Read Ebook: The Marriage of Elinor by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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Ebook has 1870 lines and 167107 words, and 38 pages

"Yes, I like it more than anything," said John, "but the evening is not so very fine. The wind is high, and I shouldn't wonder if we had rain."

"The wind is always high here," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "We don't have our view for nothing; but the sky is quite clear in the west, and all the clouds blowing away. I don't think we shall have more than a shower."

Elinor stood listening to this talk with restrained impatience, as if waiting for the moment when they should come to something worth talking about. Then she gave herself a sort of shake--half weary, half indignant--and left the room. There was a moment's silence, until her quick step was heard going to the other end of the house and up-stairs, and the shutting of a door.

"Oh, John, I am very uneasy, very uneasy," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "I scarcely thought she would have begun to you about it at once; but then I am doing the very same. We can't think of anything else. I am not going to worry you before dinner, for you must be tired with your walk, and want to refresh yourself before we enter upon that weary, weary business. But my heart misgives me dreadfully about it all. If I only had gone with her! It was not for want of an invitation, but just my laziness. I could not be troubled to leave my own house."

"I don't see what difference it would have made had you been with her, aunt."

"Oh, I should have seen the man: and been able to judge what he was and his motive, John."

"Elinor is not rich. He could scarcely have had an interested motive."

The dusk, was now pervading all the house--that summer dusk which there is a natural prejudice everywhere against cutting short by lights. He could not see her face, nor she his, as they went out of the drawing-room together and along the long passage, which led by several arched doorways to the stairs. John had a room on the ground floor which was kept for gentlemen visitors, and in which the candles were twinkling on the dressing-table. He was more than ever thankful as he caught a glimpse of himself in the vague reflected world of the mirror, with its lights standing up reflected too, like inquisitors spying upon him, that there had not been light enough to show how he was looking: for though he was both a lawyer and a man of the world, John Tatham had not been able to keep the trouble which his interview with Elinor had caused him out of his face.

Elinor did not sit up like her mother. She had flung herself upon the opposite sofa, with her arms flung behind her head, supporting it with her fingers half buried in the twists of her hair. She was not tall like Mrs. Dennistoun, and there was far more vivid colour than had ever been the mother's in her brown eyes and bright complexion, which was milk-white and rose-red after an old-fashioned rule of colour, too crude perhaps for modern artistic taste. Sometimes these delightful tints go with a placid soul which never varies, but in Elinor's case there was a demon in the hazel of the eyes, not dark enough for placidity, all fire at the best of times, and ready in a moment to burst into flame. She it was who had to be in the forefront of the interest, and not her mother, though for metaphysical, or what I suppose should now be called psychological interests, the elder lady was probably the most interesting of the two. Elinor beat her foot upon the carpet, out of sheer impatience, while John lingered alone in the dining-room. What did he stay there for? When there are several men together, and they drink wine, the thing is comprehensible; but one man alone who takes his claret with his dinner, and cares for nothing more, why should he stay behind when there was so much to say to him, and not one minute too much time till Monday morning, should the house be given up to talk not only by day but by night? But it was no use beating one's foot, for John did not come.

"You spoke to your cousin, Elinor, before dinner?" her mother said.

"Oh, yes, I spoke to him before dinner. What did he come here for but that? I sent for him on purpose, you know, mamma, to hear what he would say."

"And what did he say?"

This most natural question produced a small convulsion once more on Elinor's side. She loosed the hands that had been supporting her head and flung them out in front of her. "Oh, mamma, how can you be so exasperating! What did he say? What was he likely to say? If the beggar maid that married King Cophetua had a family it would have been exactly the same thing--though in that case surely the advantage was all on the gentleman's side."

"You know just as little," said the girl, impetuously.

"For goodness' sake, whatever you want, don't be sentimental, mamma!"

"Was I sentimental? I didn't mean it. He has got your heart, my dear, whatever words may be used."

"Yes--and for ever!" said the girl, turning round upon herself. "I know you think I don't know my own mind; but there will never be any change in me. Oh, what does John mean, sitting all by himself in that stuffy room? He has had time to smoke a hundred cigarettes!"

"Elinor, you must not forget it is rather hard upon John to be brought down to settle your difficulties for you. What do you want with him? Only that he should advise you to do what you have settled upon doing. If he took the other side, how much attention would you give him? You must be reasonable, my dear."

"I would give him every attention," said Elinor, "if he said what was reasonable. You don't think mere blind opposition is reasonable, I hope, mamma. To say Don't, merely, without saying why, what reason is there in that?"

"My dear, when you argue I am lost. I am not clever at making out my ground. Mine is not mere blind opposition, or indeed opposition at all. You have been always trained to use your own faculties, and I have never made any stand against you."

"Why not? why not?" said the girl, springing to her feet. "That is just the dreadful, dreadful part of it! Why don't you say straight out what I am to do and keep to it, and not tell me I must make use of my own faculties? When I do, you put on a face and object. Either don't object, or tell me point-blank what I am to do."

"Do you think for one moment if I did, you would obey me, Elinor?"

"You say that--and then you sigh. There is always a little reserve. You are never wholly satisfied."

"One seldom is in this world," said Mrs. Dennistoun, this time with a soft laugh. "This world is not very satisfactory. One makes the best one can of it."

"And that is just what I hate to hear," said Elinor, "what I have always heard. Oh, yes, when you don't say it you mean it, mamma. One can read it in the turn of your head. You put up with things. You think perhaps they might have been worse. In every way that's your philosophy. And it's killing, killing to all life! I would rather far you said out, 'Adelaide's husband is a prig and I hate him.'"

"There is only one drawback, that it would not be true. I don't in the least hate him. I am glad I was not called upon to marry him myself, I don't think I should have liked it. But he makes Adelaide a very good husband, and she is quite happy with him--as far as I know."

"The same thing again--never more. I wonder, I wonder after I have been married a dozen years what you will say of me?"

"I wonder, too: if we could but know that it would solve the question," the mother said. Elinor looked at her with a provoked and impatient air, which softened off after a moment--partly because she heard the door of the dining-room open--into a smile.

"I try you in every way," she said, half laughing. "I do everything to beguile you into a pleasanter speech. I thought you must at least have said then that you hoped you would have nothing to say but happiness. No! you are not to be caught, however one tries, mamma."

John came in at this moment, not without a whiff about him of the cigarette over which he had lingered so. It relieved him to see the two ladies seated opposite each other in the bow window, and to hear something like a laugh in the air. Perhaps they were discussing other things, and not this momentous marriage question, in which certainly no laughter was.

"You have your usual fire," he said, "but the wind has quite gone down, and I am sure it is not wanted to-night."

"It looks cheerful always, John."

"Which is the reason, I suppose, why you carefully place yourself out of sight of it--one of the prejudices of English life."

And then he came forward into the recess of the window, which was partly separated from the room by a table with flowers on it, and a great bush in a pot, of delicate maiden-hair fern. It was perhaps significant, though he did not mean it for any demonstration of partisanship, that he sat down on Elinor's side. Both the ladies felt it so instinctively, although, on the contrary, had the truth been known, all John's real agreement was with the mother; but in such a conjuncture it is not truth but personal sympathy that carries the day. "You are almost in the dark here," he said.

"Neither of us is doing anything. One is lazy on a summer night."

"There is a great deal more in it than that," said Elinor, in a voice which faltered a little. "You talk about summer nights, and the weather, and all manner of indifferent things, but you know all the time there is but one real subject to talk of, and that we are all thinking of that."

"That is my line, aunt," said John. "Elinor is right. We might sit and make conversation, but of course this is the only subject we are thinking of. It's very kind of you to take me into the consultation. Of course I am in a kind of way the nearest in relation, and the only man in the family--except my father--and I know a little about law, and all that. Now let me hear formally, as if I knew nothing about it , what the question is. Elinor has met someone who--who has proposed to her--not to put too fine a point upon it," said John, with a smile that was somewhat ghastly--"and she has accepted him. Congratulations are understood, but here there arises a hitch."

"There arises no hitch. Mamma is dissatisfied chiefly because she does not know Mr. Compton; and some wretched old woman, who doesn't know him either, has written to her--to her and also to me--telling us a pack of lies," said Elinor, indignantly, "to which I do not give the least credence for a moment--not for a moment!"

"That's all very well for you," said John, "it's quite simple; but for us, Elinor--that is, for your mother and me, as you are good enough to allow me to have a say in the matter--it's not so simple. We feel, you know, that, like Caesar's wife, our Elinor's--husband"--he could not help making a grimace as he said that word, but no one saw or suspected it--"should be above suspicion."

"That is exactly what I feel, John."

"Well, we must do something about it, don't you see? Probably it will be as easy as possible for him to clear himself."

"Old women are not always spiteful, and they are sometimes right." John put out his hand to prevent Mrs. Dennistoun from speaking, which, indeed, she had no intention of doing. "I don't mean so, of course, in Mr. Compton's case--and I don't know what has been said."

"Things that are very uncomfortable--very inconsistent with a happy life and a comfortable establishment," said Mrs. Dennistoun.

"Oh, if you could only hear yourself, mamma! You are not generally a Philistine, I must say that for you; but if you only heard the tone in which you said 'comfortable establishment!' the most conventional match-making in existence could not have done it better; and as for what has been said, there has nothing been said but what is said about everybody--what, probably, would be said of you yourself, John, for you play whist sometimes, I hear, and often billiards, at the club."

A half-audible "God forbid!" had come from John's lips when she said, "What would probably be said of yourself"--audible that is to Elinor, not to the mother. She sprang up as this murmur came to her ear: "Oh, if you are going to prejudge the case, there is nothing for me to say!"

"I should be very sorry to prejudge the case, or to judge it all," said John. "I am too closely interested to be judicial. Let somebody who knows nothing about it be your judge. Let the accusations be submitted--to your Rector, say; he's a sensible man enough, and knows the world. He won't be scared by a rubber at the club, or that sort of thing. Let him inquire, and then your mind will be at rest."

"There is only one difficulty, John," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "Mr. Hudson would be the best man in the world, only for one thing--that it is from his sister and his wife that the warning came."

"Oh!" said John. This fact seemed to take him aback in the most ludicrous way. He sat and gazed at them, and had not another word to say. Perhaps the fact that he himself who suggested the inquiry was still better informed of the true state of the case, and of the truth of the accusation, than were those to whom he might have submitted it, gave him a sense of the hopelessness and also absurdity of the attempt more than anything else could have done.

"And that proves, if there was nothing else," said Elinor, "how false it is: for how could Mrs. Hudson and Mary Dale know? They are not fashionable people, they are not in society. How could they or any one like them know anything of Phil"--she stopped quickly, drew herself up, and added--"of Mr. Compton, I mean?"

"They might not know, but they might state their authority," Mrs. Dennistoun said; "and if the Rector cannot be used to help us, surely, John, you are a man of the world, you are not like a woman, unacquainted with evidence. Why should not you do it, though you are, as you kindly say, an interested party?"

"He shall not do it. I forbid him to do it. If he takes in hand anything of the kind he must say good-by to me."

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