"I tell you," said Philip, raising his shoulders and stooping his head over the table, "granny, that there is nothing the matter with me."
And he took no part in the conversation as they went on talking, of any subjects but those that were most near their hearts. They had, indeed, no thoughts at all to spare but those that were occupied with the situation, and with this new feature in it, Pippo"s worn and troubled looks, yet had to talk of something, of nothing, while the meal went on, which was no meal at all for any of them. When it was over at last Pippo rose abruptly from the table.
"Are you going out?" Elinor said, alarmed, rising too. "Have you any engagement with the Marshalls for to-day?"
"I don"t know," Philip said; "Mr. Marshall was ill yesterday. I didn"t see them. I"m not going out. I am going to my room."
"You"ve got a headache, Pippo!"
"Nothing of the kind! I tell you there is nothing the matter with me.
I"m only going to my room."
Elinor put her hands on his arm. "Pippo, I have something to say to you before you go out. Will you promise to let me know before you go out? I don"t want to keep you back from anything, but I have something that I must say."
He did not ask with his usual interest what it was. He showed no curiosity; on the contrary, he drew his arm out of her hold almost rudely. "Of course," he said, "I will come in here before I go out. I have no intention of going out now."
And thus he left them, and went with a heavy step, oh, how different from Pippo"s flying foot: so that they could count every step, up-stairs.
"What is the matter, what is the matter, Elinor?"
"I know nothing," she said; "nothing! He was like himself yesterday morning, full of life. Unless he is ill, I cannot understand it. But, mother, I have to tell him--everything to-day."
"G.o.d grant it may not be too late, Elinor!" Mrs. Dennistoun said.
"Too late? How can it be too late? Yes; perhaps you are right, John and you. He ought to have known from the beginning; he ought to have been told when he was a child. I acknowledge that I was wrong; but it is no use," she said, wiping away some fiery tears, "to go back upon that now."
"John could not have told him anything?" Mrs. Dennistoun said, doubtfully.
"John! my best friend, who has always stood by me. Oh, never, never. How little you know him, mother! He has been imploring me every day, almost upon his knees, to tell Pippo everything; and I promised to do it as soon as the time was come. And then last night I was so glad to think that he was engaged with John, and I so worn out, not fit for anything.
And then this morning----"
"Then--this morning I arrived, just when I would have been better away!"
"Don"t say that, mother. It is always, always well you should be with your children. And, oh, if I had but taken your advice years and years ago!"
How easy it is to wish this when fate overtakes us, when the thing so long postponed, so long pushed away from us, has to be done at last!
There is, I fear, no repentance in it, only the intolerable sense that the painful act might have been over long ago, and the soul free now of a burden which is so terrible to bear.
Philip did not leave his room all the morning. His mother, overwhelmed now by the new anxiety about his health, which had no part in her thoughts before, went to his door and knocked several times, always with the intention of going in, of insisting upon the removal of all barriers, and of telling her story, the story which now was as fire in her veins and had to be told. But he had locked his door, and only answered from within that he was reading--getting up something that he had forgotten--and begged her to leave him undisturbed till lunch. Poor Elinor! Her story was, as I have said, like fire in her veins; but when the moment came, and a little more delay, an hour, a morning was possible, she accepted it like a boon from heaven, though she knew very well all the same that it was but prolonging the agony, and that to get it accomplished--to get it over--was the only thing to desire. She tried to arrange her thoughts, to think how she was to tell it, in the hurrying yet flying minutes when she sat alone, listening now and then to Philip"s movements over her head, for he was not still as a boy should be who was reading, but moved about his room, with a nervous restlessness that seemed almost equal to her own. Mrs. Dennistoun, to leave her daughter free for the conversation that ought to take place between Elinor and her son, had gone to lie down, and lay in Elinor"s room, next door to the boy, listening to every sound, and hoping, hoping that they would get it over before she went down-stairs again. She did not believe that Philip would stand out against his mother, whom he loved. Oh, if they could but get it over, that explanation--if the boy but knew! But it was apparent enough, when she came down to luncheon, where Elinor awaited her, pale and anxious, and where Philip followed, so unlike himself, that no explanation had yet taken place between them.
And the luncheon was as miserable a pretence at a meal as the breakfast had been--worse as a repet.i.tion, yet better in so far that poor Pippo, with his boyish wholesome appet.i.te, was by this time too hungry to be restrained even by the unusual burden of his unhappiness, and ate heartily, although he was bitterly ashamed of so doing: which perhaps made him a little better, and certainly did a great deal of good to the ladies, who thus were convinced that whatever the matter might be, he was not ill at least. He was about to return up-stairs after luncheon was over, but Elinor caught him by the arm: "You are not going to your room again, Pippo?"
"I--have not finished my reading," he said.
"I have a claim before your reading. I have a great deal to say to you, and I cannot put it off any longer. It must be said----"
"As you please, mother," he replied, with an air of endurance. And he opened the door for her and followed her up to the drawing-room, the three generations going one before the other, the anxious grandmother first, full of sympathy for both; the mother trembling in every limb, feeling the great crisis of her life before her; the boy with his heart seared, half bitter, half contemptuous of the explanation which he had forestalled, which came too late. Mrs. Dennistoun turned and kissed first one and then the other with quivering lips. "Oh, Pippo, be kind to your mother; she never will have such need of your kindness again in all your life." The boy could almost have struck her for this advice.
It raised a kind of savage pa.s.sion in him to be told to be kind to his mother--kind to her, when he had held her above all beings on the earth, and prided himself all his life upon his devotion to her! What Mrs.
Dennistoun said to Elinor I cannot tell, but she clasped her hands and gave her an imploring look, which was almost as bitterly taken as her appeal to Philip. It besought her to tell everything, to hide nothing; and what was Elinor"s meaning but to tell everything, to lay bare her heart?
But once more at this moment an interruption--the most wonderful and unthought-of of all interruptions--came. I suppose it must have been announced by the usual summons at the street-door, and that in their agitation they had not heard it. But all that I know is, that when Mrs.
Dennistoun turned to leave the mother and son to their conversation, which was so full of fate, the door of the drawing-room opened almost upon her as she was about to go out, and with a little demonstration and pride, as of a name which it was a distinction even to be permitted to say, of a visitor whose arrival could not be but an honour and delightful surprise, the husband of the landlady--the man of the house, once a butler of the highest pretensions, now only condescending to serve his lodgers when the occasion was dignified--swept into the room, noiseless and solemn, holding open the door, and announced "Lord St.
Serf." Mrs. Dennistoun fell back as if she had met a ghost; and Elinor, too, drew back a step, becoming as pale as if she had been the ghost her mother saw. The gasp of the long breath they both drew made a sound in the room where the very air seemed to tingle; and young Philip, raising his head, saw, coming in, the man whom he had seen in court--the man who had gazed at him in the theatre, the man of the opera-gla.s.s. But was this then not the Philip Compton for whom Elinor Dennistoun had stood forth, and borne witness before all the world?
He came in and stood without a word, waiting for a moment till the servant was gone and the door closed; and then he advanced with a step, the very a.s.surance and quickness of which showed his hesitation and uncertainty. He did not hold out his hands--much less his arms--to her.
"Nell?" he said, as if he had been asking a question, "Nell?"
She seemed to open her lips to speak, but brought forth no sound; and then Mrs. Dennistoun came in with the grave voice of every day, "Will you sit down?"
He looked round at her, perceiving her for the first time. "Ah," he said, "mamma! how good that you are here. It is a little droll though, don"t you think, when a man comes into the bosom of his family after an absence of eighteen years, that the only thing that is said to him should be, "Will you sit down?" Better that, however, a great deal, than "Will you go away?""
He sat down as she invited him, with a short laugh. He was perfectly composed in manner. Looking round him with curious eyes, "Was this one of the places," he said, "Nell, that we stayed in in the old times?"
She answered "No" under her breath, her paleness suddenly giving way to a hot flush of feverish agitation. And then she took refuge in a vacant chair, unable to support herself, and he sat too, and the party looked--but for that agitation in Elinor"s face, which she could not master--as if the ladies were receiving and he paying a morning call.
The other two, however, did not sit down. Young Philip, confused and excited, went away to the second room, the little back drawing-room of the little London house, which can never be made to look anything but an anteroom--never a habitable place--and went to the window, and stood there as if he were looking out, though the window was of coloured gla.s.s, and there was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Dennistoun stood with her hand upon the back of a chair, her heart beating too, and yet the most collected of them all, waiting, with her eyes on Elinor, for a sign to know her will, whether she should go or stay. It was the visitor who was the first to speak.
"Let me beg you," he said, with a little impatience in his voice, "to sit down too. It is evident that Nell"s reception of me is not likely to be so warm as to make it unpleasant for a third party. There was a fourth party in the room a minute ago, if my eyes did not deceive me.
Ah!"--his glance went rapidly to where Philip"s tall boyish figure, with his back turned, was visible against the further window--"that"s all right," he said, "now I presume everybody"s here."
"Had we expected your visit," said Mrs. Dennistoun, faltering, after a moment, as Elinor did not speak, "we should have been--better prepared to receive you, Mr. Compton."
"That"s not spoken with your usual cleverness," he said, with a laugh.
"You used to be a great deal too clever for me, you and Nell too. But if she did not expect to see me, I don"t know what she thought I was made of--everything that is bad, I suppose: and yet you know I could have worried your life out of you if I had liked, Nell."
She turned to him for the first time, and, putting her hands together, said almost inaudibly, "I know--I know. I have thought of that, and I am not ungrateful."
"Grateful! Well, perhaps you have not much call for that, poor little woman. I don"t doubt I behaved like a brute, and you were quite right in doing what you did; but you"ve taken it out of me since, Nell, all the same."
Then there was again a silence, broken only by the labouring, which she could not quite conceal, of her breath.
"You wouldn"t believe me," he resumed after a moment, "if I were to set up a sentimental pose, like a sort of a disconsolate widower, eh, would you? Of course it was a position that was not without its advantages. I was not much made for a family man, and both in the way of expense and in--other ways, it suited me well enough. n.o.body could expect me to marry them or their daughters, don"t you see, when they knew I had a wife alive? So I was allowed my little amus.e.m.e.nts. You never went in for that kind of thing, Nell? Don"t snap me up. You know I told you I never was against a little flirtation. It makes a woman more tolerant, in my opinion, just to know how to amuse herself a little. But Nell was never one of that kind----"
"I hope not, indeed," said Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had turned, with indignation.
"I don"t see where the emphasis comes in. She was one that a man could be as sure of as of Westminster Abbey. The heart of her husband rests upon her--isn"t that what the fellow in the Bible says, or words to that effect? Nell was always a kind of a Bible to me. And you may say that in that case to think of her amusing herself! But you will allow she always did take everything too much _au grand serieux_. No? to be sure, you"ll allow nothing. But still that was the truth. However, I"ll allow something if you won"t. I"m past my first youth. Oh, you, not a bit of it! You"re just as fresh and as pretty, by George! as ever you were.
When I saw you stand up in that court yesterday looking as if--not a week had pa.s.sed since I saw you last, by Jove! Nell---- And how you were hating it, poor old girl, and had come out straining your poor little conscience, and saying what you didn"t want to say--for the sake of a worthless fellow like me----"
A sob came out of Elinor"s breast, and something half inaudible besides, like a name.
"I can tell you this," he said, turning to Mrs. Dennistoun again, "I couldn"t look at her. I"m an unlikely brute for that sort of thing, but if I had looked at her I should have cried. I daresay you don"t believe me. Never mind, but it"s true."
"I do believe you," said the mother, very low.
"Thank you," he said, with a laugh. "I have always said for a mother-in-law you were the least difficult to get on with I ever saw. Do you remember giving me that money to make ducks and drakes of? It was awfully silly of you. You didn"t deserve to be trusted with money to throw it away like that, but still I have not forgotten it. Well! I came to thank you for yesterday, Nell. And there are things, you know, that we must talk over. You never gave up your name. That was like your pluck. But you will have to change it now. It was indecent of me to have myself announced like that and poor old St. Serf not in his grave yet.
But I daresay you didn"t pay any attention. You are Lady St. Serf now, my dear. You don"t mind, I know, but it"s a change not without importance. Well, who is that fellow behind there, standing in the window? I think you ought to present him to me. Or I"ll present him to you instead. I saw him in the theatre, by Jove! with that fellow Tatham, that cousin John of yours that I never could bear, smirking and smiling at him as if it were _his_ son! but _I_ saw the boy then for the first time. Nell, I tell you there are some things in which you have taken it well out of me----"
"Mr. Compton," she said, labouring to speak. "Lord St. Serf. Oh, Phil, Phil!----"
"Ah," he said, with a start, "do you remember at last? the garden at that poky old cottage with all the flowers, and the days when you looked out for wild Phil Compton that all the world warned you against? And here I am an old fogey, without either wife or child, and Tatham taking my boy about and Nell never looking me in the face."