Mrs. Dennistoun was tall and slim, a woman with a presence, and sat with a sort of dignity on her side of the window, with a little table beside her covered with her little requirements, the properties, so to speak, without which she was never known to be--a book for moments when there was nothing else to interest her, a case for work should there arise any necessity for putting in a st.i.tch in time, a bottle of salts should she or any one else become suddenly faint, a paper cutter in cases of emergency, and finally, for mere ornament, two roses, a red and a white, in one of those tall old-fashioned gla.s.ses which are so pretty for flowers. I do wrong to dismiss the roses with such vulgar qualifications as white and red--the one was a _Souvenir de Malmaison_, the other a _General_ ---- something or other. If you spoke to Mrs. Dennistoun about her flowers she said, "Oh, the Malmaison," or "Oh, the General So-and-so." Rose was only the family name, but happily, as we all know, under the other appellation they smelt just as sweet. Mrs. Dennistoun kept up all this little state because she had been used to do so; because it was part of a lady"s accoutrements, so to speak. She had also a cushion, which was necessary, if not for comfort, yet for her sense of being fully equipped, placed behind her back when she sat down. But with all this she was not a formal or prim person. She was a woman who had not produced a great deal of effect in life; one of those who are not accustomed to have their advice taken, or to find that their opinion has much weight upon others. Perhaps it was because Elinor resembled her father that this peculiarity which had affected all Mrs. Dennistoun"s married life should have continued into a sphere where she ought to have been paramount. But she was with her daughter as she had been with her husband, a person of an ineffective character, taking refuge from the sensation of being unable to influence those about her whose wills were stronger than her own, by relinquishing authority, and in her most decided moments offering an opinion only, no more. This was not because she was really undecided, for on the contrary she knew her own mind well enough; but it had become a matter of habit with her to insist upon no opinion, knowing, as she did, how little chance she had of imposing her opinion upon the stronger wills about her. She had two other children older than Elinor: one, the eldest of all, married in India, a woman with many children of her own, practically altogether severed from the maternal nest; the other an adventurous son, who was generally understood to be at the ends of the earth, but seldom or never had any more definite address. This lady had naturally gone through many pangs and anxieties on behalf of these children, who had dropped away from her side into the unknown; but it belonged to her character to have said very little about this, so that she was generally supposed to take things very easily, and other mothers were apt to admire the composure of Mrs. Dennistoun, whose son might be being murdered by savages at any moment, for anything she knew--or minded, apparently. "Now it would have driven _me_ out of my senses!" the other ladies said. Mrs. Dennistoun perhaps did not feel the back so well fitted to the burden as appeared--but she kept her own sentiments on this subject entirely to herself.
(I may say too--but this, the young reader may skip without disadvantage--by way of explanation of a peculiarity which has lately been much remarked as characteristic of those records of human history contemptuously called fiction, _i.e._, the unimportance, or ill-report, or unjust disapproval of the mother in records of this description--that it is almost impossible to maintain her due rank and character in a piece of history, which has to be kept within certain limits--and where her daughter the heroine must have the first place. To lessen _her_ pre-eminence by dwelling at length upon the mother, unless that mother is a fool, or a termagant, or something thoroughly contrasting with the beauty and virtues of the daughter--would in most cases be a mistake in art. For one thing the necessary incidents are wanting, for I strongly object, and so I think do most people, to mothers who fall in love, or think of marriage, or any such vanity in their own person, and unless she is to interfere mischievously with the young lady"s prospects, or take more or less the part of the villain, how is she to be permitted any importance at all? For there cannot be two suns in one sphere, or two centres to one world. Thus the mother has to be sacrificed to the daughter: which is a parable; or else it is the other way, which is against all the principles and prepossessions of life.)
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."
"We know none of the particulars in that case," said Mrs. Dennistoun, calmly. "I have always thought it quite possible that the beggar maid was a princess of an old dynasty and King Cophetua a _parvenu_. But in your case, Elinor----"
"You know just as little," said the girl, impetuously.
"That is what I say. I don"t know the man who has possessed himself of my child"s fancy and heart. I want to know more about him. I want----"
"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?"
"Oh, I don"t know what I might do in that case, for it will never happen. You will never take that responsibility. For my part, if you locked me up in my room and kept me on bread and water I should think _that_ reasonable; but not this kind of letting I dare not wait upon I would, saying I am to exercise my own faculties, and then hesitating and finding fault."
"I daresay, my dear," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with great tolerance, "that this may be provoking to your impatient mind: but you must put yourself in my place a little, as I try to put myself in yours. I have never seen Mr. Compton. It is probable, or at least quite possible, that if I knew him I might look upon him with your eyes----"
"Probable! Possible! What words to use! when all my happiness, all my life, everything I care for is in it: and my own mother thinks it just possible that she might be able to tolerate the man that--the man who----"
She flung herself down on her seat again, panting and excited. "Did you wear out Adelaide like that," she cried, "before she married, papa and you----"
"Adelaide was very different, Elinor. She married _salon les regles_ a man whom we all knew. There was no trouble about it. Your father was the one who was impatient then. He thought it too well arranged, too commonplace and satisfactory. You may believe he did not object to that in words, but he laughed at them and it worried him. It has done very well on the whole," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a faint sigh.
"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 (and, in fact, I know very little), 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 (which mamma generally is) 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." (The dis-Honourable Phil!
Good heavens! to think it was a man branded with such a name that was to marry Elinor! For a moment he was silenced by the thought, as if some one had given him a blow.)
"To clear himself!" said Elinor. "And do you think I will permit him to be asked to clear himself? Do you think I will allow him to believe for a moment that _I_ believed anything against him? Do you think I will take the word of a spiteful old woman?"
"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."