The Marriage of Elinor

CHAPTER XXXII

There passed after this a number of years of which I can make no record. The ladies remained at Lakeside, seldom moving. When they took a holiday now and then, it was more for the sake of the little community which, just as in Windyhill, had gathered round them, and which inquired, concerned, "Are you not going to take a little change? Don't you think, dear Mrs. Dennistoun, your daughter would be the better for a change? Do you really think that a little sea air and variety wouldn't be good for the boy?" Forced by these kind speeches they did go away now and then to unknown seaside places in the north when little Philip was still a child, and to quiet places abroad when he grew a boy, and it was thought a good thing for him to learn languages, and to be taught that there were other countries in the world besides England. They were absent for one whole winter in France and another in Germany with this motive, that Philip should learn these languages, which he did tant bien que mal with much assistance from his mother, who taught herself everything that she thought the boy should know, and shared his lessons in order to push him gently forward. And on the whole, he did very well in this particular of language, showing much aptitude, though not perhaps much application. I would not assert that the ladies, with an opinion very common among women, and also among youth in general, did not rather glory in the thought that he could do almost anything he liked (which was their opinion, and in some degree while he was very young, the opinion of his masters), with the appearance of doing nothing at all. But on the whole, his education was the most difficult matter in which they had yet been engaged. How was he to be educated? His birth and condition pointed to one of the great public schools, and Mrs. Dennistoun, who had made many economics in that retirement, was quite able to give the child what they both called the best education. But how could they send him to Eton or Harrow? A boy who knew nothing about his parentage or his family, a boy bearing a well-known name, who would be subject to endless questions where he came from, who he belonged to? a hundred things which neither in Waterdale nor in their travels had ever been asked of him. What the Waterdale people thought on the subject, or how much they knew, I should not like to inquire. There are ways of finding out everything, and people who possess family secrets are often extraordinarily deceived in respect to what is known and what is not known of those secrets. My own opinion is that there is scarcely such a thing as a secret in the world. If any moment of great revolution comes in your life you generally find that your neighbours are not much surprised. They have known it, or they have suspected it, all along, and it is well if they have not suspected more than the truth. So it is quite possible that these excellent people knew all about Elinor: but Elinor did not think so, which was the great thing.

However, there cannot be any question that Philip's education was a very great difficulty. John Tatham, who paid them a visit soberly from time to time, but did not now come as of old, never indeed came as on that first occasion when he had been so happy and so undeceived. To be sure, as Philip grew up it was of course impossible for any one to be like that. From the time Pippo was five or six he went everywhere with his mother, her sole companion in general, and when there was a visitor always making a third in the party, a third who was really the first, for he appealed to his mother on every occasion, directed her attention to everything. He only learned with the greatest difficulty that it was possible she should find it necessary to give her attention in a greater degree to any one else. When she said, "You know, Pippo, I must talk to Uncle John," Pippo opened his great eyes, "Not than to me, mamma?"

"Yes, dearest, more than to you for the moment: for he has come a long way to see us, and he will soon have to go away again." When this was first explained to him, Pippo inquired particularly when his Uncle John was going away, and was delighted to hear that it was to be very soon. However, as he grew older the boy began to take great pleasure in Uncle John, and hung upon his arm when they went out for their walks, and instead of endeavouring to monopolise his mother, turned the tables upon her by monopolising this the only man who belonged to him, and to whom he turned with the instinct of budding manhood. John too was very willing to be thus appropriated, and it came to pass that now and then Elinor was left out, or left herself out of the calculation, urging that the walk they were planning was too far for her, or too steep for her, or too something, so that the boy might have the enjoyment of the man's society all to himself. This changed the position in many ways, and I am not sure that at first it did not cost Elinor a little thus to stand aside and put herself out of that first place which had always been by all of them accorded to her. But if this was so, it was soon lost in the consideration of how good it was for Pippo to have a man like John to talk to and to influence him in every way. A man like John! That was the thing; not a common man, not one who might teach him the baseness, or the frivolity, or the falsehood of the world, but a good man, who was also a distinguished man, a man of the world in the best sense, knowing life in the best sense, and able to modify the boy's conception of what he was to find in the world, as women could never do.

"For after all that can be said, we are not good for much on those points, mother," Mrs. Compton would say.

"I don't know, Elinor; I doubt whether I would exchange my own ideas for John's," the elder lady replied.

"Ah, perhaps, mother; but for Pippo his experience and his knowledge will do so much. A boy should not be brought up entirely with women any more than a girl should be with men."

"I have often thought, my dear," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "if in God's providence it had been a girl instead of a boy – "

"Oh!" said the younger mother, with a flush, "how can you speak – how could you think of any possible child but Pippo? I would not give him for a score of girls."

"And if he had been a girl you would not have changed him for scores of boys," said Mrs. Dennistoun, who added after a while, with a curious sense of competition, and a determination to allow no inferiority, "You forget, Elinor, that my only child is a girl." The elder lady (whom they began to call the old lady) showed a great deal of spirit in defence of her own.

But Philip was approaching fourteen, and the great question had to be decided now or never; where was he to be sent to school? It was difficult now to send him to bed to get him out of the way, he who was used to be the person of first importance in the house – in order that the others might settle what was to be his fate. And accordingly the two ladies came down-stairs again after the family had separated in the usual way, in order to have their consultation with their adviser. There was now a room in the house furnished as a library in order that Philip might have a place in which to carry on his studies, and where "the gentlemen" might have their talks by themselves, when there was any one in the house. And here they found John when they stole in one after the other, soft-footed, that the boy might suspect no complot. They had their scheme, it need not be doubted, and John had his. He pronounced at once for one of the great public schools, while the ladies on their part had heard of one in the north, an old foundation as old as Eton, where there was at the moment a head master who was quite exceptional, and where boys were winning honours in all directions. There Pippo would be quite safe. He was not likely to meet with anybody who would put awkward questions, and yet he would receive an education as good as any one's. "Probably better," said Elinor: "for Mr. Sage will have few pupils like him, and therefore will give him the more attention."

"That means," said John, "that the boy will not be among his equals, which is of all things I know the worst for a boy."

"We are not aristocrats, as you are, John. They will be more than his equal in one way, because many of them will be bigger and stronger than he, and that is what counts most among boys. Besides, we have no pretensions."

"My dear Elinor," said John Tatham (who was by this time an exceedingly successful lawyer, member for his native borough, and within sight of a Solicitor-Generalship), "your modesty is a little out of character, don't you think? There can be no two opinions about what the boy is: an aristocrat – if you choose to use that word, every inch of him – a little gentleman, down to his fingers' ends."

"Oh, thank you, John," cried Pippo's inconsistent mother; "that is the thing of all others that we hoped you would say."

"And yet you are going to send him among the farmers' sons. Fine fellows, I grant you, but not of his kind. Have you heard," he said, more gravely, "that Reginald Compton died last year?"

"We saw it in the papers," said Mrs. Dennistoun. Elinor said nothing, but turned her head away.

"And neither of the others are married, or likely to marry; one of them is very much broken down – "

"Oh, John, John, for God's sake don't say anything more!"

"I must, Elinor. There is but one good life, and that in a dangerous climate, and with all the risks of possible fighting, between the boy and – "

"Don't, don't, John!"

"And he does not know who he is. He is ignorant of everything, even the fact, the great fact, which you have no right to keep from him – "

"John," she cried, starting to her feet, "the boy is mine: I have a right to deal with him as I think best. I will not hear a word you have to say."

"It is vain to say anything," said Mrs. Dennistoun; "she will not hear a word."

"That is all very well, so far as she is concerned," said John, "but I have a part of my own to play. You give me the name of adviser and so forth – a man cannot be your adviser if his mouth is closed before he speaks. I have a right to speak, being summoned for that purpose. I tell you, Elinor, that you have no right to conceal from the boy who he is, and that his father is alive."

She gave a cry as if he had struck her, and shrank away behind her mother, hiding her face in her hands.

"I am, more or less, of your opinion, John. I have told her the same. While he was a baby it mattered nothing, now that he is a rational creature with an opinion of his own, like any one of us – "

"Mother," cried Elinor, "you are unkind. Oh, you are unkind! What did it matter so long as he was a baby? But now he is just at the age when he would be – if you don't wish to drive me out of my senses altogether, don't say a word more to me of this kind."

"Elinor," said John, "I have said nothing on the subject for many years, though I have thought much: and you must for once hear reason. The boy belongs – to his father as much as to you. I have said it! I cannot take it back. He belongs to the family of which he may one day be the head. You cannot throw away his birthright. And think, if you let him grow up like this, not knowing that he has a family or a – unaware whom he belongs to."

"Have you done, John?" asked Elinor, who had made two or three efforts to interrupt, and had been beating her foot impatiently upon the ground.

"If you ask me in that tone, I suppose I must say yes: though I have a great deal more that I should like to say."

"Then hear me speak," cried Elinor. "Of us three at least, I am the only one to whom he belongs. I only have power to decide for him. And I say, No, no: whatever argument there may be, whatever plea you may bring forward, No and no, and after that No! What! at fourteen, just the age when anything that was said to him would tell the most; when he would learn a lesson the quickest, learn what I would die to keep him from! When he would take everything for gospel that was said to him, when the very charm of – of that unknown name – "

She stopped for a moment to take breath, half choked by her own words.

"And you ought to remember no one has ever laid claim to him. Why should I tell him of one that never even inquired – No, John, no, no, no! A baby he might have been told, and it would have done him no harm. Perhaps you were right, you and mother, and I was wrong. He might have known it from the first, and thought very little of it, and he may know when he is a man, and his character is formed and he knows what things mean – but a boy of fourteen! Imagine the glamour there would be about the very name; how he would feel we must all have been unjust and the – the other injured. You know from yourself, John, how he clings to you – you who are only a cousin; he knows that, yet he insists upon Uncle John, the one man who belongs to him, and looks up to you, and thinks nothing of any of us in comparison. I like it! I like it!" cried Elinor, dashing the tears from her eyes. "I am not jealous: but fancy what it would be with the – other, the real, the – I cannot, cannot, say the word; yes, the father. If it is so with you, what would it be with him?"