“Well,” said Compton, placing himself beside her, “here you are, Nell;
kind of the old lady to bring me, wasn’t it? I should never have found
you out by myself.”
“Has he gone, Phil?” Elinor raised her scared face from her hands, and
gave him a piteous look.
“Why, Nell! you are trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty
pet, for Stanny? Stanny’s gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a
bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ever you saw.”
“Was he a lawyer?” she said, not knowing why she said it, for it
mattered nothing at all to Elinor what the man was.
“Not exactly; and yet, I suppose, something of the kind. He is the one
that knows about law points, and such things. But now he’s as quiet as a
lamb, thanks to you.”
“Phil,” she cried, “what did you make me say? I don’t know what I have
done. I have done something dreadful--deceived the man, as good as told
him a lie.”
“You told him the truth,” said Phil, with a laugh, “in the most
judgmatical way. You stuck to it like a--woman. There’s nothing like a
woman for sticking to a text. You didn’t say a word too much. And I say,
Nell, that little defiant bit of yours--‘Was there any reason why it
shouldn’t be the sixth?’ was grand. That was quite magnificent, my pet.
I never thought you had such spirit in you.”
“Oh, Phil,” she cried, “why did you make me say it? What was it I said?
I don’t know; I don’t understand a bit. Whatever it was, I know that it
was wrong. I deceived the man.”
“That’s not so great a sin,” he said. “I’ve known worse things done. Put
an old reynard off the scent to save his prey. I don’t see what’s wrong
in that, especially as the innocent chicken to be saved was your own
poor old Phil.”
“Phil, Phil,” she cried, “what could that man have done to you? What had
put you in his power? You have made me lose all my innocence. I have got
horrible things in my head. What could he have done to you that you made
me tell a lie?”
“What lie did I make you tell? be reasonable; I did arrive on the sixth,
you know that just as well as I do. Don’t you really remember the
calendar in the hall? You saw it, Nell, as well as I.”
“I know, I know,” she cried, putting her hands up to her eyes, “I see it
everywhere staring at me, that big, dreadful 6. But how is it the 8th
now? There is something in it--something I don’t understand.”
He laughed loudly and long: one of those boisterous laughs which always
jarred upon Elinor. “I don’t in the least mind how it was,” he said. “It
was, and that’s quite enough for me; and let it be for you too, Nell. I
hope you’re not going to search into the origin of things like this;
we’ve quite enough to do in this world to take things as they come.”
“Oh, Phil! if at least I could understand--I don’t understand: or if I
had not been made to say what is so mysterious--what must be false.”
“Hush, Nell; how could it be false when you saw with your own eyes it
was true? Now let us be done with this, my darling. The incident is
terminated, as the French say. I came here as fast as I could come to
have a good laugh with you over it, and lo! you’re nearer crying. Why
should you have Stanny on your conscience, Nell? a fellow that would
like no better than to hang me if he could get the chance.”
“But Phil, Phil--oh, tell me, what could this man have done to you? Why
are you afraid of him? Why, why have you made me tell him----”
“Now, Nell, no exaggerated expression. It was a fact you told him,
according to the best of evidence; and what he could have done to me is
just this--he might have given me a deal of trouble, and put off our
marriage. I should have had to go back to town, and my time would have
been taken up with finding out about those books, and our marriage would
have been put off; that’s what he could have done.”
“Is that all?” cried Elinor, “was that all?”
“All!” he said, with that loud laugh again; “you don’t mind a bit how
you hurt a fellow’s pride, and his affections, and all that. Do you mean
to say, you hardhearted little coquette, that you wouldn’t mind? I don’t
believe you would mind! Here am I counting the hours, and you, you
little cold puss, you aggravating little----”
“Oh, Phil, don’t talk such nonsense. If we were to be separated, for a
week or a month, what could that matter, in comparison with saying what
wasn’t----”
“Hush,” he said, putting his hand to her mouth. “It’s not nice of you to
take it so easily, Nell. I’d tell as many what-d’ye-call-’ems as you
like, rather than put it off an hour. Why, feeling apart (and I don’t
think you’ve any feeling, you little piece of ice), think how
inconvenient it would have been; the people all arriving; the breakfast
all ready; the Rector with his surplice on, and no wedding! Fancy the
Jew with all her fallals, on the old lady’s hands, and your cousin
John----”
“I have told you already, Phil, my cousin John will not be there.”
“So much the better,” he said, with a laugh, “I don’t want him to be
there--shows his sense, when his nose is put out of joint, to keep out
of the way.”
“I wish you would understand,” she said, with a little vexation, “that
John is not put out of joint, as you say in that odious way. He has
never been anything more to me, nor I to him, than we are now--like
brother and sister.”
“The more fool he,” said Compton, “to have the chance of a nice girl
like you, Nell, and not to go in for it. But I don’t believe a bit in
the brother and sister dodge.”
“We will be just the same all our lives,” cried Elinor.
“Not if I know it,” said Phil. “I’m an easy-going fellow in most ways,
but you’ll find I’m an old Turk about you, my little duck of a Nell. No
amateur brother for me. If you can’t get along with your old Phil,
without other adorers----”
“Phil! as if I should ever think or care whether there was another man
in the world!”
“Oh, that’s going too far,” he said, laughing. “I shan’t mind a little
flirtation. You may have a man or two in your train to fetch and carry,
get your shawl for you, and call your carriage, and so forth; but no
serious old hand, Nell--nothing to remind you that there was a time when
you didn’t know Phil Compton.” His laugh died away at this point, and
for a moment his face assumed that grave look which changed its
character so much. “If you don’t come to repent before then that you
ever saw that fellow’s ugly face, Nell----”
“Phil, how could I ever repent? Nobody but you should dare to say such a
thing to me!”
“I believe that,” he said. “If that old John of yours tried it on----
Well, my pet, he is your old John. You can’t change facts, even if you
do throw the poor fellow over. Now, here’s a new chance for all of
them, Nell. I shouldn’t wonder a bit if you had another crop of letters
bidding you look before you leap. That Rectory woman, what’s her name?
that knows my family. You’ll see she’ll have some new story before we’re
clear of her. They’ll never stop blackguarding me, I know, until you’re
Phil Compton yourself, my beauty. I wish that day was come. I’m afraid
to go off again and leave you, Nell. They’ll be putting something into
your head, or the old lady’s. Let’s get it over to-morrow morning, and
come to Ireland with me; you’ve never been there.”
“Phil, what nonsense! mamma would go out of her senses.”
“My pet, what does it matter? She’d come back to them again as soon as
we were gone, and think what a botheration spared her! All the row of
receiving people, turning the house upside down. And here I am on the
spot. And what do you want with bridesmaids and so forth? You’ve got all
your things. Suppose we walk out to church to-morrow before breakfast,
Nell----”
“Phil, you are mad, I think; and why should we do such a thing,
scandalizing everybody? But of course you don’t mean it. You are excited
after seeing that man.”
“Excited about Stanny!--not such a fool; Stanny is all square, thanks
to---- But what I want is just to take you up in my arms, like this, and
run off with you, Nell. Why we should call the whole world to watch us
while we take that swing off--into space.”
“Phil!”
“So it is, for you, Nell. You don’t know a bit what’s going to happen.
You don’t know where I’m going to take you, and what I’m going to do
with you, you little innocent lamb in the wolf’s grip. I want to eat you
up, straight off. I shall be afraid up to the last moment that you’ll
escape me, Nell.”
“I did not know that you were so fond of innocence,” said Elinor, half
afraid of her lover’s vehemence, and trying to dispel his gravity with a
laugh. “You used to say you did not believe in the _ingénue_.”
“I believe in you,” he said, with an almost fierce pressure of her arm;
then, after a pause, “No, I don’t believe in women at all, Nell, only
you. They’re rather worse than men, which is saying a good deal. What
would the Jew care if we were all drawn and quartered, so long as she
had all her paraphernalia about her and got everything she wanted? For
right-down selfishness commend me to a woman. A fellow may have gleams
of something better about him, like me, warning you against myself.”
“It is a droll way of warning me against yourself to want to carry me
off to-morrow.”
“It’s all the same thing,” he said. “I’ve warned you that those old hags
are right, and I’m not good enough for you, not fit to come near you,
Nell. But if the sacrifice is to be, let’s get it over at once, don’t
let us stand and think of it. I’m capable of jilting you,” he said,
“leaving you _plantéelà_, all out of remorse of conscience; or else just
catching you up in my arms, like this, and carrying you off, never to be
seen more.”
“You are very alarming,” said Elinor. “I don’t know what you mean. You
can be off with your bargain if you please, Phil; but you had better
make up your mind at once, so that mamma may countermand her
invitations, and stop Gunter from sending the cake.”
(It was Gunter who was the man in those days. I believe people go to
Buszard now.)
He gave her again a vehement hug, and burst into a laugh. “I might jilt
you, Nell; such a thing is on the cards. I might leave you in the lurch
at the church door; but when you talk of countermanding the cake, I
can’t face that situation. Society would naturally be up in arms about
that. So you must take your chance like the other innocents. I’ll eat
you up as gently as I can, and hide my tusks as long as it’s possible.
Come on, Nell, don’t let us sit here and get the mopes, and think of our
consciences. Come and see if that show is in the village. Life’s better
than thinking, old girl.”
“Do you call the show in the village, life?” she said, half pleased to
rouse him, half sorry to be thus carried away.
“Every show is life,” said Phil, “and everywhere that people meet is
better than anywhere where you’re alone. Mind you take in that axiom,
Nell. It’s our rule of life, you know, among the set you’re marrying
into. That’s how the Jew gets on. That’s how we all get on. By this time
next year you’ll be well inured into it like all the rest. That’s what
your Rector never taught you, I’ll be bound; but you’ll see the old
fellow practises it whenever he has a chance. Why, there they begin,
tootle-te-too. Come on, Nell, and don’t let us lose the fun.”
He drew her along hastily, hurrying while the flute and the drum began
to perform their parts. Sound spreads far in that tranquil country,
where no railway was visible, and where the winds for the moment were
still. It was Pan’s pipes that were being played, attracting a few
stragglers from the scattered houses. Within a hundred yards from the
church, at the corner of four roads, stood the Bull’s Head, with a
cottage or two linked on to its long straggling front. And this was all
that did duty for a village at Windyhill. The Rectory stood back in its
own copse, surrounded by a growth of young birches and oak near the
church. The Hills dwelt intermediate between the Bull’s Head and the
ecclesiastical establishment. The school and schoolmaster’s house were
behind the Bull. The show was surrounded by the children of the place,
who looked on silent with ecstasy, while a burly showman piped his pipes
and beat his drum. A couple of ostlers, with their shirt-sleeves rolled
up to their shoulders, and one of them with a pail in his hand, stood
arrested in their work. And in the front of the spectators was Alick
Hudson, a sleepy-looking youth of twenty, who started and took his
hands out of his pockets at sight of Elinor. Mr. Hudson himself came
walking briskly round the corner, swinging his cane with the air of a
man who was afraid of being too late.
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Compton, pressing Elinor’s arm.
As the tootle-te-too went on, other spectators appeared--the two Miss
Hills, one putting on her hat, the other hastily buttoning her jacket as
they hurried up. “Oh, you here, Elinor! What fun! We all run as if we
were six years old. I’m going to engage the man to come round and do it
opposite Rosebank to amuse mother. She likes it as much as any of us,
though she doesn’t see very well, poor dear, nor hear either. But we
must always consider that the old have not many amusements,” said the
elder Miss Hill.
“Though mother amuses herself wonderfully with her knitting,” said Miss
Sarah. “There’s a sofa-cover on the stocks for you, Elinor.”
It appeared to be only at this moment that the sisters became aware of
the presence of “the gentleman” by whom Elinor stood. They had been too
busy with their uncompleted toilettes to observe him at first. But now
that Miss Hill’s hat was settled to her satisfaction, and the blue veil
tied over her face as she liked it to be, and Miss Sarah had at last
succeeded, after two false starts, in buttoning her jacket straight,
their attention was released for other details. They both gave a glance
over Elinor at the tall figure on the other side, and then looked at
each other with a mutual little “Oh!” and nod of recognition. Then Miss
Hill took the initiative as became her dignity. “I hope you are going to
introduce us to your companion, Elinor,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Compton, how
do you do? We are delighted to make your acquaintance, I am sure. It is
charming to have an opportunity of seeing a person of so much importance
to us all, our dear Elinor’s intended. I hope you know what a prize you
are getting. You might have sought the whole country over and you
wouldn’t have found a girl like her. I don’t know how we shall endure
your name when you carry her away.”
“Except, indeed,” said Miss Sarah, “that it will be Elinor’s name too.”
“So here we all are again,” said the Rector, gazing down tranquilly upon
his flock, “not able to resist a little histrionic exhibition--and Mr.
Compton too, fresh from the great world. I daresay our good friend Mrs.
Basset would hand us out some chairs. No Englishman can resist Punch.
Alick, my boy, you ought to be at your work. It will not do to neglect
your lessons when you are so near your exam.”
“No Englishman, father, can resist Punch,” said the lad: at which the
two ostlers and the landlord of the Bull’s Head, who was standing with
his hands in his pockets in his own doorway, laughed loud.
“Had the old fellow there,” said Compton, which was the first
observation he had made. The ladies looked at him with some horror, and
Alick a little flustered, half pleased, half horrified, by this support,
while the Rector laughed, but stiffly _au bout des lèvres_. He was not
accustomed to be called an old fellow in his own parish.
“The old fellows, as you elegantly say, Mr. Compton, have always the
worst of it in a popular assembly. Elinor, here is a chair for you, my
love. Another one please, Mrs. Basset, for I see Miss Dale coming up
this way.”
“By Jove,” said Compton, under his breath. “Elinor, here’s the one that
knows society. I hope she isn’t such an old guy as the rest.”
“Oh, Phil, be good!” said Elinor, “or let us go away, which would be the
best.”
“Not a bit,” he said. “Let’s see the show. I say, old man, where are you
from last?”
“Down from Guildford ways, guv’nor--awful bad trade; not taken a bob, s’
help me, not for three days, and bed and board to get off o’ that, me
and my mate.”
“Well, here is a nice little party for you, my man,” said the Rector,
“it is not often you have such an audience--nor would I encourage it,
indeed, if it were not so purely English an exhibition.”
“Master,” said the showman, “worst of it is, nobody pays till we’ve done
the show, and then they goes away, and they’ve got it, don’t you see,
and we can’t have it back once it’s in their insides, and there ain’t
nothink then, neither for my mate nor me.”
“Here’s for you, old fellow,” said Phil. He took a sovereign from his
waistcoat pocket and chucked it with his thumbnail into the man’s hand,
who looked at it with astonished delight, tossed it into the air with a
grin, a “thank’ee, gentleman!” and a call to his “mate” who immediately
began the ever-exciting, ever-amusing drama. The thrill of sensation
which ran through the little assembly at this incident was wonderful.
The children all turned from Punch to regard with large open eyes and
mouths the gentleman who had given a gold sovereign to the showman.
Alick Hudson looked at him with a grin of pleasure, a blush of envy on
his face; the Rector, with an expression of horror, slightly shaking his
head; the Miss Hills with admiration yet dismay. “Goodness, Sarah,
they’ll never come now and do it for a shilling to amuse mother!” the
elder of the sisters said.
Miss Dale came hurrying up while still the sensation lasted. “Here is a
chair for you, Mary,” said her brother-in-law, “and the play is just
going to begin. I can’t help shaking my head when I think of it, but
still you must hear what has just happened. Mr. Compton, let me present
you to my sister-in-law, Miss Dale. Mr. Compton has made the widow’s
heart, nay, not the widow’s, but the showman’s heart to sing. He has
presented our friend with a----”
“Mind you,” said Phil, from behind Elinor’s shoulders, “I’ve paid the
fellow only for two.”
At which the showman turned and winked at the Rector. To think that
such a piece of audacity could be! A dingy fellow in a velveteen coat,
with a spotted handkerchief round his neck, and a battered hat on his
unkempt locks, with Pan’s pipes at his mouth and a drum tied round his
waist--winked at the Rector! Mr. Hudson fell back a step, and his very
lips were livid with the indignity. He had to support himself on the
back of the chair he had just given to Miss Dale.
“I think we are all forgetting our different positions in this world,”
he said.
“I ain’t,” said the showman, “not taking no advantage through the
gentleman’s noble ways. He’s a lord, he is, I don’t make no doubt. And
we’re paid. Take the good of it, Guv’nor, and welcome; all them as is
here is welcome. My mate and I are too well paid. A gentleman like that
good gentleman, as is sweet upon a pretty young lady, and an open ’eart
a-cause of her, I just wish we could find one at every station; don’t
you, Joe?”
Joe assented, in the person of Mr. Punch, with a horrible squeak from
within the tent.
The sensations of Elinor during this episode were peculiar and full of
mingled emotion. It is impossible to deny that she was proud of the
effect produced by her lover. The sovereign chucked into the showman’s
hand was a cheap way of purchasing a little success, and yet it dazzled
Elinor, and made her eyelids droop and her cheek light up with the glow
of pleasure. Amid all the people who would search for pennies, or
perhaps painfully and not without reluctance produce a sixpence to
reward the humble artists, there was something in the careless
familiarity and indifference which tossed a gold coin at them which was
calculated to charm the youthful observer. Elinor felt the same mixture
of pleasure and envy which had moved Alick Hudson; yet it was not envy,
for was not he her own who did this thing which she would have liked to
have done herself, overwhelming the poor tramps with delight? Elinor
knew, as Alick also did, that it would never have occurred to her to do
it. She would have been glad to be kind to the poor men, to give them a
good meal, to speak to Basset at the Bull’s Head in their favour that
they might be taken in for the night and made comfortable, but to open
her purse and take a real sovereign from it, a whole potential pound,
would not have come into her head. Had such a thing been done, for
instance, by the united subscriptions of the party, in case of some
peculiarly touching situation, the illness of a wife, the loss of a
child, it would have been done solemnly, the Rector calling the men up,
making a little speech to them, telling them how all the ladies and
gentlemen had united to make up this, and how they must be careful not
to spend it unworthily. Elinor thought she could see the little scene,
and the Rector improving the occasion. Whereas Phil spun the money
through the air into the man’s ready hand as if it had been a joke, a
trick of agility. Elinor saw that everybody was much impressed with the
incident, and her heart went forth upon a flood of satisfaction and
content. And it was no premeditated triumph. It was so noble, so
accidental, so entirely out of his good heart!
When he hurried her home at the end of the performance, that Mrs.
Dennistoun might not be kept waiting, the previous events of the
afternoon, and all that happened in the copse and garden, had faded out
of Elinor’s mind. She forgot Stanfield and the 6th and everything about
it. Her embarrassment and trouble were gone. She went in gayly and told
her mother all about this wonderful incident. “The Rector was trying for
a sixpence. But, mamma, Phil must not be so ready with his sovereigns,
must he? We shall have nothing to live upon if he goes chucking
sovereigns at every Punch and Judy he may meet.”