“Look at that, Elinor,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, next day, when she had
read, twice over, a letter, large and emblazoned with a very big
monogram, which Elinor, well perceiving from whom it came, had furtively
watched the effect of from behind an exceeding small letter of her own.
Phil was not remarkable as a correspondent: his style was that of the
primitive mind which hopes its correspondent is well, “as this leaves
me.” He had never much more to say.
“From Mariamne, mamma?”
“She takes great pains to make us certain of that fact at least,” Mrs.
Dennistoun said; which indeed was very true, for the name of the writer
was sprawled in gilt letters half over the sheet. And this was how it
ran:--
“DEAR MRS. DENNISTOUN,--
“I have been thinking what a great pity it would be to bore you
with me, and my maid, and all my belongings. I am so silly that I
can never be happy without dragging a lot of things about with
me--dogs, and people, and so forth. Going to town in September is
dreadful, but it is rather _chic_ to do a thing that its quite out
of the way, and one may perhaps pick up a little fun in the
evening. So if you don’t mind, instead of inflicting Fifine and
Bijou and Leocadie, not to mention some people that might be with
me, upon you, and putting your house all out of order, as these
odious little dogs do when people are not used to them--I will come
down by the train, which I hope arrives quite punctually, in time
to see poor Phil turned off. I am sure you will be so kind as to
send a carriage for me to the railway. We shall be probably a party
of four, and I hear from Phil you are so hospitable and kind that I
need not hesitate to bring my friends to breakfast after it’s all
over. I hope Phil will go through it like a man, and I wouldn’t for
worlds deprive him of the support of his family. Love to Nell. I
am,
“Yours truly,
“MARIAMNE PRESTWICH.”
“The first name very big and the second very small,” said Mrs.
Dennistoun, as she received the letter back.
“I am sure we are much obliged to her for not coming, mamma!”
“Perhaps--but not for this announcement of her not coming. I don’t wish
to say anything against your new relations, Elinor----”
“You need not put any restraint upon yourself in consideration of my
feelings,” said Elinor, with a flush of annoyance.
And this made Mrs. Dennistoun pause. They ate their breakfast, which was
a very light meal, in silence. It was the day before the wedding. The
rooms down-stairs had been carefully prepared for Phil’s sister. Though
Mrs. Dennistoun was too proud to say anything about it, she had taken
great pains to make these pretty rooms as much like a fine lady’s
chamber as had been possible. She had put up new curtains, and a Persian
carpet, and looked out of her stores all the pretty things she could
find to decorate the two rooms of the little apartment. She had gone in
on the way down-stairs to take a final survey, and it seemed to her that
they were very pretty. No picture could have been more beautiful than
the view from the long low lattice window, in which, as in a frame, was
set the foreground of the copse with its glimpses of ruddy heather and
the long sweep of the heights beyond, which stretched away into the
infinite. That at least could not be surpassed anywhere; and the
Persian carpet was like moss under foot, and the chairs luxurious--and
there was a collection of old china in some open shelves which would
have made the mouth of an amateur water. Well! it was Lady Mariamne’s
own loss if she preferred the chance of picking up a little fun in the
evening, to spending the night decorously in that pretty apartment, and
making further acquaintance with her new sister. It was entirely, Mrs.
Dennistoun said to herself, a matter for her own choice. But she was
much affronted all the same.
“It will be very inconvenient indeed sending a carriage for her, Elinor.
Except the carriage that is to take you to church there is none good
enough for this fine lady. I had concluded she would go in your uncle
Tatham’s carriage. It may be very fine to have a Lady Mariamne in one’s
party, but it is a great nuisance to have to change all one’s
arrangements at the last moment.”
“If you were to send the wagonette from the Bull’s Head, as rough as
possible, with two of the farm horses, she would think it _genre_, if
not _chic_----”
“I cannot put up with all this nonsense!” cried Mrs. Dennistoun, with a
flush on her cheek. “You are just as bad as they are, Elinor, to suggest
such a thing! I have held my own place in society wherever I have been,
and I don’t choose to be condescended to or laughed at, in fact, by any
visitor in the world!”
“Mamma! do you think any one would ever compare you with Mariamne--the
Jew?”
“Don’t exasperate me with those abominable nicknames. They will give you
one next. She is an exceedingly ill-bred and ill-mannered woman. Picking
up a little fun in the evening! What does she mean by picking up a
little fun----”
“They will perhaps go to the theatre--a number of them; and as nobody is
in town they will laugh very much at the kind of people, and perhaps the
kind of play--and it will be a great joke ever after among
themselves--for of course there will be a number of them together,” said
Elinor, disclosing her acquaintance with the habits of her new family
with downcast eyes.
“How can well-born people be so vulgar and ill-bred?” cried Mrs.
Dennistoun. “I must say for Philip that though he is careless and not
nearly so particular as I should like, still he is not like that. He has
something of the politeness of the heart.”
Elinor did not raise her downcast eyes. Phil had been on his very good
behaviour on the occasion of his last hurried visit, but she did not
feel that she could answer even for Phil. “I am very glad anyhow, that
she is not coming, mamma: at least we shall have the last night and the
last morning to ourselves.”
Mrs. Dennistoun shook her head. “The Tathams will be here,” she said;
“and everybody, to dinner--all the party. We must go now and see how we
can enlarge the table. To-night’s party will be the largest we have ever
had in the cottage.” She sighed a little and paused, restraining
herself. “We shall have no quiet evening--nor morning either--again; it
will be a bustle and a rush. You and I will never have any more quiet
evenings, Elinor: for when you come back it will be another thing.”
“Oh, mother!” cried Elinor, throwing herself into her mother’s arms: and
for a moment they stood closely clasped, feeling as if their hearts
would burst, yet very well aware, too, underneath, that any number of
quiet evenings would be as the last, when, with hearts full of a
thousand things to say to each other, they said almost nothing--which in
some respects was worse than having no quiet evenings evermore.
In the afternoon Phil arrived, having returned from Ireland that
morning, and paused only to refresh himself in the chambers which he
still retained in town. He had met all his hunting friends during the
three days he had been away; and though he retained a gallant
appearance, and looked, as Alice Hudson thought, “very aristocratic,”
Mrs. Dennistoun caught with anxiety a worn-out look--the look of
excitement, of nights without sleep, much smoke, and, perhaps, much
wine, in his eyes. What a woman feels who has to hand over her spotless
child, the most dear and pure thing upon earth, to a man fresh from
those indulgences and dissipations which never seem harmless, and always
are repellent to a woman, is not to be described. Fortunately the bride
herself, in invincible ignorance and unconsciousness, seldom feels in
that way. To Elinor her lover looked tired about the eyes, which was
very well explained by his night journey, and by the agitation of the
moment. And, indeed, she did not see very much of Phil, who had his
friends with him--his aide-de-camp, Bolsover, and his brother Harry.
These three gentlemen carried an atmosphere of smoke and other scents
with them into the lavender of the Rectory, which was too amazing in
that hemisphere for words, and talked their own talk in the midst of the
fringe of rustics who were their hosts, with a calm which was
extraordinary, breaking into the midst of the Rector’s long-winded,
amiable sentences, and talking to each other over Mrs. Hudson’s head. “I
say, Dick, don’t you remember?” “By Jove, Phil, you are too bad!”
sounded, with many other such expressions and reminders, over the
Rectory party, strictly silent round their own table, trying to make a
courteous remark now and then, but confounded, in their simple country
good manners, by the fine gentlemen. And then there was the dinner-party
at the cottage in the evening, to which Mr. and Mrs. Hudson were
invited. Such a dinner-party! Old Mr. Tatham, who was a country
gentleman from Dorsetshire, with his nice daughter, Mary Tatham, a quiet
country young lady, accustomed, when she went into the world at all, to
the serious young men of the Temple, and John’s much-occupied friends,
who had their own asides about cases, and what So-and-So had said in
court, but were much too well-bred before ladies to fall into “shop;”
and Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, who were such as we know them; and the bride’s
mother, a little anxious, but always debonair; and Elinor herself, in
all the haze and sweet confusion of the great era which approached so
closely. The three men made the strangest addition that can be conceived
to the quiet guests; but things went better under the discipline of the
dinner, especially as Sir John Huntingtower, who was a Master of the
hounds and an old friend of the Dennistouns, was of the party, and Lady
Huntingtower, who was an impressive person, and knew the world. This
lady was very warm in her congratulations to Mrs. Dennistoun after
dinner on the absence of Lady Mariamne. “I think you are the luckiest
woman that ever was to have got clear of that dreadful creature,” she
said. “Oh, there is nothing wrong about her that I know. She goes
everywhere with her dogs and her _cavaliers servantes_. There’s safety
in numbers, my dear. She has always two of them at least hanging about
her to fetch and carry, and she thinks a great deal more of her dogs;
but I can’t think what you could have done with her here.”
“And what will my Elinor do in such a sphere?” the troubled mother
permitted herself to say.
“Oh, if that were all,” said Lady Huntingtower, lifting up her fat
hands--she was one of those who had protested against the marriage, but
now that it had come to this point, and could not be broken off, the
judicious woman thought it right to make the best of it--“Elinor need
not be any the worse,” she said. “Thank heaven, you are not obliged to
be mixed up with your husband’s sister. Elinor must take a line of her
own. You should come to town yourself her first season, and help her on.
You used to know plenty of people.”
“But they say,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that it is so much better to
leave a young couple to themselves, and that a mother is always in the
way.”
“If I were you I would not pay the least attention to what they say. If
you hold back too much they will say, ‘There was her own mother, knowing
numbers of nice people, that never took the trouble to lend her a
hand.’”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, turning round immediately to this other
aspect of affairs, “that it never will be necessary for the world to
interest itself at all in my child’s affairs.”
“Well, of course, that is the best,” Lady Huntingtower allowed, “if she
just goes softly for a year or two till she feels her way.”
“But then she is so young, and so little accustomed to act for herself,”
said the mother, with another change of flank.
“Oh, Elinor has a great deal of spirit. She must just make a stand
against the Compton set and take her own line.”
Mrs. Hudson and Alice and Miss Tatham were at the other end of the room
exchanging a few criticisms under their breath, and disposed to think
that they were neglected by their hostess for the greater personage
with whom she was in such close conversation. And Lady Mariamne’s
defection was a great disappointment to them all. “I should like to have
seen a fine lady quite close,” said Mary (it was not; I think, usual to
speak of “smart” people in those days), “one there could be no doubt
about, a little fast and all that. I have seen them in town at a
distance, but all the people we know are sure country people.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, primly, “I don’t like to hear you talk of
any other kind. An English lady, I hope, whatever is her rank, can only
be of one kind.”
“Oh, mamma, you know very well Lady Mariamne is as different from Lady
Huntingtower as----”
“Don’t mention names, my dear; it is not well-bred. The one is young,
and naturally fond of gayety; the other--well, is not quite so young,
and stout, and all that.”
“Oh, that is all very well,” said Alice; “but Aunt Mary says----”
Miss Dale was coming in the evening, and the Miss Hills, and the curate,
and the doctor, and various other people, who could not be asked to
dinner, to whom it had been carefully explained (which, indeed, was a
fact they knew) that to dine twelve people in the little dining-room of
the cottage was a feat which was accomplished with difficulty, and that
more was impossible. Society at Windyhill was very tolerant and
understanding on this point, for all the dining-rooms were small,
except, indeed, when you come to talk of such places as
Huntingtower--and they were very glad to be permitted to have a peep at
the bridegroom on these terms, or rather, if truth were told, of the
bride, and how she was bearing herself so near the crisis of her fate.
The bridegroom is seldom very interesting on such occasions. On the
present occasion he was more interesting than usual, because he was the
Honourable Philip, and because he had a reputation of which most people
had heard something. There was a mixture of alarm and suspicion in
respect to him which increased the excitement; and many remarks of
varied kinds were made. “I think the fellow’s face quite bears out his
character,” said the doctor to the Rector. “What a man to trust a nice
girl to!” Mr. Hudson felt that as the bridegroom was living under his
roof he was partially responsible, and discouraged this pessimistic
view. “Mr. Compton has not, perhaps, had all the advantages one tries to
secure for one’s own son,” he said, “but I have reason to believe that
the things that have been said of him are much exaggerated.” “Oh,
advantages!” said the doctor, thinking of Alick, of whom it was his
strongly expressed opinion that the fellow should be turned out to rough
it, and not coddled up and spoiled at home. But while these remarks were
going on, Miss Hill had been expressing to the curate an entirely
different view. “I think he has a _beautiful_ face,” she said with the
emphasis some ladies use; “a little worn, perhaps, with being too much
in the world, and I wish he had a better colour. To me he looks
delicate: but what delightful features, Mr. Whitebands, and what an
aristocratic air!”
“He looks tremendously up to everything,” the curate said, with a faint
tone of envy in his voice.
“Don’t he just?” cried Alick Hudson. “I should think there wasn’t a
thing he couldn’t do--of things that men do do, don’t you know,” cried
that carefully trained boy, whose style was confused, though his meaning
was good. But probably there were almost as many opinions about Phil as
there were people in the room. His two backers-up stood in a
corner--half intimidated, half contemptuous of the country people.
“Queer lot for Phil to fall among,” said Dick Bolsover. “Que diable
allait-il faire dans cette galère?” said Harry Compton, who had been
about the world. “Oh, bosh with your French, that nobody understands,”
said the best man.
But in the meantime Phil was not there at all to be seen of men. He had
stolen out into the garden, where there was a white vision awaiting him
in the milky moonlight. The autumn haze had come early this season, and
the moon was misty, veiled with white amid a jumble of soft floating
vapours in the sky. Elinor stood among the flowers, which showed some
strange subdued tints of colours in the flooding of the white light,
like a bit of consolidated moonlight in her white dress. She had a white
shawl covering her from head to foot, with a corner thrown over her
hair. What had they to say to each other that last night? Not much;
nothing at all that had any information in it--whispers inaudible almost
to each other. There was something in being together for this stolen
moment, just on the eve of their being together for always, which had a
charm of its own. After to-night, no stealing away, no escape to the
garden, no little conspiracy to attain a meeting--the last of all those
delightful schemings and devices. They started when they heard a sound
from the house, and sped along the paths into the shadow like the
conspirators they were--but never to conspire more after this last
enthralling time.
“You’re not frightened, Nell?”
“No--except a little. There is one thing----”
“What is it, my pet? If it’s to the half of my kingdom, it shall be
done.”
“Phil, we are going to be very good when we are together? don’t
laugh--to help each other?”
He did laugh low, not to be heard, but long. “I shall have no
temptation,” he said, “to be anything but good, you little goose of a
Nell,” taking it for a warning of possible jealousy to come.
“Oh, but I mean both of us--to help each other.”
“Why, Nell, I know you’ll never go wrong----”
She gave him a little impatient shake. “You will not understand me,
Phil. We will try to be better than we’ve ever been. To be good--don’t
you know what that means?--in every way, before God.”
Her voice dropped very low, and he was for a moment overawed. “You mean
going to church, Nell?”
“I mean--yes, that for one thing; and many other things.”
“That’s dropping rather strong upon a fellow,” he said, “just at this
moment, don’t you think, when I must say yes to everything you say.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it in that way; and I was not thinking of church
particularly; but to be good, very good, true and kind, in our hearts.”
“You are all that already, Nell.”
“Oh, no, not what I mean. When there are two of us instead of one we can
do so much more.”
“Well, my pet, it’s for you to make out the much more. I’m quite content
with you as you are; it’s me that you want to improve, and heaven knows
there’s plenty of room for that.”
“No, Phil, not you more than me,” she said.
“We’ll choose a place where the sermon’s short, and we’ll see about it.
You mean little minx, to bind a man down to go to church, the night
before his wedding day!”
And then there was a sound of movement indoors, and after a little while
the bride appeared among the guests with a little more colour than
usual, and an anxiously explanatory description of something she had
been obliged to do; and the confused hour flew on with much sound of
talking and very little understanding of what was said. And then all the
visitors streamed away group after group into the moonlight,
disappearing like ghosts under the shadow of the trees. Finally, the
Rectory party went too, the three mild ladies surrounded by an exciting
circle of cigars; for Alick, of course, had broken all bonds, and even
the Rector accepted that rare indulgence. Alice Hudson half deplored,
half exulted for years after in the scent that would cling round one
particular evening dress. Five gentlemen, all with cigars, and papa as
bad as any of them! There had never been such an extraordinary
experience in her life.
And then the Tathams, too, withdrew, and the mother and daughter stood
alone on their own hearth. Oh, so much, so much as there was to say! but
how were they to say it?--the last moment, which was so precious and so
intolerable--the moment that would never come again.
“You were a long time with Philip, Elinor, in the garden. I think all
your old friends---- the last night.”
“I wanted to say something to him, mamma, that I had never had the
courage to say.”
Mrs. Dennistoun had been looking dully into the dim mirror over the
mantlepiece. She turned half round to her daughter with an inquiring
look.
“Oh, mamma, I wanted to say to him that we must be good! We’re so happy.
God is so kind to us; and you--if you suppose I don’t think of you! It
was to say to him--building our house upon all this, God’s mercy and
your loss, and all--that we are doubly, doubly bound to serve--and to
love--and to be good people before God; and like you, mother, like you!”
“My darling!” Mrs. Dennistoun said. And that was all. She asked no
questions as to how it was to be done, or what he replied. Elinor had
broken down hysterically, and sobbed out the words one at a time, as
they would come through the choking in her throat. Needless to say that
she ended in her mother’s arms, her head upon the bosom which had nursed
her, her slight weight dependent upon the supporter and protector of all
her life.
That was the last evening. There remained the last morning to come; and
after that--what? The great sea of an unknown life, a new pilot, and a
ship untried.