“You will not,” he said; “you are wanted; you must keep all your wits about you. What were they doing there at this time of the year?”
“They have been visiting about—they were invited to Dunorban for Christmas, but she persuaded Philip, so she said, to take this little house. I think he was to join the party while she—I cannot tell you what was the arrangement. She has written very vaguely for some time. She ought to have been with me—I told her so—but she has always said she could not leave Philip.”
Could not leave Philip! The mother, fortunately, had no idea why this determination was. “I went so far as to write to Philip,” she said, “to ask him if she might not come to me, or, at least begging him to bringher to town, or somewhere where she could have proper attention. He answered me very briefly that he wished her to go, but she would not: as he had told me before I left town—that was all. It seemed to fret him—he must have known that it was not a fit place for her, in a stranger’s house, and so far away. And to think I cannot even get away till late to-night!”
John had to comfort her as well as he could, to make her eat something, to see that she had all the comforts possible for her night journey. “You were always like her brother,” the poor lady said, finding at last relief in tears. And then he went with her to the train, and found her a comfortable carriage, and placed her in it with all the solaces his mind could think of. A sleeping-carriage on the Scotch lines is not such a ghastly pretence of comfort as those on the Continent. The solaces John brought her—the quantities of newspapers, the picture papers and others, rugs and shawls innumerable—all that he possessed in the shape of wraps, besides those which she had with her. What more could a man do? If she had been young he would have bought her sugar-plums. All that they meant were the dumb anxieties of his own breast, and the vague longing to do something, anything that would be a help to her on her desolate way.
“You will send me a word, aunt, as soon as you get there?”
“Oh, at once, John.”
“You will tell me how she is—say as much as youcan—no three words, like that. I shall not leave town till I hear.”
“Oh, John, why should this keep you from your family? I could telegraph there as easily as here.”
He made a gesture almost of anger. “Do you think I am likely to put myself out of the way—not to be ready if you should want me?”
How should she want him?—a mother summoned to her daughter at such a moment—but she did not say so to trouble him more: for John had got to that maddening point of anxiety when nothing but doing something, or at least keeping ready to do something, flattering yourself that there must be something to do, affords any balm to the soul.
He saw her away by that night train, crowded with people going home—people noisy with gayety, escaping from their daily cares to the family meeting, the father’s house, all the associations of pleasure and warmth and consolation—cold, but happy, in their third-class compartments—not wrapped up in every conceivable solace as she was, yet no one, perhaps, so heavy-hearted. He watched for the last glimpse of her face just as the train plunged into the darkness, and saw her smile and wave her hand to him; then he, too, plunged into the darkness like the train. He walked and walked through the solitary streets not knowing where he was going, unable to rest. Had he ever been, as people say, in love with Elinor? He could not tell—he had never betrayed it by word or look if he had. He had never taken anystep to draw her near him, to persuade her to be his and not another’s; on the contrary, he had avoided everything that could lead to that. Neither could he say, “She was as my sister,” which his relationship might have warranted him in doing. It was neither the one nor the other—she was not his love nor his sister—she was simply Elinor; and perhaps she was dying; perhaps the news he would receive next day would be the worst that the heart can hear. He walked and walked through those dreary, semi-respectable streets of London, the quiet, the sordid, the dismal, mile after mile, and street after street, till half the night was over and he was tired out, and might have a hope of rest.
But for three whole days—days which he could not reckon, which seemed of the length of years—during which he remained closeted in his chambers, the whole world having, as it seemed, melted away around him, leaving him alone, he did not have a word. He did not go home, feeling that he must be on the spot, whatever happened. Finally, when he was almost mad, on the morning of the third day, he received the following telegram: “Saved—as by a miracle; doing well. Child—a boy.”
“Child—a boy!” Good heavens! what did he want with that? it seemed an insult to him to tell him. What did he care for the child, if it was a boy or not?—the wretched, undesirable brat of such parentage, born to perpetuate a name which was dishonoured. Altogetherthe telegram, as so many telegrams, but lighted fresh fires of anxiety in his mind. “Saved—as by a miracle!” Then he had been right in the dreadful fancies that had gone through his mind. He had passed by Death in the dark; and was it now sure that the miracle would last, that the danger would have passed away?
END OF VOL. I.PRINTED BY F. A. BROCKHAUS, LEIPZIG.
The English LibraryNo. 96THE MARRIAGE OF ELINORBy Mrs. OLIPHANTIN TWO VOLUMESVOLUMES By THE SAME AUTHORPUBLISHED INThe English Library77. 78. The Railway Man and his Children 2 Vols.
BYMrs.OLIPHANTAUTHOR OF“KIRSTERN,” “WITHIN THE PRECINCTS,” “AT HIS GATES,”“THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN,”ETC.IN TWO VOLUMESVOLUME II.LEIPZIGHEINEMANN AND BALESTIERLIMITED, LONDON1892
Itwas not till nearly three weeks after this that John received another brief dispatch. “At home: come and see us.” He had indeed got a short letter or two in the interval, saying almost nothing—a brief report of Elinor’s health, and of the baby, against whom he had taken an unreasoning disgust and repugnance. “Little beast!” he said to himself, passing over that part of the bulletin: for the letters were scarcely more than bulletins, without a word about the circumstances which surrounded her. A shooting lodge in Ross-shire in the middle of the winter! What a place for a delicate woman! John was well enough aware that many elements of comfort were possible even in such a place; but he shut his eyes, as was natural, to anything that went against his own point of view.
And now this telegram from Windyhill—“At home: come and see us”—us. Was it a mistake of the telegraph people?—of course they must make mistakes.They had no doubt taken themein Mrs. Dennistoun’s angular writing forus—or was it possible—— John had no peace in his mind until he had so managed matters that he could go and see. There was no very pressing business in the middle of January, when people had hardly yet recovered the idleness of Christmas. He started one windy afternoon, when everything was grey, and arrived at Hurrymere station in the dim twilight, still ruddy with tints of sunset. He was in a very contradictory frame of mind, so that though his heart jumped to see Mrs. Dennistoun awaiting him on the platform, there mingled in his satisfaction in seeing her and hearing what she had to tell so much sooner, a perverse conviction of cold and discomfort in the long drive up in the pony carriage which he felt sure was before him. He was mistaken, however, on this point, for the first thing she said was, “I have secured the fly, John. Old Pearson will take your luggage. I have so much to tell you.” There was an air of excitement in her face, but not that air of subdued and silent depression which comes with solitude. She was evidently full of the report she had to make; but yet the first thing she did when she was ensconced in the fly with John beside her was to cover her face with her hands, and subside into her corner in a silent passion of tears.
“For mercy’s sake tell me what is the matter. What has happened? Is Elinor ill?”
He had almost asked is Elinor dead?
She uncovered her face, which had suddenly lightedup with a strange gleam of joy underneath the tears. “John, Elinor is here,” she said.
“Here?”
“At home—safe. I have brought her back—and the child.”
“Confound the child!” John said in his excitement. “Brought her back! What do you mean?”
“Oh, John, it is a long story. I have a hundred things to tell you, and to ask your advice upon; but the main thing is that she is here. I have brought her away from him. She will go back no more.”
“She has left her husband?” he said, with a momentary flicker of exultation in his dismay. But the dismay, to do him justice, was the strongest. He looked at his companion almost sternly. “Things,” he said, “must have been very serious to justify that.”
“They were more than serious—they had become impossible,” Mrs. Dennistoun said.
And she told him her story, which was a long one. She had arrived to find Elinor alone in the little solitary lodge in the midst of the wilds, not without attention indeed or comfort, but alone, her husband absent. She had been very ill, and he had been at the neighbouring castle, where a great party was assembled, and where, the mother discovered at last, there was—the woman who had made Elinor’s life a burden to her. “I don’t know with what truth. I don’t know whether there is what people call any harm in it. It is possible he is only amusing himself. I can’t tell. But it has madeElinor miserable this whole autumn through, that and a multitude of other things. She would not let me send for him when I got there. It had gone so far as that. She said that the whole business disgusted him, that he had lost all interest in her, that to hear it was over might be a relief to him, but nothing more. Her heart has turned altogether against him, John, in every way. There have been a hundred things. You think I am almost wickedly glad to have her home. And so I am. I cannot deny it. To have her here even in her trouble makes all the difference to me. But I am not so careless as you think. I can look beyond to other things. I shrink as much as you do from such a collapse of her life. I don’t want her to give up her duty, and now that there is the additional bond of the child——”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said John, “leave the child out of it! I want to hear nothing of the child!”
“That is one chief point, however, that we want your advice about, John. A man, I suppose, does not understand it; but her baby is everything to Elinor: and I suppose—unless he can really be proved as guilty as she thinks—he could take the child away.”
John smiled to himself a little bitterly; this was why he was sent for in such a hurry, not for the sake of his society, or from any affection for him, but that he might tell them what steps to take to secure them in possession of the child. He said nothing for some time, nor did Mrs. Dennistoun, whose disappointment in the coldness of his response was considerable, and whowaited in vain for him to speak. At length she said, almost tremblingly, “I am afraid you disapprove very much of the whole business, John.”
“I hope it has not been done rashly,” he said. “The husband’s mere absence, though heartless as—as I should have expected of the fellow—would yet not be reason enough to satisfy any—court.”
“Any court! You don’t think she means to bring him before any court? She wants only to be left alone. We ask nothing from him, not a penny, not any money—surely, surely no revenge—only not to be molested. There shall not be a word said on our side, if he will but let her alone.”
John shook his head. “It all depends upon the view the man takes of it,” he said.
Now this was very cold comfort to Mrs. Dennistoun, who had by this time become very secure in her position, feeling herself entirely justified in all that she had done. “The man,” she said, “the man is not the sufferer: and surely the woman has some claim to be heard.”
“Every claim,” said John. “That is not what I was thinking of. It is this: if the man has a leg to stand upon, he will show fight. If he hasn’t—why that will make the whole difference, and probably Elinor’s position will be quite safe. But you yourself say——”
“John, don’t throw back upon me what I myself said. I said that perhaps things were not so bad as she believed. In my experience I have found that folly, andplaying with everything that is right is more common than absolute wrong—and men like Philip Compton are made up of levity and disregard of everything that is serious.”
“In that case,” said John, “if you are right, he will not let her go.”
“Oh, John! oh, John! don’t make me wish that he may be a worse man than I think. He could not force her to go back to him, feeling as she does.”
“Nobody can force a woman to do that; but he could perhaps make her position untenable; he would, perhaps, take away the child.”
“John,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, in alarm, “if you tell her that, she will fly off with him to the end of the world. She will die before she will part with the child.”
“I suppose that’s how women are made,” said John, not yet cured of his personal offence.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s how women are made.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said, coming to himself; “but you know, aunt, a man may be pardoned for not understanding that supreme fascination of the baby who cares no more for one than another, poor little animal, so long as it gets its food and is warm enough. We must await and see what the man will do.”
“Is that the best?—is there nothing we can do to defend ourselves in the meantime—to make any sort of barricade against him?”
“We must wait and see what he is going to do,” saidJohn; and they went over and over the question, again and again, as they climbed the hills. It grew quite dark as they drove along, and when they came out upon the open part of the road, from which the Cottage was visible, they both looked out across the combe to the lights in the windows with an involuntary movement. The Cottage was transformed; instead of the one lonely lighted window which had indicated to John in former visits where Mrs. Dennistoun sat alone, there was now a twinkle from various points, a glow of firelight, a sensation of warmth, and company. Mrs. Dennistoun looked out upon it and her face shone. It was not a happy thing that Elinor should have made shipwreck of her life, should have left her husband and sought refuge in her mother’s house. But how could it be otherwise than happy that Elinor was there—Elinor and the other little creature who was something more than Elinor, herself and yet another? As for John, he looked at it too, with an interest which stopped all arguments on the cause of it. She was there—wrong, perhaps, impatient; too quick to fly as she had been too quick to go—but still Elinor all the same, whether she was right or wrong.
The cab arrived soberly at the door, where Pearson with the pony carriage, coming by the shorter way with the luggage, had just arrived also. Mrs. Dennistoun said, hurriedly, “You will find Elinor in the drawing-room, John,” and herself went hastily through the house and up the stairs. She was going to the baby!John guessed this with a smile of astonishment and half contempt. How strange it was! There could not be a more sad position than that in which, in their rashness, these two women had placed themselves; and yet the mother, a woman of experience, who ought to have known better, got out of the carriage like a girl, without waiting to be helped or attended to, and went up-stairs like the wind, forgetting everything else for that child—that child, the inheritor of Phil Compton’s name and very likely of his qualities—fated from his birth (most likely) to bring trouble to everybody connected with him! And yet Elinor was of less interest to her mother. What strange caprices of nature! what extraordinary freaks of womankind!
The Cottage down-stairs was warm and bright with firelight and lamplight, and in the great chair by the fire was reclining, lying back with her book laid on her lap and her face full of eager attention to the sounds outside, a pale young woman, surrounded by cushions and warm wraps and everything an invalid could require, who raised to him eyes more large and shining than he had ever seen before, suffused with a dew of pain and pleasure and eager welcome. Elinor, was it Elinor? He had never seen her in any way like an invalid before—never knew her to be ill, or weak, or unable to walk out to the door and meet him or anyone she cared for. The sight of her ailing, weak, with those large glistening eyes, enlarged by feebleness, went to his very heart. Fortunately he did not in any way connect this enfeebled state with the phenomenon up-stairs, which was best for all parties. He hurried up to her, taking her thin hands into his own.
“Elinor! my poor little Nelly—can this be you!”
The water that was in her eyes rolled over in two great tears; a brief convulsion went over her face. “Yes, John,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Strange as it may seem, this is all that is left of me.”
He sat down beside her and for a moment neither of them spoke. Pity, tenderness, wrath, surged up together in John’s breast; pity, tender compassion, most strong of all. Poor little thing; this was how she had come back to her home; her heart broken, her wings broken, as it were; all her soaring and swiftness and energy gone. He could scarcely look upon her for the pity that overflowed his heart. But underneath lay wrath, not only against the man who had brought her to such a pass, but against herself too.
“John,” she said, after a while, “do you remember saying to me that I was not one to bear, to put up with things, to take the consequences if I tried a dangerous experiment and failed?”
“Did I ever say anything so silly and so cruel?”
“Oh, no, no; it was neither silly nor unkind, but quite, quite true. I have thought of it so often. I used to think of it to stir up my pride, to remind myself that I ought to try to be better than my nature, not to allow you to be a true prophet. But it was so, and I couldn’t change it. You can see you were right, John,for I have not been like a strong woman, able to endure; I have only been able to run away.”
“My poor little Nelly!”
“Don’t pity me,” she said, the tears running over again. “I am too well off; I am too well taken care of. A prodigal should not be made so much of as I am.”
“Don’t call yourself a prodigal, Nelly! Perhaps things may not be as bad as they appear. At least, it is but the first fall—the greatest athlete gets many before he can stand against the world.”
“I’ll never be an athlete, John. Besides, I’m a woman, you know, and a fall of any kind is fatal to a woman, especially anything of this kind. No, I know very well it’s all over; I shall never hold up my head again. But that’s not the question—the question is, to be safe and as free as can be. Mamma takes me in, you know, just as if nothing had happened. She is quite willing to take the burden of me on her shoulders—and of baby. She has told you that there are two of me, now, John—my baby, as well as myself.”
John could only nod an assent; he could not speak.
“It’s a wonderful thing to come out of a wreck with a treasure in one’s arms; everything going to pieces behind one; the rafters coming down, the walls falling in and yet one’s treasure in one’s arms. Oh, I had not the heart or the strength to come out of the tumbling house. My mother did it all, dragged me out, wrapped me up in love and kindness; carried me away. I don’t want you to think I was good for anything. I shouldjust have lain there and died. One thing, I did not mind dying at all—I had quite made up my mind. That would not have been so disgraceful as running away.”
“There is nothing that is disgraceful,” said John, “for heaven’s sake don’t say so, Nelly. It is unfortunate—beyond words—but that is all. Nobody can think that you are in any way disgraced. And if you are allowed just to stay quietly here in your natural home, I suppose you desire nothing more.”
“What should I desire more, John? You don’t suppose I should like to go and live in the world again, and go into society and all that? I have had about enough of society. Oh, I want nothing but to be quiet and unmolested, and bring up my baby. They could not take my baby from me, John?”
“I do not think so,” he said, with a grave face.
“You do not—think so? Then you are notsure? My mother says dreadful things, but I cannot believe them. They would never take an infant from its mother to give it to—to give it to—a man—who could do nothing, nothing for it. What could a man do with a young child? a man always on the move, who has no settled home, who has no idea what an infant wants? John, I know law is inhuman, but surely, surely not so inhuman as that.”
“My dear Nelly,” he said, “the law, you know, which, as you say, is often inhuman, recognizes the child as belonging to the father. He is responsible for it. For instance, they never could come upon you for its maintenance or education, or anything of that kind, until it had been proved that the father——”
“May I ask,” said Elinor, with uplifted head, “of what or of whom you are talking when you sayit?”
It was all John could do not to burst into a peal of aggrieved and indignant laughter. He who had been brought from town, from his own comforts such as they were, to be consulted about this brat, this child which belonged to the dis-Honourable Phil; and Elinor,Elinor, of all people in the world, threw up her head and confronted him with disdain because he called the brat it, and not him or her, whichever it was. John recollected well enough that sentence at which he had been so indignant in the telegram—“child, a boy”—but he affected to himself not to know what it was for the indulgence of a little contumely: and the reward he had got was contumely upon his own head. But when he looked at Elinor’s pale face, the eyes so much larger than they ought to be, with tears welling out unawares, dried up for a moment by indignation or quick hasty temper, the temper which made her sweeter words all the more sweet he had always thought—then rising again unawares under the heavy lids, the lips so ready to quiver, the pathetic lines about the mouth: when he looked at all these John’s heart smote him. He would have called the child anything, if there had been a sex superior to him the baby should have it. And what was there that man could do that he would not do for the deliverance of the mother and the child?
Itcannot be said that this evening at the Cottage was an agreeable one. To think that Elinor should be there, and yet that there should be so little pleasure in the fact that the old party, which had once been so happy together, should be together again, was bewildering. And yet there was one member of it who was happy with a shamefaced unacknowledged joy. To think that that which made her child miserable should make her happy was a dreadful thought to Mrs. Dennistoun, and yet how could she help it? Elinor was there, and the baby was there, the new unthought-of creature which had brought with it a new anxiety, a rush of new thoughts and wishes. Already everything else in the mind of Elinor’s mother began to yield to the desire to retain these two—the new mother and the child. But she did not avow this desire. She was mostly silent, taking little part in the discussion, which was indeed a very curious discussion, since Elinor, debating the question how she was to abandon her husband and defend herself against him, never mentioned his name.
She did not come in to dinner, which Mrs. Dennistoun and John Tatham ate solemnly alone, saying but little, trying to talk upon indifferent topics, with that very wretched result which is usual when people at oneof the great crises of life have to make conversation for each other while servants are about and the restraints of common life are around them. Whether it is the terrible flood of grief which has to be barred and kept within bounds so that the functions of life may not altogether be swept away, or the sharper but warmer pang of anxiety, that which cuts like a serpent’s tooth, yet is not altogether beyond the reach of hope, what poor pretences these are at interest in ordinary subjects; what miserable gropings after something that can furnish a thread of conversation just enough to keep the intercourse of life going! These two were not more successful than others in this dismal pursuit. Mrs. Dennistoun found a moment when the meal was over before she left John, poor pretence! to his wine. “Remember that she will not mention his name; nothing must be said about him,” she said. “How can we discuss him and what he is likely to do without speaking of him?” said John, with a little scorn. “I don’t know,” replied the poor lady. “But you will find that she will not have his name mentioned. You must try and humour her. Poor Elinor! For I know that you are sorry for her, John.”
Sorry for her! He sat over his glass of mild claret in the little dining-room that had once been so bright: even now it was the cosiest little room, the curtains all drawn, shutting out the cold wind, which in January searches out every crevice, the firelight blazing fitfully, bringing out all the pretty warm decorations, the gleamof silver on the side-board, the pictures on the wall, the mirror over the mantelpiece. There was nothing wanted under that roof to make it the very home of domestic warmth and comfort. And yet—sorry for Elinor! That was not the word. His heart was sore for her, torn away from all her moorings, drifting back a wreck to the little youthful home, where all had been so tranquil and so sweet. John had nothing in him of that petty sentiment which derives satisfaction from a calamity it has foreseen, nor had he even an old lover’s thrill of almost pleasure in the downfall of the clay idol that has been preferred to his gold. His pain for Elinor, the constriction in his heart at thought of her position, were unmixed with any baser feeling. Sorry for her! He would have given all he possessed to restore her happiness—not in his way, but in the way she had chosen, even, last abnegation of all, to make the man worthy of her who had never been worthy. Even his own indignation and wrath against that man were subservient in John’s honest breast to the desire of somehow finding that it might be possible to whitewash him, nay to reform him, to make him as near as possible something which she could tolerate for life. I doubt if a woman, notwithstanding the much more ready power of sacrifice which women possess, could have so fully desired this renewal and amendment as John did. It was scarcely too much to say that he hated Phil Compton: yet he would have given the half of his substance at this moment to make Phil Comptona good man; nay, even to make him a passable man—to rehabilitate him in his wife’s eyes.
John stayed a long time over “his wine,” the mild glass of claret (or perhaps it was Burgundy) which was all that was offered him—partly to think the matter over, but also partly perhaps because he heard certain faint gurglings, and the passage of certain steps, active and full of energy, past the door of the room within which he sat, going now to the drawing-room, now up-stairs, from which he divined that the new inmate of the house was at present in possession of the drawing-room, and of all attention there. He smiled at himself for his hostility to the child, which, of course, was entirely innocent of all blame. Here the man was inferior to the woman in comprehension and sympathy; for he not only could not understand how they could possibly obtain solace in their trouble from this unconscious little creature, but he was angry and scornful of them for doing so. Phil Compton’s brat, no doubt the germ of a thousand troubles to come, but besides that a nothing, a being without love or thought, or even consciousness, a mere little animal feeding and sleeping—and yet the idol and object of all the thoughts of two intelligent women, capable of so much better things! This irritated John and disgusted him in the midst of all his anxious thoughts, and his profound compassion and deliberations how best to help: and it was not till the passage of certain feeble sounds outside his door, which proceeded audibly up-stairs, littlebleatings in which, if they had come from a lamb, or even a puppy, John would have been interested, assured him that the small enemy had disappeared—that he finally rose and proceeded to “join the ladies,” as if he had been holding a little private debauch all by himself.
There was a little fragrance and air of the visitor still in the room, a little disturbance of the usual arrangements, a surreptitious, quite unjustifiable look as of pleasure in Elinor’s eyes, which were less expanded, and if as liquid as ever, more softly bright than before. Something white actually lay on the sofa, a small garment which Mrs. Dennistoun whisked away. They were conscious of John’s critical eye upon them, and received him with a warmth of conciliatory welcome which betrayed that consciousness. Mrs. Dennistoun drew a chair for him to the other side of the fire. She took her own place in the middle at the table with a large piece of white knitting, to which she gave her whole attention, and thus the deliberation began.
“Elinor wants to know, John, what you think we ought to do—to make quite sure—that there will be no risk, about the baby.”
“I must know more of the details of the question before I can give any advice,” said John.
“John,” said Elinor, raising herself in her chair, “here are all the details that are necessary. I have come away. I have come home, finding that life wasimpossible there. That is the whole matter. It may be, probably it is, my own fault. It is simply that life became impossible. You know you said that I was not one to endure, to put up with things. I scoffed at you then, for I did not expect to have anything to put up with; but you were quite right, and life had become impossible—that is all there is any need to say.”
“To me, yes,” said John, “but not enough, Elinor, if it ever has to come within the reach of the law.”
“But why should it come within the reach of the law? You, John, you are a lawyer; you know the rights of everything. I thought you might have arranged it all. Couldn’t you try to make a kind of a bargain? What bargain? Oh, am I a lawyer, do I know? But you, John, who have it all at your fingers’ ends, who know what can be done and what can’t be done, and the rights that one has and that another has! Dear John! if you were to try, don’t you think that you could settle it all, simply as between people who don’t want any exposure, any struggle, but only to be quiet and to be let alone?”
“Elinor, I don’t know what I could do with so little information as I have. To know that you found your life impossible is enough for me. But you know most people are right in their own eyes. If we have some one opposed to us who thinks, for instance, that the fault was yours?”
“Well,” she cried, eagerly, “I am willing to accept that: say that the fault was mine! You could confirmit, that it was likely to be mine. You could tell them what an impatient person I was, and that you said I was not one to try an experiment, for I never, never could put up with anything. John, you could be a witness as well as an advocate. You could prove that you always expected—and that I am quite, quite willing to allow that it was I——”
“Elinor, if I could only make you understand what I mean! I am told that I am not to mention any names?”
“No, no names, no names! What is the good? We both know very well what we mean.”
“But I don’t know very well what you mean. Don’t you see that if it is your fault—if the other party is innocent—there can be no reason in the world why he should consent to renounce his rights. It is not a mere matter of feeling. There is right in it one way or another—either on your side or else on the other side; and if it is on the other side, why should a man give up what belongs to him, why should he renounce what is—most dear to him?”
“Oh, John, John, John!” she made this appeal and outcry, clasping her hands together with a mixture of supplication and impatience. Then turning to her mother—“Oh, tell him,” she cried, “tell him!”—always clasping those impatient yet beseeching hands.
“You see, John,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “Elinor knows that the right is on her side: but she will consent to say nothing about it to any one—to give herself out as the offender rather—that is to say, as an ill-disciplined person that cannot put up with anything, as you seem to have said.”
John laughed with vexation, yet a kind of amusement. “I never said it nor thought it: still if it pleases her to think so—— The wiser thing if this separation is final——”
“If it is final!” Elinor cried. She raised herself up again in her chair, and contemplated the unfortunate John with a sort of tragic superiority. “Do you think that of me,” she said, “that I would take such a step as this and that it should not be final? Is dying final? Could one do such a thing as this and change?”
“Such things have been done,” said John. “Elinor, forgive me. I must say it—it is all your life that is in the balance, and another life. There is this infant to be struggled over, perhaps rent in two by those who should have united to take care of him—and it’s a boy, I hear. There’s his name and his after-life to think of—a child without a father, perhaps the heir of a family to which he will not belong. Elinor—tell her, aunt, you understand: is it my wish to hand her back to—to—— No, I’ll speak no names. But you know I disliked it always, opposed it always. It is not out of any favour to—to the other side. But she ought to take all these things into account. Her own position, and the position in the future of the child——”
Elinor had crushed her fan with her hands, and Mrs. Dennistoun let the knitting with which she had gone on in spite of all fall at last in her lap. There was a littlepause. John Tatham’s voice itself had begun to falter, or rather swelled in sound as when a stream swells in flood.
“I do not go into the question about women and what they ought to put up with,” said John, resuming. “There’s many things that law can do nothing for—and nature in many ways makes it harder for women, I acknowledge. We cannot change that. Think what her position will be—neither a wife nor with the freedom of a widow; and the boy, bearing the name of one he must almost be taught to think badly of—for one of them must be in the wrong——”
“He shall never, never hear that name; he shall know nothing, he shall be free of every bond; his mind shall never be cramped or twisted or troubled by any—man—if I live.”
This Elinor said, lifting her pale face from her hands with eyes that flashed and shone with a blaze of excitement and weakness.
“There already,” said John, “is a tremendous condition—if you live! Who can make sure that they will live? We must all die—some sooner, some later—and you wearing yourself out with excitement, that never were strong; you exposing your heart, the weakest organ——”
“John,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, grasping him by the arm, “you are talking nonsense, you don’t know what you are saying. My darling! she was never weak nor had a feeble heart, nor—anything! She will live tobring uphischildren, her baby’s children, upon her knees.”
“And what would it matter?” said Elinor—looking at him with clear eyes, from which the tears had disappeared in the shock of this unlooked-for suggestion—“suppose I have no more strength than that, suppose I were to die? you shall be his guardian, John, bring him up a good man; and his Heavenly Father will take care of him. I am not afraid.”
A man had better not deal with such subjects between two women. What with Mrs. Dennistoun’s indignant protest and Elinor’s lofty submission, John was at his wits’ end. “I did not mean to carry things to such a bitter end as that,” he said. “You want to force me into a corner and make me say things I never meant. The question is serious enough without that.”
There was again a little pause, and then Elinor, with one of those changes which are so perplexing to soberminded people, suddenly turned to him, holding out both her hands.
“John—we’ll leave that in God’s hands whatever is to happen to me. But in the meantime, while I am living—and perhaps my life depends upon being quiet and having a little peace and rest. It is not that I care very much for my life,” said Elinor, with that clear, open-eyed look, like the sky after rain—“I am shipwrecked, John, as you say—but my mother does, and it’s of—some—consequence—to baby; and if it depends upon whether I am left alone, you are too good a friendto leave me in the lurch. And you said—one night—whatever happened I was to send for you.”
John sprang up from his seat, dropping the hands which he had taken into his own. She was like Queen Katherine, “about to weep,” and her breast strained with the sobbing effort to keep it down.
“For God’s sake,” he cried, “don’t play upon our hearts like this! I will do anything—everything—whatever you choose to tell me. Aunt, don’t let her cry, don’t let her go on like that. Why, good heavens!” he cried, bursting himself into a kind of big sob, “won’t it be bad for that little brat of a baby or something if she keeps going on in this way?”
Thus John Tatham surrendered at discretion. What could he do more? A man cannot be played upon like an instrument without giving out sounds of which he will, perhaps, be ashamed. And this woman appealing to him—this girl—looking like the little Elinor he remembered, younger and softer in her weakness and trouble than she had been in her beauty and pride—was the creature after all, though she would never know it, whom he loved best in the world. He had wanted to save her, in the one worldly way of saving her, from open shipwreck, for her own sake, against every prejudice and prepossession of his mind. But if she would not have that, why it was his business to save her as she wished, to do for her whatever she wanted; to act as her agent, her champion, whatever she pleased.
He was sent away presently, and accepted his dismissal with thankfulness, to smoke his cigar. This is one amusing thing in a feminine household. A man is supposed to want all manner of little indulgences and not to be able to do without them. He is carefully left alone over “his wine”—the aforesaid glass of claret; and ways and means are provided for him to smoke his cigar, whether he wishes it or not. He had often laughed at these regulations of his careful relatives, but he was rather glad of them to-night. “I am going to get Elinor to bed,” said Mrs. Dennistoun. “It has, perhaps, been a little too much for her: but when you have finished your cigar, John, if you will come back to the drawing-room for a few minutes you will find me here.”
John did not smoke any cigar. It is all very well to be soothed and consoled by tobacco in your own room, at your own ease: but when you are put into a lady’s dining-room, where everything is nice, and where the curtains will probably smell of smoke next morning: and when your mind is exercised beyond even the power of the body to keep still, that is not a time to enjoy such calm and composing delights. But he walked about the room in which he was shut up like a wild beast in his cage, sometimes with long strides from wall to wall, sometimes going round, with that abstract trick of his, staring at the pictures, as if he did not know every picture in the place by heart. He forgot that he was to go back to the drawing-room again after Elinor had been taken to bed, and it was only after havingwaited for him a long time that Mrs. Dennistoun came, almost timidly, knocking at her own dining-room door, afraid to disturb her visitor in the evening rites which she believed in so devoutly. She did go in, however, and they stood together over the fire for a few minutes, he staring down upon the glow at his feet, she contemplating fitfully, unconsciously, her own pale face and his in the dim mirror on the mantelpiece. They talked in low tones about Elinor and her health, and her determination which nothing would change.
“Of course I will do it,” said John; “anything—whatever she may require of me—there are no two words about that. There is only one thing: I will not compromise her by taking any initiative. Let us wait and see what they are going to do——”
“But, John, might it not be better to disarm him by making overtures? anything, I would do anything if he would but let her remain unmolested—and the baby.”
“Do you mean money?” he said.
Mrs. Dennistoun gave him an abashed look, deprecatory and wistful, but did not make any reply.
“Phil Compton is a cad, and a brute, and a scamp of the first water,” said John, glad of some way to get rid of his excitement; “but I do not think that even he would sell his wife and his child for money. I wouldn’t do him so much discredit as that.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, John,” Mrs. Dennistoun said.
Johnleft the Cottage next morning with the full conduct of the affairs of the family placed in his hands. The ladies were both a little doubtful if his plan was the best—they were still frightened for what might happen, and kept up a watch, as John perceived, fearing every step that approached, trembling at every shadow. They remembered many stories, such as rush to the minds of persons in trouble, of similar cases, of the machinations of the bad father whose only object was to overcome and break down his wife, and who stole his child away to let it languish and die. There are some circumstances in which people forget all the shades of character, and take it for granted that a man who can go wrong in one matter will act like a very demon in all. This was doubly strong in Mrs. Dennistoun, a woman full of toleration and experience; but the issues were so momentous to her, and the possible results so terrible, that she lost her accustomed good sense. It was more natural, perhaps, that Elinor, who was weak in health and still full of the arbitrariness of youth, should entertain this fear—without considering that Phil was the very last man in the world to burden himself with an infant of the most helpless age—which seemed to John an almost quite unreasonable one. Almost—for, of course, he too was compelled to allow,when driven into a corner, that there was nothing that an exasperated man might not do. Elinor had come down early to see her cousin before he left the house, bringing with her in her arms the little bundle of muslin and flannel upon the safety of which her very life seemed to depend. John looked at it, and at the small pink face and unconscious flickering hands that formed the small centre to all those wrappings, with a curious mixture of pity and repugnance. It was like any other blind new-born kitten or puppy, he thought, but not so amusing—no, it was not blind, to be sure. At one moment, without any warning, it suddenly opened a pair of eyes, which by a lively exercise of fancy might be supposed like Elinor’s, and seemed to look him in the face, which startled him very much, with a curious notification of the fact that the thing was not a kitten or a puppy. But then a little quiver came over the small countenance, and the attendant said it was “the wind.” Perhaps the opening of the eyes was the wind too, or some other automatic effect. He would not hold out his finger to be clasped tight by the little flickering fist, as Elinor would have had him. He would none of those follies; he turned away from it not to allow himself to be moved by the effect, quite a meretricious one, of the baby in the young mother’s arms. That was all poetry, sentiment, the trick of the painter, who had found the combination beautiful. Such ideas belonged, indeed, to the conventional-sacred, and he had never felt any profane resistance of mind againstthe San Sisto picture or any of its kind. But Phil Compton’s brat was a very different thing. What did it matter what became of it? If it were not for Elinor’s perverse feeling on the subject, and that perfectly imbecile prostration of her mother, a sensible woman who ought to have known better, before the little creature, he would himself have been rather grateful to Phil Compton for taking it away. But when he saw the look of terror upon Elinor’s face when an unexpected step came to the door, when he saw her turn and fly, wrapping the child in her arms, on her very heart as it seemed, bending over it, covering it so that it disappeared altogether in her embrace, John’s heart was a little touched. It was only a hawking tramp with pins and needles, who came by mistake to the hall door, but her panic and anguish of alarm were a spectacle which he could not get out of his eyes.
“You see, she never feels safe for a moment. It will be hard to persuade her that that man, though I’ve seen him about the roads for years, is not an emissary—or a spy—to find out if she is here.”
“I am sure it is quite an unnecessary panic,” said John. “In the first place, Phil Compton’s the last man to burden himself with a child; in the second, he’s not a brute nor a monster.”
“You called him a brute last night, John.”
“I did not mean in that way. I don’t mean to stand by any rash word that may be forced from me in a moment of irritation. Aunt, get her to give over that.She’ll torture herself to death for nothing. He’ll not try to take the child away—not just now, at all events, not while it is a mere—— Bring her to her senses on that point. You surely can do that?”
“If I was quite sure of being in my own,” Mrs. Dennistoun said, with a forlorn smile. “I am as much frightened as she is, John. And, remember, if there is anything to be done—anything——”
“There is nothing but a little common sense wanted,” said John. But as he drove away from the door, and saw the hawker with the needles still about, the ladies had so infected him that it was all he could do to restrain an inclination to take the vagrant by the collar and throw him down the combe.
“Who’s that fellow hanging about?” he said to Pearson, who was driving him; “and what does he want here?”
“Bless you, sir! that’s Joe,” Pearson said. “He’s after no harm. He’s honest enough as long as there ain’t nothing much in his way; and he’s waiting for the pieces as cook gives him once a week when he comes his rounds. There’s no harm in poor Joe.”
“I suppose not, since you say so,” said John; “but you know the ladies are rather nervous, Pearson. You must keep a look-out that no suspicious-looking person hangs about the house.”
“Bless us! Mr. John,” said Pearson, “what are they nervous about?—the baby? But nobody wants to steal a baby, bless your soul!”
“I quite agree with you,” said John, much relieved (though he considered Pearson an old fool, in a general way) to have his own opinion confirmed. “But, all the same, I wish you would be doubly particular not to admit anybody you don’t know; and if any man should appear to bother them send for me on the moment. Do you hear?”
“What do you call any man, sir?” said Pearson, smartly. He had ideas of his own, though he might be a fool.
“I mean what I say,” said John, more sharply still. “Any one that molests or alarms them. Send me off a telegram at once—‘You’re wanted!’ That will be quite enough. But don’t go with it to the office yourself; send somebody—there’s always your boy about the place—and keep about like a dragon yourself.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” said Pearson, “though I don’t know what a dragon is, except it’s the one in the Bible; and that’s not a thing anybody would want about the place.”
It was a comfort to John, after all his troubles, to be able to laugh, which he did with a heartiness which surprised Pearson, who was quite unaware that he had made any joke.
These fears, however, which were imposed upon him by the contagion of the terrors of the others, soon passed from John’s mind. He was convinced that Phil Compton would take no such step; and that, however much he might wish his wife to return, the possession of the baby was not a thing which he would struggle over. It cannot be denied, however, that he was anxious, and eagerly inspected his letters in the morning, and looked out for telegrams during the day. Fortunately, however, no evil tidings came. Mrs. Dennistoun reported unbroken peace in the Cottage and increasing strength on the part of Elinor; and, in a parenthesis with a sort of apology, of the baby. Nobody had come near them to trouble them. Elinor had received no letters. The tie between her and her husband seemed to be cut as with a knife. “We cannot of course,” she said, “expect this tranquillity to last.”
And it came to be a very curious thought with John, as week after week passed, whether it was to last—whether Phil Compton, who had never been supposed wanting in courage, intended to let his wife and child drop off from him as if they had never been. This seemed a thing impossible to conceive: but John said to himself with much internal contempt that he knew nothing of the workings of the mind of such a man, and that it might for aught he knew be a common incident in life with the Phil Comptons thus to shake off their belongings when they got tired of them. The fool! the booby! to get tired of Elinor! That rumour which flies about the world so strangely and communicates information about everybody to the vacant ear, to be retailed to those whom it may concern, provided him, as the days went by, with many particulars which he had not been able to obtain from Elinor.Phil, it appeared, had gone to Glenorban—the great house to which he had been invited—alone, with an excuse for his wife, whose state of health was not appropriate to a large party, and had stayed there spending Christmas with a brilliant houseful of guests, among whom was the American lady who had captivated him. Phil had paid one visit to the lodge to see Elinor, by her mother’s summons, at the crisis of her illness, but had not hesitated to go away again when informed that the crisis was over. Mrs. Dennistoun never told what had passed between them on that occasion, but the gossips of the club were credibly informed that she had bullied and stormed at Phil, after the fashion of mothers-in-law, till she had driven him away. Upon which he had returned to his party and flirted with Mrs. Harris more than ever. John discovered also that the party having dispersed some time ago, Phil had gone abroad. Whether in ignorance of his wife’s flight or not he could not discover; but it was almost impossible to believe that he would have gone to Monte Carlo without finding out something about Elinor—how and where she was. But whether this was the cause of his utter silence, or whether it was the habit of men of his class to treat such tremendous incidents in domestic life with levity, John Tatham could not make out. He was congratulating himself, however, upon keeping perfectly quiet, and leaving the conduct of the matter to the other party, when the silence was disturbed in what seemed to him the most curious way.
One afternoon when he returned from the court he was aware, when he entered the outer office in which his clerk abode, of what he described afterwards as a smell fit to knock you down. It would have been described more appropriately in a French novel as the special perfume, subtle and exquisite, by which a beautiful woman may be recognised wherever she goes. It was, indeed, neither more nor less than the particular scent used by Lady Mariamne, who came forward with a sweep and rustle of her draperies, and the most ingratiating of her smiles.
“It appears to be fated that I am to wait for you,” she said. “How do you do, Mr. Tatham? Take me out of this horrible dirty place. I am quite sure you have some nice rooms in there.” She pointed as she spoke to the inner door, and moved towards it with the air of a person who knew where she was going, and was fully purposed to be admitted. John said afterwards, that to think of this woman’s abominable scent being left in his room in which he lived (though he also received his clients in it) was almost more than he could bear. But, in the meantime, he could do nothing but open the door to her, and offer her his most comfortable chair.
She seated herself with all those little tricks of movement which are also part of the stock-in-trade of the pretty woman. Lady Mariamne’s prettiness was not of a kind which had the slightest effect upon John, but still it was a kind which received credit in society, beingthe product of a great deal of pains and care and exquisite arrangement and combination. She threw her fur cloak back a little, arranged the strings of her bonnet under her chin, which threw up the daintiness and rosiness of a complexion about which there were many questions among her closest friends. She shook up, with what had often been commented upon as the prettiest gesture, the bracelets from her wrists. She arranged the veil, which just came over the tip of her delicate nose, she put out her foot as if searching for a footstool—which John made haste to supply, though he remained unaffected otherwise by all these pretty preliminaries.
“Sit down, Mr. Tatham,” then said Lady Mariamne. “It makes me wretchedly uncomfortable, as if you were some dreadful man waiting to be paid or something, to see you standing there.”
Though John’s first impulse was that of wrath to be thus requested to sit down in his own chambers, the position was amusing as well as disagreeable, and he laughed and drew a chair towards his writing-table, which was as crowded and untidy as the writing-table of a busy man usually is, and placed himself in an attitude of attention, though without asking any question.
“Well,” said Lady Mariamne, slowly drawing off her glove; “you know, of course, why I have come, Mr. Tatham—to talk over with you, as a man who knows the world, this deplorable business. You see it hascome about exactly as I said. I knew what would happen: and though I am not one of those people who always insist upon being proved right, you remember what I said——”
“I remember that you said something—to which, perhaps, had I thought I should have been called upon to give evidence as to its correctness—I should have paid more attention, Lady Mariamne.”
“How rude you are!” she said, with her whole interest concentrated upon the slow removal of her glove. Then she smoothed a little, softly, the pretty hand which was thus uncovered, and said, “How red one’s hands get in this weather,” and then laughed. “You don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Tatham,” she said, suddenly raising her eyes to his, “that, considering what a very particular person we were discussing, you can’t remember what I said?”
John was obliged to confess that he remembered more or less the gist of her discourse, and Lady Mariamne nodded her head many times in acceptance of his confession.
“Well,” she said, “you see what it has come to. An open scandal, a separation, and everything broken up. For one thing, I knew if she did not give him his head a little that’s what would happen. I don’t believe he cares a brass farthing for that other woman. She makes fun of everybody, and that amused him. And it amused him to put Nell in a state—that as much as anything. Why couldn’t she see that and learn toprendre son partilike other people? She was free to say, ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine:’ the most of us do that sooner or later: but to make a vulgar open rupture, and go off—like this.”
“I fail to see the vulgarity in it,” said John.
“Oh, of course; everything she does is perfect to you. But just think, if it had been your own case—followed about and bullied by a jealous woman, in a state of health that of itself disgusts a man——”
“Lady Mariamne, you must pardon me if I refuse to listen to anything more of this kind,” said John, starting to his feet.
“Oh, I warn you, you’ll be compelled to listen to a great deal more if you’re her agent as I hear! Phil will find means of compelling you to hear if you don’t like to take your information from me.”
“I should like to know how Mr. Phil Compton will succeed in compelling me—to anything I don’t choose to do.”
“You think, perhaps, because there’s no duelling in this country he can’t do anything. But there is, all the same. He would shame you into it—he could say you were—sheltering yourself——”
“I am not a man to fight duels,” said John, very angry, but smiling, “in any circumstances, even were such a thing not utterly ridiculous; but even a fighting man might feel that to put himself on a level with the dis-Hon——”
He stopped himself as he said it. How mean it was—to a woman!—descending to their own methods. But Lady Mariamne was too quick for him.
“Oh,” she said; “so you’ve heard of that, a nickname that no gentleman——” then she too paused and looked at him, with a momentary flush. He was going to apologize abjectly, when with a slight laugh she turned the subject aside.
“Pretty fools we are, both of us, to talk such nonsense. I didn’t come here carrying Phil on my shoulders, to spring at your throat if you expressed your opinion. Look here—tell me, don’t let us go beating about the bush, Mr. Tatham—I suppose you have seen Nell?”
“I know my cousin’s mind, at least,” he said.
“Well, then, just tell me as between friends—there’s no need we should quarrel because they have done so. Tell me this, is she going to get up a divorce case——”
“A divorce——!”
“Because,” said Lady Mariamne, “she’ll find it precious difficult to prove anything. I know she will. She may prove the flirting and so forth—but what’s that? You can tell her from me, it wants somebody far better up to things than she is to prove anything. I warn her as a friend she’ll not get much good by that move.”
“I am not aware,” said John, “whether Mrs. Compton has made up her mind about the further steps——”
“Then just you advise her not,” cried Lady Mariamne. “It doesn’t matter to me: I shall be nonethe worse whatever she does: but if you are her true friend you will advise her not. She might tell what she thinks, but that’s no proof. Mr. Tatham, I know you have great influence with Nell.”
“Not in a matter like this,” said John, with great gravity. “Of course she alone can be the judge.”
“What nonsense you talk, you men! Of course she is not the least the judge, and of course she will be guided by you.”
“You may be sure she shall have the best advice that I can give,” John said with a bow.
“You want me to go, I see,” said Lady Mariamne; “you are dreadfully rude, standing up all the time to show me I had better go.” Hereupon she recommenced her little manège, drawing on her glove, letting her bracelets drop again, fastening the fur round her throat. “Well, Mr. Tatham,” she said, “I hope you mean to have the civility to see after my carriage. I can’t go roaming about hailing it as if it were a hansom cab—in this queer place.”