Something white actually lay on the sofa, a small garment which Mrs.
Dennistoun whisked away. They were conscious of John"s critical eye upon them, and received him with a warmth of conciliatory welcome which betrayed that consciousness. Mrs. Dennistoun drew a chair for him to the other side of the fire. She took her own place in the middle at the table with a large piece of white knitting, to which she gave her whole attention, and thus the deliberation began.
"Elinor wants to know, John, what you think we ought to do--to make quite sure--that there will be no risk, about the baby."
"I must know more of the details of the question before I can give any advice," said John.
"John," said Elinor, raising herself in her chair, "here are all the details that are necessary. I have come away. I have come home, finding that life was impossible there. That is the whole matter. It may be, probably it is, my own fault. It is simply that life became impossible.
You know you said that I was not one to endure, to put up with things. I scoffed at you then, for I did not expect to have anything to put up with; but you were quite right, and life had become impossible--that is all there is any need to say."
"To me, yes," said John, "but not enough, Elinor, if it ever has to come within the reach of the law."
"But why should it come within the reach of the law? You, John, you are a lawyer; you know the rights of everything. I thought you might have arranged it all. Couldn"t you try to make a kind of a bargain? What bargain? Oh, am I a lawyer, do I know? But you, John, who have it all at your fingers" ends, who know what can be done and what can"t be done, and the rights that one has and that another has! Dear John! if you were to try, don"t you think that you could settle it all, simply as between people who don"t want any exposure, any struggle, but only to be quiet and to be let alone?"
"Elinor, I don"t know what I could do with so little information as I have. To know that you found your life impossible is enough for me. But you know most people are right in their own eyes. If we have some one opposed to us who thinks, for instance, that the fault was yours?"
"Well," she cried, eagerly, "I am willing to accept that: say that the fault was mine! You could confirm it, that it was likely to be mine. You could tell them what an impatient person I was, and that you said I was not one to try an experiment, for I never, never could put up with anything. John, you could be a witness as well as an advocate. You could prove that you always expected--and that I am quite, quite willing to allow that it was I----"
"Elinor, if I could only make you understand what I mean! I am told that I am not to mention any names?"
"No, no names, no names! What is the good? We both know very well what we mean."
"But I don"t know very well what you mean. Don"t you see that if it is your fault--if the other party is innocent--there can be no reason in the world why he should consent to renounce his rights. It is not a mere matter of feeling. There is right in it one way or another--either on your side or else on the other side; and if it is on the other side, why should a man give up what belongs to him, why should he renounce what is--most dear to him?"
"Oh, John, John, John!" she made this appeal and outcry, clasping her hands together with a mixture of supplication and impatience. Then turning to her mother--"Oh, tell him," she cried, "tell him!"--always clasping those impatient yet beseeching hands.
"You see, John," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "Elinor knows that the right is on her side: but she will consent to say nothing about it to any one--to give herself out as the offender rather--that is to say, as an ill-disciplined person that cannot put up with anything, as you seem to have said."
John laughed with vexation, yet a kind of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I never said it nor thought it: still if it pleases her to think so---- The wiser thing if this separation is final----"
"If it is final!" Elinor cried. She raised herself up again in her chair, and contemplated the unfortunate John with a sort of tragic superiority. "Do you think that of me," she said, "that I would take such a step as this and that it should not be final? Is dying final?
Could one do such a thing as this and change?"
"Such things have been done," said John. "Elinor, forgive me. I must say it--it is all your life that is in the balance, and another life. There is this infant to be struggled over, perhaps rent in two by those who should have united to take care of him--and it"s a boy, I hear. There"s his name and his after-life to think of--a child without a father, perhaps the heir of a family to which he will not belong. Elinor--tell her, aunt, you understand: is it my wish to hand her back to--to---- No, I"ll speak no names. But you know I disliked it always, opposed it always.
It is not out of any favour to--to the other side. But she ought to take all these things into account. Her own position, and the position in the future of the child----"
Elinor had crushed her fan with her hands, and Mrs. Dennistoun let the knitting with which she had gone on in spite of all fall at last in her lap. There was a little pause. John Tatham"s voice itself had began to falter, or rather swelled in sound as when a stream swells in flood.
"I do not go into the question about women and what they ought to put up with," said John, resuming. "There"s many things that law can do nothing for--and nature in many ways makes it harder for women, I acknowledge.
We cannot change that. Think what her position will be--neither a wife nor with the freedom of a widow; and the boy, bearing the name of one he must almost be taught to think badly of--for one of them must be in the wrong----"
"He shall never, never hear that name; he shall know nothing, he shall be free of every bond; his mind shall never be cramped or twisted or troubled by any--man--if I live."
This Elinor said, lifting her pale face from her hands with eyes that flashed and shone with a blaze of excitement and weakness.
"There already," said John, "is a tremendous condition--if you live! Who can make sure that they will live? We must all die--some sooner, some later--and you wearing yourself out with excitement, that never were strong; you exposing your heart, the weakest organ----"
"John," said Mrs. Dennistoun, grasping him by the arm, "you are talking nonsense, you don"t know what you are saying. My darling! she was never weak nor had a feeble heart, nor--anything! She will live to bring up _his_ children, her baby"s children, upon her knees."
"And what would it matter?" said Elinor--looking at him with clear eyes, from which the tears had disappeared in the shock of this unlooked-for suggestion--"suppose I have no more strength than that, suppose I were to die? you shall be his guardian, John, bring him up a good man; and his Heavenly Father will take care of him. I am not afraid."
A man had better not deal with such subjects between two women. What with Mrs. Dennistoun"s indignant protest and Elinor"s lofty submission, John was at his wits" end. "I did not mean to carry things to such a bitter end as that," he said. "You want to force me into a corner and make me say things I never meant. The question is serious enough without that."
There was again a little pause, and then Elinor, with one of those changes which are so perplexing to sober-minded people, suddenly turned to him, holding out both her hands.
"John--we"ll leave that in G.o.d"s hands whatever is to happen to me. But in the meantime, while I am living--and perhaps my life depends upon being quiet and having a little peace and rest. It is not that I care very much for my life," said Elinor, with that clear, open-eyed look, like the sky after rain--"I am shipwrecked, John, as you say--but my mother does, and it"s of--some--consequence--to baby; and if it depends upon whether I am left alone, you are too good a friend to leave me in the lurch. And you said--one night--whatever happened I was to send for you."
John sprang up from his seat, dropping the hands which he had taken into his own. She was like Queen Katherine, "about to weep," and her breast strained with the sobbing effort to keep it down.
"For G.o.d"s sake," he cried, "don"t play upon our hearts like this! I will do anything--everything--whatever you choose to tell me. Aunt, don"t let her cry, don"t let her go on like that. Why, good heavens!" he cried, bursting himself into a kind of big sob, "won"t it be bad for that little brat of a baby or something if she keeps going on in this way?"
Thus John Tatham surrendered at discretion. What could he do more? A man cannot be played upon like an instrument without giving out sounds of which he will, perhaps, be ashamed. And this woman appealing to him--this girl--looking like the little Elinor he remembered, younger and softer in her weakness and trouble than she had been in her beauty and pride--was the creature after all, though she would never know it, whom he loved best in the world. He had wanted to save her, in the one worldly way of saving her, from open shipwreck, for her own sake, against every prejudice and prepossession of his mind. But if she would not have that, why it was his business to save her as she wished, to do for her whatever she wanted; to act as her agent, her champion, whatever she pleased.
He was sent away presently, and accepted his dismissal with thankfulness, to smoke his cigar. This is one amusing thing in a feminine household. A man is supposed to want all manner of little indulgences and not to be able to do without them. He is carefully left alone over "his wine"--the aforesaid gla.s.s of claret; and ways and means are provided for him to smoke his cigar, whether he wishes it or not. He had often laughed at these regulations of his careful relatives, but he was rather glad of them to-night. "I am going to get Elinor to bed," said Mrs. Dennistoun.
"It has, perhaps, been a little too much for her: but when you have finished your cigar, John, if you will come back to the drawing-room for a few minutes you will find me here."
John did not smoke any cigar. It is all very well to be soothed and consoled by tobacco in your own room, at your own ease: but when you are put into a lady"s dining-room, where everything is nice, and where the curtains will probably smell of smoke next morning: and when your mind is exercised beyond even the power of the body to keep still, that is not a time to enjoy such calm and composing delights. But he walked about the room in which he was shut up like a wild beast in his cage, sometimes with long strides from wall to wall, sometimes going round, with that abstract trick of his, staring at the pictures, as if he did not know every picture in the place by heart. He forgot that he was to go back to the drawing-room again after Elinor had been taken to bed, and it was only after having waited for him a long time that Mrs.
Dennistoun came, almost timidly, knocking at her own dining-room door, afraid to disturb her visitor in the evening rites which she believed in so devoutly. She did go in, however, and they stood together over the fire for a few minutes, he staring down upon the glow at his feet, she contemplating fitfully, unconsciously, her own pale face and his in the dim mirror on the mantelpiece. They talked in low tones about Elinor and her health, and her determination which nothing would change.
"Of course I will do it," said John; "anything--whatever she may require of me--there are no two words about that. There is only one thing: I will not compromise her by taking any initiative. Let us wait and see what they are going to do----"
"But, John, might it not be better to disarm him by making overtures?
anything, I would do anything if he would but let her remain unmolested--and the baby."
"Do you mean money?" he said.
Mrs. Dennistoun gave him an abashed look, deprecatory and wistful, but did not make any reply.
"Phil Compton is a cad, and a brute, and a scamp of the first water,"
said John, glad of some way to get rid of his excitement; "but I do not think that even he would sell his wife and his child for money. I wouldn"t do him so much discredit as that."
"Oh, I beg your pardon, John," Mrs. Dennistoun said.
CHAPTER XXVI.
John left the Cottage next morning with the full conduct of the affairs of the family placed in his hands. The ladies were both a little doubtful if his plan was the best--they were still frightened for what might happen, and kept up a watch, as John perceived, fearing every step that approached, trembling at every shadow. They remembered many stories, such as rush to the minds of persons in trouble, of similar cases, of the machinations of the bad father whose only object was to overcome and break down his wife, and who stole his child away to let it languish and die. There are some circ.u.mstances in which people forget all the shades of character, and take it for granted that a man who can go wrong in one matter will act like a very demon in all. This was doubly strong in Mrs. Dennistoun, a woman full of toleration and experience; but the issues were so momentous to her, and the possible results so terrible, that she lost her accustomed good sense. It was more natural, perhaps, that Elinor, who was weak in health and still full of the arbitrariness of youth, should entertain this fear--without considering that Phil was the very last man in the world to burden himself with an infant of the most helpless age--which seemed to John an almost quite unreasonable one. Almost--for, of course, he too was compelled to allow, when driven into a corner, that there was nothing that an exasperated man might not do. Elinor had come down early to see her cousin before he left the house, bringing with her in her arms the little bundle of muslin and flannel upon the safety of which her very life seemed to depend. John looked at it, and at the small pink face and unconscious flickering hands that formed the small centre to all those wrappings, with a curious mixture of pity and repugnance. It was like any other blind new-born kitten or puppy, he thought, but not so amusing--no, it was not blind, to be sure. At one moment, without any warning, it suddenly opened a pair of eyes, which by a lively exercise of fancy might be supposed like Elinor"s, and seemed to look him in the face, which startled him very much, with a curious notification of the fact that the thing was not a kitten or a puppy. But then a little quiver came over the small countenance, and the attendant said it was "the wind." Perhaps the opening of the eyes was the wind too, or some other automatic effect. He would not hold out his finger to be clasped tight by the little flickering fist, as Elinor would have had him. He would none of those follies; he turned away from it not to allow himself to be moved by the effect, quite a meretricious one, of the baby in the young mother"s arms. That was all poetry, sentiment, the trick of the painter, who had found the combination beautiful. Such ideas belonged, indeed, to the conventional-sacred, and he had never felt any profane resistance of mind against the San Sisto picture or any of its kind.
But Phil Compton"s brat was a very different thing. What did it matter what became of it? If it were not for Elinor"s perverse feeling on the subject, and that perfectly imbecile prostration of her mother, a sensible woman who ought to have known better, before the little creature, he would himself have been rather grateful to Phil Compton for taking it away. But when he saw the look of terror upon Elinor"s face when an unexpected step came to the door, when he saw her turn and fly, wrapping the child in her arms, on her very heart as it seemed, bending over it, covering it so that it disappeared altogether in her embrace, John"s heart was a little touched. It was only a hawking tramp with pins and needles, who came by mistake to the hall door, but her panic and anguish of alarm were a spectacle which he could not get out of his eyes.
"You see, she never feels safe for a moment. It will be hard to persuade her that that man, though I"ve seen him about the roads for years, is not an emissary--or a spy--to find out if she is here."
"I am sure it is quite an unnecessary panic," said John. "In the first place, Phil Compton"s the last man to burden himself with a child; in the second, he"s not a brute nor a monster."
"You called him a brute last night, John."
"I did not mean in that way. I don"t mean to stand by any rash word that may be forced from me in a moment of irritation. Aunt, get her to give over that. She"ll torture herself to death for nothing. He"ll not try to take the child away--not just now, at all events, not while it is a mere---- Bring her to her senses on that point. You surely can do that?"