The Marriage of Elinor

She was still sitting by the breakfast-table, waiting, in a chill fever, if such a thing can be, for Philip, when a thing occurred which no one could have thought of, and yet which was the most natural thing in the world – which came upon Elinor like a thunderbolt, shattering all her plans again just at the moment when, after so much shrinking and delay, she had at last made up her mind to the one thing that must be done at once. The sound of the driving up of a cab to the door made her go to the window to look out, without producing any expectation in her mind: for people were coming and going in Ebury Street all day long. She saw, however, a box which she recognised upon the cab, and then the door was opened and Mrs. Dennistoun stepped out. Her mother! the wonder was not that she came now, but that she had not come much sooner. No letters for several days, her child and her child's child in town, and trouble in the air! Mrs. Dennistoun had borne it as long as she could, but there had come a moment when she could bear it no longer, and she too had followed Pippo's example and taken the night mail. Elinor stood motionless at the window, and saw her mother arrive, and did not feel capable of going to meet her, or of telling whether it was some dreadful aggravation of evil, or an interposition of Providence to save her for another hour at least from the ordeal before her.

CHAPTER XLVII

Mrs. Dennistoun had a great deal to say about herself and the motives which had at the last been too much for her, which had forced her to come after her children at a moment's notice, feeling that she could bear the uncertainty about them no longer; and it was a thing so unusual with her to have much to say about herself that there was certainly something apologetic, something self-defensive in this unaccustomed outburst. Perhaps she had begun to feel a little the unconscious criticism that gathers round the elder person in a house, the inclination involuntarily – which every one would repudiate, yet which nevertheless is true – to attribute to her a want of perception, perhaps – oh, not unkindly! – a little blunting of the faculties, a suggestion quite unintentional that she is not what she once was. She explained herself so distinctly that there was no doubt there was some self-defence in it. "I had not had a letter for three days."

And Elinor was far more humble than her wont. "I know, mother: I felt as if it were impossible to write – till it was over – "

"My darling! I thought at last I must come and stand by you. I felt that I ought to have seen that all the time – that you should have had your mother by your side to give you countenance."

"I had John with me, mother."

"Then it is over!" Mrs. Dennistoun cried.

And at that moment Pippo, very late, pale, and with eyes which were red with sleeplessness, and perhaps with tears, came in. Elinor gave her mother a quick look, almost of blame, and then turned to the boy. She did not mean it, and yet Mrs. Dennistoun felt as if the suggestion, "He might never have known had you not called out like that," was in her daughter's eyes.

"Pippo!" she said. "Why, Elinor! what have you been doing to the boy?"

"He does not look well," said Elinor, suddenly waking up to that anxiety which had been always so easily roused in respect to Pippo. "He was very late last night. He was at the House with John," she added, involuntarily, with an apology to her mother for the neglect which had extended to Pippo too.

"There is nothing the matter with me," he said, with a touch of sullenness in his tone.

The two women looked at each other with all the vague trouble in their eyes suddenly concentrated upon young Philip, but they said nothing more, as he sat down at table and began to play with the breakfast, for which he had evidently no appetite. No one had ever seen that sullen look in Pippo's face before. He bent his head over the table as if he were intent upon the food which choked him when he tried to eat, and which he loathed the very sight of – and did not say a word. They had certainly not been very light-hearted before, but the sight of the boy thus obscured and changed made all the misery more evident. There was always a possibility of over-riding the storm so long as all was well with Pippo: but his changed countenance veiled the very sun in the skies.

"You don't seem surprised to see me here," his grandmother said.

"Oh! – no, I am not surprised. I wonder you did not come sooner. Have you been travelling all night?" he said.

"Just as you did, Pippo. I drove into Penrith last night and caught the mail train. I was seized with a panic about you, and felt that I must see for myself."

"It is not the first time you have taken a panic about us, mother," said Elinor, forcing a smile.

"No; but it is almost the first time I have acted upon it," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with that faint instinct of self-defence; "but I think you must have needed me more than usual to keep you in order. You must have been going out too much, keeping late hours. You are pale enough, Elinor, but Pippo – Pippo has suffered still more."

"I tell you," said Philip, raising his shoulders and stooping his head over the table, "granny, that there is nothing the matter with me."

And he took no part in the conversation as they went on talking, of any subjects but those that were most near their hearts. They had, indeed, no thoughts at all to spare but those that were occupied with the situation, and with this new feature in it, Pippo's worn and troubled looks, yet had to talk of something, of nothing, while the meal went on, which was no meal at all for any of them. When it was over at last Pippo rose abruptly from the table.

"Are you going out?" Elinor said, alarmed, rising too. "Have you any engagement with the Marshalls for to-day?"

"I don't know," Philip said; "Mr. Marshall was ill yesterday. I didn't see them. I'm not going out. I am going to my room."

"You've got a headache, Pippo!"

"Nothing of the kind! I tell you there is nothing the matter with me. I'm only going to my room."

Elinor put her hands on his arm. "Pippo, I have something to say to you before you go out. Will you promise to let me know before you go out? I don't want to keep you back from anything, but I have something that I must say."

He did not ask with his usual interest what it was. He showed no curiosity; on the contrary, he drew his arm out of her hold almost rudely. "Of course," he said, "I will come in here before I go out. I have no intention of going out now."

And thus he left them, and went with a heavy step, oh, how different from Pippo's flying foot: so that they could count every step, up-stairs.

"What is the matter, what is the matter, Elinor?"

"I know nothing," she said; "nothing! He was like himself yesterday morning, full of life. Unless he is ill, I cannot understand it. But, mother, I have to tell him – everything to-day."

"God grant it may not be too late, Elinor!" Mrs. Dennistoun said.

"Too late? How can it be too late? Yes; perhaps you are right, John and you. He ought to have known from the beginning; he ought to have been told when he was a child. I acknowledge that I was wrong; but it is no use," she said, wiping away some fiery tears, "to go back upon that now."

"John could not have told him anything?" Mrs. Dennistoun said, doubtfully.

"John! my best friend, who has always stood by me. Oh, never, never. How little you know him, mother! He has been imploring me every day, almost upon his knees, to tell Pippo everything; and I promised to do it as soon as the time was come. And then last night I was so glad to think that he was engaged with John, and I so worn out, not fit for anything. And then this morning – "

"Then – this morning I arrived, just when I would have been better away!"

"Don't say that, mother. It is always, always well you should be with your children. And, oh, if I had but taken your advice years and years ago!"

How easy it is to wish this when fate overtakes us, when the thing so long postponed, so long pushed away from us, has to be done at last! There is, I fear, no repentance in it, only the intolerable sense that the painful act might have been over long ago, and the soul free now of a burden which is so terrible to bear.

Philip did not leave his room all the morning. His mother, overwhelmed now by the new anxiety about his health, which had no part in her thoughts before, went to his door and knocked several times, always with the intention of going in, of insisting upon the removal of all barriers, and of telling her story, the story which now was as fire in her veins and had to be told. But he had locked his door, and only answered from within that he was reading – getting up something that he had forgotten – and begged her to leave him undisturbed till lunch. Poor Elinor! Her story was, as I have said, like fire in her veins; but when the moment came, and a little more delay, an hour, a morning was possible, she accepted it like a boon from heaven, though she knew very well all the same that it was but prolonging the agony, and that to get it accomplished – to get it over – was the only thing to desire. She tried to arrange her thoughts, to think how she was to tell it, in the hurrying yet flying minutes when she sat alone, listening now and then to Philip's movements over her head, for he was not still as a boy should be who was reading, but moved about his room, with a nervous restlessness that seemed almost equal to her own. Mrs. Dennistoun, to leave her daughter free for the conversation that ought to take place between Elinor and her son, had gone to lie down, and lay in Elinor's room, next door to the boy, listening to every sound, and hoping, hoping that they would get it over before she went down-stairs again. She did not believe that Philip would stand out against his mother, whom he loved. Oh, if they could but get it over, that explanation – if the boy but knew! But it was apparent enough, when she came down to luncheon, where Elinor awaited her, pale and anxious, and where Philip followed, so unlike himself, that no explanation had yet taken place between them. And the luncheon was as miserable a pretence at a meal as the breakfast had been – worse as a repetition, yet better in so far that poor Pippo, with his boyish wholesome appetite, was by this time too hungry to be restrained even by the unusual burden of his unhappiness, and ate heartily, although he was bitterly ashamed of so doing: which perhaps made him a little better, and certainly did a great deal of good to the ladies, who thus were convinced that whatever the matter might be, he was not ill at least. He was about to return up-stairs after luncheon was over, but Elinor caught him by the arm: "You are not going to your room again, Pippo?"

"I – have not finished my reading," he said.

"I have a claim before your reading. I have a great deal to say to you, and I cannot put it off any longer. It must be said – "

"As you please, mother," he replied, with an air of endurance. And he opened the door for her and followed her up to the drawing-room, the three generations going one before the other, the anxious grandmother first, full of sympathy for both; the mother trembling in every limb, feeling the great crisis of her life before her; the boy with his heart seared, half bitter, half contemptuous of the explanation which he had forestalled, which came too late. Mrs. Dennistoun turned and kissed first one and then the other with quivering lips. "Oh, Pippo, be kind to your mother; she never will have such need of your kindness again in all your life." The boy could almost have struck her for this advice. It raised a kind of savage passion in him to be told to be kind to his mother – kind to her, when he had held her above all beings on the earth, and prided himself all his life upon his devotion to her! What Mrs. Dennistoun said to Elinor I cannot tell, but she clasped her hands and gave her an imploring look, which was almost as bitterly taken as her appeal to Philip. It besought her to tell everything, to hide nothing; and what was Elinor's meaning but to tell everything, to lay bare her heart?

But once more at this moment an interruption – the most wonderful and unthought-of of all interruptions – came. I suppose it must have been announced by the usual summons at the street-door, and that in their agitation they had not heard it. But all that I know is, that when Mrs. Dennistoun turned to leave the mother and son to their conversation, which was so full of fate, the door of the drawing-room opened almost upon her as she was about to go out, and with a little demonstration and pride, as of a name which it was a distinction even to be permitted to say, of a visitor whose arrival could not be but an honour and delightful surprise, the husband of the landlady – the man of the house, once a butler of the highest pretensions, now only condescending to serve his lodgers when the occasion was dignified – swept into the room, noiseless and solemn, holding open the door, and announced "Lord St. Serf." Mrs. Dennistoun fell back as if she had met a ghost; and Elinor, too, drew back a step, becoming as pale as if she had been the ghost her mother saw. The gasp of the long breath they both drew made a sound in the room where the very air seemed to tingle; and young Philip, raising his head, saw, coming in, the man whom he had seen in court – the man who had gazed at him in the theatre, the man of the opera-glass. But was this then not the Philip Compton for whom Elinor Dennistoun had stood forth, and borne witness before all the world?

He came in and stood without a word, waiting for a moment till the servant was gone and the door closed; and then he advanced with a step, the very assurance and quickness of which showed his hesitation and uncertainty. He did not hold out his hands – much less his arms – to her. "Nell?" he said, as if he had been asking a question, "Nell?"

She seemed to open her lips to speak, but brought forth no sound; and then Mrs. Dennistoun came in with the grave voice of every day, "Will you sit down?"

He looked round at her, perceiving her for the first time. "Ah," he said, "mamma! how good that you are here. It is a little droll though, don't you think, when a man comes into the bosom of his family after an absence of eighteen years, that the only thing that is said to him should be, 'Will you sit down?' Better that, however, a great deal, than 'Will you go away?'"

He sat down as she invited him, with a short laugh. He was perfectly composed in manner. Looking round him with curious eyes, "Was this one of the places," he said, "Nell, that we stayed in in the old times?"

She answered "No" under her breath, her paleness suddenly giving way to a hot flush of feverish agitation. And then she took refuge in a vacant chair, unable to support herself, and he sat too, and the party looked – but for that agitation in Elinor's face, which she could not master – as if the ladies were receiving and he paying a morning call. The other two, however, did not sit down. Young Philip, confused and excited, went away to the second room, the little back drawing-room of the little London house, which can never be made to look anything but an anteroom – never a habitable place – and went to the window, and stood there as if he were looking out, though the window was of coloured glass, and there was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Dennistoun stood with her hand upon the back of a chair, her heart beating too, and yet the most collected of them all, waiting, with her eyes on Elinor, for a sign to know her will, whether she should go or stay. It was the visitor who was the first to speak.

"Let me beg you," he said, with a little impatience in his voice, "to sit down too. It is evident that Nell's reception of me is not likely to be so warm as to make it unpleasant for a third party. There was a fourth party in the room a minute ago, if my eyes did not deceive me. Ah!" – his glance went rapidly to where Philip's tall boyish figure, with his back turned, was visible against the further window – "that's all right," he said, "now I presume everybody's here."

"Had we expected your visit," said Mrs. Dennistoun, faltering, after a moment, as Elinor did not speak, "we should have been – better prepared to receive you, Mr. Compton."

"That's not spoken with your usual cleverness," he said, with a laugh. "You used to be a great deal too clever for me, you and Nell too. But if she did not expect to see me, I don't know what she thought I was made of – everything that is bad, I suppose: and yet you know I could have worried your life out of you if I had liked, Nell."

She turned to him for the first time, and, putting her hands together, said almost inaudibly, "I know – I know. I have thought of that, and I am not ungrateful."

"Grateful! Well, perhaps you have not much call for that, poor little woman. I don't doubt I behaved like a brute, and you were quite right in doing what you did; but you've taken it out of me since, Nell, all the same."