THE Rector came in with his smiling and rosy face. He was, as many of his parishioners thought, a picture of a country clergyman. Such a healthy colour, as clear as a girl’s, limpid blue eyes, with very light eyelashes and eyebrows; a nice round face, “beautifully modelled,” according to Miss Sarah Hill, who did a little in that way herself, and knew how to approve of a Higher Sculptor’s work. And then the neatest and blackest of coats, and the whitest and stiffest of collars. Mr. Hudson, I need scarcely say, was not so left to himself as to permit his clerical character to be divined by means of a white tie. He came in, as was natural among country neighbours, without thinking of any bell or knocker on the easily opened door, and was about to peep into the drawing-room with “Anybody in?” upon his smiling lips, when he saw a gentleman approaching, picking up his hat as he advanced. Mr. Hudson paused a moment in uncertainty. “Mr. Compton, I am sure,” he said, holding out both of his plump pink hands. “Ah, Elinor too! I was sure I could not be mistaken. And I am exceedingly glad to make your acquaintance.” He shook Phil’s hand up and down in a sort of see-saw. “Very glad to make your acquaintance! though you are the worst enemy Windyhill has had for many a day—carrying off the finest lamb in all the fold.”
“Yes, I’m a wolf, I suppose,” said Phil. He went to the door and took a long look out while Elinor led the Rector into the drawing-room. Then Mr. Compton lounged in after them, with his hands in his pockets, and placed himself in the bow-window, where he could still see the white line across the combe of the distant road.
“They’ll think I have stolen a march upon them all, Elinor,” said the Rector, “chancing upon Mr. Compton like this, a quite unexpected pleasure. I shall keep them on the tenterhooks, asking them whom they suppose I have met? and they will give everybody but the right person. What a thing for me to have been the first person to see your intended, my dear! and I congratulate you, Elinor,” said the Rector, dropping his voice; “a fine handsome fellow, and such an air! You are a lucky girl—” he paused a little and said, with a slight hesitation, in a whisper, “so far as meets the eye.”
“Oh, Mr. Hudson, don’t spoil everything,” said Elinor, in the same tone.
“Well, I cannot tell, can I, my dear?—the first peep I have had.” He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “I believe we are to have the pleasure of entertaining you, Mr. Compton, on a certain joyful occasion (joyful to you, not to us). I need not say how pleased my wife and I and the other members of the family will be. There are not very many of us—we are only five in number—my son, and my daughter, and Miss Dale, my wife’s sister, but much younger than Mrs. Hudson—who has done us the pleasure of staying with us for part of the year. I think she has met you somewhere, or knows some of your family, or—something. She is a great authority on noble families. I don’t know whether it is because she has been a good deal in society, or whether it is out of Debrett——”
“Nell, come and tell me what this is,” Compton said.
“Oh, Phil! it is nothing, it is a carriage. I don’t know what it is. Be civil to the Rector, please.”
“So I am, perfectly civil.”
“You have not answered a single word, and he has been talking to you for ten minutes.”
“Well, but he hasn’t said anything that I can answer. He says Miss Something or other knows my family. Perhaps she does. Well, much good may it do her! but what can I say to that? I am sure I don’t know hers. I didn’t come here to be talked to by the Rector. Could we slip out and leave him with your mother? That would suit his book a great deal better. Come, let’s go.”
“Oh! he is speaking to you, Phil.”
Compton turned round and eyed the Hector. “Yes?” he said in so marked an interrogative that Mr. Hudson stopped short and flushed. He had been talking for some time.
“Oh! I was not precisely asking a question,” he said, in his quiet tones. “I was saying that we believe and hope that another gentleman is coming with you—for the occasion.”
“Dick Bolsover,” said Compton, “a son of Lord Freshfield’s; perhaps Miss——, the lady you were talking of, may know his family too. His brother got a little talked of in that affair about Fille d’Or, don’t you know, at Newmarket. But Dick is a rattling good fellow, doesn’t race, and has no vices. He is coming to stand by me and see that all’s right.”
“We shall be happy to see Mr. Bolsover, I am sure.” The Rector rubbed his hands and said to himself with pleasure that two Honourables in his quiet house was something to think of, and that he hoped it would not turn the heads of the ladies, and make Alice expect—one couldn’t tell what. And then he said, by way of changing yet continuing the subject, “I suppose you’ve been looking at the presents. Elinor must have shown you her presents.”
“By Jove, I never thought of the presents. Have you got a lot, Nell?”
“She has got, if I may be allowed to answer for her, having known her all her life, a great many pretty things, Mr. Compton. We are not rich, to be sure, her old friends here. We have to content ourselves with but a small token of a great deal of affection; but still there are a number of pretty things. Elinor, what were you thinking of, my dear, not to show Mr. Compton the little set out which you showed us? Come, I should myself like to look them over again.”
Phil gave another long look at the distant road, and then he thrust his arm into Elinor’s and said, “To be sure, come along, Nell. It will be something to do.” He did not wait for the Rector to pass first, which Elinor thought would have been better manners, but thrust her before him quite regardless of the older people. “Let’s see the trumpery,” he said.
“Don’t use such a word, Phil: the Rector will be so hurt.”
“Oh, will he? did he work you an—antimacassar or something?”
“Phil, speak low at least. No, but his daughter did; and they gave me——”
“I know: a cardcase or a button-hook, or something. And how many biscuit-boxes have you got, and clocks, and that sort of thing? I advise you to have an auction as soon as we get away. Hallo! that’s a nice little thing; look pretty on your pretty white neck I should say, Nell. Who gave you that?” He took John’s necklace out of its box where it had lain undisturbed until now, and pulled it through his fingers. “Cost a pretty bit of money that, I should say. You can raise the wind on it when we’re down on our luck, Nell.”
“My cousin John, whom you have heard me speak of, gave me that, Phil,” said Elinor, with great gravity. She thought it necessary, she could scarcely tell why, to make a stand for her cousin John.
“Ah, I thought it was one of the disappointed ones,” said Phil, flinging it back carelessly onto the bed of white velvet where it had been fitted so exactly. “That’s how they show their spite; for of course I can’t give you anything half as good as that.”
“There was no disappointment in the matter,” said Elinor, almost angry with the misconceptions of her lover.
“You are a nice one,” said Compton, taking her by the chin, “to tell me! as if I didn’t know the world a long sight better than you do, my little Nell.”
The Rector, who was following slowly, for he did not like to go up-stairs in a hurry, saw this attitude and drew back, a little scandalized. “Perhaps we were indiscreet to—to follow them too closely,” he said, disconcerted. “Please to go in first, Mrs. Dennistoun—the young couple will not mind you.”
Mr. Hudson was prim, but he was rather pleased to see that “the young couple” were, as he said, so fond of each other. He went into the room under the protection of the mother—blushing a little. It reminded him, as he said afterwards, of his own young days; but it was only natural that he should walk up direct to the place where his kettle stood conspicuous, waiting only the spark of a match to begin to boil the water for the first conjugal tea. It appeared to him a beautiful idea as he put his head on one side and looked at it. It was like the inauguration of the true British fireside, the cosy privacy in which, after the man had done his work, the lady awaited him at home, with the tea-kettle steaming. A generation before Mr. Hudson there would have been a pair of slippers airing beside the fire. But neither of these preparations supply the ideal of perfect happiness now.
“I say, where did you get these hideous things?” said Compton, approaching the table on which “the silver” was laid out. By a special dispensation it was Lady Mariamne’s dishes which caught Phil’s attention. “Some old grandmother, I suppose, that had ’em in the house. Hallo! if it isn’t the Jew! Nell, you don’t mean to tell me you got these horrors from the Jew?”
“They are supposed to be—quite handsome,” said Elinor, with a suppressed laugh. “We must not criticise. It is very kind of people to send presents at all. We all know it is a very severe tax—to those who have a great many friends——”
“The stingy old miser,” said Compton. “Boiling in money, and to send you these! By Jove! there’s a neat little thing now that looks what it is; probably one of your nice country friends, Nell——” (It was the kettle, as a kind Providence decreed; and both the ladies breathed an internal thanksgiving.) “Shows like a little gem beside that old, thundering, mean-spirited Jew!”
“That,” said the Rector, bridling a little and pink with pleasure, “is our little offering: and I’m delighted to think that it should please so good a judge. It was chosen with great care. I saw it first myself, and the idea flashed upon me—quite an inspiration—that it was the very thing for Elinor; and when I went home I told my wife—the very thing—for her boudoir, should she not be seeing company—or just for your little teas when you are by yourselves. I could at once imagine the dear girl looking so pretty in one of those wonderful white garments that are in the next room.”
“Hallo!” said Compton, with a laugh, “do you show off your things in this abandoned way, Nell, to the killingest old cov——”
She put her hand up to his mouth with a cry of dismay and laughter, but the Rector, with a smile and another little blush, discreetly turned his back. He was truly glad to see that they were so fond of each other, and thought it was pretty and innocent that they should not mind showing it—but it was a little embarrassing for an old and prim clergyman to look on.
“What a pleasure it must be to you, my dear lady,” he said when the young couple had gone: which took place very soon, for Phil soon grew tired of the presents, and he was ill at ease when there was no window from which he could watch the road—“what a pleasure to see them so much attached! Of course, family advantage and position is always of importance—but when you get devoted affection, too——”
“I hope there is devoted affection,” said Mrs. Dennistoun; “at all events, there is what we are all united in calling ‘love,’ for the present. He is in love with Elinor—I don’t think there can be much doubt of that.”
“I did not of course know that he was here,” said the Rector, with some hesitation. “I came with the intention of speaking—I am very sorry to see in the papers to-day something about that Joint-Stock Company of which Mr. Compton was a director. It’s rather a mysterious paragraph: but it’s something about the manager having absconded, and that some of the directors are said to be involved.”
“Do you mean my future son-in-law?” she said, turning quickly upon him.
“Good heavens, no! I wouldn’t for the world insinuate—— It was only that one felt a desire to know. Just upon the eve of a marriage it’s—it’s alarming to hear of a business the bridegroom is involved in being—what you may call broken up.”
“That was one of the things Mr. Compton came to tell us about,” said Mrs. Dennistoun. “He said he hoped it might be kept out of the papers, but that some of the books have got lost or destroyed. I am afraid I know very little about business. But he has lost very little—nothing to speak of—which was all that concerned me.”
“To be sure,” said the Rector, but in a tone not so assured as his words. “It is not perhaps quite a nice thing to be director of a company that—that collapses in this way. I fear some poor people will lose their money. I fear there will be things in the papers.”
“On what ground?” she said. “Oh, I don’t deny there may be some one to blame; but Mr. Compton was, I suspect, only on the board for the sake of his name. He is not a business man. He did it, as so many do, for the sake of a pretence of being in something. And then, I believe, the directors got a little by it; they had a few hundreds a year.”
“To be sure,” said Mr. Hudson, but still doubtfully; and then he brightened up. “For my part, I don’t believe there is a word of truth in it. Since I have seen him, indeed, I have quite changed my opinion—a fine figure of a man, looking an aristocrat every inch of him. Such a contrast and complement to our dear Elinor—and so fond of her. A man like that would never have a hand in any sham concern. If it was really a bogus company, as people say, he must be one of the sufferers. That is quite my decided opinion; only the ladies, you know—the ladies who have not seen him, and who are so much more suspicious by nature (I don’t know that you are, my dear Mrs. Dennistoun), would give me no rest. They thought it was my duty to interfere. But I am sure they are quite wrong.”
To think that it was the ladies of the Hector’s family who were interfering made Mrs. Dennistoun very wroth. “Next time they have anything to say, you should make them come themselves,” she said.
“Oh, they would not do that. They say it is the clergyman’s business, not theirs. Besides, you know, I have not time to read all the papers. We get the Times, and Mary Dale has the Morning Post, and another thing that is all about stocks and shares. She has such a head for business—far more than I can pretend to. She thought——”
“Mr. Hudson, I fear I do not wish to know what was thought by Miss Dale.”
“Well, you are, perhaps, right, Mrs. Dennistoun. She is only a woman, of course, and she may make mistakes. It is astonishing, though, how often she is right. She has a head for business that might do for a Chancellor of the Exchequer. She made me sell out my shares in that Red Gulch—those American investments have most horrible names—just a week before the smash came, all from what she had read in the papers. She knows how to put things together, you see. So I have reason to be grateful to her, for my part.”
“And what persuaded you, here at Windyhill, a quiet clergyman, to put money in any Red Gulch? It is a horrible name!”
“Oh, it was Mary, I suppose,” said Mr. Hudson. “She is always looking out for new investments. She said we should all make our fortunes. We did not, unfortunately. But she is so clever, she got us out of it with only a very small loss indeed.”
“No doubt she is very clever. I wish, though, that she would let us know definitely on what ground——”
“Oh, there is no ground,” cried the Rector. “Now that I have seen Mr. Compton I am certain of it. I said to her before I left the Rectory, ‘Now, my dear Mary, I am going like a lamb to the slaughter. I have no reason to give if Mrs. Dennistoun should ask me, and you have no reason to give. And she will probably put me to the door.’ If I said that before I started, you may fancy how much more I feel it now, when I have made Mr. Compton’s acquaintance. A fine aristocratic face, and all the ease of high breeding. There are only three lives—and those not very good ones—between him and the title, I believe?”
“Two robust brothers, and an invalid who will probably outlive them all; that is, I believe, the state of the case.”
“Dear me, what a pity!” said the Rector, “for our little Elinor would have made a sweet little Countess. She would grow a noble lady, like the one in Mr. Tennyson’s poem. Well, now I must be going, and I am extremely glad to have been so lucky as to come in just in time. It has been the greatest pleasure to me to see them together—such a loving couple. Dear me, like what one reads about, or remembers in old days, not like the commonplace pairs one has to do with now.”
Mrs. Dennistoun accompanied the Rector to the garden gate. She was half inclined to laugh and half to be angry, and in neither mood did Mr. Hudson’s insinuations which he made so innocently have much effect upon her mind. But when she took leave of him at the gate and came slowly back among her brilliant flower-beds, pausing here and there mechanically to pick off a withered leaf or prop up the too heavy head of a late rose, her mind began to take another turn. She had always been conscious of an instinctive suspicion in respect to her daughter’s lover. Probably only, she said to herself, because he was her daughter’s lover, and she was jealous of the new devotion that withdrew from her so completely the young creature who had been so fully her own. That is a hard trial for a woman to undergo. It is only to be borne when she, too, is fascinated by her future son-in-law, as happens in some fortunate cases. Otherwise, a woman with an only child is an alarming critic to encounter. She was not fascinated at all by Phil. She was disappointed in Elinor, and almost thought her child not so perfect as she had believed, when it proved that she could be fascinated by this man. She disliked almost everything about him—his looks, the very air which the Rector thought so aristocratic, his fondness for Elinor, which was not reverential enough to please the mother, and his indifference, nay, contempt, for herself, which was not calculated to please any woman. She had been roused into defence of him in anger at the interference, and at the insinuation which had no proof; but as that anger died away, other thoughts came into her mind. She began to put the broken facts together which already had roused her to suspicion: his sudden arrival, so unexpected; walking from the station—a long, very long walk—carrying his own bag, which was a thing John Tatham did, but not like Phil Compton. And then she remembered, suddenly, his anxiety about the carriage on the distant road, his care to place himself where he could see it. She had thought with a little scorn that this was a proof of his frivolity, of the necessity of seeing people, whoever these people might be. But now there began to be in it something that could have a deeper meaning. For whom was he looking? Who might be coming? Stories she had heard of fugitives from justice, of swindlers taking refuge in the innocence of their families, came up into her mind. Could it be possible that Elinor’s pure name could be entangled in such a guilty web as this?