It was while this conversation was going on that John Tatham, anxious
and troubled about many things, knocked at the door in Ebury Street. He
was anxious to know how the explanations had got accomplished, how the
boy took it, how Elinor had borne the strain upon her of such a
revelation. Well as he knew Elinor, he still thought, as is generally
thought in circumstances so painful, that a great crisis, a great mental
effort, would make her ill. He wanted to know how she was, he wanted to
know how Pippo had borne it, what the boy thought. It had glanced across
him that young Philip might be excited by so wonderful a new thing, and
form some false impression of his father (whom doubtless she would
represent under the best light, taking blame upon herself, not to
destroy the boy’s ideal), and be eager to know him--which was a thing,
John felt, which would be very difficult to bear.
The door was opened to him not by good Mrs. Jones, the kind landlady,
but by the magnificent Jones himself, who rarely appeared. John said
“Mrs. Compton?” as a matter of course, and was about to pass in, in his
usual familiar way. But something in the man’s air made him pause. He
looked at Jones again, who was bursting with importance. “Perhaps she’s
engaged?” he said.
“I think, sir,” said John, “that her ladyship is engaged--his lordship
is with her ladyship up-stairs.”
“His--what?” John Tatham cried.
“His lordship, Mr. Tatham. I know, sir, as the title is not usually
assumed till after the funeral; but in the very ’ouse where her ladyship
is residing for the moment, there’s allowances to be made. Naturally
we’re a little excited over it, being, if I may make so bold as to say
so, a sort of ’umble friends, and long patronized by her ladyship, and
young Lord Lomond too.”
“Young Lord Lomond too!” John Tatham stood for a moment and stared at
Mr. Jones; and then he laughed out, and turned his back and walked away.
Young Lord Lomond too! The boy! who had been more like John’s boy than
anything else, but now tricked out in a new name, a new position, his
father’s heir. Oh, yes, it was John himself who had insisted on that
only a few days ago! “The heir to a peerage can’t be hid.” It was he
that had quoted this as an aphorism worthy of a social sage. But when
the moment came and the boy was taken from him, and introduced into that
other sphere, by the side of that man who had once been the
_dis_-Honourable Phil! Good heavens, what changes life is capable of!
What wrongs, what cruelties, what cuttings-off, what twists and
alterations of every sane thought and thing! John Tatham was a sensible
man as well as an eminent lawyer, and knew that between Elinor’s son,
who was Phil Compton’s son, and himself, there was no external link at
all--nothing but affection and habit, and the ever-strengthening link
that had been twisted closer and closer with the progress of these
years; but nothing real, the merest shadow of relationship, a cousin,
who could count how often removed? And it was he who had insisted,
forced upon Elinor the necessity of making his father known to Philip,
of informing him of his real position. Nobody had interfered in this
respect but John. He had made himself a weariness to her by insisting,
never giving over, blaming her hourly for her delay. And yet now, when
the thing he had so worked for, so constantly urged, was done----!
He smiled grimly to himself as he walked away: they were all together,
the lordship and the ladyship, young Lord Lomond too!--and Phil Compton,
whitewashed, a peer of the realm, and still, the scoundrel! a handsome
fellow enough: with an air about him, a man who might still dazzle a
youngster unaccustomed to the world. He had re-entered the bosom of his
family, and doubtless was weeping upon Philip’s neck, and bandying about
that name of “Nell” which had always seemed to John an insult--an insult
to himself. And in that moment of bitterness John did not know how she
would take it, what effect it would produce upon her. Perhaps the very
sight of the fellow who had once won her heart, the lover of her youth,
with whom John had never for a moment put himself in competition,
notwithstanding the bitter wonder in his heart that Elinor--Elinor of
all people!--could ever have loved such a man. Yet she had loved him,
and the sight of him again after so many years, what effect might it not
produce? As he walked away, it was the idea of a happy family that came
into John Tatham’s mind--mutual forgiveness, mutual return to the old
traditions which are the most endearing of all; expansions, confessions,
recollections, and lives of reunion. Something more than a prodigal’s
return, the return of a sinner bringing a coronet in his hand, bringing
distinction, a place and position enough to dazzle any boy, enough to
make a woman forgive. And was not this what John wished above all
things, every advancement for the boy, and an assured place in the
world, as well as every happiness that might be possible--happiness! yet
it was possible she might think it so--for Elinor? Yes, this was what he
had wished for, been ready to make any sacrifice to secure. In the
sudden shock Mr. Tatham thought of the only other person who
perhaps--yet only perhaps--might feel a little as he did--the mother,
Mrs. Dennistoun, upon whom he thought all this would come like a
thunder-clap, not knowing that she was up-stairs in the family party,
among the lordships and the ladyship too.
He went home and into his handsome library, and shut the door upon
himself, to have it out there--or rather to occupy himself in some more
sensible way, and shut this foolish subject out of his mind. It
occurred to him, however, when he sat down that the best thing to do
would be to write an account of it all to Mrs. Dennistoun, who doubtless
in the excitement would have a long time to wait for news of this great
change. He drew his blotting-book towards him with this object, and
opened it, and dipped his pen in the ink, and wrote “My dear Aunt;” but
he did not get much further. He raised his head, thinking how to
introduce his narrative, for which she would in all likelihood be wholly
unprepared, and in so doing looked round upon his book-cases, on one
shelf of which the reflection of a ray of afternoon sunshine caught in
the old Louis Treize mirror over the mantelpiece was throwing a shaft of
light. He got up to make sure that it was only a reflection, nothing
that would harm the binding of a particular volume upon which he set
great store--though of course he knew very well that it could only be a
reflection, no impertinent reality of sunshine being permitted to
penetrate there. And then he paused a little to draw his hand lovingly
over the line of choice books--very choice--worth a little fortune,
which he laughed at himself a little for being proud of, fully knowing
that what was inside them (which generally is the cream of a book, as of
a letter, according to Tony Lumpkin) was in many cases worth nothing at
all. And then John went and stood upon the hearth-rug, and looked round
him upon this the heart of his domain. It was a noble library, any man
might have been proud of it. He asked himself whether it did not suit
him better, with all the comforts and luxuries beyond it, than if he had
been like other men, with an entirely different centre of life up-stairs
in the empty drawing-room, and the burden upon him of setting out
children, boys and girls, upon the world.
When a man asks himself this question, however complacent may be the
reply, it betrays perhaps a doubt whether the assurance he has is so
very sure after all; and he returned to his letter to Mrs. Dennistoun,
which would be quite easy to write if it were only once well begun. But
he had not written above a few words, having spent some time in his
previous reflections, when he paused again at the sound of a tumultuous
summons at the street-door. As may be well supposed, his servant took
more time than usual to answer it, resenting a noise so out of character
with the house, during which John listened half-angrily, fearing, yet
wishing for, a diversion. And then his own door burst open, not, I need
not say, by any intervention of legitimate hands, but by the sudden wish
of Philip, who seemed to come in in a whirl of long limbs and eager
eyes, flinging himself into a chair and fixing his gaze across the
corner of the table upon his astonished yet expectant friend. “Oh, Uncle
John!” the boy cried, and had not breath to say any more.
John put forth his hand across the table, and grasped the young flexible
warm hand that wanted something to hold. “Well, my boy,” he said.
“I suppose you know,” said Philip. “I have nothing to tell you, though
it is all so strange to me.”
“I know--nothing about what interests me most at present--yourself,
Pippo, and what has happened to you.”
John had always made a great stand against that particular name, but
several times had used it of late, not knowing why.
“I don’t know what you thought of me last night,” said the boy, “I was
so miserable. May I tell you everything, Uncle John?”
What balm that question was! He clasped Pippo’s hand in his own, but
scarcely could answer to bid him go on.
“It was unnecessary, all she wanted to tell me. I fought it off all the
morning. I was there yesterday in the court and heard it all.”
“In the court! At the trial?”
“I had no meaning in it,” said Philip. “I went by chance, as people say,
because the Marshalls had not turned up. I got Simmons to get me into
the court. I had always wanted to see a trial. And there I saw my mother
stand up--my mother, that I never could bear the wind to blow on,
standing up there alone with all these people staring at her to be
tried--for her life.”
“Don’t be a fool, Philip,” said John Tatham, dropping his hand; “tried!
she was only a witness. And she was not alone. I was there to take care
of her.”
“I saw you--but what was that? She was alone all the same; and for me,
it was she who was on her trial. What did I know about any other? I
heard it, every word.”
“Poor boy!”
“So what was the use of making herself miserable to tell me? She tried
to all this morning, and I fought it off. I was miserable enough. Why
should I be made more miserable to hear her perhaps excusing herself to
me? But at last she had driven me into a corner, angry as I was--Uncle
John, I was angry, furious, with my mother--fancy! with my mother.”
John did not say anything, but he nodded his head in assent. How well he
understood it all!
“And just then, at that moment, he came. I am angry with her no more. I
know whatever happened she was right. Angry with her, my poor dear,
dearest mother! Whatever happened she was right. It was best that she
should not tell me. I am on her side all through--all through! Do you
hear me, Uncle John! I have seen you look as if you blamed her. Don’t
again while I am there. Whatever she has done it has been the right
thing all through!”
“Pippo,” said John, with a little quivering about the mouth, “give me
your hand again, old fellow, you’re my own boy.”
“Nobody shall so much as look as if they blamed her,” cried the boy,
“while I am alive!”
Oh, how near he was to crying, and how resolute not to break down,
though something got into his throat and almost choked him, and his
eyes were so full that it was a miracle they did not brim over.
Excitement, distress, pain, the first touch of human misery he had ever
known almost overmastered Philip. He got up and walked about the room,
and talked and talked. He who had never concealed anything, who had
never had anything to conceal. And for four-and-twenty hours he had been
silent with a great secret upon his soul. John was too wise to check the
outpouring. He listened to everything, assented, soothed, imperceptibly
led him to gentler thoughts.
“And what does he mean,” cried the boy at last, “with his new name? I
shall have no name but my own, the one my mother gave me. I am Philip
Compton, and nothing else. What right has he, the first time he ever saw
me, to put upon me another name?”
“What name?”
“He called me Lomond--or something like that,” said young Philip: and
then there came a sort of stillness over his excitement, a lull in the
storm. Some vague idea what it meant came all at once into the boy’s
mind: and a thrill of curiosity, of another kind of excitement, of
rising thoughts which he did not hardly understand, struggled up through
the other zone of passion. He was half ashamed, having just poured forth
all his feelings, to show that there was something else, something that
was no longer indignation, nor anger, nor the shock of discovery,
something that had a tremor perhaps of pleasure in it, behind. But John
was far too experienced a man not to read the boy through and through.
He liked him better in the first phase, but this was natural too.
“It happens very strangely,” he said, “that all these things should come
upon you at once: but it is well you should know now all about it.
Lomond is the second title of the Comptons, Earls of St. Serf. Haven’t I
heard you ask what Comptons you belonged to, Philip? It has all happened
within a day or two. Your father was only Philip Compton yesterday at
the trial, and a poor man. Now he is Lord St. Serf, if not rich, at
least no longer poor. Everything has changed for you--your position,
your importance in the world. The last Lord Lomond bore the name
creditably enough. I hope you will make it shine.” He took the boy by
the hand and grasped it heartily again. “I am thankful for it,” said
John. “I would rather you were Lord Lomond than----”
“What! Uncle John?”
“Steady, boy. I was going to say Philip Compton’s son; but Lord St. Serf
is another man.”
There was a long pause in the room where John Tatham’s life was centred
among his books. He had so much to do with all this business, and yet so
little. It would pass away with all its tumults, and he after being
absorbed by it for a moment would be left alone to his own thoughts and
his own unbroken line of existence. So much the better! It is not good
for any man to be swept up and put down again at the will of others in
matters in which he has no share. As for Philip, he was silent chiefly
to realise this great thing that had come upon him. He, Lord Lomond, a
peer’s son, who was only Pippo of Lakeside like any other lad in the
parish, and not half so important at school as Musgrave, who did not get
that scholarship. What the school would say! the tempest that would
arise! They would ask a holiday, and the head master would grant it.
Compton a lord! Philip could hear the roar and rustle among the boys,
the scornful incredulity, the asseverations of those who knew it was
true. And a flush that was pleasure had come over his musing face. It
would have been strange if in the wonder of it there had not been some
pleasure too.
He had begun to tolerate his father before many days were over, to cease
to be indignant and angry that he was not the ideal father of his
dreams. That was not Lord St. Serf’s fault, who was not at all aware of
his son’s dreams, and had never had an ideal in his life. But John
Tatham was right in saying that Lord St. Serf was another man. The shock
of a new responsibility, of a position to occupy and duties to fulfil,
were things that might not have much moved the dis-Honourable Phil two
years before. But he was fifty, and beginning to feel himself an old
fogey, as he confessed. And his son overawed Lord St. Serf. His son, who
was so like him, yet had the mother’s quick, impetuous eyes, so rapid to
see through everything, so disdainful of folly, so keen in perception.
He was afraid to bring upon himself one of those lightning flashes from
the eyes of his boy, and doubly afraid to introduce his son anywhere, to
show him anything that might bring upon him the reproach of doing harm
to Pippo. His house, which had been very decent and orderly in the late
Lord St. Serf’s time, became almost prim in the terror Phil had lest
they should say that it was bad for the boy.
As for Lady St. Serf, it was popularly reported that the reason why she
almost invariably lived in the country was her health, which kept her
out of society--a report, I need not say, absolutely rejected by society
itself, which knew all the circumstances better than you or I do: but
which sufficed for the outsiders who knew nothing. When Elinor did
appear upon great occasions, which she consented to do, her matured
beauty gave the fullest contradiction to the pretext on which she
continued to live her own life. But old Lord St. Serf, who got old so
long before he need to have done, with perhaps the same sort of
constitutional weakness which had carried off all his brothers before
their time, or perhaps because he had too much abused a constitution
which was not weak--grew more and more fond in his latter days of the
country too, and kept appearing at Lakeside so often that at last the
ladies removed much nearer town, to the country-house of the St. Serfs,
which had not been occupied for ages, where they presented at last the
appearance of a united family; and where “Lomond” (who would have
thought it very strange now to be addressed by any other name) brought
his friends, and was not ill-pleased to hear his father discourse, in a
way which sometimes still offended the home-bred Pippo, but which the
other young men found very amusing. It was not in the way of morals,
however, that Lord St. Serf ever offended. The fear of Elinor kept him
as blameless as any good-natured preacher of the endless theme, that all
is vanity, could do.
These family arrangements, however, and the modified happiness obtained
by their means, were still all in the future, when John Tatham, a little
afraid of the encounter, yet anxious to have it over, went to Ebury
Street the day after these occurrences, to see Elinor for the first time
under her new character as Lady St. Serf. He found her in a languor and
exhaustion much unlike Elinor, doing nothing, not even a book near,
lying back in her chair, fallen upon herself, as the French say. Some of
those words that mean nothing passed between them, and then she said,
“John, did Pippo tell you that he had been there?”
He nodded his head, finding nothing to say.
“Without any warning, to see his mother stand up before all the world to
be tried--for her life.”
“Elinor,” said John, “you are as fantastic as the boy.”
“I was--being tried for my life--before him as the judge. And he has
acquitted me; but, oh, I wonder, I wonder if he would have done so had
he known all that I know?”
“I do so,” said John, “perhaps a little more used to the laws of
evidence than Pippo.”
“Ah, you!” she said, giving him her hand, with a look which John did not
know how to take, whether as the fullest expression of trust, or an
affectionate disdain of the man in whose partial judgment no justice
was. And then she asked a question which threw perhaps the greatest
perplexity he had ever known into John Tatham’s life. “When you tell a
fact--that is true: with the intention to deceive: John, you that know
the laws of evidence, is that a lie?”
END OF VOL. II.
PRINTED BY F. A. BROCKHAUS, LEIPZIG.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Marriage of Elinor, by Margaret Oliphant