The Marriage of Elinor
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"You were to tell him everything to-night, Elinor."
"Oh, I was to tell him! Do you think I have not had enough for one day? enough to wear me out body and soul? You have just been telling me so, John."
He shook his head. "You know," he said, "and I know, that in any case you will have it your own way, Elinor; but you have promised to tell him."
"John, you are unkind. You take advantage of me being here, and so broken down, to say that I will have my own way. Has this been my own way at all? I would have fled if I could, and taken the boy far, far away from it all; but you would not let me. Yes, yes, I have promised. But I am tired to death. How could I look him in the face and tell him – " She hid her face suddenly in her hands with a moan.
"It will be in the papers to-morrow morning, Elinor."
"Well! I will tell him to-morrow morning," she said.
John shook his head again; but it was done behind her, where she could not see the movement. He had more pity of her than words could say. When she covered her face with her hands in that most pathetic of attitudes, there was nothing that he would not have forgiven her. What was to become of her now? Her position through all these years had never been so dangerous, in John's opinion, never so sad, as now. Philip Compton had been there looking on while she put his accusers to silence, at what cost to herself John only began dimly to guess – to divine, to forbid himself to inquire. The fellow had been there all the time. He had the grace not to look at her, not to distract her with the sight of him – probably for his own sake, John thought bitterly, that she might not risk breaking down. But he was there, and knew where she was to be found. And he had seen the boy, and had cared enough to fix his gaze upon him, that gaze which John had found intolerable at the theatre. And he was on the eve of becoming Lord St. Serf, and Pippo his heir. What was to be the issue of these complications? What was to happen to her who had hid the boy so long, who certainly could hide him no more?
He took her home to Ebury Street shortly after, where Philip, weary of waiting, and having made a meal he much wanted off the sandwiches, had gone out again in his restlessness and unhappiness. Elinor, who had become paler and paler as the carriage approached Ebury Street, and who by the time she reached the house looked really as if at last she must swoon, her heart choking her, her breathing quick and feverish, had taken hold of John to support herself, clutching at his arm, when she was told that Philip was out. She came to herself instantly on the strength of that news. "Tell him when he comes in to make haste," she said, "for Mr. Tatham is waiting for him. As for me I am fit for nothing but bed. I have had a very tiring day."
"You do look tired, ma'am," said the sympathetic landlady. "I'll run up and put your room ready, and then I'll make you a nice cup of tea."
John Tatham thought that, notwithstanding her exhaustion, her anxiety, all the realities of troubles present and to come that were in her mind and in her way, there was a flash something like triumph in Elinor's eyes. "Tell Pippo," she said, "he can come up and say good-night to me before he goes. I am good for nothing but my bed. If I can sleep I shall be able for all that is before me to-morrow." The triumph was quenched, however, if there had been triumph, when she gave him her hand, with a wistful smile, and a sigh that filled that to-morrow with the terror and the trouble that must be in it, did she do what she said. John went up to the little drawing-room to wait for Pippo, with a heavy heart. It seemed to him that never had Elinor been in so much danger. She had exposed herself to the chance of losing the allegiance of her son: she was at the mercy of her husband, that husband whom she had renounced, yet whom she had not refused to save, whose call she had obeyed to help him, though she had thrown off all the bonds of love and duty towards him. She had not had the strength either way to be consistent, to carry out one steady policy. It was cruel of John to say this, for but for him and his remonstrances Elinor would, or might have, fled, and avoided this last ordeal. But he had not done so, and now here she was in the middle of her life, her frail ship of safety driven about among the rocks, dependent upon the magnanimity of the husband from whom she had fled, and the child whom she had deceived.
"Your mother is very tired, Philip," he said, when the boy appeared. "I was to tell you to go up and bid her good-night before you went out; for it will probably be late before you get back, if you think you are game to sit out the debate."
"I will sit it out," said Philip, with no laughter in his eye, with an almost solemn air, as if announcing a grave resolution. He went up-stairs, not three steps at a time, as was his wont, but soberly, as if his years had been forty instead of eighteen. And he showed no surprise to find the room darkened, though Elinor was a woman who loved the light. He gave his mother a kiss and smoothed her pillow with a tender touch of pity. "Is your head very bad?" he said.
"It is only that I am dreadfully tired, Pippo. I hope I shall sleep: and it will help me to think you are happy with Uncle John."
"Then I shall try to be happy with Uncle John," he said, with a sort of smile. "Good-night, mother; I hope you'll be better to-morrow."
"Oh, yes," she said. "To-morrow is always a new day."
He seemed in the half light to nod his head, and then to shake it, as one that assents, but doubts – having many troubled thoughts and questions in his mind. But Pippo did not at all expect to be happy with Uncle John.
CHAPTER XLVI
It cannot be said that Uncle John was very happy with Philip, but that was a thing the others did not take into account. John Tatham was doing for the boy as much as a man could do. A great debate was expected that evening, in which many eminent persons were to speak, and Mr. Tatham gave Philip a hasty dinner in the House so that he should lose nothing, and he found him a corner in the distinguished strangers' gallery, telling him with a smile that he expected him hereafter to prove his title to such a place. But Philip's smile in return was very unlike the flush of pleasure that would have lighted it up only yesterday. John felt that the boy was not at all the delightful young companion, full of interest in everything, that he had been. Perhaps he was on his good behaviour, on his dignity, bent upon showing how much of a man he was and how little influenced by passing sentiments, as some boys do. Anyhow it was certain that he was much less agreeable in his self-subdued condition. But John was fortunately much interested in the discussion, in which, indeed, he took himself a slight part, and, save for a passing wonder and the disappointment of the moment, did not occupy himself so very much with Pippo. When he looked into the corner, however, in a lull of the debate, when one of those fools who rush in at unguarded moments, when the Speaker chances to look their way, had managed to get upon his foolish feet to the despair of all around, the experienced man of the world received a curious shock from the sight of young Philip's intense gravity, and the self-absorbed, unconscious look he wore. The boy had the look of hearing nothing, seeing nothing that was around him, of being lost in thoughts of his own, thoughts far too serious and troubled for his age. Had he discovered something? What did he know? This was the instinctive question that rose in John's mind, and not an amused anticipation of Pippo's original boyish view of the question and the speakers, such as had delighted him on the boy's previous visits to the House. And indeed Philip's attention was little fixed upon the debate. He tried hard to bring it back, to keep it there, to get the question into his mind, but in spite of himself his thoughts flew back to the other public assembly in which he had sat unnoticed that day: till gradually the aspect of things changed to him, the Speaker became the judge, the wigged secretaries the pleaders, and he almost expected to see that sudden apparition, that sight that had plucked him out of his careless life of boyhood and trust, the sight of his mother standing before the world on trial for her life. Oh, no, no, not on trial at all! he was aware of that: a harmless witness, doing only good. The judge could have nothing but polite regard for her, the jury admiration and thanks for the clear testimony which took a weight from their shoulders. But before her son she was on her trial, her trial for more than life – and he who said with so much assurance that his mother had no secrets from him! until the moment arrived, without any warning, in the midst of his security, which proved that everything had been secret, and that all was mystery – all mystery! and nothing sure in life.
It crossed Philip's mind more than once to question John Tatham upon this dreadful discovery of his – John, who was a relation, who had been the universal referee of the household as long as he could remember, Uncle John must know. But there were two things which held him back: first, the recollection of his own disdainful offence at the suggestion that Uncle John, an outsider, could know more than he did of the family concerns; and partly from the proud determination to ask no questions, to seek no information that was not freely given to him. He made up his mind to this while he looked out from his corner upon the lighted House, seeing men move up and down, and voices going on, and the sound of restless members coming and going, while the business of the country went on. It was far more important than any private affairs that could be passing in an individual brain, and Philip knew with what high-handed certainty he would have put down the idea that to himself at his age there could be anything private half so exciting, half so full of interest, as a debate on the policy of the country which might carry with it the highest issues. But conviction comes readily on such subjects when the personal interest comes which carries every other away. It was while a minister was speaking, and everything hanging on his words, that the boy made up his mind finally that he would ask no questions. He would ignore that scene in the Law Courts, as if it had not been. He would say nothing, try to look as if nothing had passed, and wait to see if any explanation would come.
It was not, perhaps, then to be wondered at if John found him a much less interesting companion than ever before, as they walked home together in the small hours of the night. Mr. Tatham's own speech had been short, but he had the agreeable consciousness that it had been an effective one, and he was prepared to find the boy excited by it, and full of applause and satisfaction. But Philip did not say a word about the speech. He was only a boy, and it may be supposed that any applause from him would have had little importance for the famous lawyer – the highly-esteemed member who kept his independence, and whose speeches always secured the attention of the House, and carried weight as among the few utterances which concerned the real import of a question and not its mere party meaning. But John was hurt more than he could have thought possible by Philip's silence. He even tried to lead the conversation artfully to that point in the debate, thinking perhaps the boy was shy of speaking on the subject – but with no effect. It was exceedingly strange. Had he been deceived in Philip? had the boy really no interest in subjects of an elevated description? or was he ill? or what was the matter with him? It troubled John to let him go on alone from Halkin Street to his lodging, with a vague sense that something might happen. But that was, of course, too absurd. "Tell your mother I'll come round in the afternoon to-morrow, as soon as I am free," he said, holding Philip's hand. And then he added, paternally, still holding that hand, "Go to bed at once, boy. You've had a tiring day."
"Yes – I suppose so," said Philip, drawing his hand away.
"I hope you haven't done too much," said John, still lingering. "You're too young for politics – and to sit up so late. I was wrong to keep you out of bed."
"I hope I'm not such a child as that," said Philip, with a half-smile: and then he went away, and John Tatham, with an anxious heart, closed behind him his own door. If it were not for Elinor and her boy what a life free of anxiety John would have had! Never any need to think with solicitude of anything outside that peaceful door, no trouble with other people's feelings, with investigations what this or that look or word meant. But perhaps it was Elinor and her boy, after all (none of his! thinking of him as an outsider, having nothing to do with their most intimate circle of confidence and natural defence), who, by means of that very anxiety, kept alive the higher principles of humanity in John Tatham's heart.
Philip went home, walking quickly through the silent streets. They were very silent at that advanced hour, yet not so completely but that there was a woman who came up to the boy at the corner. Philip neither knew nor desired to know what she said. He thought nothing about her one way or another. He took a shilling out of his pocket and threw it to her as he passed – walking on with the quick, elastic step which the sudden acquaintance he had made with care had not been able to subdue. He saw that there was still a faint light in his mother's window when he reached the house, but he would not disturb her. How little would he have thought of disturbing her on any other occasion! "Are you asleep, mother?" he would have said, looking in; and the time had never been when Elinor was asleep. She had always heard him, always replied, always been delighted to hear the account of what he had been doing, and how he had enjoyed himself. But not to-night. With a heart full of longing, yet of a sick revolt against the sight of her, he went past her door to his room. He did not want to see her, and yet – oh, if she had only called to him, if she had but said a word!
Elinor for her part was not asleep. She had slept a little while she was sure that Philip was safely disposed of and herself secured from all interruption; but when the time came for his return she slept no longer, and had been lying for a long time holding her breath, listening to every sound, when she heard his key in the latch and his foot on the stair. Would he come in as he always did? or would he remember her complaint of being tired, a complaint she so seldom made? It was as a blow to Elinor when she heard his step go on past her door: and yet she was glad. Had he come in there was a desperate thought in her mind that she would call him to her bedside and in the dark, with his hand in hers, tell him – all that there was to tell. But it was again a relief when he passed on, and she felt that she was spared for an hour or two, spared for the new day, which perhaps would give her courage. It was an endless night, long hours of dark, and then longer hours of morning light, too early for anything, while still nobody in the house was stirring. She had scarcely slept at all during that long age of weary and terrible thought. For it was not as if she had but one thing to think of. When her mind turned, like her restless body, from one side to another, it was only to a change of pain. What was it she had said, standing up before earth and heaven, and calling God to witness that what she said was true? It had been true, and yet she knew that it was not, and that she had saved her husband's honour at the cost of her own. Oh, not in those serious and awful watches of the night can such a defence be accepted as that the letter of her testimony was true! She did not attempt to defend herself. She only tried to turn to another thought that might be less bitter: and then she was confronted by the confession that she must make to her boy. She must tell him that she had deceived him all his life, hid from him what he ought to have known, separated him from his father and his family, kept him in ignorance, despite all that had been said to her, despite every argument. And when Elinor in her misery fled from that thought, what was there else to think of? There was her husband, Pippo's father, from whom he could no longer be kept. If she had thought herself justified in stealing her child away out of fear of the influence that father might have upon him, how would it be now when they must be restored to each other, at an age much more dangerous for the boy than in childhood, and with all the attractions of mystery and novelty and the sense that his father had been wronged! When she escaped from that, the most terrible thought of all, feeling her brain whirl and her heart burn as she imagined her child turning from the mother who had deceived him to the father who had been deprived of him, her mind went off to that father himself, from whom she had fled, whom she had judged and condemned, but who had repaid her by no persecution, no interference, no pursuit, but an acceptance of her verdict, never molesting her, leaving her safe in the possession of her boy. Perhaps there were other ways in which Phil Compton's magnanimity have been looked at, in which it would have shown in less favourable colours. But Elinor was not ready to take that view. Her tower of justice and truth and honour had crumbled over her head. She was standing among her ruins, feeling that nothing was left to her, nothing upon which she could build herself a structure of self-defence. All was wrong; a series of mistakes and failures, to say no worse. She had driven on ever wilful all through, escaping from every pang she could avoid, throwing off every yoke that she did not choose to bear: until now here she stood to face all that she had fled from, unable to elude them more, meeting them as so many ghosts in her way. Oh, how true it was what John had said to her so long, so long ago – that she was not one who would bear, who if she were disappointed and wronged could endure and surmount her trouble by patience! Oh, no, no! She had been one who had put up with nothing, who had taken her own way. And now she was surrounded on every side by the difficulties she had thrust away from her, but which now could be thrust away no more.
It may be imagined what the night was which Elinor spent sleepless, struggling one after another with these thoughts, finding no comfort anywhere wherever she turned. She had not been without many a struggle even in the most quiet of the years that had passed – in one long dream of peace as it seemed now; but never as now had she been met wherever she turned by another and another lion in the way. She got up very early, with a feeling that movement had something lulling and soothing in it, and that to lie there a prey to all these thoughts was like lying on the rack – to the great surprise of the kind landlady, who came stealing into her room with the inevitable cup of tea, and whose inquiry how the poor lady was, was taken out of her mouth by the unexpected apparition of the supposed invalid, fully dressed, moving about the room, with all the air of having been up for hours. Elinor asked, with a sudden precaution, that the newspapers might be brought up to her, not so much for her own satisfaction – for it made her heart sick to think of reading over in dreadful print, as would be done that morning at millions of breakfast-tables, her own words: perhaps with comments on herself and her history, which might fall into Pippo's hands, and be read by him before he knew: which was a sudden spur to herself and evidence of the dread necessity of letting him know that story from her own lips, which had not occurred to her before. She glanced over the report with a sickening sense that all the privacy of sheltered life and honourable silence was torn off from her, and that she was exposed as on a pillory to the stare and the remarks of the world, and crushed the paper away like a noxious thing into a drawer where the boy at least would never find it. Vain thought! as if there was but one paper in the world, as if he could not find it at every street corner, thrust into his hand even as he walked along; but at all events for the moment he would not see it, and she would have time – time to tell him before that revelation could come in his way. She went down-stairs, with what a tremor in her and sinking of her heart it would be impossible to say. To have to condemn herself to her only child; to humble herself before him, her boy, who thought there was no one like his mother; to let him know that he had been deceived all his life, he who thought she had always told him everything. Oh, poor mother! and oh, poor boy!
She was still sitting by the breakfast-table, waiting, in a chill fever, if such a thing can be, for Philip, when a thing occurred which no one could have thought of, and yet which was the most natural thing in the world – which came upon Elinor like a thunderbolt, shattering all her plans again just at the moment when, after so much shrinking and delay, she had at last made up her mind to the one thing that must be done at once. The sound of the driving up of a cab to the door made her go to the window to look out, without producing any expectation in her mind: for people were coming and going in Ebury Street all day long. She saw, however, a box which she recognised upon the cab, and then the door was opened and Mrs. Dennistoun stepped out. Her mother! the wonder was not that she came now, but that she had not come much sooner. No letters for several days, her child and her child's child in town, and trouble in the air! Mrs. Dennistoun had borne it as long as she could, but there had come a moment when she could bear it no longer, and she too had followed Pippo's example and taken the night mail. Elinor stood motionless at the window, and saw her mother arrive, and did not feel capable of going to meet her, or of telling whether it was some dreadful aggravation of evil, or an interposition of Providence to save her for another hour at least from the ordeal before her.
CHAPTER XLVII
Mrs. Dennistoun had a great deal to say about herself and the motives which had at the last been too much for her, which had forced her to come after her children at a moment's notice, feeling that she could bear the uncertainty about them no longer; and it was a thing so unusual with her to have much to say about herself that there was certainly something apologetic, something self-defensive in this unaccustomed outburst. Perhaps she had begun to feel a little the unconscious criticism that gathers round the elder person in a house, the inclination involuntarily – which every one would repudiate, yet which nevertheless is true – to attribute to her a want of perception, perhaps – oh, not unkindly! – a little blunting of the faculties, a suggestion quite unintentional that she is not what she once was. She explained herself so distinctly that there was no doubt there was some self-defence in it. "I had not had a letter for three days."
And Elinor was far more humble than her wont. "I know, mother: I felt as if it were impossible to write – till it was over – "
"My darling! I thought at last I must come and stand by you. I felt that I ought to have seen that all the time – that you should have had your mother by your side to give you countenance."
"I had John with me, mother."
"Then it is over!" Mrs. Dennistoun cried.
And at that moment Pippo, very late, pale, and with eyes which were red with sleeplessness, and perhaps with tears, came in. Elinor gave her mother a quick look, almost of blame, and then turned to the boy. She did not mean it, and yet Mrs. Dennistoun felt as if the suggestion, "He might never have known had you not called out like that," was in her daughter's eyes.
"Pippo!" she said. "Why, Elinor! what have you been doing to the boy?"
"He does not look well," said Elinor, suddenly waking up to that anxiety which had been always so easily roused in respect to Pippo. "He was very late last night. He was at the House with John," she added, involuntarily, with an apology to her mother for the neglect which had extended to Pippo too.
"There is nothing the matter with me," he said, with a touch of sullenness in his tone.
The two women looked at each other with all the vague trouble in their eyes suddenly concentrated upon young Philip, but they said nothing more, as he sat down at table and began to play with the breakfast, for which he had evidently no appetite. No one had ever seen that sullen look in Pippo's face before. He bent his head over the table as if he were intent upon the food which choked him when he tried to eat, and which he loathed the very sight of – and did not say a word. They had certainly not been very light-hearted before, but the sight of the boy thus obscured and changed made all the misery more evident. There was always a possibility of over-riding the storm so long as all was well with Pippo: but his changed countenance veiled the very sun in the skies.