The Marriage of Elinor Part 47

"Yes, mother?"

"Don't let her make acquaintance with you; don't speak to her, nor the girl, nor any one that may be with her. At the risk even of being uncivil----"

"Why, mother," he said, elevating his eyebrows, "how could I be uncivil to a lady?"

"Because I tell you," she cried, "because you must--because I shall sit here in terror counting every moment till you come back, if you don't promise me this."

He looked at her with the most wondering countenance, half disapproving, half pitying. Was she going mad? what was happening to her? was she after all, though his mother, no better than the jealous foolish women in books, who endeavoured at all costs to separate their children from every influence but their own? How could Pippo think such things of his mother? and yet what else could he think?

"I had better," he said, "if that is how you feel, mother, not go to the Row at all."

"Much better, much better!" she cried. "I'll tell you what we'll do, Pippo--you have never been to see--the Tower." She had run over all the most far-off and unlikely places in her mind, and this occurred to her as the most impossible of all to attract any visitor of whom she could be afraid. "I have changed my mind," she added. "Well have a hansom, and I will go with you to see the Tower."

"So long as you go with me," said Pippo, "I don't care where I go."

And they set out almost joyfully as in their old happy expeditions of old, for that long drive through London in the hansom. And yet the boy was only lulled for the moment, and in his heart was more and more perplexed what his mother could mean.

CHAPTER XLIII.

Fortune was favourable to Elinor that day. At the Tower, where she duly went over everything that was to be seen with Pippo, conscious all the time of his keen observance of her through all that he was doing, and even through his interest in what he saw--and feeling for the first time in her life that there was between her boy and her something that he felt, something that was not explained by anything she had said, and that awaited the dreadful moment when everything would have to be told--at the Tower, as I say, they met some friends from the north, the rector of the parish, who had come up with his son to see town, and was naturally taking his boy, as Elinor took hers, to see all that was not town, in the usual sense of the word. They were going to Woolwich and Greenwich next day, and with a pang of mingled trouble and relief in her mind Elinor contrived to engage Pippo to accompany them. On the second day I think they were to go to St. Katherine's Docks, or the Isle of Dogs, or some other equally important and interesting sight--far better no doubt for the two youths than to frequent such places as the Row, and gaze at the stream of gaiety and luxury which they could not join. Pippo in ordinary circ.u.mstances would have been delighted to see Woolwich and the docks--but it was so evident to him that his mother was anxiously desirous to dispose of him so, that his satisfaction was much lessened.

The boy, however, was magnanimous enough to consent without any appearance of reluctance. In the many thoughts which filled his mind Philip showed his fine nature, by having already come to consent to the possibility that his mother might have business of her own into which he had no right to enter unless at her own time and with her full consent. It cost him an effort, I allow, to come to that: but yet he did so, and resolved, a little pride helping him, to inquire no more, and if possible to wonder or be offended no more, but to wait the time she had promised, when the old rule of perfect confidence should be re-established between them. The old rule! if Pippo had but known! nothing yet had given Elinor such a sense of guilt as his conviction that she had told him everything, that there had been no secrets between them during all the happy life that was past.

How entirely relieved Elinor was when he started to join his friends next morning it would be impossible to put into words. She watched all his lingering movements before he went with eyes in which she tried to quench the impatience, and look only with the fond admiration and interest she felt upon all his little preparations, his dawning sense of what was becoming in apparel, the flower in his coat, the carefully rolled umbrella, the hat brushed to the most exquisite smoothness, the handkerchief just peeping from his breast-pocket. It is always a revelation to a woman to find that these details occupy as much of a young man's attention as her own toilette occupies hers; and that he is as tremulously alive to "what is worn" in many small particulars that never catch her eye, as she is to details which entirely escape him. She smiles at him as he does at her, each in that conscious superiority to the other, which is on the whole an indulgent sentiment. Underneath all her anxiety to see him go, to get rid of him (was that the dreadful truth in this terrible crisis of her affairs?), she felt the amus.e.m.e.nt of the boy's little coquetries, and the mother's admiration of his fresh looks, his youthful brightness, his air of distinction; how different from the Rector's boy, who was a nice fellow enough, and a credit to his rectory, and whose mother, I do not doubt, felt in his ruddy good looks something much superior in robustness, and strength, and manhood to the too-tall and too-slight golden youth of the ladies at Lakeside! It even flitted across Elinor's mind to give him within herself the t.i.tle that was to be his, everybody said--Lord Lomond! And then she asked herself indignantly what honour it could add to her spotless boy to have such a vain distinction; a name that had been soiled by so much ign.o.ble use?

Elinor had prided herself all her life on an indifference to, almost a contempt for, the distinctions of rank: and that it should occur to her to think of that t.i.tle as an embellishment to Pippo--nay, to think furtively, without her own knowledge, so to speak, that Pippo looked every inch a lord and heir to a peerage, was an involuntary weakness almost incredible. She blushed for herself as she realised it:--a peerage which had meant so little that was excellent--a name connected with so many undesirable precedents: still I suppose when it is his own even the veriest democrat is conscious at least of the picturesqueness, the superiority, as a mode of distinguishing one man from another, of anything that can in the remotest sense be called a historical name.

When Pippo was out of sight Elinor turned from the window with a sigh, and came back to the dark chamber of her own life, full at this moment of all the gathered blackness of the past and of the future. She put her hands over her eyes, and sank down upon a seat, as if to shut out from herself all that was before her. But shut it out as she might, there it was--the horrible court with the judgment-seat, the rows of faces bent upon her, the silence through which her own voice must rise alone, saying--what? What was it she was called there to say? Oh, how little they knew who suggested that her mother should have been called instead of her, with all her minute old-fashioned calculations and exact memory, who even now, when all was over, would probably convict Elinor of a mistake! Even at that penalty what would not she give to have it over, the thing said, the event done with, whatever it might bring after it!

And it could now be only a very short time till the moment of the ordeal would come, when she should stand up in the face of her country, before the solemn judge on his bench, before all the gaping, wondering people--before, oh! thought most dreadful of all, which we would not, could not, contemplate--before one who knew everything, and say---- She picked herself up trembling as it were, and uncovered her eyes, and protested to herself that she would say nothing that was not true.

Nothing that was not true! She would tell her story--so well remembered, so often conned; that story that had been put into her lips twenty years ago which she had repeated then confused, not knowing how it was that what was a simple fact should nevertheless not be true. Alas! she knew that very well now, and yet would have to repeat it before G.o.d and the world. But thinking would make it no better--thinking could only make it worse. She sprang up again, and began to occupy herself with something she had to do: the less it was thought over the better: for now the trial had begun, and her ordeal would soon be done too. If only the boy could be occupied, kept away--if only she could be left alone to do what she had to do! That he should be there was the last aggravation of which her fate was capable; there in idleness, reading the papers in the morning, which was a thing she had so lately calculated a boy at school was unlikely to do; and what so likely as that his eye would be caught by his own name in the report of the trial, which would be an exciting trial and fully reported--a trial which interested society. The boy would see his own name: she could almost hear him cry out, looking up from his breakfast, "Hallo, mother! here's something about a Philip Compton!" And all the questions that would follow--"Is he the same Comptons that we are? What Comptons do we belong to? You never told me anything about my family. Is this man any relation, I wonder?

Both surname and Christian name the same. It's strange if there is no connection!" She could almost hear the words he would say--all that and more--and what should she reply?

"I have only one thing to say, Elinor," said John, to whom in her desperation she turned again, as she always did, disturbing him, poor man, in his chambers as he was collecting his notes and his thoughts in the afternoon after his work was over: "it is the same as I have always said; even now make a clean breast of it to the boy. Tell him everything; better that he should hear it from your own lips than that it should burst upon him as a discovery. He has but to meet Lady Mariamne in the park, the most likely thing in the world----"

"No, John," cried Elinor, "no; the Marshalls are here, our Rector from Lakeside, and he is taking his boy to see all the sights. I have got Pippo to go with them. They are going to Woolwich to-day, and afterwards to quite a long list of things--oh, entirely out of everybody's way."

Her little look of uneasy triumph and satisfaction made John smile. She was not half so sure as she tried to look; but, all the same, had a little pride, a little pleasure in her own management, and in the happy chance of the Marshalls being in London, which was a thing that could not have been planned, an intervention of Providence. He could not refuse to smile--partly with her, partly at her simplicity--but, all the same, he shook his head.

"The only way in which there is any safety--the only chance of preserving him from a shock, a painful shock, Elinor, that may upset him for life----"

"How do you mean, upset him for life?"

"By showing him that his mother, whom he believes in like heaven, has deceived him since ever he was born."

She covered her face with her hands, and burst into a sobbing cry. "Oh, John, you don't know how true that is! He said to me only yesterday, 'You have always told me everything, mother. There has never been any secret between us.' Oh! John, John, only think of having that said to me, and knowing what I know!"

"Well, Elinor; believe me, my dear, there is but one thing to do. The boy is a good boy, full of love and kindness."

"Oh, isn't he, John? the best boy, the dearest----"

"And adores his mother, as a boy should," John got up from his chair and walked about the room for a little, and then he came behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Tell him, Elinor: my dear Nelly, as if I had never said a word on the subject before, I beseech you tell him, trust him fully, even now, at the eleventh hour."

She raised her head with a quivering, wistful smile. "The moment the trial is over, the moment it is over! I give you my word, John."

"Do not wait till it is over, do it now; to-night when he comes home."

She began to tremble so that John Tatham was alarmed--and kept looking at him with an imploring look, her lips quivering and every line in her countenance. "Oh, not to-night. Spare me to-night! After the trial; after my part of it. At least--after--after--oh, give me till to-morrow to think of it!"

"My dear Elinor, I count for nothing in it. I am not your judge; I am your partisan, you know, whatever you do. But I am sure it will be the better done, and even the easier done, the sooner you do it."

"I will--I will: at the very latest the day after I have done my part at the trial. Is not that enough to think of at one time, for a poor woman who has never stood up before the public in all her life, never had a question put to her? Oh, John! oh, John!"

"Elinor, Elinor! you are too sensible a woman to make a fuss about a simple duty like this."

"There speaks the man who has stood before the world all his life, and is not afraid of any public," she said, with a tremulous laugh. But she had won her moment's delay, and thus was victorious after a fashion, as it was her habit to be.

I do not know that young Philip much amused himself at Woolwich that day. He did and he did not. He could not help being interested in all he saw, and he liked the Marshalls well enough, and in ordinary circ.u.mstances would have entered very heartily into any sight-seeing.

But he kept thinking all the time what his mother was doing, and wondering over the mysterious business which was to be explained to him sooner or later, and which he had so magnanimously promised to wait for the revelation of, and entertain no suspicions about in the meantime.

The worst of such magnanimity is that it is subject to dreadful failings of the heart in its time of waiting--never giving in, indeed, but yet feeling the pressure whenever there is a moment to think. This matter mixed itself up so with all Philip saw that he never in after life saw a great cannon, or a pyramid of b.a.l.l.s (which is not, to be sure, an every-day sight) without a vague sensation of trouble, as of something lying behind which was concealed from him, and which he would scarcely endure to have concealed. When he left his friends in the evening, however, it was with another engagement for to-morrow, and several to-morrows after, and great jubilation on the part of both father and son, as to their good luck in meeting, and having his companionship in their pleasures. And, in fact, these pleasures were carried on for several days, always with the faint bitter in them to Philip, of that consciousness that his mother was pleased to be rid of him, glad to see his back turned, the most novel, extraordinary sensation to the boy.

And it must also be confessed that he kept a very keen eye on all the pa.s.sing carriages, always hoping to see that one in which the witch, as he called her, and the girl with the keen eyes were--for he had not picked up the name of Lady Mariamne, keen as his young ears were, and though John had mentioned it in his presence, partly, perhaps, because it was so very unlikely a name. As for the man with the opera-gla.s.ses, he had not seen his face at all, and therefore could not hope to recognise him. And yet he felt a little thrill run through him when any tall man with grey hair pa.s.sed in the street. He almost thought he could have known the tall slim figure with a certain swaying movement in it, which was not like anybody else. I need not say, however, that even had these indications been stronger, Woolwich and the Isle of Dogs were unlikely places in which to meet Lady Mariamne, or any gentleman likely to be in attendance on her. In Whitechapel, indeed, had he but known, he might have met Miss Dolly: but then in Whitechapel there were no sights which virtuous youth is led to see. And Philip's man with the opera-gla.s.s was, during these days, using that aid to vision in a very different place, and had neither leisure nor inclination to move vaguely about the world.

For three days this went on successfully enough: young Philip Compton and Ralph Marshall saw enough to last them all the rest of their lives, and there was no limit to the satisfaction of the good country clergyman, who felt that he never could have succeeded so completely in improving his son's mind, instead of delivering him over to the frivolous amus.e.m.e.nts of town, if it had not been for the companionship of Philip, who made Ralph feel that it was all right, and that he was not being victimised for nothing. But on the fourth day a hitch occurred. John Tatham had been made to give all sorts of orders and admissions for the party to see every nook and corner of the Temple, much to Elinor's alarm, who felt that place was too near to be safe; but she was herself in circ.u.mstances too urgent to permit her dwelling upon it. She had left the house on that particular morning long before Philip was ready, and every anxiety was dulled in her mind for the moment by the overwhelming sense of the crisis arrived. She went to his room before he had left it, and gave him a kiss, and told him that she might be detained for a long time; that she did know exactly at what hour she should return. She was very pale, paler than he had ever seen her, and her manner had a suppressed agitation in it which startled Philip; but she managed to smile as she a.s.sured him she was quite well, and that there was nothing troubling her. "Nothing, nothing that has to do with us--a little disturbed for a friend--but that will be all over," she said, "to-night, I hope." Philip made a leisurely breakfast after she was gone, and it happened to him that morning for the first time as he was alone to make a study of the papers. And the consequence was that he said to himself really those words which his mother in imagination had so often heard him say, "Hallo! Philip Compton, my name! I wonder if he is any relation.

I wonder if we have anything to do with those St. Serf Comptons." Then he reflected, but vaguely, that he did not know to what Comptons he belonged, nor even what county he came from, to tell the truth. And then it was time to hurry over his breakfast, to swallow his cup of tea, to s.n.a.t.c.h up his hat and gloves, and to rush off to meet his friends. But on that day Philip was unlucky. When he got to the place of meeting he found nothing but a telegram from Ralph, announcing that his father was so knocked up with his previous exertions that they were obliged to take a quiet day. And thus Philip was left in the Temple, of all places in the world, on the day when his mother was to appear in the law-courts close by--on the day of all others when if she could have sent him for twenty-four hours to the end of the earth she would have done so--on the day when so terrible was the stress and strain upon herself that for once in the world even Pippo had gone as completely out of her mind as if he had not been.

The boy looked about him for awhile, and reflected what to do, and then he started out into the Strand, conscientiously waiting for the Marshalls before he should visit the Temple and all its historical ways; and then he was amused and excited by seeing a barrister or two in wig and gown pa.s.s by; and then he thought of the trial in the newspapers, in which somebody who, like himself, was called Philip Compton, was involved. Philip was still lingering, wondering if he could get into the court, a little shy of trying, but gradually growing eager, thinking at least that he would try and get a sight of the wonderful grand building, still so new, when he suddenly saw Simmons, his uncle John's clerk, pa.s.sing through the quadrangle of the law-courts. Here was his chance.

He rushed forward and caught the clerk by the arm, who was in a great hurry, as everybody seemed to be. "Oh, Simmons, can you get me into that Brown trial?" cried Philip. "Brown!" Simmons said. "Mr. Tatham is not on in that." "Oh, never mind about Mr. Tatham," said the boy. "Can't you get me in? I have never seen a trial, and I take an interest in that."

"I advise you," said Simmons, "to wait for one that your uncle's in."

"Can't you get me in?" said Philip, impatiently: and this touched the pride of Simmons, who had many friends, if not in high places, yet in low.

CHAPTER XLIV.

Philip had never been in a court of law before. I am almost as ignorant as he was, yet I cannot imagine anything more deeply interesting than to find one's self suddenly one of a crowded a.s.sembly trying more or less--for is not the public but a larger jury, sometimes contradicting the verdict of the other, and when it does so almost invariably winning the cause?--a fellow-creature, following out the traces of his crime or his innocence, looking on while a human drama is unrolled, often far more interesting than any dramatic representation of life. He was confused for the moment by the crowd, by the new and unusual spectacle, by the bewilderment of seeing for the first time what he had so often heard of, the judge on the bench, the wigged barristers below, the one who was speaking, so different from any other public speaker Philip had ever heard, addressing not the a.s.sembly, but the smaller circle round him, interrupted by other voices: the accused in his place and the witness--standing there more distinctly at the bar than the culprit was--bearing his testimony before earth and heaven, with the fate of another hanging on his words. The boy was so full of the novel sight--which yet he had heard of so often that he could identify every part of it, and soon perceived the scope of what was going on--that he did not at first listen, so full was he of the interest of what he saw.

The imperturbable judge, grave, letting no emotion appear on his face; the jury, just the reverse, showing how this and that piece of evidence affected them; the barristers who were engaged, so keenly alive to everything, starting up now and then when the witness swerved from the subject, when the opposition proposed a leading question, or one that was irrelevant to the issue; the others who were not "in it," as Simmons said, so indifferent; and then the spectators who had places about or near the central interest. Philip saw, with a sudden leap of his heart, the ladies of the theatre and park, the witch and the girl with the keen eyes, in a conspicuous place; the old lady, as he called her, full of movement and gesture, making signs to others near her, keeping up an interrupted whispering, the girl at her side as impa.s.sive as the judge himself. And then Pippo's roving eye caught a figure seated among the barristers with an opera-gla.s.s, which made his heart jump still more.

Was that the man? He had, at the moment Philip perceived him, his opera-gla.s.s in his hand: a tall man leaning back with a look of interest, very conspicuous among the wigged heads about him, with grey hair in a ma.s.s on his forehead as if it had grown thin and had been coaxed to cover some denuded place, and a face which it seemed to Philip he had seen before, a face worn--was it with study, was it with trouble?

Pippo knew of no other ways in which the eyes could be so hollowed out, and the lines so deeply drawn. A man, perhaps, hard worn with life and labor and sorrow. A strange sympathy sprang up in the boy's mind: he was sure he knew the face. It was a face full of records, though young Philip could not read them--the face, he thought, of a man who had had much to bear. Was it the same man who had fixed so strange a gaze upon himself at the theatre? And what interest could this man have in the trial that was going on?

The accused at the bar was certainly not of a kind to arouse the interest which sprang into being at sight of this worn and n.o.ble hero.

He had the air of a comfortable man of business, a man evidently well off, surprised at once and indignant to find himself there, sometimes bursting with eagerness to explain, sometimes leaning back with an air of affected contempt--not a good man in trouble, as Philip would have liked to think him, nor a criminal fully conscious of what might be awaiting him; but a man of the first respectability, indignant and incredulous that anything should be brought against him. Philip felt himself able to take no interest whatever in Mr. Brown.

It was not till he had gone through all these surprises and observations that he began to note what was being said. Philip was not learned in the procedure of the law, nor did he know anything about the case; but it became vaguely apparent to him after awhile that the immediate question concerned the destruction of the books of a joint-stock company, of which Brown was the manager, an important point which the prosecution had some difficulty in bringing home to him. After it had been proved that the books had been destroyed, and that so far as was known it was to Brown's interest alone to destroy them, the evidence as to what had been seen on the evening on which this took place suddenly took a new turn, and seemed to introduce a new actor on the scene. Some one had been seen to enter the office in the twilight who could not be identified with Brown; whom, indeed, even Philip, with his boyish interest in the novelty of the proceedings, vaguely perceived to be another man. The action of the piece, so to speak (for it was like a play to Philip), changed and wavered here--and he began to be sensible of the character of the different players in it. The counsel for the prosecution was a well-known and eminent barrister, one of the most noted of the time, a man before whom witnesses trembled, and even the Bench itself was sometimes known to quail. That this was the case on the present occasion Philip vaguely perceived. There were points continually arising which the opposing counsel made objections to, appealing to the judge; but it rarely failed that the stronger side, which was that of the prosecution, won the day. The imperious accuser, whose resources of precedent and argument seemed boundless, carried everything with a high hand. The boy, of course, was not aware of the weakness of the representative of the majesty of the law, nor the inferiority, in force and skill, of the defence; but he gradually came to a practical perception of how the matter stood.

Philip listened with growing interest, sometimes amused, sometimes indignant, as the remorseless prosecutor ploughed his way through the witnesses, whom he bullied into admissions that they were certain of nothing, and that in the dusk of that far-off evening, the man whom they had sworn at the time to be quite unlike him, might in reality have been Brown. Philip got greatly interested in this question. He took up the opposite side himself with much heat, feeling as sure as if he had been there that it was not Brown: and he was delighted in his excitement, when there stood up one man who would not be bullied, a man who had the air of a respectable clerk of the lower cla.s.s, and who held his own. He had been an office boy, the son apparently of the housekeeper in charge of the premises referred to when the incident occurred, and the gist of his evidence was that the prisoner at the bar--so awful a personage once to the little office boy, so curtly discussed now as Brown--had left the office at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th of September, and had not appeared again.