THE weather was fine, which was by no means always a certainty at Waterdale, and Elinor had become a great pedestrian, and was ready to accompany John in his walks, which were long and varied. It was rather a curious test to which to subject himself after the long time he had been away, and the other tests through which he had gone. Never had he been so entirely the companion of Elinor, never before had they spent so many hours together without other society. At Windyhill, indeed, their interviews had been quite unrestrained, but then Elinor had many friends and interests in the parish and outside of it, visits to pay and duties to perform. Now she had her child, which occupied her mornings and evenings, but left her free for hours of rambling among the hills, for long walks, from which she came back blooming with the fresh air and breezes which had blown her about, ruffling her hair, and stirring up her spirits and thoughts. Sometimes when there has been heavy and premature suffering there occurs thus in the young another spring-time, an almost childhood of natural, it may be said superficial pleasure—the power of being amused, and of enjoying every simple satisfaction without any arrière pensée like a child. She had recovered her strength and vigour in the mountain air—and in that freedom of being unknown, with no look ever directed to her which reminded her of the past, no question which brought back her troubles, had blossomed out into that fine youthful maturity of twenty-six, which has already an advantage over the earlier girlhood, the perfection of the woman grown. Elinor had thought of many things and understood many things, which she had still regarded with the high assumptions of ignorance three or four years ago. And poor John, who had tried so hard to find himself a mate that suited him, who had studied so many girls more beautiful, more accomplished than Elinor, in the hope of goading himself, so to speak, into love, and had not succeeded—and who had felt so strongly that another man’s wife must not occupy so much of his thoughts, nor another man’s child give him an unwilling pleasure which was almost fatherly—poor John felt himself placed in a position more trying than any he had known before, more difficult to steer his way through. He had never had so much of her company, and she did not conceal the pleasure it was to her to have some one to walk with, to talk with, who understood what she said and what she did not say, and was in that unpurchasable sympathy with herself which is not to be got by beauty, or by will, or even by love itself, but comes by nature. Elinor felt this with simple pleasure. Without any complicating suspicion, she said, “What a brother John is! I always felt him so, but now more than ever.” “You have been, so to speak, brought up together,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, whose mind was by no means so easy on the subject. “That is the reason, I suppose,” said Elinor, with happy looks.
But poor John said nothing of this kind. What he felt was that he might have spared himself the trouble of all those researches of his; that to roam about looking for a young lady whom he might—not devour, but learn to love, was pains as unnecessary as ever man took. He still hugged himself, however, over the thought that in no circumstances would he have been a marrying man; that if Elinor had been free he would have found plenty of reasons why they should remain on their present terms and go no farther. As it was clear that they must remain on their present terms, and could go no farther, it was certainly better that he should cherish that thought.
And curiously enough, though they heard so little from the outside world, they had heard just so much as this, that John’s assiduities to the Miss Gaythornes (which the reader may remember was the first of all his attempts, and quite antiquated in his recollection) had occasioned remarks, and he had not been many evenings at Lakeside before he was questioned on the subject. Had it been true, or had he changed his mind or had the lady——? It vexed him that there was not the least little opposition or despite in their tones, such as a man’s female friends often show towards the objects of his admiration, not from any feeling on their own part, except that most natural one, which is surprised and almost hurt to find that, “having known me, he could decline”—a feeling which, in its original expression, was not a woman’s sentiment, but a man’s, and therefore is, I suppose, common to both sides. But the ladies at Lakeside did not even betray this feeling. They desired to know if there had been anything in it—with smiles, it is true; but Mrs. Dennistoun at the same time expressed her regret warmly.
“We were in great hopes something would come of it, John. Elinor has met the Gaythornes, and thought them very nice; and if there is a thing in the world that would give me pleasure, it would be to see you with a nice wife, John.”
“I am sure I am much obliged to you, aunt; but there really was nothing in it. That is, I was seized with various impulses on the subject, and rather agreed with you: but I never mentioned the matter to any of the Miss Gaythornes. They are charming girls, and I don’t suppose would have looked at me. At the same time, I did not feel it possible to imagine myself in love with any of them. That’s quite a long time since,” he added with a laugh.
“Then there have been others since then? Let us put him in the confessional, mother,” cried Elinor with a laugh. “He ought not to have any secrets of that description from you and me.”
“Oh, yes, there have been others since,” said John. “To tell the truth, I have walked round a great many nice girls asking myself whether I shouldn’t find it very delightful to have one of them belonging to me. I wasn’t worthy the least attractive of them all, I quite knew; but still I am about the same as other men. However, as I’ve said, I never mentioned the matter to any of them.”
“Never?” cried Mrs. Dennistoun, feeling a hesitation in his tone.
He laughed a little, shamefaced: “Well, if you like, I will say hardly ever,” he said. “There was one that might, perhaps, have taken pity upon me—but fortunately an old lover of hers, who was much more enterprising, turned up before anything decisive had been said.”
“Fortunately, John?”
“Well, yes, I thought so. You see I am not a marrying man. I tried to screw myself up to the point, but it was altogether, I am afraid, as a matter of principle. I thought it would be a good thing, perhaps, to have a wife.”
“That was a very cold-blooded idea. No wonder you—it never came to anything. That is not the way to go about it,” said Elinor with the ringing laugh of a child.
And yet her way of going about it had been far from a success. How curious that she did not remember that!
“Yes,” he said, “I am quite aware that I did not go about it in the right way, but then that was the only way in which it presented itself to me; and when I had made up my mind at last that it was a failure, I confess it was with a certain sense of relief. I suppose I was born to live and die an old bachelor.”
“Do not be so sure of that,” said Elinor. “Some day or other, in the most unlooked-for moment, the fairy princess will bound upon the scene, and the old bachelor will be lost.”
“We’ll wait quite contentedly for that day—which I don’t believe in,” he said.
Mrs. Dennistoun did not take any part in the later portion of this discussion; her smile was feeble at the places where Elinor laughed. She said seriously after this fireside conference, when he got up to prepare for dinner, putting her hand tenderly on his shoulder, “I wish you had found some one you could have loved, John.”
“So did I—for a time,” he said, lightly. “But you see, it was not to be.”
She shook her head, standing against the firelight in the dark room, so that he could not see her face. “I wish,” she said, “I wish—that I saw you with a nice wife, John.”
“You might wish—to see me on the woolsack, aunt.”
“Well—and it might come to pass. I shall see you high up—if I live long enough; but I wish I was as sure of the other, John.”
“Well,” he said with a laugh, “I did my best; but there is no use in struggling against fate.”
No, indeed! how very, very little use there was. He had kept away from them for nearly two years; while he had done his best in the meantime to get a permanent tenant for his heart which should prevent any wandering tendencies. But he had not succeeded; and now if ever a man could be put in circumstances of danger it was he. If he did not appear in time for their walk Elinor would call him. “Aren’t you coming, John?” And she overflowed in talk to him of everything—excepting always of that one dark passage in her life of which she never breathed a word. She asked him about his work, and about his prospects, insisting upon having everything explained to her—even politics, to which he had a tendency, not without ideas of their use in reaching the higher ranks of his profession. Elinor entered into all with zest and almost enthusiasm. She wrapped him up in her sympathy and interest. There was nothing he did that she did not wish to know about, did not desire to have a part in. A sister in this respect is, as everybody knows, often more full of enthusiasm than a wife, and Elinor, who was vacant of all concerns of her own (except the baby) was delighted to take up these subjects of excitement, and follow John through them, hastening after him on every line of indication or suggestion which he gave—nay, often with her lively intelligence hastening before him, making incursions into undiscovered countries of which he had not yet perceived the importance. They walked over all the country, into woods which were a little damp, and up hill-sides where the scramble was often difficult enough, and along the side of the lake—or, for a variety, went rowing across to the other side, or far down the gleaming water, out of sight, round the wooded corner which, with all its autumnal colours, blazed like a brilliant sentinel into the air above and the water below. Mrs. Dennistoun watched them, sometimes with a little trouble on her face. She would not say a word to throw suspicions or doubts between them. She would not awaken in Elinor’s mind the thought that any such possibilities as arise between two young people free of all bonds could be imagined as affecting her and any man such as her cousin John. Poor John! if he must be the victim, the victim he must be. Elinor could not be disturbed that he might go free. And indeed, what good would it have done to disturb Elinor? It would but have brought consciousness, embarrassment, and a sense of danger where no such sense was. She was trebly protected, and without a thought of anything but the calm yet close relations that had existed so long. He—— but he could take care of himself, Mrs. Dennistoun reflected in despair; he must take care of himself. He was a man and must understand what his own risks and perils were.
“And do you think this plan is a success?” John asked her one day as they were rowing homeward up the lake. The time of his visit was drawing to a close; indeed it had drawn to a close several times, and been lengthened very unadvisedly, yet very irresistibly as he felt.
Her face grew graver than usual, as with a sudden recollection of that shadow upon her life which Elinor so often seemed to have forgotten. “As much of a success,” she said, “as anything of the kind is likely to be.”
“It suits you better than Windyhill?”
“Only in being more out of the world. It is partially out of the world for a great part of the year; but I suppose no place is so wholly. It seems impossible to keep from making acquaintances.”
“Of course,” he said, “I have noticed. You know people here already.”
“How can we keep from knowing people? Mamma says it is the same thing everywhere. If we lived up in that little house which they say is the highest in England—at the head of the pass—we should meet people I suppose even there.”
“Most likely,” he replied; “but the same difficulties can hardly arise.”
“You mean we shall not know people so well as at—at home, and will not be compelled to give an account of ourselves whatever we do? Heaven knows! There is a vicarage here, and there is a squire’s house: and there are two or three people besides who already begin to inquire if we are related to So-and-So, if we are the Scotch Dennistouns, or the Irish Comptons, or I don’t know what; and whether we are going to Penrith or any other capital city for the winter.” Elinor ended with a laugh.
“So soon?” John said.
“So soon—very much sooner, the first year: with mamma so friendly as she is and with me so silly, unable to keep myself from smiling at anybody who smiles at me!”
“Poor Elinor!”
“Oh, you may laugh; but it is a real disadvantage. I am sure there was not very much smile in me when we came; and yet, notwithstanding, the first pleasant look is enough for me, I cannot but respond; and I shall always be so, I suppose,” she said, with a sigh.
“I hope so, Elinor. It would be an evil day for all of us if you did not respond.”
“For how many, John? For my mother and—ah, you are so good, more like my brother than my cousin—for you, perhaps, a little; but what is it to anybody else in the world whether I smile or sigh? It does not matter, however,” she said, flinging back her head; “there it is, and I can’t help it. If you smile at me I must smile back again—and so we make friends; and already I get a great deal of advice about little Pippo. If we live here till he grows up, the same thing will happen as at the Cottage. We will require to account to everybody for what we do with him—for the school he goes to, and all he does; to explain why he has one kind of training or another; and, in short, all that I ran away from: the world wherever one goes seems to be so much the same.”
“The world is very much the same everywhere; and you cannot get out of it were you to take refuge in a cave on the hill. The best thing is generally to let it know all that can be known, and so save the multitude of guesses it always makes.”
Elinor looked at him for a moment with her lips pressed tightly together, and a light in her eyes; then she looked away across the water to the golden hills, and said nothing; but there was a great deal in that look of eager contradiction, yet forced agreement, of determination above all, with which right and wrong had nothing to do.
“Elinor,” he said, “do you mean that child to grow up here between your mother and you—in ignorance of all that there is in the world besides you two?”
“That child!” she cried. “John, I think you dislike my boy; for, of course, it is Pippo you mean.”
“I wish you would not call him by that absurd name.”
“You are hard to please,” she said, with an angry laugh. “I think it is a very sweet little name.”
“The child will not always be a baby,” said John.
“Oh, no: I suppose if we all live long enough he will some time be a—possibly disagreeable man, and punish us well for all the care we have spent upon him,” Elinor said.
“I don’t want to make you angry, Elinor——”
“No, I don’t suppose you do. You have been very nice to me, John. You have neither scolded me nor given me good advice. I never expected you would have been so forbearing. But I have always felt you must mean to give me a good knock at the end.”
“You do me great injustice,” he said, much wounded. “You know that I think only of what is best for you—and the child.”
They were approaching the shore, and Mrs. Dennistoun’s white cap was visible in the waning light, looking out for them from the door. Elinor said hastily, “And the child? I don’t think that you care much for the child.”
“There you are mistaken, Elinor. I did not perhaps at first: but I acknowledge that a little thing like that does somehow creep into one’s heart.”
Her face, which had been gloomy, brightened up as if a sunbeam had suddenly burst upon it. “Oh, bless you, John—Uncle John; how good and how kind, and what a dear friend and brother you are! And I such a wretch, ready to quarrel with those I love best! But, John, let me keep quiet, let me keep still, don’t make me rake up the past. He is such a baby, such a baby! There cannot be any question of telling him anything for years and years!”
“I thought you were lost,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, calling to them. “I began to think of all kinds of things that might have happened—of the steamboat running into you, or the boat going on a rock, or——”
“You need not have had any fear when I was with John,” Elinor said, with a smile that made him warm at once, like the sun. He knew very well, however, that it was only because he had made that little pleasant speech about her boy.