I WILL not say that Philip’s sleep was broken by this question, but it undoubtedly recurred to his mind the first thing in the morning when he jumped out of bed very late for breakfast, and the events of the past night and the lateness of the hour at which he got to rest came back upon him as excuses in the first place for his tardiness. And then, which was remarkable, it was not the scene in the play in which he had been most interested which came to his mind, but a vision of that box and the man standing in front of it staring at him through the black tubes of the opera-glass which came before Philip like a picture. Uncle John had said it was at the ladies behind, but the boy felt sure it was no lady behind, but himself, on whom that stare was fixed. Who would care to stare so at him? It faintly gleamed across his thoughts that it might be some one who had heard of the scholarship, but he dismissed that thought instantly with a blush. It also gleamed upon him with equal vagueness like a momentary but entirely futile light, consciously derived from story books, and of which he was much ashamed, that the inexplicable attention given to himself might have something to do with the girl who had such keen eyes. Philip blushed fiery red at this involuntary thought, and chased it from his mind like a mad dog; but he could not put away the picture of the box, the girl putting aside the curtain to look at him, and the opera-glass fixed upon his face. And then why was Uncle John in such a hurry to get away? It had seemed a capital joke at that moment, but when he came to think of it, it was rather strange that a man who might be Solicitor-General to-morrow if he liked, and probably Lord Chancellor in a few years, should make a schoolboy rush from the stalls of a theatre with the object of being first out. Philip disapproved of so undignified a step on the part of his elderly relation. And he saw now in the serious morning that Uncle John was very unlikely to have done it for fun. What, then, did it mean?
He came down full of these thoughts, and rather ashamed of being late, wondering whether his mother would have waited for him (which would have annoyed him), or if she would have finished her breakfast (which would have annoyed him still more). Happily for Elinor, she had hit the golden mean, and was pouring out for herself a second cup of coffee (but Philip was not aware it was the second) when the boy appeared. She was quite restored to her usual serenity and freshness, and as eager to know how he had enjoyed himself as she always was. He gave her a brief sketch of the play and of what pleased him in it as in duty bound. “But,” he added, “what interested me almost more was that we had a sort of a—little play of our own.”
“What?” she cried, with a startled look in her eyes. One thing that puzzled him was that she was so very easily startled, which it seemed to Philip had never been the case before.
“Well,” he said, “the lady was there whom Uncle John met in the park—and the girl with her—and I believe the little dog. She made all sorts of signs to him, but he took scarcely any notice. But that’s not all, mother——”
“It’s a good deal, Pippo——”
“Is it? Why do you speak in that choked voice, mother? I suppose it is just one of his society acquaintances. But the thing was that before the last act somebody else came forward to the front of the box, and fixed—I was going to say his eyes, I mean his opera-glasses upon us.”
Philip had meant to say upon me—but he had produced already so great an effect on his mother’s face that he moderated instinctively the point of this description. “And stared at us,” he added, “all the rest of the time, paying not the least attention to anything that was going on. It’s a queer sensation,” he went on, with a laugh, “to feel that black mysterious-looking thing like the eyes of some monster with no speculation in them, fixed upon you. Now, I want you to tell me—— What’s the matter, mother?”
“Nothing, Pippo; nothing,” said Elinor, faintly, stooping to lift up a book she had let fall. “Go on with your story. I am very much interested; and then, my dear?”
“Mother,” cried Philip, “I don’t know what has come over you, or over me. There’s something going on I can’t understand. You never used to have any secrets from me. I was always in your confidence—wasn’t I, mother?”
It was not a book she had let fall, but a ring that she had dropped from her finger, and which had to be followed over the carpet. It made her red and flushed when she half raised her head to say, “Yes, Pippo—you know—I have always told you——”
Philip did not remark that what his mother said was nothing after all. He got up to help her to look for her ring, and put his arm round her waist as she knelt on the floor.
“Yes, mamma,” he said, tenderly, protectingly, “I do know: but something’s changed; either it’s in me that makes you feel you can’t trust me—or else it is in you. And I don’t know which would be worst.”
“There is no change,” she said, after a moment, for she could not help the ring being found, and immediately when his quick, young eyes came to the search: but she did not look him in the face. “There is no change, dear. There is only some worrying business which involves a great many troubles of my old life before you were born. You shall hear—everything—in a little while: but I cannot enter into it all at this moment. It is full of complications and—secrets that belong to other people. Pippo, you must promise me to wait patiently, and to believe—to believe—always the best you can—of your mother.”
The boy laughed as he raised her up, still holding her with his arm. “Believe the best I can! Well, I don’t think that will be a great effort, mother. Only to think that you can’t trust me as you always have done makes me wretched. We’ve been such friends, haven’t we, mamma? I’ve always told you everything, or at least everything except just the nonsense at school: and you’ve told me everything. And if we are going to be different now——”
“You’ve told me everything!” the boy was as sure of it as that he was born. She had to hold by him to support herself, and it cost her a strong effort to restrain the shiver that ran through her. “We are not going to be different,” she said, “as soon as we leave London—or before—you shall know everything about this business of mine, Pippo. Will that satisfy you? In the meantime it is not pleasant business, dear; and you must bear with me if I am abstracted sometimes, and occupied, and cross.”
“But, mother,” said Philip, bending over her with that young celestial-foolish look of gravity and good advice with which a neophyte will sometimes address the much-experienced and heavily-laden pilgrim, “don’t you think it would be easier if it was all open between us, and I took my share? If it is other people’s secrets I would not betray them, you know that.”
Unfortunately Elinor here murmured, scarcely knowing what words came from her lips, “That is what John says.”
“John,” said the boy, furious with the quick rage of injured tenderness and pride, “Uncle John! and you tell him more, him, an outsider, than you tell me!”
He let her go then, which was a great relief to Elinor, for she could command herself better when he was a little farther off, and could not feel the thrill that was in her, and the thumping of her heart.
“You must remember, Pippo,” she said, “what I have told you, that my present very disagreeable, very painful business is about things that happened before you were born, which John knew everything about. He was my adviser then, as far as I would take any advice, which I am afraid never was much, Pippo,” she said; “never, alas! all my life. Granny will tell you that. But John, always the kindest friend and the best brother in the world, did everything he could. And it would have been better for us all if I had taken his advice instead of always, I fear, always my own way.”
Strangely enough this cheered Pippo and swept the cloud from his face. “I’m glad you didn’t take anybody’s advice, mother. I shouldn’t have liked it. I’ve more faith in you than anybody. Well, then, now about this man. What man in the world—I really mean in the world, in what is called society, for that is the kind of people they were—could have such a curiosity about—me?”
She had resumed her seat, and her face was turned away from him. Also the exquisite tone of complacency and innocent self-appreciation with which Philip expressed this wonder helped her a little to surmount the situation. Elinor could have laughed had her heart been only a trifle less burdened. She said: “Are you sure it was at you?”
“Uncle John said something about ladies behind us, but I am sure it was no ladies behind. It might, of course,” the boy added, cautiously, “have been him, you know. I suppose Uncle John’s a personage, isn’t he? But after all, you know, hang it, mother, it isn’t easy to believe that a fellow like that would stare so at Uncle John.”
“Poor John! It is true there is not much novelty about him,” said Elinor, with a tremble in her voice, which, if it was half agitation, was yet a little laughter too: for there are scarcely any circumstances, however painful, in which those who are that way moved by nature are quite able to quench the unconquerable laugh. She added, with a falter in which there was no laughter, “and what—was the—fellow like?”
“All that I could see was that he was a tall man. I saw his large shirt-front and his black evening clothes, and something like grey hair above those two big, black goggles——”
“Grey hair!” Elinor said, with a low suppressed cry.
“He never took them away from his eyes for a moment, so of course I could not see his face, or anything much except that he was more than common tall—like myself,” Pippo said, with a little air of pleased vanity in the comparison.
Like himself! She did not make any remark. It is very doubtful whether she could have done so. There came before her so many visions of the past, and such a vague, confused, bewildering future, of which she could form no definite idea what it would be. Was it with a pang that she foresaw that drawing towards another influence: that mingled instinct, curiosity, perhaps admiration and wonder, which already seemed to move her boy’s unconscious mind? Elinor did not even know whether that would hurt her at all. Even now there seemed a curious pungent sense of half-pleasure in the pain. Like himself! So he was. And if it should be that it was his father, who for hours had stood there, not taking his eyes off the boy (for hours her imagination said, though Pippo had not said so), his father who had known where she was and never disturbed her, never interfered with her; the man who had summoned her to perform her martyrdom for him, never doubting—Phil, with grey hair! To say what mingled feelings swept through Elinor’s mind, with all these elements in them, is beyond my power. She saw him with his face concealed, standing up unconscious of the crowded place and of the mimic life on the stage, his eyes fixed upon his son whom he had never seen before. Where was there any drama in which there was a scene like this? His son, his only child, the heir! Unconsciously even to herself that fact had some influence, no doubt, on Elinor’s thoughts. And it would be impossible to say how much influence had that unexpected subduing touch of the grey hair: and the strange change in the scene altogether. The foolish, noisy, “fast” woman, with her tourbillon of men and dogs about her, turned into the old lady of Pippo’s careless remark, with her daughter beside her far more important than she: and the tall figure in the front of the box, with grey hair——
Young Philip had not the faintest light or guidance in the discovery of his mother’s thoughts. He was much more easy and comfortable now that there had been an explanation between them, though it was one of those explanations which explained nothing. He even forgave Uncle John for knowing more than he did, moved thereto by the consolatory thought that John’s advice had never been taken, and that his mother had always followed her own way. This was an incalculable comfort to Pippo’s mind, and gave him composure to wait calmly for the clearing up of the mystery, and the restoration of that perfect confidence between his mother and himself which he was so firmly convinced had existed all his life. He was a great deal happier after, and gave her an excellent account of the play, which he had managed to see quite satisfactorily, notwithstanding the other “little play of our own” which ran through everything. At Philip’s age one can see two things at once well enough. I knew a boy who at one and the same moment got the benefit of (1st) his own story book, which he read lying at full length before the fire, half buried in the fur of a great rug; and (2nd) of the novel which was being read out over his head for the benefit of the other members of the family—or at least he strenuously asserted he did, and indeed proved himself acquainted with both. Philip in the same way had taken in everything in the play, even while his soul was intent upon the opera-glass in the box. He had not missed anything of either. He gave an account of the first, from which the drama might have been written down had fate destroyed it: and had noticed the minauderies of the heroine, and the eager determination not to be second to her in anything which distinguished the first gentleman, as if he had nothing else in his mind: while all the time he had been under the fascination of the two black eyeholes braqués upon him, the mysterious gaze as of a ghost from eyes which he never saw.
This occupied some part of the forenoon, and Philip was happy. But when he had completed his tale and began to feel the necessity of going out, and remembered that he had nowhere to go and nothing to do, the prospect was not alluring. He tried very hard to persuade his mother to go out with him, but this was a risk from which Elinor shrank. She shrank, too, from his proposal at last to go out to the park by himself.
“To the Row. I sha’n’t know the people except those who are in Punch every week, and I shall envy the fellows riding—but at least it will be something to see.”
“I wish you would not go to the Row, Pippo.”
“Why, mother? Doesn’t everybody go? And you never were here at this time of the year before.”
“No,” she said, with a long breath of despair. No; of all times of the year this was the one in which she had never risked him in London. And, oh! that he had been anywhere in the world except London now!
Philip, who had been watching her countenance with great interest, here patted her on the shoulder with condescending, almost paternal, kindness. “Don’t you be frightened, mother. I’ll not get into any mischief. I’ll neither be rode over, nor robbed, nor run away. I’ll take as great care of myself as if you had been there.”
“I’m not afraid that you will be ridden over or robbed,” she said, forcing a smile; “but there is one thing, Pippo. Don’t talk to anybody whom you—don’t know. Don’t let yourself be drawn into—— If you should meet, for instance, that lady—who was in the theatre last night.”
“Yes, mother?”
“Don’t let her make acquaintance with you; don’t speak to her, nor the girl, nor any one that may be with her. At the risk even of being uncivil——”
“Why, mother,” he said, elevating his eyebrows, “how could I be uncivil to a lady?”
“Because I tell you,” she cried, “because you must—because I shall sit here in terror counting every moment till you come back, if you don’t promise me this.”
He looked at her with the most wondering countenance, half disapproving, half pitying. Was she going mad? what was happening to her? was she after all, though his mother, no better than the jealous foolish women in books, who endeavoured at all costs to separate their children from every influence but their own? How could Pippo think such things of his mother? and yet what else could he think?
“I had better,” he said, “if that is how you feel, mother, not go to the Row at all.”
“Much better, much better!” she cried. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Pippo—you have never been to see—the Tower.” She had run over all the most far-off and unlikely places in her mind, and this occurred to her as the most impossible of all to attract any visitor of whom she could be afraid. “I have changed my mind,” she added. “We’ll have a hansom, and I will go with you to see the Tower.”
“So long as you go with me,” said Pippo, “I don’t care where I go.”
And they set out almost joyfully as in their old happy expeditions of old, for that long drive through London in the hansom. And yet the boy was only lulled for the moment, and in his heart was more and more perplexed what his mother could mean.