’t do—of things that men do do, don’t you know,” cried that carefully trained boy, whose style was confused, though his meaning was good. But probably there were almost as many opinions about Phil as there were people in the room. His two backers-up stood in a corner—half intimidated, half contemptuous of the country people. “Queer lot for Phil to fall among,” said Dick Bolsover. “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” said Harry Compton, who had been about the world. “Oh, bosh with your French, that nobody understands,” said the best man.
But in the meantime Phil was not there at all to be seen of men. He had stolen out into the garden, where there was a white vision awaiting him in the milky moonlight. The autumn haze had come early this season, and the moon was misty, veiled with white amid a jumble of soft floating vapours in the sky. Elinor stood among the flowers, which showed some strange subdued tints of colours in the flooding of the white light, like a bit of consolidated moonlight in her white dress. She had a white shawl covering her from head to foot, with a corner thrown over her hair. What had they to say to each other that last night?Not much; nothing at all that had any information in it—whispers inaudible almost to each other. There was something in being together for this stolen moment, just on the eve of their being together for always, which had a charm of its own. After to-night, no stealing away, no escape to the garden, no little conspiracy to attain a meeting—the last of all those delightful schemings and devices. They started when they heard a sound from the house, and sped along the paths into the shadow like the conspirators they were—but never to conspire more after this last enthralling time.
“You’re not frightened, Nell?”
“No—except a little. There is one thing——”
“What is it, my pet? If it’s to the half of my kingdom, it shall be done.”
“Phil, we are going to be very good when we are together? don’t laugh—to help each other?”
He did laugh low, not to be heard, but long. “I shall have no temptation,” he said, “to be anything but good, you little goose of a Nell,” taking it for a warning of possible jealousy to come.
“Oh, but I mean both of us—to help each other.”
“Why, Nell, I know you’ll never go wrong——”
She gave him a little impatient shake. “You will not understand me, Phil. We will try to be better than we’ve ever been. To be good—don’t you know what that means?—in every way, before God.”
Her voice dropped very low, and he was for amoment overawed. “You mean going to church, Nell?”
“I mean—yes, that for one thing; and many other things.”
“That’s dropping rather strong upon a fellow,” he said, “just at this moment, don’t you think, when I must say yes to everything you say.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it in that way; and I was not thinking of church particularly; but to be good, very good, true and kind, in our hearts.”
“You are all that already, Nell.”
“Oh, no, not what I mean. When there are two of us instead of one we can do so much more.”
“Well, my pet, it’s for you to make out the much more. I’m quite content with you as you are; it’s me that you want to improve, and heaven knows there’s plenty of room for that.”
“No, Phil, not you more than me,” she said.
“We’ll choose a place where the sermon’s short, and we’ll see about it. You mean little minx, to bind a man down to go to church, the night before his wedding day!”
And then there was a sound of movement indoors, and after a little while the bride appeared among the guests with a little more colour than usual, and an anxiously explanatory description of something she had been obliged to do; and the confused hour flew on with much sound of talking and very little understanding of what was said. And then all the visitors streamedaway group after group into the moonlight, disappearing like ghosts under the shadow of the trees. Finally, the Rectory party went too, the three mild ladies surrounded by an exciting circle of cigars; for Alick, of course, had broken all bonds, and even the Rector accepted that rare indulgence. Alice Hudson half deplored, half exulted for years after in the scent that would cling round one particular evening dress. Five gentlemen, all with cigars, and papa as bad as any of them! There had never been such an extraordinary experience in her life.
And then the Tathams, too, withdrew, and the mother and daughter stood alone on their own hearth. Oh, so much, so much as there was to say! but how were they to say it?—the last moment, which was so precious and so intolerable—the moment that would never come again.
“You were a long time with Philip, Elinor, in the garden. I think all your old friends—— the last night.”
“I wanted to say something to him, mamma, that I had never had the courage to say.”
Mrs. Dennistoun had been looking dully into the dim mirror over the mantlepiece. She turned half round to her daughter with an inquiring look.
“Oh, mamma, I wanted to say to him that we must be good! We’re so happy. God is so kind to us; and you—if you suppose I don’t think of you! It was to say to him—building our house upon all this, God’s mercy and your loss, and all—that we are doubly, doubly bound to serve—and to love—and to be good people before God; and like you, mother, like you!”
“My darling!” Mrs. Dennistoun said. And that was all. She asked no questions as to how it was to be done, or what he replied. Elinor had broken down hysterically, and sobbed out the words one at a time, as they would come through the choking in her throat. Needless to say that she ended in her mother’s arms, her head upon the bosom which had nursed her, her slight weight dependent upon the supporter and protector of all her life.
That was the last evening. There remained the last morning to come; and after that—what? The great sea of an unknown life, a new pilot, and a ship untried.
Andnow the last morning had come.
The morning of a wedding-day is a flying and precarious moment which seems at once as if it never would end, and as if it were a hurried preliminary interval in which the necessary preparations never could be done. Elinor was not allowed to come down-stairs to help, as she felt it would be natural to do. It was Mary Tatham who arranged the flowers on the table, and helped Dennistoun to superintend everything.All the women in the house, though they were so busy, were devoted at every spare moment to the service of Elinor. They brought her simple breakfast up-stairs, one maid carrying the tray and another the teapot, that each might have their share. The cook, though she was overwhelmed with work, had made some cakes for breakfast, such us Elinor liked. “Most like as we’ll never have her no more—to mind,” she said. The gardener sent up an untidy bundle of white flowers. And Mrs. Dennistoun came herself to pour out the tea. “As if I had been ill, or had turned into a baby again,” Elinor said. But there was not much said. Mary Tatham was there for one thing, and for another and the most important they had said all they had to say; the rest which remained could not be said. The wedding was to be at a quarter to twelve, in order to give Lady Mariamne time to come from town. It was not the fashion then to delay marriages to the afternoon, which no doubt would have been much more convenient for her ladyship; but the best that could be done was done. Mr. Tatham’s carriage, which he had brought with him to grace the ceremony, was despatched to the station to meet Lady Mariamne, while he, good man, had to get to church as he could in one of the flys. And then came the important moment, when the dressing of the bride had to be begun. The wedding-breakfast was not yet all set out in perfect order, and there were many things to do. Yet every woman in the house had a little share in the dressingof the bride. They all came to see how it fitted when the wedding-dress was put on. It fitted like a glove! The long glossy folds of the satin were a wonder to see. Cook stood just within the door in a white apron, and wept, and could not say a word to Miss Elinor; but the younger maids sent forth a murmur of admiration. And the Missis they thought was almost as beautiful as the bride, though her satin was grey. Mrs. Dennistoun herself threw the veil over her child’s head, and put in the diamond star, the old-fashioned ornament which had been her husband’s present to herself. And then again she had meant to say something to Elinor—a last word—but the word would not come. They were both of them glad that somebody should be there all the time, that they should not be left alone. And after that the strange, hurried, everlasting morning was over, and the carriage was at the door.
Then again it was a relief that old Mr. Tatham had missed his proper place in the fly, and had to go on the front seat with the bride and her mother. It was far better so. If they had been left even for ten minutes alone, who could have answered that one or the other would not have cried, and discomposed the bouquet and the veil? It seemed a great danger and responsibility over when they arrived at last safely at the church door. Lady Mariamne was just then arriving from the station. She drew up before them in poor Mr. Tatham’s carriage, keeping them back. Harry Compton and Mr. Bolsover sprang to the carriage window to talk to her, and there was a loud explosion of mirth and laughter in the midst of the village people, and the children with their baskets of flowers who were already gathered. Lady Mariamne’s voice burst out so shrill that it overmastered the church bells. “Here I am,” she cried, “out in the wilderness. And Algy has come with me to take care of me. And how are you, dear boys; and how is poor Phil?” “Phil is all ready to be turned off, with the halter round his neck,” said Dick Bolsover; and Harry Compton said, “Hurry up, hurry up, Jew, the bride is behind you, waiting to get out.” “She must wait, then,” said Lady Mariamne, and there came leisurely out of the carriage, first, her ladyship’s companion, by name, Algy, a tall person with an eye-glass, then a little pug, which was carefully handed into his arms, and then lightly jumping down to the ground, a little figure in black—in black of all things in the world! a sight that curdled the blood of the village people, and of Mrs. Hudson, who had walked across from the Rectory in a gown of pigeon’s-breast silk which scattered prismatic reflections as she walked. In black! Mrs. Hudson bethought herself that she had a white China crape shawl in her cupboard, and wondered if she could offer it to conceal this ill-omened gown. But if Lady Mariamne’s dress was dark, she herself was fair enough, with an endless fluff of light hair under her little black lace bonnet. Her gloves were off, and her hands were white and glistening with rings. “Give me my puggy darling,” she said in herloud, shrill tone. “I can go nowhere, can I, pet, without my little pug!”
“A Jew and a pug, both in church. It is enough,” said her brother, “to get the poor parson into trouble with his bishop.”
“Oh, the bishop’s a great friend of mine,” said the lady; “he will say nothing to me, not if I put Pug in a surplice and make him lead the choir.” At this speech there was a great laugh of the assembled party, which stood in the centre of the path, while Mr. Tatham’s carriage edged away, and the others made efforts to get forward. The noise of their talk disturbed the curious abstraction in which Elinor had been going through the morning hours. Mariamne’s jarring voice seemed louder than the bells. Was this the first voice sent out to greet her by the new life which was about to begin? She glanced at her mother, and then at old Uncle Tatham, who sat immovable, prevented by decorum from apostrophising the coachman who was not his own, but fuming inwardly at the interruption. Mrs. Dennistoun did not move at all, but her daughter knew very well what was meant by that look straight before her, in which her mother seemed to ignore all obstacles in the way.
“I got here very well,” Lady Mariamne went on; “we started in the middle of the night, of course, before the lamps were out. Wasn’t it good of Algy to get himself out of bed at such an unearthly hour! But he snapped at Puggy as we came down, which was asign he felt it. Why aren’t you with the poor victim at the altar, you boys?”
“Phil will be in blue funk,” said Harry; “go in and stand by your man, Dick: the Jew has enough with two fellows to see her into her place.”
The bride’s carriage by this time pushed forward, making Lady Mariamne start in confusion. “Oh! look here; they have splashed my pretty toilette, and upset my nerves,” she cried, springing back into her supporter’s arms.
That gentleman regarded the stain of the damp gravel on the lady’s skirt through his eye-glass with deep but helpless anxiety. “It’s a pity for the pretty frock!” he said with much seriousness. And the group gathered round and gazed in dismay, as if they expected it to disappear of itself—until Mrs. Hudson bustled up. “It will rub off; it will not make any mark. If one of you gentlemen will lend me a handkerchief,” she said. And Algy and Harry and Dick Bolsover, not to speak of Lady Mariamne herself, watched with great gravity while the gravel was swept off. “I make no doubt,” said the Rector’s wife, “that I have the pleasure of speaking to Lady Mariamne: and I don’t doubt that black is the fashion and your dress is beautiful: but if you would just throw on a white shawl for the sake of the wedding—it’s so unlucky to come in black——”
“A white shawl!” said Lady Mariamne in dismay.
“The Jew in a white shawl!” echoed the others witha burst of laughter which rang into the church itself and made Phil before the altar, alone and very anxious, ask himself what was up.
“It’s China crape, I assure you, and very nice,” Mrs. Hudson said.
Lady Mariamne gave the good Samaritan a stony stare, and took Algy’s arm and sailed into the church before the Rector’s wife, without a word said; while all the women from the village looked at each other and said, “Well, I never!” under their breath.
“Let me give you my arm, Mrs. Hudson,” said Harry Compton, “and please pardon me that I did not introduce my sister to you. She is dreadfully shy, don’t you know, and never does speak to anyone when she has not been introduced.”
“My observation was a very simple one,” said Mrs. Hudson, very angry, yet pleased to lean upon an Honourable arm.
“My dear lady!” cried the good-natured Harry, “the Jew never wore a shawl in her life——”
And all this time the organ had been pealing, the white vision passing up the aisle, the simple villagers chanting forth their song about the breath that breathed o’er Eden. Alas! Eden had not much to do with it, except perhaps in the trembling heart of the white maiden roused out of her virginal dream by the jarring voices of the new life. The laughter outside was a dreadful offence to all the people, great and small, who had collected to see Elinor married.
“What could you expect? It’s that woman whom they call the Jew,” whispered Lady Huntingtower to her next neighbour.
“She should be put into the stocks,” said Sir John, scarcely under his breath, which, to be sure, was also an interruption to the decorum of the place.
And then there ensued a pause broken by the voice, a little lugubrious in tone, of the Rector within the altar rails, and the tremulous answers of the pair outside. The audience held its breath to hear Elinor make her responses, and faltered off into suppressed weeping as the low tones ceased. Sir John Huntingtower, who was very tall and big, and stood out like a pillar among the ladies round, kept nodding his head all the time she spoke, nodding as you might do in forced assent to any dreadful vow. Poor little thing, poor little thing, he was saying in his heart. His face was more like the face of a man at a funeral than a man at a wedding. “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord”—he might have been nodding assent to that instead of to Elinor’s low-spoken vow. Phil Compton’s voice, to tell the truth, was even more tremulous than Elinor’s. To investigate the thoughts of a bridegroom would be too much curiosity at such a moment. But I think if the secrets of the hearts could be revealed, Phil for a moment was sorry for poor little Elinor too.
And then the solemnity was all over in a moment, and the flutter of voices and congratulations began.
I do not mean to follow the proceedings through all the routine of the wedding-day. Attempts were made on the part of the bridegroom’s party to get Lady Mariamne dismissed by the next train, an endeavour into which Harry Compton threw himself—for he was always a good-hearted fellow—with his whole soul. But the Jew declared that she was dying of hunger, and whatever sort of place it was, must have something to eat; a remark which naturally endeared her still more to Mrs. Dennistoun, who was waiting by the door of Mr. Tatham’s carriage, which that anxious old gentleman had managed to recover control of, till her ladyship had taken her place. Her ladyship stared with undisguised amazement when she was followed into the carriage by the bride’s mother, and when the neat little old gentleman took his seat opposite. “But where is Algy? I want Algy,” she cried, in dismay. “Absolutely I can’t go without Algy, who came to take care of me.”
“You will be perfectly safe, my dear lady, with Mrs. Dennistoun and me. The gentlemen will walk,” said Mr. Tatham, waving his hand to the coachman.
And thus it was that the forlorn lady found herself without her cavalier and without her pug, absolutely stranded among savages, notwithstanding her strong protest almost carried the length of tears. She was thus carried off in a state of consternation to the cottage over the rough road, where the wheels went with a din and lurch over the stones, and dug deep into thesand, eliciting a succession of little shrieks from her oppressed bosom. “I shall be shaken all to bits,” she said, grasping the arm of the old gentleman to steady herself. Mr. Tatham was not displeased to be the champion of a lady of title. He assured her in dulcet tones that his springs were very good and his horses very sure—“though it is not a very nice road.”