The drawing-room of the cottage was large and low, and had that _faux
air_ of being old-fashioned which is dear to the hearts of superior
people generally. Mrs. Dennistoun and her daughter scarcely belonged to
that class, yet they were, as ladies of leisure with a little taste for
the arts are bound to be, touched by all the fancies of their time,
which was just beginning to adore Queen Anne. There was still, however,
a mixture of luxury with the square settees and spindle-legged cabinets
which were "the fashion:" and partly because that was also "the fashion,"
and partly because on Windyhill even a July evening was sometimes a
little chill, or looked so by reason of the great darkness of the
silent, little-inhabited country outside--there was a log burning on the
fire-dogs (the newest thing in furnishing in those days though now so
common) on the hearth. The log burned as little as possible, being,
perhaps, not quite so thoroughly dry and serviceable as it would have
been in its proper period, and made a faint hissing sound in the silence
as it burned, and diffused its pungent odour through the house. The bow
window was open behind its white curtains, and it was there that the
little party gathered out of reach of the unnecessary heat and the
smoke. There was a low sofa on either side of this recess, and in the
centre the French window opened into the garden, where all the scents
were balmy in the stillness which had fallen upon the night.
Mrs. Dennistoun was tall and slim, a woman with a presence, and sat with
a sort of dignity on her side of the window, with a little table beside
her covered with her little requirements, the properties, so to speak,
without which she was never known to be--a book for moments when there
was nothing else to interest her, a case for work should there arise
any necessity for putting in a stitch in time, a bottle of salts should
she or any one else become suddenly faint, a paper cutter in cases of
emergency, and finally, for mere ornament, two roses, a red and a white,
in one of those tall old-fashioned glasses which are so pretty for
flowers. I do wrong to dismiss the roses with such vulgar qualifications
as white and red--the one was a _Souvenir de Malmaison_, the other a
_General_ ---- something or other. If you spoke to Mrs. Dennistoun
about her flowers she said, "Oh, the Malmaison," or "Oh, the General
So-and-so." Rose was only the family name, but happily, as we all know,
under the other appellation they smelt just as sweet. Mrs. Dennistoun
kept up all this little state because she had been used to do so;
because it was part of a lady's accoutrements, so to speak. She had also
a cushion, which was necessary, if not for comfort, yet for her sense of
being fully equipped, placed behind her back when she sat down. But with
all this she was not a formal or prim person. She was a woman who had
not produced a great deal of effect in life; one of those who are not
accustomed to have their advice taken, or to find that their opinion has
much weight upon others. Perhaps it was because Elinor resembled her
father that this peculiarity which had affected all Mrs. Dennistoun's
married life should have continued into a sphere where she ought to have
been paramount. But she was with her daughter as she had been with her
husband, a person of an ineffective character, taking refuge from the
sensation of being unable to influence those about her whose wills were
stronger than her own, by relinquishing authority, and in her most
decided moments offering an opinion only, no more. This was not because
she was really undecided, for on the contrary she knew her own mind well
enough; but it had become a matter of habit with her to insist upon no
opinion, knowing, as she did, how little chance she had of imposing her
opinion upon the stronger wills about her. She had two other children
older than Elinor: one, the eldest of all, married in India, a woman
with many children of her own, practically altogether severed from
the maternal nest; the other an adventurous son, who was generally
understood to be at the ends of the earth, but seldom or never had any
more definite address. This lady had naturally gone through many pangs
and anxieties on behalf of these children, who had dropped away from her
side into the unknown; but it belonged to her character to have said
very little about this, so that she was generally supposed to take
things very easily, and other mothers were apt to admire the composure
of Mrs. Dennistoun, whose son might be being murdered by savages at any
moment, for anything she knew--or minded, apparently. "Now it would have
driven _me_ out of my senses!" the other ladies said. Mrs. Dennistoun
perhaps did not feel the back so well fitted to the burden as
appeared--but she kept her own sentiments on this subject entirely to
herself.
(I may say too--but this, the young reader may skip without
disadvantage--by way of explanation of a peculiarity which has lately
been much remarked as characteristic of those records of human history
contemptuously called fiction, _i.e._, the unimportance, or ill-report,
or unjust disapproval of the mother in records of this description--that
it is almost impossible to maintain her due rank and character in a
piece of history, which has to be kept within certain limits--and where
her daughter the heroine must have the first place. To lessen _her_
pre-eminence by dwelling at length upon the mother, unless that mother
is a fool, or a termagant, or something thoroughly contrasting with the
beauty and virtues of the daughter--would in most cases be a mistake in
art. For one thing the necessary incidents are wanting, for I strongly
object, and so I think do most people, to mothers who fall in love, or
think of marriage, or any such vanity in their own person, and unless
she is to interfere mischievously with the young lady's prospects, or
take more or less the part of the villain, how is she to be permitted
any importance at all? For there cannot be two suns in one sphere, or
two centres to one world. Thus the mother has to be sacrificed to the
daughter: which is a parable; or else it is the other way, which is
against all the principles and prepossessions of life.)
Elinor did not sit up like her mother. She had flung herself upon the
opposite sofa, with her arms flung behind her head, supporting it with
her fingers half buried in the twists of her hair. She was not tall
like Mrs. Dennistoun, and there was far more vivid colour than had ever
been the mother's in her brown eyes and bright complexion, which was
milk-white and rose-red after an old-fashioned rule of colour, too crude
perhaps for modern artistic taste. Sometimes these delightful tints go
with a placid soul which never varies, but in Elinor's case there was a
demon in the hazel of the eyes, not dark enough for placidity, all fire
at the best of times, and ready in a moment to burst into flame. She
it was who had to be in the forefront of the interest, and not her
mother, though for metaphysical, or what I suppose should now be
called psychological interests, the elder lady was probably the most
interesting of the two. Elinor beat her foot upon the carpet, out of
sheer impatience, while John lingered alone in the dining-room. What did
he stay there for? When there are several men together, and they drink
wine, the thing is comprehensible; but one man alone who takes his
claret with his dinner, and cares for nothing more, why should he stay
behind when there was so much to say to him, and not one minute too
much time till Monday morning, should the house be given up to talk not
only by day but by night? But it was no use beating one's foot, for John
did not come.
"You spoke to your cousin, Elinor, before dinner?" her mother said.
"Oh, yes, I spoke to him before dinner. What did he come here for but
that? I sent for him on purpose, you know, mamma, to hear what he would
say."
"And what did he say?"
This most natural question produced a small convulsion once more on
Elinor's side. She loosed the hands that had been supporting her head
and flung them out in front of her. "Oh, mamma, how can you be so
exasperating! What did he say? What was he likely to say? If the beggar
maid that married King Cophetua had a family it would have been exactly
the same thing--though in that case surely the advantage was all on the
gentleman's side."
"We know none of the particulars in that case," said Mrs. Dennistoun,
calmly. "I have always thought it quite possible that the beggar maid
was a princess of an old dynasty and King Cophetua a _parvenu_. But in
your case, Elinor----"
"You know just as little," said the girl, impetuously.
"That is what I say. I don't know the man who has possessed himself of
my child's fancy and heart. I want to know more about him. I want----"
"For goodness' sake, whatever you want, don't be sentimental, mamma!"
"Was I sentimental? I didn't mean it. He has got your heart, my dear,
whatever words may be used."
"Yes--and for ever!" said the girl, turning round upon herself. "I know
you think I don't know my own mind; but there will never be any change
in me. Oh, what does John mean, sitting all by himself in that stuffy
room? He has had time to smoke a hundred cigarettes!"
"Elinor, you must not forget it is rather hard upon John to be brought
down to settle your difficulties for you. What do you want with him?
Only that he should advise you to do what you have settled upon doing.
If he took the other side, how much attention would you give him? You
must be reasonable, my dear."
"I would give him every attention," said Elinor, "if he said what was
reasonable. You don't think mere blind opposition is reasonable, I hope,
mamma. To say Don't, merely, without saying why, what reason is there in
that?"
"My dear, when you argue I am lost. I am not clever at making out my
ground. Mine is not mere blind opposition, or indeed opposition at all.
You have been always trained to use your own faculties, and I have never
made any stand against you."
"Why not? why not?" said the girl, springing to her feet. "That is just
the dreadful, dreadful part of it! Why don't you say straight out what
I am to do and keep to it, and not tell me I must make use of my own
faculties? When I do, you put on a face and object. Either don't object,
or tell me point-blank what I am to do."
"Do you think for one moment if I did, you would obey me, Elinor?"
"Oh, I don't know what I might do in that case, for it will never
happen. You will never take that responsibility. For my part, if you
locked me up in my room and kept me on bread and water I should think
_that_ reasonable; but not this kind of letting I dare not wait upon I
would, saying I am to exercise my own faculties, and then hesitating and
finding fault."
"I daresay, my dear," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with great tolerance, "that
this may be provoking to your impatient mind: but you must put yourself
in my place a little, as I try to put myself in yours. I have never seen
Mr. Compton. It is probable, or at least quite possible, that if I knew
him I might look upon him with your eyes----"
"Probable! Possible! What words to use! when all my happiness, all my
life, everything I care for is in it: and my own mother thinks it just
possible that she might be able to tolerate the man that--the man
who----"
She flung herself down on her seat again, panting and excited. "Did you
wear out Adelaide like that," she cried, "before she married, papa and
you----"
"Adelaide was very different, Elinor. She married _salon les règles_ a
man whom we all knew. There was no trouble about it. Your father was
the one who was impatient then. He thought it too well arranged, too
commonplace and satisfactory. You may believe he did not object to that
in words, but he laughed at them and it worried him. It has done very
well on the whole," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a faint sigh.
"You say that--and then you sigh. There is always a little reserve. You
are never wholly satisfied."
"One seldom is in this world," said Mrs. Dennistoun, this time with a
soft laugh. "This world is not very satisfactory. One makes the best one
can of it."
"And that is just what I hate to hear," said Elinor, "what I have always
heard. Oh, yes, when you don't say it you mean it, mamma. One can read
it in the turn of your head. You put up with things. You think perhaps
they might have been worse. In every way that's your philosophy. And
it's killing, killing to all life! I would rather far you said out,
'Adelaide's husband is a prig and I hate him.'"
"There is only one drawback, that it would not be true. I don't in the
least hate him. I am glad I was not called upon to marry him myself, I
don't think I should have liked it. But he makes Adelaide a very good
husband, and she is quite happy with him--as far as I know."
"The same thing again--never more. I wonder, I wonder after I have been
married a dozen years what you will say of me?"
"I wonder, too: if we could but know that it would solve the question,"
the mother said. Elinor looked at her with a provoked and impatient air,
which softened off after a moment--partly because she heard the door of
the dining-room open--into a smile.
"I try you in every way," she said, half laughing. "I do everything to
beguile you into a pleasanter speech. I thought you must at least have
said then that you hoped you would have nothing to say but happiness.
No! you are not to be caught, however one tries, mamma."
John came in at this moment, not without a whiff about him of the
cigarette over which he had lingered so. It relieved him to see the
two ladies seated opposite each other in the bow window, and to hear
something like a laugh in the air. Perhaps they were discussing other
things, and not this momentous marriage question, in which certainly no
laughter was.
"You have your usual fire," he said, "but the wind has quite gone down,
and I am sure it is not wanted to-night."
"It looks cheerful always, John."
"Which is the reason, I suppose, why you carefully place yourself out of
sight of it--one of the prejudices of English life."
And then he came forward into the recess of the window, which was partly
separated from the room by a table with flowers on it, and a great bush
in a pot, of delicate maiden-hair fern. It was perhaps significant,
though he did not mean it for any demonstration of partisanship, that
he sat down on Elinor's side. Both the ladies felt it so instinctively,
although, on the contrary, had the truth been known, all John's real
agreement was with the mother; but in such a conjuncture it is not truth
but personal sympathy that carries the day. "You are almost in the dark
here," he said.
"Neither of us is doing anything. One is lazy on a summer night."
"There is a great deal more in it than that," said Elinor, in a voice
which faltered a little. "You talk about summer nights, and the weather,
and all manner of indifferent things, but you know all the time there
is but one real subject to talk of, and that we are all thinking of
that."
"That is my line, aunt," said John. "Elinor is right. We might sit
and make conversation, but of course this is the only subject we are
thinking of. It's very kind of you to take me into the consultation. Of
course I am in a kind of way the nearest in relation, and the only man
in the family--except my father--and I know a little about law, and all
that. Now let me hear formally, as if I knew nothing about it (and, in
fact, I know very little), what the question is. Elinor has met someone
who--who has proposed to her--not to put too fine a point upon it," said
John, with a smile that was somewhat ghastly--"and she has accepted him.
Congratulations are understood, but here there arises a hitch."
"There arises no hitch. Mamma is dissatisfied (which mamma generally is)
chiefly because she does not know Mr. Compton; and some wretched old
woman, who doesn't know him either, has written to her--to her and also
to me--telling us a pack of lies," said Elinor, indignantly, "to which I
do not give the least credence for a moment--not for a moment!"
"That's all very well for you," said John, "it's quite simple; but for
us, Elinor--that is, for your mother and me, as you are good enough to
allow me to have a say in the matter--it's not so simple. We feel, you
know, that, like Cæsar's wife, our Elinor's--husband"--he could not help
making a grimace as he said that word, but no one saw or suspected
it--"should be above suspicion."
"That is exactly what I feel, John."
"Well, we must do something about it, don't you see? Probably it will be
as easy as possible for him to clear himself." (The dis-Honourable Phil!
Good heavens! to think it was a man branded with such a name that was to
marry Elinor! For a moment he was silenced by the thought, as if some
one had given him a blow.)
"To clear himself!" said Elinor. "And do you think I will permit him to
be asked to clear himself? Do you think I will allow him to believe for
a moment that _I_ believed anything against him? Do you think I will
take the word of a spiteful old woman?"
"Old women are not always spiteful, and they are sometimes right."
John put out his hand to prevent Mrs. Dennistoun from speaking, which,
indeed, she had no intention of doing. "I don't mean so, of course, in
Mr. Compton's case--and I don't know what has been said."
"Things that are very uncomfortable--very inconsistent with a happy life
and a comfortable establishment," said Mrs. Dennistoun.
"Oh, if you could only hear yourself, mamma! You are not generally a
Philistine, I must say that for you; but if you only heard the tone
in which you said 'comfortable establishment!' the most conventional
match-making in existence could not have done it better; and as for
what has been said, there has nothing been said but what is said about
everybody--what, probably, would be said of you yourself, John, for you
play whist sometimes, I hear, and often billiards, at the club."
A half-audible "God forbid!" had come from John's lips when she said,
"What would probably be said of yourself"--audible that is to Elinor,
not to the mother. She sprang up as this murmur came to her ear: "Oh, if
you are going to prejudge the case, there is nothing for me to say!"
"I should be very sorry to prejudge the case, or to judge it all," said
John. "I am too closely interested to be judicial. Let somebody who
knows nothing about it be your judge. Let the accusations be submitted--to
your Rector, say; he's a sensible man enough, and knows the world. He
won't be scared by a rubber at the club, or that sort of thing. Let him
inquire, and then your mind will be at rest."
"There is only one difficulty, John," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "Mr. Hudson
would be the best man in the world, only for one thing--that it is from
his sister and his wife that the warning came."
"Oh!" said John. This fact seemed to take him aback in the most
ludicrous way. He sat and gazed at them, and had not another word to
say. Perhaps the fact that he himself who suggested the inquiry was
still better informed of the true state of the case, and of the truth of
the accusation, than were those to whom he might have submitted it, gave
him a sense of the hopelessness and also absurdity of the attempt more
than anything else could have done.
"And that proves, if there was nothing else," said Elinor, "how false
it is: for how could Mrs. Hudson and Mary Dale know? They are not
fashionable people, they are not in society. How could they or any one
like them know anything of Phil"--she stopped quickly, drew herself up,
and added--"of Mr. Compton, I mean?"
"They might not know, but they might state their authority," Mrs.
Dennistoun said; "and if the Rector cannot be used to help us, surely,
John, you are a man of the world, you are not like a woman, unacquainted
with evidence. Why should not you do it, though you are, as you kindly
say, an interested party?"
"He shall not do it. I forbid him to do it. If he takes in hand anything
of the kind he must say good-by to me."
"You hear?" said John; "but I could not do it in any case, my dear
Elinor. I am too near. I never could see this thing all round. Why not
your lawyer, old Lynch, a decent old fellow----"
"I will tell him the same," cried Elinor; "I will never speak to him
again."
"My dear," said her mother, "you will give everybody the idea that you
don't want to know the truth."
"I know the truth already," said Elinor, rising with great dignity. "Do
you think that any slander would for a moment shake my faith in you--or
you? You don't deserve it, John, for you turn against me--you that I
thought were going to take my part; but do you think if all the people
in London set up one story that I would believe it against you? And how
should I against _him_?" she added, with an emphasis upon the word, as
expressing something immeasurably more to be loved and trusted than
either mother or cousin, by which, after having raised John up to a sort
of heaven of gratified affection, she let him down again to the ground
like a stone. Oh, yes! trusted in with perfect faith, nothing believed
against him, whom she had known all her life--but yet not to be mentioned
in the same breath with the ineffable trust she reposed in the man she
loved--whom she did not know at all. The first made John's countenance
beam with emotion and pleasure, the second brought a cold shade over his
face. For a moment he could scarcely speak.
"She bribes us," he said at last, forcing a smile. "She flatters us, but
only to let us drop again, Mrs. Dennistoun; it is as good as saying,
'What are we to _him_?'"
"They all do so," said the elder lady, calmly; "I am used to it."
"But, perhaps, I am not quite--used to it," said John, with something in
his voice which made them both look at him--Elinor only for a moment,
carelessly, before she swept away--Mrs. Dennistoun with a more warmly
awakened sensation, as if she had made some discovery. "Ah!" she said,
with a tone of pain. But Elinor did not wait for any further disclosures.
She waved her hand, and went off with her head high, carrying, as she
felt, the honours of war. They might plot, indeed, behind her back, and
try to invent some tribunal before which her future husband might be
arraigned; but John, at least, would say nothing to make things worse.
John would be true to her--he would not injure Phil Compton. Elinor,
perhaps, guessed a little of what John was thinking, and felt, though
she could scarcely have told how, that it would be a point of honour
with him not to betray her love.
He sat with Mrs. Dennistoun in partial silence for some time after
this. He felt as if he had been partially discovered--partially, and yet
more would be discovered than there was to discover; for if either of
them believed that he was in love with Elinor, they were mistaken, he
said to himself. He had been annoyed by her engagement, but he had never
come to the point of asking her that question in his own person. No, nor
would not, he said to himself--certainly would not--not even to save her
from the clutches of this gambler and adventurer. No; they might think
what they liked, but this was the case. He never should have done
it--never would have exposed himself to refusal--never besought this
high-tempered girl to have the control of his life. Poor Nelly all the
same! poor little thing! To think she had so little judgment as to
ignore what might have been a great deal better, and to pin her faith to
the dis-Honourable Phil.