PHIL COMPTON went off next morning by an early train, having in the meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears, but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated the mother. “Don’t you think,” said the Honourable Phil, “because I speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don’t know what she is. I’ve got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like Nell. The girls of my set, they’re not worthy to tie her shoes—thing I most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for her. But you can’t help your relations, can you? and you have to stick to them for dozens of reasons. There’s the Jew, when you know her she’s not such a bad sort—not generous, as you may see from what she’s given Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and we’ll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her husband, old Prestwich, isn’t bad for a man that has made his own money, and they’ve got a jolly house, always something going on.”
“But I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that as soon as these autumn visits are over you will have a house of your own.”
“Oh, that!” said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. “Nell,” he went on, “gets on with the Jew like a house on fire—you see they don’t clash. Nell ain’t one of the mannish sort, and she doesn’t flirt—at least not as far as I’ve seen——”
“I should hope not, indeed,” said Mrs. Dennistoun.
“Oh, I’m not one of your curmudgeons. Where’s the harm? But she don’t, and there’s an end of it. She keeps herself to herself, and lets the Jew go ahead, and think she’s the attraction. And she’ll please the old lord down to the ground. For he’s an old-fashioned old coon, and likes what he calls tenue, don’t you know: but the end is, there ain’t one of them that can hold a candle to Nell. And I should not wonder a bit if she made a change in the lot of us. Conversion of a family by the influence of a pious wife, don’t you know. Sort of thing that they make tracts out of. Capital thing, it would be,” said Phil, philosophically, “for some of us have been going a pace——”
“Mr. Compton,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, solemnly, “I don’t understand very well what you mean by these phrases. They may be much more innocent than they seem to a country lady’s ears. But I implore you to keep my Elinor clear of anything that you call going the pace. It must mean something very unlike her, whatever it means. She has been used to a very quiet, orderly life. Don’t hurry her off into a whirl of society, or among noisy gay people. Indeed I can assure you that the more you have her to herself the more you will be happy in her. She is the brightest companion, the most entertaining—— Oh, Mr. Compton!”
“I think it’s about time, now, mater, to call me Phil.”
She smiled, with the tears in her eyes, and held out her hand. “Philip, then,” she said, “to make a little difference. Now remember what I say. It is only in the sacredness of her home that you will know what is in Elinor. One is never dull with her. She has her own opinions—her bright way of looking at things—as you know. It is, perhaps, a strange thing for a mother to say, but she will amuse you, Philip; she is such company. You will never be dull with Elinor: she has so much in her, which will come out in society, it is true, but never so brightly as between you two alone.”
This did not seem to have quite the effect upon the almost-bridegroom which the mother intended. “Perhaps” (she said to herself), “he was a little affected by the thought” (which she kept so completely out of the conversation) “of the loss she herself was about to undergo.” At all events, his face was not so bright as in the vision of that sweet prospect held before him it ought to have been.
“The fact is,” he said, “she knows a great deal more than I do, or ever will. It’s she that will be the one to look blue when she finds herself alone with a fool of a fellow that doesn’t know a book from a brick. That’s the thing I’m most afraid—— As for society, she can have her pick of that,” he added, brightening up, “I’ll not bind her down.”
“You may be sure she’ll prefer you to all the world.”
He shrugged his shoulders a little.
“They say it’s always a leap in the dark,” he said, “for how’s she to know the sort of fellow I am with what she sees of me here? But I promise you I’ll do my best to take her in, and keep her in that delusion, for her good—making believe to be all that’s virtuous: and perhaps not a bad way—some of it may stick. Come, mater, don’t look so horrified. I’m not of the Cousin John sort, but there may be something decent in me after all.”
“I am sure,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that you will try to make her happy, Philip.” She was crying by this time, which was a thing very odious to Phil. He took her by both hands and gave her a hearty kiss, which was a thing for which she was not at all prepared.
“I’ll do by her——” he said, with a murmur which sounded like an oath, “as well as I know how.”
Perhaps this was not the very greatest comfort to her mother, but it was the best she was at all likely to get from a man so entirely different in all ways from her own species. She had her cry out quietly while he went off to get his bag. The pony carriage was at the door in which Elinor was to drive him to the station, and a minute after Mrs. Dennistoun heard his voice in the hall calling to his Nell, his old girl, in terms which went against all the mother’s prejudices of soft and reverent speech. To have her carefully-trained child, her Elinor, whom every one had praised and honoured, her maiden-princess so high apart from all such familiarity, addressed so, gave the old-fashioned lady a pang. It meant nothing but love and kindness, she said to herself. He reverenced Elinor as much as it was in such a man to do. He meant with all his heart to do by her as well as he knew how. It was as fantastic to object to his natural language as it would be to object to a Frenchman speaking French. That was his tongue, the only utterance he knew—— She dried her eyes and went out to the door to see them start. The sun was blazing over all the brilliant autumnal colours of the garden, though it was still full and brilliant summer in the September morning, and only the asters and dahlias replacing the roses betrayed the turn of the season. And nothing could be more bright than the face of Elinor as she sat in the homely little carriage, with the reins gathered up in her hand. He was going away, indeed, but in a week he was coming back. Philip, as Mrs. Dennistoun now called him with dignity, yet a little beginning of affection, packed up his long limbs as well as he could in the small space. “I believe she’ll spill us on the road,” he said, “or bring back the shandrydan with a hole in it.”
“There is too much of you, Phil,” said Elinor, giving the staid pony a quiet touch.
“I should like some of those fellows to see me,” he said, “joggled off to market like a basket of eggs; but don’t smash me, Nell, on the way.”
Mrs. Dennistoun stood on the steps looking after them, or rather, listening after them, for they had soon turned the corner of the house and were gone. She heard them jogging over the stony road, and the sound of their voices in the air for a long time after they were out of sight—the air was so still and so close, nothing in it to break the sound. The atmosphere was all sunshine, not a cloud upon the sky, scarcely a breath stirring over those hill-tops, which had almost the effect of a mountainous landscape, being the highest ground in all the visible space. Along the other side of the combe, where the road became visible, there were gleams of heather brilliant under the dark foliage of the firs. She sat down in the porch and waited to see them pass; there was a sorrowful background to her thoughts, but for the moment she was not actually sad, if perhaps a little forlorn. They had gone away leaving her alone, but yet in an hour or two Elinor was coming back. Time enough to think of the final parting. Next week Elinor would go and would not return. Mrs. Dennistoun held on by both hands to to-day and would not think of that future, near as it was. She waited in a hush of feeling, so near to great commotions of the heart and mind, but holding them at a distance in a suspense of all thought, till the shandrydan appeared in the opening of the road. They were thinking of her, for she saw a gleam of white, the waving of a handkerchief, as the little carriage trundled along the road, and for a moment the tears again blinded her eyes. But Mrs. Dennistoun was very reasonable. She got up from the cottage porch after the pony carriage had passed in the distance, with that determination to make the best of it, which is the inspiration of so many women’s lives.
And what a drive the others had through the sunshine—or at least Elinor! You can never tell by what shadows a man’s thoughts may be haunted, who is a man of the world, and has had many other things to occupy him besides this vision of love. But the girl had no shadows. The parting which was before her was not near enough to harm as yet, and she was still able to think, in her ignorance of the world, that even parting was much more in appearance than in reality, and that she would always be running home, always going upon long visits brightening everything, instead of saddening. But even had she been going to the end of the world with her husband next week, Elinor would still have been happy to-day. The sunshine itself was enough to go to any one’s head, and the pony stepped out so that Phil had the grace to be ashamed of his reflections upon “the old girl.” They got to the station too early for the train, and had half an hour’s stroll together, with all the railway porters looking on admiring. They all knew Miss Dennistoun from her childhood, and they were interested in her “young man.”
“And to think you will be in Ireland to-morrow,” said Elinor, “over the sea, with the Channel between us—in another island!”
“I don’t see much that’s wonderful in that,” said Phil, “the boat goes every day.”
“Oh, there’s nothing wonderful about the boat. Hundreds might go, and I shouldn’t mind, but you—— It’s strange to think of your going off into a world I don’t know at all—and then coming back.”
“To take you off to that world you don’t know, Nell; and then the time will come when you will know it as well as I do, and more, too; and be able to set me down in my proper place.”
“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 shopkeeper’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.