The Marriage of Elinor

"You know, John," she said, holding his arm tight with her two hands, "that nobody ever calls me Nelly – except you."

"Possibly I shall call you Nelly no longer. Why? Why, because that fellow will object."

"That fellow! Oh, he!" Elinor's face grew very red all over, from the chin, which almost touched John's arm, to the forehead, bent back a little over those eyes suffused with light which were intent upon all the changes of John's face. This one was, like the landscape, swept by all the vicissitudes of sun and shade. It was radiant now with the unexpected splendour of the sudden gleam.

"Oh, John, John, I have so much to say to you! He will object to nothing. He knows very well you are like my brother – almost more than my brother – for you could help it, John. You almost chose me for your friend, which a brother would not. He says, 'Get him to be our friend and all will be well!'"

He had not said this, but Elinor had said it to him, and he had assented, which was almost the same – in the way of reckoning of a girl, at least.

"He is very kind, I am sure," said John, gulping down something which had almost made him throw off Elinor's arm, and fling away from her in indignation. Her brother – !! But there was no use making any row, he said to himself. If anything were to be done for her he must put up with all that. There had suddenly come upon John, he knew not how, as he scanned her anxious face, a conviction that the man was a scamp, from whom at all hazards she should be free.

Said Elinor, unsuspecting, "That is just what he is, John! I knew you would divine his character at once. You can't think how kind he is – kind to everybody. He never judges anyone, or throws a stone, or makes an insinuation." ("Probably because he knows he cannot bear investigation himself," John said, in his heart.) "That was the thing that took my heart first. Everybody is so censorious – always something to say against their neighbours; he, never a word."

"That's a very good quality," said John, reluctantly, "if it doesn't mean confounding good with bad, and thinking nothing matters."

Elinor gave him a grieved, reproachful look, and loosened the clasping of her hands. "It is not like you to imagine that, John!"

"Well, what is a man to say? Don't you see, if you do nothing but blow his trumpet, the only thing left for me to do is to insinuate something against him? I don't know the man from Adam. He may be an angel, for anything I can say."

"No; I do not pretend he is that," said Elinor, with impartiality. "He has his faults, like others, but they are nice faults. He doesn't know how to take care of his money (but he hasn't got very much, which makes it the less matter), and he is sometimes taken in about his friends. Anybody almost that appeals to his kindness is treated like a friend, which makes precise people think – but, of course, I don't share that opinion in the very least."

("A very wasteful beggar, with a disreputable set," was John's practical comment within himself upon this speech.)

"And he doesn't know how to curry favour with people who can help him on; so that though he has been for years promised something, it never turns up. Oh, I know his faults very well indeed," said Elinor; "but a woman can do so much to make up for faults like that. We're naturally saving, you know, and we always keep those unnecessary friends that were made before our time at a distance; and it's part of our nature to coax a patron – that is what Mariamne says."

"Mariamne?" said John.

"His sister, who first introduced him to me; and I am very fond of her, so you need not say anything against her, John. I know she is – fashionable, but that's no harm."

"Mariamne," he repeated; "it is a very uncommon name. You don't mean Lady Mariamne Prestwich, do you? and not – not – Elinor! not Phil Compton, for goodness' sake? Don't tell me he's the man?"

Elinor's hands dropped from his arm. She drew herself up until she seemed to tower over him. "And why should I say it is not Mr. Compton," she asked, with a scarlet flush of anger, so different from that rosy red of love and happiness, covering her face.

"Phil Compton! the dis-Honourable Phil! Why, Elinor! you cannot mean it! you must not mean it!" he cried.

Elinor said not a word. She turned from him with a look of pathetic reproach but with the air of a queen, and walked into the house, he following in a ferment of wrath and trouble, yet humbled and miserable more than words could say. Oh, the flowery, peaceful house! jasmine and rose overleaping each other upon the porch, honeysuckle scenting the air, all manner of feminine contrivances to continue the greenness and the sweetness into the little bright hall, into the open drawing-room, where flowers stood on every table amid the hundred pretty trifles of a woman's house. There was no one in this room where she led him, and then turned round confronting him, taller than he had ever seen her before, pale, with her nostrils dilating and her lips trembling. "I never thought it possible that you of all people in the world, you, John – my stand-by since ever I was a baby – my – Oh! what a horrid thing it is to be a woman," cried Elinor, stamping her foot, "to be ready to cry for everything! – you, John! that I always put my trust in – that you should turn against me – and at the very first word!"

"Elinor," he said, "my dear girl! not against you, not against you, for all the world!"

"And what is me?" she said, with that sudden turning of the tables and high scorn of her previous argument which is common with women; "do I care what you do to me? Oh, nothing, nothing! I am of no account, you can trample me down under your feet if you like. But what I will not bear," she said, clenching her hands, "is injustice to him: that I will not bear, neither from you, Cousin John, who are only my distant cousin, after all, and have no right to thrust your advice upon me – or from any one in the world."

"What you say is quite true, Elinor, I am only a distant cousin – after all: but – "

"Oh, no, no," she cried, flying to him, seizing once more his arm with her clinging hands, "I did not mean that – you know I did not mean that, my more than brother, my good, good John, whom I have trusted all my life!"

And then the poor girl broke out into passionate weeping with her head upon his shoulder, as she might have leant upon the handy trunk of a tree, or on the nearest door or window, as John Tatham said in his heart. He soothed her as best he could, and put her in a chair and stood with his hand upon the back of it, looking down upon her as the fit of crying wore itself out. Poor little girl! he had seen her cry often enough before. A girl cries for anything, for a thorn in her finger, for a twist of her foot. He had seen her cry and laugh, and dash the tears out of her eyes on such occasions, oh! often and often: there was that time when he rushed out of the bushes unexpectedly and frightened her pony, and she fell among the grass and vowed, sobbing and laughing, it was her fault! and once when she was a little tot, not old enough for boy's play, when she fell upon her little nose and cut it and disfigured herself, and held up that wounded little knob of a feature to have it kissed and made well. Oh, why did he think of that now! the little thing all trust and simple confidence! There was that time too when she jumped up to get a gun and shoot the tramps who had hurt somebody, if John would but give her his hand! These things came rushing into his mind as he stood watching Elinor cry, with his hand upon the back of her chair.

She wanted John's hand now when she was going forth to far greater dangers. Oh, poor little Nelly! poor little thing! but he could not put her on his shoulder and carry her out to face the foe now.

She jumped up suddenly while he was thinking, with the tears still wet upon her cheeks, but the paroxysm mastered, and the light of her eyes coming out doubly bright like the sun from the clouds. "We poor women," she said with a laugh, "are so badly off, we are so handicapped, as you call it! We can't help crying like fools! We can't help caring for what other people think, trying to conciliate and bring them round to approve us – when we ought to stand by our own conscience and judgment, and sense of what is right, like independent beings."

"If that means taking your own way, Elinor, whatever any one may say to you, I think women do it at least as much as men."

"No, it does not mean taking our own way," she cried, "and if you do not understand any better than that, why should I – But you do understand better, John," she said, her countenance again softening: "you know I want, above everything in the world, that you should approve of me and see that I am right. That is what I want! I will do what I think right; but, oh, if I could only have you with me in doing it, and know that you saw with me that it was the best, the only thing to do! Happiness lies in that, not in having one's own way."

"My dear Elinor," he said, "isn't that asking a great deal? To prevent you from doing what you think right is in nobody's power. You are of age, and I am sure my aunt will force nothing; but how can we change our opinions, our convictions, our entire points of view? There is nobody in the world I would do so much for as you, Elinor: but I cannot do that, even for you."

The hot tears were dried from her cheeks, the passion was over. She looked at him, her efforts to gain him at an end, on the equal footing of an independent individual agreeing to differ, and as strong in her own view as he could be.

"There is one thing you can do for me," she said. "Mamma knows nothing about – fashionable gossip. She is not acquainted with the wicked things that are said. If she disapproves it is only because – Oh, I suppose because one's mother always disapproves a thing that is done without her, that she has no hand in, what she calls pledging one's self to a stranger, and not knowing his antecedents, his circumstances, and so forth! But she hasn't any definite ground for it as you – think you have, judging in the uncharitable way of the world – not remembering that if we love one another the more there is against him the more need he has of me! But all I have to ask of you, John, is not to prejudice my mother. I know you can do it if you please – a hint would be enough, an uncertain word, even hesitating when you answer a question – that would be quite enough! John, if you put things into her head – "

"You ask most extraordinary things of me," said John, turning to bay. "To tell her lies about a man whom everybody knows – to pretend I think one thing when I think quite another. Not to say that my duty is to inform her exactly what things are said, so that she may judge for herself, not let her go forth in ignorance – that is my plain duty, Elinor."

"But you won't do it; oh, you won't do it!" she said. "Oh, John, for the sake of all the time that you have been so good to Nelly – your own little Nelly, nobody else's! Remember that I and everybody who loves him know these stories to be lies – and don't, don't put things into my mother's head! Let her judge for herself – don't, don't prejudice her, John. It can be no one's duty to repeat malicious stories when there is no possibility of proving or disproving them. Don't make her think – Oh, mamma! we couldn't think where you had gone to. Yes, here is John."

"So I perceive," said Mrs. Dennistoun. It was getting towards evening, and the room was not very light. She could not distinguish their looks or the agitation that scarcely could have been hidden but for the dusk. "You seem to have been having a very animated conversation. I heard your voices all along the garden walk. Let me have the benefit of it, if there is anything to tell."

"You know well enough, mamma, what we must have been talking about," said Elinor, turning half angrily away.

"To be sure," said the mother, "I ought to have known. There is nothing so interesting as that sort of thing. I thought, however, you would probably have put it off a little, Elinor."

"Put it off a little – when it is the thing that concerns us more than anything else in the world!"

"That is true," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a sigh. "Did you walk all the way, John? I meant to have sent the pony-cart for you, but the man was too late. It is a nice evening though, and coming out of town it is a good thing for you to have a good walk."

"Yes, I like it more than anything," said John, "but the evening is not so very fine. The wind is high, and I shouldn't wonder if we had rain."

"The wind is always high here," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "We don't have our view for nothing; but the sky is quite clear in the west, and all the clouds blowing away. I don't think we shall have more than a shower."

Elinor stood listening to this talk with restrained impatience, as if waiting for the moment when they should come to something worth talking about. Then she gave herself a sort of shake – half weary, half indignant – and left the room. There was a moment's silence, until her quick step was heard going to the other end of the house and up-stairs, and the shutting of a door.

"Oh, John, I am very uneasy, very uneasy," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "I scarcely thought she would have begun to you about it at once; but then I am doing the very same. We can't think of anything else. I am not going to worry you before dinner, for you must be tired with your walk, and want to refresh yourself before we enter upon that weary, weary business. But my heart misgives me dreadfully about it all. If I only had gone with her! It was not for want of an invitation, but just my laziness. I could not be troubled to leave my own house."

"I don't see what difference it would have made had you been with her, aunt."

"Oh, I should have seen the man: and been able to judge what he was and his motive, John."

"Elinor is not rich. He could scarcely have had an interested motive."

"There is some comfort in that. I have said that to myself again and again. He could not have an interested motive. But, oh! I am uneasy! There is the dressing-bell. I will not keep you any longer, John; but in the evening, or to-morrow, when we can get a quiet moment – "

The dusk, was now pervading all the house – that summer dusk which there is a natural prejudice everywhere against cutting short by lights. He could not see her face, nor she his, as they went out of the drawing-room together and along the long passage, which led by several arched doorways to the stairs. John had a room on the ground floor which was kept for gentlemen visitors, and in which the candles were twinkling on the dressing-table. He was more than ever thankful as he caught a glimpse of himself in the vague reflected world of the mirror, with its lights standing up reflected too, like inquisitors spying upon him, that there had not been light enough to show how he was looking: for though he was both a lawyer and a man of the world, John Tatham had not been able to keep the trouble which his interview with Elinor had caused him out of his face.