It was about the 10th of June when Mrs. Dennistoun left London. She had
been in town for about five weeks, which looked like as many months, and
it was with a mingled sense of relief, and of that feeling which is
like death in the heart, the sense of nothing further to be done, of the
end of opportunity, the conclusion of all power to help, which sometimes
comes over an anxious mind, without in any respect diminishing the
anxiety, giving it indeed a depth and pang beyond any other feeling that
is known to the heart of man. What could she do more for her child?
Nothing. It was her only policy to remain away, not to see, certainly
not to remark anything that was happening, to wait if perhaps the moment
might come when she would be of use, and to hope that perhaps that
moment might never need to come, that by some wonderful turn of affairs
all might yet go well. She went back to Windyhill with the promise of a
visit “soon,” Philip himself had said--in the pleasure of getting the
house, which was her house, which she had paid for and provisioned, to
himself for his own uses. Mrs. Dennistoun could not help hearing through
her maid something of the festivities which were in prospect after she
was gone, the dinners and gay receptions at which she would have been
_de trop_. She did not wish to hear of them, but these are things that
will make themselves known, and Mrs. Dennistoun had to face the fact
that Elinor was more or less consenting to the certainty of her mother
being _de trop_, which gave her a momentary pang. But after all, what
did it matter? It was not her fault, poor child. I have known a loving
daughter in whose mind there was a sentiment almost of relief amid her
deep grief when her tender mother died. Could such a thing be possible?
It was; because after then, however miserable she might be, there was no
conflict over her, no rending of the strained heart both ways. A woman
who has known life learns to understand and forgive a great many things;
and Mrs. Dennistoun forgave her Elinor, her only child, for whose
happiness she had lived, in that she was almost glad when her mother
went away.
Such things, however, do not make a lonely little house in the country
more cheerful, or tend to make it easier to content one’s self with the
Rector’s family, and the good old, simple-minded, retired people, with
their little complaints, yet general peacefulness, and incompetence to
understand what tragedy was. They thought on the whole their neighbour
at the Cottage ought to be very thankful that she had got her daughter
well, or, if not very well, at least fashionably, married, with good
connections and all that, which are always of use in the long run. It
was better than marrying a poor curate, which was almost the only chance
a girl had on Windyhill.
It was a little hard upon Mrs. Dennistoun, however, that she lost not
only Elinor, but John, who had been so good about coming down when she
was all alone at first. Of course, during the season, a young rising
man, with engagements growing upon him every day, was very unlikely to
have his Saturdays to Mondays free. So many people live out of town
nowadays, or, at least, have a little house somewhere to which they go
from Saturday to Monday, taking their friends with them. This was no
doubt the reason why John never came; and yet the poor lady suspected
another reason, and though she no longer laughed as she had done on that
occasion when the Honourable Phil gave her her dismissal, a smile would
come over her face sometimes when she reflected that with her two
thousand pounds she had purchased the hostility of both Philip and John.
John Tatham was indeed exceedingly angry with her for the weakness with
which she had yielded to Phil Compton’s arguments, though indeed he knew
nothing of Phil Compton’s arguments, nor whether they had been exercised
at all on the woman who was first of all Elinor’s mother and ready to
sacrifice everything to her comfort. When he found that this foolish
step on her part had been followed by her retirement from London, he was
greatly mystified and quite unable to understand. He met Elinor some
time after at one of those assemblies to which “everybody” goes. It was,
I think, the soirée at the Royal Academy--where amid the persistent
crowd in the great room there was a whirling crowd, twisting in and out
among the others, bound for heaven knows how many other places, and
pausing here and there on tiptoe to greet an acquaintance, at the tail
of which, carried along by its impetus, was Elinor. She was not looking
either well or happy, but she was responding more or less to the impulse
of her set, exchanging greetings and banal words with dozens of people,
and sometimes turning a wistful and weary gaze towards the pictures on
the walls, as if she would gladly escape from the mob of her companions
to them, or anywhere. It was no impulse of taste or artistic feeling,
however, it is to be feared, but solely the weariness of her mind. John
watched her for some time before he approached her. Phil was not of the
party, which was nothing extraordinary, for little serious as that
assembly is, it was still of much too serious a kind for Phil; but Lady
Mariamne was there, and other ladies with whom Elinor was in the habit
of pursuing that gregarious hunt after pleasure which carries the train
of votaries along at so breakneck a pace, and with so little time to
enjoy the pleasure they are pursuing. When he saw indications that the
stream was setting backwards to the entrance, again to separate and take
its various ways to other entertainments, he broke into the throng and
called Elinor’s attention to himself. For a moment she smiled with
genuine pleasure at the sight of him, but then changed her aspect almost
imperceptibly. “Oh, John!” she said with that smile: but immediately
looked towards Lady Mariamne, as if undecided what to do.
“You need not look--as if I would try to detain you, Elinor.”
“Do you think I am afraid of your detaining me? I thought I should be
sure to meet you to-night, and was on the outlook. How is it that we
never see you now?”
He refused the natural retort that she had never asked to see him, and
only said, with a smile, “I hear my aunt is gone.”
“Do you mean to say that you only came for her? That is an unkind
speech. Yes, she has gone. It was cruel to keep her in town for the best
part of the year.”
“But she intended to stay till July, Elinor.”
“Did she? I think you are mistaken, John. She intended to watch over
me--dear mamma, she thinks too much of me--but when she saw that I was
quite well----”
“You don’t look to me so extraordinarily well.”
“Don’t I? I must be a fraud then. Nobody could be stronger. I’m going to
a multitude of places to-night. Wherever my Hebrew leader goes I go,”
said Elinor, with a laugh. “I have given myself up for to-night, and she
is never satisfied with less than a dozen.”
“Ten minutes to each.”
“Oh, half an hour at least: and with having our carriage found for us at
every place, and the risk of getting into a _queue_, and all the delays
of coming and going, it cannot be much less than three-quarters of an
hour. This is the third. I think three more will weary even the Jew.”
“You are with Lady Mariamne then, Elinor?”
“Yes--oh, you need not make that face. She is as good as the rest, and
pretends to nothing, at least. I have no carriage, you know, and Phil
took fright at my dear old fly. He thought a hired brougham was not good
when I was alone.”
“That was quite true. Nevertheless, I should like above all things to
keep you here a little longer to look at some of the pictures, and take
you home in a hansom after.”
She laughed. “Oh, so should I--fancy, I have not seen the pictures, not
at all. We came in a mob to the private view; and then one day I was
coming with mamma, but was stopped by something, and now---- Always
people, people--nothing else. ‘Did you see So-and-so? There’s some one
bowing to you, Nell. Be sure you speak a word to the Thises or the
Thats’--while I don’t care for one of them. But I fear the hansom would
not do, John.”
“It would have done very well in the old days. Your mother would not
have been displeased.”
“The old days are gone and will never return,” she said, half sad, half
smiling, shaking her head. “So far as I can see, nothing ever returns.
You have your day, and if you do not make the best of that----”
She stopped, shaking her head again with a laugh, and there were various
ways in which that speech might be interpreted. John for one knew a
sense of it which he believed had never entered Elinor’s head. He too
might have had his day and let it slip. “So you are making the most of
yours,” he said. “I hear that you are very gay.”
Elinor coloured high under his look. “I don’t know who can have told you
that. We have had a few little dinners since mamma left us, chiefly
Phil’s business friends. I would not have them while she was with
us--that is to say, to be honest,” cried Elinor, “while we were with
her: which of course was the real state of the case. I myself don’t like
those people, John, but they would have been insupportable to mamma. It
was for her sake----”
“I understand,” he said.
“Oh, but you must not say ‘I understand’ with that air of knowing a
great deal more than there is to understand,” she said, with heat.
“Mamma said it would do me much more good to go--home for a night now
and then and sleep in the fresh air than for her to stay; and though I
think she is a little insane on the subject of my health, still it was
certainly better than that she should stay here, making herself
wretched, her rest broken, and all that. You know we keep such late
hours.”
“I should not have thought she would have minded that.”
“But what would you have thought of me if I did not mind it for her?
There, John, do you see they are all going? Ah, the pictures! I wish I
could have stayed with you and gone round the rooms. But it must not be
to-night. Come and see me!” she said, turning round to him with a smile,
and holding out her hand.
“I would gladly, Elinor--but should not I find myself in the way of your
fine friends like----”
He had not the heart to finish the sentence when he met her eyes
brimming full of tears.
“Not my fine friends, but my coarse friends,” she said; “not friends at
all, our worst enemies, I am sure.”
“Nell!” cried Lady Mariamne, in her shrill voice.
“You will come and see me, John?”
“Yes,” he said, “and in the meantime I will take you down-stairs, let
your companions think as they please.”
It proved when he did so that John had to escort both ladies to the
carriage, which it was not very easy to find, no other cavalier being at
hand for the moment; and that Lady Mariamne invited him to accompany
them to their next stage. “You know the Durfords, of course. You are
going there? What luck for us, Nell! Jump in, Mr. Tatham, we will take
you on.”
“Unfortunately Lady Durford has not taken the trouble to invite me,”
said John.
“What does that matter? Jump in, all the same, she’ll be delighted to
see you, and as for not asking you, when you are with me and Nell----”
But John turned a deaf ear to this siren’s song.
He went to Curzon Street a little while after to call, as he had been
invited to do, and went late to avoid the bustle of the tea-table, and
the usual rabble of that no longer intimate but wildly gregarious house.
And he was not without his reward. Perhaps a habit he had lately formed
of passing by Curzon Street in the late afternoon, when he was on his
way to his club, after work was over, had something to do with his
choice of this hour. He found Elinor, as he had hoped, alone. She was
sitting so close to the window that her white dress mingled with the
white curtains, so that he did not at first perceive her, and so much
abstracted in her own thoughts that she did not pay any attention to the
servant’s hurried murmur of his name at the door. When she felt rather
than saw that there was some one in the room, Elinor jumped up with a
shock of alarm that seemed unnecessary in her own drawing-room; then
seeing who it was, was so much and so suddenly moved that she shed a few
tears in some sudden revulsion of feeling as she said, “Oh, it is you,
John!”
“Yes,” he said, “but I am very sorry to see you so nervous.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I was always nervous”--which indeed was the purest
invention, for Elinor Dennistoun had not known what nerves meant. “I
mean I was always startled by any sudden entrance--in this way,” she
cried, and very gravely asked him to be seated, with a curious
assumption of dignity. Her demeanour altogether was incomprehensible to
John.
“I hope,” he said, “you were not displeased with me, Elinor, for going
off the other night. I should have been too happy, you know, to go with
you anywhere; but Lady Mariamne is more than I can stand.”
“I was very glad you did not come,” she said, with a sigh; then smiling
faintly, “But you were ungrateful, for Mariamne formed a most favourable
opinion of you. She said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Nell, you had a
cousin so presentable as that?’”
“I am deeply obliged, Elinor; but it seems that what was a compliment to
me personally involved something the reverse for your other relations.”
“It is one of their jokes,” said Elinor, with a voice that faltered a
little, “to represent my relations as--not in a complimentary way. I am
supposed not to mind, and it’s all a joke, or so they tell me; but it is
not a joke I like,” she said, with a flash from her eyes.
“All families have jokes of that description,” said John; “but tell me,
Nelly, are you really going down to the cottage, to your mother?”
Her eyes thanked him with a gleam of pleasure for the old familiar name,
and then the light went out of them. “I don’t know,” she said, abruptly.
“Phil was to come; if he will not, I think I will not either. But I will
say nothing till I make sure.”
“Of course your first duty is to him,” said John; “but a day now or a
day then interferes with nothing, and the country would be good for you,
Elinor. Doesn’t your husband see it? You are not looking like yourself.”
“Not like myself? I might easily look better than myself. I wish I
could. I am not so bigoted about myself.”
“Your friends are, however,” he said: “no one who cares for you wants to
change you, even for another Elinor. Come, you are nervous altogether
to-night, not like yourself, as I told you. You always so courageous
and bright! This depressed state is not one of your moods. London is too
much for you, my little Nelly.”
“Your little Nellie has gone away somewhere John. I doubt if she’ll ever
come back. Yes, London is rather too much for me, I think. It’s such a
racket, as Phil says. But then he’s used to it, you know. He was brought
up to it, whereas I--I think I hate a racket, John--and they all like it
so. They prefer never having a moment to themselves. I daresay one would
end by being just the same. It keeps you from thinking, that is one very
good thing.”
“You used not to think so, Elinor.”
“No,” she said, “not at the Cottage among the flowers, where nothing
ever happened from one year’s end to another. I should die of it now in
a week--at least if not I, those who belong to me. So on the whole
perhaps London is the safest--unless Phil will go.”
“I can only hope you will be able to persuade him,” said John, rising to
go away, “for whatever you may think, you are a country bird, and you
want the fresh air.”
“Are you going, John? Well, perhaps it is better. Good-by. Don’t trouble
your mind about me whether I go or stay.”
“Do you mean I am not to come again, Elinor?”
“Oh, why should I mean that?” she said. “You are so hard upon me in
your thoughts;” but she did not say that he was wrong, and John went out
from the door saying to himself that he would not go again. He saw
through the open door of the dining-room that the table was prepared
sumptuously for a dinner-party. It was shining with silver and crystal,
the silver Mrs. Dennistoun’s old service, which she had brought up with
her from Windyhill, and which as a matter of convenience she had left
behind with her daughter. Would it ever, he wondered, see Windyhill
again?
He went on to his club, and there some one began to amuse him with an
account of Lady Durford’s ball, to which Lady Mariamne had wished to
take him. “Are not those Comptons relations of yours, Tatham?” he said.
“Connections,” said John, “by marriage.”
“I’m very glad that’s all. They are a queer lot. Phil Compton you
know--the dis-Honourable Phil, as he used to be called--but I hear he’s
turned over a new leaf----”
“What of him?” said John.
“Oh, nothing much: only that he was flirting desperately all the evening
with a Mrs. Harris, an American widow. I believe he came with her--and
his own wife there--much younger, much prettier, a beautiful young
creature--looking on with astonishment. You could see her eyes growing
bigger and bigger. If it had not been kind of amusing to a looker-on, it
would be the most pitiful sight in the world.”
“I advise you not to let yourself be amused by such trifles,” said John
Tatham, with a look of fire and flame.