"A great pity," said Mrs. Dennistoun, and then she changed the subject.
"I thought it required all sorts of examinations and things for a man to get into a public office now."
"So it does for the ordinary grades, which would be far, far too much routine for Phil. But they say a minister always has things in his power. There are still posts----"
"Sinecures, Elinor?"
"I did not mean exactly sinecures," she said, with an embarra.s.sed laugh, "though I think those must have been fine things; but posts where it is not merely routine, where a man may have a chance of acting for himself and distinguishing himself, perhaps. And to be in the service of the country is always better, safer, than that dreadful city. Don"t you think so?"
"I have never thought the city dreadful, Elinor. I have had many friends connected with the city."
"Ah, but not in those horrid companies, mamma. Do you know that company which we just escaped, which Phil saved my money out of, when it was all but invested--I believe that has ruined people right and left. He got out of it, fortunately, just before the smash; that is, of course, he never had very much to do with it, he was only on the Board."
"And where is your money now?"
"Oh, I can answer that question this time," said Elinor, gayly. "He had just time to get it into another company which pays--beautifully! The Jew is in it, too, and the whole lot of them. Oh! I beg your pardon, mamma. I tried hard to call her by her proper name, but when one never hears any other, one can"t help getting into it!"
"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 pa.s.s. 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 p.r.o.noun, 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 b.a.l.l.s."
"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 c.o.xcomb, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 p.r.o.nounce like this; but he did it in the interests of justice, and for Elinor"s sake and her mother"s said nothing of the circ.u.mstances 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?"