The Marriage of Elinor Part 20

And then the solemnity was all over in a moment, and the flutter of voices and congratulations began.

I do not mean to follow the proceedings through all the routine of the wedding-day. Attempts were made on the part of the bridegroom's party to get Lady Mariamne dismissed by the next train, an endeavour into which Harry Compton threw himself--for he was always a good-hearted fellow--with his whole soul. But the Jew declared that she was dying of hunger, and whatever sort of place it was, must have something to eat; a remark which naturally endeared her still more to Mrs. Dennistoun, who was waiting by the door of Mr. Tatham's carriage, which that anxious old gentleman had managed to recover control of, till her ladyship had taken her place. Her ladyship stared with undisguised amazement when she was followed into the carriage by the bride's mother, and when the neat little old gentleman took his seat opposite. "But where is Algy? I want Algy," she cried, in dismay. "Absolutely I can't go without Algy, who came to take care of me."

"You will be perfectly safe, my dear lady, with Mrs. Dennistoun and me.

The gentlemen will walk," said Mr. Tatham, waving his hand to the coachman.

And thus it was that the forlorn lady found herself without her cavalier and without her pug, absolutely stranded among savages, notwithstanding her strong protest almost carried the length of tears. She was thus carried off in a state of consternation to the cottage over the rough road, where the wheels went with a din and lurch over the stones, and dug deep into the sand, eliciting a succession of little shrieks from her oppressed bosom. "I shall be shaken all to bits," she said, grasping the arm of the old gentleman to steady herself. Mr. Tatham was not displeased to be the champion of a lady of t.i.tle. He a.s.sured her in dulcet tones that his springs were very good and his horses very sure--"though it is not a very nice road."

"Oh, it is a dreadful road!" said Lady Mariamne.

But in due time they did arrive at the cottage, where her ladyship could not wait for the gathering of the company, but demanded at once something to eat. "I can't really go another moment without food. I must have something or I shall die. Phil, come here this instant and get me something. They have brought me off at the risk of my life, and there's n.o.body to attend to me. Don't stand spooning there," cried Lady Mariamne, "but do what I tell you. Do you think I should ever have put myself into this position but for you?"

"You would never have been asked here if they had consulted me. I knew what a nuisance you'd be. Here, get this lady something to eat, old man," said the bridegroom, tapping Mr. Tatham on the back, who did, indeed, look rather like a waiter from that point of view.

"I shall have to help myself," said the lady in despair. And she sat down at the elaborate table in the bride's place and began to hack at the chicken. The gentlemen coming in at the moment roared again with laughter over the Jew's impatience; but it was not regarded with the same admiration by the rest of the guests.

These little incidents, perhaps, helped to wile away the weary hours until it was time for the bridal pair to depart. Mrs. Dennistoun was so angry that it kept up a little fire, so to speak, in her heart when the light of her house was extinguished. Lady Mariamne, standing in the porch with a bag full of rice to throw, kept up the spirit of the mistress of the house, which otherwise might, perhaps, have failed her altogether at that inconceivable moment; for though she had been looking forward to it for months it was inconceivable when it came, as death is inconceivable. Elinor going away!--not on a visit, or to be back in a week, or a month, or a year--going away for ever! ending, as might be said, when she put her foot on the step of the carriage. Her mother stood by and looked on with that cruel conviction that overtakes all at the last. Up to this moment had it not seemed as if the course of affairs was unreal, as if something must happen to prevent it? Perhaps the world will end to-night, as the lover says in the "Last Ride." But now here was the end: nothing had happened, the world was swinging on in s.p.a.ce in its old careless way, and Elinor was going--going away for ever and ever. Oh, to come back, perhaps--there was nothing against that--but never the same Elinor. The mother stood looking, with her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. Those eyes were quite dry, and she stood firm and upright by the carriage door. She was not "breaking down"

or "giving way," as everybody feared. She was "bearing up," as everybody was relieved to see. And in a moment it was all over, and there was nothing before her eyes--no carriage, no Elinor. She was so dazed that she stood still, looking with that strange kind of smile for a full minute after there was nothing to smile at, only the vacant air and the prospect of the combe, coming in in a sickly haze which existed only in her eyes.

But, by good luck, there was Lady Mariamne behind, and the fire of indignation giving a red flicker upon the desolate hearth.

"I caught Phil on the nose," said that lady, in great triumph; "spoilt his beauty for him for to-day. But let's hope she won't mind. She thinks him beautiful, the little goose. Oh, my Puggy-wuggy, did that cruel Algy pull your little, dear tail, you darling? Come to oos own mammy, now those silly wedding people are away."

"Your little dog, I presume, is of a very rare sort," said Mr. Tatham, to be civil. He had proposed the bride and bridegroom's health in a most appropriate speech, and he felt that he had deserved well of his kind, which made him more amiable even than usual. "Your ladyship's little dog," he added, after a moment, as she did not take any notice, "I presume, is of a rare kind?"

Lady Mariamne gave him a look, or rather a stare. "Is Puggy of a rare sort?" she said over her shoulder, to one of the attendant tribe.

"Don't be such a duffer, Jew! You know as well as any one what breed he's of," Harry Compton said.

"Oh, I forgot," said the fine lady. She was standing full in front of the entrance, keeping Mrs. Dennistoun in the full sun outside. "I hope there's a train very soon," she said. "Did you look, Algy, as I told you? If it hadn't been that Phil would have killed me I should have gone now. It would have been such fun to have spied upon the turtle doves!"

The men thought it would have been rare fun with obedient delight, but that Phil would have cut up rough, and made a scene. At this Lady Mariamne held up her finger, and made a portentous face.

"Oh, you naughty, naughty boy," she cried, "telling tales out of school."

"Perhaps, my dear lady," said Mr. Tatham, quietly, "you would let Mrs.

Dennistoun pa.s.s."

"Oh!" said Lady Mariamne, and stared at him again for half a minute; then she turned and stared at the tall lady in grey satin. "Anybody can pa.s.s," she said: "I'm not so very big."

"That is quite true--quite true. There is plenty of room," said the little gentleman, holding out his hand to his cousin.

"My dear John," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "I am sure you will be kind enough to lend your carriage again to Lady Mariamne, who is in a hurry to get away. There is another train, which stops at Downforth station, in half an hour, and there will just be time to get there, if you will order it at once. I told your man to be in readiness: and it would be a thousand pities to lose this train, for there is not another for an hour."

"By Jove, Jew! there's a slap in the face for you," said, in an audible whisper, one of the train, who had been standing in front of all the friends, blocking out the view. As for Lady Mariamne, she stared more straight than ever into Mrs. Dennistoun's eyes, but for the moment did not seem to find anything to say. She was left in the hall with her band while the mistress of the house went into the drawing-room, followed by all the country ladies, who had not lost a word, and who were already whispering to each other over that terrible betrayal about the temper of Phil.

"Cut up rough! Oh! poor little Elinor, poor little Elinor!" the ladies said to each other under their breath.

"I am not at all surprised. It is not any news to me. You could see it in his eyes," said Miss Mary Dale. And then they all were silent to listen to the renewed laughter that came bursting from the hall. Mrs.

Hudson questioned her husband afterwards as to what it was that made everybody laugh, but the Rector had not much to say. "I really could not tell you, my dear," he said. "I don't remember anything that was said--but it seemed funny somehow, and as they all laughed one had to laugh too."

The great lady came in, however, dragged by her brother to say good-by.

"It has all gone off very well, I am sure, and Nell looked very nice, and did you great credit," she said, putting out her hand. "And it's very kind of you to take so much trouble to get us off by the first train."

"Oh, it is no trouble," Mrs. Dennistoun said.

"Shouldn't you like to say good-by to Puggy-muggy?" said Lady Mariamne, touching the little black nose upon her arm. "He enjoyed that _pate_ so much. He really never has _foie gras_ at home: but he doesn't at all mind if you would like to give him a little kiss just here."

"Good-by, Lady Mariamne," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with one of the curtseys of the old school. But there was another gust of laughter as Lady Mariamne was placed in the carriage, and a shrill little trumpet gave forth the satisfaction of the departing guest at having "got a rise out of the old girl." The gentlemen heaped themselves into Mr. Tatham's carriage, and swept off along with her, all but civil Harry, who waited to make their apologies, and to put up along with his own d.i.c.k Bolsover's "things." And thus the bridegroom's party, the new a.s.sociates of Elinor, the great family into which the Honourable Mrs. Phil Compton had been so lucky as to marry, to the great excitement of all the country round, departed and was seen no more. Harry, who was civil, walked home with the Hudsons when all was over, and said the best he could for the Jew and her friends. "You see, she has been regularly spoiled: and then when a girl's so dreadful shy, as often as not it sounds like impudence." "Dear me, I should never have thought Lady Mariamne was shy," the gentle Rector said. "That's just how it is," said Harry. He went over again in the darkening to take his leave of Mrs. Dennistoun.

He found her sitting out in the garden before the open door, looking down the misty walk. The light had gone out of the skies, but the usual cheerful lights had not yet appeared in the house, where the hum of a great occasion still reigned. The Tathams were at the Rectory, and Mrs.

Dennistoun was alone. Harry Compton had a good heart, and though he could not conceive the possibility of a woman not being glad to have married her daughter, the loneliness and darkness touched him a little in contrast with the gayety of the previous night. "You must think us a dreadful noisy lot," he said, "and as if my sister had no sense. But it's only the Jew's way. She's made like that--and at bottom she's not at all a bad sort."

"Are you going away?" was all the answer that Mrs. Dennistoun made.

"Oh, yes, and we shall be a good riddance," said Harry; "but please don't think any worse of us than you can help---- Phil--well, he's got a great deal of good in him--he has indeed, and she'll bring it all out."

It was very good of Harry Compton. He had a little choking in his throat as he walked back. "Blest if I ever thought of it in that light before,"

he said to himself.

But I doubt if what he said, however well meant, brought much comfort to Mrs. Dennistoun's heart.

CHAPTER XVII.

Thus Elinor Dennistoun disappeared from Windyhill and was no more seen.

There are many ways in which a marriage is almost like a death, especially when the marriage is that of an only child. The young go away, the old remain. There is all the dreary routine of the solitary life unbrightened by that companionship which is all the world to the one who is left behind. So little--only the happy going away into brighter scenes of one whose happiness was the whole thought of that dreary survivor at the chimney corner--and yet so much. And if that survivor is a woman she has to smile and tell her neighbours of the bride's happiness, and how great the comfort to herself that her Elinor's life is a.s.sured, and her own ending is now of no particular importance to her daughter; if it is a man, he is allowed to lament, which is a curious paradox, but one of the many current in this world.

Mrs. Dennistoun had to put a very brave face upon it all the more because of the known unsatisfactoriness of Elinor's husband: and she had to go on with her life, and sit down at her solitary meals, and invent lonely occupations for herself, and read and read, till her brains were often dazed by the multiplicity of the words, which lost their meaning as she turned over page by page. To sit alone in the house, without a sound audible, except perhaps the movement of the servants going up-stairs or down to minister to the wants, about which she felt she cared nothing whether they were ministered to or not, of their solitary mistress, where a little while ago there used to be the rhythm of the one quick step, the sound of the one gay voice which made the world a warm inhabited place to Mrs. Dennistoun--this was more dismal than words could say. To be sure, there were some extraordinary and delightful differences; there were the almost daily letters, which afforded the lonely mother all the pleasure that life could give; and there was always the prospect, or at least possibility and hope, of seeing her child again. Those two particulars, it need scarcely be said, make a difference which is practically infinite: but yet for Mrs. Dennistoun, sitting alone all the day and night, walking alone, reading alone, with little to do that was of the slightest consequence, not even the reading--for what did it matter to her dreary, lonely consciousness whether she kept afloat of general literature or improved her mind or not? this separation by marriage was dreadfully like the dreary separation by death, and in one respect it was almost worse; for death, if it reaches our very hearts, takes away at least the gnawing pangs of anxiety. He or she who is gone that way is well; never more can trouble touch them, their feet cannot err nor their hearts ache; while who can tell what troubles and miseries may be befalling, out there in the unknown, the child who has embarked upon the troubled sea of mortal life?

And it may be imagined with what anxious eyes those letters, which made all the difference, were read; how the gradually changing tone in them was noted as it came in, slowly but also surely. Sometimes they got to be very hurried, and then Mrs. Dennistoun saw as in a gla.s.s the impatient husband waiting, wondering what she could constantly find to say to her mother; sometimes they were long and detailed, and that meant, as would appear perhaps by a phrase slurred over in the postscript, that Phil had gone away somewhere. There was never a complaint in them, never a word that could be twisted into a complaint: but the anxious mother read between the lines innumerable things, not half of them true. There is perhaps never a half true of what anxiety may imagine: but then the half that is true!

John Tatham was very faithful to her during that winter. As soon as he came back from Switzerland, at the end of the long vacation, he went down to see her, feeling the difference in the house beyond anything he had imagined, feeling as if he were stepping into some darkened outer chamber of the grave: but with a cheerful face and eager but confident interest in "the news from Elinor." "Of course she is enjoying herself immensely," he said, and Mrs. Dennistoun was able to reply with a smile that was a little wistful, that yes, Elinor was enjoying herself immensely. "She seems very happy, and everything is new to her and bright," she said. They were both very glad that Elinor was happy, and they were very cheerful themselves. Mrs. Dennistoun truly cheered by his visit and by the necessity for looking after everything that John might be comfortable, and the pleasure of seeing his face opposite to her at table. "You can't think what it is to see you there; sitting down to dinner is the most horrible farce when one is alone." "Poor aunt!" John Tatham said: and n.o.body would believe how many Sat.u.r.days and Sundays he gave up to her during the long winter. Somehow he himself did not care to go anywhere else. In Elinor's time he had gone about freely enough, liking a little variety in his Sat.u.r.day to Mondays, though always happiest when he went to Windyhill: but now somehow the other houses seemed to pall upon him. He liked best to go down to that melancholy house which his presence made more or less bright, where there was an endless talk of Elinor, where she was, what she was doing, and what was to be her next move, and, at last, when she was coming to town. Mrs.

Dennistoun did not say, as she did at first, "when she is coming home."

That possibility seemed to slip away somehow, and no one suggested it.

When she was coming to town, that was what they said between themselves.

She had spent the spring on the Riviera, a great part of it at Monte Carlo, and her letters were full of the beauty of the place; but she said less and less about people, and more and more about the sea and the mountains, and the glorious road which gave at every turn a new and beautiful vision of the hills and the sea. It was a little like a guide-book, they sometimes felt, but neither said it; but at last it became certain that in the month of May she was coming to town.

More than that, oh, more than that! One evening in May, when it was fine but a little chilly, when Mrs. Dennistoun was walking wistfully in her garden, looking at the moon shining in the west, and wondering if her child had arrived in England, and whether she was coming to a house of her own, or a lodging, or to be a visitor in some one else's house, details which Elinor had not given--her ear was suddenly caught by the distant rumbling of wheels, heavy wheels, the fly from the station certainly. Mrs. Dennistoun had no expectation of what it could be, no sort of hope: and yet a woman has always a sort of hope when her child lives and everything is possible. The fly seemed to stop, not coming up the little cottage drive; but by and by, when she had almost given up hoping, there came a rush of flying feet, and a cry of joy, and Elinor was in her mother's arms. Elinor! yes, it was herself, no vision, no shadow such as had many a time come into Mrs. Dennistoun's dreams, but herself in flesh and blood, the dear familiar figure, the face which, between the twilight and those ridiculous tears which come when one is too happy, could scarcely be seen at all. "Elinor, Elinor! it is you, my darling!" "Yes, mother, it is me, really me. I could not write, because I did not know till the last minute whether I could get away."

It may be imagined what a coming home that was. Mrs. Dennistoun, when she saw her daughter even by the light of the lamp, was greatly comforted. Elinor was looking well; she was changed in that indescribable way in which marriage changes (though not always) the happiest woman. And her appearance was changed; she was no longer the country young lady very well dressed and looking as well as any one could in her carefully made clothes. She was now a fashionable young woman, about whose dresses there was no question, who wore everything as those do who are at the fountain-head, no matter what it was she wore.

Mrs. Dennistoun's eyes caught this difference at once, which is also indescribable to the uninitiated, and a sensation of pride came into her mind. Elinor was improved, too, in so many ways. Her mother had never thought of calling her anything more, even in her inmost thoughts, than very pretty, very sweet; but it seemed to Mrs. Dennistoun now as if people might use a stronger word, and call Elinor beautiful. Her face had gained a great deal of expression, though it was always an expressive face; her eyes looked deeper; her manner had a wonderful youthful dignity. Altogether, it was another Elinor, yet, G.o.d be praised, the same.

It was but for one night, but that was a great deal, a night subtracted from the blank, a night that seemed to come out of the old times--those old times that had not been known to be so very happy till they were over and gone. Elinor had naturally a great deal to tell her mother, but in the glory of seeing her, of hearing her voice, of knowing that it was actually she who was speaking, Mrs. Dennistoun did not observe, what she remembered afterwards, that again it was much more of places than of people that Elinor talked, and that though she named Phil when there was any occasion for doing so, she did not babble about him as brides do, as if he were altogether the sun, and everything revolved round him. It is not a good sign, perhaps, when the husband comes down to his "proper place" as the representative of the other half of the world too soon.

Elinor looked round upon her old home with a mingled smile and sigh.

Undoubtedly it had grown smaller, perhaps even shabbier, since she went away: but she did not say so to her mother. She cried out how pretty it was, how delightful to come back to it! and that was true too. How often it happens in this life that there are two things quite opposed to each other, and yet both of them true.