Fortune was favourable to Elinor that day. At the Tower, where she duly
went over everything that was to be seen with Pippo, conscious all the
time of his keen observance of her through all that he was doing, and
even through his interest in what he saw--and feeling for the first time
in her life that there was between her boy and her something that he
felt, something that was not explained by anything she had said, and
that awaited the dreadful moment when everything would have to be
told--at the Tower, as I say, they met some friends from the north, the
rector of the parish, who had come up with his son to see town, and was
naturally taking his boy, as Elinor took hers, to see all that was not
town, in the usual sense of the word. They were going to Woolwich and
Greenwich next day, and with a pang of mingled trouble and relief in her
mind Elinor contrived to engage Pippo to accompany them. On the second
day I think they were to go to St. Katherine’s Docks, or the Isle of
Dogs, or some other equally important and interesting sight--far better
no doubt for the two youths than to frequent such places as the Row,
and gaze at the stream of gaiety and luxury which they could not join.
Pippo in ordinary circumstances would have been delighted to see
Woolwich and the docks--but it was so evident to him that his mother was
anxiously desirous to dispose of him so, that his satisfaction was much
lessened. The boy, however, was magnanimous enough to consent without
any appearance of reluctance. In the many thoughts which filled his mind
Philip showed his fine nature, by having already come to consent to the
possibility that his mother might have business of her own into which he
had no right to enter unless at her own time and with her full consent.
It cost him an effort, I allow, to come to that: but yet he did so, and
resolved, a little pride helping him, to inquire no more, and if
possible to wonder or be offended no more, but to wait the time she had
promised, when the old rule of perfect confidence should be
re-established between them. The old rule! if Pippo had but known!
nothing yet had given Elinor such a sense of guilt as his conviction
that she had told him everything, that there had been no secrets between
them during all the happy life that was past.
How entirely relieved Elinor was when he started to join his friends
next morning it would be impossible to put into words. She watched all
his lingering movements before he went with eyes in which she tried to
quench the impatience, and look only with the fond admiration and
interest she felt upon all his little preparations, his dawning sense
of what was becoming in apparel, the flower in his coat, the carefully
rolled umbrella, the hat brushed to the most exquisite smoothness, the
handkerchief just peeping from his breast-pocket. It is always a
revelation to a woman to find that these details occupy as much of a
young man’s attention as her own toilette occupies hers; and that he is
as tremulously alive to “what is worn” in many small particulars that
never catch her eye, as she is to details which entirely escape him. She
smiles at him as he does at her, each in that conscious superiority to
the other, which is on the whole an indulgent sentiment. Underneath all
her anxiety to see him go, to get rid of him (was that the dreadful
truth in this terrible crisis of her affairs?), she felt the amusement
of the boy’s little coquetries, and the mother’s admiration of his fresh
looks, his youthful brightness, his air of distinction; how different
from the Rector’s boy, who was a nice fellow enough, and a credit to his
rectory, and whose mother, I do not doubt, felt in his ruddy good looks
something much superior in robustness, and strength, and manhood to the
too-tall and too-slight golden youth of the ladies at Lakeside! It even
flitted across Elinor’s mind to give him within herself the title that
was to be his, everybody said--Lord Lomond! And then she asked herself
indignantly what honour it could add to her spotless boy to have such a
vain distinction; a name that had been soiled by so much ignoble use?
Elinor had prided herself all her life on an indifference to, almost a
contempt for, the distinctions of rank: and that it should occur to her
to think of that title as an embellishment to Pippo--nay, to think
furtively, without her own knowledge, so to speak, that Pippo looked
every inch a lord and heir to a peerage, was an involuntary weakness
almost incredible. She blushed for herself as she realised it:--a
peerage which had meant so little that was excellent--a name connected
with so many undesirable precedents: still I suppose when it is his own
even the veriest democrat is conscious at least of the picturesqueness,
the superiority, as a mode of distinguishing one man from another, of
anything that can in the remotest sense be called a historical name.
When Pippo was out of sight Elinor turned from the window with a sigh,
and came back to the dark chamber of her own life, full at this moment
of all the gathered blackness of the past and of the future. She put her
hands over her eyes, and sank down upon a seat, as if to shut out from
herself all that was before her. But shut it out as she might, there it
was--the horrible court with the judgment-seat, the rows of faces bent
upon her, the silence through which her own voice must rise alone,
saying--what? What was it she was called there to say? Oh, how little
they knew who suggested that her mother should have been called instead
of her, with all her minute old-fashioned calculations and exact memory,
who even now, when all was over, would probably convict Elinor of a
mistake! Even at that penalty what would not she give to have it over,
the thing said, the event done with, whatever it might bring after it!
And it could now be only a very short time till the moment of the ordeal
would come, when she should stand up in the face of her country, before
the solemn judge on his bench, before all the gaping, wondering
people--before, oh! thought most dreadful of all, which we would not,
could not, contemplate--before one who knew everything, and say---- She
picked herself up trembling as it were, and uncovered her eyes, and
protested to herself that she would say nothing that was not true.
Nothing that was not true! She would tell her story--so well remembered,
so often conned; that story that had been put into her lips twenty years
ago which she had repeated then confused, not knowing how it was that
what was a simple fact should nevertheless not be true. Alas! she knew
that very well now, and yet would have to repeat it before God and the
world. But thinking would make it no better--thinking could only make it
worse. She sprang up again, and began to occupy herself with something
she had to do: the less it was thought over the better: for now the
trial had begun, and her ordeal would soon be done too. If only the boy
could be occupied, kept away--if only she could be left alone to do what
she had to do! That he should be there was the last aggravation of which
her fate was capable; there in idleness, reading the papers in the
morning, which was a thing she had so lately calculated a boy at school
was unlikely to do; and what so likely as that his eye would be caught
by his own name in the report of the trial, which would be an exciting
trial and fully reported--a trial which interested society. The boy
would see his own name: she could almost hear him cry out, looking up
from his breakfast, “Hallo, mother! here’s something about a Philip
Compton!” And all the questions that would follow--“Is he the same
Comptons that we are? What Comptons do we belong to? You never told me
anything about my family. Is this man any relation, I wonder? Both
surname and Christian name the same. It’s strange if there is no
connection!” She could almost hear the words he would say--all that and
more--and what should she reply?
“I have only one thing to say, Elinor,” said John, to whom in her
desperation she turned again, as she always did, disturbing him, poor
man, in his chambers as he was collecting his notes and his thoughts in
the afternoon after his work was over: “it is the same as I have always
said; even now make a clean breast of it to the boy. Tell him
everything; better that he should hear it from your own lips than that
it should burst upon him as a discovery. He has but to meet Lady
Mariamne in the park, the most likely thing in the world----”
“No, John,” cried Elinor, “no; the Marshalls are here, our Rector from
Lakeside, and he is taking his boy to see all the sights. I have got
Pippo to go with them. They are going to Woolwich to-day, and
afterwards to quite a long list of things--oh, entirely out of
everybody’s way.”
Her little look of uneasy triumph and satisfaction made John smile. She
was not half so sure as she tried to look; but, all the same, had a
little pride, a little pleasure in her own management, and in the happy
chance of the Marshalls being in London, which was a thing that could
not have been planned, an intervention of Providence. He could not
refuse to smile--partly with her, partly at her simplicity--but, all the
same, he shook his head.
“The only way in which there is any safety--the only chance of
preserving him from a shock, a painful shock, Elinor, that may upset him
for life----”
“How do you mean, upset him for life?”
“By showing him that his mother, whom he believes in like heaven, has
deceived him since ever he was born.”
She covered her face with her hands, and burst into a sobbing cry. “Oh,
John, you don’t know how true that is! He said to me only yesterday,
‘You have always told me everything, mother. There has never been any
secret between us.’ Oh! John, John, only think of having that said to
me, and knowing what I know!”
“Well, Elinor; believe me, my dear, there is but one thing to do. The
boy is a good boy, full of love and kindness.”
“Oh, isn’t he, John? the best boy, the dearest----”
“And adores his mother, as a boy should.” John got up from his chair
and walked about the room for a little, and then he came behind her and
put his hand on her shoulder. “Tell him, Elinor: my dear Nelly, as if I
had never said a word on the subject before, I beseech you tell him,
trust him fully, even now, at the eleventh hour.”
She raised her head with a quivering, wistful smile. “The moment the
trial is over, the moment it is over! I give you my word, John.”
“Do not wait till it is over, do it now; to-night when he comes home.”
She began to tremble so that John Tatham was alarmed--and kept looking
at him with an imploring look, her lips quivering and every line in her
countenance. “Oh, not to-night. Spare me to-night! After the trial;
after my part of it. At least--after--after--oh, give me till to-morrow
to think of it!”
“My dear Elinor, I count for nothing in it. I am not your judge; I am
your partisan, you know, whatever you do. But I am sure it will be the
better done, and even the easier done, the sooner you do it.”
“I will--I will: at the very latest the day after I have done my part at
the trial. Is not that enough to think of at one time, for a poor woman
who has never stood up before the public in all her life, never had a
question put to her? Oh, John! oh, John!”
“Elinor, Elinor! you are too sensible a woman to make a fuss about a
simple duty like this.”
“There speaks the man who has stood before the world all his life, and
is not afraid of any public,” she said, with a tremulous laugh. But she
had won her moment’s delay, and thus was victorious after a fashion as
it was her habit to be.
I do not know that young Philip much amused himself at Woolwich that
day. He did and he did not. He could not help being interested in all he
saw, and he liked the Marshalls well enough, and in ordinary
circumstances would have entered very heartily into any sight-seeing.
But he kept thinking all the time what his mother was doing, and
wondering over the mysterious business which was to be explained to him
sooner or later, and which he had so magnanimously promised to wait for
the revelation of, and entertain no suspicions about in the meantime.
The worst of such magnanimity is that it is subject to dreadful failings
of the heart in its time of waiting--never giving in, indeed, but yet
feeling the pressure whenever there is a moment to think. This matter
mixed itself up so with all Philip saw that he never in after life saw a
great cannon, or a pyramid of balls (which is not, to be sure, an
every-day sight) without a vague sensation of trouble, as of something
lying behind which was concealed from him, and which he would scarcely
endure to have concealed. When he left his friends in the evening,
however, it was with another engagement for to-morrow, and several
to-morrows after, and great jubilation on the part of both father and
son, as to their good luck in meeting, and having his companionship in
their pleasures. And, in fact, these pleasures were carried on for
several days, always with the faint bitter in them to Philip, of that
consciousness that his mother was pleased to be rid of him, glad to see
his back turned, the most novel, extraordinary sensation to the boy. And
it must also be confessed that he kept a very keen eye on all the
passing carriages, always hoping to see that one in which the witch, as
he called her, and the girl with the keen eyes were--for he had not
picked up the name of Lady Mariamne, keen as his young ears were, and
though John had mentioned it in his presence, partly, perhaps, because
it was so very unlikely a name. As for the man with the opera-glasses,
he had not seen his face at all, and therefore could not hope to
recognise him. And yet he felt a little thrill run through him when any
tall man with grey hair passed in the street. He almost thought he could
have known the tall slim figure with a certain swaying movement in it,
which was not like anybody else. I need not say, however, that even had
these indications been stronger, Woolwich and the Isle of Dogs were
unlikely places in which to meet Lady Mariamne, or any gentleman likely
to be in attendance on her. In Whitechapel, indeed, had he but known, he
might have met Miss Dolly: but then in Whitechapel there were no sights
which virtuous youth is led to see. And Philip’s man with the
opera-glass was, during these days, using that aid to vision in a very
different place, and had neither leisure nor inclination to move vaguely
about the world.
For three days this went on successfully enough: young Philip Compton
and Ralph Marshall saw enough to last them all the rest of their lives,
and there was no limit to the satisfaction of the good country
clergyman, who felt that he never could have succeeded so completely in
improving his son’s mind, instead of delivering him over to the
frivolous amusements of town, if it had not been for the companionship
of Philip, who made Ralph feel that it was all right, and that he was
not being victimised for nothing. But on the fourth day a hitch
occurred. John Tatham had been made to give all sorts of orders and
admissions for the party to see every nook and corner of the Temple,
much to Elinor’s alarm, who felt that place was too near to be safe; but
she was herself in circumstances too urgent to permit her dwelling upon
it. She had left the house on that particular morning long before Philip
was ready, and every anxiety was dulled in her mind for the moment by
the overwhelming sense of the crisis arrived. She went to his room
before he had left it, and gave him a kiss, and told him that she might
be detained for a long time; that she did know exactly at what hour she
should return. She was very pale, paler than he had ever seen her, and
her manner had a suppressed agitation in it which startled Philip; but
she managed to smile as she assured him she was quite well, and that
there was nothing troubling her. “Nothing, nothing that has to do with
us--a little disturbed for a friend--but that will be all over,” she
said, “to-night, I hope.” Philip made a leisurely breakfast after she
was gone, and it happened to him that morning for the first time as he
was alone to make a study of the papers. And the consequence was that he
said to himself really those words which his mother in imagination had
so often heard him say, “Hallo! Philip Compton, my name! I wonder if he
is any relation. I wonder if we have anything to do with those St. Serf
Comptons.” Then he reflected, but vaguely, that he did not know to what
Comptons he belonged, nor even what county he came from, to tell the
truth. And then it was time to hurry over his breakfast, to swallow his
cup of tea, to snatch up his hat and gloves, and to rush off to meet his
friends. But on that day Philip was unlucky. When he got to the place of
meeting he found nothing but a telegram from Ralph, announcing that his
father was so knocked up with his previous exertions that they were
obliged to take a quiet day. And thus Philip was left in the Temple, of
all places in the world, on the day when his mother was to appear in the
law-courts close by--on the day of all others when if she could have
sent him for twenty-four hours to the end of the earth she would have
done so--on the day when so terrible was the stress and strain upon
herself that for once in the world even Pippo had gone as completely out
of her mind as if he had not been.
The boy looked about him for awhile, and reflected what to do, and then
he started out into the Strand, conscientiously waiting for the
Marshalls before he should visit the Temple and all its historical ways;
and then he was amused and excited by seeing a barrister or two in wig
and gown pass by; and then he thought of the trial in the newspapers, in
which somebody who, like himself, was called Philip Compton, was
involved. Philip was still lingering, wondering if he could get into the
court, a little shy of trying, but gradually growing eager, thinking at
least that he would try and get a sight of the wonderful grand building,
still so new, when he suddenly saw Simmons, his uncle John’s clerk,
passing through the quandrangle of the law-courts. Here was his chance.
He rushed forward and caught the clerk by the arm, who was in a great
hurry, as everybody seemed to be. “Oh, Simmons, can you get me into that
Brown trial?” cried Philip. “Brown!” Simmons said. “Mr. Tatham is not on
in that.” “Oh, never mind about Mr. Tatham,” said the boy. “Can’t you
get me in? I have never seen a trial, and I take an interest in that.”
“I advise you,” said Simmons, “to wait for one that your uncle’s in.”
“Can’t you get me in?” said Philip, impatiently: and this touched the
pride of Simmons, who had many friends, if not in high places, yet in
low.