The Marriage of Elinor

"What is your proper place? Your place will always be the same. Phil, you've been so good to me this time; you've made everybody like you so. Mamma – that's the best of all. She was a little – I can't say jealous, that is not the right word, but uncertain and frightened – which just means that she did not know you, Phil; now you've condescended to let yourself be known."

"Have I, Nell? I've had more luck than meaning if that's so."

"'Tis that you've condescended to let yourself be known. A man has such odious pride. He likes to show himself all on the wrong side, to brave people's opinions – as if it was better to be liked for the badness in you than for the goodness in you!"

"What's the goodness in me, Nell? I'd like to know, and then I can have it ready in other emergencies and serve it out as it is wanted."

"Oh, Phil! the goodness in you is – yourself. You can't help being nice when you throw off those society airs. When you are talking with Mariamne and all that set of people – "

"Why can't you call her Jew? life is too short to say all those syllables."

"I don't like you to call her Jew. It's unkind. I don't think she deserves it. It's a sort of an insult."

"Shut up, Nell. It's her name and that's enough. Mar-ry-am-ne! It's a beast of a name to begin with. And do you think any of us has got time to say as much as that for one woman? Oh, I suppose I'm fond of her – as men are of their sisters. She is not a bad sort – mean as her name, and never fond of parting with her money – but stands by a fellow in a kind of a way all the same."

"I'll never call her Jew," said Elinor; "and, Phil, all this wonderful amount of things you have to do is simply – nothing. What do you ever do? It is the people who do things that have time to spare. I know one – "

"Don't come down on me, Nell, again with that eternal Cousin John."

"Phil! I never think of him till you put him into my head. I was thinking of a gentleman who writes – "

"Rubbish, Nell! What have I to do with men that write, or you either? We are none of us of that sort. I do what my set do, and more – for there was this director business; and I should never mind a bit of work that was well paid, like attending Board meetings and so forth, or signing my name to papers."

"What, without reading them, Phil?"

"Don't come over a fellow with your cleverness, Nell! I am not a reader; but I should take good care I knew what was in the papers before I signed them, I can tell you. Eh! you'd like me to slave, to get you luxuries, you little exacting Nell."

"Yes, Phil," she said, "I'd like to think you were working for our living. I should indeed. It seems somehow so much finer – so real a life. And I should work at home."

"A great deal you would work," he said, laughing, "with those scraps of fingers! Let's hear what you would do – bits of little pictures, or impossible things in pincushions, or so forth – and walk out in your most becoming bonnet to force them down some poor shop-keeper's throat?"

"Phil!" she said, "how contemptuous you are of my efforts. But I never thought of either sketches or pincushions. I should work at home to keep the house nice – to look after the servants, and guide the cook, and see that you had nice dinners."

"And warm my slippers by the parlour fire," said Phil. "That's too domestic, Nell, for you and me."

"But we are going to be very domestic, Phil."

"Are we? Not if I knows it; yawn our heads off, and get to hate one another. Not for me, Nell. You'll find yourself up to the eyes in engagements before you know where you are. No, no, old girl, you may do a deal with me, but you don't make a domestic man of Phil Compton. Time enough for that when we've had our fling."

"I don't want any fling, Phil," she said, clinging a little closer to his arm.

"But I do, my pet, in the person of Benedick the married man. Don't you think I want to show all the fellows what a stunning little wife I've got? and all the women I used to flirt with – "

"Did you use to flirt much with them, Phil?"

"You didn't think I flirted with the men, did you? like you did," said Phil, who was not particular about his grammar. "I want to show you off a bit. Nell. When we go down to the governor's, there you can be as domestic as you like. That's the line to take with him, and pays too if you do it well."

"Oh, don't talk as if you were always calculating for your advantage," she said, "for you are not, Phil. You are not a prudent person, but a horrid, extravagant spendthrift; if you go on chucking sovereigns about as you did yesterday."

"Well," he said, laughing, "wasn't it well spent? Didn't I make your Rector open his old eyes, and stop the mouths of the old maids? I don't throw away sovereigns in a general way, Nell, only when there's a purpose in it. But I think I did them all finely that time – had them on toast, eh?"

"You made an impression, if that is what you mean; but I confess I thought you did it out of kindness, Phil."

"To the Punch and Judy? catch me! Sovereigns ain't plentiful enough for that. You little exacting thing, ain't you pleased, when I did it to please you, and get you credit among your friends?"

"It was very kind of you, I'm sure, Phil," she said, very soberly, "but I should so much rather you had not thought of that. A shilling would have done just as well and they would have got a bed at the Bull's Head, and been quite kindly treated. Is this your train coming? It's a little too soon, I think."

"Thanks for the compliment, Nell. It is really late," he said, looking at his watch, "but the time flies, don't it, pet, when you and I are together? Here, you fellow, put my bag in a smoking carriage. And now, you darling, we've got to part; only for a little time, Nell."

"Only for a week," she said, with a smile and a tear.

"Not so long – a rush along the rail, a blow on the sea, and then back again; I shall only be a day over there, and then – bless you, Nell. Good-bye – take care of yourself, my little duck: take care of yourself for me."

"Good-bye," said Elinor, with a little quiver of her lip. A parting at a roadside station is a very abrupt affair. The train stops, the passenger is shoved in, there is a clanging of the doors, and in a moment it is gone. She had scarcely realized that the hour had come before he was whirled off from her, and the swinging line of carriages disappeared round the next curve. She stood looking vaguely after it till the old porter came up, who had known her ever since she was a child.

"Beg your pardon, miss, but the pony is a-waiting," he said. And then he uttered his sympathy in the form of a question: – "Coming back very soon, miss, ain't the gentleman?" he said.

"Oh, yes; very soon," she said, rousing herself up.

"And if I may make bold to say it, miss," said the porter, "an open-hearted gentleman as ever I see. There's many as gives us a threepenny for more than I've done for 'im. And look at what he's give me," he said, showing the half-crown in his hand.

Did he do that from calculation to please her, ungracious girl as she was, who was so hard to please? But he never could have known that she would see it. She walked through the little station to the pony carriage, feeling that all the eyes of the people about were upon her. They were all sympathetic, all equally aware that she had just parted with her lover: all ready to cheer her, if she had given them an opportunity, by reminding her of his early return. The old porter followed her out, and assisted at her ascent into the pony carriage. He said, solemnly, "And an 'andsome gentleman, miss, as ever I see," as he fastened the apron over her feet. She gave him a friendly nod as she drove away.

How dreadful it is to be so sensitive, to receive a wound so easily! Elinor was vexed more than she could say by her lover's denial of the reckless generosity with which she had credited him. To think that he had done it in order to produce the effect which had given her so distinct a sensation of pleasure changed that effect into absolute pain. And yet in the fantastic susceptibility of her nature, there was something in old Judkin's half-crown which soothed her again. A shilling would have been generous, Elinor said to herself, with a feminine appreciation of the difference of small things as well as great, whereas half-a-crown was lavish – ergo, he gave the sovereign also out of natural prodigality, as she had hoped, not out of calculation as he said. She drove soberly home, thinking over all these things in a mood very different from that triumphant happiness with which she started from the cottage with Phil by her side. The sunshine was still as bright, but it had taken an air of routine and commonplace to Elinor. It had come to be only the common day, not the glory and freshness of the morning. She felt herself, as she had never done before, on the edge of a world unknown, where everything would be new to her, where – it was possible – that which awaited her might not be unmixed happiness, might even be the reverse. It is seldom that a girl on the eve of marriage either thinks this or acknowledges to herself that she thinks it. Elinor did so involuntarily, without thinking upon her thought. Perhaps it would not be unmixed happiness. Strange clouds seemed to hang upon the horizon, ready to roll up in tragic darkness and gloom. Oh, no, not tragic, only commonplace, she said to herself; opaqueness, not blackness. But yet it was ominous and lowering, that distant sky.

CHAPTER XIV

The days of the last week hurried along like the grains of sand out of an hour-glass when they are nearly gone. It is true that almost everything was done – a few little bits of stitching, a few things still to be "got up" alone remaining, a handkerchief to mark with Elinor's name, a bit of lace to arrange, just enough to keep up a possibility of something to do for Mrs. Dennistoun in the blank of all other possibilities – for to interest herself or to occupy herself about anything that should be wanted beyond that awful limit of the wedding-day was of course out of the question. Life seemed to stop there for the mother, as it was virtually to begin for the child; though indeed to Elinor also, notwithstanding her love, it was visible more in the light of a point at which all the known and certain ended, and where the unknown and almost inconceivable began. The curious thing was that this barrier which was placed across life for them both, got somehow between them in those last days which should have been the most tender climax of their intercourse. They had a thousand things to say to each other, but they said very little. In the evening after dinner, whether they went out into the garden together to watch the setting of the young moon, or whether they sat together in that room which had witnessed all Elinor's commencements of life, free to talk as no one else in the world could ever talk to either of them, they said very little to each other, and what they said was of the most commonplace kind. "It is a lovely night; how clear one can see the road on the other side of the combe!" "And what a bright star that is close to the moon! I wish I knew a little more about the stars." "They are just as beautiful," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, "as if you knew everything about them, Elinor." "Are you cold, mamma? I am sure I can see you shiver. Shall I run and get you a shawl?" "It is a little chilly: but perhaps it will be as well to go in now," the mother said. And then indoors: "Do you think you will like this lace made up as a jabot, Elinor?" "You are giving me all your pretty things, though you know you understand lace much better than I do." "Oh, that doesn't matter," Mrs. Dennistoun said hurriedly; "that is a taste which comes with time. You will like it as well as I do when you are as old as I am." "You are not so dreadfully old, mamma." "No, that's the worst of it," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, and then break out into a laugh. "Look at the shadow that handkerchief makes – how fantastic it is!" she cried. She neither cared for the moon, nor for the quaintness of the shadows, nor for the lace which she was pulling into dainty folds to show its delicate pattern – for none of all these things, but for her only child, who was going from her, and to whom she had a hundred, and yet a hundred, things to say: but none of them ever came from her lips.

"Mary Dale has not seen your things, Elinor: she asked if she might come to-morrow."

"I think we might have had to-morrow to ourselves, mamma – the last day all by ourselves before those people begin to arrive."

"Yes, I think so too; but it is difficult to say no, and as she was not here when the others came – She is the greatest critic in the parish. She will have so much to say."

"I daresay it may be fun," said Elinor, brightening up a little, "and of course anyhow Alice must have come to talk about her dress. I am tired of those bride's-maids' dresses; they are really of so little consequence." Elinor was not vain, to speak of, but she thought it improbable that when she was there any one would look much at the bride's-maids' dresses. For one thing, to be sure, the bride is always the central figure, and there were but two bride's-maids, which diminished the interest; and then – well, it had to be allowed at the end of all, that, though her closest friends, neither Alice Hudson nor Mary Tatham were, to look at, very interesting girls.

"They are of great consequence to them," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with the faintest smile.

"I didn't mean that, of course," said Elinor, with a blush; "only I never should have worried about my own dress, which after all is the most important, as Alice does about hers."

"Which nobody will look at," Mrs. Dennistoun said.

"I did not say that: but to tell the truth, it is a pity for the girls that the men will not quite be, just of their world, you know. Oh, mamma, you know it is not that I think anything of that, but I am sorry for Alice and Mary. Mr. Bolsover and the other gentlemen will not take that trouble which country neighbours, or – or John's friends from the Temple might have done."

"Why do you speak of John's friends from the Temple, Elinor?"

"Mamma! for no reason at all. Why should I? They were the only other men I could think of."