The Marriage of Elinor

"I hope," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "that Philip was not much mixed up with this company if other people have been ruined, and he has escaped?"

"How could that be?" said Elinor, with a sort of tremulous dignity. "You don't suppose for a moment that he – . But of course you don't," she added with a heightened colour and a momentary cloud over her eyes, "of course you don't. There was a dreadful manager who destroyed the books and then fled, so that there never could be a right winding up of the affairs."

"I hope Philip will take great care never to have to do with anything of the kind again."

"Oh, no, he has promised me he will not. I will not have it. He has a kind of ornamental directorship on this new company, just for the sake of his name: but he has promised me he will have nothing more to do with it for my peace of mind."

"I wonder that they should care in the city for so small a matter as a peer's younger son."

"Oh, do you think it a small matter, mamma? I don't mean that I care, but people give a good deal of weight to it, you know."

"I meant only in the city, Elinor."

"Oh!" Elinor said. She was half offended with her mother's indifference. She had found that to be the Hon. Mrs. Compton was something, or so at least she supposed: and she began timidly to give her mother a list of her engagements, which were indeed many in number, and there were some dazzling names among a great many with which Mrs. Dennistoun was unacquainted. But how could she know who were the fashionable people nowadays, a woman living so completely out of the world?

John Tatham, for his part, went through his engagements that year with a constant expectation of seeing Elinor, which preoccupied him more than a rising young barrister going everywhere ought to have been preoccupied. He thought he went everywhere, and so did his family at home, especially his sister, Mary Tatham, who was his father's nurse and attendant, and never had any chance of sharing these delights. She made all the more, as was natural, of John's privileges and social success from the fact of her own seclusion, and was in the habit of saying that she believed there was scarcely a party in London to which John was not invited – three or four in a night. But it would seem with all this that there were many parties to which he was not invited, for the Phil Comptons (how strange and on the whole disgusting to think that this now meant Elinor!) also went everywhere, and yet they very seldom met. It was true that John could not expect to meet them at dinner at a Judge's or in the legal society in high places which was his especial sphere, and nothing could be more foolish than the tremor of expectation with which this very steady-going man would set out to every house in which the fashionable world met with the professional, always thinking that perhaps – But it was rarely, very rarely, that this perhaps came to pass. When it did it was amid the crowd of some prodigious reception to which people "looked in" for half an hour, and where on one occasion he found Elinor alone, with that curious dignity about her, a little tragical, which comes of neglect. He agreed with her mother, that he had never imagined Elinor's youthful prettiness could have come to anything so near beauty. There was a strained, wide open look in her eyes, which was half done by looking out for some one, and half by defying any one to think that she felt herself alone, or was pursuing that search with any anxiety. She stood exceedingly erect, silent, observing everything, yet endeavouring to appear as if she did not observe, altogether a singular and very striking figure among the fashionable crowd, in which it seemed everybody was chattering, smiling, gay or making believe to be gay, except herself. When she saw John a sudden gleam of pleasure, followed by a cloud of embarrassment, came over her face: but poor Elinor could not help being glad to see some one she knew, some one who more or less belonged to her; although it appeared she had the best of reasons for being alone. "I was to meet Phil here," she said, "but somehow I must have missed him." "Let us walk about a little, and we'll be sure to find him," said John. She was so glad to take his arm, almost to cling to him, to find herself with a friend. "I don't know many people here," she confided to John, leaning on his arm, with the familiar sisterly dependence of old, "and I am so stupid about coming out by myself. It is because I have never been used to it. There has always been mamma, and then Phil; but I suppose he has been detained somewhere to-night. I think I never felt so lost before, among all these strange people. He knows everybody, of course."

"But you have a lot of friends, Elinor."

"Oh, yes," she said, brightly enough; "in our own set: but this is what Phil calls more serious than our set. I should not wonder in the least if he had shirked it at the last, knowing I would be sure to come."

"That is just the reason why I should have thought he would not shirk it," said John.

"Ah, that's because you're not married," said Elinor, but with a laugh in which there was no bitterness. "Don't you know one good of a wife is to do the man's social duties for him, to appear at the dull places and save his credit? Oh, I don't object at all; it is quite a legitimate division of labour. I shall get into it in time: but I am so stupid about coming into a room alone, and instead of looking about to see what people I really do know, I just stiffen into a sort of shell. I should never have known you if you had not come up to me, John."

"You see I was looking out for you, and you were not looking out for me, that makes all the difference."

"You were looking out for us!"

"Ever since the season began I have been looking out for you, everywhere," said John, with a rather fierce emphasis on the pronoun, which, however, as everybody knows, is plural, and means two as much as one, though it was the reverse of this that John Tatham meant to show.

"Ah!" said Elinor. "But then I am afraid our set is different, John. There will always be some places – like this, for instance – where I hope we shall meet; but our set perhaps is a little frivolous, and your set a little – serious, don't you see? You are professional and political, and all that; and Phil is – well, I don't know exactly what Phil is – more fashionable and frivolous, as I said. A race-going, ball-going, always in motion set."

"Most people," said John, "go more or less to races and balls."

"More or less, that makes the whole difference. We go to them all. Now you see the distinction, John. You go to Ascot perhaps on the cup day; we go all the days and all the other days, at the other places."

"How knowing you have become!"

"Haven't I?" she said, with a smile that was half a sigh.

"But I shouldn't have thought that would have suited you, Elinor."

"Oh, yes, it does," she said, and then she eyed him with something of the defiance that had been in her look when she was standing alone. She did not avoid his look as a less brave woman might have done. "I like the fun of it," she said.

And then there was a pause, for he did not know what to reply.

"We have been through all the rooms," she said at last, "and we have not seen a ghost of Phil. He cannot be coming now. What o'clock is it? Oh, just the time he will be due at – I'm sure he can't come now. Do you think you could get my carriage for me? It's only a brougham that we hire," she said, with a smile, "but the man is such a nice, kind man. If he had been an old family coachman he couldn't take more care of me."

"That looks as if he had to take care of you often, Elinor."

"Well," she said, looking him full in the face again, "you don't suppose my husband goes out with me in the morning shopping? I hope he has something better to do."

"Shouldn't you like to have your mother with you for the shopping, etc.?"

"Ah, dearly!" then with a little quick change of manner, "another time – not this season, but next, if I can persuade her to come; for next year I hope we shall be more settled, perhaps in a house of our own, if Phil gets the appointment he is after."

"Oh, he is after an appointment?"

"Yes, John; Phil is not so lucky as to have a profession like you."

This was a new way of looking at the matter, and John Tatham found nothing to say. It seemed to him, who had worked very hard for it, a little droll to describe his possession of a profession as luck. But he made no remark. He took Elinor down-stairs and found her brougham for her, and the kind old coachman on the box, who was well used to taking care of her, though only hired from the livery stables for the season – John thought the old man looked suspiciously at him, and would have stopped him from accompanying her, had he designed any such proceeding. Poor little Nelly, to be watched over by the paternal fly-man on the box! she who might have had – but he stopped himself there, though his heart felt as heavy as a stone to see her go away thus, alone from the smart party where she had been doing duty for her husband. John could not take upon himself to finish his sentence – she who might have had love and care of a very different kind. No, he had never offered her that love and care. Had Phil Compton never come in her way it is possible that John Tatham might never have offered it to her – not, at least, for a long time. He could never have had any right to be a dog in the manger, neither would he venture to pretend now that it was her own fault if she had chosen the wrong man; was it his fault then, who had never put a better man within her choice? but John, who was no coxcomb, blushed in the dark to himself as this question flitted through his mind. He had no reason to suppose that Elinor would have been willing to change the brotherly tie between them into any other. Thank heaven for that brotherly tie! He would always be able to befriend her, to stand by her, to help her as much as any one could help a woman who was married, and thus outside of all ordinary succour. And as for that blackguard, that dis-Honourable Phil – But here John, who was a man of just mind, paused again. For a man to let his wife go to a party by herself was not after all so dreadful a thing. Many men did so, and the women did not complain; to be sure they were generally older, more accustomed to manage for themselves than Elinor: but still, a man need not be a blackguard because he did that. So John stopped his own ready judgment, but still I am afraid in his heart pronounced Phil Compton's sentence all the same. He did not say a word about this encounter to Mrs. Dennistoun; at least, he did tell her that he had met Elinor at the So-and-So's, which, as it was one of the best houses in London, was pleasing to a mother to hear.

"And how was she looking?" Mrs. Dennistoun cried.

"She was looking – beautiful – " said John. "I don't flatter, and I never thought her so in the old times – but it is the only word I can use – "

"Didn't I tell you so?" said the mother, pleased. "She is quite embellished and improved – therefore she must be happy."

"It is certainly the very best evidence – "

"Isn't it? But it so often happens otherwise, even in happy marriages. A girl feels strange, awkward, out of it, in her new life. Elinor must have entirely accustomed herself, adapted herself to it, and to them, or she would not look so well. That is the greatest comfort I can have."

And John kept his own counsel about Elinor's majestic solitude and the watchful old coachman in the hired brougham. Her husband might still be full of love and tenderness all the same. It was a great effort of the natural integrity of his character to pronounce like this; but he did it in the interests of justice, and for Elinor's sake and her mother's said nothing of the circumstances at all.

It may be supposed that when Elinor paid the last of her sudden visits at the cottage it was a heavy moment both for mother and daughter. It was the time when fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood – and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than one's self about one's dress?"

"He wants you to do him credit, Elinor."

"Well, mamma, there is no harm in that. But more than that – he wants me to look nice, for myself. He thinks me still a little shy – though I never was shy, was I? – and he thinks nothing gives you courage like feeling yourself well dressed – but he takes the greatest interest in everything I wear."

"And where do you go after Goodwood, Elinor?"

"Oh, mamma, on such a round of visits! – here and there and everywhere. I don't know," and the tears sprang into Elinor's eyes, "when I may see you again."

"You are not coming back to London," said the mother, with the heart sinking in her breast.

"Not now – they all say London is insupportable – it is one of the things that everybody says, and I believe that Phil will not set foot in it again for many months. Perhaps I might get a moment, when he is shooting, or something, to run back to you; but it is a long way from Scotland – and he must be there, you know, for the 12th. He would think the world was coming to an end if he did not get a shot at the grouse on that day."

"But I thought he was looking for an appointment, Elinor?"

A cloud passed over Elinor's face. "The season is over," she said, "and all the opportunities are exhausted – and we don't speak of that any more."

She gave her mother a very close hug at the railway, and sat with her head partly out of the window watching her as she stood on the platform, until the train turned round the corner. No relief on her dear face now, but an anxious strain in her eyes to see her mother as long as possible. Mrs. Dennistoun, as she walked again slowly up the hills that the pony might not suffer, said to herself, with a chill at her heart, that she would rather have seen her child sinking back in the corner, pleased that it was over, as on the first day.

CHAPTER XIX

The next winter was more dreary still and solitary than the first at Windyhill. The first had been, though it looked so long and dreary as it passed, full of hope of the coming summer, which must, it seemed, bring Elinor back. But now Mrs. Dennistoun knew exactly what Elinor's coming back meant, and the prospect was less cheering. Three days in the whole long season – three little escapades, giving so very little hope of more sustained intercourse to come. Mrs. Dennistoun, going over all the circumstances – she had so little else to do but to go over them in her long solitary evenings – came to the conclusion that whatever might happen, she herself would go to town when summer came again. She amused herself with thinking how she would find a little house – quite a small house, as there are so many – in a good situation, where even the most fashionable need not be ashamed to come, and where there would be room enough for Elinor and her husband if they chose to establish themselves there. Mrs. Dennistoun was of opinion, already expressed, that if mothers-in-law are obnoxious to men, sons-in-law are very frequently so to women, which is a point of view not popularly perceived. And Philip Compton was not sympathetic to her in any point of view. But still she made up her mind to endure him, and even his family, for the sake of Elinor. She planned it all out – it gave a little occupation to the vacant time – how they should have their separate rooms and even meals if that turned out most convenient; how she would interfere with none of their ways: only to have her Elinor under her roof, to have her when the husband was occupied – in the evenings, if there were any evenings that she spent alone; in the mornings, when perhaps Phil got up late, or had engagements of his own; for the moment's freedom when her child should be free. She made up her mind that she would ask no questions, would never interfere with any of their habits, or oppose or put herself between them – only just to have a little of Elinor every day.

"For it will not be the same thing this year," she said to John, apologetically. "They have quite settled down into each other's ways. Philip must see I have no intention of interfering. For the most obdurate opponent of mothers-in-law could not think – could he, John? – that I had any desire to put myself between them, or make myself troublesome now."

"There is no telling," said John, "what such asses might think."

"But Philip is not an ass; and don't you think I have behaved very well, and may give myself this indulgence the second year?"

"I certainly think you will be quite right to come to town: but I should not have them to live with you, if I were you."

"Shouldn't you? It might be a risk: but then I shouldn't do it unless there was room enough to leave them quite free. The thing I am afraid of is that they wouldn't accept."

"Oh, Phil Compton will accept," said John, hurriedly.

"Why are you so sure? I think often you know more about him than you ever say."

"I don't know much about him, but I know that a man of uncertain income and not very delicate feelings is generally glad enough to have the expenses of the season taken off him: and even get all the more pleasure out of it when he has his living free."

"That's not a very elevated view to take of the transaction, John."

"My dear aunt, I did not think you expected anything very elevated from the Comptons. They are not the sort of family from which one expects – "

"And yet it is the family that my Elinor belongs to: she is a Compton."

"I did not think of that," said John, a little disconcerted. Then he added, "There is no very elevated standard in such matters. Want of money has no law: and of course there are better things involved, for he might be very glad that Elinor should have her mother to go out with her, to stand by when – a man might have other engagements."

Mrs. Dennistoun looked at him closely and shook her head. She was not very much reassured by this view of the case. "At all events I shall try it," she said.

Quite early in the year, when she was expecting no such pleasure, she was rewarded for her patience by another flying visit from her child, who this time telegraphed to say she was coming, so that her mother could go and meet her at the station, and thus lose no moment of her visit. Elinor, however, was not in good spirits on this occasion, nor was she in good looks. She told her mother hurriedly that Phil had come up upon business; that he was very much engaged with the new company, getting far more into it than satisfied her. "I am terrified that another catastrophe may come, and that he might share the blame if things were to go wrong" – which was by no means a good preface for the mission with which it afterwards appeared Elinor herself was charged.

"Phil told me to say to you, mamma, that if you were not satisfied with any of your investments, he could help you to a good six or seven per cent. – "

She said this with her head turned away, gazing out of the window, contemplating the wintry aspect of the combe with a countenance as cloudy and as little cheerful as itself.

There was an outcry on Mrs. Dennistoun's lips, but fortunately her sympathy with her child was so strong that she felt Elinor's sentiments almost more forcibly than her own, and she managed to answer in a quiet, untroubled voice.

"Philip is very kind, my dear: but you know my investments are all settled for me and I have no will of my own. I get less interest, but then I have less responsibility. Don't you know I belong to the time in which women were not supposed to be good for anything, and consequently I am in the hands of my trustees."

"I think he foresaw that, mother," said Elinor, still with her head averted and her eyes far away; "but he thought you might represent to the trustees that not only would it give you more money, but it would be better in the end for me. Oh, how I hate to have to say this to you, mamma!"

How steadily Mrs. Dennistoun kept her countenance, though her daughter now flung herself upon her shoulder with uncontrollable tears!

"My darling, it is quite natural you should say it. You must tell Philip that I fear I am powerless. I will try, but I don't think anything will come of it. I have been glad to be free of responsibility, and I have never attempted to interfere."

"Mother, I am so thankful. I oughtn't to go against him, ought I? But I would not have you take his advice. It is so dreadful not to appear – "

"My dear, you must try to think that he understands better than you do: men generally do: you are only a girl, and they are trained more or less to business."

"Not Phil! not Phil!"

"Well, he must have some capacity for it, some understanding, or they would not want him on those boards; and you cannot have, Elinor, for you know nothing about it. To hear you speak of per cents. makes me laugh." It was a somewhat forlorn kind of laugh, yet the mother executed it finely: and by and by the subject dropped, and Elinor was turned to talk of other things – other things of which there was a great deal to say, and over which they cried and laughed together as nature bade.

In the same evening, the precious evening of which she did not like to waste a moment, Mrs. Dennistoun unfolded her plan for the season. "I feel that I know exactly the kind of house I want; it will probably be in some quiet insignificant place, a Chapel Street, or a Queen Street, or a Park Street somewhere, but in a good situation. You shall have the first floor all to yourself to receive your visitors, and if you think that Philip would prefer a separate table – "

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" cried Elinor, clinging to her, kissing passionately her mother's cheek, which was still as soft as a child's.

"It is not anything you have told me now that has put this into my head, my darling. I had made it all up in my own mind. Then, you know, when your husband is engaged with those business affairs – in the city – or with his own friends – you would have your mother to fall back upon, Elinor. I should have just the moments perdus, don't you see, when you were doing nothing else, when you were wanted for nothing else. I promise you, my darling, I should never be de trop, and would never interfere."

"Oh, mamma, mamma!" Elinor cried again as if words failed her; and so they did, for she said scarcely anything more, and evaded any answer. It went to her mother's heart, yet she made her usual excuses for it. Poor child, once so ready to decide, accepting or rejecting with the certainty that no opposition would be made to her will, but now afraid to commit herself, to say anything that her husband would not approve! Well! Mrs. Dennistoun said to herself, many a young wife is like that, and yet is happy enough. It depends so much on the man. Many a man adores his wife and is very good to her, and yet cannot bear that she should seem to settle anything without consulting his whim. And Philip Compton had never been what might be called an easy-going man. It was right of Elinor to give no answer till she knew what he would like. The dreadful thing was that she expressed no pleasure in her mother's proposal, scarcely looked as if she herself would like it, which was a thing which did give an unquestionable wound.

"Mamma," she said, as they were driving to the station, not in the pony carriage this time, but in the fly, for the weather was bad, "don't be vexed that I don't say more about your wonderful, your more than kind offer."

"Kind is scarcely a word to use, Elinor, between you and me."

"I know, I know, mamma – and I as good as refuse it, saying nothing. Oh, if I could tell you without telling you! I am so frightened – how can I say it? – that you should see things you would not approve!"

"My dear, I am of one generation and you are of another. I am an old woman, and your husband is a young man. But what does that matter? We can agree to differ. I will never thrust myself into his private affairs, and he – "

"Oh, mother, mother darling, it is not that," Elinor said. And she went away without any decision. But in a few days there came to Mrs. Dennistoun a letter from Philip himself, most nobly expressed, saying that Elinor had told him of her mother's kind offer, and that he hastened to accept it with the utmost gratitude and devotion. He had just been wondering, he wrote, how he was to muster all things necessary for Elinor, with the business engagements which were growing upon himself. Nobody could understand better than Nell's good mother how necessary it was that he should neglect no means of securing their position, and he had found that often he would have to leave his darling by herself: but this magnificent, this magnanimous offer on her part would make everything right. Need he say how gratefully he accepted it? Nell and he being on the spot would immediately begin looking out for the house, and when they had a list of three or four to look at he hoped she would come up to their rooms and select what she liked best. This response took away Mrs. Dennistoun's breath, for, to tell the truth, she had her own notions as to the house she wanted and as to the time to be spent in town, and would certainly have preferred to manage everything herself. But in this she had to yield, with thankfulness that in the main point she was to have her way.