JOHN TATHAM had in vain attempted to persuade Elinor to come to his house, to dine there in comfort—he was going out himself—so that at least in this time of excitement and trouble she might have the careful service and admirable comfort of his well-managed house. Elinor preferred her favourite lodgings and a cup of tea to all the luxuries of Halkin Street. And she was fit for no more consultations that night. She had many, many things to think of, and some new which as yet she barely comprehended. The rooms in Ebury Street were small, and they were more or less dingy, as such rooms are; but they were comfortable enough, and had as much of home to Elinor as repeated visits there with all her belongings could give them. The room in which she slept was next to that in which her boy had usually slept. That was enough to make it no strange place. And I need not say that it became the scene of many discussions during the few days that followed. The papers by this time were full of the strange trial which was coming on: the romance of commercial life and ruin—the guilty man who had been absent so long, enjoying his ill-gotten gains, and who now was dragged back into the light to give an account of himself—and of other guilt perhaps less black than his own, yet dreadful enough to hear of. The story of the destroyed books was a most remarkable and picturesque incident in the narrative. The leading papers looked up their own account of the facts given at the time, and pointed out how evidently justified by the new facts made known to the public was the theory they had themselves given forth. As these theories, however, were very different, and as all claimed to be right, perhaps the conclusion was less certain than this announcement gave warrant to believe. But each and all promised “revelations” of the most surprising kind—involving some of the highest aristocracy, the democratic papers said—bringing to light an exciting story of the private relations between husband and wife, said those of society, and revealing a piquant chapter of social history hushed up at the time. It was a modest print indeed that contented itself with the statement that its readers would find a romance of real life involved in the trial which was about to take place. Elinor did not, fortunately, see all these comments. The Times and the Morning Post were dignified and reticent, and she did not read, and was indeed scarcely cognisant of the existence of most of the others. But the faintest reference to the trial was enough, it need hardly be said, to make the blood boil in her veins.
It was a curious thing in her state of mind, and with the feelings she had towards her husband’s family, that one of the first things she did on establishing herself in her Ebury Street rooms, was to look for an old “Peerage” which had lain for several years she remembered on a certain shelf. Genteel lodgings in Ebury Street which did not possess somewhere an old “Peerage” would be out of the world indeed. She found it in the same corner as of old, where she had noted it so often and avoided it as if it had been a serpent; but now the first thing she did, as soon as her tray was brought her, and all necessary explanations given, and the door shut, was to take the book furtively from its place, almost as if she were afraid of what she should see. What a list there was of sons of Lord St. Serf! some she had never known, who died young: and Reginald in India, and Hal, who was so kind—what a good laugh he had, she remembered, not a joyless cackle like Mariamne’s, a good natural laugh, and a kind light in his eyes: and he had been kind. She could remember ever so many things, nothings, things that made a little difference in the dull, dull cloudy sky of a neglected wife. Poor Hal! and he too was gone, and St. Serf dying, and—— Pippo the heir!—Pippo was perhaps, for any thing she knew, Lord Lomond now.
To say that this did not startle Elinor, did not make her heart beat, did not open new complications and vistas in life, would be a thing impossible. Pippo Lord Lomond! Pippo, whom she had feared to expose to his father’s influence, whom she had kept apart, who did not know anything about himself except that he was her son—had she kept and guarded the boy thus in the very obscurity of life, in the stillest and most protected circumstances, only to plunge him suddenly at last, without preparation, without warning, into the fiery furnace of temptation, into a region where he might pardonably (perhaps) put himself beyond her influence, beyond her guidance? Poor Elinor! and yet she was not wholly to be pitied either. For her heart was fired by the thought of her boy’s elevation in spite of herself. It did not occur to her that such an elevation for him meant something also for her. That view of the case she did not take into consideration for a moment. Nay, she did not think of it. But that Pippo should be Lord Lomond went through her like an arrow—like an arrow that gave a wound, acute and sharp, yet no pain, if such a thing could be said. That he should discover his father had been the danger before her all his life, but if he must find out that he had a father that was a way in which it might not be all pain. I do not pretend that she was very clear in all these thoughts. Indeed, she was not clear at all. John Tatham, knowing but one side, had begun to think vaguely of Elinor what Elinor thought of her mother, that her mind was not quite as of old, not so bright nor so vivid, not so clear in coming to a conclusion; had he known everything he might not have been so sure even on that point. But then had he known everything that Elinor knew, and been aware of what it was which Elinor had been summoned by all the force of old fidelity and the honour of her name to do, John would have been too much horrified to have been able to form an opinion. No, poor Elinor was not at all clear in her thoughts—less clear than ever after these revelations—the way before her seemed dark in whatever way she looked at it, complications were round her on every side. She had instinctively, without a word said, given up that idea of flight. Who was it that said the heir to a peerage could not be hid? John had said it, she remembered, and John was always right. If she was to take him away to the uttermost end of the earth, they would seek him out and find him. And then there was—his father, who had known all the time, had known and never disturbed her—— No wonder that poor Elinor’s thoughts were mixed and complicated. She walked up and down the room, not thinking, but letting crowds and flights of thoughts like birds fly through her mind; no longer clear indeed as she had been wont to be, no longer coming to sudden, sharp conclusions, admitting possibilities of which Elinor once upon a time would never have thought.
And day by day as he saw her, John Tatham understood her less and less. He did not know what she meant, what she was going to do, what were her sentiments towards her husband, what were her intentions towards her son. He had found out a great deal about the case, merely as a case, and it began to be clear to him where Elinor’s part came in. Elinor Compton could not have appeared on her husband’s behalf, and whether there might not arise a question whether, being now his wife, her evidence could be taken on what had happened before she was his wife, was by no means sure—“Why didn’t they call your mother?” John said, as Mrs. Dennistoun also had said—but he did not at all understand, how could he? the dismay that came over Elinor, and the “Not for the world,” which came from her lips. He had come in to see her in the morning as he went down to his chambers, on the very morning when Pippo, quite unexpected and also not at all desired, was arriving at Euston Square.
“It would have been much better,” he said, “in every way if they had called your mother—who of course must know exactly what you know, Elinor, in respect to this matter——”
“No,” said Elinor with dry lips. “She knows nothing. She—calculates back by little incidents—she does not remember: I—do——”
“That’s natural, I suppose,” said John, with an impatient sigh and a half-angry look. “Still—my aunt——”
“Would do no good at all: you may believe me, John. Don’t let us speak of this any more. I know what has to be done: my mother would twist herself up among her calculations—about Alick Hudson’s examination and I know not what. Whereas I—there is nothing, nothing more to be said. I thought I could escape, and it is your doing if I now see that I cannot escape. I can but hope that Providence will protect my boy. He is at school, where they have little time for reading the papers. He may never even see—or at least if he does he may think it is another Compton—some one whom he never heard of——”
“And how if he becomes Lord Lomond, as I said, before the secret is out?”
“Oh, John,” cried Elinor, wringing her hands—“don’t, don’t torment me with that idea now—let only this be past and then: Oh, I see, I see—I am not a fool—I perceive that I cannot hide him as you say if that happens. But oh, John, for pity’s sake let this be over first! Let us not hurry everything on at the same time. He is at school. What do schoolboys care for the newspapers, especially for trials in the law courts? Oh, let this be over first! A boy at school—and he need never know——”
It was at this moment that a hansom drew up, and a rattling peal came at the door. Hansoms are not rare in Ebury Street, and how can one tell in these small houses if the peal is at one’s door or the next? Elinor was not disturbed. She paid no attention. She expected no one, she was afraid of nothing new for the present. Surely, surely, as she said, there was enough for the present. It did not seem possible that any new incident should come now.
“I do not want to torment you, Elinor—you may imagine I would be the last—I would only save you if I could from what must be—— What! what? who’s this?—PHILIP! the boy!”
The door had burst open with an eager, impatient hand upon it, and there stood upon the threshold, in all the mingled excitement and fatigue of his night journey, pale, sleep in his eyes, yet happy expectation, exultation, the certainty of open arms to receive him, and cries of delight—the boy. He stood for a second looking into the strange yet familiar room. John Tatham had sprung to his feet and stood startled, hesitating, while young Philip’s eyes, noting him with a glance, flashed past him to the other more important, more beloved, the mother whom he had expected to rush towards him with an outcry of joy.
And Elinor sat still in her chair, struck dumb, grown pale like a ghost, her eyes wide open, her lips apart. The sight of the boy, her beloved child, her pride and delight, was as a horrible spectacle to Elinor. She stared at him like one horrified, and neither moved nor spoke.
“Elinor!” cried John, terrified, “there’s nothing wrong. Don’t you see it’s Philip? Boy, what do you mean by giving her such a fright? She’s fainting, I believe.”
“I—give her a fright!” cried, half in anguish, half in indignation, the astonished boy.
“No, I’m not fainting. Pippo! there’s nothing wrong—at home?” Elinor cried, holding out her hand to him—coming to herself, which meant only awakening to the horror of a danger far more present than she had ever dreamt, and to the sudden sight not of her boy, but of that Nemesis which she had so carefully prepared for herself, and which had been awaiting her for years. She was not afraid of anything wrong at home. It was the first shield she could find in the shock which had almost paralysed her, to conceal her terror and distress at the sight of him from the astonished, disappointed, mortified, and angry boy.
“I thought,” he said, “you would have been glad to see me, mother! No, there’s nothing wrong at home.”
“Thank heaven for that!” cried Elinor, feeling herself more and more a hypocrite as she recovered from the shock. “Pippo, I was saying this moment that you were at school. The words were scarcely off my lips—and then to see you in a moment, standing there.”
“I thought,” he repeated again, trembling with the disappointment and mortification, wounded in his cheerful, confident affection, and in his young pride, the monarch of all he surveyed—“I thought you would have been pleased to see me, mother!”
“Of course,” said John, cheerfully, “your mother is glad to see you: and so am I, you impetuous boy, though you don’t take the trouble of shaking hands with me. He wants to be kissed and coddled, Elinor, and I must be off to my chambers. But I should like to know first what’s up, boy? You’ve got something to say.”
“Pippo, what is it, my dearest? You did give me a great fright, and I am still nervous a little. Tell me, Pippo; something has brought you—your uncle John is right. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve got something to tell me!”
The tired and excited boy looked from one to another, two faces both full of a veiled but intense anxiety, looking at him as if what they expected was no good news. He burst out into a big, hoarse laugh, the only way to keep himself from crying. “You don’t even seem to remember anything about it,” he cried, flinging himself down in the nearest chair; “and for my part I don’t care any longer whether any one knows or not.”
And Elinor, whose thoughts were on such different things—whose whole mind was absorbed in the question of what he could have heard about the trial, about his father, about the new and strange future before him—gazed at him with eyes that seemed hollowed out all round with devouring anxiety. “What is it?” she said, “what is it? For God’s sake tell me! What have you heard?”
It goes against all prejudices to imagine that John Tatham, a man who never had had a child, an old bachelor not too tolerant of youth, should have divined the boy better than his mother. But he did, perhaps because he was a lawyer, and accustomed to investigate the human countenance and eye. He saw that Philip was full of something of his own, immediately interesting to himself; and he cast about quickly in his mind what it could be. Not that the boy was heir to a peerage: he would never have come like this to announce that: but something that Philip was cruelly disappointed his mother did not remember. This passed through John’s mind like a flash, though it takes a long time to describe. “Ah,” he said, “I begin to divine. Was not there something about a—scholarship?”
“Pippo!” cried Elinor, lighting up great lamps of relief, of sudden ease and quick-coming joy, in her brightened eyes and face. “My boy! you’ve won your battle! You’ve got it, you’ve got it, Pippo! And your foolish, stupid mother that thought for a moment you could rush to her like this with anything but good news!”
It took a few moments to soothe Pippo down, and mend his wounded feelings. “I began to think nobody cared,” he said, “and that made me that I didn’t care myself. I’d rather Musgrave had got it, if it had not been to please you all. And you never seemed so much as to remember—only Uncle John!” he added after a moment, with a half scorn which made John laugh at the never-failing candour of youth.
“Only the least important of all,” he said. “It was atrocious of the ladies, Philip. Shake hands, my boy, I owe you five pounds for the scholarship. And now I’ll take myself off, which will please you most of all.”
He went down-stairs laughing to himself all the way, but got suddenly quite grave as he stepped outside—whether because he remembered that it does not become a Q.C. and M.P. to laugh in the street, or for other causes, it does not become us to attempt to say.
And Elinor meanwhile made it up to her boy amply, and while her heart ached with the question what to do with him, how to dispose of him during those dreadful following days, behaved herself as if her head too was half turned with joy and exultation, only tempered by the regret that Musgrave, who had worked so hard, could not have got the scholarship too.