Mrs. Dennistoun did not go up to town. There are some women who would
have done so, seeing the other side of the subject--at all hazards; and
perhaps they would have been right--who can tell? She did not--denying
herself, keeping herself by main force in her solitude, not to interfere
with the life of her child, which was drawn on lines so different from
any of hers--and perhaps she was wrong. Who knows, except by the event,
which is the best or the worst way in any of our human movements, which
are so short-sighted? And twice during the season Elinor found means to
come to the cottage for a night as she had done at first. These were
occasions of great happiness, it need not be said--but of many thoughts
and wonderings too. She had always an excuse for Phil. He had meant
until the last moment to come with her--some one had turned up, quite
unexpectedly, who had prevented him. It was a fatality; especially when
she came down in July did she insist upon this. He had been invited
quite suddenly to a political dinner to meet one of the Ministers from
whom he had hopes of an appointment. “For we find that we can’t go on
enjoying ourselves for ever,” she said gayly, “and Phil has made up his
mind he must get something to do.”
“It is always the best way,” said Mrs. Dennistoun.
“I am not so very sure, mamma, when you have never been used to it. Of
course, some people would be wretched without work. Fancy John with
nothing to do! How he would torment his wife--if he had one. But Phil
never does that. He is very easy to live with. He is always after
something, and leaves me as free as if he had a day’s work in an
office.”
This slipped out, with a smile: but evidently after it was said Elinor
regretted she had said it, and thought that more might be drawn from the
admission than she intended. She added quietly, “Of course a settled
occupation would interfere with many things. We could not go out
together continually as we do now.”
Was there any way of reconciling these two statements? Mrs. Dennistoun
tried and tried in vain to make them fit into each other: and yet no
doubt there was some way.
“And perhaps another season, mother, if Phil was in a public office--it
seems so strange to think of Phil having an office--you might come up,
don’t you think, to town for a time? Would it be a dreadful bore to you
to leave the country just when it is at its best? I’m afraid it would be
a dreadful bore: but we could run about together in the mornings when he
was busy, and go to see the pictures and things. How pleasant it would
be!”
“It would be delightful for me, Elinor. I shouldn’t mind giving up the
country, if it wouldn’t interfere with your engagements, my dear.”
“Oh, my engagements! Much I should care for them if Phil was occupied. I
like, of course, to be with him.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Dennistoun.
“And it is good for him, too, I think.” This was another of the little
admissions that Elinor regretted the moment they were made. “I mean it’s
a pity, isn’t it, when a man likes to have his wife with him that she
shouldn’t always be there, ready to go?”
“A great pity,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, and then she changed the subject.
“I thought it required all sorts of examinations and things for a man to
get into a public office now.”
“So it does for the ordinary grades, which would be far, far too much
routine for Phil. But they say a minister always has things in his
power. There are still posts----”
“Sinecures, Elinor?”
“I did not mean exactly sinecures,” she said, with an embarrassed laugh,
“though I think those must have been fine things; but posts where it is
not merely routine, where a man may have a chance of acting for himself
and distinguishing himself, perhaps. And to be in the service of the
country is always better, safer, than that dreadful city. Don’t you
think so?”
“I have never thought the city dreadful, Elinor. I have had many friends
connected with the city.”
“Ah, but not in those horrid companies, mamma. Do you know that company
which we just escaped, which Phil saved my money out of, when it was
all but invested--I believe that has ruined people right and left. He
got out of it, fortunately, just before the smash; that is, of course,
he never had very much to do with it, he was only on the Board.”
“And where is your money now?”
“Oh, I can answer that question this time,” said Elinor, gayly. “He had
just time to get it into another company which pays--beautifully! The
Jew is in it, too, and the whole lot of them. Oh! I beg your pardon,
mamma. I tried hard to call her by her proper name, but when one never
hears any other, one can’t help getting into it!”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that Philip was not much mixed up with
this company if other people have been ruined, and he has escaped?”
“How could that be?” said Elinor, with a sort of tremulous dignity. “You
don’t suppose for a moment that he----. But of course you don’t,” she
added with a heightened colour and a momentary cloud over her eyes, “of
course you don’t. There was a dreadful manager who destroyed the books
and then fled, so that there never could be a right winding up of the
affairs.”
“I hope Philip will take great care never to have to do with anything of
the kind again.”
“Oh, no, he has promised me he will not. I will not have it. He has a
kind of ornamental directorship on this new company, just for the sake
of his name: but he has promised me he will have nothing more to do
with it for my peace of mind.”
“I wonder that they should care in the city for so small a matter as a
peer’s younger son.”
“Oh, do you think it a small matter, mamma? I don’t mean that I care,
but people give a good deal of weight to it, you know.”
“I meant only in the city, Elinor.”
“Oh!” Elinor said. She was half offended with her mother’s indifference.
She had found that to be the Hon. Mrs. Compton was something, or so at
least she supposed: and she began timidly to give her mother a list of
her engagements, which were indeed many in number, and there were some
dazzling names among a great many with which Mrs. Dennistoun was
unacquainted. But how could she know who were the fashionable people
nowadays, a woman living so completely out of the world?
John Tatham, for his part, went through his engagements that year with a
constant expectation of seeing Elinor, which preoccupied him more than a
rising young barrister going everywhere ought to have been preoccupied.
He thought he went everywhere, and so did his family at home, especially
his sister, Mary Tatham, who was his father’s nurse and attendant, and
never had any chance of sharing these delights. She made all the more,
as was natural, of John’s privileges and social success from the fact of
her own seclusion, and was in the habit of saying that she believed
there was scarcely a party in London to which John was not
invited--three or four in a night. But it would seem with all this that
there were many parties to which he was not invited, for the Phil
Comptons (how strange and on the whole disgusting to think that this now
meant Elinor!) also went everywhere, and yet they very seldom met. It
was true that John could not expect to meet them at dinner at a Judge’s
or in the legal society in high places which was his especial sphere,
and nothing could be more foolish than the tremor of expectation with
which this very steady-going man would set out to every house in which
the fashionable world met with the professional, always thinking that
perhaps---- But it was rarely, very rarely, that this perhaps came to
pass. When it did it was amid the crowd of some prodigious reception to
which people “looked in” for half an hour, and where on one occasion he
found Elinor alone, with that curious dignity about her, a little
tragical, which comes of neglect. He agreed with her mother, that he had
never imagined Elinor’s youthful prettiness could have come to anything
so near beauty. There was a strained, wide open look in her eyes, which
was half done by looking out for some one, and half by defying any one
to think that she felt herself alone, or was pursuing that search with
any anxiety. She stood exceedingly erect, silent, observing everything,
yet endeavouring to appear as if she did not observe, altogether a
singular and very striking figure among the fashionable crowd, in which
it seemed everybody was chattering, smiling, gay or making believe to
be gay, except herself. When she saw John a sudden gleam of pleasure,
followed by a cloud of embarrassment, came over her face: but poor
Elinor could not help being glad to see some one she knew, some one who
more or less belonged to her; although it appeared she had the best of
reasons for being alone. “I was to meet Phil here,” she said, “but
somehow I must have missed him.” “Let us walk about a little, and we’ll
be sure to find him,” said John. She was so glad to take his arm, almost
to cling to him, to find herself with a friend. “I don’t know many
people here,” she confided to John, leaning on his arm, with the
familiar sisterly dependence of old, “and I am so stupid about coming
out by myself. It is because I have never been used to it. There has
always been mamma, and then Phil; but I suppose he has been detained
somewhere to-night. I think I never felt so lost before, among all these
strange people. He knows everybody, of course.”
“But you have a lot of friends, Elinor.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, brightly enough; “in our own set: but this is what
Phil calls more serious than our set. I should not wonder in the least
if he had shirked it at the last, knowing I would be sure to come.”
“That is just the reason why I should have thought he would not shirk
it,” said John.
“Ah, that’s because you’re not married,” said Elinor, but with a laugh
in which there was no bitterness.
“Don’t you know one good of a wife is to do the man’s social duties for
him, to appear at the dull places and save his credit? Oh, I don’t
object at all; it is quite a legitimate division of labour. I shall get
into it in time: but I am so stupid about coming into a room alone, and
instead of looking about to see what people I really do know, I just
stiffen into a sort of shell. I should never have known you if you had
not come up to me, John.”
“You see I was looking out for you, and you were not looking out for me,
that makes all the difference.”
“You were looking out for us!”
“Ever since the season began I have been looking out for you,
everywhere,” said John, with a rather fierce emphasis on the pronoun,
which, however, as everybody knows, is plural, and means two as much as
one, though it was the reverse of this that John Tatham meant to show.
“Ah!” said Elinor. “But then I am afraid our set is different, John.
There will always be some places--like this, for instance--where I hope
we shall meet; but our set perhaps is a little frivolous, and your set a
little--serious, don’t you see? You are professional and political, and
all that; and Phil is--well, I don’t know exactly what Phil is--more
fashionable and frivolous, as I said. A race-going, ball-going, always
in motion set.”
“Most people,” said John, “go more or less to races and balls.”
“More or less, that makes the whole difference. We go to them all. Now
you see the distinction, John. You go to Ascot perhaps on the cup day;
we go all the days and all the other days, at the other places.”
“How knowing you have become!”
“Haven’t I?” she said, with a smile that was half a sigh.
“But I shouldn’t have thought that would have suited you, Elinor.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” she said, and then she eyed him with something of
the defiance that had been in her look when she was standing alone. She
did not avoid his look as a less brave woman might have done. “I like
the fun of it,” she said.
And then there was a pause, for he did not know what to reply.
“We have been through all the rooms,” she said at last, “and we have not
seen a ghost of Phil. He cannot be coming now. What o’clock is it? Oh,
just the time he will be due at---- I’m sure he can’t come now. Do you
think you could get my carriage for me? It’s only a brougham that we
hire,” she said, with a smile, “but the man is such a nice, kind man. If
he had been an old family coachman he couldn’t take more care of me.”
“That looks as if he had to take care of you often, Elinor.”
“Well,” she said, looking him full in the face again, “you don’t suppose
my husband goes out with me in the morning shopping? I hope he has
something better to do.”
“Shouldn’t you like to have your mother with you for the shopping,
etc.?”
“Ah, dearly!” then with a little quick change of manner, “another
time--not this season, but next, if I can persuade her to come; for next
year I hope we shall be more settled, perhaps in a house of our own, if
Phil gets the appointment he is after.”
“Oh, he is after an appointment?”
“Yes, John; Phil is not so lucky as to have a profession like you.”
This was a new way of looking at the matter, and John Tatham found
nothing to say. It seemed to him, who had worked very hard for it, a
little droll to describe his possession of a profession as luck. But he
made no remark. He took Elinor down-stairs and found her brougham for
her, and the kind old coachman on the box, who was well used to taking
care of her, though only hired from the livery stables for the
season--John thought the old man looked suspiciously at him, and would
have stopped him from accompanying her, had he designed any such
proceeding. Poor little Nelly, to be watched over by the paternal
fly-man on the box! she who might have had---- but he stopped himself
there, though his heart felt as heavy as a stone to see her go away
thus, alone from the smart party where she had been doing duty for her
husband. John could not take upon himself to finish his sentence--she
who might have had love and care of a very different kind. No he had
never offered her that love and care. Had Phil Compton never come in her
way it is possible that John Tatham might never have offered it to
her--not, at least, for a long time. He could never have had any right
to be a dog in the manger, neither would he venture to pretend now that
it was her own fault if she had chosen the wrong man; was it his fault
then, who had never put a better man within her choice? but John, who
was no coxcomb, blushed in the dark to himself as this question flitted
through his mind. He had no reason to suppose that Elinor would have
been willing to change the brotherly tie between them into any other.
Thank heaven for that brotherly tie! He would always be able to befriend
her, to stand by her, to help her as much as any one could help a woman
who was married, and thus outside of all ordinary succour. And as for
that blackguard, that _dis_-Honourable Phil---- But here John, who was a
man of just mind, paused again. For a man to let his wife go to a party
by herself was not after all so dreadful a thing. Many men did so, and
the women did not complain; to be sure they were generally older, more
accustomed to manage for themselves than Elinor: but still, a man need
not be a blackguard because he did that. So John stopped his own ready
judgment, but still I am afraid in his heart pronounced Phil Compton’s
sentence all the same. He did not say a word about this encounter to
Mrs. Dennistoun; at least, he did tell her that he had met Elinor at
the So-and-So’s, which, as it was one of the best houses in London, was
pleasing to a mother to hear.
“And how was she looking?” Mrs. Dennistoun cried.
“She was looking--beautiful----” said John. “I don’t flatter, and I
never thought her so in the old times--but it is the only word I can
use----”
“Didn’t I tell you so?” said the mother, pleased. “She is quite
embellished and improved--therefore she must be happy.”
“It is certainly the very best evidence----”
“Isn’t it? But it so often happens otherwise, even in happy marriages. A
girl feels strange, awkward, out of it, in her new life. Elinor must
have entirely accustomed herself, adapted herself to it, and to them, or
she would not look so well. That is the greatest comfort I can have.”
And John kept his own counsel about Elinor’s majestic solitude and the
watchful old coachman in the hired brougham. Her husband might still be
full of love and tenderness all the same. It was a great effort of the
natural integrity of his character to pronounce like this; but he did it
in the interests of justice, and for Elinor’s sake and her mother’s said
nothing of the circumstances at all.
It may be supposed that when Elinor paid the last of her sudden visits
at the cottage it was a heavy moment both for mother and daughter. It
was the time when fashionable people finish the season by going to
Goodwood--and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne
and a number of the “set.” She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new
dresses she had got for this important occasion. “Phil says one may go
in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine
for Goodwood,” she said. “I wanted him to believe that I had too many
clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that
one’s husband is more anxious than one’s self about one’s dress?”
“He wants you to do him credit, Elinor.”
“Well, mamma, there is no harm in that. But more than that--he wants me
to look nice, for myself. He thinks me still a little shy--though I
never was shy, was I?--and he thinks nothing gives you courage like
feeling yourself well dressed--but he takes the greatest interest in
everything I wear.”
“And where do you go after Goodwood, Elinor?”
“Oh, mamma, on such a round of visits!--here and there and everywhere. I
don’t know,” and the tears sprang into Elinor’s eyes, “when I may see
you again.”
“You are not coming back to London,” said the mother, with the heart
sinking in her breast.
“Not now--they all say London is insupportable--it is one of the things
that everybody says, and I believe that Phil will not set foot in it
again for many months. Perhaps I might get a moment, when he is
shooting, or something, to run back to you; but it is a long way from
Scotland--and he must be there, you know, for the 12th. He would think
the world was coming to an end if he did not get a shot at the grouse on
that day.”
“But I thought he was looking for an appointment, Elinor?”
A cloud passed over Elinor’s face. “The season is over,” she said, “and
all the opportunities are exhausted--and we don’t speak of that any
more.”
She gave her mother a very close hug at the railway, and sat with her
head partly out of the window watching her as she stood on the platform,
until the train turned round the corner. No relief on her dear face now,
but an anxious strain in her eyes to see her mother as long as possible.
Mrs. Dennistoun, as she walked again slowly up the hills that the pony
might not suffer, said to herself, with a chill at her heart, that she
would rather have seen her child sinking back in the corner, pleased
that it was over, as on the first day.