Elinor made much of her boy during that day and the following days, to
take away the sense of disappointment which even after the first great
mortification was got over still haunted young Philip’s mind. It
surprised him beyond measure to find that she did not wish to go out
with him, indeed in so far as was possible avoided it altogether, save
for a hurried drive to a few places, during which she kept her veil down
and sheltered herself with an umbrella in the most ridiculous way. “Are
you afraid of your complexion, mother?” the boy asked of her with
disdain. “It looks like it,” she said, but with a laugh that was full of
embarrassment, “though it is a little late in the day.” Elinor was
perhaps better aware than Pippo was that she had a complexion which a
girl might have envied, and was still as fresh as a rose,
notwithstanding that she was a year or two over forty; but I need not
say it was not of her complexion she was thinking. She had been careful
to choose her time on previous visits to London so as to risk as little
as possible the chance of meeting her husband. But now there was no
doubt that he was in town, and not the least that if he met her anywhere
with Pippo, her secret, so far as it had ever been a secret, would be in
his hands. Even when John took the boy out it was with a beating heart
that his mother saw him go, for John was too well known to make any
secret possible about his movements, or who it was who was with him.
Perhaps it was for this reason that John desired to take him out, and
even cut short his day’s work on one or two occasions to act as cicerone
to Philip. He took him to the House, to the great excitement and delight
of the boy, who only wished that the entertainment could have been made
complete by a speech from Uncle John, which was a point in which his
guide, philosopher, and friend, though in every other way so
complaisant, did not humour Pippo. On one occasion during the first week
they had an encounter which made John’s middle-aged pulses move a little
quicker. When they were walking along through Hyde Park, having strolled
that way in the fading of the May afternoon, when the carriages were
still promenading up and down, before they returned to Halkin Street to
dinner, where Elinor awaited them--it happened to Mr. Tatham to meet the
roving eyes of Lady Mariamne, who lay back languidly in her carriage,
wrapped in a fur cloak, and shivering in the chill of the evening. She
was not particularly interested in anything or any person whom she had
seen, and was a little cross and desirous of getting home. But when she
saw John she roused up immediately, and gave a sign to Dolly, who sat by
her, to pull the check-string. “Mr. Tatham!” she cried, in her shrill
voice. Lady Mariamne was not one of the people who object to hear their
voice in public or are reluctant to make their wishes known to
everybody. She felt herself to be of the cast in which everybody is
interested, and that the public liked to know whom she honoured with her
acquaintance. “Mr. Tatham! are you going to carry your rudeness so far
as not to seem to know me? Oh, come here this moment, you impertinent
man!”
“Can I be of any use to you, Lady Mariamne?” said John, gravely, at the
carriage door.
“Oh, dear no; you can’t be of any use. What should I have those men for
if I wanted you to be of use? Come and talk a moment, that’s all; or get
into the carriage and I’ll take you anywhere. Dolly and I have driven
round and round, and we have not seen a creature we cared to see. Yes!
there was a darling, darling little Maltese terrier, with white silk
curls hanging over his eyes, on an odious woman’s lap; but I cannot
expect you to find that angel for me. Mr. Tatham, who is that tall boy?”
“Pippo,” said John, quickly (though probably he had never in his life
before used that name, which he disapproved of angrily, as people often
do of a childish name which does not please them), “go on. I’ll come
after you directly. The boy is a cousin of mine, Lady Mariamne, just
from school.”
“Mr. Tatham, I am quite sure it is Nell’s boy. Call after him. What’s
his name? Bring him back! John Thomas, run after that young gentleman,
and say with my compliments----”
“Nothing,” said John, stopping the footman with a lifted hand and a
still more emphatic look. “He is hastening home to--an engagement. And
it’s evident I had better go too--for your little friend there is
showing his teeth.”
“The darling!” said Lady Mariamne, “did it show its little pearls at the
wicked man that will not do what its mummy says? Dolly, can’t you jump
down and run after that boy? I am sure it is your Uncle Philip’s boy.”
“He is out of sight, mother,” said Miss Dolly, calmly.
“You are the most dreadful, wicked, unkind people, all of you. Show its
little teeth, then, darling! Oo’s the only one that has any feeling. Mr.
Tatham, do tell me something about this trial. What is going to be done?
Phil is mixed up in it. I know he is. Can they do anything to
anybody--after all this time? They can’t make you pay up, I know, after
a certain time. Oh, couldn’t it all be hushed up and stopped and kept
out of the newspapers? I hate the newspapers, always chuckling over
every new discovery. But this cannot be called a new discovery. If it’s
true it’s old, as old as the old beginning of the world. Don’t you think
somebody could get at the newspaper men and have it hushed up?”
“I doubt if you could get hold of all of them, their name is legion,”
said John.
“Oh, I don’t care what their name is. If you will help me, Mr. Tatham,
we could get hold of most of them--won’t you? You know, don’t you, poor
St. Serf is so bad; it may be over any day--and then only think what a
complication! Dolly, turn your head the other way; look at that silly
young Huntsfield capering about to catch your eye. I don’t want you to
hear what I have got to say.”
“I don’t in the least way want to hear what you have got to say, dear
mamma,” said Dolly.
“That would have made me listen to every word,” said Lady Mariamne; “but
girls are more queer nowadays than anything that ever was. Mr.
Tatham”--she put her hand upon his, which was on the carriage door, and
bent her perfumed, powdered face towards him--“for goodness’ sake--think
how awkward it would be--a man just succeeding to a title and that sort
of thing put in all the papers about him. Do, do stop it, or try
something to stop it, for goodness’ sake!”
“I assure you,” said John, “I can do nothing to stop it. I am as
powerless as you are.”
“Oh, I don’t say that I am powerless,” said Lady Mariamne, with her
shrill laugh. “One has one’s little ways of influence.” Then she put her
hand again upon John with a sudden grip. “Mr. Tatham,” she said, “tell
me, in confidence, was that Phil’s boy?”
“I have told you, Lady Mariamne, it is a nephew of mine.”
“A nephew--oh, I know what kind of a nephew--_à la mode de Bretagne_!”
She turned her head to the other side, where her daughter was gazing
calmly in front of her.
“Dolly! I was sure of it,” she cried, “don’t you hear? Dolly, don’t you
hear?”
“Which, mamma?” said Dolly, gravely; “of course I could not help hearing
it all. Which part was I to notice? about the newspapers or about the
boy?”
Lady Mariamne appealed to earth and heaven with the loud cackle of her
laugh. “He can’t deny it,” she said; “he as good as owns it. I am
certain that’s the boy that will be Lomond.”
“Uncle St. Serf is not dead yet,” said Dolly, reprovingly.
“Poor Serf!--but he’s so very bad,” said Lady Mariamne, “that it’s
almost the same thing. Mr. Tatham, can’t we take you anywhere? I’m so
glad I’ve seen Nell’s boy. Can’t we drive you home? Perhaps you’ve got
Nell there too?”
John stood back from the carriage door, just in time to escape the start
of the horses as the remorseless string was touched and the footman
clambered up into his seat. Lady Mariamne’s smile went off her face, and
she had forgotten all about it, to judge from appearances, before he had
got himself in motion again. And a little farther on, behind the next
tree, he found young Philip waiting, full of curiosity and questions.
“Who was that lady, Uncle John? Was she asking about me? I thought I
heard her call. I had half a mind to run back and say ‘Here I am.’”
“It was much better that you didn’t do anything of the kind. Never pay
any attention when you think you hear a fine lady calling you, Philip.
It is better not to hear the Siren’s call.”
“When they’re elderly Sirens like that!” said the boy, with a laugh.
“But I say, Uncle John, if you won’t tell me who the lady is, who is the
girl? She has a pair of eyes!--not like Sirens though--eyes that go
through you--like--like a pair of lancets.”
“A surgical operation in fact: and I shouldn’t wonder if she meant to be
a doctor,” said John. “The mother has done nothing all her life,
therefore the daughter means to do much. It is the natural reaction of
the generations. But I never noticed that Miss Dolly had any eyes--to
speak of,” said the highly indifferent middle-aged man.
The boy flushed with a sense of indignation. “Perhaps you think the old
lady’s were finer?” he said.
“I never admired the old lady, as you call her,” said John, shortly; and
then he turned Philip’s attention to something, possibly with the
easily satisfied conviction of a spectator that the boy thought of it no
more.
“We met my Lady Mariamne in the park,” he said to Elinor when they sat
at dinner an hour later at that bachelor table in Halkin Street, where
everything was so exquisitely cared for. It was like Elinor, but most
unlike the place in which she found herself, that she started so
violently as to shake the whole table, crying out in a tone of
consternation, “John!” as if he did not know very well what he might
venture to say, or as if he had any intention of betraying her to her
son.
“She was very anxious,” he said, perhaps playing a little with her
excitement, “to have Philip presented to her: but I sent him on--that is
to say, I thought I sent him on. The fellow went no farther than to the
next tree, where he stood and watched Miss Dolly, not feeling any
interest in the old lady, as he said.”
“Well, Uncle John--did you expect me to look at the old lady? You are
not so fond of old ladies yourself.”
“And who is Miss Dolly?” said Elinor, trying to conceal the beating of
her heart and the quiver on her lips with a smile; and then she added,
with a little catch of her breath, “Oh, yes, I remember there was a
little girl.”
“You will be surprised to hear that we are by way of being great
friends. Her ladyship visits me in my chambers----”
Again Elinor uttered that startled cry, “John!” but she tried this time
to cover it with a tremulous laugh. “Are you becoming a flirt in your
old age?”
“It appears so,” said John. And then he added, “That aphorism, which
struck you as it struck me, Elinor, by its good sense--about the heir to
a peerage--is really her production, and not mine.”
“Miss Dolly’s? And what was the aphorism, Uncle John?” cried Philip.
“No, it was not Miss Dolly’s, my young man. It was the mother’s, and so
of course does not interest you any more.”
It did not as a matter of fact: the old lady was supremely indifferent
to Pippo; but as he looked up saying something else which did not bear
upon the subject, it occurred to the boy, as it will sometimes occur by
the merest chance to a young observer, to notice his mother. She caught
his eye somehow in the most accidental way; and Pippo was too well
acquainted with her looks not to perceive that there was a thrill in
every line of her countenance, a slight nervous tremble in her hands and
entire person, such as was in no way to be accounted for (he thought) by
anything that had been said or done. There was nothing surely to
disquiet her in dining at Uncle John’s, the three alone, not even one
other guest to fill up the vacant side of the table. Philip had himself
thought that Uncle John might have asked some one to meet them. He
should have remembered that he himself, Philip, was now of an age to
dine out, and see a little society, and go into the world. But what in
the name of all that was wonderful was there in this entertainment to
agitate his mother? And John Tatham had a look--which Philip did not
understand--the look of a man who was successful in argument, who was
almost crushing an opponent. It was as if a duel had been going on
between them, and the man was the victor, which, as was natural,
immediately threw Philip violently on the other side.
“You’re not well, mother,” he said.
“Do you think not, Pippo? Well, perhaps you are right. London is too
much for me. I am a country bird,” said Elinor, with smiling yet
trembling lips.
“You shall not go to the theatre if you are not up to it,” said the boy
in his imperious way.
She gave him an affectionate look, and then she looked across the table
at John. What did that look mean? There was a faint smile in it: and
there was a great deal which Philip did not understand, things
understood by Uncle John--who was after all what you might call an
outsider, no more--and not by him, her son! Could anything be so
monstrous? Philip blazed up with sudden fire.
“No,” said John Tatham; “I think Philip’s right. We’ll take her home to
be coddled by her maid, and we’ll go off, two wild young fellows, to the
play by ourselves.”
“No,” said Philip, “I’ll leave her to be coddled by no maid. I can take
care of my mother myself.”
“My dear boy,” said Elinor, “I want no coddling, But I doubt whether I
could stand the play. I like you to go with Uncle John.”
And then it began to dawn upon Philip that his mother had never meant to
be of the party, and that this was what had been settled all along. He
was more angry, more wounded and hurt in his spirit than he had of
course the least occasion to be. He was of opinion that his mother had
never had any secrets from him, that she had taken him into her
confidence since he was a small boy, even things that Granny did not
know! And here all at once there was rising between them a cloud, a
mist, which there was no reason for. If he had done anything to make him
less worthy he would have understood; had there been a bad report from
school, had he failed in his work and disappointed her, there might have
been some reason for it. But he had done nothing of the kind! Never
before had he been so deserving of confidence; he had got his
scholarship, he had finished the first phase of his education in
triumph, and fulfilled all her expectations. And now just at this point
of all others, just when he was most fit to understand, most worthy of
trust, she turned from him. His heart swelled as if it would burst, with
anger first, almost too strong to be repressed, and with that sense of
injured merit which is of all things the most hard to bear. It is hard
enough even when one is aware one deserves no better. But to be
conscious of your worth and to feel that you are not appreciated, that
is indeed too much for any one. There was not even the satisfaction of
giving up the play which he had looked forward to, making a sacrifice of
it to his mother, in which there would have been a severe pleasure. But
she did not want him! She preferred that he should leave her by herself
to be coddled by her maid, as Uncle John (vulgarly) said. Or perhaps was
there somebody else coming, some old friend whom he knew nothing of,
somebody, some one or other like that old witch in the carriage whom
Pippo was not meant to know?
It ended, however, in the carrying out of the plan settled beforehand by
those old conspirators. The old conspirators do generally manage to
carry out their plans for the management of rebellious youth, however
injured the latter may feel. Pippo wound himself up in solemn dignity
and silence when he understood that it was ordained that he should
proceed to the play with John Tatham. And the pair had got half way to
Drury Lane--or it may have been the Lyceum, or the Haymarket, or any of
half-a-dozen other theatres, for here exact information fails--before he
condescended to open his lips for more than Yes or No. But Philip’s
gloom did not survive the raising of the curtain, and he had forgotten
all offences and had taken his companion into favour again, and was
talking to Uncle John between the acts with all the excitement of a
country youth to whom a play still was the greatest of novelties and
delights, when he suddenly saw a change come over John Tatham’s
countenance and a slight bow of recognition directed towards a box,
which made Philip turn round and look too. And there was the old witch
of the carriage, and, what was more interesting, the girl with the keen
eyes, who looked out suddenly from the shade of the draperies, and fixed
upon Philip--Philip himself--a look which startled that young hero much.
Nor was this all; for later in the evening, after another act of the
play, some one else appeared in the same box, and fixed the dark and
impassive stare of a long pair of opera-glasses upon Philip. It amused
him at first, and afterwards it half frightened him, and finally made
him very angry. The gazer was a man, of whom, however, Philip could make
nothing out but his white shirt front and his tall stature, and the long
black tubes of the opera-glass. Was it at him the man was looking, or
perhaps at Uncle John? But the boy thought it on the whole unlikely that
anybody should stare in that way at anything so little out of the
ordinary as Uncle John.
“I say,” he said, in the next interval, “who is that fellow staring at
us out of your old lady’s box?”
“Staring at the ladies behind us, you mean,” said John. “Pippo, do you
think we could make a rush for it the moment the play’s over? I’ve got
something to look over when I get home. Are you game to be out the very
first before the curtain’s down?”
“Certainly I’m game,” said Philip, delighted, “if you wish it, Uncle
John.”
“Yes, I wish it,” said the other, and he put his hand on the boy’s
shoulder as the act finished and the characters of the piece drew
together for the final tableau. And the pair managed it triumphantly,
and were the very first to get out at the head of the crowd, to Philip’s
immense amusement and John Tatham’s great relief. The elder hurried the
younger into the first hansom, all in the twinkling of an eye: and then
for the first time his gravity relaxed. Philip took it all for a great
joke till they reached Ebury Street. But when his companion left him,
and he had time to think of it, he began to ask himself why?