Ralph Corbet found it a very difficult thing to keep down his curiosity
during the next few days. It was a miserable thing to have Ellinor's
unspoken secret severing them like a phantom. But he had given her his
word that he would make no further inquiries from her. Indeed, he
thought he could well enough make out the outline of past events; still,
there was too much left to conjecture for his mind not to be always busy
on the subject. He felt inclined to probe Mr. Wilkins in their after-
dinner conversation, in which his host was frank and lax enough on many
subjects. But once touch on the name of Dunster and Mr. Wilkins sank
into a kind of suspicious depression of spirits; talking little, and with
evident caution; and from time to time shooting furtive glances at his
interlocutor's face. Ellinor was resolutely impervious to any attempts
of his to bring his conversation with her back to the subject which more
and more engrossed Ralph Corbet's mind. She had done her duty, as she
understood it; and had received assurances which she was only too glad to
believe fondly with all the tender faith of her heart. Whatever came to
pass, Ralph's love would still be hers; nor was he unwarned of what might
come to pass in some dread future day. So she shut her eyes to what
might be in store for her (and, after all, the chances were immeasurably
in her favour); and she bent herself with her whole strength into
enjoying the present. Day by day Mr. Corbet's spirits flagged. He was,
however, so generally uniform in the tenor of his talk--never very merry,
and always avoiding any subject that might call out deep feeling either
on his own or any one else's part, that few people were aware of his
changes of mood. Ellinor felt them, though she would not acknowledge
them: it was bringing her too much face to face with the great terror of
her life.
One morning he announced the fact of his brother's approaching marriage;
the wedding was hastened on account of some impending event in the duke's
family; and the home letter he had received that day was to bid his
presence at Stokely Castle, and also to desire him to be at home by a
certain time not very distant, in order to look over the requisite legal
papers, and to give his assent to some of them. He gave many reasons why
this unlooked-for departure of his was absolutely necessary; but no one
doubted it. He need not have alleged such reiterated excuses. The truth
was, he was restrained and uncomfortable at Ford Bank ever since
Ellinor's confidence. He could not rightly calculate on the most
desirable course for his own interests, while his love for her was
constantly being renewed by her sweet presence. Away from her, he could
judge more wisely. Nor did he allege any false reasons for his
departure; but the sense of relief to himself was so great at his recall
home, that he was afraid of having it perceived by others; and so took
the very way which, if others had been as penetrating as himself, would
have betrayed him.
Mr. Wilkins, too, had begun to feel the restraint of Ralph's grave
watchful presence. Ellinor was not strong enough to be married; nor was
the promised money forthcoming if she had been. And to have a fellow
dawdling about the house all day, sauntering into the flower-garden,
peering about everywhere, and having a kind of right to put all manner of
unexpected questions, was anything but agreeable. It was only Ellinor
that clung to his presence--clung as though some shadow of what might
happen before they met again had fallen on her spirit. As soon as he had
left the house she flew up to a spare bedroom window, to watch for the
last glimpse of the fly which was taking him into the town. And then she
kissed the part of the pane on which his figure, waving an arm out of the
carriage window, had last appeared; and went down slowly to gather
together all the things he had last touched--the pen he had mended, the
flower he had played with, and to lock them up in the little quaint
cabinet that had held her treasures since she was a tiny child.
Miss Monro was, perhaps, very wise in proposing the translation of a
difficult part of Dante for a distraction to Ellinor. The girl went
meekly, if reluctantly, to the task set her by her good governess, and by-
and-by her mind became braced by the exertion.
Ralph's people were not very slow in discovering that something had not
gone on quite smoothly with him at Ford Bank. They knew his ways and
looks with family intuition, and could easily be certain thus far. But
not even his mother's skilfulest wiles, nor his favourite sister's
coaxing, could obtain a word or a hint; and when his father, the squire,
who had heard the opinions of the female part of the family on this head,
began, in his honest blustering way, in their _tete-a-tetes_ after
dinner, to hope that Ralph was thinking better than to run his head into
that confounded Hamley attorney's noose, Ralph gravely required Mr.
Corbet to explain his meaning, which he professed not to understand so
worded. And when the squire had, with much perplexity, put it into the
plain terms of hoping that his son was thinking of breaking off his
engagement to Miss Wilkins, Ralph coolly asked him if he was aware that,
in that case, he should lose all title to being a man of honour, and
might have an action brought against him for breach of promise?
Yet not the less for all this was the idea in his mind as a future
possibility.
Before very long the Corbet family moved _en masse_ to Stokely Castle for
the wedding. Of course, Ralph associated on equal terms with the
magnates of the county, who were the employers of Ellinor's father, and
spoke of him always as "Wilkins," just as they spoke of the butler as
"Simmons." Here, too, among a class of men high above local gossip, and
thus unaware of his engagement, he learnt the popular opinion respecting
his future father-in-law; an opinion not entirely respectful, though
intermingled with a good deal of personal liking. "Poor Wilkins," as
they called him, "was sadly extravagant for a man in his position; had no
right to spend money, and act as if he were a man of independent
fortune." His habits of life were criticised; and pity, not free from
blame, was bestowed upon him for the losses he had sustained from his
late clerk's disappearance and defalcation. But what could be expected
if a man did not choose to attend to his own business?
The wedding went by, as grand weddings do, without let or hindrance,
according to the approved pattern. A Cabinet minister honoured it with
his presence, and, being a distant relation of the Brabants, remained for
a few days after the grand occasion. During this time he became rather
intimate with Ralph Corbet; many of their tastes were in common. Ralph
took a great interest in the manner of working out political questions;
in the balance and state of parties; and had the right appreciation of
the exact qualities on which the minister piqued himself. In return, the
latter was always on the look-out for promising young men, who, either by
their capability of speech-making or article-writing, might advance the
views of his party. Recognising the powers he most valued in Ralph, he
spared no pains to attach him to his own political set. When they
separated, it was with the full understanding that they were to see a
good deal of each other in London.
The holiday Ralph allowed himself was passing rapidly away; but, before
he returned to his chambers and his hard work, he had promised to spend a
few more days with Ellinor; and it suited him to go straight from the
duke's to Ford Bank. He left the castle soon after breakfast--the
luxurious, elegant breakfast, served by domestics who performed their
work with the accuracy and perfection of machines. He arrived at Ford
Bank before the man-servant had quite finished the dirtier part of his
morning's work, and he came to the glass-door in his striped cotton
jacket, a little soiled, and rolling up his working apron. Ellinor was
not yet strong enough to get up and go out and gather flowers for the
rooms, so those left from yesterday were rather faded; in short, the
contrast from entire completeness and exquisite freshness of arrangement
struck forcibly upon Ralph's perceptions, which were critical rather than
appreciative; and, as his affections were always subdued to his
intellect, Ellinor's lovely face and graceful figure flying to meet him
did not gain his full approval, because her hair was dressed in an old-
fashioned way, her waist was either too long or too short, her sleeves
too full or too tight for the standard of fashion to which his eye had
been accustomed while scanning the bridesmaids and various highborn
ladies at Stokely Castle.
But, as he had always piqued himself upon being able to put on one side
all superficial worldliness in his chase after power, it did not do for
him to shrink from seeing and facing the incompleteness of moderate
means. Only marriage upon moderate means was gradually becoming more
distasteful to him.
Nor did his subsequent intercourse with Lord Bolton, the Cabinet minister
before mentioned, tend to reconcile him to early matrimony. At Lord
Bolton's house he met polished and intellectual society, and all that
smoothness in ministering to the lower wants in eating and drinking which
seems to provide that the right thing shall always be at the right place
at the right time, so that the want of it shall never impede for an
instant the feast of wit or reason; while, if he went to the houses of
his friends, men of the same college and standing as himself, who had
been seduced into early marriages, he was uncomfortably aware of numerous
inconsistencies and hitches in their _menages_. Besides, the idea of the
possible disgrace that might befall the family with which he thought of
allying himself haunted him with the tenacity and also with the
exaggeration of a nightmare, whenever he had overworked himself in his
search after available and profitable knowledge, or had a fit of
indigestion after the exquisite dinners he was learning so well to
appreciate.
Christmas was, of course, to be devoted to his own family; it was an
unavoidable necessity, as he told Ellinor, while, in reality, he was
beginning to find absence from his betrothed something of a relief. Yet
the wranglings and folly of his home, even blessed by the presence of a
Lady Maria, made him look forward to Easter at Ford Bank with something
of the old pleasure.
Ellinor, with the fine tact which love gives, had discovered his
annoyance at various little incongruities in the household at the time of
his second visit in the previous autumn, and had laboured to make all as
perfect as she could before his return. But she had much to struggle
against. For the first time in her life there was a great want of ready
money; she could scarcely obtain the servants' wages; and the bill for
the spring seeds was a heavy weight on her conscience. For Miss Monro's
methodical habits had taught her pupil great exactitude as to all money
matters.
Then her father's temper had become very uncertain. He avoided being
alone with her whenever he possibly could; and the consciousness of this,
and of the terrible mutual secret which was the cause of this
estrangement, were the reasons why Ellinor never recovered her pretty
youthful bloom after her illness. Of course it was to this that the
outside world attributed her changed appearance. They would shake their
heads and say, "Ah, poor Miss Wilkins! What a lovely creature she was
before that fever!"
But youth is youth, and will assert itself in a certain elasticity of
body and spirits; and at times Ellinor forgot that fearful night for
several hours together. Even when her father's averted eye brought it
all once more before her, she had learnt to form excuses and palliations,
and to regard Mr. Dunster's death as only the consequence of an
unfortunate accident. But she tried to put the miserable remembrance
entirely out of her mind; to go on from day to day thinking only of the
day, and how to arrange it so as to cause the least irritation to her
father. She would so gladly have spoken to him on the one subject which
overshadowed all their intercourse; she fancied that by speaking she
might have been able to banish the phantom, or reduce its terror to what
she believed to be the due proportion. But her father was evidently
determined to show that he was never more to be spoken to on that
subject; and all she could do was to follow his lead on the rare
occasions that they fell into something like the old confidential
intercourse. As yet, to her, he had never given way to anger; but before
her he had often spoken in a manner which both pained and terrified her.
Sometimes his eye in the midst of his passion caught on her face of
affright and dismay, and then he would stop, and make such an effort to
control himself as sometimes ended in tears. Ellinor did not understand
that both these phases were owing to his increasing habit of drinking
more than he ought to have done. She set them down as the direct effects
of a sorely burdened conscience; and strove more and more to plan for his
daily life at home, how it should go on with oiled wheels, neither a jerk
nor a jar. It was no wonder she looked wistful, and careworn, and old.
Miss Monro was her great comfort; the total unconsciousness on that
lady's part of anything below the surface, and yet her full and delicate
recognition of all the little daily cares and trials, made her sympathy
most valuable to Ellinor, while there was no need to fear that it would
ever give Miss Monro that power of seeing into the heart of things which
it frequently confers upon imaginative people, who are deeply attached to
some one in sorrow.
There was a strong bond between Ellinor and Dixon, although they scarcely
ever exchanged a word save on the most common-place subjects; but their
silence was based on different feelings from that which separated Ellinor
from her father. Ellinor and Dixon could not speak freely, because their
hearts were full of pity for the faulty man whom they both loved so well,
and tried so hard to respect.
This was the state of the household to which Ralph Corbet came down at
Easter. He might have been known in London as a brilliant diner-out by
this time; but he could not afford to throw his life away in fireworks;
he calculated his forces, and condensed their power as much as might be,
only visiting where he was likely to meet men who could help in his
future career. He had been invited to spend the Easter vacation at a
certain country house which would be full of such human stepping-stones;
and he declined in order to keep his word to Ellinor, and go to Ford
Bank. But he could not help looking upon himself a little in the light
of a martyr to duty; and perhaps this view of his own merits made him
chafe under his future father-in-law's irritability of manner, which now
showed itself even to him. He found himself distinctly regretting that
he had suffered himself to be engaged so early in life; and having become
conscious of the temptation and not having repelled it at once, of course
it returned and returned, and gradually obtained the mastery over him.
What was to be gained by keeping to his engagement with Ellinor? He
should have a delicate wife to look after, and even more than the common
additional expenses of married life. He should have a father-in-law
whose character at best had had only a local and provincial
respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were both
sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing from
joyous geniality into moody surliness. Besides, he doubted if, in the
evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to be paid
down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be forthcoming. And
above all, and around all, there hovered the shadow of some unrevealed
disgrace, which might come to light at any time and involve him in it. He
thought he had pretty well ascertained the nature of this possible shame,
and had little doubt it would turn out to be that Dunster's
disappearance, to America or elsewhere, had been an arranged plan with
Mr. Wilkins. Although Mr. Ralph Corbet was capable of suspecting him of
this mean crime (so far removed from the impulsive commission of the past
sin which was dragging him daily lower and lower down), it was of a kind
that was peculiarly distasteful to the acute lawyer, who foresaw how such
base conduct would taint all whose names were ever mentioned, even by
chance, in connection with it. He used to lie miserably tossing on his
sleepless bed, turning over these things in the night season. He was
tormented by all these thoughts; he would bitterly regret the past events
that connected him with Ellinor, from the day when he first came to read
with Mr. Ness up to the present time. But when he came down in the
morning, and saw the faded Ellinor flash into momentary beauty at his
entrance into the dining-room, and when she blushingly drew near with the
one single flower freshly gathered, which it had been her custom to place
in his button-hole when he came down to breakfast, he felt as if his
better self was stronger than temptation, and as if he must be an honest
man and honourable lover, even against his wish.
As the day wore on the temptation gathered strength. Mr. Wilkins came
down, and while he was on the scene Ellinor seemed always engrossed by
her father, who apparently cared little enough for all her attentions.
Then there was a complaining of the food, which did not suit the sickly
palate of a man who had drunk hard the night before; and possibly these
complaints were extended to the servants, and their incompleteness or
incapacity was thus brought prominently before the eyes of Ralph, who
would have preferred to eat a dry crust in silence, or to have gone
without breakfast altogether, if he could have had intellectual
conversation of some high order, to having the greatest dainties with the
knowledge of the care required in their preparation thus coarsely
discussed before him. By the time such breakfasts were finished, Ellinor
looked thirty, and her spirits were gone for the day. It had become
difficult for Ralph to contract his mind to her small domestic interests,
and she had little else to talk to him about, now that he responded but
curtly to all her questions about himself, and was weary of professing a
love which he was ceasing to feel, in all the passionate nothings which
usually make up so much of lovers' talk. The books she had been reading
were old classics, whose place in literature no longer admitted of keen
discussion; the poor whom she cared for were all very well in their way;
and, if they could have been brought in to illustrate a theory, hearing
about them might have been of some use; but, as it was, it was simply
tiresome to hear day after day of Betty Palmer's rheumatism and Mrs.
Kay's baby's fits. There was no talking politics with her, because she
was so ignorant that she always agreed with everything he said.
He even grew to find luncheon and Miss Monro not unpleasant varieties to
his monotonous _tete-a-tetes_. Then came the walk, generally to the town
to fetch Mr. Wilkins from his office; and once or twice it was pretty
evident how he had been employing his hours. One day in particular his
walk was so unsteady and his speech so thick, that Ralph could only
wonder how it was that Ellinor did not perceive the cause; but she was
too openly anxious about the headache of which her father complained to
have been at all aware of the previous self-indulgence which must have
brought it on. This very afternoon, as ill-luck would have it, the Duke
of Hinton and a gentleman whom Ralph had met in town at Lord Bolton's
rode by, and recognised him; saw Ralph supporting a tipsy man with such
quiet friendly interest as must show all passers-by that they were
previous friends. Mr. Corbet chafed and fumed inwardly all the way home
after this unfortunate occurrence; he was in a thoroughly evil temper
before they reached Ford Bank, but he had too much self-command to let
this be very apparent. He turned into the shrubbery paths, leaving
Ellinor to take her father into the quietness of his own room, there to
lie down and shake off his headache.
Ralph walked along, ruminating in gloomy mood as to what was to be done;
how he could best extricate himself from the miserable relation in which
he had placed himself by giving way to impulse. Almost before he was
aware, a little hand stole within his folded arms, and Ellinor's sweet
sad eyes looked into his.
"I have put papa down for an hour's rest before dinner," said she. "His
head seems to ache terribly."
Ralph was silent and unsympathising, trying to nerve himself up to be
disagreeable, but finding it difficult in the face of such sweet trust.
"Do you remember our conversation last autumn, Ellinor?" he began at
length.
Her head sunk. They were near a garden-seat, and she quietly sat down,
without speaking.
"About some disgrace which you then fancied hung over you?" No answer.
"Does it still hang over you?"
"Yes!" she whispered, with a heavy sigh.
"And your father knows this, of course?"
"Yes!" again, in the same tone; and then silence.
"I think it is doing him harm," at length Ralph went on, decidedly.
"I am afraid it is," she said, in a low tone.
"I wish you would tell me what it is," he said, a little impatiently. "I
might be able to help you about it."
"No! you could not," replied Ellinor. "I was sorry to my very heart to
tell you what I did; I did not want help; all that is past. But I wanted
to know if you thought that a person situated as I was, was justified in
marrying any one ignorant of what might happen, what I do hope and trust
never will."
"But if I don't know what you are alluding to in this mysterious way, you
must see--don't you see, love?--I am in the position of the ignorant man
whom I think you said you could not feel it right to marry. Why don't
you tell me straight out what it is?" He could not help his irritation
betraying itself in his tones and manner of speaking. She bent a little
forward, and looked full into his face, as though to pierce to the very
heart's truth of him. Then she said, as quietly as she had ever spoken
in her life,--"You wish to break off our engagement?"
He reddened and grew indignant in a moment. "What nonsense! Just
because I ask a question and make a remark! I think your illness must
have made you fanciful, Ellinor. Surely nothing I said deserves such an
interpretation. On the contrary, have I not shown the sincerity and
depth of my affection to you by clinging to you through--through
everything?"
He was going to say "through the wearying opposition of my family," but
he stopped short, for he knew that the very fact of his mother's
opposition had only made him the more determined to have his own way in
the first instance; and even now he did not intend to let out, what he
had concealed up to this time, that his friends all regretted his
imprudent engagement.
Ellinor sat silently gazing out upon the meadows, but seeing nothing.
Then she put her hand into his. "I quite trust you, Ralph. I was wrong
to doubt. I am afraid I have grown fanciful and silly."
He was rather put to it for the right words, for she had precisely
divined the dim thought that had overshadowed his mind when she had
looked so intently at him. But he caressed her, and reassured her with
fond words, as incoherent as lovers' words generally are.
By-and-by they sauntered homewards. When they reached the house, Ellinor
left him, and flew up to see how her father was. When Ralph went into
his own room he was vexed with himself, both for what he had said and for
what he had not said. His mental look-out was not satisfactory.
Neither he nor Mr. Wilkins was in good humour with the world in general
at dinner-time, and it needs little in such cases to condense and turn
the lowering tempers into one particular direction. As long as Ellinor
and Miss Monro stayed in the dining-room, a sort of moody peace had been
kept up, the ladies talking incessantly to each other about the trivial
nothings of their daily life, with an instinctive consciousness that if
they did not chatter on, something would be said by one of the gentlemen
which would be distasteful to the other.
As soon as Ralph had shut the door behind them, Mr. Wilkins went to the
sideboard, and took out a bottle which had not previously made its
appearance.
"Have a little cognac?" he asked, with an assumption of carelessness, as
he poured out a wine-glassful. "It's a capital thing for the headache;
and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking headache all day."
"I am sorry for it," said Ralph, "for I wanted particularly to speak to
you about business--about my marriage, in fact."
"Well! speak away, I'm as clear-headed as any man, if that's what you
mean."
Ralph bowed, a little contemptuously.
"What I wanted to say was, that I am anxious to have all things arranged
for my marriage in August. Ellinor is so much better now; in fact, so
strong, that I think we may reckon upon her standing the change to a
London life pretty well."
Mr. Wilkins stared at him rather blankly, but did not immediately speak.
"Of course I may have the deeds drawn up in which, as by previous
arrangement, you advance a certain portion of Ellinor's fortune for the
purposes therein to be assigned; as we settled last year when I hoped to
have been married in August?"
A thought flitted through Mr. Wilkins's confused brain that he should
find it impossible to produce the thousands required without having
recourse to the money lenders, who were already making difficulties, and
charging him usurious interest for the advances they had lately made; and
he unwisely tried to obtain a diminution in the sum he had originally
proposed to give Ellinor. "Unwisely," because he might have read Ralph's
character better than to suppose he would easily consent to any
diminution without good and sufficient reason being given; or without
some promise of compensating advantages in the future for the present
sacrifice asked from him. But perhaps Mr. Wilkins, dulled as he was by
wine thought he could allege a good and sufficient reason, for he said:
"You must not be hard upon me, Ralph. That promise was made
before--before I exactly knew the state of my affairs!"
"Before Dunster's disappearance, in fact," said Mr. Corbet, fixing his
steady, penetrating eyes on Mr. Wilkins's countenance.
"Yes--exactly--before Dunster's--" mumbled out Mr. Wilkins, red and
confused, and not finishing his sentence.
"By the way," said Ralph (for with careful carelessness of manner he
thought he could extract something of the real nature of the impending
disgrace from his companion, in the state in which he then was; and if he
only knew more about this danger he could guard against it; guard others;
perhaps himself)--"By the way, have you ever heard anything of Dunster
since he went off to--America, isn't it thought?"
He was startled beyond his power of self-control by the instantaneous
change in Mr. Wilkins which his question produced. Both started up; Mr.
Wilkins white, shaking, and trying to say something, but unable to form a
sensible sentence.
"Good God! sir, what is the matter?" said Ralph, alarmed at these signs
of physical suffering.
Mr. Wilkins sat down, and repelled his nearer approach without speaking.
"It is nothing, only this headache which shoots through me at times.
Don't look at me, sir, in that way. It is very unpleasant to find
another man's eyes perpetually fixed upon you."
"I beg your pardon," said Ralph, coldly; his short-lived sympathy, thus
repulsed, giving way to his curiosity. But he waited for a minute or two
without daring to renew the conversation at the point where they had
stopped: whether interrupted by bodily or mental discomfort on the part
of his companion he was not quite sure. While he hesitated how to begin
again on the subject, Mr. Wilkins pulled the bottle of brandy to himself
and filled his glass again, tossing off the spirit as if it had been
water. Then he tried to look Mr. Corbet full in the face, with a stare
as pertinacious as he could make it, but very different from the keen
observant gaze which was trying to read him through.
"What were we talking about?" said Ralph, at length, with the most
natural air in the world, just as if he had really been forgetful of some
half-discussed subject of interest.
"Of what you'd a d---d deal better hold your tongue about," growled out
Mr. Wilkins, in a surly thick voice.
"Sir!" said Ralph, starting to his feet with real passion at being so
addressed by "Wilkins the attorney."
"Yes," continued the latter, "I'll manage my own affairs, and allow of no
meddling and no questioning. I said so once before, and I was not minded
and bad came of it; and now I say it again. And if you're to come here
and put impertinent questions, and stare at me as you've been doing this
half-hour past, why, the sooner you leave this house the better!"
Ralph half turned to take him at his word, and go at once; but then he
"gave Ellinor another chance," as he worded it in his thoughts; but it
was in no spirit of conciliation that he said:
"You've taken too much of that stuff, sir. You don't know what you're
saying. If you did, I should leave your house at once, never to return."
"You think so, do you?" said Mr. Wilkins, trying to stand up, and look
dignified and sober. "I say, sir, that if you ever venture again to talk
and look as you have done to-night, why, sir, I will ring the bell and
have you shown the door by my servants. So now you're warned, my fine
fellow!" He sat down, laughing a foolish tipsy laugh of triumph. In
another minute his arm was held firmly but gently by Ralph.
"Listen, Mr. Wilkins," he said, in a low hoarse voice. "You shall never
have to say to me twice what you have said to-night. Henceforward we are
as strangers to each other. As to Ellinor"--his tones softened a little,
and he sighed in spite of himself--"I do not think we should have been
happy. I believe our engagement was formed when we were too young to
know our own minds, but I would have done my duty and kept to my word;
but you, sir, have yourself severed the connection between us by your
insolence to-night. I, to be turned out of your house by your
servants!--I, a Corbet of Westley, who would not submit to such threats
from a peer of the realm, let him be ever so drunk!" He was out of the
room, almost out of the house, before he had spoken the last words.
Mr. Wilkins sat still, first fiercely angry, then astonished, and lastly
dismayed into sobriety. "Corbet, Corbet! Ralph!" he called in vain;
then he got up and went to the door, opened it, looked into the fully-
lighted hall; all was so quiet there that he could hear the quiet voices
of the women in the drawing-room talking together. He thought for a
moment, went to the hat-stand, and missed Ralph's low-crowned straw hat.
Then he sat down once more in the dining-room, and endeavoured to make
out exactly what had passed; but he could not believe that Mr. Corbet had
come to any enduring or final resolution to break off his engagement, and
he had almost reasoned himself back into his former state of indignation
at impertinence and injury, when Ellinor came in, pale, hurried, and
anxious.
"Papa! what does this mean?" said she, putting an open note into his
hand. He took up his glasses, but his hand shook so that he could hardly
read. The note was from the Parsonage, to Ellinor; only three lines sent
by Mr. Ness's servant, who had come to fetch Mr. Corbet's things. He had
written three lines with some consideration for Ellinor, even when he was
in his first flush of anger against her father, and it must be confessed
of relief at his own freedom, thus brought about by the act of another,
and not of his own working out, which partly saved his conscience. The
note ran thus:
"DEAR ELLINOR,--Words have passed between your father and me which
have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to return to it. I
will write more fully to-morrow. But do not grieve too much, for I am
not, and never have been, good enough for you. God bless you, my
dearest Nelly, though I call you so for the last time.--R. C."
"Papa, what is it?" Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as her
father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing the
note.
"I don't know!" said he, looking up at her piteously; "it's the world, I
think. Everything goes wrong with me and mine: it went wrong before THAT
night--so it can't be that, can it, Ellinor?"
"Oh, papa!" said she, kneeling down by him, her face hidden on his
breast.
He put one arm languidly round her. "I used to read of Orestes and the
Furies at Eton when I was a boy, and I thought it was all a heathen
fiction. Poor little motherless girl!" said he, laying his other hand on
her head, with the caressing gesture he had been accustomed to use when
she had been a little child. "Did you love him so very dearly, Nelly?"
he whispered, his cheek against her: "for somehow of late he has not
seemed to me good enough for thee. He has got an inkling that something
has gone wrong, and he was very inquisitive--I may say he questioned me
in a relentless kind of way."
"Oh, papa, it was my doing, I'm afraid. I said something long ago about
possible disgrace."
He pushed her away; he stood up, and looked at her with the eyes dilated,
half in fear, half in fierceness, of an animal at bay; he did not heed
that his abrupt movement had almost thrown her prostrate on the ground.
"You, Ellinor! You--you--"
"Oh, darling father, listen!" said she, creeping to his knees, and
clasping them with her hands. "I said it, as if it were a possible case,
of some one else--last August--but he immediately applied it, and asked
me if it was over me the disgrace, or shame--I forget the words we
used--hung; and what could I say?"
"Anything--anything to put him off the scent. God help me, I am a lost
man, betrayed by my child!"
Ellinor let go his knees, and covered her face. Every one stabbed at
that poor heart. In a minute or so her father spoke again.
"I don't mean what I say. I often don't mean it now. Ellinor, you must
forgive me, my child!" He stooped, and lifted her up, and sat down,
taking her on his knee, and smoothing her hair off her hot forehead.
"Remember, child, how very miserable I am, and have forgiveness for me.
He had none, and yet he must have seen I had been drinking."
"Drinking, papa!" said Ellinor, raising her head, and looking at him with
sorrowful surprise.
"Yes. I drink now to try and forget," said he, blushing and confused.
"Oh, how miserable we are!" cried Ellinor, bursting into tears--"how very
miserable! It seems almost as if God had forgotten to comfort us!"
"Hush! hush!" said he. "Your mother said once she did so pray that you
might grow up religious; you must be religious, child, because she prayed
for it so often. Poor Lettice, how glad I am that you are dead!" Here
he began to cry like a child. Ellinor comforted him with kisses rather
than words. He pushed her away, after a while, and said, sharply: "How
much does he know? I must make sure of that. How much did you tell him,
Ellinor?"
"Nothing--nothing, indeed, papa, but what I told you just now!"
"Tell it me again--the exact words!"
"I will, as well as I can; but it was last August. I only said, 'Was it
right for a woman to marry, knowing that disgrace hung over her, and
keeping her lover in ignorance of it?'"
"That was all, you are sure?"
"Yes. He immediately applied the case to me--to ourselves."
"And he never wanted to know what was the nature of the threatened
disgrace?"
"Yes, he did."
"And you told him?"
"No, not a word more. He referred to the subject again to-day, in the
shrubbery; but I told him nothing more. You quite believe me, don't you,
papa?"
He pressed her to him, but did not speak. Then he took the note up
again, and read it with as much care and attention as he could collect in
his agitated state of mind.
"Nelly," said he, at length, "he says true; he is not good enough for
thee. He shrinks from the thought of the disgrace. Thou must stand
alone, and bear the sins of thy father."
He shook so much as he said this, that Ellinor had to put any suffering
of her own on one side, and try to confine her thoughts to the necessity
of getting her father immediately up to bed. She sat by him till he went
to sleep, and she could leave him, and go to her own room, to
forgetfulness and rest, if she could find those priceless blessings.