Things relapsed into quietness for some time after that combination
which seemed to be directed against John’s peace of mind. If I said that
it is not unusual for the current of events to run very quietly before a
great crisis, I should not be saying anything original, since the
torrent’s calmness ere it dash below has been remarked before now. But
it certainly was so in this instance. John, I need scarcely say, did not
present himself at Lady Mariamne’s on the afternoon at five when he was
expected. He wrote a very civil note to say that he was unable to come,
and still less able to give the information her ladyship required; and,
to tell the truth, in his alarm lest Lady Mariamne should repeat her
invasion, Mr. Tatham was guilty of concerting with his clerk, the
excellent Simmons, various means of eluding such a danger. And he
exercised the greatest circumspection in regard to his own invitations,
and went nowhere where there was the least danger of meeting her. In
this way for a few months he had kept himself safe.
It may be imagined, then, how great was his annoyance when Simmons came
in again, very diffident, coughing behind his hand, and taking shelter
in the shaded part of the room, with the hesitating statement that a
lady--who would take no denial, who looked as if she knew the chambers
as well as he did, and could hardly be kept from walking straight
in--was waiting to see Mr. Tatham. John sprang to his feet with words
which were not benedictions. “I thought,” he said, “you ass, that you
knew exactly what to say.”
“But, sir,” said Simmons, “it is not the same lady--it is not at all the
same lady. It is a lady who----”
But here the question was summarily settled, for the door was pushed
open though Simmons still held it with his hand, and a voice, which was
more like the voice of Elinor Dennistoun at eighteen than that of Mrs.
Compton, said quickly, “I know, John, that your door can’t be shut for
me.”
“Elinor!” he said, getting up from his chair.
“I know,” she repeated, “that there must be some mistake--that your door
could not be shut for me.”
“No, of course not,” he said. “It is all right, Simmons; but who could
have thought of seeing you here? It was a contingency I never
anticipated. When did you come? where are you staying? Is Philip with
you?” He overwhelmed her with questions, perhaps by way of stopping her
mouth lest she should put questions still more difficult to answer to
himself.
“Let me take breath a little,” she said. “I scarcely have taken breath
since the--thing happened which has brought me here; but I feel a little
confidence now with the strong backing I have in you, John.”
“My dear Elinor,” he said, “I am afraid you must not look for any strong
backing in me.”
“Why?” she cried. “Have you judged it all beforehand? And do you
know--are you quite, quite sure, John, that I cannot avoid it in any
way, that I am obliged at all costs to appear? I would rather fly the
country, I would rather leave Lakeside altogether and settle abroad.
There is nothing in the world that I would not rather do.”
“Elinor,” said John, with some sternness, “you cannot believe that I
would oppose you in any possible thing. Your pleasure has been a law to
me. I may have differed with you, but I have never made any difference.”
“John! you do not mean to say,” she cried, turning pale, “that you are
going to abandon me now?”
“Of course, that is merely a figure of speech,” he said. “How could I
abandon you? But it is quite true what that woman says, and I entirely
agree with her and not with you in this respect, that the heir to a
peerage cannot be hid----”
“The heir to a peerage!” she faltered, looking at him astonished.
Gradually a sort of slowly growing light seemed to diffuse itself over
her face. “The heir to a peerage, John! I don’t know what you mean.”
“Is this not your reason for coming to town?”
“There is nothing--that I know of--about the heir to a peerage. Who is
this heir to a peerage? I don’t know what you mean, but you frighten me.
Is that a reason why I should be dragged out of my seclusion and made to
appear in his defence? Oh, no--surely no; if he is _that_, they will let
him off. They will not press it. I shall not be wanted. John, the more
reason that you should stand by me----”
“We are at cross-purposes, Elinor. What has brought you to London? Let
me know on your side and then I shall understand what I have got to do.”
“_That_ has brought me to London.” She handed him a piece of paper which
John knew very well the appearance of. He understood it better than she
did, and he was not afraid of it, which she was, but he opened it all
the same with a great deal of surprise. It was a subpœna charging Elinor
Compton to appear and bear testimony--in the case of the _Queen_ versus
_Brown_.
“The _Queen_ versus _Brown_! What have you got to do with such a case?
You, Elinor, of all people in the world! Oh!” he said suddenly as a
light, but a dim one, began to break upon him. It was the case of which
his friend the judge had spoken, and in which he had been offered a
retainer, as a matter of fact, shortly after that talk. He had been
obliged to refuse, his time being already fully taken up, and he had not
looked into the case. But now it began slowly to dawn upon him that the
trial was that of the once absconded manager of a certain joint-stock
company, and that this was precisely the company in which Elinor’s money
had been all but invested by her husband. It might be upon that subject
that she had to appear.
“Well,” he said, “I can imagine a possible reason why you should be
called, and yet not a good one; for it was not of course you who were
acting, but your--husband for you. It is he that should appear, and not
you.”
“Oh, John,” she cried. “Oh, John!” wringing her hands. She had followed
his looks eagerly, noticing the light that seemed to dawn over his face
with a strange anxiety and keen interest. But John, it was evident, had
not got the clue which she expected, and her face changed into
impatience, disappointment, exasperation. “You have not heard anything
about it,” she said; “you don’t know.”
“It was brought to me,” he said, “but I could not take it up--no, I
don’t know--except that it’s curious from the lapse of time--twenty
years or thereabouts: that’s all I know.”
“The question is,” she said, “about a date. There were some books
destroyed, and it is not known who did it. Suspicion fell upon one--who
might have been guilty: but that on that day--he arrived at the house of
the girl--whom he was going to marry: and consequently could not have
been there----”
“Elinor!”
“Yes,” she said, “that is what I am wanted for, John, an excellent
reason after all these years. I must appear to--clear my husband: and
that is how Pippo will find out that I have a husband and he a father.
Oh, John, John! support me with your approval, and help me, oh, help me
to go away.”
“Good gracious!” was all that John could say.
“I should have gone first and asked you after,” she cried, “for you are
a lawyer, and I suppose you will think you must not advise any one to
fly in the face of the law. And I don’t even know whether it will be of
any use to fly. Will they have it in the papers all the same? Will they
put it in that his wife refused to appear on his behalf, that she had
gone away to avoid the summons? Will it be all there for Pippo to guess
and wonder at the name and come to me with questions, mother, who is
this? and mother, what is that? John, can’t you answer me, you that I
came to to guide me, to tell me what I must do; have you nothing,
nothing to say?”
“I am too much bewildered to know what I am doing, Elinor. This is all
sprung upon me like a mine: and there was plenty before.”
“There was nothing before,” she cried, indignantly, “it was all plain
sailing before. He knew nothing of family troubles--how should he, poor
child, being so young? That was simple enough. And I think I see a way
still, John. I will take him off at Easter for a trip abroad, and when
we have started to go to Switzerland or somewhere, I will change my
mind, and make him think of Greece or somewhere far, far away--the East
where there will be no newspapers. Tell me when the trial will come on,
and how long you think it will last, and I will keep him away till it is
all over. John! you have nothing surely to say against that? Think from
how much it will save the boy.”
“It is impossible, Elinor, that the boy can be saved. I never knew of
this complication, but there are other circumstances, of which I have
lately heard.”
“What can any other circumstances have to do with it, John, even if he
must hear? I know, I know, you have always been determined upon that. Is
that the way you would have him hear, not only that he has a father, but
that his father was involved in--in transactions like that before ever
he was born?”
“Elinor, let us understand each other,” said Mr. Tatham. “You mean that
you have it in your power to exonerate your husband, and he has had you
subpœnaed, knowing this?”
She looked at him with a look which he could not fathom. Was it
reluctance to save Phil Compton that was in Elinor’s eyes? Was she ready
to leave her husband to destruction when she could prevent it, in order
to save her boy from the knowledge of his existence? John Tatham was
horrified by the look she fixed upon him, though he could not read it.
He thought he could read it, and read it that way, in the way of hate
and deliberate preference of her own will to all law and justice. There
could be no such tremendous testimony to the power of that
long-continued, absolutely-faithful, visionary love which John Tatham
bore to Elinor than that this discovery which he thought he had made did
not destroy it. He was greatly shocked, but it made no difference in his
feelings. Perhaps there was more of the brotherly character in them than
he thought. For a moment they looked at each other, and he thought he
made this discovery--while she met his eyes with that look which she did
not know was inscrutable, which she feared was full of self-betrayal. “I
believe,” she said, bending her head, “that that is what he thinks.”
“If it had been me,” said John Tatham, moved out of his habitual calm,
“I would rather be proved guilty of anything than owe my safety to such
an expedient as that. Drag in a woman who hates me to prove my alibi as
if she loved me! By Jove, Elinor! you women have the gift of drawing out
everything that’s worst in men.”
“It seems to make you hate me, John, which I don’t think I have
deserved.”
“Oh, no, I don’t hate you. It’s a consequence, I suppose, of use and
wont. It makes little difference to me----”
She gave him another look which he did not understand--a wistful look,
appealing to something, he did not know what--to his ridiculous
partiality, he thought, and that stubborn domestic affection to which it
was of so little importance what she did, as long as she was Elinor; and
then she said with a woman’s soft, endless pertinacity, “Then you think
I may go?”
He sprang from his seat with that impatient despair which is equally
characteristic of the man. “Go!” he said, “when you are called upon by
law to vindicate a man’s character, and that man your husband! I ought
not to be surprised at anything with my experience, but, Elinor, you
take away my breath.”
She only smiled, giving him once more that look of appeal.
“How can you think of it?” he said. “The subpœna is enough to keep any
reasonable being, besides the other motive. You must not budge. I should
feel my own character involved, as well as yours, if after consulting me
on the subject you were guilty of an evasion after all.”
“It would not be your fault, John.”
“Elinor! you are mad--it must not be done,” he cried. “Don’t defy me, I
am capable of informing upon you, and having you stopped--by force--if
you do not give this idea up.”
“By force!” she said, with her nostril dilating. “I shall go, of course,
if I am threatened.”
“Then Philip must not go. Do you know what has happened in the family to
which he belongs, and must belong, whether you like it or not? Do you
know--that the boy may be Lord Lomond before the week is out? that his
uncle is dying, and that your husband is the heir?”
She turned round upon him slowly, fixing her eyes upon his, with simple
astonishment and no more in her look. Her mind, so absorbed in other
thoughts, hardly took in what he could mean.
“Have you not heard this, Elinor?”
“But there is Hal,” she said, “Hal--the other brother--who comes first.”
“Hal is dead, and the one in India is dead, and Lord St. Serf is dying.
The boy is the heir. You must not, you cannot, take him away. It is
impossible, Elinor, it is against all nature and justice. You have had
him for all these years; his father has a right to his heir.”
“Oh, John!” she cried, in a bitter note of reproach, “oh, John, John!”
“Well,” he cried, “is not what I tell you the truth? Would Philip give
it up if it were offered to him? He is almost a man--let him judge for
himself.”
“Oh, John, John! when you know that the object of my life has been to
keep him from knowing--to shut that chapter of my life altogether; to
bring him up apart from all evil influences, from all instructions----”
“And from his birthright, Elinor?”
She stopped, giving him another sudden look, the natural language of a
woman brought to bay. She drew a long breath in impatience and
desperation, not knowing what to reply; for what could she reply? His
birthright! to be Lord Lomond, Lord St. Serf, the head of the house.
What was that? Far, far better Philip Dennistoun, of Lakeside, the heir
of his mother and his grandmother, two stainless women, with enough for
everything that was honest and of good report, enough to permit him to
be an unworldly scholar, a lover of art, a traveller, any
play-profession that he chose if he did not incline to graver work. Ah!
but she had not been so wise as that, she had not brought him up as
Philip Dennistoun. He was Philip Compton, she had not been bold enough
to change his name. She stood at bay, surrounded as it were by her
enemies, and confronted John Tatham, who had been her constant companion
and defender, as if all that was hostile to her, all that was against
her peace was embodied in him.
“I must go a little further, Elinor,” said John, “though God knows that
to add to your pain is the last thing in the world I wish. You have been
left unmolested for a very long time, and we have all thought your
retreat was unknown. I confess it has surprised me, for my experience
has always been that everything is known. But you have been subpœnaed
for this trial, therefore, my dear girl, we must give up that idea.
Everybody, that is virtually everybody, all that are of any consequence,
know where you are and all you are about now.”
She sank into a chair, still keeping her eyes upon him, as if it were
possible that he might take some advantage of her if she withdrew them;
then, still not knowing what to reply, seized at the last words because
they were the last, and had little to do with the main issue. “All about
me?” she said faintly, as if there had been something else besides the
place of her refuge to conceal.
“You know what I mean, Elinor. The moment that your home is known all is
known. That Philip lives and is well, a promising boy; that you have
brought him up to do honour to any title or any position.”
He could not help saying this, and partly in the testimony to her,
partly for love of the boy, John Tatham’s voice faltered a little and
the water came into his eyes.
“Ah, John! you say that!” she cried, as if it had been an admission
forced from him against his will.
“What could I say otherwise? Elinor, because I don’t approve of all your
proceedings, because I don’t think you have been wise in one respect, is
that to say that I do not understand and know _you_? I am not such a
fool or a formalist as you give me credit for being. You have made him
all that the fondest and proudest could desire. You have done far better
for him, I do not doubt for a moment, than---- But, my dear cousin, my
dear girl, my poor Nellie----”
“Yes, John?”
He paused a moment, and then he said, “Right is right, and justice is
justice at the end of all.”