Phil Compton went off next morning by an early train, having in the
meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in
general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with
enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears,
but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated
the mother. “Don’t you think,” said the Honourable Phil, “because I
speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don’t know what
she is. I’ve got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the
highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like
Nell. The girls of my set, they’re not worthy to tie her shoes--thing I
most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for
her. But you can’t help your relations, can you? and you have to stick
to them for dozens of reasons. There’s the Jew, when you know her she’s
not such a bad sort--not generous, as you may see from what she’s given
Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and
we’ll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her
husband, old Prestwich, isn’t bad for a man that has made his own money,
and they’ve got a jolly house, always something going on.”
“But I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that as soon as these autumn visits
are over you will have a house of your own.”
“Oh, that!” said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some
doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it
as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. “Nell,” he
went on, “gets on with the Jew like a house on fire--you see they don’t
clash. Nell ain’t one of the mannish sort, and she doesn’t flirt--at
least not as far as I’ve seen----”
“I should hope not, indeed,” said Mrs. Dennistoun.
“Oh, I’m not one of your curmudgeons. Where’s the harm? But she don’t,
and there’s an end of it. She keeps herself to herself, and lets the Jew
go ahead, and think she’s the attraction. And she’ll please the old lord
down to the ground. For he’s an old-fashioned old coon, and likes what
he calls _tenue_, don’t you know: but the end is, there ain’t one of
them that can hold a candle to Nell. And I should not wonder a bit if
she made a change in the lot of us. Conversion of a family by the
influence of a pious wife, don’t you know. Sort of thing that they make
tracts out of. Capital thing, it would be,” said Phil, philosophically,
“for some of us have been going a pace----”
“Mr. Compton,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, solemnly, “I don’t understand very
well what you mean by these phrases. They may be much more innocent than
they seem to a country lady’s ears. But I implore you to keep my Elinor
clear of anything that you call going the pace. It must mean something
very unlike her, whatever it means. She has been used to a very quiet,
orderly life. Don’t hurry her off into a whirl of society, or among
noisy gay people. Indeed I can assure you that the more you have her to
herself the more you will be happy in her. She is the brightest
companion, the most entertaining---- Oh, Mr. Compton!”
“I think it’s about time, now, mater, to call me Phil.”
She smiled, with the tears in her eyes, and held out her hand. “Philip,
then,” she said, “to make a little difference. Now remember what I say.
It is only in the sacredness of her home that you will know what is in
Elinor. One is never dull with her. She has her own opinions--her bright
way of looking at things--as you know. It is, perhaps, a strange thing
for a mother to say, but she will amuse you, Philip; she is such
company. You will never be dull with Elinor: she has so much in her,
which will come out in society, it is true, but never so brightly as
between you two alone.”
This did not seem to have quite the effect upon the almost-bridegroom
which the mother intended. “Perhaps” (she said to herself), “he was a
little affected by the thought” (which she kept so completely out of the
conversation) “of the loss she herself was about to undergo.” At all
events, his face was not so bright as in the vision of that sweet
prospect held before him it ought to have been.
“The fact is,” he said, “she knows a great deal more than I do, or ever
will. It’s she that will be the one to look blue when she finds herself
alone with a fool of a fellow that doesn’t know a book from a brick.
That’s the thing I’m most afraid---- As for society, she can have her
pick of that,” he added, brightening up, “I’ll not bind her down.”
“You may be sure she’ll prefer you to all the world.”
He shrugged his shoulders a little.
“They say it’s always a leap in the dark,” he said, “for how’s she to
know the sort of fellow I am with what she sees of me here? But I
promise you I’ll do my best to take her in, and keep her in that
delusion, for her good--making believe to be all that’s virtuous: and
perhaps not a bad way--some of it may stick. Come, mater, don’t look so
horrified. I’m not of the Cousin John sort, but there may be something
decent in me after all.”
“I am sure,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that you will try to make her happy,
Philip.” She was crying by this time, which was a thing very odious to
Phil. He took her by both hands and gave her a hearty kiss, which was a
thing for which she was not at all prepared.
“I’ll do by her----” he said, with a murmur which sounded like an oath,
“as well as I know how.”
Perhaps this was not the very greatest comfort to her mother, but it was
the best she was at all likely to get from a man so entirely different
in all ways from her own species. She had her cry out quietly while he
went off to get his bag. The pony carriage was at the door in which
Elinor was to drive him to the station, and a minute after Mrs.
Dennistoun heard his voice in the hall calling to his Nell, his old
girl, in terms which went against all the mother’s prejudices of soft
and reverent speech. To have her carefully-trained child, her Elinor,
whom every one had praised and honoured, her maiden-princess so high
apart from all such familiarity, addressed so, gave the old-fashioned
lady a pang. It meant nothing but love and kindness, she said to
herself. He reverenced Elinor as much as it was in such a man to do. He
meant with all his heart to do by her as well as he knew how. It was as
fantastic to object to his natural language as it would be to object to
a Frenchman speaking French. That was his tongue, the only utterance he
knew---- She dried her eyes and went out to the door to see them start.
The sun was blazing over all the brilliant autumnal colours of the
garden, though it was still full and brilliant summer in the September
morning, and only the asters and dahlias replacing the roses betrayed
the turn of the season. And nothing could be more bright than the face
of Elinor as she sat in the homely little carriage, with the reins
gathered up in her hand. He was going away, indeed, but in a week he was
coming back. Philip, as Mrs. Dennistoun now called him with dignity, yet
a little beginning of affection, packed up his long limbs as well as he
could in the small space. “I believe she’ll spill us on the road,” he
said, “or bring back the shandrydan with a hole in it.”
“There is too much of you, Phil,” said Elinor, giving the staid pony a
quiet touch.
“I should like some of those fellows to see me,” he said, “joggled off
to market like a basket of eggs; but don’t smash me, Nell, on the way.”
Mrs. Dennistoun stood on the steps looking after them, or rather,
listening after them, for they had soon turned the corner of the house
and were gone. She heard them jogging over the stony road, and the sound
of their voices in the air for a long time after they were out of
sight--the air was so still and so close, nothing in it to break the
sound. The atmosphere was all sunshine, not a cloud upon the sky,
scarcely a breath stirring over those hill-tops, which had almost the
effect of a mountainous landscape, being the highest ground in all the
visible space. Along the other side of the combe, where the road became
visible, there were gleams of heather brilliant under the dark foliage
of the firs. She sat down in the porch and waited to see them pass;
there was a sorrowful background to her thoughts, but for the moment she
was not actually sad, if perhaps a little forlorn. They had gone away
leaving her alone, but yet in an hour or two Elinor was coming back.
Time enough to think of the final parting. Next week Elinor would go and
would not return. Mrs. Dennistoun held on by both hands to to-day and
would not think of that future, near as it was. She waited in a hush of
feeling, so near to great commotions of the heart and mind, but holding
them at a distance in a suspense of all thought, till the shandrydan
appeared in the opening of the road. They were thinking of her, for she
saw a gleam of white, the waving of a handkerchief, as the little
carriage trundled along the road, and for a moment the tears again
blinded her eyes. But Mrs. Dennistoun was very reasonable. She got up
from the cottage porch after the pony carriage had passed in the
distance, with that determination to make the best of it, which is the
inspiration of so many women’s lives.
And what a drive the others had through the sunshine--or at least
Elinor! You can never tell by what shadows a man’s thoughts may be
haunted, who is a man of the world, and has had many other things to
occupy him besides this vision of love. But the girl had no shadows. The
parting which was before her was not near enough to harm as yet, and she
was still able to think, in her ignorance of the world, that even
parting was much more in appearance than in reality, and that she would
always be running home, always going upon long visits brightening
everything, instead of saddening. But even had she been going to the end
of the world with her husband next week, Elinor would still have been
happy to-day. The sunshine itself was enough to go to any one’s head,
and the pony stepped out so that Phil had the grace to be ashamed of his
reflections upon “the old girl.” They got to the station too early for
the train, and had half an hour’s stroll together, with all the railway
porters looking on admiring. They all knew Miss Dennistoun from her
childhood, and they were interested in her “young man.”
“And to think you will be in Ireland to-morrow,” said Elinor, “over the
sea, with the Channel between us--in another island!”
“I don’t see much that’s wonderful in that,” said Phil, “the boat goes
every day.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wonderful about the boat. Hundreds might go, and I
shouldn’t mind, but you---- It’s strange to think of your going off into
a world I don’t know at all--and then coming back.”
“To take you off to that world you don’t know, Nell; and then the time
will come when you will know it as well as I do, and more, too; and be
able to set me down in my proper place.”
“What is your proper place? Your place will always be the same. Phil,
you’ve been so good to me this time; you’ve made everybody like you so.
Mamma--that’s the best of all. She was a little--I can’t say jealous,
that is not the right word, but uncertain and frightened--which just
means that she did not know you, Phil; now you’ve condescended to let
yourself be known.”
“Have I, Nell? I’ve had more luck than meaning if that’s so.”
“’Tis that you’ve condescended to let yourself be known. A man has such
odious pride. He likes to show himself all on the wrong side, to brave
people’s opinions--as if it was better to be liked for the badness in
you than for the goodness in you!”
“What’s the goodness in me, Nell? I’d like to know, and then I can have
it ready in other emergencies and serve it out as it is wanted.”
“Oh, Phil! the goodness in you is--yourself. You can’t help being nice
when you throw off those society airs. When you are talking with
Mariamne and all that set of people----”
“Why can’t you call her Jew? life is too short to say all those
syllables.”
“I don’t like you to call her Jew. It’s unkind. I don’t think she
deserves it. It’s a sort of an insult.”
“Shut up, Nell. It’s her name and that’s enough. Mar-ry-am-ne! It’s a
beast of a name to begin with. And do you think any of us has got time
to say as much as that for one woman? Oh, I suppose I’m fond of her--as
men are of their sisters. She is not a bad sort--mean as her name, and
never fond of parting with her money--but stands by a fellow in a kind
of a way all the same.”
“I’ll never call her Jew,” said Elinor; “and, Phil, all this wonderful
amount of things you have to do is simply--nothing. What do you ever do?
It is the people who do things that have time to spare. I know one----”
“Don’t come down on me, Nell, again with that eternal Cousin John.”
“Phil! I never think of him till you put him into my head. I was
thinking of a gentleman who writes----”
“Rubbish, Nell! What have I to do with men that write, or you either? We
are none of us of that sort. I do what my set do, and more--for there
was this director business; and I should never mind a bit of work that
was well paid, like attending Board meetings and so forth, or signing my
name to papers.”
“What, without reading them, Phil?”
“Don’t come over a fellow with your cleverness, Nell! I am not a reader;
but I should take good care I knew what was in the papers before I
signed them, I can tell you. Eh! you’d like me to slave, to get you
luxuries, you little exacting Nell.”
“Yes, Phil,” she said, “I’d like to think you were working for our
living. I should indeed. It seems somehow so much finer--so real a life.
And I should work at home.”
“A great deal you would work,” he said, laughing, “with those scraps of
fingers! Let’s hear what you would do--bits of little pictures, or
impossible things in pincushions, or so forth--and walk out in your most
becoming bonnet to force them down some poor shopkeeper’s throat?”
“Phil!” she said, “how contemptuous you are of my efforts. But I never
thought of either sketches or pincushions. I should work at home to keep
the house nice--to look after the servants, and guide the cook, and see
that you had nice dinners.”
“And warm my slippers by the parlour fire,” said Phil. “That’s too
domestic, Nell, for you and me.”
“But we are going to be very domestic, Phil.”
“Are we? Not if I knows it; yawn our heads off, and get to hate one
another. Not for me, Nell. You’ll find yourself up to the eyes in
engagements before you know where you are. No, no, old girl, you may do
a deal with me, but you don’t make a domestic man of Phil Compton. Time
enough for that when we’ve had our fling.”
“I don’t want any fling, Phil,” she said, clinging a little closer to
his arm.
“But I do, my pet, in the person of Benedick the married man. Don’t you
think I want to show all the fellows what a stunning little wife I’ve
got? and all the women I used to flirt with----”
“Did you use to flirt much with them, Phil?”
“You didn’t think I flirted with the men, did you? like you did,” said
Phil, who was not particular about his grammar. “I want to show you off
a bit, Nell. When we go down to the governor’s, there you can be as
domestic as you like. That’s the line to take with him, and pays too if
you do it well.”
“Oh, don’t talk as if you were always calculating for your advantage,”
she said, “for you are not, Phil. You are not a prudent person, but a
horrid, extravagant spendthrift; if you go on chucking sovereigns about
as you did yesterday.”
“Well,” he said, laughing, “wasn’t it well spent? Didn’t I make your
Rector open his old eyes, and stop the mouths of the old maids? I don’t
throw away sovereigns in a general way, Nell, only when there’s a
purpose in it. But I think I did them all finely that time--had them on
toast, eh?”
“You made an impression, if that is what you mean; but I confess I
thought you did it out of kindness, Phil.”
“To the Punch and Judy? catch me! Sovereigns ain’t plentiful enough for
that. You little exacting thing, ain’t you pleased, when I did it to
please you, and get you credit among your friends?”
“It was very kind of you, I’m sure, Phil,” she said, very soberly, “but
I should so much rather you had not thought of that. A shilling would
have done just as well, and they would have got a bed at the Bull’s
Head, and been quite kindly treated. Is this your train coming? It’s a
little too soon, I think.”
“Thanks for the compliment, Nell. It is really late,” he said, looking
at his watch, “but the time flies, don’t it, pet, when you and I are
together? Here, you fellow, put my bag in a smoking carriage. And now,
you darling, we’ve got to part; only for a little time, Nell.”
“Only for a week,” she said, with a smile and a tear.
“Not so long--a rush along the rail, a blow on the sea, and then back
again; I shall only be a day over there, and then--bless you, Nell.
Good-bye--take care of yourself, my little duck: take care of yourself
for me.”
“Good-bye,” said Elinor, with a little quiver of her lip. A parting at a
roadside station is a very abrupt affair. The train stops, the passenger
is shoved in, there is a clanging of the doors, and in a moment it is
gone. She had scarcely realized that the hour had come before he was
whirled off from her, and the swinging line of carriages disappeared
round the next curve. She stood looking vaguely after it till the old
porter came up, who had known her ever since she was a child.
“Beg your pardon, miss, but the pony is a-waiting,” he said. And then he
uttered his sympathy in the form of a question:--“Coming back very soon,
miss, ain’t the gentleman?” he said.
“Oh, yes; very soon,” she said, rousing herself up.
“And if I may make bold to say it, miss,” said the porter, “an
open-hearted gentleman as ever I see. There’s many as gives us a
threepenny for more than I’ve done for ’im. And look at what he’s give
me,” he said, showing the half-crown in his hand.
Did he do that from calculation to please her, ungracious girl as she
was, who was so hard to please? But he never could have known that she
would see it. She walked through the little station to the pony
carriage, feeling that all the eyes of the people about were upon her.
They were all sympathetic, all equally aware that she had just parted
with her lover: all ready to cheer her, if she had given them an
opportunity, by reminding her of his early return. The old porter
followed her out, and assisted at her ascent into the pony carriage. He
said, solemnly, “And an ’andsome gentleman, miss, as ever I see,” as he
fastened the apron over her feet. She gave him a friendly nod as she
drove away.
How dreadful it is to be so sensitive, to receive a wound so easily!
Elinor was vexed more than she could say by her lover’s denial of the
reckless generosity with which she had credited him. To think that he
had done it in order to produce the effect which had given her so
distinct a sensation of pleasure changed that effect into absolute pain.
And yet in the fantastic susceptibility of her nature, there was
something in old Judkin’s half-crown which soothed her again. A shilling
would have been generous, Elinor said to herself, with a feminine
appreciation of the difference of small things as well as great, whereas
half-a-crown was lavish--ergo, he gave the sovereign also out of natural
prodigality, as she had hoped, not out of calculation as he said. She
drove soberly home, thinking over all these things in a mood very
different from that triumphant happiness with which she started from the
cottage with Phil by her side. The sunshine was still as bright, but it
had taken an air of routine and commonplace to Elinor. It had come to be
only the common day, not the glory and freshness of the morning. She
felt herself, as she had never done before, on the edge of a world
unknown, where everything would be new to her, where--it was
possible--that which awaited her might not be unmixed happiness, might
even be the reverse. It is seldom that a girl on the eve of marriage
either thinks this or acknowledges to herself that she thinks it. Elinor
did so involuntarily, without thinking upon her thought. Perhaps it
would not be unmixed happiness. Strange clouds seemed to hang upon the
horizon, ready to roll up in tragic darkness and gloom. Oh, no, not
tragic, only commonplace, she said to herself; opaqueness, not
blackness. But yet it was ominous and lowering, that distant sky.