I WILL not confuse the reader with a description of all Elinor’s thoughts during the slow progress of that afternoon and evening, which were as the slow passing of a year to her impatient spirit. She took the usual afternoon walk with her mother soberly, as became Mrs. Dennistoun’s increasing years, and then she made a pretext of some errands in the village to occupy her until dark, or rather to leave her free to twist the thread of her own thoughts as she went along the silent country road. Her thoughts varied in the afternoon from those which had seized upon her with such vulture’s claws in the morning; but they were not less overwhelming in that respect. Her mother’s suggestion that she and not Elinor should be the witness of that date, and then her ponderings as to that date, her slow certainty that she could make it out, or puzzle it out, as Elinor in her impatience said, which was the last of all things to be desired—had stung the daughter into a new and miserable realization of what it was that was demanded of her, which nobody could do but she. What was it that would be demanded of her? To stand up in the face of God and man and swear to tell the truth, and tell—a lie: or else let the man who had been her husband, the love of her youth, the father of her boy, sink into an abyss of shame. She thought rapidly, knowing nothing, that surely there could be no punishment for him, even if it were proved, at the long interval of twenty years. But, shame—there would be shame. Nothing could save him from that. Shame which would descend more or less to his son. And then Elinor reflected, with hot moisture coming out upon her forehead against the cold breeze of the spring night, on what would be asked of her. Oh, no doubt, it would be cleverly done! She would be asked if she remembered his visit, and why she remembered it. She would be led on carefully to tell the story of the calendar in the hall, and of how it was but ten days before her marriage—the last hurried, unexpected visit of the lover before he came as a bridegroom to take her away. It would be all true, every word, and yet it would be a lie. And standing up there in that public place, she would be made to repeat it, as she had done in the flowery garden, in the sunshine, twenty years ago—then dazed and bewildered, not knowing what she did, and with something of the blind confidence of youth and love in saying what she was told to say; but now with clearer insight, with a horrible certainty of the falsehood of that true story, and the object with which it was required of her. Happily for herself, Elinor did not think of the ordeal of cross-examination through which witnesses have to pass. She would not, I think, have feared that if the instinct of combativeness had been roused in her: her quick wit and ready spirit would not have failed in defending herself, and in maintaining the accuracy of the fact to which she had to bear witness. It was herself, and not an opposing counsel, that was alarming to Elinor. But I have promised that the reader should not be compelled to go through all the trouble and torment of her thoughts.
Dinner, with the respect which is necessary for the servant who waits, whether that may be a solemn butler with his myrmidons, or a little maid—always makes a pause in household communications; but when the ladies were established afterwards by the pleasant fireside which had been their centre of life for so many years, and with the cheerful lamp on the table between them which had lighted so many cheerful talks, readings, discussions, and consultations, the new subject of anxiety and interest immediately came forth again. It was Mrs. Dennistoun who spoke first. She had grown older, as we all do; she wore spectacles as she worked, and often a white shawl on her shoulders, and was—as sometimes her daughter felt, with shame of herself to remark it—a little slower in speech, a little more pertinacious and insistent, not perhaps perceiving with such quick sympathy the changes and fluctuations of other minds, and whether it was advisable or not to follow a subject to the bitter end. She said, looking up from her knitting, with a little rhetorical movement of her hand which Elinor feared, and which showed that she felt herself on assured and certain ground:
“My dear, I have been thinking. I have made it out day by day. God knows there were plenty of landmarks in it to keep any one from forgetting. I can now make out certainly the day—of which we were speaking; and if you will give me your attention for a minute or two, Elinor, you will see that whatever the calendar said—which I never noticed, for it was as often wrong as right—you are making a mis——”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, mother,” cried Elinor, “don’t let us talk of that any more!”
“I have no desire to talk of it, my dear child; but for what you said I should never—— But of course we must take some action about this thing—this paper you have got. And it seems to me that the best thing would be to write to John, and see whether he could not manage to get it transferred from you to me. I can’t see what difficulty there could be about that.”
“I would not have it for the world, mother! And what good would it do? The great thing in it, the dreadful thing, would be unchanged. Whether you appear or me, Pippo would be made to know, all the same, what it has been our joint object to conceal from him all his life.”
Mrs. Dennistoun did not say anything, but she would not have been mortal if she had not, very slightly, but yet very visibly to keen eyes, shaken her head.
“I know what you mean,” said Elinor, vehemently, “that it has been I, and not we, whose object has been to conceal it from him. Oh, yes, I know you are right; but at least you consented to it, you have helped in it, it is your doing as well as mine.”
“Elinor, Elinor!” cried her mother, who, having always protested, was not prepared for this accusation.
“Is there any advantage to be got,” said Elinor, like an injured and indignant champion of the right, “in opening up the whole question over again now?”
What could poor Mrs. Dennistoun do? She was confounded, as she often had been before, by those swift and sudden tactics. She gave a glance up at her daughter over her spectacles, but she said nothing. Argument, she knew by long experience, was difficult to keep up with such an opponent.
“But John is an idea,” said Elinor. “I don’t know why I should not have thought of him. He may suggest something that could be done.”
“I thought of him, of course, at once,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, not able to refrain from that small piece of self-assertion. “It is not a time that it would be easy for him to leave town; but at least you could write and lay your difficulties before him, and suggest——”
“Oh, you may be sure, mother,” cried Elinor, “I know what I have to say.”
“I never doubted it, my dear,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, gently.
And then there was a little pause. They sat and worked, the elder lady stumbling a little over her knitting, her thoughts being so much engaged; the younger one plying a flying needle, the passion and impetus of her thoughts lending only additional swiftness and vigour to everything she did. And for ten minutes or more there was nothing to be heard in the room but the little drop of ashes from the fire, the sudden burst of a little gas-flame from the coals, the rustle of Elinor’s arm as it moved. The cat sat with her tail curled round her before the fire, the image of dignified repose, winking at the flames. The two human inhabitants, save for the movements of their hands, might have been in wax, they were so still. Suddenly, however, the quietness was broken by an energetic movement. Elinor threw her work down on the table and rose from her chair. She went to the window and drew the curtain aside, and looked out upon the night. She shut it carefully again, and going to the writing-table, struck a match and lighted the candles there, and sat down and began, or appeared to begin, to write. Then she rose quickly again and returned to the table at which Mrs. Dennistoun was still seated, knitting on, but watching every movement of her restless companion. “Mother,” she said, “I can’t write, I have far too much to say. I will run up to town to-morrow myself and see John.”
“To town, Elinor, by yourself? My dear, you forget it is not an hour’s journey, as it was to Windyhill.”
“I know that very well, mother. But even the journey will be an advantage. The movement will do me good, and I can tell John much better than I could write. Who could write about a complicated business like this? He will understand me when he sees me at half a word, whereas in writing one can never explain. Don’t oppose me, please, mother! I feel that to do something, to get myself in motion, is the only thing for me now.”
“I will not oppose you, Elinor. I have done so, perhaps, too little, my dear; but we will not speak of that. No doubt, as you say, you will understand each other better if you tell him the circumstances face to face. But, oh, my dear child, do nothing rash! Be guided by John; he is a prudent adviser. The only thing is that he, no more than I, has ever been able to resist you, Elinor, if you had set your heart upon any course. Oh, my dear, don’t go to John with a foregone conclusion. Hear first what he has to say!”
Elinor came behind her mother with one of those quick returns of affectionate impulse which were natural to her, and put her arms suddenly round Mrs. Dennistoun. “You have always been far too good to me, mamma,” she said, kissing her tenderly, “both John and you.”
And next morning she carried out her swiftly conceived intention and went to town, as the reader is aware. A long railway journey is sometimes soothing to one distracted with agitation and trouble. The quiet and the noise, which serves as a kind of accompaniment, half silencing, half promoting too active thought; the forced abstraction and silence, and semi-imprisonment of mind and body, which are equally restless, but which in that enclosure are bound to self-restraint, exercise, in spite of all struggles of the subject, a subduing effect. And it was a strange thing that in the seclusion of the railway compartment in which she travelled alone there came for the first time to Elinor a softening thought, the sudden sensation of a feeling, of which she had not been sensible for years, towards the man whose name she bore. It occurred to her quite suddenly, she could not tell how, as if some one invisible had thrown that reflection into her mind (and I confess that I am of opinion they do: those who are around us, who are unseen, darting into our souls thoughts which do not originate with us, thoughts not always of good, blasphemies as well as blessings)—it occurred to her, I say, coming into her mind like an arrow, that after all she had not been so well hidden as she thought all these years, seeing that she had been found at once without difficulty, it appeared, when she was wanted. Did this mean that he had known where she was all the time—known, but never made any attempt to disturb her quiet? The thought startled her very much, revealing to her a momentary glimpse of something that looked like magnanimity, like consideration and generous self-restraint. Could these things be? He could have hurt her very much had he pleased, even during the time she had remained at Windyhill, when certainly he knew where she was: and he had not done so. He might have taken her child from her: at least he might have made her life miserable with fears of losing her child: and he had not done so. If indeed it was true that he had known where she was all the time and had never done anything to disturb her, what did that mean? This thought gave Elinor perhaps the first sense of self-reproach and guilt that she had ever known towards this man, who was her husband, yet whom she had not seen for more than eighteen years.
And then there was another thing. After that interval he was not afraid to put himself into her hands—to trust to her loyalty for his salvation. He knew that she could betray him—and he knew equally well that she would not do so, notwithstanding the eighteen years of estrangement and mutual wrong that lay between. It did not matter that the loyalty he felt sure of would be a false loyalty, an upholding of what was not true. He would think little of that, as likely as not he had forgotten all about that. He would know that her testimony would clear him, and he would not think of anything else; and even did he think of it the fact of a woman making a little mis-statement like that would never have affected Philip. But the strange thing was that he had no fear she would revenge herself by standing up against him—no doubt of her response to his appeal; he was as ready to put his fate in her hands as if she had been the most devoted of wives—his constant companion and champion. This had the most curious effect upon her mind, almost greater than the other. She had shown no faith in him, but he had faith in her. Reckless and guilty as he was, he had not doubted her. He had put it in her power to convict him not only of the worst accusation that was brought against him, but of a monstrous trick to prove his alibi, and a cruel wrong to her compelling her to uphold that as true. She was able to expose him, if she chose, as no one else could do; but he had not been afraid of that. This second thought, which burst upon Elinor without any volition of her own, had the most curious effect upon her. She abstained carefully, anxiously, from allowing herself to be drawn into making any conclusion from these darts of unintended thoughts. But they moved her in spite of herself. They made her think of him, which she had for a long time abstained from doing. She had shut her heart for years from any recollection of her husband, trying to ignore his existence in thought as well as in fact. And she had succeeded for a long time in doing this. But now in a moment all her precautions were thrown to the winds. He came into her memory with a sudden rush for which she was no way responsible, breaking all the barriers she had put up against him: that he should have known where she was all this time, and never disturbed her, respected her solitude all these years—that when the moment of need came he should, without a word to conciliate her, without an explanation or an apology, have put his fate into her hands—— To the reader who understands I need not say more of the effect upon the mind of Elinor, hasty, generous, impatient as she was of these two strange facts. There are many in the world who would have given quite a different explanation—who would have made out of the fact that he had not disturbed her only the explanation that Phil Compton was tired of his wife and glad to get rid of her at any price: and who would have seen in his appeal to her now only audacity combined with the conviction that she would not compromise herself by saying anything more than she could help about him. I need not say which of these interpretations would have been the true one. But the first will understand and not the other what it was that for the first time for eighteen years awakened a struggle and controversy which she could not ignore, and vainly endeavoured to overcome, in Elinor’s heart.